So the most we would not have no one.

Okay.

Thank you, Mair Commissioners.

Thank you for having us.

We brought an incredibly critical community partner here to give you an update or to earn.

I'll turn it over to Stacey Court.

Hello, Mayor, Commissioner, thank you very much for having us.

And thank you for giving us the privilege and I'll get back in the habit.

Thank you very much for having us, and thank you for the opportunity to work with you to facilitate the new vision for the future of Dayton.

We're really excited to share an update with you.

So just a little bit of background about Learn to Earn sort of to ground us in our role in the community and working with you and with other community partners.

We have a method of our work that really is always grounded in the data.

So if you look around the room, you can see some of the data boards that we prepared as part of this initiative to share with young people and partners.

But we always start with the data.

And then we bring partners together to look at that data together and say what might we be able to do differently to get better outcomes for all of our kids in Jane.

And those partners, what we really work to do is to launch new ways of doing things as proof points to say we can do this differently to get better outcomes.

And when people align, when partners align instead of doing things in a siloed way, that we can really catalyze impact.

We establish those proof points while we're doing that.

We're always designing for sustainability in the long run.

And so we work with a policy lens often, and that's a that's both a big key and a small key policy.

Sometimes institutionalizing the way that we proved a new approach led to better outcomes.

Sometimes it's working at the state level or the local level to realign resources to fund things in a different way and to fund the method of cross-sector partnership.

But we're always looking, we always design with an eye of long-term sustainability.

So I want you to know that.

And that's this whole method is very true for the way that we led the facilitation of the youth vision.

And this is just a visual that um that shares overall what we're working to do.

Our goal is to create a seamless cradle and career pipeline for all young people in Montgomery County.

Um those academic core pieces of early childhood education, K-12 success and college and career preparation.

That's the core of it.

But what we know to be true is that students spend about 80% of their time outside the classroom minutes.

So as a community, we have to come together to say what is that 80% look like.

And that's why we focus on high quality out-of-school time, summer and after school, uh, that place-based two-generation support, looking at how do we bolster whole families for economic mobility, incorporating youth and community voice, and then just in general being really mindful about increasing access to opportunity.

There are a lot of things.

So building on oh afternoon.

Hi everyone, it's good to see you, Mayor.

Um I'm Vierca Fields and I'm with Larna Dayton.

So happy to um give you an update on where we are with the student engine for Dayton.

Um, so you know, as Stacey said, what's really in uh critical to the success of how we're improving social and economic mobility, not just for um our entire residents, but young people specifically is to make sure that we're looking at opportunities to prioritize proximate leadership and proximate voice.

And so who best to be able to tell us how to vision for the city over the next few years, what we need to prioritize and young people.

That close to situation either ones are experiencing challenges.

They're the ones who are experiencing um opportunity, uh, also positive things, but also ones who can tell us how to leverage the assets that we have to make sure that we're serving them.

And so it's been a national best practice, National League of Cities, as um I know you know, has um talked about how it's a best practice to make sure that we're looking at um creating visions for cities that are co-created at the very least, if not led completely by young people to tell us how we can unify our shared resources and assets to make sure that we're aligned, not just within the city, but aligned with our districts, our out-of-school time partner, our community partners to make sure that we're working collaboratively to serve best serve our students.

Um, and so that's really the fundamental um belief behind creating a student vision for the city.

Um and so we're really excited.

We're really excited to have the opportunity to do that in coordination with the city of Dayton on behalf of the city of Dayton to lead this process to create a vision that was really led completely by young people within the city.

And so the master plan um uh update that you see before you uh outlines uh goals, uh priorities, need statements, and strategies that will help us as we're creating that long-term vision for how we really want to be unified and how we're investing um in young people.

We before we get started into the content of the of the strategic plan.

I wanted to share with you one of the students who we worked with talked about her experience living in Dayton, and a lot of what you're gonna see in the vision really focuses on opportunities for improvement.

Um, but I think young people, it's important to know that young people are incredibly tied to the city, are incredibly tied to their neighborhoods, um, really feel strongly um and have a belief in their city and in their neighborhoods.

And so I just wanted to share this before we get started.

Is that from one of the high school students we worked with?

I've lived in Dayton my whole life, even after struggles or hard times.

Dayton always manages to bounce back stronger each time.

Because of the experiences I've had in the city, I've grown and I've learned to love this place I call home.

So I thought that was just it spoke to the entire process uh really of what we learned and gleaned from young people is that they're really conducted from what we invested in leaders and trying to um determine ways in which we can improve opportunities for them.

