Council Member Epstein Questions Parent Engagement in COMPASS RFP

Yeah, and just just on the other providers, the school-based providers, uh, I want to follow up with uh Councilmember Maloney.

In some of these determinations, yeah, how much did family input play into this factor?

How much did principal input play in?

How much did services like someone has a sports program, someone doesn't have a sports program?

Like all those factors, cost, how are these all factored in?

Because you know, from the families we're hearing in hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of families, you know, they were very happy with the provider.

And I understand that you went through a process and I respect that, but it feels like they're not feeling like their input has been heard.

Yeah.

Dana, would you like to so as part of the procurement process, the principals did have an opportunity to weigh in through their ranking?

Um, and when we made those selections, we did take other factors into consideration.

The parents at the time of the RFP, that was not taken into consideration.

However, that will be done as part of the school partnership agreement process when we're bringing the new providers in.

That's when the opportunity for the parents to speak about what programming they want to ensure that the new provider is um providing.

I appreciate that, but I don't I'm not sure why after the fact you would take parents' consideration in, like why not have that involved in in the application process and parent engagement and are they happy?

I appreciate the principals and the three schools that lost Manhattan Youth in my district, all rate rated rank them as number one.

So they've already said they want them to continue.

The parents said they want them to continue, but not really listening to the parents.

The second question I'll ask because I know I'm almost out of time, is you committed to coming out to the school to talk to parents, or your team will be?

We'd like to be able to sketch that set up before the end of the school year.

I want to make a commitment now to make sure that happens in the next couple of weeks.

I'm committed to speak to whoever wants to speak to me about this process.

Yeah, just on the Yeah, I also just want to add in terms of parent engagement.

We also, prior to the RFP being released, as part of our stakeholder engagement, we did engage families to build that new compass model that we made it into the RFP.

So parents were engaged before, but during the actual RFP process, it was really between the school principals and DYCD.

And I'll just say I think that's a mistake, honestly.

I think parents are the recipients of these services, and they're the ones to best judge beyond the paper what happens day to day in those schools.

And I think taking their consideration out of the mix as a as an instrumental part of what we're doing, I think unfortunately was a mistake, and I think it'll have some consequences in our district, and we're hearing directly from it.