The L.A. Opportunity Youth Collaborative (OYC), co-convened by UNITE-LA, John Burton Advocates for Youth and the Alliance for Children's Rights, recently released its 2023 Impact report. The OYC builds cross-sector partnerships to improve education and employment outcomes for transition-age foster youth (TAY). The 2023 Impact Report highlights OYC's collective impact outcomes over the previous year, including noteworthy highlights from LAP3 and the OYC Foster Youth at Work Campaign:

In February 2024, the L.A. Unified Community Schools Steering Committee (CSSC) finalized the selection and designation of eight schools to join Cohort 5 of the Community Schools Initiative (CSI). The designation supports collective efforts to achieve L.A. Unified's expansion goal of 70 community schools by 2025.

In its role as the Los Angeles Region K-16 Collaborative convener, UNITE-LA led a two-day site visit in February for the Office of Public School Construction (OPSC), the state agency overseeing the K-16 Collaborative Grant Program. OPSC and the Foundation for California Community Colleges met with members of the L.A. Region K-16 Collaborative, including leadership from K-12 districts, community colleges, CSUs, UCs and employers. In total, 26 members of the collaborative’s regional and subregional structure participated in the site visit.

On March 12, the L.A. Region K-16 Collaborative held the first transfer pathways community of practice. As the Collaborative’s regional convener, UNITE-LA is hosting a learning session series for partners and practitioners in the region, strengthening awareness about the Collaborative's priority areas of focus, barriers to student success, and current opportunities for collaboration.

On March 8, UNITE-LA co-hosted an L.A./O.C. Master Plan for Career Education regional convening with the Office of California Governor Newsom and WestEd following an executive order signed last August. More than 100 leaders from education, workforce development, government and community organizations reflected on existing challenges and ways to streamline our education system's approach to preparing students and adults for high-paying careers.

UNITE-LA, in partnership with the Association of Chamber of Commerce Executives Foundation (ACCEF) and the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC), created an in-depth toolkit to serve as a roadmap to help communities get started in their own equitable credential work. Launching the equitable credential toolkit illustrates a key outcome of the $1.3 million Lumina Foundation grant.

UNITE-LA recently wrapped up a multi-month community of practice with leadership from our L.A. Compact partner, California State University, Dominguez Hills (CSUDH). Over the course of our community of practice with the guidance of WestEd, we've engaged in a series of design thinking activities that centered on empathy, ideation and prototyping.

As the new 2023-24 school year began, UNITE-LA collaborated alongside its L.A. Unified and UTLA partners to appoint a new Community Schools Steering Committee (CSSC). In September, the new CSSC held its kickoff meeting, which served as an orientation for the 16 members. The new CSSC members are ignited to expand the Community Schools Initiative (CSI) by strategizing ways to recruit a fifth cohort of schools.

More than 143,000 people, ages 16-24, are not connected to school or work in the Los Angeles region – a 21 percent increase since before the pandemic. Regional leaders of K-12, postsecondary, workforce, youth development and social safety net systems are coming together to renew and reimagine a joint strategic plan to reduce youth disconnection by 32,000 by 2028.

As a part of UNITE-LA's 25th Anniversary Symposium, the L.A. Region K-16 Collaborative was highlighted with a presentation and panel discussion featuring Collaborative and L.A. Compact leaders. The panel explored the driving forces behind the L.A. Region K-16 Collaborative, the work of collaborative partners over the first year of implementation and what the future of the initiative holds. The panel featured Dr. S. Terri Gomez, Interim Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs at Cal Poly Pomona; Elijah Sims, Interim Director of the Long Beach Promise at Long Beach Community College; Ruben Valles, Chief Academic Officer at the L.A. County Office of Education; and was moderated by UNITE-LA's Adam Gottlieb, who serves as Director of Postsecondary Strategy & Policy. The hour-long event began with an overview of the K-16 Collaborative, including new information such as subregional plans that the speakers have worked to put together with their partners across the county.