Updates include Collective Impact Convening, LAUSD Strategic Plan Engagement, the LAUSD Promising Practices forum, and more 

LA Compact & OYC Presentation at the 2017 Boston Collective Impact Convening: On Tuesday, May 23^rd leaders from the L.A. Compact and the LA OYC presented examples on how to structure, fund, and sustain a collective impact initiative that diffuses the backbone role across multiple conveners to a packed room at the 2017 Collective Impact Convening in Boston.  Attendees at the presentation, “Structuring and Funding a Multi-Convener Model for Collective Impact,” learned how the L.A. Compact has embraced and implemented the Constellation Model, allowing the initiative to promote a broad cradle-to-career vision, while fostering independent action by constellation workgroups convened by partner organizations.  Presenters L.A. Compact Director Carrie Lemmon, L.A. Compact Institutions of Higher Education lead and Senior Director Paola Santana, L.A. Compact Senior Coordinator Emily Blake, and L.A. OYC Director Thomas Lee with the Alliance for Children’s Rights provided insight on joint funding and communication strategies, as well as how the Compact has ensured continued engagement by political and system leaders over nine years of collaboration.  For more information, please see the blog  that answers several questions that arose during the workshop. 

LAUSD Strategic Plan Engagement: L.A. Compact partner LMU joined LAUSD on May 31st for a forum with students, parents, and community stakeholders from University and Hamilton High School feeder patterns to discuss the district’s strategic plan and goal of 100% graduation.

LAUSD Promising Practice Forum: Under Superintendent Michelle King and the Board of Education’s leadership, LAUSD hosted its second Sharing Promising Practices Together forum on June 3^rd featuring school practitioner teams across a diverse network of school models to share their promising practices with a focus on supporting middle school students for college and career success.  This year’s forum was hosted at Julian Nava Learning Academy near USC.  A keynote address was offered by Dr. Judy Willis, a board-certified practicing neurologist with ten subsequent years as a classroom teacher and a leading authority on the neuroscience of learning.  Throughout the workshops, facilitators often drew inspiration from Dr. Willis’ keynote, truly grounding the learning and sharing of LAUSD’s most promising practices.  Examples of promising practices included linked learning, restorative justice and restorative communities, community schools, whole child and summer bridge programming, model united nations, blended learning, as well as a variety of STEM/ STEAM programming, each presented by middle school administrators, teachers and students across the district.  For detailed descriptions of workshops and presenting middle schools, please see the Sharing Promising Practices Together agenda.  

Stewardship Group

At the Stewardship Group’s April meeting, members reached consensus on changes to the Compact’s process for revising the L.A. Compact agreement in 2017 (known as Compact 3.0). The group agreed to:

• Replace the Compact’s standing eight collaborative strategy areas and extensive sub-strategies with a smaller set of two-year priorities that reflect the current activities of existing L.A. Compact workgroups as well as new opportunities for collaboration that will be launched by the Stewardship Group by 2018.
• Establish a set of principles for how Compact partners want to collaborate. The principles would seek to answer the question: What does it mean to pursue “Compact-like” collaboration?

Next the Stewardship Group will turn to revising the L.A. Compact’s three goals, which were first established and agreed upon by 19 signers in 2010. Partners will be exploring potential additional goals related to school readiness as well as the positive development of the whole child beyond academics. 

Joint Advocacy Workgroup: June 2^nd marked the deadline for bills to make it out of their house of origin.  With hundreds of education bills before both houses, the Joint Advocacy Group reviewed a number of bills that look to improve public education for Angelino students.  Two bills, aligned to the group's 2017 goals, were supported by the group: AB 1164 (Thurmond) and AB 60 (Santiago).  AB 1164 (Thurmond) passed out of the Assembly House 60-0.  This bipartisan bill known as the Emergency Child Care Bridge Program for Foster Children would increase access to early care and education services for abused and neglected children across California, helping to immediately stabilize vulnerable children in the most appropriate placement and providing them with a bridge to long-term, high quality early education programs.  This effort would help children remain in safe environments while also supporting resource/foster parents to remain in the workplace. This $31 million budget proposal is currently being discussed by the state budget conference committee.   AB 60 is an extraordinary opportunity to remove unjust and unjustified, red-tape reporting rules that cause eligible families to churn in and out of child care programs; put their jobs at risk; disrupt children’s school readiness and development; make it impossible for child care professionals to balance ledgers or plan for quality investments while accepting children with subsidies; and burden employers and education providers who are required to sign off on the endless paperwork.  Both bills are headed to the Senate.

