#DCFY18 Budget Advocacy: $10 million for Expanded Learning

Over the next several weeks, we’ll be sharing talking points around the #DCFY18 Budget as it relates to our asks of Council and the Mayor for DCAYA’s key issue areas. We begin this week with Expanded Learning.

THE ASK: $5.1 million in additional funding to the Office of Out-of-School Time Grants and Youth Outcomes

Funding for out-of-school time (OST) in the Mayor's proposed budget was kept flat at $4.9 million, meaning we'll need to work collaboratively with Council to get to the full $10 million dollar investment we know is needed.

NOW: Why additional OST funding matters to youth, and why we believe it is a sound investment in FY18

• Impact on Kids: Quality programs with a youth development focus show positive impacts on kids’ academic gains, participation in school, social and emotional development, and overall health, and research shows that the greatest gains from these outcomes are shown to be for youth who are considered “at risk” of academic failure due to poverty; declining funding means fewer of these outcomes for District youth.
• Declining Funding and Access: Local funding for community-based OST programs has declined by 60% since 2010, resulting today in only a quarter of the locally-funded slots for community-based afterschool and summer learning that were there for kids just six years ago (from close to 10,000 in 2010 to under 2,500 in 2016). Much of this decline happened as funds were administered through the DC Trust, and reluctance to invest over the years has been understandable given the Trust’s mismanagement over that time period. 
• New Youth Office, New Opportunity to Invest in Kids: With the Trust’s dissolution and the creation of the new Youth Office, we have a structure for OST to be led with accountability and authority; the Commission offers community-based governance and strong potential for cross-sector and family and youth collaboration, and an in-government entity can better ensure access to student-level data to yield shared, measurable outcomes.
• Turning the Trend: We see an opportunity ahead in FY2018 to scale up locally-funded afterschool programs in the District to better meet the OST needs of youth and their communities. We are convinced the time is right to inform and influence the re-creation of the youth development system here in the District with the strongest investment in expanded learning we’ve seen in years. This year, we support an initial $10 million dollar investment in expanded learning programs through the new Youth Office in the FY18 budget. This funding will support community-based OST providers to better meet the needs of some 6,000 additional children and youth.
• Leading Locally in Face of Federal Threats: All of this will also serve to counter potential loss of federal funds; The proposed elimination of the 21st Century Community Learning Centers program (which provides before- and after-school enrichment, tutoring and other services) would mean $1.2 billion eliminated from the expanded learning space nationally; DC’s share of this federal funding in FY16 was approximately $6.3 million, with an FY17 allocation closer to $5 million.

HOW: Help advocate for OST funding in the #DCFY18 Budget

• Please sign up to testify at the Budget Hearing for the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Education on Tuesday, April 25, 2017 at 10 am in Room 123 of the John A. Wilson Building at 1350 Pennsylvania Avenue NW.
• You can sign up to testify at this link or by calling the Committee on Education at 202-724-8061.

NEXT: Please check back here next week for more on our Youth Workforce Development and Disconnected Youth #DCFY18 budget asks, and the following week for Youth Homelessness.

And in case you missed it, check out our Actions for Budget Advocacy - Week 1 email.

Out-of-School Time partners letter

DCAYA has drafted a joint letter to the Deputy Mayor for Education (DME and Council that we'd like to have as many of our members, OST providers and individual supporters as possible sign on to ahead of the markup. It lays out some core tenets that have emerged from discussions to date which are important to highlight for policy makers.

The letter reads as follows. And if we can include you/your organization as a signatory, click on the link toward the end of this post (and let us know how it should appear on the letter, e.g. your name/title, a board chair/ED's name, both names, or just the organization name):


November 17, 2016


Dear Deputy Mayor Niles, Chairman Grosso, and Members of the Committee on Education:

We wanted to thank you for the collaborative leadership you have shown in the months since the
announced dissolution of the DC Trust, most recently at the DC Council Committee on Education’s
October 31 hearing on Councilmember Grosso and Councilmember Nadeau’s proposed Office of
Youth Outcomes and Grants.

As a provider of community-based out-of-school time (OST) services in the District, we especially
appreciate that stakeholder partners have been at the table with policy makers, that all partners
are clearly focused on the present need in the community, and that efforts to forge a defined path
forward for funding OST have been balanced with the intention for a system that may evolve over
time. This is all reflected in how you have both made clear an intent to create a long-term strategic
plan informed by meaningful community input and inclusive participation.

We see areas of cohesion between both the Council’s and the DME’s proposed OST system
models, and as we move into this next phase, we see the following tenets as critical to the longterm
success of youth development in DC:

1. Governed by a body with broad stakeholder representation, which has clear authority to create and approve a strategic plan informed through meaningful community input processes, and which is empowered to ensure the strategic plan is carried out as intended.
   
2. Includes a strong executive leadership position with youth development expertise, and the staff, resources and authority necessary to span the multiple clusters, agencies and partners that are integral to holistic youth development. While accountable to the broad governing body for carrying out the long-term strategic plan, this position and staff should be housed in government with a distinct level of authority and transparency, subject to regular Council oversight for performance and budget.
   
3. Is streamlined in all functions to minimize burden and opportunity costs put on providers and families, specifically A) for providers presently navigating numerous systems with varied requirements and processes in grant making, reporting, capacity building, and vetting/partnerships with government agencies; and, B) for families presently forced to navigate multiple systems to provide duplicative information and, in essence, “prove poverty” to access core youth development opportunities.

We are happy to discuss these with you further, and are confident that in the coming weeks our
continued collaboration will produce a legislative path forward which reflects the consensus of
policy makers, advocates, and the OST provider community and the children, youth and families
we serve.


Sincerely,

[DCAYA Member/Partner Organizations – click here to email DCAYA and sign on!]

CC: Councilmember Brianne Nadeau, Ward 1; Councilmember Brandon Todd, Ward 4;
Councilmember Charles Allen, Ward 6; Councilmember Yvette Alexander, Ward 7;
Councilmember Anita Bonds, DC at-large