OLA#: 027-03

LEGISLATIVE ANALYST REPORT

TO: Honorable Members of the Board of Supervisors

FROM: Amanda Kahn, Office of the Legislative Analyst

DATE: December 22, 2003

SUBJECT: Status of Youth Employment Efforts (File # 031414)

SUMMARY OF REQUESTED ACTION

A motion (sponsored by Supervisor Newsom) requested that the Office of the Legislative Analyst (OLA) research youth employment efforts in San Francisco and analyze how different departments and agencies collaborate to provide local youth employment resources and to leverage new State, federal or private resources.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

According to the Every Child Can Learn Foundation (ECCLF), approximately $20 million dollars is spent annually on youth employment, job training, career development and workforce preparation initiatives for young people in San Francisco. Furthermore, San Francisco's Department of Children Youth and Families (DCYF) has identified Youth Employment as a major focus of planning efforts based on the belief that "employment offers young people leadership and skill-building opportunities, positive alternatives and other vehicles to explore and contribute to the vitality of San Francisco."¹

However, while funding levels have remained high, San Francisco struggles to create lasting public/private partnerships to ensure the strategic and successful investment in youth employment opportunities. The recent efforts of the Youth Employment Coordination Project, a collaboration of DCYF, the Private Industry Council (PIC), the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD), the San Francisco School to Career Partnership (SFSTCP), and the ECCLF, is promising. The group has undertaken a resource mapping project, and has invited all partners in the youth employment sectors, including funding agencies, service providers, the private sector, educators, and youth to participate in future planning efforts.

San Francisco should look to Boston as a strong example of the benefits of creating strong public/private coalitions with the power to make substantive changes for the outcomes of youth in this City.

BACKGROUND

San Francisco's Department of Children Youth and Families (DCYF) has identified Youth Employment as a major focus of planning efforts based on the belief that "employment offers young people leadership and skill-building opportunities, positive alternatives and other vehicles to explore and contribute to the vitality of San Francisco."²

Aside from the benefit to youth on the individual level, youth employment is also an important part of the labor economy. For example, young workers make up more than 60 percent of the service sector nationwide.³ However, despite common perception of young workers as high-school students seeking supplemental disposable income, particularly in a city like San Francisco that has a relatively high cost of living, young workers need the income to survive.

One's age can often be an impediment to securing and retaining employment, regardless of wage. According to a report sponsored by the Wage Resource Center, workers ages 16-24 are six times as likely as older workers to be unemployed, and are more likely to be laid off than older workers.⁴ Tough economic times often hit young workers most severely. The 2001 recession and the jobless recovery that followed had its greatest impact on young people. According to a recent study by Northeastern University's Center for Labor Market Studies, youth are being hardest hit by the current declining economy⁵. In the last year and a half, young adults (ages 16-24) represented 53 percent of the total job losses among all U.S. adults despite the fact that they only represent approximately 15% of the working population.

DCYF Children's Services Allocation Plan

As part of a multiyear planning process mandated by the Children's Amendment, passed by voters in 2000, DCYF was required to conduct a citywide planning process. The first phase of this planning process was completed in 2002, with the Community Needs Assessment Report. The next step in the planning process is the Allocation plan, which is intended to guide DCYF's disbursement of the Children's Fund. According to the draft CSAP, "this report is the first time the city's total investment in young people has been presented in one place, enabling DCYF and the community at large to see how the Children's Fund fits into the larger picture of children's services and systems in San Francisco."

CSAP identified four subgoals for the Children's Fund. One benchmark under Goal Four, "Children and Youth Contribute to the Growth, Development, and Vitality of San Francisco," is that "All 14-to17-year-olds who want and need youth employment opportunities are able to attain them." The CSAP identifies that 15% of the Fund will be allocated to this end, in addition to general fund spending of $1,665,000 for the Mayors Youth Employment and Education Program (MYEEP) and YouthWorks.