L.A. Regional STEM Hub: On Wednesday, May 31 more than 150 L.A. area leaders gathered for the Chamber's 2017 State of STEM at the University of Southern California. Cultivating diverse talent in the areas of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) is essential to continued economic growth and competitiveness. The program highlighted high demand/high growth STEM related industries within L.A. County and its implications to our regional economy. The discussions focused on expanding access to STEM education and fostering education-industry partnerships to meet Southern California's high-skill workforce needs. As part of the L.A. Regional STEM Hub initiative, the annual State of STEM convening addresses how leaders throughout our community are sparking change and diversifying STEM fields in the workforce, higher education and the K-12 pipeline, with a focus on the cradle-to-career STEM pipeline.  Photos from the event can be found here.

Institutions of Higher Education (IHE) Collaborative:

Los Angeles Educator Pathways Partnership (LAEPP): The Los Angeles Educator Pathways Partnership met on June 5 to continue planning for the data analysis phase of the partnership’s project now that data files have been exchanged between L.A. Unified and the participating teacher preparation programs.  The partners discussed the data analysis conducted by individual institutions to date and considered a proposal from a data analytics firm to conduct research across the data set.  The partners also celebrated workgroup members who are transitioning from their roles or are retiring at the end of the academic year.

Student Success Workgroup:  At its last meeting on April 4th, the Student Success Workgroup welcomed new representation from LAUSD. Dr. Frances Gipson, Chief Academic Officer, will join the working group in order to provide a needed K-12 perspective as the group examines the student success challenges that arise during the transition between high school and college. Already, this perspective has been valuable as the group explores collaborative strategies to address remediation, including using state standards to assess college readiness early on, aligning high school and college curricula, using high school GPA and other measures to determine college course placement, and implementing co-requisite remediation and “stretch” courses that help students move through remediation more quickly.  As it continues exploring these pipeline issues, the Workgroup will also remain focused on guiding implementation of the L.A. College Promise, which grants one year of free community college to LAUSD graduates who enroll at any of the 9 LACCD campuses, and on the L.A. Reverse Transfer partnership, which enables students who have stopped out of CSUN to earn a first-time associate degree from one of three LACCD campuses in the San Fernando Valley. The group will continue to pursue opportunities for peer learning and joint action in the spirit of promoting student success and postsecondary completion in the region. The next meeting of the Student Success Workgroup is scheduled for June 14th.

Regional Workforce Systems Collaborative: The Systems Collaborative is in the process of scheduling its next regional partner convening for spring. The meeting will provide regional workforce stakeholders with an update on the recent changes within Los Angeles County to develop a plan that provides a framework to align the County’s employment and training efforts with community colleges, adult schools and labor organizations to meet the region’s industry needs.

In addition, the L.A. County Board of Supervisors recently commissioned a new Economic Development Policy Committee tasked with developing an Economic Development Scorecard (Scorecard) to report on how current and future economic development initiatives could be measured on a quarterly basis going forward. The goal of the Scorecard is to organize the County’s economic development programs into strategic categories and to develop a standardized means for reporting on the progress of each program. Accurate data collection by the departments and commissions that administer these programs is critical to the success and use of the Scorecard. The three strategic initiatives identified in the current Scorecard are workforce development, business assistance, and financial assistance. The regional collaborative will provide input as to how the scorecard can potentially be leveraged in order to align various workforce development efforts in the region.

