Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission
Ad Hoc Outreach Committee
April 5 , 2000
Commission Hearing RoomTexas Parks & Wildlife Department Headquarters Complex
4200 Smith School Road
Austin, TX 78744
1
7 BE IT REMEMBERED that heretofore on the
8 5th day of April 2000, there came on to be heard
9 matters under the regulatory authority of the
10 Parks and Wildlife Commission of Texas, in the
11 Commission Hearing Room of the Texas Parks and
12 Wildlife Headquarters complex, Austin, Travis
13 County, Texas, beginning at 5:05 p.m., to wit:
14
15
APPEARANCES:
16 THE PARKS AND WILDLIFE COMMISSION:
AD HOC OUTREACH COMMITTEE:
17 Chair: Alvin L. Henry
Lee M. Bass (absent)
18 Carol E. Dinkins
Dick W. Heath
19 Nolan Ryan
Ernest Angelo, Jr.
20 John Avila, Jr.
Katharine Armstrong Idsal
21 Mark E. Watson, Jr.
22 THE PARKS AND WILDLIFE DEPARTMENT:
Andrew H. Sansom, Executive Director, and other
23 personnel of the Parks and Wildlife Department
24
25
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1 APRIL 5, 2000
2
3 ITEM NO. 2 - BRIEFING - OUTREACH INITIATIVE STATUS
4 REPORT.
5 MR. SANSOM: Commissioner Henry.
6 It's your Outreach Program.
7 COMMISSIONER HENRY: Mr. Chairman,
8 this is a fairly new effort that's underway, so
9 I'm just going to ask Dr. Larry McKinney to come
10 forward and give the oral presentation that
11 they've prepared to make. I think that will save
12 a little time.
13 DR. McKINNEY: Thank you,
14 Mr. Chairman. What I will try to do again, in the
15 essence of time, is try to be brief but try to
16 bring you up to speed on some things that we're
17 doing to initiate some of the outreach efforts,
18 according to the Chairman's Charge. We'll just
19 begin with that.
20 Of course, for our agency, outreach
21 is an important part of everything we do as an
22 agency and always has been, as you've seen from
23 the presentations today and so forth. It seems
24 like a growing part of our time is spent dealing
25 with issues like that, social issues rather than
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1 the resource issues, because that's important to
2 what we do.
3 But what we're going to focus on in
4 this strategy, this outreach strategy, and along
5 with the Chairman's Charges, is to look at
6 Frankwood building our constitutent base, bringing
7 new users in and future users. That's the
8 strategy that we're going to be looking at
9 according to our charge.
10 If we are successful, what would it
11 look like? What will our outreach goals achieve?
12 Well, it's really three things, I think.
13 One, at a very minimum, is
14 developing an appreciation through participation;
15 people doing things at our sites. At a minimum,
16 we're going to do that.
17 Certainly, we hope to develop
18 conservation-minded citizens at some point. We're
19 going to need them in the future for decisions
20 we're going to make.
21 And certainly not least is users,
22 paying users, which we are going to need as well.
23 So if we're successful, are the
24 types of things that we're going to achieve. If
25 we've going to do that on the scale that we need
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1 to across the State, we're going to have to be
2 very systematic about it. We're going to have to
3 build a framework of how we're going to approach
4 it and follow that framework, and that's really
5 what I want to spend a few minutes on is looking
6 at that. And that outreach framework is going to
7 have to be built on sound educational apprentices,
8 and it's really straighforward; but there's a
9 model that we'll have to follow, and I want to
10 spend just a few minutes kind of laying that model
11 out, because I think it makes sense in giving us
12 direction as to where we want to go.
13 And, of course, that model is built
14 initially on building awareness and appreciation;
15 that is, going out and getting the people to
16 participate. If we're going to bring these people
17 into the loop, they have to develop an awareness
18 of what we're doing and an appreciation for it;
19 and we're very good at that, frankly. But what
20 we're going to be looking at here is: Where are we
21 missing that target market? What are we missing?
22 What groups are we not getting at, and how do we
23 get at them?
24 To give you an example of what
25 we're talking about and what we do here, for
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1 example, Expo is an important way in which we get
2 at that. Park visitations, Kid Fish, outreach
3 efforts like that are what we do in getting that
4 awareness or appreciation up up to where it
5 should be.
6 As we move through that model, and
7 once we get that awareness and appreciation,
8 trying to develop the skills and knowledge to use
9 to enjoy the outdoors and acquiring that type of
10 thing is where is we want to take our next
11 outreach efforts.
