Chris Cate: Welcome to the Fluent in Floridian podcast featuring the Sunshine State’s brightest leaders talking about the issues most important to the people of Florida, and its millions of weekly visitors. In this episode created by SalterMitchell PR, our executive producer, Heidi Otway, the President of SalterMitchell PR, talks to the director of No Kid Hungry Florida, Sky Beard.

Heidi Otway: Sky, thank you so much for being a guest on our Fluent in Floridian podcast. We’re so happy to have you today.

Sky Beard: Thank you so much for the invite. Look forward to chatting with you today.

Heidi Otway: Yeah. So you grew up in Florida, in Brevard County. Tell us about that.

Sky Beard: I did. I am a Florida native. Not sure how many of us are around to be able to say that. It seems like few and far between. But yes, I actually was born in the same county where I currently reside in Melbourne, in Southern Brevard County, born at one of our local hospitals. It’s now Health First Holmes Regional Medical Center. It was Brevard Hospital way back then. So yeah, had a great upbringing here at the beaches and we have the space center. So watching what was happening with the shuttle program was a big part of my growing up and knew that we really wanted to be established here for the long haul. So after a little stint in Tampa and Winter Park in my college years, my husband and I really decided that this was home for both of us and this is where we wanted to get settled and raise a family. So been here ever since.

Heidi Otway: So where did you go to college?

Sky Beard: I started my first couple of years at University of South Florida in Tampa. Started as a psychology major. That was my plan, to be a psychologist, and had a great experience in Tampa my first couple of years. But I was missing a little something in the psych field. I found myself in a lot of the classes asking questions and pondering what was happening outside of the individual. I always saw people as being part of systems and communities and families and that really was just a little bit of a missing piece in some of that early curriculum. And I took my first intro to social work course and felt that that was really a much better fit for my professional path, then transferred over to University of Central Florida and ended up getting my bachelor’s and master’s degrees in social work there.

Heidi Otway: Okay. And then what did you do after you graduated from college at UCF?

Sky Beard: So my intro to many of the helping professions and social work really started when I was at UCF with some amazing internships with Orange County Public Schools and Children’s Home Society over there. And as we were moving back to Brevard, I had an opportunity to work with the Healthy Families and Healthy Start programs with Children’s Home Society there in Brevard and ended up working my way to a supervisory and a program manager level there. So from the very beginning, working with families with young children, working with families who needed some extra in home supports to be the best parents that they could be.

Heidi Otway: And then where did you go after that position? Because you recently were the director of the Brevard County Early Learning Coalition. Is that when you transitioned there?

Sky Beard: With a little step in between, I spent a couple of years as a statewide trainer for the Healthy Families program, which is a national model of a really great child abuse prevention program in Florida under the umbrella of the Ounce of Prevention Fund of Florida. So I traveled the state training home visitors and their teams and supervisors about the Healthy Families model, which is an in-home support program to help prevent child abuse, give families the assistance. So that was kind of an in between.

Sky Beard: And then yes, I ended up at the Early Learning Coalition at Brevard where I spent the last 12 years or so until just recently working with the early childhood education world, not only in Brevard but across the state, advocating for and working within systems to help make sure that our little ones are ready for school, because we know that far too many of our kids enter kindergarten not quite ready. And if you’re not quite ready in kindergarten, there’s a lot of stuff that has to be done. So there’s a lot of great services that can be put into place through really great childcare providers throughout the state and working to make sure that where children go in those early years are of high quality and meeting their needs. So I spent a good number of years in that early childhood world.

Heidi Otway: So tell me, what was one of the highlights of your work with the Early Learning Coalition?

Sky Beard: I think one of the great accomplishments, looking back on a decade plus of that work is really getting to a place, not just in our local community, but across the street where we really see education as a continuum. When I first joined that world, there was a lot of conversation, and not that this still isn’t a that we face, but it’s gotten better where we really thought of the birth to five years and what happens there as like a babysitting service or that we drop kids off at childcare centers and they just kind of hang out there. And we really had to dispel a lot of the myths. So we really had to fight initially to have a seat at the table when we were talking about the education of young children, because those first years, those first five years really set the foundation for everything that comes after and if we don’t get birth to five right, it’s really, really hard to get the rest of it right.

Sky Beard: So I’m really proud that we have come such a long way and getting a good understanding that education starts at birth and that there are great opportunities that can happen in those early years that sets children up for success once they get to kindergarten.

