DCAYA’s Budget Updates Part II: Expanded Learning & Youth Homelessness

The final vote by the Council occurred yesterday, and the District’s FY17 budget now goes to Mayor Bowser. Today we continue to reflect on the work of our members and partners throughout this year’s advocacy season, and provide an update on successes for youth, families and children within the FY17 budget. Last week’s blog focused on Youth Workforce Development and Disconnected Youth, and we continue this week with a look at Expanded Learning and Youth Homelessness.

Expanded Learning

A Path Forward for Funding Afterschool and Summer Learning

After the mayor proposed $4.9 million to the DC Trust for community-based afterschool and summer programming in FY17, our initial ask was to double that investment in order to serve up to four times as many children and youth in need of quality expanded learning opportunities. While we were optimistic about the strength of the proposed amount compared to recent years, it was not enough to reverse a downward trend for out-of-school time programming we have seen each year in the District since 2010.

While we will continue to advocate for scaled-up, multi-year funding beginning in FY18, the advocacy priority for FY17 quickly shifted with the announced dissolution of the DC Trust on April 26. Since then, DCAYA and our community-based partners have worked hard to preserve the $4.9 million intended for expanded learning programs. Our coalition has held more than a dozen meetings with members of DC Council and their staff, as well as the Deputy Mayors for Education and Health and Human Services, to build support among policy makers for an established, nonprofit intermediary with youth development expertise to administer out-of-school time (OST) funding in FY17. We continue to be an active partner in this effort, as Deputy Mayor Brenda Donald presents this recommendation to Mayor Bowser.

We’d like to thank the Deputy Mayors and members of Council, as well as all of our expanded learning partners (simply too many to list here) who stepped up to provide resources and insight in the wake of the Trust’s collapse. Most especially, we’re grateful to those members who met with policy makers and offered public testimony to advocate for the preservation of out-of-school time funding. We'd like to give a special shout out of thanks to Fair Chance and Gretchen Van der Veer for helping coordinate our members and Fair Chance partners to do a final round of walk arounds with DC Council on the importance of out of school time programming.

Sustaining 21st Century Community Learning Centers

Earlier this year, the Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE) announced that due to internal efforts to streamline grant making processes and decreased federal funds, there would be no new competition for the federal 21st Century Community Learning Center (CLC) grant program in the 2016-2017 school year. This action immediately affected three community-based OST providers who all stood to lose approximately $995,413 in the coming school year. The disruption of these services, which have all demonstrated quality programming and remarkable outcomes for students, would have caused significant ramifications next year for up to 1,000 at-risk students and undermined years of investments.

Recognizing that families, youth and children deserve more than a haphazard and inconsistent delivery of these key critical services, DCAYA and these three partners launched a targeted advocacy effort to find support and funding. These efforts paid off with Council identifying $800,000 to sustain 21st Century CLC’s in FY17. We’d like to thank these organizations and their families for rallying to support the students, as well as Superintendent Hanseul Kang and everyone at OSSE for their support in working toward a solution, and Councilmembers David Grosso, Brianne Nadeau and Charles Allen for their outspoken support for sustaining this important and life-changing funding stream.

Youth Homelessness

Building Capacity for a Youth-Friendly System

This year, DCAYA advocated to an additional investment of $800,000 to create more transitional housing and independent living options for youth experiencing homelessness. While the mayor’s proposed budget included significantly more funding for crisis support and prevention and diversion services, which we had advocated for and certainly applaud, more funding for meaningful housing interventions will be needed in future years if we are to meet the intent of the 2014 End Youth Homelessness Amendment Act and make homelessness among unaccompanied minors and transition-aged youth rare, brief and non-recurring by 2020.

