Councilmember Epstein presses on parent engagement in Compass RFP decisions

Yeah.

And just on the other providers, the school-based providers, I want to follow up with Councilmember Maloney in some of these determinations.

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 and 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.

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 providing.

I appreciate that, but I'm not sure why after the fact you would take parents'consideration in.

Like, why not have that involved 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 already.

Ranked 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 get 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 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 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 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.

So I would love to figure that out.

And I appreciate your willingness to come talk to parents and to hear directly from them, but also hearing directly from the community about the jobs and the staffing and making sure people who are working for Manhattan Youth, maybe they can, you know.

either stay on with a new provider or whatever we can do to fix this problem, we really do need to fix it.

I just wanted to add something to that, to the principal engagement and to how extensively through this process the superintendents were involved and the principals were involved.

But where we are right now, having just announced these awards and finalizing the protest period, is precisely the time when families and young people and principals and superintendents can express

what it is that they love about their current provider, and how those programs and services could be implemented in the fall, what they haven't had that they'd like to see.

We love at DYCD, you won't get any arguments, when a school community loves their after school provider, that is like the best thing for us.

And we really appreciate the advocacy.

If that energy could be brought to

to help plan and coordinate with the new provider.

This is what our kids want.

We have a whole group who wants theater.

We can't live without soccer here.

Can you hire with that in mind?

Like this is the time for the school specific, student specific activities to be negotiated.

And that's what Daniel and the team are gonna be engaging with providers in now.

So I hope that the adults working with young people around this will take that opportunity to engage with the new providers to get things off to a good start in the fall.

I know my time is up, Chair, so I'll come back for a second round.

Thank you.

Perfect.

I will add you to the...