Heidi Otway: Yeah. I was reading an article recently about babies needing to hear like a million words very early on and I’m sure that’s part of some of the work that the ELC does is just to help parents get the resources and supports to help them accomplish that.

Sky Beard: Yeah. And the million words study was really groundbreaking because it also looked at how children that come from homes of poverty, that come from homes without access to written books in the home, that don’t have parents who have had such a good understanding about the importance of the early years, that there are measurable differences in vocabulary of children who come from homes with lots of books and those opportunities and children that don’t. So it really was eye opening, and you’re right, getting parents to understand the importance of those years and make sure they have the tools that they need is an important part of the work.

Heidi Otway: Yeah. And now in your new role with No Kid Hungry Florida, which is a group that we’ve worked with over the years to help ensure that kids are getting nutritious meals to feed their brains. Talk about your new role as the Florida director for No Kid Hungry Florida.

Sky Beard: Yeah. Very, very excited for this new journey. So as the Florida director for No Kid Hungry, we are partnering with schools and community based organizations throughout the state to make sure, just as you said, children have access to already existing food programs. There are lots of really amazing community organizations who are running food banks and weekend backpack programs, and those are all a critically important part of this larger challenge that our state faces of child hunger. Our particular piece of this work focuses on making sure that children are able to access and participate in school breakfast programs as well as what happens when children aren’t in school, particularly those that rely on school meals as their primary source of nutrition. That means making sure that after school meals and snacks are available, making sure that in the summer months children have access to meals as well because that’s a stressful time in families when school is not in session. This is no different there.

Heidi Otway: Yeah. One of my favorite campaigns that I worked on was the development of the Summer BreakSpot program here in Florida. Myself as a kid growing up in Miami, my brother and I, we would go to the summer camp so that we could get a meal and so that is really close to my heart. Talk a little bit about some of the data points just to kind of educate our listeners about the problem of childhood hunger here in Florida.

Sky Beard: Yeah. And a lot of people might be surprised if it’s not something that they’re faced with on a regular basis to know that we have hungry children showing up in our schools every single day. One in seven children are living in homes where there is food insecurity and when we look at what that looks like in Florida, it just really shows up in a whole variety of ways. When you’re a student, regardless of age, kindergarten to 12th grade, hungry children can’t learn. When your basic needs aren’t met, it’s really difficult to focus on your math and your reading and all of those other things that you’re responsible for during the day when maybe your last meal was the school lunch the day before. That makes it incredibly challenging and we see that displayed in a variety of ways.

Sky Beard: We have kids that are going to school clinics with headaches and stomachaches when really the underlying issue is that they’re hungry. They have maybe behavior challenges or absences in schools and really the underlying issue is hunger. We have teachers who see it every day and are digging deep into their pockets to buy granola bars and things like that to stick in their desks so that they can supply snacks for children who aren’t getting their hunger needs met. So it really does cause so many other issues during the school day when we have food in school. There is school breakfast there is lunch, there are hopefully after school meals and summer meals. Our role is really to connect those better. We’ve got kids in schools, we’ve got food. Sometimes it just takes innovative strategy to make sure that the children are able to have access to meals that are already there.

Heidi Otway: Yeah, and one of those innovative ideas that No Kid Hungry has been pushing in Florida is really breakfast after the bell. Can you talk a little bit about that? We’ve actually worked with them on that.

Sky Beard: Yeah, absolutely. So breakfast after the bell is an amazing strategy. When you look at trying to, like I was saying, connect kids with meals that are already there. Sometimes when breakfast is served in the traditional way that a lot of us may remember from our school years, which is in the cafeteria and waiting in the line and going through the line, sometimes we find in schools that children just aren’t participating in breakfast when it starts that way. Sometimes that’s because of just the morning craziness as we all experience from time to time where maybe the bus gets there a little bit late or mom or dad arrived to school with the child a little later than intended and then the cafeteria is already closed. Or in some cases just the logistics, where the cafeteria is located. Sometimes there’s a stigma associated with children going to a cafeteria.

Heidi Otway: Yeah.

Sky Beard: Sometimes that calls them out in front of their friends to eat a school breakfast. We know how critically important peers are to children and sometimes children will bypass a meal just so that kids don’t know that they’re hungry. So when we take breakfast out of the traditional setting, serve it in the classroom as the beginning of the school day, and think of breakfast just like we think of school lunch, it’s just part of what we do in our school. It gets rid of that stigma. It becomes a way that the whole class, or even better, the whole school starts their day together with having school breakfast.