That's a very strong statement.

Very strong.

Thank you for that.

So sometimes uh videos and pictures can do the work justice better than than we can.

And so we wanted to be able to show you a short clip of the process um and what it's looked like so far.

So the idea said the student vision, the dating that's dating how school districts, community-based organization, right?

It is an opportunity for young people.

Oh, because it's like actually.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

So you heard a little bit about the process and where we've uh come from and where we want to go for the third year.

So it is a three year planning process.

And I really do want to start and thank though the city for the opportunity.

Thank you for the vision and the level of investment that you're putting towards young people and making this a reality for young people who live within the city of Dayton.

So just thank you for your leadership and engaging and investing in young people.

So the first year, as you heard, we really wanted to engage young people and start to understand what are the critical issues.

And so it was important for us to understand that we can't, no one entity can do this work alone.

And so we wanted to create those critical partnerships with youth serving organizations who were doing this work day in and day out.

And so created an advisory committee to help understand what this process should look like.

So I really want to thank the Dayton Boys and Girls Club, YLAD, the Victory Project, Omega CDC, East End Community Services, and Miami Valley Urban for their leadership and the support of getting this off the ground.

But we started to the process by surveying students within the district, Dayton Public Schools, within DECA and within CJ to really get an understanding of the priorities that they wanted to have highlighted in the plan.

And we think as practitioners, as adults, as people who are in this field day in and day out that we know what's best for young people.

But it was really important for us to hear not anecdotally, but directly from young people, what do they want us to focus on in this plan?

And so we um I'll talk about the results in just a moment, but we wanted to survey them directly to really understand what we should be focusing in.

And then from that, we created uh data profiles on each of the areas that they've identified, and you can see that around the board.

I know it's going to be difficult for you to see the specifics of what's included, but it was really important for us to kind of level set once we understood what they've wanted to focus on in the plan and talk about um what does this actually mean?

How does it show up for you?

Are you represented in the data?

Are you not represented in the data?

Um, does that change your overall thought for what is a priority, like how it impacts you, how it's impacting your community, how it's impacting your schools and your neighborhood.

And so that really grounded us in the conversations with the student listening sessions.

Um, and then this year it was really around putting meat on the bones.

We wanted to make sure that we had identified the goals, um, not only the priorities, but the goals and the strategies, and then get feedback for some specific action steps that we could take to implement and address some of the concerns and challenges identified by the students.

So we did that both um with focus groups for young people, um, but also for adults to help us really understand how we can connect better with organizations that are already doing this work in the field.

And then the third year, what we want to focus on is really building, creating that infrastructure of support that will allow the city and community partners to really focus on the implementation.

Um, with the presentation of the final plan, we're doing an online resource guide and also creating a tracking template so we can track the progress over time that we will be available to the public so we can see where we stand and what the status is over time.

Um and what's really important is to build into this process opportunities for youth engagement and leadership opportunities.

We don't want to be the ones advocating for the plan.

We want young people to continue to advocate for themselves and for the priorities that they've identified in the plan.

And so we'll work once that body has been established, we will work learn to earn to provide um a civic leadership and advocacy training to help them through that process.

So as you know, and as you've probably seen, these were the four here.

It's probably not a surprise to you that these show up in many conversations across the city, but these are the four areas that um students have had identified that are important to them.

Leadership opportunities, the the opportunity to engage right now and advocate for what they want to see in their city, safe and healthy neighborhoods, uh, mental health and bullying, and then college and career readiness.

Okay.

So there's a lot.

I will say I'm gonna start by saying there's a lot of information in these next few slides, but we wanted you to see some of the content of what is in the plan and some of the specific strategies that they've identified that um they want us to focus on moving forward.

So with the first one of leadership opportunities, the youth created a vision that said they want us to coordinate safe and inclusive opportunities to foster a youth environment, youth empowerment, I'm sorry, and increased access to experiences for youth to become contributing members of the community right now, right?

They're not in the future, but right now they're looking for opportunities to plug in and they're looking for opportunities to leave.

And so a lot of the conversation focused on how is it that we're really creating authentic ways for them to engage, what bodies currently exist for them to plug into in terms of leadership.

How are they trained and how are they given the resources and the tools to advocate for themselves?

How is it that they navigate with government and districts?

So as districts and as government are setting their priorities as city is setting policy.

How is how are there opportunities provided that for them to plug in?

How are there opportunities for them to learn and shadow?

Do job shadowing within the city and for them to contribute to decisions as they're made within the city.

And then how are how are we incentivizing them to do that?