Data Workgroup: At its last meeting on May 19^th, the L.A. Compact Data Workgroup finalized recommendations for optimal Early Childhood Education and K-12 indicators to track outcomes and progress toward the Compact’s goals.  We will now solicit input on these metrics from other relevant Compact workgroups before discussing final recommendations with the Stewardship group.  The L.A. Compact Data Workgroup is also nearing completion of recommendations for higher education and workforce indicators and is in the early stages of discussing dashboard options for future reporting.

Healthcare Collaborative: The Health Collaborative will be working with the Hospital Association of Southern California (HASC) to create a dissemination plan to inform stakeholders of their findings behind the shortage of specialty nurses in the region.

Kindergarten Readiness Assessment (KRA): Leaders from First 5 LA, Children Now, and the L.A. Area Chamber of Commerce (the KRA Leadership Team) met in May to discuss various strategy options for advancing a common school readiness assessment in L.A. County. The group discussed options for developing a learning community among several L.A. County school districts that are already or considering implementing a KRA tool known as the Early Development Instrument (EDI).

L.A. Opportunity Youth Collaborative (LA OYC), convened by the Alliance for Children’s Rights:

LA OYC Stewardship Committee:  The Los Angeles Opportunity Youth Collaborative (OYC) Stewardship Committee met in April to discuss how to increase foster youth access into higher education, employment, and stable housing.  Robert Sainz (L.A. City Economic Workforce Development Dept.) gave an overview of the Performance Partnership Pilot (P3) draft document to highlight areas that support the OYC’s goals.  Throughout the presentation, discussions ranged from quantitative data accuracy, to strategic goals and the involvement of each agency at the table, to AB12 and Wendy Luke (DCFS-YDS Director) being the AB12 liaison with AB12 “champions” in each DCFS service planning area.  Erika Torres (LAUSD) gave an overview of how the district’s services for disconnected youth fit into the P3 framework. Through its Juvenile Hall Camp Returnee Program, Foster Youth Achievement program, Group Home Scholars, and homeless youth services, LAUSD tries to promote school stability and advocate for educational rights. Of the 6,000 students who have dropped out, they have re-engaged 3,000.
 

On Housing, Hellen Hong (First Place For Youth) provided an update on Measure H.  After passage, the Homelessness Committee is reviewing and will have about $26M for youth. The second round of the review will visit the topic of specialized populations. Hellen’s office will be meeting with the Mayor to solidify support for funds to help specialized populations.  Richard Verches with the L.A/O.C. Regional Community College Consortium expressed a need for deeper engagement in P3. He reported that community colleges are seeing an over-funding which allows more investments into programs and engagement. P3 is also imbedded in the Community College’s plans which provides more options to improve employer engagement. There is also a new app called “Pathways to Careers” which has been funded by JP Morgan. It will include all the courses at all the colleges so individuals can see what the career pathways are. Eventually they will add all the job and career events in the area. The app’s scheduled launch was on April 26^th.

LA OYC Jobs for Foster Youth Program: The Jobs for Foster Youth initiative expanded and ran cohorts in San Gabriel Valley, Los Angeles, and Panorama City since March.  Over 50 youth were trained in the World of Work Curriculum led by the Los Angeles TAY Collaborative.  iFoster, a LA 100K Opportunities Initiative member, leveraged their relationships with large employers around the county to connect those youth deemed work ready to companies like Starbucks, Stater Brothers, Superior Market, and Ralphs.  

 LA OYC Young Leaders. This Spring the OYC on-boarded 10 new Young Leaders (YL)--current and former foster youth seeking an opportunity to support the goals of the OYC in areas of employment, post-secondary education, and systems change.  There are not many axioms in the world of child welfare, but this one always has practical applications: “there should be nothing created for foster youth without foster youth’s voice.”  Their time with the OYC is comprised of professional training in areas of public speaking, policy change, project management, strategic partnering, and team building. One of our YL, Alexandria Maldonado, was able to get the City of Irvine to declare May Foster Care Awareness Month.  Alexandria’s success was on the heels of her travels to Boston to participate in the annual Opportunity Incentive Fund convening.   

