All right.

1002 a.m.

on March 17, 2026, we'll call the educational opportunities meeting to order.

Madam Click will please call the rule.

Councilmember Corps.

Councilmember McKee Rodriguez is here virtually.

Councilmember Mungia.

Councilmember Castillo.

Here.

Chair Galvan.

Here.

Sir, we have a quorum.

All right.

Well, thank you all so much.

I know we have a pretty packed agenda today.

I promise we're not gonna go too much into everything, each one, hopefully.

Um get through.

The last conversation last point on there's wanted to get the committee to know.

Uh we'll be talking a bit about the next uh meeting.

So that'll just be kind of a quick idea session just to make sure we're on the same page for that.

But everything else will be pretty smooth and similar, I think, as the last meetings.

Um, of course, uh, can I get a motion to approve the minutes uh from February 17, 2026?

All those in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed?

Any abstentions?

All right.

Great.

Melc, do you have any members of the public to speak?

No members.

Got it.

All right.

Um, really quick for my committee.

Do we want to uh go through all the presentations or do you want to break it up with ambassador than Gavi College and then all together promise programs?

What's the vibe?

Let's do it all together.

I hear it all together.

All right, we'll go through.

Yes.

Can we do the two policy?

Yeah.

I'm actually introduced each one of them, but we'll go into item two uh overview of the summer ambassador summer internship program.

Good morning, everyone's division within the Department of Human Services.

Um we our programming covers kind of the broad width.

We start off at uh providing services to children six weeks, and we go all the way up to 24 years of age.

Um before I begin, like talking about the ambassador program.

I just kind of want to recap.

I know some of y'all probably can cite this better than I do, but just the research that's out there on the importance of internships, particularly paid internships.

Um there was a Wall Street Journal article in 2024 that like had these beautiful charts.

I wish I brought copies of it.

Um, but basically, when a college graduate, when they graduate, they're like two times more likely to get a job with um a professional job with professional wages, and they're all but also more likely to get more job opportunities than those who did not have any internships.

Um we also know just the importance of career explorations for youth.

So besides just the monetary gain, there's just self-awareness of what they want to be when they grow up and also what they don't want to be when they grow up.

I know that I remember this one intern that we had an ambassador that she was dead set on becoming a lawyer, and we placed her in a law firm, and she realized that was not for her at all.

Um, and she got into the program the second year.

We actually placed her in the HR at CPS, and she loved it.

It was something she had never even thought about and ended up changing her uh major because she wanted to go in HR.

So again, just the awareness of what you want to do and what you don't want to do is super important.

Um the ambassador program, it launched in 2004.

Um, Secretary Mayor uh Julian Castro when he was uh city council member to us, he'll always be our former mayor, but officially he is uh Secretary Castro.

Um it did win the Texas Workforce Innovation Award in 2005 when it was first created.

Um, it really was about addressing the brain drain in San Antonio.

We had these wonderful high school uh graduates here in San Antonio, they go off to tier one universities outside of not only San Antonio but the state, similar to Secretary Castro's experience.

Um, and then we just didn't have a really robust ecosystem of finding internships, particularly when you start comparing us to like the Bay Area, DC, New York City.

Um, and that was kind of how this program kind of evolved was really just how do we make it easier for top talent that left our city that we invested in that are still residents of the city of San Antonio.

How do we bring them back and show them that San Antonio is a great place to live, work, and play?

Um, and so that kind of is really um when you look at the eligibility requirements, a lot of that is geared towards again San Antonio residents.

So you have to have graduated uh from a San Antonio area high school and currently enrolled in a college or university and have completed at least one full year, two semesters.

And this does not encounter if you were like dual credit or you know, when in high school, I know we get a lot of those questions about I'm graduating high school and I have 24 hours of college credit.

You have to actually be enrolled full-time in a college.

And then the demonstrated GPA, but 2.5.

We do check for residency within the city council within a council district, be a permanent resident.

And then in these last couple of years, we've been doing a better job of kind of making sure that a wide variety of youth know about the ambassador program.

And so we have gotten some youth, particularly during the summer when dorms close, et cetera, that they're unhoused, and so they're kind of couch surfing.

Um, and so we do have uh a waiver ability for students in those types of situations.

Umployment partners, a lot of people think we just place them within the city of San Antonio.

Not true.

We actually have this very long list of employers.

Um, about half of our interns are placed within city departments.

Um, and I want to say we also hire quite a number of them, and we even have a councilwoman who's an ambassador alumni.

Um, but I just kind of want to talk, mention some of the uh partners that we have: Astroport Space Technologies, Biomed, Brackenridge Park Conservancy, Haven for Hope, Botanical Gardens, SAWS, STEM Biosystems, Texas AM, San Antonio, TPR, JUZEM, Velocity, and the list goes on.

So we have a very wide variety of internship possibilities again to kind of meet the all the needs of that and majors that our students come to us with, and we always have like one or two that we actually have to go and really be strategic about where we place them.

I know one when last year we had an intern ambassador, she was actually doing research on artificial blood, and so we went, we had a finder or something to kind of continue with her studies, and Southwest Research stepped up and we placed her in an internship.

So again, it's kind of the really putting what the the ambassador, what they come with us, what their major, and finding the right fit for them.

Um we also have we couldn't do this alone besides our employment partners.

Um we also work with Bear County Fostering for Educational Success.

Um, and so that started, I think in 2019, I can't remember, but um we had a number of you know, the increase of foster youth coming into higher ed, and they just weren't able to kind of get into internships, they just didn't have that support network.

And Bear County like stepped up, and so we now have a great relationship with them, and we actually do a pre-ambassador orientation with our our ambassadors who have foster care experience just to set them up for success.

Um, and then some of our ambassadors they couldn't intern without child care.

Um, so DHS also operates our city cares, which provide short-term and or emergency child care assistance, and so we do partner with our city carers when we do have an ambassador that is in need of child care.

Um, and then dress for success in San Antonio Threads, they've just been wonderful partners helping us with work boots or lab coats or anything that or even professional attire.

Um, they've just been really, really great about helping our ambassadors have what they need to be successful, and a random conversation that I had with uh former Richard Pettis, the president of uh former president of the greater chamber.

We were just talking about the ambassador program, and I was telling him it really was about that brain drain.

Like, how do we showcase San Antonio businesses?

Um, and so kind of like over Margaritas, we came up with the stay in essay idea where we partner every year with the chamber, um, they invite all of their board of board members, top businesses, and we we show the ambassadors how to network.

Um, and so they meet business leaders, they get to hear about industries and get to learn, you know, how do you shake a hand when you have a mock tell in the other?

Um, but that has been it started, I believe, in 2019, and and we did it every year, except for one year during the pandemic.

Um, and then as you can see, the ambassador program has grown quite a bit since we first started.

So in 2004, we had 12 ambassadors, um, and then it continually has grown as we have done a better job about recruiting.

You know, at one point we when I first took over, to be honest, we we didn't have people applying in certain council districts.

And so Melody just kind of you know tasked us with changed that.

Um and I just thank our staff that they really kind of got off there and so much better at social media than I am, but also working with nonprofits and particularly our faith-based organizations in some of our districts.

But we have now we always, always now get at least 20, 25 applications per council district.

Um, so again, that has just been a wonderful thing to see that now youth all across San Antonio know about the ambassador program and they are actually applying.

Um so to show that our efforts, it's kind of we we created a little bit of a good problem to have.

Um, but we have funding for about 200 ambassadors, and um last year we received 1,154 applications for the 200 slots.

Um so I always like to tell people that we're like more competitive than getting into you know Texas Tech and uh Texas State.

Um, and then our employers again, we have two, we accept about 200.

Last year we accept 220, um, but we did get requests for almost 352 internships from employers.

So not only do we have youth who want internships, but we also have employers that are saying, hey, I want a host, I want an intern.

I mean, they're really looking at this as a way to recruit as their future talent, particularly in STEM.

This has been a wonderful, wonderful way for our STEM partners to kind of find talent.

That again, we get MIT grads, um, UT Austin, Harvard, Stanford, all across, and this is again a way for for them to kind of showcase them and get to learn a little bit more about them.

Um, again, last as I said, we had 212 ambassadors last year, and I am proud to say that we started with 212 and we ended with 212.

And I just want to congratulate Cameron, who just did, she's back there.

Uh she just did an amazing job of when our interns are experiencing anxiety or you know, just they're they're learning.

Um she just really stepped in and not only was running a professional you know, work experience, but on top of that, she was doing case management, to be quite frank.

Um, and working with them on transportation, working with them again if they had any needs, they needed mentoring.

Um, we actually took a couple of interns, extra interns in DHS to provide them with a little bit extra support.

But again, I just um just want to showcase that this isn't just about getting them into jobs and then forgetting about them.

GHS really is providing some extra support so that all of our youth are successful.

Um, the budget and we have 838,000 that's in the DHS budget for the ambassador program.

Um position, as you can see, the vast majority of our funds go to the actual stipends for the youth.

Um, we provide $18 an hour, they can work up to 30 hours a week.

Um, we do have some exceptions again when I talk about our partnership with Bear County Fostering for Educational Success.

We learned very on that when they found out they could only work 30 hours, they're like, I need to work full time.

I'm like on my own by myself.

Um, and so we work with those youth who need to work a little extra hours because we always have some youth that you know they only work 25 or they get sick or whatever.

Um, so if we do have some extra funds, we do uh provide our um ambassadors who need extra hours of work, those experiences with their supervisor uh permission.

And then the program costs about 40,000.

Most of that is food, to be honest, t-shirts, um, and yeah, a little bit of swag, but most of it is delicious food.