12 And in those types of things, what
13 we do, for example -- and we're very good, again,
14 at this -- is hunter education, technical guidance
15 that we provide to landowners. Those types of
16 things for our publications and interpretation in
17 our parks is that next level of getting these
18 folks skills, our users skills.
19 The next level that we move into,
20 again, is moving those users into constituents.
21 We want to make them constituents of ours. So
22 once they have acquired their awareness and
23 appreciation and they've acquired the skills to
24 participate, we want them to take ownership in
25 what we're doing, to become a constituent our
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1 ours.
2 And these are the types of things
3 like becoming an Outdoorwoman and Buffalo
4 Soldiers, those types of things that we do.
5 It's also at this point, really,
6 that it becomes very resource-intensive. It takes
7 people and dollars to move into this next phase.
8 We're very good at the agency at working the mass
9 level of bringing into people into parks and that
10 awareness and appreciation; but when we move into
11 the area of trying to convert these users into
12 constituents, that's where we need the partners to
13 help us do it, because it's an intensive job.
14 And, finally, of course, what we
15 want to accomplish is really a behavioral change,
16 making our constituents make this a part of
17 something they want to do with their lives. And
18 in that role, our job is to provide opportunities
19 for them to do that. Outdoor Kids, the
20 Conservation Passport, those types of things is
21 what we're trying to develop.
22 The model act really describes what
23 happens in an outreach process, a successful one,
24 basically how do we make best use of it? Well,
25 these are some assumptions we have to make.
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1 First of all, we basically are
2 doing outreaches on a programatic and individual
3 level. We're been doing this for some time. It's
4 nothing new to us. We know how to do that. The
5 difference is that there are many people that we
6 are not now reaching. That's where we have to go.
7 And if we're not reaching them, then certainly
8 there is room for improvement in what we do in
9 our outreach so that we can get to those folks.
10 And we have to understand that there are inherent
11 limits to our capacity and to the resources we
12 have to do this, and we have to address that
13 issue.
14 So if we have this as a model and
15 we accept both that and the assumptions, then
16 basically where do we need to focus on the
17 outreach strategies? And they really come down
18 into a number of major areas: coordination,
19 evaluation, targeting of partnerships, and then
20 resources. And I briefly want to touch on a
21 couple of those issues.
22 For example, coordination: This is
23 really an issue that's important to us internally
24 of trying to make sure that all of our divisions
25 work together effectively. What we have is a
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1 very decentralized system, and we enjoy a lot of
2 the benefits from that; a lot of diverse programs,
3 very effective programs.
4 But if we're going to move in the
5 direction that we need to go to be effective, we
6 have to better coordinate; so we have to develop
7 ways to do that. And at the end of the
8 presentation today, we're going to be talking
9 about some of those.
10 Our regional concepts: We're going
11 to look at sites in our regions where we can focus
12 the various divisions together. For example,
13 you'll hear today about Sheldon as a center in the
14 Houston region where we can bring our staff from
15 our divisions together to be effective in that
16 kind of outreach. And there's others as well,
17 Government Canyon and so forth that we're looking
18 at.
19 Evaluation is something that we
20 need to improve on, because how can we tell where
21 we are going if we don't know where we've been?
22 Are we going to be looking at all levels from
23 individual efforts and performance plans to try to
24 standardize our programmatic evaluations? Which
25 we do, but we need to make sure we can work across
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1 the board with that.
2 And most importantly, agencywide --
3 which is another one of the charges looking at us
4 -- how can we make that evaluation across this
5 State? How are we being effective on a statewide
6 basis? And that effort is underway. Lydia
7 Saldana and others and Bob Cook are leading that
8 effort to try to establish the basis so we can
9 make those kinds of evaluations.
10 Targeting: Again, our targets for
11 this effort are youth, minorities, women, and
12 urban situations. That's where we want to target
13 our efforts to build that constituent base and
14 bring new users into our fold to become
15 constituents.
16 To do that, it's going to take, as
17 I said, partnerships. We're going to have to
18 develop those partnerships for several reasons.
19 One, we simply do not have the people power to do
20 it. We're going to have to magnify our impact
21 through building partnerships with others, and
22 also to bring resources. Again, we do not have
23 the resources to do we need; but, certainly, if we
24 can bring our partners in with us and multiply
25 those resources, we can accomplish that.
