Yeah, Eric. We let the public.
We have corn can we let the public in?
Your public speakers, you're gonna do role calls for public
speakers. So
All right. Good afternoon. The subcommittee on youth
employment will now come to order.
Today we have 1 item on the agenda subject matter hearing
on the city-wide strategy for youth employment. I will now
conduct a roll call to establish quorum.
Alderman Robinson
alderman, yansi
Alderman Chico
Alderman Ramirez
alderwoman Gutierrez
alderwoman
Alderman Curtis
Vice chair Rodriguez
Alderman Byron Lopez
chairperson Fuentes is here all the woman Crews.
Alderman Rodriguez Sanchez
all the woman mitts
all the women clay
Alderman Martin
non-committee members present all the women Janette Taylor
Alderman Marty Quinn
We have 8 members present. We have a quorum.
That miss any other non-committee members.
All right, all there's Robinson jansy and Rodriguez Sanchez
have requested to attend the meeting by remote means on the
rule 59 due to unrelated emergencies all those in favor of
Permitting all this Robinson. Jansy and Rodriguez Sanchez
to attend remotely today. Please respond by saying I
Any opposed and the opinion of the chair of the eyes have
it? All does Robinson Yancey and Rodriguez Sanchez are
allowed to attend this meeting by remote means and will be
added to the road call.
At this time, we will begin the meeting with public
comment. The public comment period is 30 minutes out of
respect for everybody's time. Each speaker will be limited
to those 3 minutes. We will start with Mr. George,
Blakemore.
My name is George Blakemore and as a concerned sales. I'm
appalled at well how you're treating the citizens had us
down here waiting, uh for this meeting to start weighting
30 minutes.
Well, you must be on in people time black folks time. I'm
sure white folks always on time. Anyway work force
development.
You have money to give the illegal immigrants.
Millions and millions of dollars and you have high
employment in the black community with our youth high crime
whole school.
It is something wrong here.
And what's wrong here is no black leader.
not any black leadership Black Faces in high places
you have money for illegals people that don't even uh US
citizen.
And and the workplace. Yeah, it still holds true with black
youth. We are the last 1 high and the first 1 5.
And because of old black leadership no leadership. We owe
people said bad examples for young our young people.
You shouldn't have to come down here and beg for summer
jobs and and good schools and work force development.
You do that.
But you know, what's wrong?
poor black leadership
now you with my black, uh students and young people I'm
talking to.
You know America treat you different from they treat their
white.
and they hit Spanish and they a
you don't know that by now.
You you can't tell that by now.
Your schools are not first class school like on the north
side.
Your community your part.
So this is why it's very important to have a personal like
Mr. Blakemore to speak.
But Injustice, they they treat our they don't like the
adults and they don't like the children.
So it's something wrong here and but what's wrong here. You
have poor black leadership on the plantation.
This is plantation politics.
And you see that red hat I'm going for Trump. Trump is a
racist bad news too. This whole country is racist.
So I'm leaving 1 Plantation going to another on my way the
freedom land.
They all Democrats turn this red young people and tell your
friends to turn. Thank you, Mr. Blakemore for participating
today in our public. Comment up. Next is Jack. Whis?
I'm not the 1 to pay with okay, I'm gonna speak. Well you
shut up you shut up. Uh, I'm Jack West the executive
director of the alternative schools Network. We have a lot
of students who want to testify the importance of summer
jobs, uh schools from around the uh City. Uh, we're going
to release a report from the University of Illinois next
Monday great cities Institute, 85% of all young black teens
in the city are jobless.
40% of young black teens, 20 to 24. The good news is we're
working on a campaign. I think you have some of this
information here at the State. Uh, and the other good news
is the uh, University of Chicago looked at 1700 students
who had a 7-week summer job and over 17 months their
violence.
Was cut in half nearly by 50% 43% So getting 80 90,000
students off the streets. This summer will be important
give them a chance to move forward make the community safer
and build a Workforce for the city. I'll uh accede to the
next the student who could speak next. Thanks again.
Thank you Jack.
Up. Next is Jason Santiago.
Um
1 thing about youth employment. Uh, it really is really
it's really good for the Youth. It doesn't only help us
stay off the streets and gives us something to do after
school. It also teaches us responsibility and the benefits
been it's beneficial to us and personal ways and also gives
us
um
response a gives us
Like let me rephrase that it also helps us with life and
with future stuff it gives us, um ski communication skills
at jobs. It also helps us focus on school and working so it
doesn't make it harder for us to do school and work and
stress ourselves out more than we already do as young
people.
And um, yeah ever since the youth appointment. I joined the
youth employment. I feel like life's been way better for
me. It's been it went from down to up. So yeah, that's
that's really what I got to say about you.
Yeah.
Thank you young man.
Up. Next is Kofi ademola.
Good afternoon, steamed city council and others. Uh, my
name is Kofi ademola. I'm an adult Mentor with the young
people who call good kids Mad City who've been doing
violence prevention work, uh since 2018.
Um, I've said this before but I just want to reiterate the
fact that when a young person may cause harm, uh,
especially if they're young 11 12 13
and the criminal legal system. We identify them we have
laws on the books that say that they can be tried as an
adult.
But on the other hand, uh, if a young person wants to work,
uh, they have to go through a lot of red tapes and Hoops to
even find employment and then once they find employment
they're not compensated a fair wage. So we just finished
celebrating Mayday workers rights to labor Movement. We
need to make sure the young people have good health
insurance that they have adequate Fair pay. We know a lot
of young people, uh, take care of their siblings. They take
on a lot of responsibilities, you know, a lot of people
want to talk about parents and the neglect happening in the
home, but on the other end of that is young people stepping
up to take on a lot of those roles and responsibility. They
have to go to school get their education they have to take
Take care of their siblings and they have to help bring an
income into the house. So before we criminalize young
people and are so quick to throw them under the book. Let's
let's try to opposite of that. Right? Let's give them the
opportunities. Let's give them employment. Well, let's also
give them Mental Health Care. Let's give them the social
skills. They need let's give them the opportunity to learn
how to become peacekeepers. Uh, so thank you to dfss. Thank
you to 1 so much Chicago, uh for allowing us to Pilot.
Giving 100 young people the opportunity to become
peacekeepers. We've learned that over close to 900 people,
uh have applied for those jobs and want to become
peacekeepers and it's unfortunate that at this time that we
can't fulfill those roles, right but moving forward. We
want to get full-time employment. We want to give as many
young people as possible that opportunity to be
peacekeepers in that neighborhoods and and be a part of a
community if we hold them accountable on 1 end. Let's give
them the tools and resources so they can hold each other
accountable. Thank you.
Thank you up. Next is Reese Johnson?
Um, good afternoon. Um Reese Johnson, I'm from the west side
of Chicago, North Florida area.
uh, I grew up with different opportunities that allowed me
to uh, be where I am today and be successful and
go all the places like basketball and just being in the
community where uplifting me, um gave me different
opportunities.
Um, I believe that I'm working with gkmc good kids Mass
cities, uh offering
the same thing opportunities to be with a uh, kids like
myself and growing up in different communities that uh,
succeed in life and do other things instead of violence and
um offer more jobs and more opportunities to get paid and
um, learn different things that can get you different
places like, uh, I believe it's bigger than where we from
and our communities are just a place where we start and
that's all the places that we go and we can always keep our
communities uplifted and I think that we all have different
opportunities that can uplift each other and I think that's
what we need to do.
Thank you up next is James Robinson?
Good morning. Good morning.
Uh, my name is James Robertson. I'm 20 years old and a youth
youth organizer good kids Man City. I've been with good
kids Man City since I was 14 and this gave me an
opportunity to stay away from The Gangs. I have some
positive to do.
I'm from the Washington Park neighborhood where resources
are low and needed that's why the Peace book, uh, the 1
summer Chicago are important because they give you jobs and
resource they need to stay out the streets.
Thank you young man. Jose Velasquez is up next.
Good afternoon.
Youth employment helped me a lot with um new opportunities
for me that I move from a different state. They gave me
opportunities to know how to be in job places and
understand the
opportunities that the programs could give me in in life in
the school.
Thank you. Young sir up. Next is lania.
Sorry, if I get the last name wrong cables kapelos.
Hi, my name's laniah from compost.
and I'm here to talk about alternative school networks and
how they prepare for future jobs opportunities and it also
helps us focus on having like a part-time job outside of
school. And when we finish school, it gives us new skills
and multitasking skills.
Um, the alternative school networks give students like us.
Confidence and work environments and future job interviews,
too.
So yeah.
Thank you.
Up. Next is Jayla Jones.
Hello. I am Jayla Jones a student at Chatham Academy.
and
these jobs are important because
College
we have to be in college.
we got to
I don't even know where to start with this like.
the fact that we even fight for this is outrageous, but
We struggling.
like serious
like
we want to go to college. We we are the future of this
country our Mass are strong.
We have a stand here. We take care of y'all when y'all need
it for real.
I feel like this this program is more than just oh giving
up some money from your pocket.
It's helping your country. It's seeing the the beauty of
your youth.
We are the future of of this country and for us to fight
for something that we was born here. We was born to take
over the things that y'all started.
And so much love in the youth if we can teach it.
It's so much better things to come about than.
Gang violence. We not gang members. We not whatever these
people pending us out to be. No. We are smart strong
individuals. We are people who have a voice we are people
who deserve to be heard. We are people who need a fair
chance everybody deserves a fair chance.
That's my piece.
And that was beautiful. Thank you.
Kayla Gary
Kayla
good afternoon. Um, my name is Kayla c. Um, I am a part of
the alternative school networks, and once summer Chicago
working for me was really life-changing. I've been um
working doing summer jobs since my freshman year of high
school where I not only worked but I found
Mentor, um tying hustling. That's 1 person that helped me
throughout my entire journey. I tell her that I wanted to
own a daycare and she placed me at a daycare. She placed me
working at a daycare and that was so amazing for me. Um,
and I really feel like throughout College.
That I was able to help my my mother. She's a single mother
I was able to help her. I was able to thrive through
college graduating ballad Victorian of my class and make it
in on to go on to um college and go to uvi. I'm currently a
sophomore and I was lucky enough to still continue to have
my summer job working online while being in school still
having to pay for um my tuition this even though like I
still had a scholarship outside of scholarships. I still
have personal needs personal things that I still needed
that I still needed help with and this summer job helped me
with that and it just helped me become a better person and
all that's it. Thank you.
Romani gun
Hi, good afternoon. My name is Romani gun. I am 19 years
old and I come from the Bronzeville area. The Peace book is
important because it's a lot of young kids outside in the
streets doing bad things and we're trying to get them off
the streets what gkim G wait. Well, hold on gkmc good kids,
Mad City.
they're trying to do is take all the bad kids off the
streets from doing bad things carjacking selling drugs
everything like that. And we're trying to take them off the
streets to make them a better person and change their life
around to get them to doing jobs and things like that. I
have a also I have a 16 year old brother and he's like to
stay in the house. He just played a game don't go outside.
And what I'm trying to do is to help other kids do the same
thing to stay in the house and just to be safe and not do
bad things. That's it.
Thank you Romani.
Taiwan Sims
Um, once again, thank y'all.
Oh y'all can see that?
Y'all got the picture y'all getting the picture. I don't
know who all you all in the box is but this is our future
she said it best. She said she they're they're going to
take over the responsibilities that you all have set forth.
city council people
professionals
But how can they when they not giving opportunity?
How can they when they are being stepped down on?
How can they when they not being considered by the people
who should be considering the most?
Ah, man.
Ah, Lord.
It's hard it hurt. Yeah, she crying for a reason.
Because it's unbelievable.
It's unbelievable because 1 child back there the 19 year
old said I'm just trying to keep the kids off the street.
So they won't carjacked and sell drugs and all these things
things. We should have been got passed.
Because there'll be some of y'all programs have been
implemented for years.
however, if they're not truly implemented
if it's just something that you all put out there and
So these kids need an opportunity?
To be professionals to be counseled people so that they
might learn their voices the voices that they do have.
Other than for Folly, let's say that because I'm not going
to demonize a criminalize our criminalized and demonize
y'all first because y'all y'all the blame.
