• change in leadership of the organization resulted in tracking discrepancy
• a number of matches that were no longer active but still open were closed
• personnel change in the schools

TCPS and its guidance counselors were the main partner that supported our program in FY18. Their role was to refer students, and to provide answers to our survey questions on performance measures presented at the end of the grant period. In FY19 and beyond, we must involve our other referral source(s) such as Chesapeake Multicultural Resource Center in the performance measure data collection process. We also see an opportunity to partner with other youth and community service organizations to provide us with data that supports the performance measures of the children that we serve, such as BAAM.

Talbot Mentors is in the process of providing more clear expectations to its mentors on the desired outcomes of our overall program, such as increased self-esteem and improved behavior outcomes at school. In FY18 we have made progress toward building awareness about the importance of measuring the outcomes of the youth in our program, which requires input from mentors, counselors, parents, etc. As we move forward, we expect this new awareness coupled with new data collection processes to allow us to show reliable data toward improvement of these outcomes.

We have established a consistent line of questioning and are keeping records of which students we have data on, so that next year we can track, with a high degree of certainty, their continued trajectory on these measures.