A big part of what we do for learn to earn is just as you would pay a consultant for their work, we believe in paying residents and young people for their participation in this work.

So we need to incentivize them and make sure that they will come back to the table and participate in leadership opportunities.

We have a lot of conversation in our work groups around what does it mean to have a safe and healthy neighborhood.

Yes, we talked a lot about violence, we talked a lot about gun violence.

We know that this is an issue for young people, but we also know that it's a symptom of something larger.

And for young people, um, like I said, they're really connected to their communities.

They're really connected to the neighborhoods in which they they grow up and which they live.

And so they recognize the assets that are in their community, but they also want an opportunity to leverage those assets and become a little bit more connected and figure out how, in a very place-based way, we're building community that they can take advantage of that that's uh resource-rich and that has accessible um opportunities for them to take advantage of.

So when we think about how we want to invest in youth-led activities throughout the city, we want to do that in a very place-based way.

And then thinking about making sure that they have access.

Uh, young people talked often about being able to take advantage of things they have to travel outside of their neighborhood and outside of their city.

Um, and you know, oftentimes they talk about safety in terms of the transportation and their ability to do that.

So, very specific uh example that they wanted to think about is for us to look at new dedicated bus routes that are connected to like recreation centers that are connected to schools and that are within walking distance within their homes and in their neighborhood.

Um we also um we also talked about um the opportunity to allow young people to market for how they're promoting opportunities within their neighborhood.

Oftentimes we know that there are assets and there are things that are happening in the community, but they have no idea how to connect, they have no idea that they're happening, and they have they know that they're not, they feel like they're not relevant for them.

And um, you know, how is it that young people can be empowered uh to market and represent themselves and how they're connecting with young people to promote the opportunities going on.

There's a lot, I'm so I'm not gonna go through each and every one of these.

I'm just trying to highlight snippets in here, but you'll see that there are a lot of strategies that are recommended all throughout.

Um, the third priority is mental health and bullying with a vision to create supportive environments where young people can thrive, free from negative impacts of bullying with access to the mental health support they need, um, including peer-to-peer programs.

We talked a lot about creating um youth-led peer-to-peer buddy systems that focus on conflict mediation, conflict resolution.

Um, we also had a lot of conversations around reintroducing supportive services within the schools to include social workers, counselors, um, transition coordinators, family resource coordinators to better support students.

We recognize that there are sometimes gaps in funding within the school districts to be able to provide for this.

And so we had a lot of conversation about what are the opportunities to work with community organizations out of school time, after school time programs that could support some of these needs and provide wraparound services to students.

And then also a lot of the conversation focused on how young people need trusted adults in which they feel safe talking to issues about.

When we're talking about trauma, when we're talking about mental health, when we're talking about conflict mediation, it was important for young people to have a trusted mentor or trusted person that they could go to.

And oftentimes within the schools, they felt as if they didn't have that person, or that person wasn't specifically trained on trauma informed care, didn't really understand what it meant to have to have conversations, confidential conversations that were trusted, where folks trusted the individual having a conversation.

And so it's really important that we when we think about professional development, we think about how are we training our school staff, how are we training our counselors and how are we training our mentors to be those trusted individuals for young people to help them navigate some of the challenges that they're experiencing in and out of school?

And then the last is focused on college and career readiness.

So the youth vision here is to create stronger pathways and programs that are equally accessible to students to help young people gain the skills and find good jobs.

We had a lot of conversation on this one in terms of what we can do to support career readiness for young people, and really taking advantage of how are we looking at the child holistically?

Young people talked a lot about those critical life skills that are important for school and how are we looking at the curriculum to incorporate those back into school, those those life skills when you think about financial planning, financial management.

That was really important for young people to see within the school walls.

Also the availability of high quality future planning programs, um, how are they navigating that process and how are they getting connected to resources to understand what's out there and what's next?

How are they connecting to the resources not only within the schools but within community organizations?

Um, what's that process look like for them?

Um, either in terms of uh postsecondary degree or getting a post-secondary um you know opportunities after graduation or navigating uh specific opportunities for the workforce.

Um, and so another part of the conversation that I really want to highlight that we had with young people is that this needs to be done in a very holistic two generation way.

They recognize that their caregivers caregivers and parents needed to be a part of the conversation, um, so that if we're talking to young people about opportunities after school, they really wanted their parents and those in their household to be a part of the conversation so that we're providing resources, technical support, and wraparound services really for the for the entire family to think about family coaching and family.

Um, so for year three, so that's that's the like a big picture summary of some of the recommendations that we talked about with young people for those priority areas.