Looked out no, don't look at me. Look at them.
Look at them, but listen to me try to but hit them first,
not me because this day moment.
while everybody got their Antics and they want to have
their little whatever it is allegiances and everybody is
disenfranchised put all. Oh man, y'all y'all gotta work.
Y'all gotta work ahead of y'all.
I promise y'all these people don't want y'all here. They
don't want y'all to have nothing. So it's up to y'all.
No more talking to them. It's up to y'all. This is the
reason that I come in this room.
Y'all the reason good kids man look y'all the reason.
So they all might have opportunity so they all might learn
y'all voices, so they all might see y'all yourself in a
different place in a different light other than what the
news these comments to me. Thank you.
These the media show them as criminals thugs gang. I don't
y'all the criminals Thugs and gangsters because y'all push
the pins that write them off.
And enough is enough. So look out there.
Hit them, even though they voices might be short and but
still it's full of life.
This is the future the forfeited 1 that y'all want to write
off Mr.
Since they at the table, they the snack this this this who
you biting down on.
since they the snack
thank you, Mr. Taiwan up next to Shannon Anderson.
Hello everybody. Uh, my name is Shannon Anderson. I'm the
Illinois Youth Employment Program director for the
alternative schools Network. I implement this Employment
Program across 8 alternative schools in the city at those
schools. I am known as the job lady. Um some of the results
that we have through our program. Although it's not a city
funded program. It is a state funded program 70% of our
youth um, go on to go to college or to full-time
employment. Um, and as I spend time with these schools with
these students directly we see hope we see effort. Um, and
while they are in these buildings they are being better
than what you normally see on TV or in the news as these
people have so eloquently stated eloquently stated. Um, and
so I am here just to employ you 1 to let you know that
these programs do work. It does feedback into our
community. It does feed back into the youth and then they
turn into people like us who can then make the rules and
and make change
So I implore you that if there is anything that you can do
for youth employment that you get those things done.
Thank you.
Thank you up next I have Raven Taylor.
Hello, good afternoon. My name is Raven Taylor. I attend to
Progressive Leadership Academy.
Um, the employment of Youth is important to me because I
lost my mom at 15. Um, and normally a lot of people mom and
dads do everything for them. Um not having your mom is hard
having to buy your own stuff and everything. It's it's not
easy. Um, especially when you already don't have the access
and resources you don't um need. Um, also I currently
working at the McCormick Place through ASN as a unarmed
security guard. So, um, it's not only does it help us it it
shows us and gives us more opportunities than just jobs and
stuff. It opens our minds to way more things and stuff. Um,
and I want to thank y'all for letting me have this
opportunity to speak about this and that's that's all thank
you guys so much. Thank you for being here with us today
up. Next is Sonica Jarrett.
Hey everybody. I'm kind of nervous right now. But uh
I really wanted to say uh, I'm a student from Progressive
Leadership Academy. My name is senica Jared and uh
I wanted to break down to the point of uh, having job
opportunities. Um, they'll uh, it really can take
a lot on the student, you know what I mean, uh growing up
as a student, uh, without a father, you know, I still talk
to him, you know, he's still my dad but
Uh, I'm around my mother more. So it's like when I go to
school every day and wake up being the only youngest child
in the family, you know what I mean? And 1 thing about me
is I like to draw that's my favorite thing, uh, Progressive
Leadership Academy gave me that opportunity.
That uh, making me participate in it and I want a thousand
dollars and it's like it was such a blessing because it's
like I came so far and not so short because it's like
everything that goes on in the world around the life.
Sometimes people look at your identity. See like you a gang
banger, but I'm not I'm just a student just because my
parents I'm just a student. I try to get my education
learn, you know be better.
And that's 1 Thing. My grandma always told me my grandma
used to always tell me to be her eyes and ears and I always
used to do that anything that used to happen. I used to
always talk to us. See what she's seeing visualizing and
it's like to the point where yeah, I'm here right now. I'm
in an alternative school, but I'm not ashamed of that
because all I want to do is get my education.
Make my Mama Proud. That's right. That's all so, um, I like
to thank my teachers and staff. I like to thank y'all for
listening to my voice because you know, I used to always be
a silent kid, and it finally gave me the opportunity to
just speak up and I want to thank everybody for that. Thank
you.
Well, we're happy you're here with us today.
Up. Next is Shia Denson.
Um, hey, how y'all doing? My name is Shan Denia. I'm a part
of Innovations. Um
And I'm also a part of the 1 summer, Chicago.
uh, it gave me the opportunity to just become this
independent person that I am today and
that opportunity for others can change it can change their
life completely. Thank you.
Thank you for being here with us today up. Next is Michael
Young Bae followed by sa Rodriguez and that will culminate
our public comment today.
I was the second 1 to sign up.
But I'm glad thank you. Thank you. Thank
them testimonies was very humbling.
you know because we were faced with the Riff Raff coming in
again, so it got me time to sit down and reflect on things
because I actually was gonna go somewhere else with it.
Now I heard a couple of the students mention the Peace
book.
I was down here when the children was in front of the
mayor.
talking about the Peace book
So it seemed like that book ain't been open yet.
Because these students ain't giving the opportunity.
And this just a small fraction of the students of the
children that's out there in society.
Y'all not giving these children the opportunity.
And for them, they don't even know and a lot of the adults
don't know what the opportunity look like here. What
opportunity look like?
Just like y'all open up factories and redo them for the
migrants for shelters redo them factories and things like
that where they can make their own manufacturing their own
t-shirts.
When you they can give jobs y'all can get these jobs and
tell and and put out a call on the media. That's not here
why they not here for these children that show the light of
what these children is suffering from Etc.
Why they not here why that mayor leave out today why he not
sitting up there? He should be listening to the cries of
our children.
And that's not happening.
You see y'all can create jobs for these children for these
youth.
easily
you can create other things.
You can create other things.
Look what y'all create for the migrants you can walk around
the city. You see all the migrants with with Mars candy.
Mars making big bucks, but these children ain't even
allowed to invest in stock in it.
They keep it till they says.
To me it seemed like I ain't going to say it seemed like
because that's what y'all shown us. So we can't say what
it's saying. We got to call it what it is.
Y'all against this you
y'all ain't got no future plans for these youth.
Y'all coming up here trying to get money run your own
programs your own hidden agendas Etc. And you for these
youth you won't even be in here. Matter of fact, you'll be
out there pushing front line for these children.
You know where your where your Sue that on the front line?
Marching for these children piece for these children
economic development for these children
uplifting for Humanity for these children
I hear your cry sister.
I hear your cry. Trust me. We down here fighting for you.
The 3 adults that spoke we down here fight. Thank you for
being with us. Today s Rodriguez is our last speaker today.
so, um from Little Village I go to Innovations high school
and I think you for me really important because where I'm
from I got a lot of friends and family that really
done many legal activities just like make money.
And I know so many of my friends that I used to go to
school with before I went to alternative school that
announced any drugs and doing all kinds of things or any
kind of money and I feel like once someone in Chicago
really helped me out with that and not really like fall
down to that path.
And so like what's like that I got to like weigh every
summer just to get a job a guaranteed job just to earn some
money and also help help myself out and my family.
So I just wish y'all was just really do your part and be
better at giving you um jobs.
For them. Thank you.
Thank You Salon
I think this has been my favorite form of public comment a
bunch of young people.
There being no more speakers. Uh, the time for public
comment has expired. I do want to acknowledge that all the
women and men uh has requested to attend meeting by remote
means and the rule 59 due to an unrelated emergency.
those all in favor of allowing all the woman mitts to
participate by virtual mean signify by saying I
Any opposed say nay?
In the opinion of the chair of the eyes have it all the
women and the mitts will now join us virtually. I want to
acknowledge. We have received several written
Communications sent to the committee. Every Committee
Member should have copies of the written comments. We have
received in your packet today, including 2 additional
comments received over the weekend before the subcommittee.
Today is the subject matter hearing on the city-wide
strategy for youth employment.
today, we have several experts across several different
departments and agencies that you will hear from you will
hear from Deputy Mayor Jen Johnson of Education Youth and
Human Services to make a Jones program director of that
same Department first Deputy Kahari Humphries.
Ishan Spencer director of Youth Employment of the Department
of Family Support Services Melissa Meister strategy chief
of strategy and Tony Diaz chief of program office of
Afterschool matters Megan hoeger chief of schools at
Chicago Public Schools, Daphne Johnson Chief program
officer and Rebecca Bratman senior program manager of the
Chicago Park District, Deputy Mayor, Gary and Gatewood and
project manager Alex Goodwin of the mayor's office of
community safety. Also in the box today with us is Julie
Kowski director of Team services at the Chicago Public
Library ebony Campbell senior director of resident services
at the Chicago Housing Authority and Miriam Martinez
manager of Youth opportunities at the Chicago Housing
Authority. First to kick us off will be Deputy Mayor Jen
Johnson. I understand that all agencies and departments
have an agenda. We will proceed with each presentation. Uh,
can you be sure to introduce yourself your title and the
department or agency that you are associated?
With for the record Deputy Mayor John Johnson. Thank you so
much chair for Fuentes. Really appreciate you Vice chair
Alders in attendance, and I want to just especially thank
the public comment especially from our youth today. That is
why we are here, um for those young people and as a former
High School history teacher, I've seen it firsthand the
need and I've also seen just the amazing qualities that our
young people possess now, they are leaders now,
So we're excited to talk to you. Um today you're going to be
provided with an overview of Mayor Johnson's overall
strategy to double youth employment how this work is
related to our overall youth strategy and to hear about our
specific plans for this Summer's iteration of 1 summer
Chicago from dfss ASM CPS and parks. And as as was a
reference we have other folks available as well and you'll
also hear how the mayor's office or Community safety
connects to this work through safety plans. We're really
proud of the work that we're doing and we know the need is
great. We know that this is going to take time and effort
and advocacy but young people and investing them is worth
the time effort energy and dollars. Um, and we know that it
will pay dividends now and long into the future.
Uh next slide, please. So, um our overall youth employment
strategy, um is been in development this past year through
my education Youth and Human Services team and our goal is
to build a spectrum of opportunity for Chicagoans ages 14
through 24. We want to build a strong Continuum of paid
opportunities that provide meaningful experiences and
Pathways to good jobs. And as you've heard many many times,
the mayor's goal is to double the youth employment
opportunities and we're basing using that the summer
numbers as our Baseline. So our goal is to try to get to
40,000 in the first term and we know the need is greater
than that. This work will need to continue. Our youth
employment strategy is multifaceted. It's going to require
uh Citywide participation and we want to build a
collaborative.
Ecosystem across all levels of city government bring in the
private sector and local businesses to connect them to to
connect young people to Career exploration opportunities
Workforce Development programs and effective career
Pathways that are going to enhance their ability to get
good jobs to secure Financial Independence to grow
personally and to be excited and ignited in ambitious in
fulfilling their Futures. And so we Define youth employment
as a broad range of compensated opportunities, whether that
be hourly or through stipend depending on the age and the
role and the job, but it's aimed at offering young people
exposure to Career awareness exploration preparation and
development experiences. Our youth director. Tama Jones has
been working incredibly hard on this opportunity and I'm
very excited for her to present some of the details of that
strategy coming up momentarily.
Slide. So this is just a graphic representation of how
we're thinking about some of the major, um departments
and strategies that I just referenced. We see the youth
employment initiative and Continuum are at the center. Um,
we're going to have a brief summary of what these different
departments, um agencies and strategies are and it's really
not even the complete Universe right? But these are some of
the priority departments agencies and strategies that we're
going to use to get to that doubling next slide, please
So 1 we actually have students as trainees positions in our
city budgets. This is something that has um existed in the
past but is not always been utilized, um to allow young
people to have positions within city government. So you'll
see on the slide the strategies that our team is going to
work collaboratively to engage to enact these strategies.
