Dominique Jones says community-based organizations are key Portrait partners
Dominique Jones, Executive Director of Global Kids, says CBOs serving 30 schools can reinforce Portrait learning through global citizenship programming and evaluation expertise. She suggests joint hearings with the youth committee and DYCD to leverage resources.
Same as the last panel, we'll start on my right, your left, and go down.
Thank you, Chair Dinowitz, for the opportunity to speak and to really talk about this important topic.
I'm going to turn in my written testimony, but just to kind of focus on a few points.
One of the things that I think we are kind of missing in this conversation around Portrait of a Graduate is the ecosystem around schools that can actually help to support them.
I represent Global Kids.
I'm the executive director, and we serve 30 schools, one as a community school provider as well as after-school provider.
We are going to be central in this conversation about the implementation of Portrait.
We actually are organizations that can actually enhance and also deliver on certain programming, such as our global citizenship programming, which, you know, Global Kids has been working through for 38 years and providing those leadership services
to our schools.
And so I think it's important that we start to have the, you know, it's great that we're talking about the pedagogy.
approach, the instruction, you know, shifting assessment to portfolio assessment, but there has to be supporting organizations that are supporting services that can help to reinforce, enhance that learning.
And I think that organizations like mine and other CBOs will be instrumental to that.
I think also we also provide some expertise resources that can help around evaluation.
And I know that's something that you talked about all day.
I've had the opportunity to listen to you speak to those things.
We have some of the infrastructure to support that.
We also are thinking about how do we measure the impact of interventions on the whole child.
And so I think that that's important.
We should talk about it.
One thing I think is also we need to be having joint hearings with the youth committee, bringing DYCD and DOE together so that they can begin to think about how we can partner and leverage those resources.
You know, we as a community school provider are there every day working with kids, families, and we really want to be able to make sure that portrait is a success.
Thank you.
Thank you.