Sky Beard: So we are a partner with schools in those initiatives. We are a funder in school with those initiatives. We have had great success across the state and actually across the country with schools serving breakfast, or what we call grab and go breakfast carts. Where we take all of those required components of a healthy school breakfast and put it in a quick and easy grab and go bag that they can get from the school cart that’s out on campus where the kids already are. They grab that bag and take it to the classroom and start their day. So just looking at how we connect kids with food in new and innovative ways.

Heidi Otway: Yeah. And I like how in Broward County we actually did an event to, like you said, kind of remove that stigma of having breakfast, and we actually brought in a DJ and swag, the No Kid Hungry swag for the kids and it turned into like a patio party where they were grabbing their breakfast and sitting around, wearing their glasses and enjoying a meal among their peers. And it was kind of cool, and it was a good event. I love seeing that No Kid Hungry is working with the local communities to do these kinds of things, especially in our public schools.

Sky Beard: And the needs of each school are a little different where what they think that their students will respond to and engage with might be different. So that’s one of the great things about our work too is that there’s really no one way to do that. We just want to make sure that more kids are fed.

Heidi Otway: Exactly.

Sky Beard: We want to make sure that more kids are starting their day with breakfast. So if it’s sunglasses and a DJ at one school with a marketing campaign at another and it’s breakfast carts at another, we’re quite flexible with whatever the school would like to do.

Heidi Otway: So you’re new into this role as the Florida director for No Kid Hungry Florida. Tell me a little bit about what your vision is moving forward for the program.

Sky Beard: So we have had lots of work done in the last few months, since January 3rd that I’ve been on. We’re building our Florida base team. We are engaging with a whole bunch of partners around the state who have just been amazing and they’re excited about what we’re bringing to our schools. So we plan on continuing to do that work.

Sky Beard: We would love to get to a place, our ultimate vision is that we do just as our name implies and that we have no more hungry kids in Florida and elsewhere, and we’re confident that we will get there one school district at a time and one community partner at a time across the state. But we are really working hard to make sure that the various communities across the state know that we’re here as a partner. When there are conversations about child hunger in communities or the needs of their students related to food during the school year or summer months, we hope to be a partner in those conversations so that we can just keep moving the work forward.

Heidi Otway: Yeah, and you’re getting some support from our ag commissioner, Nikki Fried.

Sky Beard: Yeah. Commissioner Fried has been amazing in this conversation since she came on board. She fully understands the importance of school breakfast as it relates to child hunger and in Florida. Her fabulous team at Department of Agriculture oversees school breakfast programs, so they have just been amazing partners. We’re working with them on some initiatives right now and she’s just really made that some of her important messaging as she’s traveling the state and their whole team have been great.

Heidi Otway: So if someone is listening to this, whether it’s a business or a school or an organization that really believes in the mission of No Kid Hungry here in Florida, how can they get involved?

Sky Beard: I would be happy to talk to anybody that wants to talk about this work further. That’s a big part of my work is making sure that people are aware of who we are and what we’re doing. So reaching out to me would be a great place to start. We have a really fabulous website, nokidhungry.org, that has lots of resources and information. Everything from a school district who wants to take it on to a legislator who wants to learn more about it, there’s tremendous resources.

Heidi Otway: Yeah. And the program has gotten a lot of support from the professional teams in Florida, different businesses and partners who’ve really gotten behind this so we would love to see more businesses and organizations join this effort to have no kid hungry here in Florida. Is there anything else, Sky, that you want to share with our listeners about the work you’re doing?

Sky Beard: I think it’s just so critically important to recognize that child hunger is in every community and therefore there should be a solution in every community. I think sometimes we think that we don’t have hungry kids in our neighborhood or in our area, but it does exist and we are here as a resource. So I would just ask to consider us for those conversations about child hunger, about how we can use already existing resources to fill that gap because it really is a solvable problem. Sometimes when we think of these very large social issues like child hunger or poverty, it can feel really overwhelming. But these strategies that we’re working on right here in my home state really show that it is solvable. We really can make sure that no kid is hungry.

Heidi Otway: Well thank you so much, Sky. With every interview that we do, we always like to ask our guests a couple of questions, and you as a Florida native, I’m very curious to hear your responses to these. Okay, you ready? Who is a Florida leader you admire? It could be someone from any different industry or field from the past or someone who’s active right now.