So we're actually already in the process of developing, um,
a city-wide students as trainees strategy. We meet with the
Department of Human Resources and with City departments in
order to create a broad city-wide program rather than
having this be just something that departments do
independently or fail to do really because they have the
positions, but they don't fill them and so we've asked all
of our 30 plus departments to invest in this program and to
actually use their positions and thanks to uh, Mayor
Johnson and city council the budget for the students as
trainees. Um line has been doubled this year. So again,
we're working in partnership with DHR to centralize
That work to ensure that those positions are filled and to
create um wraparound supports so that the Departments can
really continue to grow in their ability to host young
people.
We can't engage the strategy also without our sister
agencies. So while we don't, you know, direct every part of
their work, we have directed and and ask them to step up
and step up to the plate and we're working with them to
understand the current landscape of what they offer and how
we can um, encourage them and also support them with
resources to expand the youth opportunities that they
provide. So for example, we were able to use some limited
1-time arpa dollars to expand youth employment at city
colleges CPS and the parks this past year. Some of those
dollars will continue to be spent this summer. Um, and
we're going to look forward to providing sustainable
Pathways and other funding sources to help them continue to
grow in their programs for youth employment.
The program that people shouted out already is 1 summer.
We're glad that we're not having to build um with no
infrastructure. There is an infrastructure of 1 summer of
Chicago, um and through the department of family support
services. We're thinking about ways to strategically grow
that program but also really reach the young people that
spoke today who are the most vulnerable in our youth of
highest promise. We know that some young people have a lot
of access to opportunity and we want to make sure that the
young people who sometimes don't get those opportunities
are able to connect um with 1 summer. Um last year we were
able to expand the program, uh through various Levels by
20% And our goal is to do that. Again this summer 2024. So
that is connected to our department of family support
services. Um, Mayor Johnson and city council did provide
Them additional, um dollars in order to expand also their
year-round program. So I want people to know that um, there
is now and there has been just for a few years year round
summer youth employment opportunities that Tamika will talk
about later. So we have a great infrastructure for summer
that we're going to build upon and we want to expand and
grow and think about how our year-round opportunities do
the same.
Um, we know that we can't do this just as City departments
agencies Community organizations and delegate agencies
through 1 summer. We have to have the support of corporate
partners and businesses. And so our team has been um
working with the Ben team as well as World business Chicago
to strategize how we get more corporate partnership through
dfss, but also on their own, how can they host young people
themselves and use the resources that they have. Um, we
don't always have to go through the city, right? We need
our folks to really step up and say I want to do youth
employment and we're seeing that payoff. We have a number
of corporate Champions who have really stepped up to the
plate. Um, and our team has done that by releasing a survey
that went over to 75 businesses in order to get interest.
We hosted a kickoff in february where we had a hundred
companies engaged in order to join the strategy and we
recently held um with World business Chicago a youth
employment Roundtable to hear from some of these employers
and really get them further connected and invested in the
work and so we're
Decided that with WBC will be piloting programs to build out
that business side continuum.
And with that I will pass it over to Tamika Jones. Um
member of the Ed yhs team and our program, uh director on
youth employment.
Thank you.
All right, uh afternoon everybody. Um, thank you so much
Deputy Mayor Johnson. Um,
like, uh, Deputy Mayor Johnson said, my name is Tamika
Jones. Um,
so I'll be providing you some additional details about the
youth employment, um Continuum and a couple of other
things. So um, oh it's already on the next slide great. All
right, so we are thinking about youth employment, um in 4
buckets of this Continuum. Um, we created this
Um to address the diverse needs and acknowledge the
importance of supporting young people in their transition
to Workforce and maximizing the maximizing their
opportunities for Success. So we know that young people
need different things at different stages in life. So the
different buckets that we're looking at are career
awareness, um, career exploration career prepare
preparation and career development and experience. Um,
I'll just go through quickly. What each of those kind of
looks like. So career awareness will focus on introducing
career options the connection between Education and
Training, um that career is required and for young people
to understand what their interests are their skills are and
relation to those different careers. Um, so some examples
that we're looking to engage. Um, like Deputy Mayor Johnson
said looking to engage business.
businesses, um in to offer along with um, some of our sister
agencies and things like that are um workplace tours having
guest speakers at schools, um, hosting Career Fairs having
young people attend those kind of things to learn more
about what careers are out there. Um career exploration
will allow young people to dive deeper into a specific
career path to motivate and inform initial career planning,
um choices through experiences, like informational
interviews job shadowing and internships career preparation
focuses on providing young people with opportunities to
acquire necessary knowledge skills and resources to enter
their chosen career Fields, um, again, opportunities could
look like early jobs like after school or during the
summer. Um, and then also learning skills, like resume
writing interviewing things like that. And then lastly
lastly Career Development, um would include internships
apprenticeships and externships that promote continuous
learning growth and advancement along 1's career path.
All all in a professional setting. Um, so like Deputy Mayor
Johnson mentioned we're thinking about this from a summer
perspective, but also year round perspective. Um year round
is something that we're still kind of looking into and
figuring out what that landscape can look like with a lot
of young people in school that that opportunity to work.
It's just a little bit different than it is for summer.
Um, yep, next slide. Um, another thing that we have
currently, um that are currently doing to to help with this
work is um, kind of revamped our youth employment working
group, um in september of last year Mayor Johnson put out
the call to all the city departments and sister agencies
asking all of their their leadership to have representative
joined the monthly youth employment meeting to increase our
Collective efforts to expand youth employment. Um,
Really the focus of this group is to share knowledge tools
and best practices develop Pathways to careers for
Chicago's youth.
um
in
Is as a part of this youth employment strategy the way
we're looking to leverage this group is have a dedicated
group that the mayor's office can come to to help navigate
challenges. Um, learn more from them of what they're
looking for resources, they need for support. Um, and other
ways to further this work, um to help re-energize the work
that the city is doing to connect young people to
employment opportunities promote more city-wide
collaboration. Um, and then just to ensure that all
departments. This is your agencies have a seat at the
table, um for this work,
Um, since that call we've doubled the number of um
Representatives that come to this meeting which is great.
Um, a lot of sharing out of different opportunities that
people aren't aware of, um, which is allowing more
collaboration. Um Citywide, which is wonderful.
um
And I'm going to pass it to Kahari Humphrey.
All right. Good afternoon, Kahari Humphries first Deputy of
education and youth in the mayor's office and just wanted
to give you a sense of the overall youth strategy. Um that
that we're working from which uh youth employment is a part
of in the mayor's office, um, in addition to youth
employment. Uh, it's also an important to this
Administration youth leadership, uh, which we convene
continue to convene the mayor's youth commission, but this
past cohort received the highest number of applications of
364, uh for this this fifth cohort, um in this cohort the
administ then once the mayor um got in office he increased
the cohort size from 32 to 40 stipend it youth
Commissioners. Also this year. This year's cohort will
organize and host a youth Summit, uh as requested from the
last year's cohort in August.
another
key area of the youth strategy is enrichment and ecosystem
which
Is manifested through and the work of Masha in my future,
which is led by the Department of Family and support
services.
Masha my future is a youth center initiative that aims to
activate and convene a network of caring adults the
strengthen the echo opportunity ecosystem for Chicago's
Youth and when we say opportunity, we're talking about jobs
events programs and safe spaces.
When we talk we say ecosystem we're talking about just the
the network and Community Connection the village that
supports those young people.
And then also to connect youth to opportunity centering
their voice and their choice.
Masha my future is created a Citywide and Community Network
of over 400 organizations and City departments to share
program information that and data also the in the
initiative offers currently offers 2 digital resources to
help connect youth to these opportunities 1 is a website
which is www.my my future.org and then at the second is an
app and the app is my side my future mobile app, which is
available on both Android and Apple devices.
Now the the Citywide initiative has meetings and convenings
which both include Citywide meetings that are quarterly
that pulled together State youth service stakeholders
departments nonprofits together to discuss and plan how to
support young people across the city.
Um, also there's an internal meeting of methi that is on
the first Friday of the month that has representatives from
State departments and sister agencies that come together
and work on specific initiatives both share the share the
information with each other while also working on key
initiatives, especially around w w winter spring summer,
uh, summer break in Halloween.
yeah, there's also the Masha my future Community
initiatives which include, uh Community Network led by
anchor organization a 15 Anchor organizations that convene
um in 15 Community regions over 19 Community areas. They
convene a network of nonprofit organizations City
departments that all service youth in that area. There's
also 7, uh Community areas that are served by a group of
partners that voluntary voluntarily convene. Um and my side
my side my future
There are there are safe spaces. There's the other part of
the community initiatives are safe spaces for youth uh,
safe spaces for the safe spaces occur in those same, um, 15
Community regions and 19 Community areas. There are 15
organizations that are responsible for hiring 15 youth, uh,
16 to 24 and they plan 10 community events over the course
of uh the year.
and lastly there are there's an organization SGA that
receives funding has received funding to provide micro
grants, um over to Grants to organizations across the city.
Oh well, so just to make sure I
Yeah, just to make sure I ensure that you all know. So for
safe spaces is both safe spaces as well as the uh, mayor's
youth commission our
links directly to the youth employment, uh initiative
because young people are compensated for their time stipend
it in the mayor's youth commission and then in safe spaces
young people are paid, uh me their paid minimum wage for 26
weeks over the course of 36 hours of that of that, um over
the year to curate and develop these events these safe
space events that happen in neighborhoods. So 1 happens
over the Halloween.
Period um, the other had 2 of 2 events happened over winter
break 1 event is uh happens over spring and then 6 events
happened over summer and these are happening in each of
those 15 Community regions. Now while those occur there are
also larger events across the city like the teen bass that
just occurred over spring break and Navy Pier had over 1100
young people from across the city bust in to maybe Pierce.
So the concurrently where these safe space events are
happening that the neighborhood level conven, uh curated by
young people that are paid in the community. They are also
these events happening across the city like the parades,
uh, the parades that happen during Halloween and those are
supported by that first Friday group of representatives
from City departments as well as sister agencies to ensure
that there are events as well.
All right. So, uh, you all have heard us talk about the
overall strategy. Um some year round things. We've
mentioned 1 summer. Um, but we're going to talk a little
bit more about 1 summer now and you'll hear from um dfss
Ark CPS and ASN ASM, um and just a little bit about um, the
opportunities they provide as a part of 1 summer.
Um, so 1 summer Chicago is a program. Um, it's a Citywide
collaboration across public private and non nonprofit
sector to provide Young.
Young people ages 14 to 24 paid opportunities throughout
this summer. Um,
We'll go into it a little bit in a little bit. But um, I'll
provide some additional details but this table here gives
you a breakdown of the estimates of um, what each agency or
what each we'll say agency, um plans to hire for this
summer, um a couple of quick notes, uh, the Park District
number is based on the percentage that they hired 16 to 24
year olds last year. Um,
they don't have specific slots slated for specific like
young people. Um, but there are obviously a lot of young
people that did get hired. So that is just um, just an
estimate. Um,
So you'll see that dfss including the programs that um
Kahari just talked about with the my shop my future safe
spaces and the delegates or the community organizations
that dfss funds they will hire a little less than 17,000,
um after school matters, um with their private funding,
we'll hire a little less than 3,000 and so on on this list,
Like Deputy Mayor Johnson, um mentioned earlier we are our
goal is to expand this program by 20% this summer.
So while there's some variation across some of the sister
agencies, the general program structure is that the program
is at least 6 weeks long. Um young people will get paid for
at least 20 hours or work 20 hours a week. Um, young people
that are over 16 will get paid the hourly wage of 1580,
which is the current city minimum wage. And anyone that is
14 to 15 will get paid a stipend which should be at least
at least $75 a week which equals 460 or $50 for the 6 weeks
of Summer.
All right. So who are the employers um dfss provides
funding to Community Based organizations or delegate
agencies. You'll hear us say that um throughout the rest of
The presentation that higher and place the young people in
employment and Project based opportunities at local
businesses Community organizations City departments
aldermanic offices, and also the mayor's office then we
have our sister agencies like after school matters cha CTA
Parks CPS, um city colleges Lincoln Park Zoo and the Cook
County forest preserve that also hire young people um, and
pay young people through their agency budgets or leveraging
Partnerships and you'll hear more details about some of
those shortly.
All right. So to show this chart kind of shows the overall
collaboration that makes 1 summer possible.