And so moving into year three, um, what we're going to be working on, as I said, in the process early in the beginning of the uh presentation, we're going to finalize the plan and then create a resource guide that really links some of the strategies and some of the assets that we have in the community, align those and make sure that those are available as part of the plan.

Um, do the recommended progress tracking template, and then think about how we create a framework for ongoing participation for youth and leadership in conjunction with frameworks that are already existing within the city of Dayton.

So we've done some initial work with the peace campaign to think about what a youth commission could look like and leadership opportunities for youth to plug in, and then oversee the youth leadership advocacy training.

Um, so it's really important that as we move forward with the vision, that this is not just a vision that fits somewhere.

We want to think about how it's operationalized, how are we working not only within the city?

Um, because it's not just the city, how are we working with the districts and how are we working with community organizations to think about how we can move forward with this?

However, we do have a few recommendations for city alignment and for commitment for how we make sure that there's ongoing progress and sustainability.

So the first is to think about how do we have resources that are dedicated specifically to the investment of young people.

Um, and it's really something similar like how do you create an equally equity lens to a policy-based budget.

So thinking about like all of your decisions, if we're prioritizing young people, what does that look like in terms of prioritizing the vision and budgeting?

So, how can we dedicate very specific resources and have resource allocation directly to support their strategies?

And then think about establishing a formal lead.

So making sure that there's continuation in movement, that we have a dedicated person who's thinking about this that's working not only within the city, but's working with it could be learning to earn the district and community partners to think about how we move forward with in alignment and in collaboration with all of the partners on the ground.

We talked about the public facing tracking tool.

So it's going to be important that we not only create that template to track progress, but we're also looking at how do we make that public so that the public can understand the status and where they can plug in over the next few years.

And then the last is to think about how we incorporate this into existing policy frameworks.

So, like I said, we already are working with the peace campaign with the youth leadership development committee to think about as a first step.

How do we create that body of leaders that can advocate, advocate for the plan?

But are there other existing frameworks or it would make sense where some of the strategies are currently aligned with what you're working on within the city that we can plug in and have that be a part of the work that you're doing.

So as we move through this process, there's a couple of things that I think are really important.

One that you should be or taking the leadership role to give youth the opportunity to share those.

You know, when when you saw the list of recommended strategies, those are those are mostly worded by the youth.

Like we did not edit those.

We didn't go through and say that's realistic, that isn't that we haven't done that.

This is really what came from the young people.

And so we need you to know that that's really important and that you made that possible, their voice to be lifted in this way, that it's really coming from them.

So I want to commend the city for taking the leadership role.

And at the same time, I want to say there is no way that the city can bear the full responsibility for making this kind of reality.

Nor in a school district or any other school or learn to earn or any of our community partners that are so vital and critical to serving young people.

It's it's really clear that that to deliver on this for young people is going to take all of us.

And we're going to have to be coordinated and aligned.

And just like we shared like some of the recommendations of ways that the city can make a commitment to align with this.

We need to have similar conversations with a whole lot of other entities and organizations to say we need everybody to commit to you know, aligning your budget on these priorities.

One of the ways we feel we can structure them, be really powerful, is to consider the formation of a children's cabinet or a youth cabinet.

Um, a couple of things, you know, at the beginning of this process, I know the mayor was really interested, and everybody was really interested in a youth commission.

And I think we you've seen what the young people are looking for as far as leadership opportunities.

We know you're exploring youth input as part of the peace campaign.

There are a lot of things already in place for youth to get those leadership opportunities.

We need to align those.

We feel pretty strongly that what we don't need is another program, programmatic solution of a youth commission.

What we need is really a structure and the infrastructure to unite the youth voice with the adults who have their hand on the lever to be able to make some of these things happen.

So we we'd like to recommend that we consider the formation of a children's cabinet or a youth cabinet.

In most places where this is happening across the country, the mayor and commission provide the leadership for that.

It sits under the mayor, much like we envision the mayor's youth commission.

Um, also in many places, there are organizations like us that serve as the backbone.

We know that it's not realistic nor the right thing for the city to have the capacity or be the ones really doing the convening.

We can maybe help get some players to the table uh, you know, in a in a united front.

We can use our convening power, and we can do the very practical parts of agendas and organizing work groups and this is what we do.

Um, and and we've got a track record to do it, and we'd love to explore what it might look like for us to be in partnership to do that.

Both youth and adult leaders get appointed to serve together on our children's cabinet.

