Children & Youth Committee- Senate & Aging, Children & Youth, Legislative & Military Affairs- House

OK, members, if you take your seats, uh, Representative Barker could not be here today and I'm here today, uh, to chair this meeting and we're gonna start the agenda off by calling up, uh, Mr. Jeff Wood, but also, uh, I can remember several years ago, I served with Mr. Wood and, uh, in the, uh, house and, uh, I'm gonna tell you he was pretty easy on me coming in. But, uh, members, if it's OK and without objection because back then we, uh, They uh allowed freshmen and some other people who never chaired or had experienced meetings come up when there was a meeting that, uh, was like this so if there's no objection, I'm gonna turn it over to Representative Brown to chair the meeting. So is there an objection? OK, without a check and Representative Brown, you're now the chair, you can recognize. Thank you, Senator. Please bear with me in case I make any mistakes. I would like to remind the committee that my sole qualification for today is that I wore a tie this morning. Uh, first item on the agenda is to consider and approve the August 26th, 2024 meeting minutes to have a motion. Second. Sing a second, all in favor. All right, then it's approved. Next item on the agenda is discussion of the closure of the Youth Challenge program, uh, uh, Chief Wood, I believe, is, uh, going to present. Right. You recognize, sir, if you'd introduce yourself and uh you may begin. You have one chief of staff. I already messed up and I'm 2 minutes in. Here we go. Jeff Wood, chief of staff, Arkansas Department of Military. Brigadier General Bradley Cox, Deputy General, Arkansas National Guard. You recognize her. OK, Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to come before you today on behalf of the Essent General Brigadier General Chad Bridges. I want to thank the hundreds of dedicated employees who have worked with Youth Challenge over many years. It was with a heavy heart that Major General John Stubs made the decision to curtail the program, but I think you will see over the course of this presentation that was the right decision, not just for the Department of the military, but for the children, which would have been placed in its care. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm just gonna start out by giving a little bit of background because youth Challenge often gets confused with, uh, with DHS's CSTEP program, the civilian student training program which was located across the street. It used to be with the Department of Military until they reorged in 2019 and it went over there. So, um, the first slide here shows you that the youth challenge is a, is a federal program. It's actually in the US Code, uh, that the National Guard can, can operate the program. It's a 22 week residential with a 12 month post-residential mentoring period. So in the paragraph there kind of in the handout I gave you kind of highlights what the initiatives were of the program. Uh, it's in the statute that the people eligible to attend the program are, uh, it says, uh, a school dropout from a secondary school. I'll admit I had to Google secondary school. That's just a fancy name for high school. So, uh, which is what I thought it was. So, uh, has to be a high school dropout and then the Secretary of Defense can prescribe rules after that and so that's literally all that's in the um that's in the code section regarding the youth challenge program, so. And what I did is I pulled some of the information from the Department of Defense instruction, um, that establishes the National Guard Youth Challenge program, just kind of wanted to highlight that currently it is in operation in 27 states, territories, or districts. Um, it is a 2 75% federally funded program, uh, receives 25% state funds. Um, one of the important things in the rules that kind of played in this decision is that, um, the, the rules require us to have a 21. Padre for every 25 students, and you'll hear me use the term cadre. That's interchangeable with youth challenge training Officer one. And so we just kind of use those terms interchangeably. So, but that was one of the things that factored in is for, for every 25 kids we have in the program, we're supposed to have one cadre. If you look at that next paragraph, it kind of tells you who's eligible to participate, um, and again, uh, a citizen that second paragraph, you know, uh, is somewhat important for us, you know, not under indictment or even convicted of a felony or any crime that would be a felony if perpetrated by an adult or not currently on parole or probation for anything other than juvenile, uh, status offenses or misdemeanors. Um, and again, the age group is between 16 and 18, uh, is, is there, and again, high school dropout, uh, recruitment, here is the recruitment. rules for the Youth Challenge program and so it is a voluntary program. It is not court-ordered, so, uh, the kids are there, they can leave at any time, uh, their parents can come and get them at any time and so, um, and if you read that second underlying thing there is by sta by the regulations, the DOD instruction, it is neither a juvenile justice detention alternative, no therapeutic environment for those with serious clinical mental health issues or substance abuse issues and kind of what we discovered, you know, uh, kind of. And the after action on this is when we're trying to put some of our kids that have been accepted into our program into other states. Uh, you know, a lot of the other states wouldn't accept some of our kids because they, they felt they kind of fell in too much in that category of having certain mental health issues or, you know, they, their involvement with the juvenile justice system was a little bit more than what they would take in their own state. So we kind of, we kind of stumbled to upon that through the closed down process. Um, again, so the other states kind of always stress that the rigorous screening and selection criteria. you know, it's kind of a cornerstone of a good Youth Challenge program. And then around March of 2023, there was a RD report, uh, that dealt with, uh, the Youth Challenge program nationally. It's got a lot of good information there and kind of what I pulled out here is kind of one of the factors that impacted us, um, you'll see there, they talked about staff turnover is very high, you know, almost throughout all the programs, uh, and particularly because of the salaries. And so if you look at that chart there, uh, you know, they said that, you know, even $38,000 in other states. It's very difficult to hire people. To fill these cadre positions. Uh, and again, even with states that were paying up to 47,000, they were still having trouble finding folks to fill these positions, um. And in Arkansas, you know, we basically were at $27,000 is what we had until the last biennium. Uh, we did get a, a market rate increase to 31, and then the next biennium raised them all to GS 5. So it was, you know, still trying to get it up from 30, 27,000 we did get it up to 32, which ultimately didn't really make it as competitive as we hoped it would. Uh, pull this, I pulled this out too. This is another important chart from the, from the RAND study. It showed the average graduation rates, you know, across