So the 1 summer team is made up of dfss, and the mayor's
office, um education Youth and Human Services team.
DFS dfss overseas or the Department of Family and support
services directly overseas and funds the delegate agencies
who again higher and place the young people and Community
organizations local businesses nonprofits, the mayor's
office aldermanic offices and City departments, the mayor's
office, um overseas the communication and requests from the
the the mayor's office, um, and the aldermanic offices City
departments and um also oversees the implementation of the
programs from the partners for 1 summer.
um
Just to want to give an overview of the requests that have
been made by the mayor's office automatic offices and
departments. There's 30 wards that have requested 49 young
people.
Oh my notes ended. Okay, um 19 departments that requested.
I don't remember the actual number. It's somewhere um, and
then I believe 9 teams from the mayor's office requested 17
young people. Um, so those will all be filled. Um,
hopefully this summer
All right. I'm going to pass it on to ishan Spencer to talk
more about dfss if I can just interject for 1 second and
acknowledge chairwoman Coleman, uh in the chambers today
and adds a core.
Thank you.
Thank you Tama. Good afternoon everyone. My name is ishaan
Spencer manager of family support programs youth employment
with the Department of Family Support Services.
This summer as to We Will We Are providing 16,550, um
opportunities to youth ages 14 to 24. These opportunities
will be provided by dfss funded agency 51 funded agencies
across 108 programs, um in the city of Chicago
the total investment of these um of these opportunities is
49.8 million
Youth will have the opportunity to uh to work in 1 of the
following 3 Programs Chicago ability Summer Youth
Employment Program and Chicago youth service Corps.
Chicago ability is a stepping stone program for youth ages
14 to 15. It's for youth who are not old enough to work,
but they're too old to be in daycare.
These youth will have the opportunity to be um, they we
will provide exposure expiration and Job showing to these
young people. Um, we will they will go on field trips. They
will work on beautification projects and they will have
visitors come in to talk about all different types of
industries that they may be interested in. Our goal is to
introduce the world of work to them and help prepare them
for the next program model, which is Summer Youth
Employment Program.
Chicago ability youth work 20 hours a week and it's stipend
based. They'll receive 450 at the end of the program.
Summer Youth Employment Program is for our 16 to 24 year
olds. They work 20 hours a week and they're getting paid
$15.80 an hour. This program is different. It's because
young people actually go on site and learn those skills.
They need to be successful. So they're working indoors and
Outdoors. They're working in hospitals retail schools day
camp park districts. They're interns. They're coaches.
They're mentors young people have the opportunity to do
what they what they want to do. They actually select in the
application what their preferences are and I goal is to
make sure we match them up to the
their preferences
and then we have our Chicago Youth Employment Program. This
is a unique program. It started in during the pandemic and
this is where young people actually get to get paid to make
a difference in their Community. They identify those gaps
and issues that that concerns them the most it could be the
violence mental health lack of um, um lack of food
appropriate Foods options. Um, it could be about lgbtq
young people work together as a team, and they
They come together they do the research and they come up
with a workable solution. These individuals get paid $15.88
an hour and they work 20 hours a week.
What's unique about 1 summer Chicago for dfss is that we
have the requirement that 50% of all of our hires are
required to fall into 1 of these 7 Target pops individuals
with disabilities.
Individuals who are homeless and unstable house individuals
who individuals who are involved in the justice system
individuals who are English is the second language.
Individuals who are in foster care and we also have
individuals who are out of work and out of school. So 50%
of all of our hires must fall into 1 of these Target pops.
populations
next slide
we assure that where the need is at. We allocate those
slots to those communities who needs it the most as you can
see on the chart for syep and Cy cysc.
23 of all of our opportunities falls on the West Side 27%
falls on the near South Side 16% for both far south and the
Southwest um Equity zones. We ensure that we assign um
about 66% of those slots to those Equity zones. And as you
can see from the map on the right, that's those who are the
young people that will actually hired um, and you can see
that the majority are the highest the purple dots are on
the far south and
west side of the city
next slide
So here's some highlights that I want to um share with you.
We have a great partnership with CPS. We've been partnering
with them for years this year. We partnered with them again
with the skills Trade Fair. Um, we actually work and
provided, um application support to all the individuals
that came to the skills Trade Fair and as a result over 20
over 2,000 young people actually submitted the application
over those 3 days in addition, we partner with 36 schools
that were prioritized our delicate H agencies actually go
on site and provide, um hiring support that includes
interviewing providing additional supports and helping the
young people complete applications.
Another thing that I'm I'm proud of is myself and Tama. We
worked with mopd this year. We were able to assist 150
individuals with disability complete the 1 summer
application. It was a wonderful event and those young
people were so glad to be there.
I mentioned earlier about the 50% Target pops populations.
The 1 the reason we're able to meet that 50% Target
population is the intentional Outreach and recruitment that
we do to make and I work extremely close together and we go
out and we we're talking to probation office. We're talking
to DCFS. We're going into the youth shelters and actually
assisting those young people with completing the
application. Um, we're doing Outreach events. We're we're
um meeting with we're we're presenting to Youth Care
represented to over 150 youth care workers. We also
presented to the community safety coordination Center.
We're presenting to make sure that these young people are
actually getting the opportunities that we have for them.
And now I want to break down highlights for each 1 of our
program models. We have been partnering with Chicago Fire
Department for the last few years and they have worked with
our um, our older youth the 16 to 24 year olds that work
with our 1 summer interns. And also our year-round interns.
Well this year they're working with our younger youth.
They're providing a 6 week curriculum to expose the young
people to what it's like to be a firefighter in the city of
Chicago each week. They will learn a new skill such as EMT
CPR, um first
Aid and at the end of this 6 week, they'll receive a um
certificate of completion we're working with 2 Agency 1 on
the southwest side Boys and Girls Club and also on the far
south side, um failings for a total of 50 individuals that
will work with um, Chicago Fire Department this summer.
1 of the programs I am also um impressed and and and proud
to say is that every year we host everyone can code and
create we partner with apple CPS cha and other agencies
throughout, um the city these young people have the
opportunity to learn iOS Swift and apple curriculum so they
can learn how to code do programming and other um, um
curriculum. Um, so this is like it creates a career
Pathways for these individuals.
Then we have our Chicago youth service Corps, um in the
beginning I mentioned that these young people actually work
on a projects and they come up with workable Solutions.
Well at this showcase this is where we celebrate the work
that they have done all year. Uh, mayor Brandon Johnson
come out Jen Johnson comes out the community leaders comes
out. Everyone comes out to support these young people and
this is where they talk about the work that they have done
from the beginning of the project to the end and they talk
about the outcomes the successes.
That they had for the project.
Those are all my highlights and I'll turn it over to
Melissa and Tony from after school matters.
Sure. Thank you. Sean and good afternoon everyone. My name
is Melissa mister, and I'm the chief of strategy and staff
at after school matters Tony and I will quickly walk you
through the 2 main types of programs that after school
matters provides over the summer. We'll provide over this
summer. The first bucket of programs are apprenticeships
they are intermediate or Advanced Hands-On programs where
teens gain content specific skills. And any number of
different content areas the teens who are in these programs
are 13 to 15 years old and the advanced apprenticeships.
They're 16 to 18 years old and will serve over 6,000 teens
in this bucket of programs with the support of over 75
community-based organization Partners who are critical to
the work as well. If you look at the picture on the side,
that's a picture from 1 of our culinary programs. Again,
there's a very wide range of programs, but in culinary
apprenticeships teens learn about careers in The Culinary
field and hospitality industry. They learn how to prepare.
Healthy and sustainable meals as they're learning about
those careers as well and teens also gain really critical
social emotional skills cooperation planning for Success
communication, they build confidence over the course of the
program so that no matter what they decide to do in the
future. They've gained skills that are transferable in a
number of different settings and Tony will tell you a
little bit about our in
internship programs
Good afternoon. Everyone Tony Diaz Chief program officer
here at Afterschool matters. And so um as Melissa mentioned
so for our internships, these are integrated workplace
experiences that directly connect to a career pathway where
teens receive guidance to lead independent or team, uh
based projects. And so this is really kind of like that
next level after young people have completed their
experience in an apprenticeship program. They are now
eligible to be part of an internship program. So these are
for our 6 and 8 year olds, um eligibility is through the
end of their when they graduate so they're graduating
years. So teens that are graduating seniors are eligible to
participate so in our um internship model and they do
receive an minimum wage of $5.80 to participate we'll have
about uh, over 3,700 young people that will be part of our
internship program which includes about almost 90 different
partners and these are uh, small local businesses. We also
partner with uh, the public life.
Libraries to offer internships across different, uh,
there's about 55, uh Library sites that will be hosting
interns this summer, um along with community-based partners
that also offer internship programs for our young people.
And corporate Partners as well that that we work with
directly. Um, if you see the picture on the right here,
this is actually really exciting for us. We have a new
space, um at our Luts Annex in the northwest side, Deputy
Mayor got an opportunity to come out and visit as well as
other women Crews that I think just left. Um, but just a
really exciting space for our young people to really learn
some industry specific skills as we think about different
career Pathways and the trades. Um, our young people are
able to learn about welding technique and really are
working towards earning their certifications. We're really
excited about continuing to offer these different level of
opportunities for our teams to really meet them where they
are. Um, everything that we do is we, you know, we Infuse
our our uh, social emotional learning and really, um,
thinking about those 21st century skills. Our young people
are learning but we also want to make sure that they are
learning, um how to acquire again different Pathways not
just the traditional 4 year or even the 2 year but like
these trades based opportunities as well that we want to
start making them, uh being more exposed to
Thank you, and I'll pass it over to our CPS partners.
Thank you. Good afternoon. I'm Megan Hoggard. I'm the chief
of College and Career Success for Chicago public schools
and under my office are all aspects of that Continuum. So
all counseling career exposure all the way through job
placement College, uh and career. I'm really excited
because I was laughing as we came here. These are all our
favorite people. Um, we worked
Together all the time and really are building this
infrastructure for youth employment.
1 thing I'm really proud of when we look at our internship
work. Um, we have over 1,200 students that we place. We
actually hire them as CPS employees and place them with um
businesses the older man Black Caucus, um, different
education partners and they work as CPS employees through
the summer. Um,
we can go into the next slide.
We've also partnered with after school matters to expand,
um programming to earn and learn funding for a freshman as
rising freshman. The reason this is important if you're a
young person and you're choosing between working a summer
job or going to get ready for high school, um, we don't
want them to make that choice. We know our youth of highest
promise who are focused on will be successful high
schoolers if they spend that summer there and the earn and
learn is another way for us to make sure they're there but
then also, um that they have what they need first for
students.
next slide
and part of this. Um expansion has been our work with the
skilled trades. If you look at employment in the city of
Chicago City departments and sister agencies are the
largest single employer.
We know many of those. Uh
Opportunities are in the trades and we're working with our
labor partners with the city departments. And then with
many of the partners here to make sure our students are in
that pipeline. This is uh, this week is the first ever
National Youth apprenticeship week. And after I leave here,
I'm going up to Departments of streets and sanitation for
our 100 students who are being hired as employees of
streets and sand and will get their laborers union card and
their training and be ready to go into full-time employment
this fall these Partnerships have been extremely extremely
valuable and it's really important when we look at that
Continuum of Youth Employment that we think of Youth
apprenticeship as the next step after internship into
employment. Um, we have the best jobs in the city and our
young people that were focused on
Who are on the south and west side who are our young people
of highest opportunity need to be the first young people in
those seats?
The last thing I'll add is that um, we are doubling down on
our opportunities during the year as well. So we're
building capacity at schools to be able to host what used
to be called Co-op. It's now called workplace experience.
We have over 35 teachers who will be trained this summer to
be able to offer students to leave early from school to get
credit and to go to work and paid internships and um career
opportunities. So that goes very well with what um, you all
are speaking of as well. It's like we've all been working
together, right?
But we're excited for that opportunity and I will pass to
our partners at the parks. Thank you. My name is Daphne
Johnson. I'm a chief program officer with the park
district. I have Rebecca Brandman here and she is my senior
project manager who works on the hiring at the Chicago Park
District. Um as the other agencies talked about I'm going
to start off with our 13 to 15 year old program. It's a job
training program. Um, this was not a formalized program.