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1 And I'm going to turn this over now
2 to Bob Murphy, who is our Outreach Coordinator,
3 and others who will come up and talk with you just
4 very briefly to give you an idea of how we're
5 going to take all of that -- and I ran through it
6 very quickly with you -- but how we can focus
7 those areas and try to make some impact. So I
8 think, frankly, it's quite exciting. It's an
9 opportunity, I think, for us to bring all of our
10 resources together to work with you all as
11 individuals Members of the Commission to have us
12 build some of those partnerships and gain those
13 resources to match what we have. And I think then
14 we can really begin to step into that next level
15 of outreach and accomplish what we're going to
16 need to do to be a relevant player in the new
17 Texas of the next 30 years with a population that
18 is changing.
19 So at this point I'm going to turn
20 it over to Bob Murphy to begin to give you just a
21 feel -- and we'll talk more about these through
22 the year -- just give you a feel for where we want
23 to go and get your input on this.
24 MR. MURPHY: Thank you, Larry.
25 One of the snapshots I'd like to
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1 give you is of an effort that we've been working
2 on for months now. And I don't want to jinx it
3 by giving you too many details, but basically
4 there's a grant before the Texas Education Agency
5 right now, and their granting process is called
6 "Technology: Integration and Education. They
7 currently have $33 million to give to schools to
8 integrate techology into their education
9 curriculum.
10 And what we have formed is a
11 partnership with some rural schools across Texas.
12 We will be focusing on 22 of our sites and having
13 those rural schools that are close in proximity to
14 those in 19 school districts applying for
15 $2.4 million through that $33 million grant
16 program.
17 Basically, we partnered with the
18 Texas Rural Systemic Initiative, a group that is
19 already together focused on the poorer schools,
20 the poorer counties in Texas. And we are asking
21 for support for those 19 districts. The money
22 would go to them, but they would then study our
23 parks and our wildlife management areas. And it
24 would meet their needs in technology, it would
25 meet their needs in training and in other
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1 programs in order for them to bring their students
2 to our sites and study them.
3 Basically, again, part of that
4 money would come to us. About $700,000 would go
5 to our Foundation to create a management plan, a
6 management program for this grant project. It
7 would also provide money for evaluation of the
8 entire program and money to have the teachers
9 working at our sites during the two summers that
10 surround the school year that this grant would go
11 for.
12 In summer of 2000 the teachers
13 would learn about our sites. In the school year
14 of 2000-2001 the students would visit our sites
15 and learn about it, share what they learned
16 through the Internet, and communicate with each
17 other. And then in summer of 2001 those local
18 communities, some of them very small and very
19 interested in this for their students to learn
20 about, would then celebrate the progress they made
21 through this grant.
22 So if we get the grant, we'll come
23 back and celebrate ourselves.
24 COMMISSIONER DINKINS: Would you
25 just give us an example or two of what rural
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1 communities are involved in this?
2 MR. MURPHY: Well, if you look up
3 in the Panhandle area, there's three red stars
4 surrounding the wildlife management there, the
5 Playa Lakes wildlife management areas. Those
6 three school districts would be studing those
7 Playa Lakes. They would also visit Palo Duro
8 Canyon up there. The opportunity would be for
9 them to say when they first saw whooping cranes
10 using those Playa Lakes.
11 If it had been along the coast, the
12 mid-coast, Aransas County ISD would have students
13 studying Goose Island State Park and Fulton
14 Mansion and also learning through the Rockport
15 Marine Lab. And those students would also be
16 aware of when those whoopers arrived at their
17 wintering grounds. They could be sharing
18 information about the migrational patterns of
19 whooping cranes.
20 There's Village Creek State Park,
21 Caddo Lake State Park, Mason Mountain Wildlife
22 Management Area, the Chapparal, Choke Canyon,
23 Garner State Park, McKinney Falls State Park. It
24 would be an interesting complex of communities and
25 park facilities or Parks and Wildlife facilities
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1 for them to learn from.
2 The second thing I wanted to give
3 you a snapshot on was the status of the Outdoor
4 Kids Program. Dr. McKinney explained that program
5 in a briefing at your previous meeting, but I
6 wanted to let you know that we are in the current
7 stage of the third round of our statewide pilot of
8 this program. And in the previous two summers we
9 provided funding to our staff to conduct Outdoor
10 Kids projects at their facilities or in their
11 programs. The call for their proposals is out
12 right now, and those are due on the 14th of this
13 month, so we'll know what it looks like, what
14 they're going to be proposing, what they're going
15 to be wanting to do, and funding those.
16 The significant there is we would
17 be providing resources to our staff for the
18 Outdoor Kids Program to continue.
19 We recently just finished a survey
20 of last year's program, with a very positive
21 response from our field staff to the program.