Um every year we do a post-program survey.

Um, so we we look at our ambassadors, we survey them after 97% say they have a better understanding of career opportunities in San Antonio.

91% believe that staff communicated effectively.

Um, so that was something that we actually worked on quite a bit, was just you know, when you have one staff and 200 interns, plus about you know, a hundred and something uh supervisors, it can get a little bit uh crazy.

Um, but we worked with um with the team just to make sure that we were working and effectively communicating with them.

Um, and then 93% felt better about their careers after their internships.

Um, beyond their internships, we actually also provide some leadership opportunities during the program, and you know, depending on how creative we get.

Um, after the pandemic, um, our in our professional development centered on like how do you shine in the virtual world?

So we hired the Y group to kind of talk to youth about like how do you do an interview online, how do you make sure that you kind of stand out.

Um, when how unhousing, when homelessness was just like a huge issue here in San Antonio, a lot of misinformation.

Um, we actually had like a whole series of of we not only did site visits to um like Haven for Hope and Gorazon, but we also had a panel of of youth, some that were currently homeless and some that were former, and it was so so powerful.

Um, but again, we always feel these are future leaders of San Antonio, so not only do they have to have the skills to get those jobs, but they also have to have an understanding of just what is happening in San Antonio, and you need to be part of these these conversations and have the facts as you kind of grow up and graduate and we're looking to them to take over the world.

Um we also super we also uh survey the supervisors, so 94% agree that uh their ambassadors met the needs of their organization.

Something that I didn't mention is we also do some training of supervisors, so even before they take an intern, we actually meet with the supervisors and we provide just what is it to be a supervisor of an intern.

Um and then I had mentioned that we do the pre-service for our uh kiddos with foster care experience, um, and we do get their permission to share, but um if they they do say yes, we actually start working with those supervisors earlier on what is this going to take because they really do need a little bit more mentoring than kind of throwing them out there, and so again, our our our business partners have just been so wonderful.

Um, and then we've started to survey our alumni.

We needed, and I'll be honest, we need to do a better job about that.

That's on my um my my list that from Mel that I gotta improve upon, but um 74% agree that they were more likely to consider jobs in San Antonio after graduation, and then 54% currently live in San Antonio.

Um, and so about 50% of our ambassadors actually they graduated from San Antonio and they leave.

Um, and so that's something that we also need to study a little bit more about like those that do leave us and come back to do an internship program.

Did they come back?

I know it took me 20 years, but I came back and I you know, again have just the wonderful, wonderful job of running this program and others.

But um kind of our next steps right now we are the ambassador program did close last week, and we received about 900-ish applications.

Um we're gonna start doing kind of our scoring.

We do have a matrix.

Obviously, when we can only accept 200 and we're getting almost you know, a thousand plus applications, and we have one staff person, um, it becomes kind of all hands on deck.

But so right now we are like up to here in ambassador applications, but um, so we're going to start like screening them.

We'll we'll notify uh the 200 that we accept, um, and then they do actually clear, they go through the HR process, so HR, and that's also should have mentioned it earlier.

One of the reasons that we have great employer um participation is because they know the city of San Antonio is going to do it right, and so they go through the same background checks, drug screening that City of San Antonio employees go through, and that also kind of helps employers say yes when we do ask them to take an intern.

Um, and then we spend a lot of time on the matching, and so like when I had talked about this long list of employers, we actually go through all their applications.

We look at their major, we read what they wrote, we see what they want to want to major in, um, what they want to be when they grow up, and then we see what internship do we have that matches that and we think would be the best for them.

Um, and sometimes we surprise them and then they come back to us and like again, like that young person who never thought she would want to be in HR, and you know, she's now hopefully in HR.

But that's probably, I think, when when you look at those 90 plus percent of approval ratings that we're getting on our survey, and that has been consistent, like year after year after year.

I think a lot of it has to do with just that pre-work that we do, not only with the screening, not only with the background checks, but the matching.

That's what's really really important.

Um, and then we will have our stay in essay event on National Intern Day.

We've started to not only have it for ambassadors, but SA Works has started a small cohort of college kiddos that they're trying to get into STEM, and so we've invited them also in 8020 foundation, also has some college interns, and so we're we kind of turn it into a big party for our college interns to meet business leaders in San Antonio.

And then in August, the ambassador program ends.

We get to relax a little bit, um, and we'll send out the survey, and um again, we're gonna be doing more robust work on what our alumni are doing after they leave us, and hopefully, next time I give a presentation, I'll have more information on the impact this is having on our alum.

And that's it for my presentation.

Thank you so much, Rebecca.

Um, we're gonna take the next presentation right now, and then we'll have a conversation about those who just for minute keeping purposes.

Go ahead, Anna.

Great, thank you.

So, good morning, and thank you for giving me the opportunity to be here this morning.

I'm Ana Acevedo, and I am the CEO of the San Antonio Education Partnership.

Our mission is to create college opportunities, access, and success for our community.

Our connection to the city of San Antonio is deep.

Our roots began with the City of San Antonio, specifically with then Mayor Henry Cisneros.

Cisneros, along with Cops Metro and other community and business leaders, founded the San Antonio Education Partnership in 1989, providing advice college advising in eight high schools and establishing the San Antonio Education Partnership Scholarship.

In 2010, under the leadership of then Mayor Julian Castro, the City of San Antonio created CAFE College and awarded the first contract to administer CAFE College to SAEP to serve as a community hub for college advising and to strengthen a college-going culture in San Antonio.

With the intent to support SAP scholarship recipients beyond a scholarship, SAEP launched scholar success, offering another layer of support to help college students with persistence and credential completion.

Today we continue to provide free college advising and scholarships to meet our mission.

Here you see Henry Cisneros pictured in the early days of San Antonio Education Partnership, and then on the picture below that, you see he is there along with two other former mayors Ed Garza and Julian Castro.

This was at our recent Cafe College Quincenera celebration, which highlighted the strong support that Cafe College and SAEP have had from city officials, again reinforcing our deep and long-standing connection and partnership with the city of San Antonio.

In the context of our city's high poverty rate and low educational attainment rate, we believe that increasing educational attainment is key to alleviating poverty and promoting economic mobility within our community.

You're very familiar with our demographics so I don't have to elaborate much there, but I do want to highlight that less than 28% of San Antonio adults have a bachelor's degree or higher.

And this is the key community indicator that we are addressing.

We provide services to over 12,000 individuals each year, youth and adults across our programs.

Of these clients, 96% are people of color, 79% are first generation college goers, and 76% come from low to moderate income households.

And Andrea was a when she was at high school, she was at Edison High School and received services through our high school-based programming.

And then she went on to UTSA and received RSAP scholarship at UTSA.

While at UTSA one summer, she was an ambassador and uh was an intern at SAEP.

And as of last month, we hired her full-time as an intake specialist.

And so I just want to reinforce what uh Rebecca mentioned about the internship uh opportunity, but also about how connected we are with other city programs as well.

And to highlight that we have several staff members that have benefited from our services and want to come back, they believe in what we do, and they want to make sure that others have that same opportunity.

One is our Road to Success Program, which is a linear pathway from high school to credential attainment.

The second is CAFE College, which is the community's one stop shop for all things college.

Our Road to Success program offers a continuum of services for up to six years.

Today, Road to Success operates in 29 high schools and six school districts.

Advising is provided to students at their campus, meeting them where they are at.

It is through our high school based advisors that students are then encouraged to apply to the SAEP scholarship and they are given assistance to meet those requirements.

Those graduating high school seniors who meet all the criteria for the scholarship and actually enroll and attend one of the colleges the fall semester after graduation, they begin to receive our renewable SAEP scholarship for up to eight semesters.

During those eight semesters, our SAEP scholars receive ongoing support in the form of a monthly newsletter, connections to campus-based and local resources, and opportunities for mentorship.

Topics for our one-on-one advising and workshops include goal setting, career planning, college entry and enrollment, college affordability, financial aid, and college transition support.

And those 29 high schools that we partner with this year are in these school districts Edgewood, Harlandale, San Antonio, South SAN, South Side, and Southwest ISDs.

The SAP scholarship amounts vary according to the type of higher education institution and can only be used at our partner institutions, which are listed here.

The last step of the continuum of services for road to success is scholar success.

In addition to the scholarship, we want to support our scholars all along their college journey, from their first fall semester through credential attainment.

We offer support to our SAP scholars through group workshops, mentorships, and regular monthly communication to connect them to resources and reminders of upcoming deadlines.

CAFE College is a program we administer for the City of San Antonio.

This is our community-facing program that is open to all youth and adults across San Antonio who are interested in post-secondary education.

Additionally, many people in our community who have earned credentials outside of the US come to CAFE College to receive assistance using the SpanTrans service from the evaluation company.

And this service offers foreign academic credential evaluations, translations, and document verification.

Clients need these services to either continue their education locally or to demonstrate credentials required for employment.

Our one-on-one advising sessions at CAFE College are on a walk-in basis.

These advising sessions can be accessed in person or virtually via Zoom.

Additionally, CAFE College hosts workshops, events, and camps throughout the year.

And one of our more popular offerings is our free SAT prep sessions that are hosted multiple times a year.

These are a few of the metrics we report on the COSA scorecard for our scholarship and outreach contract.

This scorecard reflects both students served in our partner high schools as well as those college students receiving our scholarship.

The top line metric represents the high school students that are receiving those high school-based services.

And the fourth metric represents the college students receiving the scholarship.

Those college students are comprised of students from the last five high school graduating cohorts.

In FY26, our current scholars are from the high school classes of 2021 through 2025.