Sky Beard: So there are… Gosh, there are so many to pick from. And I think one of the first that comes to mind, and though I’m sad I never had an opportunity to engage with him personally, but such an inspiration is Lawton Chiles, and probably a lot of people respond with that answer. But I just seem to recall pretty clearly when I was just first starting in my career of social work and you kind of feel like you’re out to save the world and you’re going to be so successful. I still remember when he was in office, just him putting forth so many initiatives that even to this day we refer back to. And you trace them back and you’re like, oh, that was a Chiles initiative from looking at infant mortality and the healthy start program that developed and health insurance and special needs services and high quality childcare.

Sky Beard: There are just countless child advocacy type programs and initiatives that really started under his leadership, and I do wonder if he were with us still what we could accomplish because I think that there’s… we’ve had great successes but there’s a long way to go and he really was a champion for children in our state,.

Heidi Otway: What is a person, place or thing in Florida that deserves more attention than it’s currently getting?

Sky Beard: So I think we have lots of conversations in our state about education, our education system, that I think that’s so critically important to continue those conversations. It gets a lot of attention for good or bad. We talk a lot about our education system in Florida. I think, from my perspective and my experience, and maybe it’s just the way I view the world, I think sometimes we need to have further conversation about how children don’t arrive in our education system in isolation. That kind of looking at all of those other things that our kiddos are coming to our education system with, some of the challenging things that they arrive with, and I think our state’s done a pretty good job of recognizing that.

Sky Beard: But I think we need to continue to highlight how domestic violence and homelessness and hunger, how that impacts kids and really looking at children from a whole child perspective and not just this is their education system, this is… It all is so interchangeable and our focus on mental health is helping good understanding of that, but I think that we just need to keep conversing about whole child related issues and that children don’t live in a vacuum. They just don’t show up at 8:00 in the morning at their elementary school not having come along with them everything else that surrounds them in their home and in their neighborhoods and their communities. So I think it’s just… we need to recognize when we talk about education, we’re also talking about children and everything else that needs equal attention.

Heidi Otway: Yeah. It’s almost like we need an evolution of change.

Sky Beard: Yeah. Nicely said.

Heidi Otway: So what is your favorite Florida location to visit?

Sky Beard: There’s again, so many nice places to pick from and I’ve had an opportunity to visit much of the state over the years professionally and personally. So I could list probably whole bunches of favorite places. I think for a lot of people, home always feels like the best place to be. So if I had to pick, I’m really fond of where I am right now and have been for so many years in Brevard County, between the beaches and the Space Center and so many things that we have here. I’m just a huge fan of east central Florida and everything that comes with it.

Sky Beard: I think one of my favorite places in addition to home now, and I’m probably going to say it for reasons different than other people do, but I’m about an hour from the theme park area and we regularly visit some of the attractions and though that’s lovely for everything that the attractions provide and we’re very fortunate to have that, I kind of see it as one of my favorite places because it’s still one of the places that my children at age 17 and 11 really want to be.

Heidi Otway: Yeah. Right. Yeah, the cool factor when you take them to the theme parks.

Sky Beard: Yeah, exactly. My children will still hold my hand when we walk through the Disney parks so to me that’s special. We build memories there and all of that that goes with it is lovely, but the family component of that time and because we’re so close and can take advantage of it so often is a nice place to be as well.

Heidi Otway: Well are you a sports fan, and if you are, what’s your favorite Florida sports team?

Sky Beard: We are a pretty heavy collegiate football household. So I think for the most part, we do have a pretty strong UF following here in my home, but I am a UCF graduate and so excited about what’s happening at UCF with their football program, so we’re watching that regularly. My daughter intends to go to college there, so I am sure that we have many years of football in our future. So that would have to be my pick.

Heidi Otway: Well, Sky, thank you so much for sharing your role and what you’re doing to end childhood hunger here in Florida and the work that you’ve done previously with the Early Learning Coalition. We’re expecting to see some big changes with you in this new role with No Kid Hungry Florida and we thank you so much for being a guest on our Fluent in Floridian podcast.

Sky Beard: Thank you so much for the opportunity. I enjoyed talking with you.

Chris Cate: Thanks for listening to the Fluent in Floridian podcast. This show is executive produced by April Salter with additional support provided by Heidi Otway and the team at SalterMitchell PR. If you need help telling your Florida story, SalterMitchell PR has you covered by offering issues management, crisis communications, social media, advocacy, and media relations assistance. You can learn more about SalterMitchell PR at saltermitchellpr.com. You can also learn more about the Fluent in Floridian podcast and listen to every episode of the show at fluentinfloridian.com or by searching for the show using your favorite podcast app. Have a great day.