And then there are work groups that are created under that cabinet that align with the priorities that the young people brought forward.

And those work groups are the ones who help make progress on the plan.

Um, a couple of examples for you uh of places where this is happening that are pretty similar to Dayton.

Nowhere is as great as data, but pretty similar.

Tulsa, Oklahoma, KC New York.

I also want to include QR code is going to take you to a recording of a webinar that happened a couple of weeks ago.

And I know there are members of the city of the team who participated.

We found it to be incredibly valuable to really paint the picture of what's possible when there's a children's cabinet.

So know that it's going to take some time.

It's a great listen, even when you're driving or something, not watching, but just listening.

But that QR code will take you to the YouTube video of the webinar.

I think it orients very well on the power of the children's cabinet to align all the partners that it takes in a community.

And we we have three things that we have going on right now that we think are great examples of what a children's cabinet for Dayton specifically could do.

One, we've we've been doing some student eviction prevention work.

Um to bring together partners to think about we're we're concerned about academic outcomes and economic mobility.

Well, if students aren't in school, they're not learning.

And one of the major drivers, particularly in the city of Dayton for chronic absenteeism is the family facing eviction.

And so we've been we've been doing that work to reduce evictions, and we have we have great progress.

We we have a proof point that it works.

The next step is we've got to pull together more partners to get around the table and say, okay, we can all be a part of making this true for every family facing eviction in Dayton to reduce the disturbance to academic progress for the students in that house.

Um so that's just an example of something that could fall under a children's cabinet that has broad impact.

It has housing and neighborhood stability impact, it has academic impact.

The other and it has social safety net impact as well.

Um the other thing that we recognize, and I'm I was talking to a few people before the meeting about this is that we don't Emma's here because she's our data expert.

We don't, you know, when we went to do this plan, we actually don't have all the data that we need.

The city has some data, the county has some data, different organizations have data.

We have publicly available things that we leveraged to give some insight for the young people, but they're not ideal, they're not perfect for what we need.

And even as we think about the tracking tool, we need to do the work to bring all these entities together to say how do how could we have an outcomes framework and how could everybody's data feed into that?

We see that as something that's really important, and without it, we're going to keep having siloed information that isn't really going to tell us the true picture of what's going on.

The other opportunity that the children's cabinet would allow us to be positioned for is that UNICEF has a child-friendly cities designation.

And a dedicated body overseeing outcomes for young people across sector body is one of the requirements to be eligible.

Dayton has the assets to land this.

Like Erica said before, videos can do uh can do more justice to this than we can just sitting here talking to you.

That QR code that goes to that webinar that was hosted by Bloomberg and Harvard, um Harvard Kennedy School, I think.

Um, and so we know you have a track record of working with those groups.

We found it to be uh really inspiring.

We were messaging each other during it, like this is exactly what we need to do.

We hope that you can take the time to watch it and and might feel the same way because this plan risks being something that's on a shelf without a body committed to coming together to implement it, and we want to be really clear.

We wouldn't expect that that's just the city.

We expect that it's just us.

I was on the website just uh just last week.

How about Bloomberg uh the graduated class from that group as well?

Um this is great.

I didn't mean to cut you off, but this is great.

Yeah, things wanted to say before I ask commissions about questions and thoughts that they have.

Thoughts, questions.

No, this is really helpful.

Thank you very much.

We've been anticipating this.

Very excited.

One of the questions I had, I think in year three resource guide with that and like pre-composed, maybe asset mapping.

Yes, it's uh it's the asset mapping.

So it's also it's trying to determine what is available, what resources do we currently have, specifically as it relates to the priorities and the planning.

So trying to group those by both age and specific videography so that students and families know where to go.

Um the cradle to career pipeline.

You have the summer after school learning.

Um but in the four priorities, there wasn't anything around activities or programming that the youth are saying, but they wanted transportation to somewhere.

Um so I'm curious.

It seems like a disconnect.

I'm wondering if you guys have any thoughts on that.

So the the transportation is really around um, so we had a lot of conversations around what do you do for fun, right?

And so oftentimes young people talked about we had to go outside of the city to do something fun.

They had to go somewhere into the suburbs to take advantage of something.

And so oftentimes transportation was both an access and a safety issue.

And so that thinking about safe routes to transport folks, but then also how is it that we invest in in city and make sure that they understand there are things that are happening, but we want to make sure that they're relevant for you.

They talked about um not wanting to be overprogrammed in programs to death.

So there's a lot happening, but we want to make sure that's relevant for them.

And sometimes they just want a safe space to go where they can just be and not be forced to participate in any specific activity.