the country for the programs and so most people were averaging between 75 to, uh, 75 to 78% of the folks that went into the program, graduated from it, uh, and that's an important factor because, uh, the federal budget is getting a little tighter, so federal funds are getting more competitive for youth challenge programs and so, uh, ultimately, when they look at what's a successful program and what's not, they look. it from an investment standpoint. And so I think, uh, what you'll see is Arkansas had one of the lowest graduation rates, uh, you know, of nationally compared to other youth challenge programs. And there was another uh uh GAO study that came out in November of 2023 regarding National Guard Youth Challenge programs. If you look to the right, I kind of pulled some of this out because I think other states, again, they were experiencing the same thing we were, uh, persistent challenge in hiring to meet that cadet to student ratio, um, and again, when they had didn't have enough cadre there, the risk kids were wandering off and they were also engaging in self-harm and also getting into altercations with other kids just because there wasn't enough staff there to kind of keep us safe. Environment. So, um, other states to address their shortages. You'll read there, they kind of lowered their rank, which basically meant they've kind of lowered their lowered their emission standards down a little bit to get to to kind of, uh, get more people in there, uh, but it resulted the cadre with less experience, which is something again that I think we also experienced even with $32,000 we were getting, uh, weren't getting very experienced employees, so. Um, and finally there's that last part of that, they said, you know, that because of pay and burnout, uh, it was, uh, contributing their inability to maintain cadre, uh, they could significantly reduce the risk to Cadre, um, excuse me, students, safety, and again, when they, they noticed low cash, low rates of staff also led to inappropriate language by the staff and again incidents where they were actually, you know, laying hands on students. The next thing I threw up there just a little bit more background. This is actually the opium position description for our youth program training officer one or cadre. Again, the, the starting salary, we did get up to 32,000. And we really tried to work, uh, you know, the exceptionally well qualified, uh, angle to this to try to, to make the salary more competitive. As you can see, uh, the minimum qualifications for this job is a high school equivalent education and then one year of specialized related experience, which honestly is pretty vague. There's a lot of things that could fit into that, so it's a very low, low threshold on the, uh, entry qualifications for the position, which, again, probably contributed to the, uh, the level of staff we were bringing in. Um, and again, here's some of the, just for your, I won't go through this because it's kind of lengthy, but you can kind of see when we talk about cadre, here's basically what their jobs were, and they basically were there to oversee the kids. They're the ones that would watch the kids overnight, they would march them to and from, uh, you know, food, take them to classes. So they were basically like the drills, the drill instructors for the students. And a little bit more background and, and, uh, you know, there was an audit, the team that came down from NGB. They come down every couple of years. They came down in March of 2023. Uh, we got a little bit of verbal on the audit. We didn't actually get our hands on the actual audit till July or early August of that year was the first time we were able to see it in writing. So, and I kind of pulled out some of the major fightings there, uh, findings, uh, that first one, you know, they did notice that there was a tension between the director and deputy director. And I think what we noticed, uh, you know, on the, on The back end of this is, uh, you know, there was a few of the cadre that were taking advantage of that. I mean, they were kind of amplifying that wedge and they were kind of playing it so that they had a little bit more control. Uh, not all of our cadre, we've had some great cadre work there, uh, but it just, there was a few that that I think use this opportunity to, to kind of, uh, push the program in their direction and kind of and they were making policy decisions which they shouldn't have been making. So, um, through some efforts, we were able to, we did, we did reorganize, uh, the, uh, organizational chart down. There and I think we had that division, if not squashed, minimize uh very little towards the end of, uh, uh, this year, so. Um Let's see, and again, you'll see that the, the, the cadre were dismissing kids from the program. That is a director's call, uh, but he was, you know, he was getting notified on the backside that some kids are being released, so the cadre were just calling the parents telling them to come get them. And I think we had a few instances where the director said, don't release the kid, but the cadre went ahead and did it anyway. And so with a voluntary program, it's kind of hard to undo those types of things. And again, to me, it just shows more of the evidence where we had a few bad actors that were kind of exploiting the, uh, you know, some of the structural, uh, Problems down there, so, and there was a unilateral decision made to go to 12 hour shifts, uh, which, you know, again, that cost us some employees down there, Cadre, you know, just couldn't, couldn't make that work with their life. Uh, we had some cadre down there that pushed forward and so they were kind of juggling it around. So, and a lot of the studies say you can't have cadres or, you know, people that are looking after kids work 12 hours. Uh, I think the RAND study has a ratio of when you work longer hours, the graduation rate goes down, you know, discipline problems go up just because it's hard. For folks to stay that engaged with these youth for 12 hours, you know, 12 hour shifts, so, um, and down at the bottom there is just something, something else we wanted to highlight, you know, uh, we had to call, uh, soldiers on the state active duty. Uh, you'll see back in 2022, you know, during COVID, uh, you know, we, we had some, uh, state of emergencies which enabled us to bring soldiers on to orders, um, basically, we had to have 8 service members come on down there and basically supplement the staff down there at Youth Challenge because we just did not have the bare minimum number of. Staff to run the place. And so you'll see there we had service members there for, you know, almost a couple of years. Uh, the other thing I would highlight where it gets down to that 10 enlisted in one major, that was one of our efforts to address the audit. Uh, we brought in a senior major who had good military planning, military operations and staff experience. So she helped reshape the organization down there, kind of showed them how military, you know, build slides, uh, have staff meetings and kind of that, so we, uh, we started doing that and saw some good results from that. That and the director and deputy director actually came up and met with General Cox every month to kind of brief us on, you know, different areas