I've been with the district for years and we kind of just
had teens come in after they were they kind of aged out of
our programs and they didn't really have a program to go in
if they didn't go to a camp or basketball or certain
things. Um, we'd call them Junior counselors.
Um this year they're called direct leader in training the
last 2 years. We've spent uh, formalizing this program our
biggest our biggest ask from parents has been the 13 to 15
year olds. And how do I how do I keep them engaged? Um, as
I said, I'm the pro Chief program officer. I'm not really
the HR manager the HR department. Um, but we start 1 of our
pipelines and I'm going to talk about that later is that we
want to start our kids in our programs and move them
through our our job training and right into working for us.
I am a product of that pipeline. I started out as a
seasonal wreck leader. I skipped the junior part, but I
started out as a seasonal wreck later, um and also
introduced them to careers at our early age. Um, so that 13
to 15 year old those 13 to 15 year olds work alongside the
rec Recreation leaders in camps. Um, they do not they learn
they have a built-in mentorship program that has been going
on for years. We've also formalized that with curriculum
check
ins and and just made the entire program formalized. Um,
there's about 1,250 slots across, um across the district,
um different programs. They're all all over the city.
Um, let's see what else uh, they also receive a stipend. So
this is a stipend program. I just want to say it's not a
work program. It's a stipend program. Um, but it definitely
feeds into our uh, my next slide, which is our a recreation
leaders that I'll talk about in in our other programs. Um,
but the stipend program, we also had I want to say over
this is the first year we tracked it and we had we had
maybe 150, um, 15 year olds that ended up working in our
year-round. I mean our summer program summer as a seasonal
uh next slide
All right. So our our largest program is is our season is
our seasonal higher in the 16th. Overall. I don't know that
is that 70% between 16 year olds and 16 and 24 year olds,
um seasonal wreck leaders are largest position. And those
are the those are the kids that work with directly with the
camps. Um, they there's a 1 to 20 ratio just so we get a
technically how we come up with these numbers and how
everybody gets their uh, 1 to 20 ratio. So if you got a 100
kids you got 5 wckd leaders, let's say, um this position
what we're most proud about um with our W leaders and I'm
an ad lifeguards in here too. This is the overall number is
about 2,400. Um, but that's lifeguards and seasonal record
leaders. That's attendance as well. Um back in the day we
didn't have to do a
Push for these programs. We had a lot of lifeguards. We had
a lot of direct leaders. We were turning people away. Um,
this year has pre during the pandemic. We lost a lot of
those that momentum that we had. Um, I'm happy to say that
this year we have rebounded and right now we're counting
applications applications. Don't necessarily mean we hire
them but getting the interest so the interest back up and
the lifeguards lifeguarding and Recreation leaders, um,
especially lifeguarding, um with all our strength stringent
requirements. Um, we have been able to double some of those
lifeguard application numbers the testing all of that has
has doubled pre-pandemic and um, we did struggle obviously
a couple years ago with lifeguards. Um, and we are working
very hard. Um, we've we saw I mean the marketing campaign
that we've done and and definitely the I'm sure the
aldermen have seen, uh, some of our campaign we've sent
out. Uh, We've marketed these jobs all way more than we
have in the past.
Um, and it has shown it has bared his fruit. Um, we've had
a lot of applications a lot of interest, so we're happy
about that.
Uh, let's see. I will just say, you know that our our our
our camps open our camps and open our jobs actually start
in in June in June the last the last week in June the 24th
of June 24th at the date. Um, but that's when we'll start
all most of our workers, uh pools do open just so I'll just
throw that in their pools open, June 17th.
outdoor pools
um, just talking a little bit about the pipeline and again,
I'm into programming and we try to keep kids from all the
way from preschool to uh engage them from in in Middle
School in high school. Um, so not only with programs but
this pipe pipeline has again, it's been more of a quiet
pipeline. Um, so I'm glad to talk about it and I'm glad to
have funding this year for it. Um, but they Camp is in I'll
just go over the blue part that they Camp is where I mean,
they when you're in the program you learn how to work it in
the first place because you're in the program and so you're
able to watch you're able to watch your instructor run the
program. So when you do get a job you understand a little
bit more about how it's supposed to run. Um, and again we
go to that record the stipend program the 13 to 15 year
olds, uh this year we added uh lifeguard explorers, which
is basically the same thing is where we're helping where
we're teaching kids how to swim we're teaching in your
training and teaching.
Um, that wasn't we didn't used to do that. And so this is a
new program that we've put on um, not just to um recruit
lifeguards, but if we need to go and trained lifeguards
train kids to swim train, I mean that's it's a longer
training, um, but it's worth it.
Um, so they go from that to Recreation leaders and then we
go into literally full-time employment. So 1 of the things
also we changed last year was We have 16 year old positions
for uh, Recreation leaders and lifeguards. So it's a few
positions right now. Um, but again keeping those kids
engaged and and and they can't work as many hours but we
have those set aside where they can actually work. Um
during the year as well.
Um and then moving into full-time employment again, I I'm
I'm a product of that and just having a career within the
park district and and getting that exposure.
I think that was it.
Thank you. We are going to wrap the subject matter hearing
with project manager Alex Goodwin of the mayor's office of
community safety.
Thank you honorable, man. Um, good afternoon y'all. So
again, my name is Alex Goodwin. I use she and her pronouns.
I'm a senior policy advisor to Deputy Mayor Gary and
Gatewood and the mayor's office of community safety. Um,
I'm going to start uh, you know narrow and specific talking
about our support for um, 1 summer Chicago and then I will
talk a little bit about
How this connects to the mayor's office of community safety
our larger workaround. Um The People's plan for Community
safety. So, uh, we are currently supporting uh, the dfss
and good kids Mad City partnership to train a 100 young
people on peacekeeping activities young people ages 16 to
24 through 1 summer Chicago. Um, we are working with dfss
gkmc as well as the alternative schools Network, um who,
you know agreed to be the the Delegate for this for this
really exciting opportunity. Uh, so we'll have 50 youth
that train at Aus either at their south or west side sites,
um another and then um, as well as training at CoCo, uh,
the other 50 youth were hopefully going to be able to get
them in a high park or diet, um to do again their their
training and so with the 6 weeks of 1 summer Chicago, um,
young people will spend their time working with um,
A list. I think it's maybe 4 or 5 cvos on.
Peacekeeping activities training and deescalate space
activation. Um, and that will mostly be happening in Wards
3 4 5 and 20, um, as of Friday, there were over 800 young
people that enter that indicated an interest in a job as a
peacekeeper, um, and knowing that we only have 100 slots. I
think that this is very exciting, um to really underscore
what the demand is for these kind of jobs from the youth
um, as well as like gaining this skill set, uh around
peacekeeping and so, uh, the way this connects to our
summer safety plan, uh, we're going to be convening weekly
meetings with young people that are taking these
peacekeeping jobs as well as the cbos that are supporting
them to assess prevention as well as rapid response
strategies as it relates to youth experiences with violence
over summer. So we are making sure that youth are at the
front and center.
Of how the city responds to the things that youth are
meeting us to respond to.
We can go to the next slide.
Thank you. And then um just the larger connection here. Uh,
this is a very small highlight of the people's plan for
Community safety where we have um, 6, um play Space
initiatives and then 3 People based initiatives on the
right hand side 1 of those being youth of highest promise,
um our definition of Youth of highest promise.
Has some overlap with dfs's definition which I think brings
more of that alignment to the Forefront. So we're looking
at young people ages 10 to 24 disconnected from school with
an exposure to violence. Um, those are the young people
that we want to Target for these kind of jobs, um in
Partnership again with dfss and so just some of our larger
goals as it relates to this population is we want to better
coordinate and streamline the services and program
offerings that the city has to make sure that these young
people who often fall through the cracks that we're finding
them that we're catching them we're engaging them and we're
moving them and their families into opportunities that will
support. Um, I know I talked really quickly but and trying
to just say brief on time, so I think that's like that. I
appreciate you Alex. I want to remind committee members
that we have Julie Kozlowski director of Team services at
the Chicago Public Library in the Box ebony Campbell senior
director of resident services with the Chicago Housing
Authority and Miriam Martinez manager of
Youth opportunities with the Chicago Housing Authority will
now turn it over to committee members for any questions or
comments.
chair recognizes all the woman tailor
Thank you. Um
Through the chair. Can I have?
The list of organizations that our young people are getting
to what Ward they come from.
um and a list of
the
war war by War
and youth who have previously in the program and new in the
program because I feel like sometimes what we do is we hire
some of the same young people without giving new young
people an opportunity. And so if anybody on any of the
panels can talk about how we're pulling in young people so
that we make sure the young people because we all know that
it's usually the good kids. It's it's usually the kids that
get the good grades. That's a part of the school culture
who gets some of these jobs and not the young people who
sometimes or she who struggle and so, how are we picking
young people and can I through the chair have a list of how
many young people we got this year, um that are brand new
to a system and how do we keep them engaged? And then I got
a whole bunch of questions. So let's talk about that. Just
then this is for 1 and so we won't have the new data until
the end of the summer, but we can start on what we
We have in terms of the orgs we can get you. Um, we
definitely can get you that and then we'd have to do the
comparison, but we're happy to get you the comparison 1
that is available.
Okay. What is the safety?
for young people
well, so we're not going to act like some of our
departments haven't had issues through the years with the
safety our young people what has the city of Chicago done
different and put in place to make sure young people have
somebody to go talk to that's not their supervisor a number
that they can call in if there are anything that happened
that makes these young people uncomfortable does that exist
or do we have that can somebody talk about it?
We certainly can I'll ask dfss in our mocks team to chime
in part of why we have a working group is to talk through
issues just like that so that departments and agencies can
learn best practices from 1 another because we know they
have different strengths. Um, so some are safety is on
Deck, um for conversation right now and in this period of
time so that we are sharing those kind of best practices
and strategies, but I'll ask our partners if they'd like to
chime in on this 1
Sure, ishan Spencer Spencer manager of family support
services youth employment dfss.
As far as safety, we have a hotline and an email that young
people can call um and talk to us about any safety
concerns. It will be confidential and we will work with the
young person to resolve the issue quickly.
So just a hotline and an email. It's real people though on
the other side. That's the important thing is. Yes that is.
Thank you.
Can we talk about how many year round jobs we got? Um, how
many students can we accommodate? And are we moving are we
asking in this 2024 25 budget season for more money to make
sure more young people get hired year round.
Ean Spencer manager of family supports program dfss, we
currently have 900 year-round employment opportunities and
we have 880 Chicago youth service Corps year-round
opportunities.
Can you repeat that for me?
900 year-round employment opportunities and 880 Chicago
youth service Corps opportunities that are year-round and
then there's additional work through the safe space. Um
Yeah, 225 225.
With the my side my future safe space and I'll just say on
sustainability. That's a concern that we have. We have so
many needs in our city and our young people need so much
and deserve so much and so, you know, we've been grateful
to have 1-time dollars through arpa. But the reason we've
created that kind of array graph is because we can't just
rely on growing dfss and 1 summer because we're competing
in a city budget that you know has constraints and so, you
know, we hope to continue to work with allders to Champion
youth employment. Um, we're going to continue to work with
our partners to try to you know, find additional funding
sources. Um, and we've got a call on our businesses and
other partners philanthropic Partners to help contribute as
well. This is going to take all of the different levers in
order to really reach that doubling goal. The city budget
is absolutely a part of it and we know we need every
opportunity through additional Partners people have dollars
out there. Let's invest them in our youth to Black Caucus
who's going to
Springfield on Thursday. So what is what's the yeah, we
certainly can put something together for you. That's very
specific. But um, you know, there are vast needs including
our schools our school system who needs dollars, um,
operational dollars, but part of that would be allowing our
young people to expand some of the school-based programs as
well, but we can get you more um through the chair.
How are we dealing with youth who have um who have mental
health needs?