Our SAAP scholarship distribution graph shows that in FY25, almost half of our scholarship recipients were attending Alamo Colleges.

And a quarter, a little more than a quarter, were attending UT San Antonio, and 16% attended four-year private colleges.

CAFE College serves a large number of clients a year, and it's almost evenly split between youth and adults.

Not only do our survey metrics demonstrate client satisfaction with our services, a number of community organizations, school districts, and institutions of higher education refer clients to CAFE College to us on a regular basis.

Additionally, these community partners often request classrooms at CAFE College to host their own events.

To close, these are two examples of student testimonies captured in survey responses.

Sometimes it's hard to understand the real impact behind the numbers.

Each number we report represents a real person who's receiving the necessary support to help make their college dreams a reality.

Thank you again for your time today, and thank you most importantly for the continued long-standing partnership we have with the City of San Antonio to do this important work together.

Thank you so much, Anna.

Thank you again, Rebecca, as well, for the presentations today.

Do you want to start with council or committee conversation?

Anyone want to start off?

Council Mug.

Thank you, Chair.

I think these are just two phenomenal things that we do at the city, and I've been lucky to have some every year have ambassadors work in our office, and the students are so bright, and they go off to do amazing things.

And we even have one of our staffers, Air Rend, who was an ambassador who is now works in our office.

And so I think whatever we can do to expand that program is helpful.

I think my colleagues have talked about before, you know, what does it look like for high school also?

Because I know that there's I think you do mostly kids enrolled in college, right?

Or yeah.

Yeah, so that's something to look into for sure.

Uh, but it's a great program, and I I love to see who we get.

You know, we had a mix of uh paid interns and ambassadors this past summer we had six, um, and they were all from D4, which is very rare to have.

Um, and they all had a very um they bought into it, right?

When they went block walking to pass information, they were like, This is our community, and they just believed in it so much.

And so, whatever we can do to be uh advocates for this program continue, I think is very, very important.

Um, and you know, uh I actually took my little sister who's a junior in high school to Cafe College.

I didn't let anybody know, you know, who I was or that I was going.

I just went just as a regular person, and uh we were helped pretty quick, and she got some really good advice.

Uh, and so luckily she's taught five percent of her class, so she's doing well.

Uh, but they were able to talk to her about things she can start doing now for scholarships, what to look out for day one of being a senior, uh, and they said, you know, you're in good shape, but come back when you're a senior and help us.

So it was a really positive experience.

Um, I was very happy to take her there and to show her that and try to help her, you know, speak up a little bit in what she's looking for in college.

Um, and so it was really great advice we got there.

So I want to thank the staff and the team, they did a really good job over there.

Um, incredibly important institution that we have with San Antonio Educational Partnership.

So excited for that work and want to continue to be advocate for you all.

Thank you.

Councilor Mercastille.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, uh Rebecca and Anna for the presentations.

I wanted to highlight with Anna in terms of the metrics that y'all have laid out.

Uh, your organization has exceeded the metrics uh that you all intended to accomplish.

Uh, and I'm what I'm most impressed by is in terms of the number of unduplicated clients, uh seeing y'all exceeding those metrics as well as with the clients from prior academic years.

Um, this is something based off of what y'all laid out and what I've heard from uh administration within our ISDs is you all are engaged and always willing to assist and accommodate to help with student schedules and or parent schedules.

So just really grateful for the impact that you all have in seeing uh the amount of individuals who are successfully graduating with a degree uh after going through CAFE College is very impactful, so just um share the similar sentiment in that this is just invaluable work, and we really appreciate uh the work of your team and uh all the case managers and every team member at Cafe College, we really appreciate them.

Um, Rebecca just also wanted to highlight uh, as folks have already mentioned, the ambassador program is just such an impactful program.

Uh as I mentioned in 2019, I had an opportunity to participate in that program.

And this weekend I spoke to the youth commission where they asked beyond, right, adding the city of San Antonio to your resume, what other skills and impact would expanding this program to opportunity youth have, right?

And what I emphasize, and you hit on in your presentation is the impact of social and emotional skills.

For example, if you intern with one of our offices, particularly on the constituent services end, your filtering and fielding calls with constituents that are in crisis, and you're having to navigate and walk them through what steps you're going to take or what steps there aren't for you to take, uh, and managing expectations in terms of just different needs in our community.

And those are just invaluable skills that can tell you, okay, I I have it to continue to work in a field that's very emotionally stressful, right?

Because people are putting very heavy cases on our field offices, and we have to identify a solution.

So I I highlight that to say that this program is just very impactful in terms of keeping folks here in the city of San Antonio.

And it's such a valuable program that I feel that there's a lot of value in expanding it for opportunity youth.

This is again, I know this is the committee that's well aware of what opportunity youth is, and within the public safety committee, we're seeing an increase in youth violence and cities all throughout the United States, whether it's Chicago, Madison, and Atlanta, they have programs specifically for opportunity youth, uh, in addition to regular internship programs like the ambassador program.

And what they've seen is a decrease in violent crime.

Uh, and I think in terms of the goal that you all have to track the success of graduates of the ambassador program, I think tracking uh folks uh through an opportunity youth pilot program uh will also be very impactful and something to follow.

See, are we seeing a decrease in uh youth violence in our community?

Um again, the goal, whether it's an adult, the goal is that we don't have folks reoffending, and we're getting to the root uh of issues in our community and both by providing opportunity for youth who may be going through municipal court or the county court, juvenile court rather, there's a lot of value to redirect and get folks on the correct path to enter a trade program, enter the workforce, and build those social and emotional skills.

So I'm hopeful as that CCR moves through the process that I have the support of my colleagues because this is um something that will be very impactful.

And I'm pleased that employers have already reached out saying, hey, we have some fund set aside and we'd be willing to support this pilot.

Um like the YAWCA, for example, says they're they're willing and ready to participate if this pilot moves forward.

Um, but those are all my comments.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Councilor Court.

Thank you, Chair.

I'll just start where Councilman Castillo left off.

Can you just tell us a little bit about the opportunity there with opportunity youth?

And maybe, you know, you mentioned Rebecca that you had a bunch of partners.

Do we have that access to that list so we can see which ones from the list would be willing to engage in that?

Yes, yes, ma'am.

We do have a list of employers, partners that we can send out.

Okay, yeah, I'd love to see that just so I could get kind of like can you uh can you just like name off some of the ones that you think might be potentially a good fit?

Uh at this time I I am I don't want to put anybody on the spot, so I'll send y'all the list.

Um, and I think you know, when I hit particularly mentioned that we spend a lot of time matching, I think this particular population, just like what we do with the Bear County fostering for educational success, not only are we matching organizations, but we're matching supervisors.

And so it's for me, it's less about the organization and kind of more about who's going to be mentoring and supervising them.

Um, but that's part of what we do with the ambassador program.

So I don't think it would change if we you know we were to do the pilot.

And I know we track metrics, and like I know you mentioned a lot about like wanting one of the metrics that we track is like the 51% or something like that that was retained in San Francisco.

54 that retains in San Antonio, and obviously these students are your it's you mentioned very rigorous programs.

So I I hear that, and I I could understand why there might be uh maybe there's a different lane that we create for our opportunity youth where we're tracking different metrics, right?

Like how many are um in, and maybe we could get, I always talk about like comparative groups, right?

If we're taking opportunity youth with the folks that are participating in the program in comparison to those that don't, what their rates for um participating or for conducting a criminal action or things like that, and how we could compare the opportunity to do some of that social emotional learning that councilman was talking about.

I don't think like I I can understand why you would want to, you know, maybe keep some of these metrics for these groups of kids who are great and talented at what they do and future council people.

Um, and we also want the opportunity for those opportunity youth kids to potentially have some of that social capital as well.

So just wanted to echo support for that.

Um, and then the other thing that I had a question about was for the metrics, do we track repeat ambassadors to see?

Because, like, for example, we had um an ambassador for two summers who's been phenomenal, and we want to be able to like one selfishly bring him back so that he can continue to explore opportunities to see if he would want to stay, because doing the work in our offices is not easy, and you have to have the right of the ability to stay calm and uh patient while yes, folks are in crisis, but also all folks yell at you sometimes on values that you can't that don't align with you and you can't control.

So yes, ma'am, we do.

So one of the questions that we do ask is if you've had um if you participated in the ambassador program and also SA works and um family services, so we actually know which of our ambassadors have had multiple internship experiences.

So I'd be curious to see how many of those remain.

Like, is there a higher statistic for folks that have done this multiple years to come back?

Because when you're a college and or when you're college intern in the summer, you're some the folks that are just trying to get the experience will take kind of whatever city.

I also see more often that freshmen who are coming back home for the first time are more likely to take the ambassadors and then we lose them like the last two times ago we didn't get the one back because you wanted to go get another experience.

So I'm just curious to see if that metric is higher for those that do it multiple years in a row.

And then also I know some of them are actually in San Antonio already, right?

So they can be enrolled.

So I'd be curious to see like take out that number if you're just trying to measure who's staying in San Antonio.

That what is the percentage of folks that are actually going out to college?

About 50% every year.

So 54% is the total 54%, like of the alumni, 54% actually currently live in San Antonio, but our um our class that we accept out of like the 212 that we accepted last year, um about a hundred, a hundred and seven-ish were um they actually did not attend they graduated uh high school in San Antonio and they attended college outside of San Antonio.

So, what's the percentage of those hundred and seven that are in the like or I guess yeah, like because it's not I guess last year's, but like historically, I'm that's what I I that we need to do further work with that.

So that is something that we need to get more um do a deeper dive data-wise.