because, uh, the audit also showed they weren't doing serious incident reports and so we weren't getting, we weren't getting informed of when things happened down there and they weren't being reported up, so we implemented that and that kind of flowed some information up to us of things that we weren't aware that were going on down there, so. Going to kind of highlight again because this kind of played into the ultimate decision. We had several investigations take place once we started getting a flow of information of, hey, what's going on down there? And when the SIR started coming up, so kind of starting back with May, uh, I'll just kind of give you a quick summary. And we had 6 cadets test positive for marijuana that had not left, uh, the campus in 45 days. Um, so somehow they were getting marijuana inside the, uh, you know, inside the youth challenge compound. You know, there was allegations about some of the kids that the Uh, cadre were selling marijuana to the kids. Uh, that was unsubstantiated in our investigation. Um, all these investigations are what we call administrative investigations. So the, the burden of proof is preponderance, and so the investigating officer just could not determine how they got it in there, uh, even though there was allegations that could have been, uh, cadre, you'll see there too we had a cadre that was engaged in horseplay. We have a hands-off policy. Um, he shouldn't have done that and then, uh, the term inappropriate relationship in this context that came up but It was more so the, uh, having, uh, you know, social communications with the cadres sometimes of a romantic, sometimes of a sexual nature, either through, you know, um, Instagram or other means. And so that did come up in the, in the investigation we're able to address that, so had another one of our cadre who came to work often smelling of marijuana, uh, and, and was under the influence at work and was giving females, uh, students, unauthorized access to the operations center. So, so again, those were findings of. An investigation we hadn't made that we addressed. April, you know, we had another investigation that came up in 2024, uh, that one of the senior, uh, supervisors down there was engaging in sexual harassment, uh, of the other, you know, training officers and so we, we addressed that. And again, there was just some unprofessional language, uh, and, and just not a good level of discipline, uh, and standards there, so. And then, uh, leading up, I'm kind of going backwards in March of 2024, um, in the middle of the day, we got a report of one of our training officers, I guess he'd gotten off shift, but he broke into one of our, uh, our hotel barracks rooms out there. Uh, we call them barracks, basically just hotel rooms, but, uh, he broke the window out and apparently he got intoxicated and, you know, tore up a little bit of the room. So ultimately, police report was filed, uh, and he was terminated, so. Jumping down to another investigation that happened in January of 2024. Uh, again, this is kind of involved three different cadre, you know, we had one that was unfairly, you know, uh, punishing the kids, not using the proper discipline, uh, risk their safety by sending them out in the cold without the, you know, proper cold weather gear down there, so that was addressed, had another cadre who was having an inappropriate romantic relationship, uh, with a cadet. Uh, there was allegations there was, it was actually a physical relationship, uh, but the cameras that we had down there at the time. We're not of a good quality. We've since upgraded them, but you know, it was one of those we could get to a preponderance, but we couldn't, we couldn't prove there was sexual contact, um, you know, when we talk to the student, she denied it, uh, the cadre, by the time that time was already terminated for other misconduct. We never really got to interview them, but we did, uh, we did handle everything like we should have. We reported the child maltreatment registry, you know, we did the investigation and we referred our administrative investigation to local law enforcement, um, and you're going down there. Again, we had another cadre that was, uh, you know, accused of a sexual romantic communications with one of the students, um, And then, uh, let's see, we had a couple more of those there in that one. So that was a really big investigation, um, going back a little bit more, October 20 23rd, we had two training officers that were found to have abandoned their post, you know, one was alleged to have been sleeping in her car. Um, she denied it, but the preponderance of the evidence showed that she more likely than not was sleeping in her car, had another, uh, training officer Cadre who took medication, fell asleep in the operations room, so he wasn't available and, uh, probably the sad part of this story is. During this time frame, they were not watching the kids, an electrical fire took place in the barracks and so we had some, uh, really good students who, who, who stepped up, uh, even at a young age, uh, just cleared the building, actually put the fire out themselves and so I think that was a, that was a big deal for us, you know, looking at that, that, you know, we're paying people to watch these kids. We have a fire break out and the kids put the fire out themselves. So, um, so again, that was another investigation we had, um, and then going back to May of 2023, uh, we actually had a A stayed active duty soldier who there was an investigation against who was just, uh, probably using more traditional military means for, for discipline and engaging them. And, uh, I think he lay, uh, laid hands on one of the cadets, uh, you know, uh, just kind of grabbing them, which they can't do, but that investigation ultimately found that it recommended we not use, uh, state active duty soldiers to replace the, the, uh, the cadre down there. We need to start hiring more student cadre, get them on there and transition the military folks out because Uh, the investigator felt we were putting some of our soldiers in a bad position. They weren't trained, they don't have experience with, with these youth, and so we're putting them down there trying to execute a mission that we weren't setting them up for, for success on, so. Kind of jumping on the graduation percentages, I kind of touched on that earlier, but this is kind of our trend, you know, for the last couple of years, so, um. You know, I would say um probably 15 or 20 years ago, we were running, you know, 200, 200 plus kids through there, had a high graduation rate, and I think again, just the shift in the labor market, uh, I think is what impacted us. We just couldn't hire and, uh, retain good cadre. So, and ultimately, those are the things I talked about going to 12 hour shifts, you know, having that, uh, that disagreement between the, uh, the director and the deputy director kind of led to, you know, some tension down there, so which started getting reflected in our graduation rates. So you can see there for the last You know, couple of years we've been well below the 75% graduation rate. And this kind of gives the ultimate picture of where we were kind of in that July time frame when we ultimately made the decision, um, you know, out of our 28 cadre positions, only 