DCAYA continues to work in a leadership role with the Interagency Council of Homelessness (ICH) and the ICH Youth Subcommittee, and we are optimistic that with the Fall release of the ICH’s Strategic Plan to End Youth Homelessness, we and our partners will be positioned to make an even stronger ask next budget season. We’d like to thank ICH Executive Director Kristy Greenwalt, DHS Director Laura Zeilinger, and DHS Deputy Administrator for Youth Services Hilary Cairns for their continued leadership and support for scaled-up funding, as well as Kimberly Henderson with Child and Family Services Agency, for her role co-chairing the Youth Subcommittee. We are grateful to our members and partners from Sasha Bruce, Casa Ruby, the Latin American Youth Center, Wanda Alston, Covenant House and the DC Center for the LGBT Community for their leadership, advocacy partnerships and public testimonies.

Dignified Housing for Homeless Children & Families

In February, the mayor made good on her promise to voters to deliver a plan to close D.C. General and move homeless families into safe and dignified housing throughout the District, and the plan was met both with intense support and praise, and resistance and criticism. The months that followed saw some of this teased out as policy makers, advocates, and members of the community worked toward a middle ground.  We are pleased that Council has since passed a revised plan that calls for the use of government-owned properties in Wards 3, 5, 6, 7 and 8, and the purchase (instead of leasing) of the sites in Wards 1 and 4. These revisions effectively respond to resident concerns about cost while maintaining the overall intent of the plan. We believe that the housing these families will receive, along with improved access to local amenities and on-site case management services, will have life-changing results for their children well worth this effort and its capital expenditures.

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What is the Path Forward for Supporting Afterschool and Summer Programs for Youth?

In case you missed it, Senior Policy Analyst Joseph Gavrilovich was a guest blogger for the DC Fiscal Policy Institute (DCFPI) earlier this week:

The DC Council should act this budget season to ensure resources will be available for afterschool and summer programs for low-income students, following the recent news that the DC Trust will be dissolved due to financial mismanagement and other problems. For over a decade, the Trust has served to distribute funds from DC government for these important programs run by community-based organizations. 

The collapse of the Trust raises a question that affects the lives of thousands of DC kids: Without the DC Trust, what is the path forward for funding youth development in the District? For the coming year, a short-term solution makes sense. A group of youth-serving organizations recommends allowing a local foundation to allocate the $4.9 million in the Mayor’s fiscal year (FY) 2017 budget for community-based afterschool and summer programming. This will give the Mayor and DC Council a year to work with community stakeholders to develop a permanent solution.

To read the rest of his blog, please visit DCFPI's site. 

Regarding the DC Children and Youth Investment Trust Corporation

This week's blog post is our statement released yesterday in response to the news about the DC Trust dissolving. In light of these events, we will be revising and re-releasing our #ExpandLearningDC report and fact sheets here in the coming weeks (the report was originally released on this blog on April 13). 

In the meantime, as we all work together to find a way forward, DCAYA is recommending that stakeholders use our checklist of standards for quality out-of-school time programs and systems as a shared framework. Our statement from April 26, 2016 follows.

This morning, we learned that the DC Children and Youth Investment Trust Corporation (DC Trust) will be dissolving. While the exact timeline and process is still to be determined or announced, now is the time to move forward on next steps with urgency. We want to provide you with a few immediate updates on what we’ve learned today. This is followed by a more detailed set of recommendations for the path moving forward, and a final reminder of why the programs the Trust has funded remain so vital.

Immediate Updates
Based on conversations with the Council and the Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services, Brenda Donald, we are confident that:

• Current out of school time grant commitments will be honored. 
• The $2,000,000 allocation for this coming summer will remain stable and move quickly (likely through the Trust as a part of the final wind down).
• Council will work to ensure the Mayor’s proposed $4,900,000 for FY17 is protected. The Mayor has demonstrated a clear commitment to young people with the proposed FY17 budget to fund OST programming. The continuation of the youth development work that was central to the mission of the DC Trust, “ensur(ing) that every DC youth develops the skills to grow into a healthy, caring and productive adult” is paramount.
• Mayor Bowser will deploy both Deputy Mayor Donald and Deputy Mayor Niles to work closely with Council and the community to develop a transition plan for next school year. DCAYA recommends that funding be directed to a local intermediary organization or funding institution with established grant-making expertise and an understanding of the District’s youth development landscape. Alternatively, funding could reside within a one-time special commission for children and youth that is established for the FY17 school year and summer until a more long-term intermediary is designated. In either scenario, we must work collaboratively to ensure programming is not disrupted next fall. 

