Katy Young
LE SUEUR — Dan Pfarr was a school truant in his first week of first grade. A terrible case of “mummy-itis” had his mum taking him home every day after lunch. And once he cashed a student loan check and bought a Harley instead of college books and tuition.
But overall, he says, he grew up in a world where not going to school simply wasn’t an option. The culture of his farming family in rural Sibley County with his parents, Jim and Bonnie, was one of hard work, duty, service and love of community. Dan’s eight siblings and the dozens of foster kids that shared the home participated in 4-H and community activities.
The solid strength of his upbringing is part of what keeps him commuting home 12 weeks a year to work on the family farm with three sons, Leo, 6, James, 4, and Anton, 1, in tow even though his career has taken him to the heart of Minneapolis.
He has found the work he loves in service to the children, families and community of Hennepin County. Truancy is a big focus — and not just a week here and a Harley there. He is associate director of Bolder Options, a youth mentoring program that pairs volunteer runners and cyclists with 10- to 14-year-old truant kids for a year-long commitment.
“Kids are truant for a lot of reasons,” said Pfarr, “but 10-year-olds don’t choose to be truant.”
Pfarr explained many complicated family situations that leave children without transportation, supervision, medical care or the support they need to get to school every day. Poverty, day-care issues, difficult work schedules and language barriers all play a part and contribute to a non-graduation rate that approaches 40 percent.
“We’re a goal-oriented program,” Darrell Thompson, executive director of Bolder Options, said. “We teach taking care of responsibility, sitting down and doing homework so something good happens when you go to school. We get speakers in talking on being physically fit and making good decisions.”
The two met 12 years ago when Pfarr, as a volunteer mentor in the program with a difficult kid, called Thompson for advice. They have worked together as the program grew from serving six kids to more than a hundred this year.
The two share the work of building the program. “I enjoy working with him,” Thompson said, “shaking trees and catching the apples and making it work around here.”
While Thompson brings the star power of his past as a Green Bay Packer to the program, he said Pfarr brings a different dynamic. “He’s smart and funny and diverse. He’s got a great reputation here in Minneapolis.”
Through his work at Bolder Options, Pfarr has become deeply involved in the Minnesota Youth Intervention Programs Association, serving as its president for the past four years. In this role he has reached right back out to his rural roots. The YIPA mission is to provide training and development opportunities for youth service professionals all over Minnesota. The organization also provides program development, advocacy and lobbying at state and national levels.
YIPA values
“We believe that early intervention programming is the most effective and least expensive way to make a difference in the lives of youth in high-risk situations,” says the YIPA values statement.
The 52 community-based programs that are part of YIPA (one is in Mankato; see accompanying story) are all different, each tailored to the needs of the community. Twenty-nine programs are based in the Twin Cities with only 23 in the rest of the state. This is something Pfarr would like to see changed.
“Kids across the state need to have access to programs that serve their needs,” Pfarr said. “It is more than worth it for us to support healthy lifestyles for kids.”
“At a certain point somebody will pay,” Pfarr said. “Things that always get paid for youth are hospital, mental health, jail.”
But by the time those major interventions are needed, the cost per juvenile often exceeds tens of thousands of dollars per year and a career of drug use and crime costs society in the millions, Pfarr said.
In stark contrast, the YIPA programs average $205 per youth/year. The Bolder Options program keeps costs low by using all volunteer mentors that are screened, trained and supervised by a small staff. Many other programs rely heavily on infrastructure already in place in county correctional departments. Both strategies keep costs down and contact with youth up, and the YIPA programs claim an 85 percent success rate at keeping kids out of the juvenile court system.
Pfarr stresses that YIPA programs are not youth development, such as 4-H and sports and enrichment activities. The kids who come into the programs are not volunteers. They are at risk and in need, and are on the cusp of choosing where to put their energy — into academic attendance and achievement or ... not.
“In the early ’90s people called the city ‘Murder-apolis,’” Pfarr said, “And in response to that, people said, ‘We gotta do something!’” Then in the late ’90s crime bottomed out and truancy officers in the schools went unfunded and probation officers were cut.
Pfarr saw services for truants bottoming out around the year 2000 and now, “six years later, those kids are 16 to 20, and crime rates are way up. In my mind there is a direct correlation. And people have started saying ‘We have to do something!’ again.”
“For us all it has become a work-force issue,” Pfarr said.
YIPA is making a case to Gov. Pawlenty’s office to maintain and modestly expand services to Minnesota youth even in times of state budget cuts. The request is to increase state funding to $50,000 for each program and to expand the 52 state programs to 75 or 80 by 2008.
As part of the argument for the increased spending, Pfarr points out that putting even one young person in a group home or treatment facility for a year costs between $56,000 and $75,000. Each Youth Intervention Program must raise $2 in community funding for every $1 they obtain from the state, so both state and community dollars committed to the program are well leveraged.
Pfarr spends much of his time on development for both the Minneapolis and statewide programs and finds widespread support among legislators across party lines. And, although he would never count chickens before they were hatched, he is watching and working as a $1.5 million bill works its way through the federal government to replicate the Bolder Options program in St. Paul and other places in the state. It passed in the Senate but not the House and is now in conference.
Between his work in Minneapolis, Washington, D.C., and the upcoming harvest season in Sibley County, Pfarr says, “I feel I’ve got the best of both worlds.”
As the fifth generation farming the 1,200-acre family farm, he and his brother Dave are helping his parents to retire in comfort on their farm place and pass the life and land on to the sixth generation. Through his work for the youth of Minnesota he’s doing his best to share the solid strength of his upbringing with kids who are on much shakier ground.