19 of them were filled. We had 4 cadre that were facing disciplinary action. It was pretty serious enough that we realized, hey, more likely than not, you know, they're going to be terminated, um, and so, and we also had 12 of the remaining cadre, uh, doing the quick math, I think that's, uh, 15 or 1612 of those had less than 1 year experience. Uh, and again We got another slide that's going to show our retention rate for folks that have been there less than a year is not very good. You know, it appears to be a job that folks are willing to take till they can find another job. And so we've seen a, you know, kind of a lot of turnover there. So, um, And just kind of highlighting the staffing requirements. I mean, since it is a 24 hour 7 day a week program. We got enough have enough cadre to cover 168 hours a week, uh, for every 25, uh, students. And this is just kind of a little fancier graphic kind of paints that picture I just said and the only thing I'll, I'll, uh, kind of highlight here is, you know, January is the first time that we didn't have any, uh, individuals down there on our soldiers down there on state active duty to support the program. You know, we had one nurse, uh, because that's kind of another challenge we had hiring nurses is pretty. difficult. So we had one on stay active duty, but our average turnover was 5 months of all the employees that we had come on, uh, you know, over the, over about a year and a half period that we looked at, we had about 24, 25 new ones, but the average time they were staying is 5 months. Half of those were only stay in 3 months. So within 90 days, a lot of these folks are, are finding new jobs, which really gave us a concern when you have to have 17 as the bare minimum to run the program, you know, uh, and you're looking at 12 of them have less than, uh, you know. 6 months experience, you know, again, it just looks like a recipe for disaster because we knew we were probably gonna lose a lot of those folks as well, and we're getting that kind of that unsafe ratio. And I kind of summarized a lot of those things kind of in this last slide, um, you know, it kind of went into our, our, our decision. Ultimately, it just comes down to we couldn't recruit and retain our our cadre is the is the bottom line on why the program was shut down. Uh, we could, we couldn't guarantee the safety of it, uh, you know, again, so it got to the point of, you know, if we, if we can't do it right, we owe it to the parents of those kids. They're sending them to, to us to make sure they're safe and they're treated well, and if we can't do that, uh, you know, to a, to a standard of a military program that we're used to running, then we just needed to close the program. So, uh, kind of highlighting those other things again, a lot of cadre with less than, uh, the experience that needed, um, Talked about the starting salary, uh, and again, we just had a lack of interest when we advertised the positions. We advertise these single positions over 357 times, uh, because we have 28 of them and at one time we had 19 vacancies. So we, you know, part of the, part of the way we try to get our staff kind of, uh, uh, redone is we went to continuously advertising every position. So instead of doing them one at a time for like 3 or 4 weeks, we just kept advertising them 5 days. We got, uh, you know, we started conditionally bringing folks on to go ahead and, you know, uh, pending a drug test and background because we were losing folks, uh, even in that process. We had 21 individuals say they want to accept the job and start, start work with us that either didn't show up for the first day of work or called and said, yeah, I changed my mind. I'm not, uh, not interested anymore, so, and again, that just kind of put us back at square one every time of having to re advertise a position and re-interview and all that. So, um. I think that is covers the most of it. There and I, and I tried to, uh, keep it within the, uh, 15 minute time frame. So I'll be happy to answer any questions. Representative Mayberry recognized? Thank you, Mr. Chair. Um, in some of these instances, you, you mentioned that you did turn some of it over to local law enforcement. Can you explain, is that district attorney, was that local police? Who, who do you mean by local law enforcement and what has the outcome of that been? Yeah, and I'm going to speculate a little bit because our, our, our attorney at the time handled that, uh, so I think the state police is who we turn it over to because they have concurrent jurisdiction, of course, on, uh, Camp Robinson. So, and with it being administrative investigation and again not having statements from, you know, the alleged victim or the accused person. It makes it a little tough, but we, we got them everything they, they needed, uh, to make a decision. Ultimately, I think they declined to prosecute, uh, I, I'll get you an answer on that representative, just to make be sure, but ultimately, I think there just wasn't a lot there. The cameras weren't working very well at all. There wasn't much to see there, uh, and again, it's just one of those with it being real preponderance, it's a little easier for our investigators to say, hey, you know, judged credibility and come to determination, but it probably. Didn't rise to the level of, you know, you know, what a, uh, public prosecutor would, would look at, so OK. A lot of stuff in here And I will say that it's, it's so sad because I think many of us have taken a tour of the facilities at least twice I have and have just thought, what a great program, what a great idea. We need something like this. So to, to hear this and know that these things were taking place, it's just, it, it's very sad, um, but I do understand there's a lot of problems and they need to be fixed. We can't continue with the way things are right now looking at this information. Um, Is this the end forever of this program, or is there some way that given some time and new effort and new energy that we can bring the program back and better, and what is it that you need from us to be able to do that. I think right now we're basically focused on closing it down, but Wyoming and several other states have gone through the same process. And basically, once the federal funding is turned off, it's at least a year, a year and a half wait until you can reapply to say, hey, we'd like to open it up. you know, reopen it, but, uh, for the states that do that, they want to see an extremely detailed plan of, hey, you know, we saw what happened last time, you know, how, what are you going to do to make sure it doesn't happen again, so, uh, and I think Wyoming might be about a year out from that track, but there, there is a process on down the road but if the National Guard Bureau had shut the program down. Then the odds of us ever getting the program back would have been slim to none and we were do another inspection this fall. And so that was, that also played in the decision General Stubbs, uh, went through to, to come to this conclusion. If I can have another question, do you recognize me? Thank you. Um, So The ones who normally would have possibly made use of these services. Where are they going now? What, what's out there for them and that's a good question, you know, because this is