And so what was critical in that conversation is really thinking about how we let young people lead in the design of programs that are available to them, and then how they get some market that to their peers.

So there is a disconnect, right?

Um, it's yes, we've got a ton of programs, but is it relevant?

Are they relevant?

Um, the young people.

Um do young people know about them and are they relevant.

And I would say there's a couple of places, um, both in the leadership opportunities and the preparedness for college and career where the youth did say things about what could be done after school.

Like there's there's definitely places where they said like it wouldn't even have to be in school, like what could I do after school?

And in their minds, the current opportunities for them in out of school time don't match what they're seeking.

Okay.

So if I hear you right, there's they feel like there's adequate programs, it's just not the programs that are relevant to them.

That's correct.

As you think about data points, there's a data point that um I'm really curious about.

And I think we all kind of feel this because we hear anecdotal data on this all the time.

But families who, when they get to school age, move out of the city.

And I'm curious if there's a way to capture that data point so that that could be a place where if we're gonna have impact and outcome, that would be one of the places where I think we could I don't know with a proof point, you know.

That become an opportunity for great some change that becomes the proof point for greater change.

It's a great question.

And it's a data source that we don't we don't have longitudinal student data to know, even like they started now.

What we can do, what we are doing in partnership with other community partners and neighborhoods where we're really trying to build neighborhood-based pipelines is what we what we are able to do is look at uh preschool promise sites, have a good sense of where the students in preschool promise enroll when they enroll in school after preschool promise.

So we're doing a little bit of work to understand where family, like what are the education places where families are gravitating?

Um, particularly when we're trying to really build that ecosystem within a neighborhood.

Um but it's a great question, and it's a it's again points to like having everybody at the table in a children's cabinet so that the people who do have that information could say, like, well, I could get you this piece, we can get you this piece of volunteer Emma, but Emma's really good at taking pieces and saying, like, I could probably meet these together, but it doesn't exist.

There is no place right now.

Other states have longitudinal student data where you can see where students move.

We just don't have that in Ohio.

We could make some inferences on um census data, right?

With like where ages and where people live in neighborhoods and how um those demographics have shifted over time.

Now, would we be able to say they for sure right?

It's a little hard to have you know exactly, but definitely there's some room there for some inferences into population data that we and you know, because we have our dashboard that is down to the neighborhood that's really important to us is to be able to look at data down to neighborhoods and write a small level leads to that so that we can try and see like where are young people living where and um we usually try and pull anyway families experiencing hard like we try and pull things for children zero to families with children zero to five families with children 18 and under.

You know, we do our best with census data.

Um, but yes, definitely there's some work we could do with that.

That might not be perfect, but could be good enough.

Okay, go ahead.

Just one last question in the eviction proof prevention.

I think it's really critical because I was you said it then we started listening out some of the issues that are dating public school has in terms of families who are homeless.

Um the number of students who are from group homes, and then the number of students who move from school to school every year or within the school year, you know, now all of a sudden you've got a whole cluster of issues that the same strategies could be addressing.

So I'm starting to get really inherited around that possibility.

Yeah, just saw my comments.

So thank you.

There wasn't a question there.

Thank you.

Yeah, I'm glad yeah, thank you.

I'm glad I glad you said that about the evictions.

I just want to first of all say that I think this is really good.

I think great centering youth and these conversations.

What I'm interested in in hearing is what is the population that you looked at, what age groups?

They were high school students, so high school students there an opportunity to go deeper.

There is, yeah.

Well, I mean, is there I mean what I guess I want to hear what your thoughts on are the uh opportunity there for for going to middle school and then even younger?

Because you know, what happens is with high school students, unfortunately, when we capture them and at that level, I don't want to say that it's almost too late, but it really is sometimes almost too late for a lot of these different opportunities.

So um what are your thoughts on this?

We're in the third, we're two-thirds of the way through with this 24 and 25, and now we're going in 26.

What is the plan for after 26?

And then kind of what are your, I just want to kind of hear your thoughts on how we continue this.

I think first about the idea of expanding and getting youth voice when we're talking about a younger age demographic, I think is incredibly important.

A lot of the supportive services and the things that we need to be thinking about systemically are going to start at a younger age.

And so I think it's important that we'll have already find a way to incorporate or add to some of the strategies that are listed here.

The reason why we initially focused on the high school um uh age that that demographic is because this was a continuation of the the mayor's youth summit.

And so we wanted to really think about opportunities for sustainability for the incredible work that he was doing with the youth summit and how to make sure that that there was ongoing conversation and dialogue and opportunities for leadership.

