Chair Stevens questions DYCD on supporting providers who lost Compass awards
Stevens asks how DYCD is responding to providers who lost contracts. Commissioner Escamilla-Davies acknowledges the financial and operational impacts, details briefings being conducted, extended protest period, and transition planning efforts.
I know there's going to be a lot more questions on that, so I will leave it to my colleagues.
Chair Stevens?
I will jump right into it, and I know we are kind of pressed for time, so I just ask that the answers be succinct, because we want to make sure we get to as many people.
So I'll stay with the Compass theme and just kind of just thinking about just the impact of organizations, and as we know, these decisions aren't being made easily for you guys, but just thinking about...
Because of this RFP, we know that some of these organizations that didn't get contracts, this is actually going to be a huge impact on their agencies.
And so I wanted to know how is the agencies responding?
How are you guys responding to the providers?
What supports have you been giving them?
What has this transition been looking like?
Especially for those we know that it's going to have big impacts where they didn't get any awards.
So we're in the protest phase for the school base, so I'm going to speak more generally.
First, I want to say that the non-awardies, I want to acknowledge that they have financial and operational impacts that are going to force them to make really difficult decisions, and we don't take that lightly.
And as I mentioned before, and this was a procurement process that followed all of the guidelines of procurement law, and yet we are going to try to stand in the gap for these providers.
We're conducting briefings for them.
We've extended, based on their feedback, the protest period so that everybody can get a briefing before the date, before they send a protest letter.
But also we are trying to figure out about having conversations about what this is going to look like and if there are other things that we could do to support them.
And then really leaning into the transition periods and figuring out what does transition look like from summer to September?
How do we help transition providers in ways that hold their dignity intact while entering new providers and making the way for good providers to also stand in that gap and support children, youth, and families?
Thank you.