Council Member Joseph Questions Every Child and Family is Known Initiative

So thank you.

Thank you for the question.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And as a fellow social worker who ran a nonprofit, I totally just want to reiterate what Chair Stevens was saying about um how prevention is so key, it actually saves the city money in the long run.

So I think it's smart to actually invest in more save in more preventative services, and then also just wanted to reiterate that it really does impact um just the planning.

And I say this with like almost past trauma in my voice, but you know, there it affects the planning of organization, staffing, budgets, all of that.

So you know, we'll definitely be in continued conversation.

I know there's gonna be more questions about it, but just wanted to reiterate that point.

Um, and we have council member Joseph, followed by Council Member Epstein.

Thank you, both chairs, and I'd love to associate my your with your comments as well.

Welcome, Commissioner.

How are you?

The Every Child and Family is Known initiative, a collaborative between ACS and DOE, which received additional funding in the same budget to expand its work with students living in shelters and other families facing crisis relies on the new visions portal to track and respond to families' needs.

This school year, over 50,000 check-ins have been logged by carrying adults in the portable.

Please walk me through how does the city with how does the city plan on expanding every child and family is known initiative why simultaneously cutting the platform it this it depends on to do the work.

Can you share if these cuts are sustained?

How will it impact your work at ACS to support our youth who needs this initiative the most?

Thank you for the question and thank you for the welcome.

I'm gonna turn it over to Deputy Commissioner Mendez to be able to answer some of the specifics that you ask.

But just again, reiterating you know, our our role when we're working with children and families is to ensure that they have their needs met and that we're um finding ways to resource um their needs based on what they need and not just what we have, and um look forward to continuing to have conversations with you.

Absolutely.

Our numbers are tremendous in New York City Public School students in temporary housing.

It's over 155 students, 155,000 students.

So and you know I know that work.

Good morning.

Good morning, Councilmember Joseph.

So I'm happy to report ACS is working very closely with New York City Public Schools.

Um, the foster care office, as you know, we have a close collaboration with them and new visions to explore how to introduce the the access to that portal to foster care agencies.

So as you can imagine, there's a lot of things we have to do on the back end.

We have to formalize an MOU.

Then we have to look at, I'm not the computer person, but I think it's called the cloud service agreement.

So we're going through some of those like bureaucratic things to put in place, but we're also starting to talk to the foster care providers.

So we're thinking about doing this as a pilot first.

And we're talking to the foster care providers about like what should this look like?

What's what makes sense in all of those things while we're doing the MOU pieces.

And so we're hoping that that will continue to move forward so that in the next school year, this can move if is you know it will move forward.

So the timeline is for September this coming.

So you'll spend the summer training and transitioning this platform.

Is that what that's looking like?

Timeline, I think you know, part of the um, and I I can get back to you with actual specific milestones.

Like I mentioned, we have to create this MOU.

So sometimes there's um back and forth.

I think um Councilmember Lee talked about back and forth.

So there'll be some back and forth until you get it right.

Right, until we get it right.

The cloud service agreement.

Um, I know New York City Public Schools is uh currently using New Vision, so that should not be a problem for ACS.

They should pass all those cybersecurity tests, but I don't want to speak, I don't want to get ahead of myself.

I do know we're trying to launch in the next um school year.

So I'll continue to work.

We get around to, right, Chair Lee?

Yes.

Okay.

Welcome.

I have more questions.

And and I'll just commit that we can follow up um as it's evolving with you directly.

Okay, great.