Yeah, and it might be like if we can track, I don't know how easy it is to track these kids, but um if we could track them four or five years, right, to see if they do ever return on what they're doing.

I think it might show us more longitudinal data to be able to double down in the investment, which gets back to my last point.

I saw a dip from last year to this year in terms of number accepted.

I'm sorry if I missed that, but what was the reason for that?

Um, in 2024, um, we actually received additional funds from the city manager's office, so we were able to accept more ambassadors, and so it it's more of funding than um because we're getting over uh last year we got over eleven hundred applications, right?

Um, but we only had funding for about 200-ish, so we we had the two twelve.

So as if we get more funding, we we do have the opportunity.

He just had extra funds sitting around and was like, here you go, add this.

Yeah, so it was one time and it was um got it.

I think it helped us get it.

I was like, I didn't know Eric had a slash fund last time.

That's decent.

Okay, um and also just the last reason, the last thing I had was like on the survey, what's the response rate for like how what percentage of is are you getting a hundred percent response rate?

We are not.

Um I'll have to get to that percentage.

I don't recall.

Okay.

I'm just curious to see.

Like sometimes people that are really passionate about I I will fill out a survey if I am very passionate about something.

Um so just curious.

That's and we saw that with the care horse carriage rides.

Remember, Councilmember McKee Rodriguez, how many people filled out that survey?

Okay, all right.

That and I just want to say thank you to the San Antonio Education Partnership for everything you guys do.

Um I just had one quick question for you guys on the scholarship amounts.

So I know we're about to go talk about animal promise in a second, but I noticed that a lot of those scholarships are going to kids that are attending.

How do you guys kind of match the funding and what is the collaboration look like so that um kids that are in like one program are not necessarily or maybe they are being supplemented, or like how does that work?

So that is a uh individual case-by-case basis with each in institution, and so we have ongoing talks with them and look at how are they um using those those scholarships.

What it really also boils down to is the individual student need, and so that's what makes it a little bit complicated because there is not one kind of standard way that the finance uh financial aid offices are administering it.

It it is well the the standard way is that it depends on the student and um what their need is.

Um but we are having ongoing conversations with that.

Um, so that we really want to make the scholarship um outside of the promise program.

Um we know that promise covers a lot, but not really, I don't think um the full cost of attendance.

Um it's mainly tuition and fees, and so we want to make sure that our students who the majority are Pell eligible actually do get that scholarship many times in a refund to then be able to help with transportation to help with um other things that maybe uh they're many of them and most of them still are going to work, but this helps them with those costs as well.

So um we have ongoing conversations uh as the colleges kind of are also um evolving in their practices and policies.

Yeah, what's the number of do we provide funding for um?

Yes, the city of San Antonio provides 2.1 million dollars in scholarships.

And so that that's the data.

So the data that you're showing here is the funding that we provide.

Yes.

So this is just something for us to think about because I had I had heard about this before, and um, because we are funding Alamo Promise and funding this, we could be duplicating efforts on kids that are Alamo Promise is funding full uh tuition for the most part, and I don't think that I haven't heard anything otherwise.

So, not that I'm saying that yes, students don't have additional needs for food, et cetera, but in a situation where we are limited on funds and have other programs, for example, the opportunity youth fund that we want to support.

I just think we should be um a little bit more diligent on making sure we're not deduplic or duplicating funding for um the same students at the same university.

And so um just want to make sure if we can figure out a system to ensure that those are separate.

I think I'd be interested in learning about that maybe when you guys come back for budget session conversations, too.

Great.

Okay, yes, thank you.

All right, that's all I have.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Counselor McKee Rodriguez.

Thank you.

I'll be very brief.

Um, just thank y'all.

Oh, yeah, I popped up on my own screen.

Um just want to thank all of y'all for the the work that you do in our community and with our young people.

Um, you know, we get ambassadors uh I think every year so far, and it's been uh really wonderful.

And what was the other program we were talking about?

Well, Cafe College.

Um I actually, when I was in City Year, we would go over there every so often.

Um so great programs.

Thank you all for all the work.

Thank you for uh agendizing this so that we can receive these updates.

I think it's important that uh the community know what's going on and what programs are available.

I would like um for all of the um programs we're discussing today.

If we could have any data um disaggregated by a demographic in terms of I guess just every demographic you collect, and then also council districts if possible.

Um I'd love to, you know, I I personally would like to get a sense of what district two participation looks like, and I imagine most uh council members would like that information for uh for themselves.

Thank you.

Council Member Castillo.

Thank you, Chair.

Uh Dr.

Kore's comment had me thinking in terms of right, I'm thinking of the on-the-job training program, the incumbent worker program, and where's their opportunity for ready to work to support a pilot program for the ambassador program because it is on-the-job training and workforce experience.

Um we have had a couple of ambassadors that we have brought on full-time.

Um when I participated, I was also offered a position at the same time, right?

So I think there's value and partnering with ready to work in the ambassador program uh to grow the program if there is a demand.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you all so much.

Um a lot of the same questions y'all had are things that are on my mind.

I think in particular the demographics and council district uh question for both programs, but in particular, I think Cafe College.

I know during our our board retreat earlier this year, uh, I try to give a sneak peek as much as I could about what we could be asking here.

So I hope that was helpful.

Um I think we heard a lot of some similar stuff asking about um you know what zip codes are folks coming from, how many students have been served overall uh throughout this entire program's history, um, how many successfully graduated, um, with what kind of degrees, uh, how many received scholarships versus just counseling and or both.

Um, and then to counter record's point, right?

How many are also receiving services from promise programs or other uh on-site uh education educational um institution support, uh, whether it's from our colleges, universities, or even the high school programming.

I think one question uh I would like to know and uh whether the answer is today or not was a little bit about also you know what was it like uh before um when cafe colleges was coming around, how many uh ISDs andor universities and colleges had more robust student support or college advising programs, and then what's shifted since then?

I think one question uh I would like to know and uh whether the answers today or not was a little bit about also you know what was it like before um when Cafe College is first coming around, how many uh ISDs andor universities and colleges had more robust student support or college advising programs, and then what's shifted since then understanding I think that will be helpful too to understand maybe the next steps for uh SAP's uh role overall in the community.

Um even just you know how many are solely so reliant on Cafe College as well, whether it's ISE is still requiring this particular use versus having their own, as well as partnering in what just what that looks like, whether you have a full cap encapsulated today, but yeah, I I can speak to it a little bit.

Um I I was you know, I've been there um going on four years now, but in the roles that I've had in my past, um, in fact, with uh Cafe College opening, I was actually the director of Gear Up for SAISD at the time that Cafe College was opening.

So I'm very familiar with what was going on in the school districts and around college going, college advising and readiness at that time.

And actually, that was about the time when it was becoming kind of popular across, you know, we not only the state but of the country that there was an emphasis on college for all and going to college.

However, the school districts didn't have those designated um positions and uh the types of supports, unless they had like a gear-up grant that was federally funded.

Um, and so over time um we have seen a shift that now some but not all school districts have dedicated people at their schools at their high schools that are focused on doing advising, um, but they're usually very large caseloads, and um I think the school districts that we're in right now, um, very few of them actually have uh district paid staff doing the work that we're doing.

But there is kind of an evolution, and I think that's a great point to bring up where we are now in light of the changing landscape, and I'm happy to provide some more um data to you.

That'd be great.

Thank you.

Thanks.

One of the other things, um, and again, this can be later on in the follow-up, but just wondering too, right?

Uh, I think a little bit to Council Records' point about the external, right?

That uh external costs that come with attending college, especially for first generation students for students uh from low-income backgrounds uh that may need support from whether it's wrap around services for child care, utility assistance housing, food, medical, etc.

All those different things.

Um, wondering, you know, how many participants use that these resources or need them, whether it's through the scholarship or elsewhere, and where that services are where those services are coming from.

I'd be interested in seeing any overlap with the city resources as well that are external from the scholarship, like rental assistance, like uh food assistance or anything else.

Um I think just to kind of overlap with that demographic question about you know, what is the holistic service we're providing to these students through SAEP and then also externally?

So we don't provide wraparound services.

Right.

Um, but we that's our place is to connect them to other resources, and so um we don't track what other uh needs or services they have, but we proactively put out, you know, offering what where they can connect to should they need these types of services.

Um we do have a small uh emergency aid fund that's available for our scholars, and that's not funded by the city of San Antonio, those are funds that we raise outside.

Okay, that's helpful.

Yeah, um, and I think uh to Council Burcastillo's point about ready to work as well, right?

Understanding a little bit too if there's any overlap with individuals going through the ready to work program, also using Cafe College, whichever model, yeah, what that looks like too.

Yeah, because that is one of the resources that um we definitely make available to our uh clients at Cafe College.

And um, as I said, we have about 50-50 split of uh youth and adults that come in to CAFE College.

So we are always very ready to share uh the opportunities with ready to work, and I will say a lot of them do take advantage of it.

Got it.

Thank you.

That's helpful.

Um last thing I wanted SAP SAEP was just uh a little bit of data breakdown as well with all the demographics that we listed out already, but between traditional and non-traditional students, um, whether that's you know, model one and model two, understanding a little bit if there's any differences there.

Right.

So traditional meaning like model one that's high school straight in, right?

And then cafe college.

That's where I would say that um we still have some of the high schools direct into college, um, but we are seeing that in some years we have over 50% are the non-traditional, which kind of actually become the traditional students in some cases nowadays in some of the institutions, right?

And so um, yeah, we uh but I can give you that further breakdown.

That'd be great.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Absolutely, absolutely, thank you.

Um, last couple things with ambassador program.