22 There were 7400 kids involved directly with our
23 staff in that program, and they suggested that
24 this program will really suit kids aged 8 to 13.
25 They were very supportive of a recent revision of
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1 the Journal that's been provided.
2 I would also tell you that besides
3 the Outdoor Kids that participated at our sites,
4 we've begun to get an awful lot of school
5 districts, school groups, and community groups
6 participating in the program on their own. I got
7 an e-mail this morning from a teacher in Pasadena,
8 Texas, who has 120 children participating and
9 completing the program right now.
10 This program will be very
11 applicable to our urban regional pilots that we'll
12 be explaining at the end of this briefing. And
13 that's also going back to the tie grant. What
14 that would set up, if we have rural students,
15 rural kids becoming very familiar with our
16 properties and providing information in a network,
17 then another strategy later on would be to have
18 the urban kids also doing the same thing and
19 learning from the rural kids.
20 So this Outdoor Kids Program that's
21 all built around that would be a basis for
22 applying resources to support our staff, to
23 conduct Outdoor Kids Programs, and to coordinate
24 students learning throughout the State and
25 supporting one another and learning through the
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1 process.
2 So now I'll turn it over to Darlene
3 Lewis, who's going to give you an update on the
4 Community Outdoor Outreach Program.
5 MS. LEWIS: Good afternoon. I'm
6 Darlene Lewis, as Bob has mentioned.
7 I just wanted to give you a little
8 update on the Community Outdoor Outreach Program.
9 It's been around since 1996. It was introduced in
10 a legislative rider with an original budget of
11 $250,000 a year. Now, to date we've funded 110
12 projects with over 400,000 of those dollars going
13 into the Houston area, which is one of the
14 targeted areas for our regional proposal that
15 you're going to be hearing a little more more
16 about today.
17 Just to give you an idea of where
18 the Fiscal Year 2000 regional funding has gone so
19 far: To the Houston area, over $150,000; the
20 Dallas area, $130,000; and in San Antonio, about
21 $42,307.
22 The Community Outdoor Outreach
23 Program is going to play a critical role in the
24 regional pilot program, because one of the most
25 effective things that we've gotten from this
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1 program is the partnerships that we have been able
2 to build with this program.
3 And so in order to increase some of
4 those partnership relationships, what we're hoping
5 to do is to increase our grant-writing efforts by
6 having more workshops in these regional areas,
7 which will also help us to enhance the public
8 awareness in these areas; the volunteer training
9 program so that we can build more of a minority
10 base of volunteers so that we can have access to
11 people who could help us with other projects
12 around other areas of the State; our local
13 outreach areas; and also working with the Sheldon
14 facility in Houston as a support and training
15 facility in development in that area.
16 One of the things that we have done
17 also to address this particular issue is we've
18 modified the the grant scoring criteria to
19 emphasize this regional approach.
20 One of the things that we have
21 found with the co-op program is many of the
22 programs have grown from the one-time
23 field-trip-type events to more stewardship/
24 mentorship-type programs. And so with the new
25 scoring system that you're going to be looking at
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1 tomorrow, we have also included an educational
2 curriculum to this program so we can build new
3 users and participants in this program.
4 And that's about it that I have to
5 say. So if you have any questions, please feel
6 free. Thank you.
7 DR. McKINNEY: Go ahead.
8 MR. HALL: Mr. Chairman, Members of
9 the Committe, my name is Steve Hall, Education
10 Director. I'm going to cover the regional pilots
11 as alluded to by Bob and Darlene.
12 The regional pilots essentially
13 will help us work with those who, No. 1, are
14 already involved in bringing kids outdoors; No. 2,
15 who have establish partnerships in those areas;
16 and, No. 3, who already espouse our mission, our
17 goals, our objectives and some of our programs at
18 our facilities.
19 The Nature Heritage Society in
20 Houston is such a group. They have partnered with
21 the Houston Parks and Recreation Department and
22 also with the Houston ISD, Independent School
23 District. They have also got corporations on
24 their side, and certainly civic organizations.
25 The members here I'd like to point
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1 out today are Glen Miller and David Baxter, if
2 you'll raise your hands, guys. And we worked with
3 Glen and David a long time in programs like
4 hunter education and angler education.
5 And another one of the groups
6 represented here today and on the team in that
7 respect are also the Buffalo Soldiers Hunting and
8 Fishing Club. They are a new organization in the
9 Houston area. Members represented here today and
10 who have hung with us all day long are Glenn
11 Miller, Clinton Anderson, and Chris Below.
12 And certainly working with Linton
13 and others down in the Houston region.
