Council Member Bottcher Questions High-Need Student Outcomes and New Visions Portal

Thank you chairs I would also like to add my voice with that of my colleagues Maloney and Epstein regarding Manhattan youth I've received an overwhelming correspondence to my office over 400 parents and students and teachers concerned about that about the change and you know they received positive audits and built decades long relationships with the school communities and parent communities are going to look to incorporate the same staff or programs that existed so my question is if we're looking to keep what was built by Manhattan youth why switch providers because procurement processes allow for competition which is necessary for the ecosystem of New York City and so while again I want to just say that I appreciate the advocacy and my heart goes out to the children youth and families of those communities I also want to say that I have I have uh confidence that the new provider will be able to meet the needs of the communities as well.

The CEC uh two in my district also gave put out a resolution asking for them to be reinstated.

And you know, given that response from the parents and and the school board, would would there be any consideration to reinstating uh Manhattan Youth?

So, what I would say is that the school procurement process was different than the center-based uh process because the school procurement process allowed for continuity of the slots, the number of seats in a building.

And so what is being asked of us is essentially would we give the contract to another provider that won it through the competition?

Um, unless we found something egregious in the RFP process.

And believe me, I am reading a lot of these close calls to make sure.

Um, but uh but it's really the continuity of the provide of the slots and not the provider.

I I also I want to ask about the CBO selection.

So I want to acknowledge that you know Hudson Guild is here with us today, which is a piv a crucial provider in Council District 3 centered in Chelsea, right next to two very important uh NYCHA developments and families that they serve.

So, you know, they were a reciprocal of one of these uh the cuts, and I I'm just this leaves a huge gap in in my in the district for after school programming with the provider on the like northern edge.

You know, that's really that's not really gonna work for for parents and and community and and for the families, especially those in the night in NYCHA that really rely on this.

So how are we gonna deal with that gap?

And how is um Hudson Guild going to make sure that they have the continued resources they need to serve uh Manhattan and my council district?

Yeah, I would say that we're in the process of thinking about continuity of services and stability of the ecosystem uh for center-based uh awards, and we are hopeful, as I mentioned earlier, to uh uh to share where we land after June 6th.

Can I ask one more question?

Okay.

Uh the DY uh DYCD funds uh programs explicitly designed to improve educational outcomes for high need students.

Um what are the challenges DYCD faces in understanding whether those programs are reaching the students who need them the most and whether they're working and uh how can the uh the new visions portal potentially help address those changes?

Yeah.

I want to understand more which programs you're talking about at GYCD.

Are you talking about?

I mean, on the on the one hand, all of our programs are designed to help young people to reach their goals and to thrive.

Um I'm not sure which particular program you're talking about.

So let me know.

But I can answer a portion of that, and I think Valerie, if you can chime in as well.

I think one of the things that New Visions offers, the portal is access to data that community-based organizations would ordinarily not have to assess impact.

Right now, currently, all of our contracts are designed to um check enrollment and participation, but with the support of uh New Visions for Public Schools portals, we're able to look at um how the that correlates to academic gains.

Yeah, so um I oversee our workforce program, so primarily young people between the ages of 14 and 24.

Um, and we have been in really amazing conversations with the New Visions team about way we can leverage their tool because we are always looking at ways to demonstrate like the specific impacts, especially of the Summer Youth Employment Program and Work Learn Grow, which I talked about a little earlier.

And so we've been looking at things, we already do this, but we've been looking at expanding like uh for a school.

Can they see a young person's participation in summer youth employment programs so that they can take that into consideration as they're developing what a high school experience is going to look like for that young person?

And then in return, can we look at how that young person did throughout the program now that we have that data in that portal and can see comprehensively how their experience was in a public school?

And so I'm really proud over the last many years we've been building that partnership with public schools, um, and we're now in conversation with New Visions about how we can leverage their tool.

And I just want to add that that's super critical in terms of allowing providers to use data to inform their practice, and so we are hopeful to continue to be working with them and expand our work with New Visions in the coming years.

Thank you.

Great Councilmember Rings.