Uh one, uh, want to definitely support Council Castillo's request on the Opportunity Youth Internship Pilot Program.

I know uh even outside of that conversation and that C CR Councilmember Messi Gonzalez and I spoke a little bit about uh the history of San Antonio's involvement in supporting uh youth and job programs and getting them into their career exploration programs, uh, and even just uh helping some of our uh just different part of the communities get that that opportunity.

And one of the big ones uh that I remember she mentioned to me as well was uh Sanyo.

I think her dad was a Sonio participant in.

So wondering what that could look like as a model as well with programming like this as a not just a return, but a um I don't know what the right word is for it, but uh reenvisioning of what we can do to support our youth at all levels, uh, who may not always have the opportunity to go to college immediately, who may need a bit uh of support to get there.

Um I think one of the best things about the ambassador program itself is that stability provides throughout your pro throughout your work as a student, uh, to be able to work and get the experience work and do the research work and do the school schooling you need to do all within one versus it being too separate.

Um helping the pay bills, all things like that were really helpful.

So, all that being said, I would love to see what that would look like.

Whatever ways we can expand the program are always interested.

Of course, understanding our financial position is always gonna be the conversation, but even breaking down, right?

What would it, what would it mean?

How much would it cost for us to uh be able to accept all 1,000 applicants or even 300 that employees are asking for?

Um I think that'd be helpful overall to help us kind of understand uh where we can go from here, whether it's with the pilot program or beyond.

Um I think those are all my things for the ambassador program.

Uh, of course, always interested in the alumni survey as well, understanding where folks are at, where they uh are still here, what are some reasons maybe they're not here if it's job opportunities somewhere else, if it's housing costs, or it's something else.

We'll be interested to see what that looks like as that data work goes on.

And I also want to, of course, acknowledge uh a member of our team who's an ambassador uh who is here taking pictures.

So if you see her, Jackie Compass is an incredible member of the team, uh, a friend of mine that I was able to meet at school as well, um, but who went through the ambassador program and did extremely well working side by side in D5.

Anyway, thank y'all so much for these presentations.

Any last comments on this topic?

Yeah, Council Ramung.

I just want to echo the points about working with opportunity youth, and I think that's a really important thing, especially with opportunity that exist in high schools, right?

Because we've talked about that idle hands right and what that means over the summertime.

And it's just I think a little bit harder to get a paid internship when you're in high school.

Um, you know, and at my high school I required 120 hours of internship to graduate, and uh it was not paid.

So uh I think it's important to expand to that and working with municipal court, of course, with a great partner there and next level, of course, getting kids you know filtered into these opportunities is really helpful.

So I just want to echo support for that.

Thank you.

All right.

We'll move into item number four, uh, and then five and six kind of back to back.

Um, the Alamo College's Promise Program.

Okay, good morning, Chair Golman.

Your shirt is fabulous.

Thank you for representing Alamo Promise and all the promise programs here.

Thank you for giving me a wonderful shirt that I can appropriately wear on a committee.

If anyone else would like one, please let me know.

We will provide for you and your staff and anyone else in the room, please.

So thank you all for the opportunity to present.

Thank you, Council members and guests.

My name is Stephanie Vasquez, and I serve as a chief program officer for Alamo Promise at the Alamo Colleges District.

So I'll be providing to you all this morning a high-level overview of the Promise Program and highlight some of the work that the Alamo College is doing to help with really the collective efforts that are happening in our region to promote college access and completion and educational attainment.

So at the Alamo Colleges, our work is really driven by our moonshot, and that is to partner to end poverty through education and training.

That has been lauded since 2019, since Chancellor Mike Flotes took office.

And what we really are looking at doing here is ensuring that we are working with partners across the spectrum to really ensure that we are providing higher education access and completion efforts that ensure that we have thriving communities in our region.

And the Alamo Promise is one of our key efforts to carry out that moonshot.

So Alamo Promise is our tuition-free college initiative at the Alamo Colleges district, and we are worked since 2019 to provide every graduating high school senior in Bear County the opportunity to attend college without financial barriers.

We'll talk a little bit more about how that works, but I'd like to share with you all a video that articulates and explains some of the key elements of our program.

In 2019, fewer than half of local high school graduates pursued college.

With tuition and related expenses remaining the biggest barrier to access in a city with one of the highest poverty rates in the nation.

A college degree is the key to creating brighter futures and a stronger economy.

To change this, the Alamo Colleges partnered with the community to build a college-going culture as part of its moonshot of partnering to end poverty in San Antonio.

Alamo Promise was the first step.

Now, imagine a community where students graduate from college debt-free with the Alamo Promise Program.

That dream can become a reality for graduating high school seniors in Bear County.

Alamo Promise is our way of ensuring every eligible student has access to tuition-free college at one of the five colleges in the Alamo Colleges district.

Here's how it works.

If you're a graduating high school senior from a Bear County high school or live in Bear County, Alamo Promise covers the cost of tuition and fees after financial aid through a last dollar scholarship, ensuring 100% of tuition and required fees are covered.

It supports students for up to three years or until they complete an associate degree or academic certificate.

And the best part there are no family income or graduating GPA or class rank requirements.

Every eligible graduating senior can qualify.

It's that simple.

But Alamo Promise is more than tuition.

It's a promise of support every step of the way towards success in the classroom and beyond.

Since launching in 2019, Alamo Promise has grown to serve students countywide, including 73 plus high schools and programs, public, private charter, and home schools.

And with more than 23,000 scholars enrolled so far, it's opening doors to brighter futures every day.

The Alamo College's district is focused on achieving its moonshot of ending poverty in the greater San Antonio area through education and training.

By making college accessible and affordable, we're creating pathways to high value careers and economic mobility for our community.

Together, we can open doors to opportunity.

Your support makes the Alamo Promise possible, empowering students, strengthening our community, and transforming lives.

Join us in fulfilling the promise.

So you're gonna hear a little bit more about promised programs at other institutions of higher education from my colleagues this morning.

But one of the things that I'd like to highlight that hopefully you took away from that explainer video is that Alamo Promise really is a promise program that is delivered in line with the mission, vision, and values of the Alamo colleges.

So we are an open access institution of higher education, and our promise program falls in line with that.

We do not require income levels for participation in the program, high school rank or GPA, because we really want to ensure that we can meet students where they are and provide an open access pathway to higher ed at any one of our five colleges.

And so what we've seen since we've launched the program most recently in 2025, there have been some really big things happening at the Alamo colleges that coincide with the enrollment efforts of the Alamo Promise Program.

So this past year, the Alamo Colleges experienced a record enrollment of 89,000 plus students served across our service area.

And we had a freshman enrollment of 16,000 students, of which about half of those consisted of Alamo Promise scholars.

So this year we did have a record enrollment of Alamo Promise Scholars of about 14,000 students new and continuing, but 7800 of those students were brand new freshmen entering one of our five colleges as Alamo Promise Scholars.

So every year we receive a larger uh incoming freshman class, and that is just testament to the work of the Promise Program and ensuring that students can receive tuition-free college.

Now, since the program has launched over six years of enrollment, we have actually served over 30,000 Alamo Promise students.

And so we really think that that is going to continue to be a key driver in metrics along graduation and transferring.

So far, we've had over four or nearly 4,000 students meet that milestone, and every semester that continues to grow.

And one of the things that we've also continued to monitor in partnership with organizations like Up Partnership, San Antonio Education Partnership, many others.

We're looking at what are the outcomes that are really going to be driving the needle for the continue continuum of college-going culture in our area.

So we've seen with some of the most recent data that's available from the higher education coordinating board a 7.4% increase in college going rates from pre-promise levels when Alamo Promise launched back in 2019 to 56% college going in 2023.

And so we know that there are many college access and completions efforts happening at the Alamo Colleges at UT San Antonio at AM San Antonio, drivers like education partnership and many others.

But we think that this is really a key driver in continuing to see that metric rise.

Now we continue to look at what that looks like across the county, but we also look at other large markets.

So the Alamo Colleges participates in an exercise for a Baldridge activities where it's national recognition.

We're always looking at data, right?

But one of the things that we pulled from that process was during the Alamo Promise rollout, we reviewed these data points where we saw that Bear County has actually experienced the greatest margin of increase in college going rates compared to other large markets in Texas.

So there's a table there that has a little bit more granular information, but we are monitoring and benchmarking how are we doing as a city, as a county and as a college system compared to areas like Dallas, Houston, Austin, and so on.

And we are leading the efforts there.

We also look at what is happening in terms of poverty rates.

So we talked about our moonshot in the beginning being a driver to partner to in poverty through education.

We are seeing that coinciding with those access and success efforts, including the launch of promise programs in San Antonio, the number of adults living in the below the poverty level has decreased since 2018.

And Bear County has actually experienced the greatest change in poverty decline compared to the state and nation when we look at this benchmark data.

So these are the things that we look at in terms of seeing how can access and tuition-free college be a driver for educational attainment, can be a driver for attracting workforce and business developments here in the city.

So we like to think that we're one piece of a puzzle, but a very important piece.

So we also review the investments that are supporting Alamo Promise.

So this is a snapshot specifically for year seven of our funding for scholars this coming academic year.

So we have 5 million set aside at the Alamo College's district from our institutional funds to support scholarships.

We are fortunate and thankful to have an allocation of 4.6 million from the city in continued partnership through our annual interlocal agreements.

We have funds also set aside at the Alamo Colleges Foundation.

And then we have a lion share of about 24 million that we anticipate students receiving from financial aid, since we do ensure that students utilize the financial aid funds and then in remaining needs to cover the cost of tuition and fees are covered by the scholarship portions.