probably one of the only free programs within the state, uh, you know, uh, so there's, there's nothing similar within the state, but we do have, uh, there's several other states, Mississippi does not have a, a, you have to be a citizen of that state to, to go to their youth challenge program. So what a lot of states do that, uh, don't have a youth challenge program is they encourage folks to go to the other states, I think. Kentucky's another one that doesn't have a requirement that you have to be a citizen of the state to go there, that, you know, when we were trying to get a place for our kids that we had in the pipeline, the 50 that we're going to go in there. Kentucky is one of the states, they end up taking 25 of our kids there. Louisiana does have a residency requirement, but they worked with us to get some uh some students in there. But, so I would say probably the, the alternative is going to be Mississippi's program, uh, again, it's one of those that if, uh, you can apply for it and not have to be, uh, a citizen of that state. I'll get back in the queue. Yeah. Representative Shepherd, you recognized? Thank you and thank you for being here today. Quick question, how long was the program in operations 31 years. 31 years follow up, um. Out of the 31 years because we've been presented with um definitely a program that appeared to be failing within the last couple of years. But out of the 31 years, can you share any successes that you all may have had? Oh absolutely, I think, uh, and, uh, I'm gonna get close to the number but not right on top of it, but I think we've had, you know, 4600 and something kids graduate through the program. Uh, and I think that's one of the things you can see on the website. A lot of success stories. You know, a lot of folks, uh, you know, uh, getting, uh, getting their GEDs, going on to college, you know, getting their driver's license, you know, just a fantastic, there's numerous good news stories on the program, so. Thank you. Representative Springer you recognize? Good afternoon and thank you, Mr. Chair and thank you, Chief Wood, for being here. You and I kind of had a little briefy last month before your presentation today, and I too am sad to hear about this program. We were out there, I guess maybe almost a year ago and I was thoroughly impressed with what I saw. Maybe we didn't see some of the things that you've reported here today, but it seemed to me that the students were getting along and they were enjoying themselves, and they made a nice Presentation to us, so I am deeply, deeply saddened that um The program is gonna end. So here's my question. So have, do you, can you honestly say that you all have done everything possible to turn this around, given the fact that you've done these investigations and you've addressed uh personnel and that sort of thing and I surely you've uh taken action against the director the two that would not get along, so can you truthfully say that you've done everything possible that that you don't see that this program can be turned around and you can maintain it. Can you honestly tell me that there is no hope at all for this program absolutely representative. I, I think I couldn't look a parent in the eye and say, hey, you should send your kid to this program knowing everything that's been going on there, you know, I think we did the hard thing. We didn't hide anything. We investigated what needed to be investigated. We assigned good investigators. Uh, you know, we wanted, we wanted the ultimate truth on everything and we acted, uh, properly on that, and I think if anything. There's been a little reluctance over the years. It's probably built up and probably should have been a harder question asked a few years ago, because I think what makes us nervous is this is all we know about, you know, and they weren't reporting a lot of stuff and so again we have some concerns, you know, uh, if they weren't reporting what was going on down there, uh, at the time, but no, I, we, uh, you know, we didn't take this decision lightly. You know, in the military, we do what's called courses of action, so we had several different options. We laid it out and we just talked about each one and ultimately, you know, this is the only place we can land. Because we just didn't see any way we were going to be able to, to have enough cadbure to run the program and, and we also thought it would be a lot worse if we try to keep the doors open and then had to close the program in the middle of the class and send the kids home. Mr. Chair, one last question. OK, thank you. Uh, so the students that that are remaining, am I understanding you to say that you've already found placements for all the students in the program? Can you tell us that they have been properly placed in somewhere and, and who's going to incur the costs? I heard you say Louisiana, Kentucky. So how are they gonna get there and who's gonna, are they gonna be responsible for those calls or is that something that you all are gonna cover? That's something we're gonna cover representative, because the class was going to start. Uh, in July. And so Kentucky's, uh, if I'm getting them right, Kentucky started a little bit in mid late July, so we're able to get those kids on there extremely fast and, uh, we're picking up the state share of it for Kentucky because they were nice enough to, to allow us to send our kids there. These are, these are the 50 kids that we're going to start in August here, or July, excuse me, we're going to start in July here. So, yeah, we, we're covering those costs. Uh, we've done everything we can for the families. We've chartered buses when they've had family events up in Kentucky, so we can make sure we get the family There, um, we're gonna be handling the post-residential phase piece. Uh, we are going to have some caseworkers, uh, stay on through June of next year, and part of their job is to make sure on that secondary piece for the kids that just graduated this June in the previous year that they get the, you know, they get the uh proper program on the post-residential, um, and then again, Louisiana doing the same thing for those parents. We're covering the state costs with the state of Louisiana, and we are in constant contact with Kentucky a lot just to make sure everything's going Good. But uh just one more. I just thought of something. All right, thank you. So how are you going, knowing, you know, knowing that the program will probably close. How have you communicated to the uh school districts across the state or wherever your students came from, how are you communicating to them to let them know what is what is taking place and how they need to respond and what needs to take place with respect to future placement of students that fall into this uh category, most of our communication we had. Zoom call with the, uh, uh, juvenile judges and some probationary officers, because that was a lot of the folks that were referring our cases to it, so we, and we've, we've, uh, told them and stressed, hey, these are the other states, these are the options. And we, you know, we've worked with them a lot, so, but I don't know the answer your question. We haven't pushed anything out to the schools yet, but that's a, that's a great idea that we can communicate out. Representative row you recognize? Yeah, sure. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for letting me in on this. Gentlemen, let me ask you this. If you could Weed out the folks that are working there, the ones that you know. That are not the right folks for these young people. Do you think that the salary That's involved in this if this could be adjusted. Do you think you could get more higher quality folks working there, sir. Yeah I think it's a combination of the salary, but also the the qualifications to take the position are just one step above the students that are in the program and I think that lends itself to a little bit of a dangerous situation. Uh, I think salaries would help, but we'd also have to change the, uh, the requirements for the participation as a as a cadre member, you know, the, the real problems with, with Phil and Cadre positions kind of tie back to, to COVID and, you know, we're, we suffer through it, uh, on federal positions and we suffer through our state positions is just that a vacancy at youth challenges is much more significant impact than if we're missing a plumber. Because if we're, if we can't take care of the kids, then, then we're putting the kids at risk and we're putting the tag at risk. Representative Mayberry recognized. Thanks for letting me continue to ask a few questions here. So we've had an appropriation for this. Um, I don't know if this figure is right, 1.1 million from the state of Arkansas, is that give or take a little bit, correct? I think that's what we've been spending. I think the appropriation is like 1.5% but I think we've been, because we had smaller classes, we've been averaging 1.1. OK. So you are saying you will need some of that money to send them to Kentucky. So what, when we discuss budget and all that, is this appropriation. Be there about what do you think it might be? What will it look like that's gonna come out of our current, it's already in our current fiscal budget for, for this year, the year that, that we're in right now. So, yeah, we've already got, uh, uh plenty of plenty of funding there to, to, uh, for the 25% match. Well, I mean, like the next session, looking forward, because obviously you won't need 1.1 million to Correct. So what, what are we looking at? What, what will you be asking of us? Will we still be sending to Kentucky, I, I can't imagine it being that full amount. Oh yeah, and, and actually I don't, don't think we're having in our budget at all because Mississippi, they take out of stick kids if, if it, if you're, if your state has a program, then they require the state to send the money to cover it. If your state does not have a program, Mississippi fronts the entire amount, so they'll they'll have that state amount in their budget. The reason we've been paying the state sharer for, for Louisiana and Kentucky is these students thought they were coming to Arkansas Youth Challenge this summer and those states were, were willing to take on the student loan for us. Therefore, we didn't, we didn't want to not let the kids get the, the, uh, training if we could avoid it, so we offered up to pay their, their state match to take on the students that were scheduled to attend our course. Wow. So Kentucky or another state will be paying the bill for our Kids? Am I understanding that in the future? Yes, going forward, yeah, because with our state no longer having a program, we won't, you know, we won't have, uh, you know, funding so that, yeah, Mississippi will pick up their, uh, they'll pick up this daily rate? Is that a Yearly rate? What, what is that? I think it roughly comes out to around $6200 is the, uh, uh, per student is the state share for each student that that starts the program. OK. And one more line of questioning, if that's OK for chair, um going back to kind of the incidents that were here, um, was asking, you know, what, what type of criminal charges have there been any charges? That's looking at the perpetrator. What about the victims in, in these situations. Um, Uh Has there been any counseling or anything offered to help? Any of them. Yes, yes, they specifically reached out to the, the one alleged victim. again, she claimed nothing happened, didn't happen, and, but we roll it all up in the post-residential phase because all these kids are going to be dealing with the caseworker for up to a year, and that's kind of the end, that's the, uh, mentoring, counseling, talking to that we do from the, uh, from the youth challenge piece. Thank you. Representative Springer you recognized? Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair. So am I understanding that you have actually referred some of your employees to law enforcement and they found and criminal charges have been filed against them. Can we say that that's actually taking place, we referred the case over to him and from my understanding is no charges were brought against the one individual. I mean, it was a, I think the, and I think it's based on the facts of the case. I mean, I'm not a prosecutor. I've never practiced criminal law, but we referred one case over there. My understanding is that they declined to prosecute. OK, so we're only talking about One case, so this involves situations that will take you believe that are gonna take place but they haven't actually taken place and so there are no actual charges filed against individuals who have worked there for things that that are in violation of the law. Is that what I'm hearing you say that there are no other only one instance and no other instances of your employees doing things that are in violation of the law. So but based on one incident, you want to totally end the program. Representative, I think it was just that one, but it was also just the. Appropriate when we call inappropriate relationships where they're just texting and, and, and saying inappropriate things to each other. I mean, that, that gave us concern too because from the military side, you know, I think Arkansas's got one of the, nationally, one of the best reputations when it comes to addressing and handling sexual assault on the military side and so what, what we trained over there is a lot, it's a lot of red flags when you have people in cadre, they're in positions of, you know, getting flirtatious or talking to folks which are against the rules, but they hadn't done anything criminally yet, you know, our process has been, we've been terminating those folks and getting them out of the program. So how many cases are we talking about that thing, the inappropriate texting and going back and forth. So I, I'm trying to understand because we're, we're doing a making a drastic move for the youth that are in our state and we're not providing certain things to them, so based upon a couple of incidents we want to end the program, so is that, is that what you're telling me? I have to go I probably owe you a number to say how many it was, but it was, I mean, it was substantial and it was different individuals. I mean, when you're talking of only having, 18 and 19 cadre and I think from what was in the PowerPoint, I think there's at least 456 different instances of it. I mean, that's what gave us a lot of concern. OK, so those individuals that are chart that were found to be guilty of those incidents of inappropriate texting that sort of thing, are they still employed, uh, were they, uh, were they action taken against them? They were all terminated. OK, so how many are we talking? I, I'm trying to I'm, I'm just trying to folks in the cube we can circle back to you, please, uh, Representative Painter. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Uh, Colonel Wood, General Cox, good to see you guys. Thank you guys for the other day, uh, for the great tour of the National Guard. Really appreciate that. Kind of want to go down Representative Springer's, uh, line of questioning, but on a different avenue, it's not just whether we have one incident of maybe sexual harassment or inappropriate texting and so forth. It's the constant having. Hardly any cadre there, correct? Having to re advertise, you're losing half of your cadre every 3 months. Uh, you guys know if you don't have the, the men or women to complete the mission and this mission is youth challenge, then you cannot keep the mission continuing, correct? And so, and also to follow up, Mr. Chair, there's several months in your PowerPoint of ongoing either inappropriate relationship, texting. Or maybe drugs being found. Heck, we've got a fire started. Mm There's a lot of risk, and I think General Cox, I think you said that at the end of the day, it's to prevent the risk to the tag, correct? To the tag and to the students, to the cadets. And so I, I think that's important and I think too is I don't think you guys made this decision very lightly to close it down. Uh, you, you guys are closing it down because number one, Graduation rates, right? We, we got to meet a certain point, correct? Correct, we're we're supposed to exceed 75% in class size is supposed to be about 150. OK. Then we're having, you know, inappropriate things going on between Cadre and students. And then also too is we're not having enough cadre. So, um, correct? Correct. I think one of the things I, I probably failed to highlight early on is at a certain point we did bring in, uh, female and male students. And so when you had to keep those separate, you know, uh, one of the things we tried to do to keep the program open is we decided, hey, we won't bring any female, uh, cadrey in that way we can concentrate our cadre just on the males because that was the majority of what we're getting in, and we still had the same problems with the, uh, cadre, the ratios. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Senator King, you recognized? Thank you, Mr. Wood. Uh, so your total budget, I think we talked about it's like around $9 million. Is that general revenue? Yeah, our, our general revenue I think is around, uh, $10 million total. Not, not counting, uh, not counting some of the money that goes into a different scholarship programs that we have at just our straight GR budget is around $10 million. I mean we were around back when, you know, budget shortfalls happen and then, you know, things had to happen, but, and you know, TAA funds, different federal funds run out, so you, you see the federal funds kind of drying up, but that's kind of the direction you've alluded to earlier, right? Senator, I think it's just gonna get more competitive. I think as they have a limited. funds, they got to look at the programs that are, that are thriving and which ones are struggling. Well, I want to say one thing, you know, I know it's difficult bringing these problems and being honest and straightforward and you guys really are, and unfortunately, you know, that gets the things out there. I mean, been around here down enough. No, I've seen a lot more and everything be covered up and people telling not what's going on, you know, I know it's difficult to come just tell what's going on and, and making it, you know, a difficult decision because right now, you know, we're having quality things. I know in some of the, uh, uh, different Areas of state, you know, we're not even getting applicants to be able to do things that are supposed to, you know, by law. So it's a bigger problem and, uh, in state government, it's just not, but I appreciate you guys coming and it's difficult things to bring out, but the one thing about the military guys, you guys, you just bring it out where like I said, see down here where a lot of times beings are covered up. So anyway, I know it's difficult, but, uh, hopefully we'll be able to follow up, uh, you know, we've got 3 or 4 months before now in the next session, we can see what's out there and maybe there's something that can be discussed, but, uh, appreciate it. Representative Bill can you organize? Thank you, Mr. Chair. Uh, you may have said this earlier and, and, and I may have missed it, but I'm just trying to. Remember my thoughts, what, what has become of the director and the deputy director. I mean, clearly their failure in leadership created such an issue. I mean, what? Today at any point have to, you know, Tone for their Failures in leadership. I mean, what, what's happened to them? Yeah, I mean, I, I think what happens when we got the audit and saw that was an issue, again, we addressed it by restructuring, guiding with them, came some counseling, tried to, tried to redo it. The, uh, deputy director had been there for numerous years. The other director had come from, uh, I think, uh, the Department of, uh, he came from another state agency, I think DHS, and so he was only there about a year before this took place. He came in during the COVID time. So I think we addressed it appropriately when we restructured and we set up definitive lines. Of, here's what the director does, here's what the deputy director does, and I think that ultimately, I think we turned some of that around. I think they were working together better, uh, you know, they had, they had deviated from the, uh, National Guard Bureau's model on how youth challenge programs should be, uh, should be structured. And so we went there and restructured it and that, so I ultimately I think, uh, you know, towards the end, I mean, that was an issue, but again, I think the bigger issue was, you know, the cadre were kind of exploiting that, uh, what could be appeared as a riff, uh, there, but again, I think we had addressed. Through restructuring individual counseling and talking with them. So just, so just so that I'm clear. These two individuals ran this program into the ground in which we're having to shut it down, and yet they are still employed and still part of your organization, the deputy director has, has moved on to another job. The other director is, is still, uh, is still there. He's going through the rift process. His last day will be this Friday. OK, thank you. Representative Springer, recognize. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just want to get some statistics from them. So I'm looking at this page from the, uh, that says Arkansas challenge, youth challenge, graduation percentages, and it has its statistics here. Can we, do you all have the records prior to 2019, you know, that's, you know, that's for, uh, so maybe 5 years prior to this, so I can see what the percentages are with respect to graduation rate in the number of students who are and who graduated because it seems to me, and I'm just making a statement, it seems to me that, you know, that you all are doing pretty good until maybe, I don't know, maybe you had this riff with the director and assistant director, but, but the numbers here, uh. our uh will tell us something. So if you could get us the numbers 5 years prior to 2019 with a number of cadets that are enrolled and then the number that graduated. Thank you. And Riferson Springer, I know that, uh, Blake made a note and I'm sure. All right, seeing no other questions from the committee, gentlemen, thank you very much for your presentation. We very much appreciate it. Thank you. Next item on the agenda is review of Arkansas State Police Crimes Against Children Division quarterly oversight report. Uh, Major Drew. Major jury recognized. Chair M Afternoon, chair of members of Major Jeff State Police Crimes Against Children Division today. I'll be giving you the quarter report for April through June of 24. If you go to page 2, you'll see the hotline receive 15,861 calls, 8,168. Of those were accepted, CACD handled 1,516. DCFS handled 4,000665 while 1,657 were differential responses. Phase 3 will reflect allegations of the types investigated by CCD monthly breakdown. Page 4 will show you the mandated reporter numbers. On page 5, you'll see the monthly breakdown of the cases within that 3 month time period, 1,504 cases were opened. 1,439 were closed. Out of that 419 were found true for substantiation rate of 29%. Uh, 2,262. Of those cases are active. With 109 being over 45 days. On page 6 and 7 will give you the County breakdown so you can see how your area may have been affected. 9 and 10 will reflect the report allegation types and the alleged victim age groups. Pages 11 through 19 will show the relationships between the offender and victim alleged offender and alleged victims, with the age groups of the uh alleged offenders. Pages 20 through 28 will give you the judicial district breakdown, prosecuting attorney in the case is submitted. And on page. 28 You see, there was 758. Yeah Submitted 545 charges filed with 154 of those pending, with 59 of those being declined, uh, that would be the report. I don't take any questions if you have any. Representative Springer recognized? Thank you, Mr. Chair and thank you, Major Drew for being here. You always have a very good referral. I'm just interested, uh, can you tell us whether or not you received any reports from the agency that we just, that was just before us, whether or not they made any reports too. Can you, I know you probably can't tell me right off the bat, but is there a way that you can look to see whether or not they made in a call to your hotline and you were able to investigate anything that may have come through the hotline from that agency from the camp that we that just appeared. From the youth program of breaking down um what facility it may come from because the reports goes goes by offender and uh alleged offender and alleged victims. I'd have to have that information to go into it. There's there's some way that they can go into the system, but it's pretty much going to be a manual process. We just can't type in something and say, how many did we have from this facility that occurred within this time period curious, no extra work. I was just wondering if you could. Thank you. Representative Maybeberry recognized? Thank you, Mr. Chair. Um, I had a conversation with someone about a week or two ago and, um, I'm gonna try to give you a shortened version of this, but mandated reporters. How much information is given to mandated reporters as to what should be reported and what shouldn't be reported, when does it reach the level of, yes, this is abuse, this is neglect, this is a sexual crime. This is, is there anything that trains people yearly, every 5 years, every 10 years on. What it is that They should be reporting. I'm not sure the standard for the mandated reporters. I know the educators will go through something pretty much every year, beginning of the school year, and we also offer uh some training from our division. I know a lot a lot of things come from uh those school districts. I know the uh commission gets involved with that. They, they have a training program, but those things are offered to them. The best thing for him to do, quite honestly, if they think something's not right about something, to just go ahead and report it and Let us make that determination if anything occurred. Does that not though sometimes cause this is, this is what was shared with me that sometimes. There's so many things reported that really do not need to be reported and it ends up taking away time. Investigators could spend on other things that are more serious. If it's something that that. If it's something that would meet the standards of maltreatment, it wouldn't make it to investigations. They would be screened out there at the hotline. Uh, the best route, I, I, I don't want to put too much on the hotline because they have more than enough already, but that that's the safest precaution. I'd rather be safe with the kids and report something that did need to be reported as opposed to something that should have been reported and didn't make it through. If that makes any. This particular situation was this person trying to explain that just because someone is poor, it doesn't mean that they are. Um, abusive. Or Bad parents. They don't have funds to do X, Y, and Z, and that's kind of where the conversation came up and it just got me wondering, well, what, what information do we share with Mandated reporters as to what Rises to the level of yes, you need to report. I don't know what the mandator reporter uh process consists of where they're teaching them, uh, but I'm not sure if they touch on that or not, but they will identify some areas that we we definitely things need need to be reported. It it's something as simple, maybe just looking into the maltreatment Act, the actual law which would tell them if they need to report that or not. Thank you. All right, seeing, oh, Senator King. OK, Major Drew, you know, you talked about the hotline. So currently the hotline, I think there's uh. You know, there's openings for those positions too. You're, they're, I mean, it may not be your department, but we're just having staffing problems with a lot of other jobs to be that are crucial to get things done is the hotline, are they having trouble keeping up like everything in some other areas too. Yes, sir, I think that's gonna be a a state, statewide deal. We have 35 uh operator positions presently we only have 25 of those fields. Uh, seems like it's kind of like a revolving door, uh, just last week, if I'm not mistaken, we had Uh 3 to leave and 2 to come home. it's it's pretty consistent. Yes, sir. Yeah, and I understand that and that's what I've been appreciative. You've been real good to talk to some of my people back home and, and they understand the situation and stuff, but I just think, yeah, and, and in, in these jobs we're having to get in there and maybe stay 35 years and then they're on to something else too. I mean, then you're losing the experienced person too. I'm sure that's happening too, right? Yeah. OK. All right. Well, thank you, Major Drew. I appreciate it. Yes, sir. All right, seeing no other questions from the committee, uh, Major Drew, thank you very much. Thank you. You're saying nothing else on the agenda, we are adjourned.