The Education Opportunities Committee met on February 6, 2026, from 10:03 a.m. to 11:42 a.m. to hear briefings from the Department of Human Services, Municipal Courts, Parks and Recreation, and the Ready to Work program on their respective efforts to support opportunity youth (ages 16–24 who are not working and not in school). The committee discussed program outcomes, data collection, collaboration, and potential budget priorities.
All right, ready to go. Time is now 10.03 a.m. on February 6, 2026, and the Education Opportunities Committee meeting is called to order. Madam Clerk, please call the role. Councilmember Corps. Councilmember McKee Rodriguez. Councilmember Mungia. President. Councilmember Castillo. Chair Galvon. Here. Chair, we have quorum. Thank you so much. All right, first item agenda is approval of minutes. Are there any corrections to the minutes? Motion to approve. All right, all in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed, any abstentions, moving on. All right. Um, we don't have any members of the public decided to speak, right? Great. Um then item number two will be our first item to go through, which is the opportunity youth programs uh by DHS. Rebecca Flores to the podium. Good morning. Morning. I had to write notes because if I didn't, I'll be here for like three hours and just talk and talk and talk because I can talk about this forever in my sleep. So good morning, um, chair and council members. Good morning, Chair and I think I'm taller than I am. Good morning, Chair and Council members. I'm Rebecca Flores, and I probably oversee the Children and Youth Success Team with the Department of Human Services. Um, we operate 10 city programs and four city commissions, and our programming runs from uh six weeks all the way to 24 years of age. Um, today we will be focusing on the city's investments to support opportunity youth. Um, we will share some data on what has been guiding our investments, the strategies we have adopted to better support youth, and highlight some of the work we are doing in partnership with national networks. And although the committee knows um the definition of an opportunity youth, for those listening who may not, the definition defines an opportunity youth as someone between the ages of 16 to 24 years for 24 years of age who is not working and not in school, so they have to be both not working nor in school. Um we used to call them disengaged youth, and in fact, when you look at the census data, they still use that term. But those of us who work with children and youth, we know words matter. So basically, we've tried to reframe the narrative from a deficit-based model to one of potential. And to quote the Aspen Institute's Forum for Community Solutions, the term opportunity youth highlights the belief that investing in a group of young adults offers a significant opportunity for the nation to boost the economy, reduce poverty, and build a stronger workforce. For those who want to know a bit of history of how we started to invest in opportunity youth, it goes back to 2017, and the former presiding judge of our municipal court, John Bull. He made a comment to Andrew Moore, who is the director of youth and young adult connections for the National League of Cities about always seeing youth around the age of 19 in his courts who were neither working nor enrolled in school. Andy replied, those are opportunity youth. And that one little comment started us down this path when we realized that one, except for one investment in a gang prevention program. At that time, the city's investments uh centered around those uh youth investments centered around those who are enrolled in school. There essentially was nothing for those who had already been disconnected, and two, as council was revisiting the youth curfew ordinance and began discussions on how to decriminalize it. We realized our courts and law enforcement had very few asset-based options available to them. We also discovered that San Antonio community had around 36,000 opportunity youth, around 13 percent of the youth between the ages of 16 or 24. Historically, Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio have had disconnection rates between 13 and 15 percent, which is slightly higher than the state's average, and Texas has a higher average of disconnected youth compared to the nation. And since we do compete with our neighbors up north, I wanted to note that we have more than double the amount of disconnected youth compared to Austin.