Collected uh conducted by Dr.

Belinda Roman, who's a chief economist here.

She serves as a professor at St.

Mary's University.

But one of the key takeaways I'd like to highlight here is that for every dollar we invest in Alamo Promise, we receive about an estimated $4.22 cents in additional leverage funding from other sources.

So we see that when we invest funds in Alamo Promise, there are returns for our students in ensuring that they have access to higher education.

Now, in addition to Alamo Promise, the Alamo Colleges is a large system.

We've talked about nearly 90,000 students being served.

Alamo Promise is our key mainstay to ensure students have that initial point of entry so that they do not have to be concerned with financial barriers for tuition and fees.

But we also have other efforts like Alamo Books Plus that ensures students have all of their instructional materials covered and they do not have to incur costs for those items.

We have Alamo Advise that ensures students receive support for recruitment, help with access for onboarding, and also they have their academic advisor to ensure that they continue to progress toward completion and transfer or entering into the career workforce.

And then we also have Alamo Advocacy, which ensures students have access to wraparound services, including career services, clothes, pantry.

We partner with a food bank via and others to ensure all of the students that need students have even outside of the classroom are addressed.

And so Alamo Promise Scholars are afforded the opportunity to receive these services.

Many cases we have earmarked special funds or services for promise scholars, but this is really the gamut of support that the Alamo Colleges as a system is ensuring we provide at scale across our colleges and our service area.

So I'd like to leave you with one of our key and really stellar Alamo Promise students, Abram Tenorio.

He is an Alamo Promise scholar and a St.

Phillips College graduate.

He's actually our inaugural mosaico Alamo Promise Scholar of our year that we highlighted at our annual fundraiser last year.

He comes back and talks with our students and serves really in the mentor capacity, but he is a phenomenal young man.

He took too many hours as an engineer and aced them all.

Engineering major ACE them all, did internships with CPS, and he really just epitomizes what a student can do when you provide them the access and the opportunity and the resources, and he maximizes it.

So Abram, I'll share this quote with you all, but he really shares about how Alamo Promise was a turning point in his journey.

He talked about if it wasn't for Promise and for the support that he received at St.

Philip's College, he wouldn't be in this position.

And so recently I had the opportunity to facilitate a conversation with some of our Alamo Promise scholars, and Abram was on our student panel, and he shared how the Alamo Promise was really his way to higher education, and he talked about how it's his way to a different life, and he's having conversations with his family members and with his siblings and his little cousins about how they can do it too.

And he is bringing students, um, not only colleagues, other students, but he's bringing his family and generations along the way.

So all of the data points and pieces that we've talked about are to ensure that we have students like Abram.

We've been able to have 30,000 students to date served at Alamo Promise Scholars, and we want to continue in that effort moving forward.

So we thank you for the continued support and the opportunity to share a bit more.

And with that, I'll turn it over to our next agenda item.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Thanks.

We'll go into UT San Antonio's Bold Promise program.

I'm gonna set a timer so I don't talk too long.

Uh good morning.

I'm Eric Cooper.

I'm the Associate Vice Provost for Strategic Enrollment at uh UT San Antonio, and I'm a happy district one resident.

So uh want to talk to you a little bit about the bold promise program that we have at UT San Antonio.

When you get an opportunity to talk about a program like this, uh you take it because this is such a good program to talk about.

We're very happy about uh the bold promise program, and I think you'll see why.

Um all of the presenters today are gonna be talking about access.

We all believe in access for education, uh, and this is our commitment to this.

Uh it does cover our uh tuition and fees, uh mandatory for up to eight semesters, uh, which right now is just a little bit under 12,000 for a fall spring year.

Uh we launched this program in fall 2020.

Uh and we do, unlike uh Alamo, we do have criteria that we have to abide by.

Um when we launched this in 2022 or in 2020, uh, family income, we were looking at 50,000 or less.

Luckily, through funding through the UT system, we've been able to expand that.

Uh as you can see, uh, the UT system has given us additional funds.

Um, and in fall 2022, we were able to increase that to families with a 70,000 or less AGI.

Uh and then this fall, we were able to do this last fall 2025, 100,000 or less.

Uh those that really has come from a commitment from the UT system uh and from UT San Antonio with our institutional funds.

Uh our funds can come from a variety of sources, including federal state uh institutional, of course, and the UT system.

Uh currently we have a little over 5,500 enrolled students through the Bold Promise program.

Um we've offered that to over 25,000 students.

Uh, and you can see what we've offered uh since fall 21 uh through, well, fall 26 so far, uh, and how many have enrolled.

Uh, and we're seeing really good increases uh in the number of students enrolling in bold promise.

Um here are some of the program outcomes that we have.

Um 68% of our bold promise students are first generation.

Um the bold promise students you can see retain at about 5% higher than those students who do not come in as bold promise students.

Uh we have a 7% increase over four-year graduation through bold promise.

And our GPA average is higher for those students as well.

And here's one of the things that we're really uh proud about.

Bold Promise students borrow about 1,400 less annually than our no non-Bold Promise students.

UT San Antonio already has really low loan indebtedness upon graduation.

Uh it's uh much lower than the national average for even public institutions in the country.

Uh and the fact that we can actually offer this to decrease that for bold promise students is even better.

Um we also have we were able to do this um uh the bold scholars program.

Um so of course, if you're doing bold promise and living close to UT San Antonio, it's a great opportunity for you to be able to go uh stay at home and have a very affordable education, right?

What if you want to stay on campus and get that full educational experience, right?

We have people talk about living on campus and having additional uh opportunities.

So we came up with the Bold Scholars Program that's in conjunction with our honors program as well.

Uh it is a comprehensive four-year program that supports living on campus, their four first year.

Um looks at career engaged learning opportunities, uh, academic success support, uh, which is some of the things that UT San Antonio has really been pushing, uh, and we've been able to receive some awards for some of these things uh and peer mentorship.

Um the bold scholars program students are persisting at an even higher rate than the uh uh bold promise program.

Sorry.

We have a lot of bolds, really.

Okay.

Um college access, you know, like we said, all of the presenters are going to be talking about that.

We have some initiatives that we're very proud of, of course, partnering with CAFE College and SAEP uh and our West Side Community Center.

Um we are going out and trying to educate um Bear County more on FAFSA financial aid, FAFSA completion earlier to meet state deadlines, federal deadlines, and institutional deadlines.

And hopefully some of you have seen our mobile go center that we have.

Um it's like a driving billboard.

Um, but it actually has a purpose too, right?

We have computers that are in there.

We can go around uh and do things with the community and make sure that students can do applications, apply with the FAFSA, uh, and have on-site help with that.

We have direct admission partnerships with SAISD and NISD, uh, and those are direct admission programs.

And what I the one that I really want to highlight is with SAISD right now.

We are talking to their juniors right now about you have already been admitted to UT San Antonio, and uh as a pilot with SAISD and a partnership, we are actually talking to them about hey, you know, you're eligible for free and reduced lunch, which means you are probably eligible for bold uh promise.

So we are already talking to them about tuition and fees being uh taken care of at UT San Antonio while they're still juniors.

We're very happy about that.

Um and then, of course, we're gonna always track year over year FAFSA rates.

Uh we always want to make sure that students are filling out the FAFSA, and we have seen those rates go up.

Um bless you.

We have been working with uh recruiters and um financial aid officers and our one stop to always hit FAFSA completion and of course going out into the community.

Um and that's it, and I made the time.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Last presentation, uh, this topic is uh ANF San Antonio on the Jaguar Promise Program.

All right, good morning.

And I'm gonna set a timer as well.

Um well, happy St.

Paddy's Day with a little bit of luck.

We're getting out of here early, and with even more luck, my boss is going to buy me lunch after this, right, Brandy?

Um she made me sweet, right?

So okay.

Well, with that said, my name is Vanessa Torres.

I'm the associate vice president for enrollment marketing and recruitment at AM San Antonio, and I'm accompanied today by Brandy McClellan, our vice president for enrollment management.

So a little bit about our program.

I think we have a quick video to try and pull up here.

Thank you so much.

So it's really that easy.

Three steps it takes for students to apply to the institution, submit their transcripts as you would, if you're applying anyways, and then the last step is to complete the FAFSA or the TASFA.

And that is how you can initially become qualified for the Jaguar Promise.

Uh, we're really proud of this promise program for a couple of reasons.

As my colleagues have mentioned already, that access, that pathway to higher education is so crucial for our community.

We started a promise program back in 2020 as well called the Achiever Promise, if anybody recalls or may have heard of that.

And that program was really focused on achievers, students who are in the top 10% who had or who were about to complete an early college high school program.

We did not want to lose that piece of the program and that promise back to our community.

So you see the first two categories here on who's eligible, still keeps that intact.

Our top 10% and our early college high school students.

And the benefit here is that there is no AGI, there's no family income requirement.

So regardless of how much this student or this family earns, they qualify for our program, which is really huge.

Another huge thing about Jaguar Promise is that we were able to add on our transfer students, including those that come to us from Alamo colleges, and our top 35 students.

So students who are maybe not quite in that top 10%, even you know, just the barely there, they could qualify for our Jaguar Promise program as well.

And you see here there is a family AGI of 70,000 for those two populations.

But as we uh we believe it to be, transfer students are uh very key in our um in our uh strategy for recruitment.

So, steps as I mentioned, super easy.

Students apply by the priority deadline.

Uh, there is a priority deadline of January 15 for first year students for transfer students, it's March 15th.

Uh, so that just passed.

Um, and as long as they submit their transcripts and they complete the FAFSA, regardless of uh again the AGI on those on those first two cohorts, uh they will be eligible to receive the Jaguar Promise.