Um, but many of the issues that we discussed with young people with the high school students clearly um are issues in living experiences that that they had from their entire life, right?

And things that we need to be thinking about proactively instead of reactively.

So you know, that that is a conversation to be had, you know, once we finalize this report, is there an opportunity for us to think about the addition of getting you know those additional voices that we need to supplement what's what's in the plan?

Um so yeah, and I didn't mean that as a criticism because really I know, but what I'm what I'm thinking, what I'm centering here is as you should all know.

My I'm looking at this from a workforce development lens, right?

The workforce pipeline.

And you know, and I understand, so I understand why you're capturing this group of high school students.

They're easily easier to manage at this point, and and to get to extract the kind of information that you need, and then kind of go down.

So, what I'm trying to hear is what's the plan for then going down lower, and then I think so.

I it's it's critical.

Yeah, it's absolutely critical.

And and because we have to get more of our young people on a trajectory to seize their full potential.

That's what it comes down to.

We've got to start early to do that.

I think like with my friends over here, we have a shared background in working in recreation for cities, and you know, we know that the young people who fall in love with the programs at the rec center, and they're with it the whole, you know, their whole childhood and into adulthood.

How do we get more young people to fall in love with what's available in our community partners in our out-of-school time sites that they they don't leave when they feel like they get too old?

Yeah, um, that they continue to make the most of all those opportunities.

Um, that they continue to make the most of all those opportunities.

You know, you asked the question about like what's after 26.

I think that's why we included the big opportunity for a children's cabinet, because I this could diverge two different ways.

This could be a great vision that informs some things, but pretty much sits on a shelf.

Or it could be a no, we really have to all come together to make this possible.

And as that children's cabinet forms, the young people and the adults on that children's cabinet and your leadership saying, now how do we get to the younger students?

And what do we want to ask?

What's important?

We have this, what else do we need to know?

What do we need to know from them?

Um, and I you know, I think I think that's why we we included the big opportunity is to really make sure that this we see progress on this, and that you get the return on the investment that you put in.

I'll tell you also that the young people trust that when they're asked what their vision is, something becomes of it.

That's right.

And having them at the table, I just love this whole idea of of um of having of young people having input uh into to our processes.

But really, doesn't that then beg a question about civics in school?

You know, um we all had it, and uh, you know, and it kind of informed my entire life, frankly, and to not have that now.

I'm just trying to understand how we then I just love this program.

I love the idea of this.

And and and I I heard you when you said it, like this could go one or two, it could sit on a shelf and we go nowhere, it'd be a good idea for a while, and then we we look back and say, Yeah, you remember we used to do.

But really, we are at a critical point now, especially with workforce stuff, especially with AI five years away, where young people graduating from college simply won't have an opportunity unless they're of a creative kind of a event.

So I'm looking to find pathways where we can talk to the young people.

Right now they're saying, well, we want to have access to fun opportunities, but maybe it's about more exposure.

Was there any conversation about that?

Yeah, so we talked a lot about exposure.

We talked a lot about making sure that there are opportunities to like like multi-generational linking um young people with mentors and exposure in different career pathways.

So it absolutely is about exposure, but we also talked about making sure that young people had access to tools like youth science.

So it's also about interest and aptitude and aligning that interest and aptitude with you know possible opportunities that like it's it's also about creating a demand-driven workforce.

And that absolutely starts at a young age.

You can't wait until high school to be able to create those career pathways.

Um, so there was a lot of um conversation about that.

And I think the more exposure that young people have not only creates that career pathway, but it also helps retain students so the media development.

Yeah, and also to be able to track them.

I'm not gonna take a whole lot more time because I could go on all day about this.

But uh I really appreciate that you have what I think are the appropriate organizations, people around the table.

We've got some really good, strong organizations, boys and girls club uh in particular, but but many others, urbanly and and yeah, and I just want to add this.

There's a lot of things in here that you would assume that need to happen within the schools, and I am I'm not saying nothing needs to happen within schools, but we need to be thinking about how we're leveraging the assets that we have in the community.

Like say he said 80% of our kids' time is in the community.

We've got amazing assets, and so how do we leverage that outside?

That's exactly right.

Well, I'm gonna leave it there.

Um I you know, some because I know my colleagues have a lot else to say about this, but I do want to continue this conversation and continue to engage with this.

So yeah, good work.

Appreciate it.

Commissioner Jones.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh thank you all.

This is really excellent stuff.

But uh Commissioner Pilgrim has brought up some good points.