Yeah, I'd love some of our partners to tell you that share
a little bit about after school matters. So we have a
partnership with other university where they push into our
programs to provide mental health awareness workshops
generally, but then they also provide 1-to-1 Telehealth
services and in-person services for teens who raise their
hand to say that they need that support and it is great in
the sense that it doesn't require paperwork to be completed
which is a huge barrier in a lot of cases it also um, we
know for a fact that the follow-up happens really quickly.
There's not a long waiting period And so it's done a a
great thing over the last few years to build awareness but
to also get services to teens who need it quickly.
Through the chair. Can you send that to all automatic
offices we so we can't teens must be in and after school
matters program in order to access the services. But again,
that's a good number of young people. Yeah. I don't I've
never heard a young person. I got a bunch of high schools
in my ward and that's an ex and they never bring up and but
they might not be in there. Um you talked about
Can we move the number up for a peacekeepers? You said 850
something youth? We only got a 100 slots. Is there a
conversation with moving that to 200 and is there a
capacity?
Sophie to do that
I mean, I I can say my what I yeah, which is that we really
want to Pilot and we're really excited to have this is the
first time we've ever ever done this it's going to be
groundbreaking and pioneering and I think it's going to
teach us something but it's going to teach other cities to
think differently. And so I think based on the success that
we all anticipate having this summer. There will be
conversations about how we can appropriately grow. We
really want to make sure the young people have a good
experience and a safe experience. Um, so we wanted it to be
a manageable size with our partners to really make sure um
that we're taking care of the young people who are starting
and we are grateful that there is this interest that that
we're going to be able hopefully to build on
I would just add that. Uh, we we knew that the need was
there when we asked for the pilot. It's why we asked for
it. Um, I think that
We should work on making sure this pilot goes well. Look,
we're we're coming up on budget negotiations again. And I
think we need to take the number of applicants that we had
to show that there is a is a need um, and and asked for
more and also look for delegate agencies that are willing
to take up the task. So right now the delegate agency that
is assuming responsibility for the 100% is alternative
schools Network. I think if you asked Jack, whis if he
wanted more he would say, yes, absolutely. Uh, and we and
we know he's up for the task. I think that we also need to
find delegate agencies that are in the wards and in the
regions that need peacekeepers the most
Um and all the women I look forward to doing that work with
you.
Last question and this is specifically for you. How are
these young people's coordinating with sustainable
Community Schools. Yeah, we we're really intentional about
the Outreach that we did with Chicago public schools for
that very reason and so, you know, we could have done the
application. Um sessions where people are on site our
partners are on-site helping people apply just at the
biggest schools. But what we did this year is we looked
very intentionally at the list of schools and picked a mix.
So, we ensure that our sustainable Community Schools are
being prioritized and that some of our smaller neighborhood
schools that don't necessarily always get that Outreach
we're included so that we're reaching young people who
don't always have those opportunities. So SCS continues to
remain front and center work with those partners and also
look to the schools who should be the next round of
sustainable community schools in Chicago Public Schools.
How we making sure that these young people have access to
think about?
How use the department Department of planning a lot of
times we hire outside the city because we don't have a
planners or young people. We've actually grown in our own
City. How is this Administration or how do you all plan to
use this this opportunity to make sure we're building
leaders who actually stay in Chicago. Amen. So that's
really where the students as trainees program is coming in
in addition to some of the apprenticeships that we really
want to continue to build out that you heard about the DSs
laborers program. That's like a model that we think is
going to really get traction and be something that we can
learn from and build upon but
there have been students as trainees in in many City budgets
for a long time and because of some of the HR challenges
those postings haven't been able to be prioritized and so
we were able to work with DHR to do central posting of
those intern positions so that you know, if I'm I don't
know, you know the cdph. I don't have to use that as 1 of
my posts. It's a part of a central pool of applicants. So
we're hoping that that's going to make a difference in
Department's ability to hire. We're looking for the kind of
first round of analysis of applicants and we continue we're
going to continue to think about how we can do that more.
Um, because the positions were there we've doubled them,
but we actually have to fill them. Um, so that the young
people are getting into those departments learning the work
and then they'll be able to get the support from those
departments to apply for the full-time jobs, um after those
internships, that is absolutely the goal. I just want to
goal. I just want to say 1 thing we do well is our college
students every year we all and I think every Alderman takes
on and brings in college students, so I would like to see
Us do it at the high school level because I feel like those
young people come into our office maybe once or twice a
year, but they don't know what we do. They they don't have
engaged and how we getting also them to work in our
Congressional offices in our State Rep offices. And so
really thinking outside of the box about where young people
are employed last thing I'll ask for is a list of all the
jobs that our young people will be doing this summer. So I
know kind of what park district has what are the what are
the city jobs that are often? What are the jobs that are
in?
Schools that they're offering I would just want to see a
list. Um just for myself.
Yep, there will be some data challenges, but we'll get you
everything we can possibly get you. Thank you chair. Thank
you. All the woman up next. I have all the women. Rossana
Rodriguez Sanchez followed by Alderman Byron s Lopez and if
there's anyone else that wants to ask questions.
Alderman rossana Rodriguez Sanchez
Sorry, I was trying to unmute. Um, thank you so much, uh
for for this hearing I am very excited and grateful, um
about what I have heard, um about all for all the work that
this Administration is doing in order to get this done.
um
I also want to give a shout out to good kids Matt city. Um
I spent years meeting with good kids Matt city, um trying
to make sure that the Piece book became a reality and
although we're not there yet this place a foundation for
that incredibly important project.
um, so I am very proud of the Youth of good kids, Matt City,
uh, coffee, um, because having peacekeepers, uh as as
workers and paying them, um, a fair wage is is incredible.
So I'm I'm very excited about it. Um, I absolutely agree
that our young people should be everywhere should be in our
offices. I actually have interns High School interns in my
School interns in my office and and 1 of my interns is
actually working with my Sony and development manager.
Um learning a lot right now about adus and learning, um
about the conversions, um and doing an incredible job at it
as well. Um, I also have 1 part-time worker in my office
who was a high school student that worked with us on
participatory budgeting and got really involved in the
participatory budgeting work and got so interested that
when she graduated high school and went to college asked us
if we had a position and now she works part-time for us.
Um, so it is absolutely possible to be doing this work, uh
with with our young people and it's very exciting. Um that
so many young people are going to be able to benefit from
this. So I have I I am very appreciative of the questions
that um Other Woman tailor, um raised and I wanted to add
to that
And particularly thinking about our next budget and the
sustainability of the funding. Um,
how are we going to be tracking the success of all of this
work?
I I I
I really want to have an understanding of how each agency
is going to be working on making sure that we don't miss
anything and I know that that is very hard work like the
work of documenting.
all of the success
and there are several markers right that we can see
Citywide of how good um, the the the program and how
successful the program is, but there is so much data and so
many particularly qualitative data that gets lost um,
because we all know how successful these programs are. We
especially for people like, uh, like like like share woman
Fuentes, for example that have been working with young
people for so many years. I am a former teacher Mentor
Youth Development specialist, like we know that this kind
of of programs work, um, we don't need to be convinced but
there's a lot of people that need to be convinced of how
important these programs are and how it can actually save
us a lot of money and resources that are being put in other
places, right? Um, so how are we
Going to track success for these programs and I would like
to be able to understand that from each agency.
Um so that we can use that information with budget comes
around and make the case. This is how impactful this was.
And this is why we have to prioritize it and make sure that
we are putting um all the funding that we can into it.
all the women we completely agree and I'm going to pass the
mic, but just want to um
indicate that we a have a kind of communication strategy to
try to collect success stories during the course of the
summer this year. Um and dfss does impact surveys and they
have an impact report that they do as well. But each of our
departments and agencies also do their own individual
tracking. So we absolutely will be able to tell the story
of this summer and continue to build on the stories of
success. I know it's CPS wants to jump in Megan Hoggard, um
should
I think what is really valuable in this partnership is that
we all have infrastructures to build on so I'm able to
reach out to all of the schools and I know all of the high
schools and we know I know what's going on at Richards and
I know principal Kennedy can follow up and get those
students signed up and and then my team works with the
students with the industry Partners, we have a shared
dashboard with dfss with our other partners and we
Have monthly meetings with Parks. We have talked almost
every day with ASM and we're all looking at um the data and
by school by neighborhood but to the student level. So we
we get to places where we might not have all of the student
names that we look at in common, but we've been looking at
what percentage of each school has applied what percentage
of each school is higher and then we look at the success.
Um, so that is something that we take this this is a
learning opportunity and so all of the aspects of our
organizations that are there to be protective measures to
support young people to be successful are really important
part of how we're doing this. Yes. We want it to be
employment. But we want to be successful employment for the
young people that we are working with the most closely.
Thank you. All the women. Do you have anything else to add?
Um, no, I I think that's it if there are any other um,
Any other ideas or any other ways in which we are going to
be tracking success and they can be uh sent through the
chair. Uh, that would be great. And then of course, you
know, many of us are going to have interns in our offices.
So maybe guidance for um, the different agencies and the
different um delegate agencies that will have um interns
To have ways in which we can help gather that information,
um that that would be very important for us. Um, thank you
so much. Uh, Jen Johnson. Thank you chairwoman. Thank you,
uh chairwoman Taylor. Um, and and thank you to Mayor
Brandon Johnson for for this incredible, um level of
progress on on youth employment. Uh, thank you chair.
Thank you up. Next is Alderman Byron C chopz.
Thank you. Um and thank you very much again for this
opportunity. I think it's great to have a a subcommittee on
youth. Um,
And I think that this is a really important for us and our
Council to make it a priority. Um
really painful to hear some of the testimonies of the young
people that are truly a struggling and they truly are and I
am going to say this that um, even though we may have
changes Administration some of these systems in place
continue to be pervasive in order for us to overcome some
of the barriers for young people to actually that the youth
that are most at risk, uh to access these opportunities. So
I be critical on our approach because there's a lot of more
work to be done. Um, I'm going to start with some of the um
coordination with CPS. Um, I think that we have a lot of
data that suggests that you know, we have um a lot of Youth
You know, I think 1 of the numbers that I received from the
uh, Jaden Chao from the public safety CPS speaks of
somewhere around 5,000 young people that are at risk. Uh, I
want to know what is the co coordination that we have
between CPS or delegate agencies these groups on the ground
because quite frankly I think in the past as being raised,
uh, disorganized to say the least, uh, I would like to see
a serious concerned effort to make sure that between the
FSS CPS, um, and all the manic offices. We actually have
um,
an intentional approach to get these young people at risk
to actually be in any of these opportunities if these
trades if is internships anything, um at this point, I do
think that this summer is um is going to be very
complicated to say the least until we get some serious
coordination from the adults in the room. So this question
is directly for CPS. And of course the FSS to understand
what is the coordination happening between agencies
Sure, Meghan Hoggard. I'm Jayden and I are good partners
and last summer. We added 900 additional jobs, um with the
students that she was working with. Um, we have
Very intentional work with our young people through both the
options Network and choose to change and back to our
futures which are our students who are our highest promise
highest opportunity youth. Um, I we need more employment
opportunities. I think that is the the biggest bottom line
last year. We had 30,000 CPS students apply. Um, we filled
every seat possible and so I I would say that the more
opportunities we have for employment and the um, being able
to differentiate employment for young people to
meet their needs as well.
Sean Spencer manager of family support programs youth
employment dfss. I will also like to add that. Um Jaden's
program.
Um choose to change and Back to the Future they work
directly with our year-round agency. So many of those young
people are employed. Um year round.
And in addition we also work with JD for our 1 summer
Chicago programs as well.