A little bit about our student profile.

You see here our first year students, about half of those students are coming from San Antonio Metro area.

This is huge in in a couple of reasons.

One, it's obviously the service uh the students that we serve, but this number has changed over the last five years.

We have seen this number actually reduce in the number of students that we are serving from San Antonio and increase in other markets that are coming into San Antonio, moving here for many reasons, as you all know, why they're moving to San Antonio.

You also see here in our first year student cohort, one in five of those students are receiving the Jaguar Promise opportunity, which is really huge.

A little bit different when you look at our transfer student, uh, but look at the number from the Alamo colleges.

What a great partnership that we have with the Alamo colleges, and that continues to be very strong and deepening every day as we continue working on our promise to promise with them.

But 8% of our students at transfer come in getting the free tuition fees, books as I mentioned earlier.

Uh our promise program is so comprehensive, we also are able to provide books, uh, $300 stipend per semester.

8%.

And the reason that's a little bit low, you might ask, is because we require full-time enrollment for both our transfer and our first year students.

How are we funding this promise program?

Many uh same of the many of the same sources that UTSA and uh Alamo Colleges announced, federal Pell Texas grant, we also have set aside and some university funds and our AM system funds.

How do we know this is being successful?

We can see the numbers I mentioned uh since 2020, we have increased our new student enrollment over 108%.

Moreover, if you look at the retention rates here comparatively to our, this is just our fall 205 class, but it's almost 86% for our overall retention.

If you look at Jaguar Promise as a whole, it's 93.

If you break that down even more, 97% of our top 10% students are retaining, and 9190.

So we know this um funding model is working.

We know we're able to serve as many students as we can, and we hope to continue uh serving even more.

I mentioned the change in demographic of what we're seeing our students in our enrolled population.

It is really exciting.

Jaguar Promise has opened the door for us across the state.

Uh, it's even in the logo, right?

This this program is for anybody in the state of Texas that has Texas residency.

We happen to recruit a lot on the South side.

We have very strong ties, and that still is our backyard.

Our focus on transfer students is that's how we began as an institution.

We were transfer focused.

That still remains intact.

You can see that commitment in our promise program as well.

But we are also seeing a lot of interest from other parts of the city, North Side, San Antonio ISD.

Outside of the city as well, we just announced six uh we're doubling our athletic program.

Uh we anticipate that will bring even more folks in from different parts of the state.

So, but at the end of the day, we're here for anybody who wants to improve themselves, obviously to get a degree and to hopefully give back to our community.

Many of the same student success initiatives.

I'm not going to go through them because I see my time is running out, but many of the same wraparound services that were shared.

We have a food pantry as well.

The main thing I'd like to point out here is we have a summer bridge program called Jaguar Jump Start.

This is a program that has been around for a couple of years now.

Uh, we're going into our third year.

This program offers high school students a free opportunity.

It's a four-week program over the summer in order to bolster their college readiness.

So if they feel like they need a little bit of extra support right before they begin their first semester with us, they can apply to this summer bridge program.

This is something that was started because we had grant funding.

As the grant funding, as you know, federally has uh there have been some changes there.

We as an institution are committed to continuing this program because we see how well these students come to us after just a little bit of a refresher over the summer.

And last not uh last but not least, the partnerships.

Um, I mentioned Promise to Promise.

This is a key partnership for us as we continue to work with recruiting transfer students.

We have a huge transfer population still to this day as a part of our enrollment.

We also are really proud of the Aspire network that we formed several years ago with our seven South Side ISD partnerships.

Even though South Side ISDs are not our main focal point, uh they are still, like I said, our backyard and our bread and butter in terms of we want those students to see themselves at an institution, whether it's the Alamo Colleges to us, or whether it's straight to us, whatever makes the most sense for their educational future and for their family.

We want to make that possible.

So we do a lot of work with our seven um ISD partners on the South side.

One of the um I would say the the programs we created, and I'll just take a short time to tell you a little bit about.

We created it really just so I could go into the schools and see the little kids because that's all I wanted to do.

Uh it's called a classroom of the month, and it focuses on teachers who are excelling in explaining and teaching their students about college-going culture.

What does that mean?

So we go into a classroom, we highlight the teacher, we give them a check for a thousand dollars, and we give all of their students a certificate, swag, party, all that kind of stuff.

We take the mascot, it's great.

Sponsored in partnership with community first health plans.

We've been doing this for the last five years, and it's an incredible way to make that connection with our community.

We're branching out, we started Passport to College, which is very similar.

We're working with uh 10 school uh classrooms right now, similarly with elementary and middle schools, and uh we hope to bring them to campus in May for the culmination of their first year where they've been doing college-going activities once a month with their teacher.

So really excited about that.

And my boss will definitely not buy me lunch if I fail to mention the La Familia Parent program.

This program uh we have started several years ago.

We are about to graduate uh another class tonight.

Parents from uh different school districts from different ISDs that we partner with are eligible to come to our campus or we go to theirs for a six-week curriculum, and they learn about how they can support their student in going to college.

The La Familia Parent uh workshops are incredible.

I invite anybody who wants to come to see and be inspired by these parents who go through this curriculum.

They graduate, and at the end of the class, um, even the parents want to enroll with us, which is really exciting and inspirational.

So, some partnerships to highlight some of the work we're doing.

Um, and many of these parents also learn about Jaguar Promise for the first time in this program.

So it's really really impactful.

And I believe that's my time, so thank you so much.

Well, thank you so much for the presentation, and thank you to everybody for these uh promise presentations.

I think it's really helpful for us to kind of grasp what the uh higher education institution community and our in our community are doing to help make that access more possible for our for our residents.

We don't like to start the conversation.

Catherine Castillo.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Stephanie, Eric, and uh Vanessa for the presentations.

Just really value the work that y'all do.

And I just wanted to highlight uh whether it's ready to work or the master program or many of the promise programs that we were briefed on today, uh, the importance of the wraparound services, right?

And working with community partners to ensure that students and participants have whether it's transportation, access to food, and so much more.

Uh I'm just grateful for you all connecting those pieces.

Uh, I'm reminded uh when I was volunteering with the Basura Vash in our district, and there's a student from Texas AM San Antonio who's in their water program.

Um, she's like, hey, I'm a student at AM, like great to meet you.

And I was like, Oh, how's everything going at AM San Antonio?

She's like, well, getting there is difficult, right?

They have a one vehicle within their family.

I believe at the time she was in her first year, so if they had to work around the family schedule, she's the car to get way out to the south side.

Uh, and because of those conversations, when we have via what's really uh present to council uh because of her experience sharing that with us, you know.

My ask is how are we going to expand transportation to M San Antonio, the South Side, because many of my constituents go to both UTSA A and M, and transportation uh is a huge issue getting to and from these great universities.

So just grateful for the work that y'all do, and of course, for the Alamo Promise as well.

Um, this is something that uh when I'm talking to parents uh out in the community, this is something that they ask me questions about and always just connect them to you also just uh grateful for the work that the folks in the higher education space are doing.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Coach Rugu.

Thank you, and I'm so proud to have uh what I would call describe as the best half of AM in my district, because I share it with council and via Grand.

Um, and you know, just yeah the growth at AM is is amazing.

I mean, it's it's phenomenal.

Uh and Dr.

O'Choa is doing a great job of getting partnerships there and and working with school districts, and that's been a huge thing for me.

Is he there with Southwest, South San, um, and my district in particular, and of course, Harlandale, and so he's um making sure in the way he describes it, right?

Is there's enough, there's a large enough sandbox for all the colleges to have students, so it's not he doesn't view it.

I don't think anybody views it as a competition so much as um you know what works for students and what place.

Um and the you know, Alamo Promise is just a phenomenal program, and there's still parents to this day, right, that don't know it exists.

And when I talk to parents, I said, well, you know, if your kid is a certain level, I mean this is a program that's just available to them standard, and people are very pleased to see that.

So, yeah, earlier I talked about my little sister, she's top five percent of her class, and so I'm like all these options are there for you uh by virtue of where you are in your academics.

So I just I just think these are phenomenal, and and we're slowly eliminating the excuses for kids to the barriers, right?

There's there's a significant reduction in barriers now to attending uh post-secondary education for all ages because these are not just right um young people out of high school.

Um so I really appreciate y'all being here and sharing some of the information with us.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Anyone else have any questions or comments?

All right.

Okay, that's recording.

Have you guys this is just for the Alamo colleges?

I know once you guys, once a student is no longer a senior, they're not eligible.

Have you all explored growing it past folks that may have done left for taking a skip year or a gap year and then wanting to come back?

Is just that funding just the barrier, or what's the thought there?

So definitely the resourcing is a consideration.

Um, we do on a case-by-case basis, review students for what we call an appeal process in the event they might have had some extenuating circumstances that uh required them to take some time off.

We review those and do um provide approvals when we've reviewed those circumstances for them to re-enter the program.

Um, but in terms of that being part of like the program structure, the resourcing portion is definitely the consideration we'd need to address.

Because I just wonder, I was I was having a conversation with a couple of students the other day, and they had mentioned, oh yeah, I'm not eligible to go back because I wouldn't be able to get the funding.

So, in those situations, you do consider providing that for those kids.

We do on a case-by-case basis.

We ask them to submit essentially, we have an appeal form process, we review their circumstances, and we can provide them a point of entry.

So I will say if there's ever those scenarios, always direct them to promise at alamo.edu.

My team reviews those cases, and so we try to really work with students to see where they are.

Um, but really it's on a case by case basis at this point.