Following the approval of the CSAP by the Board of Supervisors on December 16, 2003, DCYF will now implement phase three of the planning process, with the release of a Request for Proposals (RFP) in 2004. In 2005, DCYF will begin granting funds based on this planning process, drawing in part from a multiyear data evaluating the effectiveness of current programs.

YOUTH EMPLOYMENT PROGRAMS IN SAN FRANCISCO

According to the Every Child Can Learn Foundation, approximately $20 million dollars is spent annually on youth employment, job training, career development and workforce preparation initiatives for young people in San Francisco. DCYF is the major youth employment funder in CCSF through the Children's Fund and general fund spending.

The second largest investor is the Private Industry Council (PIC) who disseminates federal funding through two different initiatives. The first is YO!SF (Youth Opportunities San Francisco), which is a 5-year federal investment awarded to 20-30 communities nationwide. The program provides $28 million over 5 years for youth in Enterprise Zone Communities-Bayview Hunter's Point, Visitacion Valley, South of Market, and the Mission District. The program is currently in its fourth year. PIC also distributes $1.7 million annually to citywide employment and training programs for low-income youth.

CHALLENGES TO YOUTH EMPLOYMENT PROGRAMS

The $20 million spent in San Francisco on youth employment is a large amount of funding given the relatively small number of young people in San Francisco (approximately 32,000 ages 14-18 years; approximately 50,000 age 14-21). According to Rick Bond, Program Officer at DCYF, the struggle in San Francisco is to coordinate the wealth of opportunities to ensure that funding is strategic and meets the needs of a diverse set of youth.

According to Glenn Eagleson, a consultant hired to lead the forthcoming Youth Employment Resource Mapping Project, other communities are more advanced in coordinating schools, private industry, and government to provide youth employment opportunities. Though San Francisco historically has had good partnerships, in the last 3-4 years these relationships have not been sustained. Mr. Eagleson attributes this breakdown to the poor economy, and various leadership changes. For example, the Jobs for Youth program, which was a collaborative consisting of the Chamber of Commerce, Small Business Network, PIC, community based service providers and the Employment Development Department, used to provide 1000-1500 jobs for youth each year. San Francisco's "Say YES" (Youth Employment for the Summer) campaigns benefited from strong leadership from both local government and the business community generating hundreds of additional opportunities for youth during the summer. These initiatives no longer exist due to a string of leadership changes. According to Mr. Eagleson, "San Francisco doesn't have any kind of coordinated plan or message to the business and foundation community."

Various initiatives have been implemented to attempt to better coordinate and align the myriad of resources and opportunities that exist to prepare San Francisco's young people for the workplace including the Charles Schwab & Company resource mapping, the San Francisco Unified School District School-to-Career planning efforts, and ConnectSF. In addition, the San Francisco Youth Employment Coalition, a group of services providers and agencies, meets monthly to share best practices, resources, etc. This is the longest running program of its kind in the country. The group has between 50 and 60 members.

However, none of these programs alone has been able to successfully coordinate all youth employment funders and providers to create a "map" of the programs, funding streams and activities that come form the workforce preparation system in San Francisco. There has also never been a coordinated effort to create common language,

application standards, or evaluation procedures. In an effort to fill this gap, DCYF, PIC, SFUSD and SFSTCP

formed the Youth Employment Coordination Project. The partners of this group meet monthly, and currently include Cedric Yap from DCYF, Bob Schwab from PIC, Bea Harris from SFSTCP, Marigrace Cohen from SFUSD, and Dana Serleth from ECCLF. Last winter, the group funded a resource mapping project to identify all existing youth employment activity in the City, and to make recommendations for future investment. They hired Glenn Eagleson, a consultant, to write a final report. This report is expected to be released in late December 2003.

In June, 2003, the group hosted a conference for youth employment program staff, young people, employers and school district employees in San Francisco. They had 160 people in attendance. Currently, they are working to align processes for the upcoming DCYF and PIC Request for Proposals (RFP). The goal is to share goals and objectives for funding, and to do a joint review and recommendation for funding process. The group is also creating common quality standards for youth employment programs to be implemented with the beginning of the new funding cycle in July, 2004.