14 These are the types of
15 organizations that we're going to try to work
16 with, in conjunction, of course, with our
17 divisions, every division represented down at the
18 Houston area. And, certainly, as mentioned
19 before, Sheldon Lake State Park would be one nice
20 facility to center these efforts; but not to
21 forget, obviously, other areas like Sea Center
22 Texas and some of Brazos Bend State Park, Houston
23 State Park, and the other fine parks that we have
24 down there.
25 We don't want to forget two other
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1 areas that we'd like to start in, as well, and
2 that's the Dallas-Fort Worth area and the
3 San Antonio area: Dallas-Fort Worth, for example,
4 working with organizations like the Inner City
5 Fishing Institute in bringing more and more
6 inner-city kids to the Texas fresh Water Fisheries
7 Center, for example.
8 In San Antonio, certainly the
9 ongoing and new development in Government Canyon
10 represents for us one of those new areas to bring
11 inner-city kids or the kids from the Alamo City
12 and expose them to really our and services via
13 many of the things that you've at least heard
14 about today or in past meetings.
15 These regional pilots will be
16 hooked up essentially with the co-op program, as
17 mentioned by Darlene. They will be hooked up with
18 Outdoors Kids, as mentioned by Bob.
19 Certainly we're going to try to
20 contract for service and/or do cooperative
21 agreements in these efforts to make sure that we
22 look first of all at results or give them the
23 expectations very clearly as to what we need out
24 of this, and then look at the results for more of
25 a contractual nature rather than just a granting
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1 mechanism that the co-op grants serve.
2 And, finally, monitoring and
3 evaluation will be an important component, because
4 we've felt like we've scratched the surface.
5 We've done very good things in education and
6 outreach these past 10 years, rather a shotgun
7 approach, and lots of things going on throughout
8 the State.
9 But I think the one thing that we
10 can begin doing is really delving into: Are these
11 programs being effective? Are we effectively
12 reaching kids and women and minorities, people
13 with disabilities?
14 And these are real questions asked
15 on the national level, as well as in Texas, and
16 certainly we want to try to lead the charge in
17 that as well with this effort.
18 And with that, I know you've had a
19 long day and --
20 DR. McKINNEY: Let me add
21 something. I just wanted to add something to the
22 conclusion on that.
23 Where we're going to focus on first
24 in this outreach effort to bring all this together
25 that we've talked about briefly is in the Houston
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1 area, our largest city. I think it's going to be
2 our test bed, but it's also an important one for
3 us. We have resources in place in our various
4 divisions, but we want to bring them together; and
5 we're going to use the Sheldon area as a focus for
6 us to develop its capacity. It's got an
7 environmental education center. From there we can
8 branch out to all the facilities that we have
9 there, but that will be an important part of what
10 we're doing.
11 What we'll be seeking your help
12 with is: We can commit the resources that we've
13 talked about here with Outdoor Kids and with the
14 co-op grants, but that will not be enough. And I
15 think not only will it not be enough resourcewise,
16 but what we're trying to develop is a true
17 partnership with the folks in the City of Houston,
18 the industry, and others. And so what we'll be
19 seeking your help in is helping us get together
20 with those folks in Houston to basically challenge
21 with that, "Here we are. We have the sites. We
22 have some resources. But we're a place where you
23 can invest your resources to help us reach all the
24 folks in Houston, starting with the kids."
25 And so I think it's an exciting
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1 opportunity to demonstrate what we can do
2 together. It will be, I think as I said earlier,
3 the platform that will launch us up to the level
4 that we need to to accomplish what we want to do
5 statewide.
6 And so we'll be looking to,
7 Mr. Chairman, working with you and Members of this
8 Commission to make that happen, not only in
9 Houston -- certainly, there as the focus -- but
10 across the State.
11 So with that and any questions or
12 whatever you might have, we'll be looking forward
13 to working with you.
14 COMMISSIONER HENRY: Madam Chair,
15 I'll turn it back to you.
16 COMMISSIONER DINKINS: All right.
17 Thank you.
18 COMMISSIONER HENRY: I'll have a
19 lot to say at a later time.
20 COMMISSIONER DINKINS: All right.
21 We'll look forward to that.
22 And thank you again, all of those
23 who came; but most importantly, thank you for the
24 good work that you're doing to help with this
25 outreach. It's exciting to get this briefing.
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1 And with that, if there's no
2 further business to come before us this afternoon
3 -- and nobody speak up, please -- then we will
4 stand in recess. Thank you.
5 (RECESS)
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