Thank you. And and that's what I you know, and again I'll
I'll be um
a constructive critic of of some of our systems in place, um
out of these 900, you know use I think um, some of them
reported good kids Mad City that being barriers to fill up
all of them right like this maybe half of them have been
filled in some of the testimony that they provided. Um, so
I do think that there has to be a lot more intentionality
in the young people that as we see are facing some
significant barriers for whatever reason there is these are
the young people who need us the most so, um, I would like
to see more to be done to make sure that these 900
positions actually feel um, there is barriers that there
and I'm going to read a Verbatim because the thing is
important to put it on record. Um, but they said and I
think this is in page 4 of some other the public comment
that was submitted, uh by good kids, Mad City,
That the majority of Youth that applied to 1 summer Chicago
or Chicago Public School attend this as you said and to be
a CP as a student much on the same documentation needed to
work in the warm, uh 1 summer Chicago, uh is required. So
some of these is entirely, you know paperwork again from
the testimony here, but I tell you that
Despite of the you know, the efforts to make sure that we
coordinate I was in the office of the uh, cdph new
intervention team Youth Intervention team and um to my
surprise, um, we do not have a lot of access directly
because of illegalities and other things that I understand,
but we know who the young people are. I do think that we
can address the issue paperwork. I don't think that that
should be a barrier that we cannot overcome. So I'm just
reading some of the testimony that is read. So,
I talked to judin Chow in terms of you know, what we can
do. Uh, my office in in particular has offer to go we did
need to be on a block by block and Compass ourselves,
right? I think that CPS still yet to uh, follow up with us
to make sure that again Aldo door to door that's what is
needed. But I want to make sure that these programs
actually reach the most vulnerable kids. So again, maybe
there's a response on what can be done to overcome some of
these barriers. I understand that there's Goodwill. I'm not
questioning your Goodwill, but I'm questioning or practices
that being have been pervasive in the past.
I think these are valid critiques that we need to continue
to work on. I will just say that um the partnership with
the mayor's office for Community safety has allowed us to
think about other youth populations and how we can reach
them. You know CPS is doing the work and needs to continue
to do the work. But we also have to rely on other partners,
you know, our carceral spaces. Um, you know, I'll give just
a
brief example like our team, um 1 of our youth
interventionists is actually adopting a pod at jcdc and so,
you know, we want to create a additional lines of
communication so that we're building relationships with
partners and agencies who work with the most, you know,
youth with the most challenges. Um, so that we can get them
into these systems and agree that there's more work to be
done. I don't know if Alex wants to add anything, um
relatedly
Um, let me I know I know there may be other people waiting.
Um,
I see that there's opportunities also at the state level
right? There may be more employment programs at the state
other Partnerships that can be done. I am particularly
interested in trade opportunities. Um, I mean for for a
while I live in uh, in high schools like ours in Bonito
huarez, for instance, right? We are still waiting for a
mechanic teacher we have
tremendous potential as the young people are saying in many
aspects but there are sometimes um,
Barriers that are things that are within or reached that
can be overcome. So I want to make sure that we expand
there's um, you know, there's opportunities with other
state County Partners. Um, I will I would like to see, you
know more um,
More coordination with other agencies or other levels of
government but in particular I want to focus on you know,
what other opportunities we can have for young people when
it comes to trades great things to see stuff that um trade
schools in the 30th Ward. Um, I would like to see that
quite frankly expanding we have empty spaces. Um, there's a
bonding of Economic Development. I think our youth is a
priority on all of this. So how um, can we tap into some of
these opportunities anything that is out there in terms of
intergovernmental Partnerships around trades, uh, and you
know tapping into these 300 million dollars that you know
seems to be at the state level um available, so,
Yeah, I'll just say the our team is building relationships
with DC. I'm going to get the acronym wrong D ceoe at the
state level. Um, they've been very helpful and we're
looking forward to expanding how we coordinate with them.
I'll also lift up the Chicago Cook Workforce partnership at
the county level. They have use programming currently. Um,
and we're looking to understand their data so that we can
maximize. Um, the way that the those dollars are being
spent both city and county dollars. So we agree. Um, those
are tracks that we've identified and that we need um to
assess how they're working and then there will continue to
be this resourcing as you said in order to funnel more
opportunities that it's not for a lack of um models. It's
really about maximizing the models that we have and and
expanding them so we couldn't agree more and
Those are conversations that we're engaging.
Thank you. I think that's that's for me. Thank you. All the
message Lopez up. Next is all the woman Julia Ramirez.
Hello, everyone, good afternoon. Um, I wanted to start off
my time with roses. Um, I know that it is an uphill battle.
There is a lot of work to be done. But I I want to start
off by sharing a story before I became an alderman. I
worked in other women's Tailor's ward in the 20th Ward and
she was coordinating, um an opportunity for young people
and she wasn't in the room and then when she did come in
the room, you know her young person her chief of staff at
the time, you know, she was uplifting her her young person
talking about why she was leading. Why other women Taylor
wasn't in the room because she trusted her and gave her
space and really that sort of that talk and and living that
experience it gave me the opportunity to also believe in
myself and you know, I'm happy to actually sit next to her
at a hearing like this. I'm also a product of after school
matters 1 summer Chicago all of these people that have come
um in my path. I also really want to highlight all the
women Fuentes like she fires me up. I think she fires all
of us up. Um, just really excited to do the work and I
really want to
Let's talk about these roses because you know hearing the
way some people assume maybe how we do not care. And so the
battles that we have to I, you know, the bureaucracy that
we're dealing with and being new. I do really have faith
and very optimistic in the work ahead, especially within
the next 4 years. I want to thank a lot of the people that
are in the panel. Um, Jen Johnson, you are so responsive
you work so hard I ask you a question and you refer me to 5
people that I need to talk to. So thank you so much. Um, I
wanted to start off just talking really positive about the
things that I've experienced within the year, um, as being
an alderman, um, I want to talk about like other
opportunities that you know, maybe we can tap into through
summer opportunities. So a lot of times a lot of young
people come into war night and they say we want to start
you know, I love poetry. Um, I love art. Um, I'm really
good at basketball. I want to start a basketball program
those things right and I'm
Just wondering like how are we creating space to invest in
those ideas that they have directly within their community.
And I also just want to I want to talk a little bit about
the micro Grant because it had come to my attention that um
because I had sent the micro Grant opportunity to some
folks that they were supposed to front x amount of dollars
that they didn't have disposable to them. And so wondering
like if we can talk a little bit about that, but I talked
About space, you know a lot of times like whether it be
empty lots or storefronts that just haven't been opened.
Like how do we open those doors or talk to people about
hey, you know this summer we have 10 people that have this
really great idea where they're going to run a program, you
know, like all the women Taylor was giving the opportunity
for somebody they're going to host Youth and they're going
to run this opportunity. So now that door is no longer
vacant and we're opening up new spaces that have been
vacant for a long time. Um, I'm wondering if we're thinking
about that and I'll start there and then I'll ask my next
question first. I'm going to ask, uh first Deputy of
education and youth Kari Humphrey and maybe dfss for a
follow-up on the first piece around the safe space and
student leadership of programs in the micro grants. So
specifically I appreciate you asking because
that the whole premise of safe spaces is built upon trying
as 1 having Youth voice. So youth are paid to create to
create and curate events in their neighborhood. So that's 1
and but in addition to that we have worked to be responsive
to young people that have come to us wanting to give input
wanting to create space as we um have included in the
planning of the city Citywide initiatives like the team
Bosch Halo week. We've convened young people that have
participated both in the Gap programming the safe space
communities to ask for input and
To help get their help to actually, uh plan those larger
Citywide events. Well, then also following up with them to
get evaluation of those events. We have high school interns
in the mayor's office that are here every day Monday
through Friday working, but we we definitely need you all's
help in getting connected to those additional young people
in the in the wars in the communities that want to figure
out ways to create additional safe spaces. In addition to
that. We uh, I've started to talk to the Departments to
really figure out how we could create help ensure the
availability of public spaces like Parks libraries and
hours that are not traditionally open to figure out ways to
connect them with Partners to get those spaces open. So
that is definitely the intent it's just again, it's
resources and uh additional advocacy.
And then just on the micro Grant we'll have Tama briefly.
So your question was about um, put like up fronting the
money, right? Um, I'm I am blinking on the term, but there
is a process where organizations can submit paperwork so
they don't have to do that. Thank you. I'm sorry. I don't
know why I couldn't think about that. It's in advance. They
asked for an advanced. Yeah, so there is a process that
does exist. Um, I believe they just have to kind of request
it. I don't know if it's in the RFP itself. Um, but there
there is that process like everything else here. I don't
think it's
The quick process but it does exist to kind of um.
you know, even the playing field a little bit for for folks
and and we need to acknowledge that that's a it's a setup
challenge broadly for um,
almost all of our delegate agencies and this is something
that continues to be a challenge not just in youth
employment but in service, you know dollars that are go
going for services to our partners. So it's a conversation
that we've been having with, um, the controller's office
and the budget office but it's a systemic, you know to
Alderman sik Joe Lopez point. It's a systemic part of the
bureaucracy that takes a lot of um undoing and so we
recognize that that's a real barrier especially to the
smallest agencies that may not have a lot of technical
expertise. And so we're going to continue to look at what
the systems change can look like but also revisit. How do
we support agencies in navigating what exists currently um,
and then I'll just say that, you know, we have more work to
do to connect with the business neighborhood development
team and the department, uh dpd because they are doing like
storefront activation work. Um dkes is involved in that
too. Like we have to make we have some existing
opportunities to make additional connections to your point,
um in in community spaces that
Need that kind of activation.
so
why not information for chairwoman Taylor we could get her
mic on so we got a hundred thousand dollars.
the last Administration gave us to give the organizations
and we couldn't spend it because the organizations could
not do the paperwork. And so we need to have a real
conversation when it comes to micro grants about the
paperwork and just what we're asking organizations to do
it. Literally I got 1 person out of my ward and I wind up
giving her probably more money because I wanted to do 10
organizations, but I wound up giving her probably half of
the money because she's the and she had to pay somebody to
help her do it. And so we have to be real intentional when
we're putting together those rfps and putting out paperwork
for those organizations. So she spent the majority of her
money paying somebody to help her fill out the application
and so to all the woman's point. We need to really be
paying attention to how we we say we want to give the money
but we punish them in the paperwork. Thank you CH
appreciate you. Yeah. Um, my next question is in regards to
I know I know that we do like the all year round
opportunity, which I'm really happy with it's like
What happens after summer? How are we connecting them to CPS
to that counselor to that mentor about that experience? How
were there? Um upping their experience? How are we allowing
people who are you know at the 2024 threshold to get into a
career like are we intentional and and I guess my other
question is with the sister agencies. Are you saying that
they have to apply specifically to the sister agency or is
it 1 and then they get to choose or how do you choose
there's both really there's both opportunities. There are
opportunities through 1 summer and then there's separate
opportunities that sister agencies offer. And so, you know,
maybe a couple of the partners want to chime in about how
they do kind of the warm handoffs. Um, and then really what
are Continuum kind of frame like really popularizing this
Continuum idea is to make that kind of a standard operating
standard operating procedure right that a young person
starts the path as a young Youth and that we are building,
um those connections for
The warm handoff it's into a job like a a job in a career.
So I can speak a little bit to the summer to school year
after school matters offers about 7,500 opportunities in
the fall and in the spring and a number of opportunities in
that Gap as well so that when teens finish up the summer
session we encourage them to apply before summer is over
for fall programs and the same thing for going into spring.
So there are quite a few year round opportunities when it
comes to the when they graduate and leave us they're with
us through the summer after graduation. But again building
out these Partnerships with the trades and being able to
create some pipelines to certification is something that I
think collectively we could really benefit from building a
strong partnership because we've got great training
starting in high school, but we need to do more to bolster
what comes next I agree completely. I would add to that. So
we've we've got some initial Partnerships with trades where
after school matters did stipend our young people during
the school year to do after school pre-apprenticeship
training and now those young people are going into the
apprenticeship and that that
warm handoff I think is really important and we make the
connection to all students need to graduate with a concrete
post-secondary plan. So we use the summer employment
experience to build the individual learning plans that
become the learn plan succeed. So that idea is that that
Continuum really we shouldn't have any gaps in the
pipeline, but that is a place. Um,
The hiring processes I will just put my plug for if we had a
single source of hiring for the whole um city that would be
would would really reduce barriers and um DHR was amazing
amazing working with us and they did remove some of the
barriers, um, but to get through
When we talk about the single reason why young people have
a hard time just like the the micro Grant.
You need an ID. You need your documents. You need somebody
to help you fill out the paperwork and we all work on that
with them. But that would be a place where we could do some
serious barrier reduction.