The group also hosts quarterly "Allies Dialogues" to share practices across the funding/service provider communities.

THE BOSTON EXAMPLE

According to Mr. Eagleson, the Boston PIC is one of the leaders in the field of developing public/private partnerships to create youth employment opportunities. One of Boston's hallmark achievements is the Boston Compact, a unique collaborative agreement between Boston's employers, schools of higher education, the Mayor, the Boston Public Schools, the teachers union and other community partners to improve the schools in the city of Boston and to provide college and career opportunities to its students. The original Boston Compact was signed in 1982. According to Cathy Minehan, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, the Boston Compact "grew out of the recognition that the critical issues facing Boston could not be addressed effectively without a successful public school system."

The Boston Compact created a system of mutual accountability whereby the business community committed summer jobs and priority hiring to Boston Public School students; higher education pledged scholarships and priority admission for Boston graduates; and, in turn, the Boston schools committed to improve educational quality for its students, as measured by test scores, attendance, and a reduced dropout.

The results of the Boston Compact are striking. A study by Professor Andrew Sum, of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University, shows that 72% of Boston graduates who were not enrolled in college were employed, compared with only 63% nationwide. African-American graduates were employed at a rate of 67%, compared with 47%. Hispanic students in Boston were employed at a rate of 71%, compared with 47% nationwide.

The relationships created through the Boston Compact have also led to increased funding for local youth employment programs. In 1997, the Boston PIC, along with other local workforce boards and the state's School-to-Work Office petitioned the legislature to fund the cost of activities that link school and work-based learning opportunities for young people. This campaign resulted in a growing commitment from the state to a matching fund that allocates state dollars for connecting activities, based upon the amount of wages local employers pay to students in school-run, work-based learning programs. First funded at $500,000 in 1997, partnerships in Boston now receive $5 million from the state legislature.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Glenn Eagleson, the consultant hired by the Youth Employment Coordination Project is in the process of finishing his report on the current status of youth employment efforts in San Francisco, as well as making a series of recommendations to the partnership for future efforts. Though the final report was not available at the time of the publication of this report, Mr. Eagleson reports that one of his main recommendations for the San Francisco's youth employment providers is to model their partnership as a local intermediary network to ensure lasting success of their efforts.

According to the Intermediary Network, a national association of leading education and workforce development organizations working in local communities to ensure the success of youth., local intermediary organizations "bring together diverse constituencies to increase public involvement, launch new initiatives, strengthen local institutions, and achieve tangible results."⁶ The four functions of local intermediary organizations are to:

· Engage, convene, and support critical constituencies

· Promote quality standards and accountability

· Broker and leverage resources

· Promote effective policy.

The Office of the Legislative Analyst recommends that the Board of Supervisors review Mr. Eagleson's report for further recommendations and analysis.

CONCLUSION

There is a clear commitment to providing much needed employment opportunities to youth in San Francisco, as well as recognition for the need for greater coordination of these efforts. DCYF, PIC, and all other partners in the Youth Employment Coordination Project appear to be working diligently to ensure that future funding is strategic and that outcomes are measured to ensure that programs meet expectations. The greatest struggle for these agencies appears to be the need for consistency and commitment of high-level stakeholders. San Francisco should look to Boston as a strong example of the benefits of creating strong public/private coalitions with the power to make substantive changes for the outcomes of youth in this City.

 

¹ www.dcyf.org

² www.dcyf.org

³ Malkia Amala Cyril, "Young People and Decent Wages." From: Trends in the Living Wage Movement," Wage Resource Center, ACORN.

⁴ Young Workers Project of San Francisco, as part of: Trends in the Living Wage Movement," Wage Resource Center, ACORN.

⁵ "Leaving Young Workers Behind" Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University on behalf of the National League of Cities (2003).

⁶ www.intermediarynetwork.org