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CEO expects Inspiring Minds to overcome arrest of Youngstown director
By Ed Runyan
YOUNGSTOWN
Deryck Toles, founder and CEO of Inspiring Minds, said Tim Frost, the suspended executive director of the organization’s Youngstown program, was doing “a great job,” and so were the young people in the program.
“Everything’s been going great and still is,” Toles said Thursday in an interview after Frost’s arrest Sunday on East Indianola Avenue on drug trafficking and other charges.
Toles said he has worked closely with Frost, 35, since hiring him last year to run the Youngstown program.
“We never saw anything of concern,” Toles said.
“All we saw from Tim was that he loved Youngstown and he loved the kids,” said Toles, who started Inspiring Minds in 2006 in Warren.
The organization had its first Youngstown summer program last year and is operating its after-school program for students in kindergarten through grade 8 in the Wilson and Harding buildings in the Youngstown schools.
The Youngstown school district pledged the use of two grants totaling $600,000 over three years to pay for the program. Donations also are used.
There are 300 children in the Warren program and 100 in the Youngstown program.
Inspiring Minds offers underserved youths opportunities and motivates them to succeed in school and life. One of the opportunities it provides is trips to colleges close to and far from home. It operates mostly on donations, such as from an annual Trumbull County golf outing and gala.
Toles said “two great coordinators” are running the programs in the two Youngstown schools. And an interim executive director, Lindsay Benton, who is “rooted” in Youngstown, has been appointed to replace Frost. Toles said he sees no reason to doubt that the program will continue successfully in Youngstown just as it has in Warren.
OLD FRIENDS
Toles said he played football against Frost in high school and got re-acquainted with him about 2006, when Frost was coaching football in Youngstown.
Frost attended Youngstown East High School but graduated from Ursuline High School and then played tight end at the University of West Virginia. He also played arena football after college.
After serving as an assistant coach at Ursuline for several years, he was hired as an assistant coach at Youngstown State University in 2007, according to Vindicator files. He moved to the Tampa and Sarasota, Fla., areas around 2008 and had jobs that involved working with children.
When the expansion into Youngstown began to take shape, Toles discussed having Frost participate during summers, but Frost said he was interested in being executive director and moving back.
“He’s always helped kids and helped people,” Toles said. And because Toles thought it was important to hire people “deep rooted” in Youngstown, he offered the job to Frost. A wider search was not done, Toles said.
Frost’s salary is $60,000 per year.
Toles said he restructured Inspiring Minds when it expanded into Youngstown. He took on the role of CEO and made plans to hire a new executive director for Warren. He hasn’t done that yet because the Warren program is established and didn’t need as much attention as Youngstown, he said.
POLICE REPORT
Youngstown police were called about 12:50 a.m. Sunday for gunfire in the first block of East Evergreen Avenue on the South Side. While they were on the way, they were told someone in an SUV was firing shots at a house. About the same time, police responded to a homicide on East Evergreen but police stressed Frost is not accused in that matter, and a gun was not found in his vehicle.
Officers spotted the SUV at Market Street and Indianola Avenue, but when an officer tried to stop it, the SUV drove away, reports said. The SUV almost crashed before pulling into the drive of an East Indianola Avenue business. Reports said Frost was the driver.
Frost got out of the SUV and showed his hands, and was ordered to walk backward toward police with his hands in the air. But he began putting them in his back pockets.
When officers told Frost to keep his hands up, according to police reports, Frost said: “What are you going to do? Shoot me? Then go ahead and shoot me.”
Frost also said, “How are you going to kill me knowing who I am?” Officers used an electronic stun weapon on him, reports said. Police found a bag of suspected marijuana in his pants and 15 more small bags in the SUV, along with a marijuana grinder, a digital scale and $310.
When asked whether the Frost arrest makes him question the expansion into Youngstown, Toles said no.
“I’m very happy with the decision. At the end of the day, it’s about the kids and always will be about the kids.”
Toles said Frost “really wasn’t in contact with the students” but supervised the two people who were. Those two workers were interviewed about Frost, and they said they did not know of anything improper Frost did with students.
As for whether it will ever be possible for Frost to return, Toles said that is a legal question he won’t try to answer at this point.
DONATION INCOME
Toles said the focus of Inspiring Minds is on “kids all having the same opportunity no matter where they live – in Warren, Youngstown or South Central LA. I just want them to know we care about them. I want them to go to college and get jobs and careers.”
A Vindicator inspection of the publicly available Form 990 tax return for nonprofit corporations that Inspiring Minds filed for 2014 shows that it received 100 percent of its income from donations, including $113,241 from two fundraisers.
The organization had total expenses in 2014 – the most recent year available – of $499,625, an increase over expenses of $373,513 in 2013.
The biggest increase in its expenses was salaries, which rose from $132,029 in 2013 to $215,400 in 2014. Specifically, Toles’ salary rose from $80,000 in 2013 to $200,000 in 2014.
The reason given in the document and explained by Toles was that he received little to no salary during many of the early years of the organization.
His new base salary is $90,000 per year, which he will receive in 2016, but he received about $200,000 in 2015 to complete the repayment of deferred wages.
“I knew in order to get this organization where I wanted it to be, I didn’t want to break the organization” financially by taking a large salary, he said.