Taking a thoughtful approach to the management of youth development funding is critical, and as we work with policy makers, our members, and the community at large to explore and consider next steps and solutions, we must remain aware of the unique space such an intermediary exists in. Because of this, while there might seem to be easier options to consider, such as shifting these funds to Local Education Agencies (LEAs), we would be remiss in our own work if we didn’t push to find a better, sustainable solution rather than rush to institutionalize an easier, short-term one.

While next steps remain a bit unclear today, know that we’re working closely across DC government to ensure that there will be opportunities for public feedback and input on what has and has not worked historically. As these and other opportunities are made available, we will communicate them to you and your fellow DCAYA members.

The Path Forward
We are dedicated to protecting this funding, to ensuring that it will stay intact, and to guaranteeing that it remains true to its original purpose. We have been searching for alternative OST funding structures, even before seeing the news regarding the DC Trust’s dissolution. We believe the value of a public-private intermediary should be central to our thinking about the future of OST and youth development funding. We are committed to being a thought partner in this work, and will frame future conversations with these thoughts in mind:

1. When effectively designed, intermediaries can have tremendous value. We know how valuable having a grantmaking intermediary for local Out-of-School Time (OST) funding is to our members and community based organizations in general. A strong public-private intermediary professionalizes the non-profit, youth serving sector through the provision of high quality youth development training and technical assistance. It can ensure grantee accountability through consistent oversight; and finally, when effectively designed an intermediary entity can make sure public investments are made to high quality youth development programs with demonstrated impacts on academic achievement, diminishing the learning gap, reducing truancy, combating youth crime, promoting healthy behaviors and supporting transition-aged youth.
2. The DC Council’s oversight of the intermediary should set a reasonable cap on annual overhead and administrative costs. This action would serve to reassure providers and the public that the funds are dedicated to OST, and that the dollars are reaching the most number of children and youth through community-based program implementation. A threshold of 10-15% would meet the recommendations “reasonable cap” standard.
3. As longer-term solutions are considered, all stakeholder partners should establish and use a common checklist of quality standards for OST programs and the system as a whole. Any and all funders, programs, schools, parent-teacher organizations, government leaders, LEAs and agency partners would have access to the tool. Any CBOs receiving OST grants from the funding intermediary would be expected to meet the quality standards. Similarly, all policy and funding decisions impacting OST would be assessed according to this checklist.

The Value of Out of School Time Opportunities

The annual share of funding for out-of-school time programs has declined by 60% since 2010. As a result, only one quarter of the locally-funded slots exist now for community-based afterschool and summer learning that were available to kids just six years ago, a reduction from close to 10,000 in 2010 to fewer than 2,500 in 2016.

If we are serious about providing safe, youth-friendly opportunities focused on improving outcomes and quality of life for all our children now and in future, we must protect the $4.9 million presently proposed for OST programming in FY2017 and work collaboratively to design a strong, efficient and transparent system moving forward. While there are other funding sources for out-of-school time activities in the District, the funds which are allocated to the DC Trust explicitly for OST uniquely offer community-based organizations the ability to nimbly partner with multiple schools to maximize the number of kids they serve annually. As such, this funding stream directly reflects the value we as a District place on our kids’ learning in the hours after school and in the summer. In ensuring the stability and flexibility of this funding, the District will remain on track in serving children and youth with quality, community-based expanded learning opportunities.

While today's news is heartbreaking, know that we will work diligently with each and every one of you to ensure that the children, youth and families that rely on these critical services are protected. Please don't hesitate to reach out with any questions, and we'll be in touch as things unfold.

- Maggie Riden, Executive Director, on behalf of your team at DC Alliance of Youth Advocates