Monticello Altrusa hears update from Florida Sheriffs Youth Ranches

Laura Young
ECB Publishing, Inc.

Janet Sampson, who manages donor relations and special events across the panhandle for Florida Sheriffs Youth Ranches, spoke at Altrusa International of Monticello on Thursday, March 23. She visits about 500 donors each year, including Monticello's Altrusa club, which has donated books, art supplies and money for camp scholarships to the Florida Sheriffs Boys Ranch in Live Oak. Sampson began her talk with the club members by providing an overview of the mission of Florida Sheriffs Youth Ranches.
“We are not a delinquency center. We are not a youth jail. We are not a prison,” she said. “We are a prevention program. We are here to help children at risk – abused, orphaned – that want a better opportunity in life. They are striving for this... We are completely volunteer, which means the children have to want to be there, which makes our success rate about 85 percent. It doesn't work for everybody, but it does work for the majority. That's our whole thing: to get these kids up and moving, educated and become great citizens.”
Sampson then provided an update on the two types of opportunities available through Florida Sheriffs Youth Ranches: residential programs and summer camps.
There currently are three residential campuses. The Youth Villa in Bartow is a scholarship house program. The Boys Ranch in Live Oak is the organization's “mother ship,” which has been operating since 1957. Although it will always be called the Boys Ranch, it does include girls now. The Youth Ranch in Safety Harbor, in the Marco Island area of southwest Florida, takes care of younger children, elementary to middle school, including many sibling groups.
“We currently can hold up to 250 children residentially in our programs,” said Sampson. “We right now have 25 at the Youth Ranch and 30 at the Boys Ranch. We have a wait list. We are desperately seeking qualified cottage parents. They are hard to find. It is definitely a mission-driven job. It is not a payroll-driven job. You have to want to do that kind of job.”
Sampson explained that cottage parents are a married couple that usually have not had kids yet or their kids are out of the house.
“Cottage life is what makes our program work,” Sampson continued. “We are all about teaching these kids what a family is.”
Living as a family at the Boys Ranch means there are chores to do in the house, and dinners are eaten together every night. They do devotions, give thanks, and even take vacations together.
“Cottage parents want to teach these kids that everybody is family. You do as a family. You go as a family. Everything is together.”
The philosophy of the Florida Sheriffs Youth Ranches has had the same four elements for 57 years: Work, Study, Play and Pray.
The rest of Sampson's talk focused on life at the Boys Ranch in Live Oak, a 3,500-acre working cattle farm with more than 400 head of cattle and more than 2,000 acres of certified tree farms, both of which are run as a business to help fund the program.
“[Because we are] teaching these kids to be able to work on the farm, work cattle, ride horses, run tractors, bale hay, they leave with some skills behind them,” Sampson pointed out. “We've got a couple of kids working in the timber company, and we've got a lot of logging companies that come in and teach these children, certify them in the timber company. We've also got a mechanic shop, a maintenance division. We have our school, so there's administration in our offices. So we have a lot of opportunities for these kids to learn to work. It's run just like any other job. They have to apply for the job. They have to do an interview. They have to be hired. They can be fired.”
Sampson explained that if a youth is working on the farm and all of a sudden a job opens up as a mechanic, and they'd really like that job instead, the staff teaches them how to change jobs.
“The proper way to do that is,” they would tell the youth, “to apply for the job, and if you get it, give your notice and work your two weeks.”
Sampson says they want to teach the kids in their care that when they head to the world that they can't just not show up to work one day. Teaching them a work ethic is teaching them skills they can take on with them in life after the Boys Ranch.
One of the biggest updates at the Boys Ranch in Live Oak is changing their school from being a public school site to being an accredited, private Christian school.
“We use the Christian-based curriculums,” said Sampson, adding that “becoming private has given us options. First of all, we can teach other things besides just base curriculum. We have bible study in school; we have chapel every Wednesday. We've been able to bring in music classes as credited classes; we've been able to bring in dual enrollment that our kids were kind of discouraged on doing. We've got a great technical school, and a lot of these kids do great once you get them in hands-on. We were also able to start doing hands-on classes on our ranch. You don't like PE? Can you ride a horse? Do you want to take care of a horse for eight weeks? That's a PE credit.”
They've also begun having their students wear uniforms, which Sampson says has made many things easier when a cottage parent is trying to get 10 kids out the door in the morning.