Three other YL traveled with our OYC partner, National Foster Youth Institute, to Washington D.C. to shadow members of the House of Representatives--which included but were not limited to Congresswoman Karen Bass, Congressman Adam Schiff, and Congresswoman Maxine Waters. Over 100 foster youth descended on Washington to learn and engage elected officials from both sides of the aisle.   Lastly, several YL stood before the L.A. County Board of Supervisors to share their concerns about the next Director of the Department of Children and Family Services.  They offered a list of qualifications and items for the Supervisors to consider before making the next hire.  This is youth engagement and leadership at its best.

OYC Career Pathways, convened by UNITE-LA: OYC stakeholders met in May to discuss how to make intentional connections between various efforts related to foster youth accessing subsidized and unsubsidized work experience. This group grew out of an annual campaign over the past three years to connect more foster youth with summer jobs and other year-round work experience opportunities and a desire to bridge foster youth from subsidized to private-sector employment. Stakeholders represented the L.A. Chamber, Alliance for Children’s Rights, iFoster, the TAY Collaborative, DCFS, L.A. City Economic & Workforce Development Department, and L.A. County Workforce Development Aging and Community Services Department. Partners reflected on different perspectives related to challenges in connecting foster youth with jobs and attempted to assess the impact and feasibility of current strategies aimed at foster youth employment. Moving forward, the group recommended integrating these efforts with the Los Angeles Performance Partnership Pilots (LA P3) convened by the City and County of Los Angeles.

OYC Foster Youth College Advancement Program (OYC FYCAP), convened by the John Burton Foundation and UNITE-LA: The Foster Youth College Advancement Project (FYCAP) last met on May 30th to discuss progress across several work streams. The group has been working with several California Community Colleges Foster Care and Kinship Education (FKCE) providers to develop a curriculum that will empower caregivers to assist foster youth with college planning and matriculation processes. FKCE providers would deliver this training across the region and L.A. County DCFS is considering mandating this training as part of the new annual training requirements that caregivers of teenagers will have to meet under statewide Continuum of Care Reform. In addition, FYCAP is working with DCFS regional offices and L.A. County Office of Education Foster Youth Services staff to coordinate college planning service delivery for foster youth in the Antelope Valley. This region has a high proportion of foster youth but less community-based resources, making a compelling case for creative coordination between child welfare, K-12 education, and higher education partners in the region. FYCAP is also working with the Office of LAUSD Board Member Monica Garcia and the LAUSD Foster Youth Achievement Program to amend LAUSD’s current data agreement with Cal-PASS Plus to enable the district to track foster youth achievement beyond high school graduation. Finally, the FYCAP Manager, Jessica Petrass, presented on these and other developments to the L.A. County Commission for Children and Families on June 5^th to seek support from the Commissioners and the Board of Supervisors in driving this work forward. The workgroup will convene the Court Scholars working group on June 19th and will reconvene in full on June 22nd. 

100K Opportunities Los Angeles Coalition (100K), convened by Leader’s Up: The core objective of the 100K LA Coalition is to develop a network of employers dedicated to advancing policy and systems change that connects Opportunity Youth & Transitioned Aged Youth to permanent employment career pathway opportunities.  Members of the Coalition include Leader’s Up, the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, Alliance for Children’s Rights, and iFoster.  The 100K LA Coalition is working to finalize goals across 3 working groups: Employer Engagement, Talent Development Partner Network, as well as Policy and Systems Change.

Los Angeles Performance Partnership Pilot (LA P3), convened by LA City EWDD and LA County WDACS: LA P3 continues to collect feedback from partners on its strategic plan. Regional working groups of cross-sector stakeholders continue to meet on a monthly basis to determine how to better coordinate wraparound services for disconnected youth at a local level. Check out the June calendar for regional meetings.

L.A. Compact Workgroup updates in PDF format