Absolutely, and I'll just give a shout out to you know, for
the first time. We also have a a deputy mayor of Labor
brigitt Earley who you know, she she can't do everything
for everyone in every labor space, but she does juggle a
whole lot and she's got a team member now and so I think
we're better positioned than ever to build the kind of
relationships that are going to build some of these
programs over time and the warm handoffs, especially to um
unionized jobs.
1 more sorry and then um, my last question is in relation to
the um, 36 high schools were chosen for like on-site
support. I'm just curious how you you pick those high
schools like through our office. We ended up coordinating,
um with the delegate agencies. So but I wish like after
school matters was there. I wish we would have had CPS
there, um, wondering how you chose those schools and then
um in connection to the breakdown of um, OC applicants are
these like did did we reach those goals or those numbers
based off of Ward like did you guys have expected numbers?
I'm curious because I I just want to be better if it is the
case that we missed that Mark.
So for the CPS, um on-site events, we obviously worked with
Chief oard and her team Ean and I did um CPS had Schools
sign up that were interested. I don't remember how many
schools it was. It was it was a lot. Um, and then like
Deputy Mayor Johnson said we went through that lesson was
very intentional about the 36 schools that we selected. So
they shared you know dates and times that worked for them
and the parameters that we shared. Um, and so yeah, we
picked those 36 schools. Um you Sean and I worked with the
partners in the delegates to get people at those events, um
to share out what they'd be able to provide that day
whether it was interviews on application support promoting,
um opportunities, they had open um, and shared that out
with all the schools and the delegates and partners all
together. Um, so it's something that we did last year that
we're um, like
Chief like I mentioned before we're we're learning as we go.
Alright, so we're constantly trying to figure out how to
make this better. Um, we've already had conversations about
how to make it better for next year. So something that we
want to continue to do because we do see that that has a
really positive outcome. I'll just add so the sum of the
criteria we use were geography making sure we had
Geographic spread. I mentioned that we didn't want to just
do big schools. We wanted to do a schools of range because
sometimes our small schools get left behind. We looked at
sustainable Community Schools and then we looked at
program. We really want to make sure we went to schools
also that had um higher levels of students with
disabilities, for example who may not always get those
offerings. I just got to say like 36 School visits that you
know, Megan Tamika Ean ASM are doing all like really
themselves. It's a lot um, and they have always been
willing to do extra events and other events on top of it.
Um, but it's also like a capacity thing. So we've got to
work on training, you know, maybe training the trainers so
we can get more people and able to help support that um,
because we want to reach
As many as possible, but I'll just say the the conundrum is
you can get as many applicants as you want. We have to have
dollars to actually pay for the jobs. And so, um the chase
to get applicants is less the issue it is that we have to
continue to work with you work with our partners as we
talked about in the beginning. So we have more dollars for
more positions. And so we're we're proud of the growth that
we've done in a year and looking forward to the growth that
we see this summer, but we have to have sustainable funding
to keep growing and you all know we're going to face lots
of difficult choices. Um, and so I just hope that we can
continue to collaborate on all the various funding
strategies that were raised today because all of these guys
want to do more and we want to do more as well.
awesome
any other comments all the woman?
All right.
Thank you so much everyone, uh for the great job that you
all are doing. Um,
I used to be a coordinator for ASM during my time at what
is high school? So I do remember working with all of you
and all the important, um different opportunities that are
due with head and thank you so much for all these uh
presentation really valuable information. Just wanted to
ask if you all can please send us to all of our to me and
my colleagues all the updated, um promotion materials that
you may have so that way we can continue to share with our
constituents but also, uh follow up because I guess you
already share it with
With the schools, but we can uh follow up with our
counselors in administration to make sure that their um
handing out this important information. I also have a
Pathways in education and Alternative High School in my
award, which I would love to go and visit myself and and
let them know all of these great opportunities for the
So happy to continue to collaborate and work together and
please share as much information as you may have. Thank
you. Thank you all the woman share recognizes all the women
cumming.
Thank you.
Chairman of this inaugural youth committee meeting, um
earlier. I just wanted to give a shout out to the students
from Progressive Leadership Academy under the leadership of
principal Dion kirsy, who is amazing a raven Taylor and
Sonica Garrett, we're here and um while they are in the
Woodland Community a lots of children from Englewood that
alderwoman Taylor and I share we're here. So just wanted to
encourage those young people. Uh, this question is more so
from DHR and I don't recall it being in the presentation or
perhaps I missed it when I stepped out in the back, but how
many applicants um, as of Friday. I believe Friday was the
deadline applied for 1 summer Chicago. I know ean's ready
with that. She's looking for her notes.
Ishan Spencer manager of family supports programs at the
department of family support services as of Friday.
Midnight. We had 33927 applicants for 1 summer Chicago.
Wow, 3300927 and that's an additional there's an additional
7,000 applications that were not completed that young
people have the opportunity to go in and complete the
application really so possibly 40,000.
round of round of about
Yes.
And we have 28,000. We've expanded uh summer 1 to 28
thousand. Yep. Um, I want to clarify really quickly that
the application numbers that yishan just shared are just
for the dfss opportunities. So the opportunities that are
offered through parks and um cha CPS all that all those
other opportunities are not necessarily in that number
because they have their own like chief of Arts at earlier.
They have their own application systems. So what is the
total amount of opportunities dfss, our sister agency CPS?
Cha Etc. What is the total amount?
Of opportunities for the 6 week program job. Um, so the the
goal is to have 28,000 correct. The goal is 28,000.
So what are the determinant for?
Those 28,000 applicants.
Because we're going to have to deny some students probably
about 20,000 students considering if 40,000 alone for dfss.
I don't know what how many for cha or CPS.
If that's a different we'll put the slide back up with the
estimated slots. And again, these are estimates and we are
going to continue to run into this challenge of more
interest than there are slots without additional resources,
which is why you know, we want to push on our business
Community our corporate Partners. Everything doesn't have
to go through 1 summer. But how can we work more closely
with our business community on what they can themselves
offer as well? And so we think this is great that we're
growing through these agencies and departments through
including 1 summer, but we have to go above and beyond
above and above and beyond. Yeah and Deputy Mayor. I know,
you know from your experience at CPS, especially for
children on the south and west side. We don't want any
child in Chicago to be discouraged or to have this idle
time. Um, perhaps the you know, the application was, you
know, maybe there's some literacy challenges there and
those are the children that we
Really need to wrap our hands and arms around and I heard
the the job lady was here, uh earlier in the testimonial.
So perhaps that we need to think outside of those 28,000
jobs and maybe work with with our schools or where our
children are going specifically and just make sure that
they have an opportunity to work if they missed the
deadline. I just don't want to see you know, we know the
saying and I don't mind idle time leads to the devil's
workshop and this summer specifically this summer. Um, I
just don't want to see any Child Left Behind. Um,
especially if the the desire is to work,
We don't want to see that either and so 1 of the things
that we've talked about on the edhs team is how can we work
with dfss in our partners to stay in communication with the
applicants who aren't placed. How can we connect them with
other programs? Even if it's not a 1 summer job because we
want them to be engaged in something. Um, but we look
forward to the partnership with the Alders in this room to
help us do that, um to push out these opportunities that
are available and again to advocate for um, you know
businesses in your communities to step up and and not be
scared of hiring young people because sometimes people are
scared of young people and we saw the young people today.
They're not scary. They're amazing. Um, and they're not
just Future Leaders. They're leaders right now. Yeah. Um,
and so we have to get past some of that stigma, um, and
remind people that it's going to pay off for them in their
business and their community.
Or and for the young people it's not just about giving
charity away. Your your organization is going to benefit
and be greater and better by working with young people.
Yes. Have we considered working with our City Treasurer's
Office, uh for financial literacy while we have the young
people for the 6 weeks my office does we even um,
especially for our 14 year olds. Uh, we have a young lady
by the name of Donna Rogers who comes in and teach young
people how to open up a bank account and we work with like
1 trust and with our CTO with treasure Connors Urban and
while it's great in the 16th War, but I want to make sure
that everyone knows about and we've got to get young
people.
That financial literacy and I think that this is an amazing
opportunity within those 6 weeks. I'm going to pass to you
Sean, but dfss does have some of those kind of trainings
already implemented into 1 Summer full. Yes, Ean Spencer
manager of family support programs youth employment
department of family support services. So all of our 1
summer Chicago participants complete a career Readiness and
financial literacy playlists. It is about 2 3 to 5 hours a
week and the playlist for financial literacy consists of
banking so our 14 and 15 year olds have the opportunity to
open up non-custodial bank accounts where their parents
don't have to be on the account and they can go um, and
access their money, um at their will also we talk about the
pros and cons of a cash check.
Um, um office we talk about savings plan we talk about
credit. Um, all of these things are discussed on the
playlist with all applicants and they're required to
complete the entire playlist for the summer. Oh that's
amazing. Um, the clerk's office and this is just 1 of my
random youth ideas, but the clerk's office has the like
sample City Hall.
Uh, since we have a budget every year what if we select a
student from every war to participate in a sample budget
financial literacy with maybe chairman Ervin and we have
that where students from Summer 1 Chicago can come downtown
and be a part of the budgetary process, but it could be
from what they have learned from that playlist by way of
the treasurer's office. Just a random thought random idea
that you know, we love it. Yeah, give our children
something else to do and fill this place up with the future
and last but not least. I have to commend it's so good to
see you Megan you got and your new role you were you was
our chief during the Englewood, uh High School stem times
and Jamal Chambers next to you is just awesome to not only
my community but to all of us and uh, thank you so much in
advance for working with um, not only the black caucus, but
I'm sure our like
Latino caucus and soon to be women's caucus that is forming
his will so God bless you and thank you for your work.
Thank you all of you all because you certainly doing the
Lord's work.
Thank you all the women. I just have a few questions and
then we'll wrap up. I know it's been a long hearing and and
some of my colleagues may have War night.
How will we follow up or I should say who's going to Bear
the responsibility of following up with the almost 5,000
young people that may not be placed this summer.
for a connections to services and resources so gonna pass
it to you Sean for I know dfss has a response, but I do
know for some of the year-round opportunities like isan.
Spoke about earlier for young people that either didn't
apply or didn't get selected. They do get communication
about those opportunities.
Yes, ishan Spencer management of family support programs,
um at the department of family support services, so we have
um additional opportunities outside of the summer. Um as
Tama mentioned year round opportunities. Also I Chicago
youth Service Corp, both of those programs will resume and
septembar. We also have corporate Partnerships that
application will launch in the next couple of weeks. We
will send out a mass email to everyone who's qualified
youth who between the ages of 16 and 24 that they can now
apply for corporate partnership programs. Um, and we also
have the my shy my future where there's always
opportunities being posted on.
That platform where individuals can apply.
Thank you. And this question is uh directed to Miriam
Martinez manager of Youth opportunities at the Chicago
Housing Authority. How are we engaging young people that
live in our public housing system, uh, as it relates to the
employment opportunities that have been presented here
today.
Good afternoon. I'm Mary Martinez manager of Youth
opportunities at Chicago Housing Authority. So we have
hosted a series of events since februari, um at different
developments throughout the city to ensure that young
people receive Hands-On support about um the application
but also that they know about the programs that we have for
them this Summer.
Awesome. Thank you. And then because we are allowed to
dream, uh through the committee. Can we get how much it
would cost if we provided each young person that is
employed through the city or delegate ages through city
funding, uh, 3 therapy sessions. How much would that cost
us?
Um in a budget request and then how much it would cost. Can
you repeat it? It's all every single youth that is employed
through 1 summer or any other program by Sister agencies or
related departments. How much would it cost? If each of
them got 3 therapy sessions during their employment?
Also due to the committee. Can we get uh, an a budget
estimate of how much it would cost if we expanded the uh,
Peacekeeper through good kids Mad City pilot to 250
positions.
Yes. Yes, we can we can do that.
All right. Awesome.
I believe there is no further business before this
committee. Uh, can I get a motion to adjourn?
so moved by all the women Gutierrez
All right, you all have a beautiful evening meeting J?
I know, right?