“Cottage parents don't have to constantly say 'you can't wear that'. The kids know what they can wear... It makes life a lot easier at school, because everybody pretty much has the same options, so there's not one kid with fashion clothes and one with not. It really has helped us.”
Sampson also said that being a private school has given them the opportunity to tailor their approach to discipline to fit their student population.
“We've got kids that work on a farm. If we had a kid who left a pocket knife in their pants from the night before and they show up at [a public] school, they would get expelled for good. How is that helping us help them? So becoming private has given us the option to say, 'Okay, here's your consequences for not following the rules. Let's not do it again and giving them another chance. So it's a teaching moment, and we've been able to help our kids by not just flushing them down the toilet if something like that happens.”
The school has really excelled this year, Sampson said. They have six accredited teachers, three of whom specialize in working with students who have learning disabilities. They've also taken a different approach to teaching, using more cooperative, group learning situations and technology.
“These dry erase tables that the kids sit at now, they are amazing,” said Sampson. “Remember when you were a kid and you used to write on the desk and you'd get in trouble? We're allowed now, and they encourage it. Keeping these kids moving in the classroom, and not making them sit in a chair for eight hours, has really encouraged them to continue to learn, and they enjoy it more.”
For the Play part of their program the Boys Ranch staff encourage any kind of sports, art or industrial arts. They get them outside, on the horses and fishing on the river.
“Anything they want to do, we just want to make sure they have the opportunity, not only so they can have a great hobby but maybe a job one day. And it gets them outside and gets them to working in a group activity.”
Regarding the final key component of the program, Pray, Sampson said, “We are a Christian-based program. We always have been. One of our staples, one of our foundations. We do chapel every Wednesday in school. Kids have the opportunity to go to church on Sundays with cottage parents. If we have a child that want's to attend a certain church or certain religion, we make sure they get to it. We are non-denominational. The whole ideas is just getting these kids to build a relationship with God, any way we can get them to do it. We try to make it as easy as possible. They are not required to participate in chapel, but they are required to attend as a family... Usually the kids when they come in if they are not used to it, they sit in the back row with a book and they just watch. We have some great chaplains; they are very musical. The whole stage has got drums and guitars and pianos up there, and they teach them. The kids get up and sing. It doesn't take long. If everybody else is up there playing and singing, it doesn't take long for them to say, 'hey, can I try those drums?' And once you get them up there, it's just fun. We usually have about six to 10 children who ask to be baptized each year in the river. So that becomes a big campus event. Hopefully they remember it. If they ever get off track, they've got something to come back to as well.”
In addition to residential programs, Florida Sheriffs Youth Ranches offer summer camps.
“ Summer camps are a chance to reach more children in a shorter period of time,” said Sampson. “Summer camps are eight weeks in the summer. Each camp is ten days. We have three locations that we own, and we can have up to 100 kids each week at those locations. We also have mobile camps that go around into low-income neighborhoods that work with the sheriff offices, and we bring camp to them for day camps.”
The overnight camps offer the chance to canoe, do archery, climb the trees, do rope courses, learn campfire songs and make friends. Camps are for families at risk and are provided at no cost to the family, thanks to donors who fund numerous $250 scholarships for camp.
“Our whole goal at the main summer camps,” emphasizes Sampson, “is to teach them respect. Summer camps are for ages 10 to 15. We want them to respect themselves, respect the person next to them, respect the adult talking to them and respect law enforcement. One of the things that makes our camps so popular and successful is that 50 percent of our counselors are sheriff deputies volunteering their time to be counselors at camp. You have the kids come in the first day, and here's Counselor Bob. He's just in his khaki's and tee shirt and funky hat. They spend all week together, learning this, playing that, talking to Counselor Bob. Lots of the kids spill their stories. There is someone who wants to listen to them. And the night before they go home there's this big celebration. All of a sudden, here comes ten cop cars coming down the road, lights flashing. The kids are going, 'oh no! What's going on!' Here comes Counselor Bob out with his whole uniform on and steps out and every year it's the same. To see these kids, they're like, 'Oh my gosh. This great guy we've spent all week with is a cop!' It's the connections they make.”
Sampson thanked Altrusa of Monticello for their support of the Florida Sheriffs Youth Ranches and their programs that center on teaching at-risk youth healthy habits of Work, Study, Play and Pray.