Uh, I just want to bring up one, and that is uh I'm excited about the the possibilities of a student or youth cabinet.

And I I'm remembering the last attempt we made, I you were around for that with uh myself, Mayor McGlynn and then Commissioner Whaley and Dr.

Danelle Gregory put together a youth commission, and that it was good.

Uh, but I think I had two major drawbacks.

The first is that there was no mission, like no vision for what they would be doing other than providing input.

And the second was that uh it was limited because it was just we wanted to focus on city issues and they were looking at everything.

So to that end, I like this idea of a cabinet rather than a commission.

And I would suggest that instead of having it be a cabinet advising the mayor or the commission, that it'd be uh more holistic, that you have adults uh from various organizations partners.

You maybe already been there, but you're probably already.

That's actually how supposed to be.

Okay, well I'm I'm done.

Thank you very much.

This is excellent stuff.

Okay, good.

Thank you so much.

You know, um I'm uh typical beyond belief.

Uh you guys have uh continued to uh exceed my expectations in terms of the the uh contract that we gave you to work in this space.

I think talking about the youth summit and all the things that have sprung from that, all the kind of uh conversations, including um the whole issue of mental health.

As we know each of the four years that we've had the youth summit, mental health was the number one group that the young people signed up for.

And that's a strong signal that there's something wrong in our community in terms of how we address uh more and more of our young people.

Uh the data that's out there, uh you mentioned, of course, Harvard Bloomberg and all the Kennedy schools.

We talked about that a lot in the Harvard School that I was in.

Additionally, looking at about just uh Dr.

Kappa, uh Brookings Institute, uh, there's all kinds of data that supports the kinds of things that you're talking about and the kinds of things that we're talking about.

Uh, the city has done a great job in terms of moving in these tracks as well.

Uh, for those who may not know uh the work with uh our HR department as well as some of our department heads have created, I think at least maybe two or three sessions.

I know one big one during the summer, where we have uh young people from Dayton Public Schools and they're not high school, they're junior high, young people who come into those spaces, and they get interaction from all of our departments, including police and fire, and um working and exposing them to those type of uh those type of programs.

The water department as well does a lot of great work in those spaces.

We've also uh been engaged in helping them through our recreation department with uh helping them prepare for the standardized test that they have.

Now, all these things uh that we do, uh still we can do more.

Uh, but all this is uh really a great result of some of the surveys that we have done in the city, uh, primarily when we did the the look at what we are gonna do with the issue nine prior to 2016.

We did a major, major survey to find out what type of things citizens of dating support and pay for additional taxes.

And even though education was number one, that's number one, not part of our responsibility.

So, what we did look at was the preschool education program in terms of how we're doing the work in those spaces because young people were going to school two and three years behind their development of skills, which was making it difficult for them to be successful in the academic program.

So that work, of course, you guys know has produced more and more good data and more and more good results as far as uh uh the young people being more prepared in those programs.

You're doing great work, and I'm sure the this commission is going to continue.

Um that's why I wanted to mention some of the things that we're already doing in partnership with you.

Um, I'm excited when I hear, because I've attended uh tremendous amount of your sessions.

When I hear uh one session where we gave the young people money, and they were asked to put money on city priorities.

And um, even though the young people had the opportunity for putting money in those certain places, when they got finished, they looked at the fact that they did not have much money in the area of recreation, which is odd because you would think some of them there would be a first place they would uh they would go.

And so I think we had a conversation that ensued on that, and um they make assumptions that that's the automatic thing that people are already gonna put money in the recreation because they know how valuable it is.

Um that's exciting because I think more and more a couple of notes here that I didn't want to take much time because we don't have much time.

Um but to um to talk about just some of the kinds of things that uh I know Commissioner uh Shaw's engaged in here and I always do a lot of work with getting more and more of our young people engaged in some of the aviation-related programs, uh, more and more of the job-related programs, because those are the ways that we continue to get more of our young people into a position to support self family in this community, and it also puts them in a position where they want to stay and also puts them in a position where they continue to raise the medium income, but also puts them in a position where they can post their family and their community, address some of the community challenges that they have, which minimizes some of the kinds of things such as the eviction and other kinds of programs.

So it's that whole connection that uh we're hoping to get through this program.

So I'm gonna stop there because uh like Commissioner Shaw and Commissioner Fairchild, Commissioner Joseph, I could probably talk about this issue for the next uh five, six hours because it's just that important to this committee.

So I really want to say thank you.

Thank you, the staff as well.

Okay, thank you.

Okay, speech agents.