If Connie Mueller received a “thank you” note from every young person she has helped over the past six years, she might be buried by a paper avalanche.
Mueller retires as managing director of Bainbridge Youth Services this week.
“I’d like to finish my education,” said Mueller, who may also seek full-time employment in Kitsap County, “but the most important thing to me is to keep working for kids.”
Barbara Kerr, BYS board co-president, praised Mueller for her service.
“If I were asked to provide three words to describe Connie from my own observations and experience, I would choose ‘connected, committed and compassionate,’” Kerr said. “The youth of our community are better off because of Connie’s unswerving efforts on their behalf.”
Under Mueller’s leadership, BYS has maintained the focus of its 1962 mission statement – to care for young people “one kid at a time.”
The organization mentors and finds jobs for island young people and also offers free counseling, some to kids from across the bridge.
“We are ‘it’ in North Kitsap,” Mueller said, “and if there is free walk-in mental health available in the rest of Kitsap, I’ve never heard of it.”
Beyond individual Bainbridge youths, a constellation of services such as Safe Teen and It’s About Time for Kids under the BYS umbrella and Bainbridge Island Juvenile Diversion Program have been nurtured by Mueller.
“We all benefited so much from her caring leadership,” diversion program manager Mary Woodward said. “She has always made time for everyone. She has been consistently supportive of the programs – 100 percent there.”
Mueller kept the focus on serving individuals even as the organization grew.
“We pilot programs that are going to improve kids’ lives and then hope that someone steps in to take them on,” she said. “We always look to do what’s best for kids – and that hasn’t changed but it has enlarged.”
When Mueller assumed the reins in 1995, there were three part-time staff members and a $80,000 budget.
Today, BYS has a budget of $160,000 and a staff of seven. The office is open five days a week, compared to just 20 hours a week in the past.
Among her successes, Mueller points to the expansion of programs like Safe Teen, a program that teaches kids to use verbal skills to escape harassment. The curriculum, once available to just 30 girls, now is offered to all seventh graders.
Under Mueller’s leadership, BYS has sought ways to partner with local schools, and the group offers eight hours of counseling to Contract Studies students.
Two years ago, Mueller helped secure a $4,000 grant from Kitsap County Department of Human Service for a multicultural coordinator. The funds helped expand Title IX Indian Education program in schools.
“Almost all of my job is raising funds,” Mueller said. “It’s almost completely grant writing.”
Long service
Mueller served on the board of Bainbridge Youth Services beginning in 1987, and became its president in 1993.
In 1995, she stepped into the managing director role, after taking the prescribed hiatus for a board president of one year.
“I was encouraged to apply for the job so I did,” Mueller said. “In many ways, I felt like I just walked in and sat down at my old desk.
“When you serve as president of a working board and the director is part-time, you will be very hands-on.”
Mueller also helped found the Bainbridge Teen Center in 1986, and was president of Straight Talk, a drug and alcohol education group.
Although busy in her post at BYS, Mueller found time as a representative to Kitsap Community Resources; serve on the Bainbridge Foundation board, including two years as president; do a four-year stint on the Commission on Children and Youth; serve on advisory boards for It’s About Time for Kids and its Kitsap counterpart; and participate in Community Connections for Youth.
Mueller says she feels good about her decision to leave BYS.
“I think it’s time for the agency to grow more,” she said,” and they need someone else to do that.”
Mueller’s replacement is Geoff Ball, the former coordinator of It’s About Time for Kids.