And then there are also when we do run into students who are in those scenarios, we ensure that we provide them connections to other resources, whether it's at Alamo Colleges Foundations, entry to the Ready to Work Program or other venues where they can still receive that scholarship and tuition assistance, even if it's not the Alamo Promise program per se, they can still achieve a relatively similar outcome in certain in terms of the financial support.

And then that's if they're going through ready to work.

Of course, if they meet the ready to work requirements.

And so if they get in through ready to work, they can still get promise even though they've been like out for a few years.

They can receive the tuition funding, but not the wraparound, the rest of the support, basically.

Well, many of the wraparound support services that are available to promise scholars are actually part of what students receive at the system as Alamo Promise student or Alamo Colleges' students overall.

So they'd still have access to Alamo Books Plus, right?

The Alamo Advised model advocacy services, and if anything, in particular with ready to work, they would receive the case management services that come with that program as well.

So if there's ever those certain scenarios, we always try to work with students and see what are the best options available.

So just send them our way and we'll address their cases.

But for and if they're going through ready to work, they have to go through one of the pathways for ready to work, right?

Correct.

They need to meet those program requirements.

Okay.

And then the last thing that I wanted to just ask what you call it.

I Catholmora McKee Rodriguez mentioned this a little bit about the ambassador program, but it would be great to be able to see this.

I think this council is really data oriented.

Maybe it's just me, but I'd love to see the data from all of the programs about like who are the ones that are receiving these supports, which schools are they coming from, where which districts are they coming from, where are they where is that access, the access points to that.

So we could just see if there are certain areas that in my district, for example, that are that have more awareness, more access than others.

Yeah, we can definitely provide a follow-up.

We provided some breakdowns of council district before.

Um, in terms of participation of scholars, district four, district five, and district six are currently our top feeders, but we can definitely provide more detail in that in future presentations or updates to you all.

Awesome.

Thank you.

Great work on all of the things that you guys do for our kiddos.

Thank you.

Any other uh committee questions?

Comments?

Okay, great.

Glad to hear uh for Alamo Colleges, the West Side is really jumping into Alamo Promise.

Um But yes, I also agree with Councilmember Core getting some of that data about uh the demographics of it all would be helpful for each of the bold or each of the promise programs.

Um last thing I wasn't gonna ask about that is also any kind of overlap with, of course, uh Cafe College and Tanto Education Partnership, uh, but also with the other programs that we talked about today, ambassador program, um, and even other DHS programs like next level, training for job success, and then of course, ready to work as well.

Any other overlap I think would be helpful to understand, you know, what kind of support is out there for our community, who is taking advantage of it, and also who's not, right?

I think it'd be interesting to see too how many students are eligible for all these different programs that maybe are not taking part of it, and understanding a little bit more as to why, um, whether it's just different eligibility requirements, whether it's capacity of institutions themselves, including our own, um, any other kind of factors that would be involved in that.

Um and the last thing I wanted to ask was um this has to be answered fully today, but you know, how do each of the uh universities and colleges here today work with SADP and their long-term goals and any kind of strategies and resource um guidance?

We'll leave that there.

Cool.

Well, thank you all so much for the presentations today.

Uh, I really appreciate the full look at all the different kinds of uh higher education programming that we have here at the city and in our community.

Um we'll move on to item seven really quick, and there's a short presentation with just to kind of frame it.

But overall, I wanted to just kind of share, of course, next month we'll be having a conversation more so about all the different things that we've gone through, early education, early child education programming all the way through higher education programming here in the city, and so understanding a little bit more about what things that this committee wants to see for the upcoming budget conversation, uh, what kind of data we want to dig into a bit more, what that'll also take, um, and just be able to get the direction to staff to be able to really give us the answers that we're looking for in preparation for this budget and following ones.

Um, take it away, Alex.

So it's just a very a couple of very quick slides to help maybe kick off the conversation.

And even even today, you know, all of the meetings that this committee committee has had, the consistent theme has been wanting to understand more of the data, especially since you're seeing the alignment between so many of these programs.

Um, and there's been the additional request to try to find a way to visualize this in some way.

And and I think some of the briefings have included some pretty good either tables with some information, some um maps that show some of the demographics associated with some of the populations that have been referenced.

Um, but there's been this request to show it organized in some way in a more meaningful way.

And we've we've uh taken some steps into doing this.

But I wanted to start off by really under making it clear that at least this initial step of what we're looking to do is really come finding a coordinated way to visualize what you've already heard from, what you've already seen, and really focusing on the volume.

But I know that we're not quite looking at showing a complete or attempting to show any kind of correlation between some of the demographics that we're seeing in our community and some of the programmatic volumes, the number of participants and where they're coming from that we'd be trying to map out through this exercise.

So with that in mind, I just want to make sure that we're we we are heading in the right direction as we're organizing some of this data.

Um, and that we should be looking at the right um geographic boundaries, I'll call it, because some of the data you've seen, and we can actually go to the next slide because I I pulled up a couple of maps that y'all saw during the first presentation, where we mapped out um kinder readiness, and that was by school district, um, and because that's how we can get the data, but then opportunity youth, um, it's a different, it's a different geography, which both of these are different from council district, which is often one of the ways that you um we like to see some of this data as well.

So, with that in mind, um there's a couple of options that we've looked at already of how we could potentially start organizing some of the data that you have already seen.

If you can get to the next slide, one of those options would be for us to go to identify specific educational milestones.

If y'all remember, there was um, I believe eight different milestones that we began um the conversation um discussing.

These were two of them, and over the past couple months, these are some of the programs, these are some of the COSA programs that you've received briefings on.

That our next step would be to try to get as granular data as we can to overlay that into the maps that you saw in the previous slides, so that we could really start seeing again just from a volume perspective, where we seeing Head Start, early Head Start, pre-K4SA students in relation to that other map that you saw earlier.

Um, again, trying to uh identify some sort of correlation between those two would be a much more significant analysis.

Um, but for now, what we're trying to do is just show that the volume of participants for these different types of programs.

Um we could we could take a couple of these and try to get really deep and map as much or organize as much of the data as we can from the different departments.

Um, or we could do something um a little bit more comprehensive.

If you go to the next slide, these were all of those milestones that that were discussed.

Um so if we want if the committee wants to still be looking at all of these different educational outcome milestones, then it's more of a mapping exercise to understand which ones belong where.

Some of them just as we were thinking about it, some of them belong in more than one category.

Um, and and again, trying to track that volume by these different educational outcomes.

So we wanted to put that out there.

Our next steps are to get get your feedback today.

Um, we will work with all of the departments, and we have been working with them to see all of the data that they showed the committee over the past couple months, how do they keep it?

How how granular can we take it?

Um, and then already working with Craig and his team at ITSD to see how we can start organizing this visually to be able to show the committee.

Um they'll help us identify what the right GIS product or what the right proximation would be.

Um but we want to make sure we're heading in the right direction before we kind of take off.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you so much, Alex.

Um really quick.

I this is something just to share what my thoughts were when I were first talking about it was I think we've all talked about the full comprehensive view a whole lot and understanding what it all, all the overlaps are all the different things are there, how all of our programs are affecting just one student alone as much as possible, um, let alone for all the students in our community.

And I think we should still try to strive for that personally, but I also want to recognize like the amount of uh research that I'll take, amount of effort that'll take, how much staff time that'll take as well.

And so I think that's uh critically important to think about with this, and so um just wanted to leave that out there because I I have a feeling we're all gonna look for the most and everything because we are asking for that all the time.

Um, and I also want that, but I want to just be judicious about uh how much that'll take for our staff to take on, and then what maybe support we may need for that overall, not only by next month, over the next several months as we continue with this committee.

Um, open up the conversation here.

Any thoughts or feedback on what to see not only next month, but overall within this committee in terms of data collection, how to refine it, uh, what we're looking for within that.

You don't want to start?

Counselor Core.

Shocking, I want to start on this one.

Um, one of the things that I think is really important when we look at this data is to not just look at it isolated in the education perspective, because we know that stuff already, right?

We can go to um online to see what our graduation rate is at Edison, like that information is already readily available.

What I am more interested in is understanding the layers of impact that all of the other decisions that we make have on these data points.

So one of the things that I've been talking to Maria Vargas a lot, I don't think she's here.

Um, but her team has uh I mentioned this in public safety a little while back, but has a team of like nine um analytics specialists that have been looking at different points.

And so they look at they have created like a sample um just heat map of things like infrastructure, looking at um street lights, walkability, which are data points that have been collect that could be collected um on a point-by-point basis.

Um she looks at housing, she has some indicators for housing, she has some indicators for animal care services, like the number of 311 calls on um for spay and new or for 311 calls for stray and loose dogs.

Um she has some solid manage, solid even solid waste management calls that she has.

So, like 311 services calls are pulled in, and then there's of course safety um as one of them, which talks about like what are the crime rates.

She's pulling that.

Um, there's there's property calls for service, uh, social calls, violent calls, fires.

So all of that is being pulled, and you can and she's they're trying to figure out a way to map it right now.

Um, the thing that I think would be really cool is and y'all know I'm working on that uh safe passageway to school program, and we're using a quarter mile radius as uh from a school as the way to show the data.

So it's easy enough to do, it's not easy.

I mean, district by district is important, but I also think at least in my district and a lot of districts, there's variability across.

And so, and I asked her, like, can you overlay?

Because some of these are point-based, some of these are census block base, and she essentially described the technical aspect of yes, you can split up that data to be able to overlay it by school in an area and also by district.

So if you wanted to say, in this school, show me all or in and around this school, show me all of these things that then you could see the correlation to how many folks are in next level, how many folks are um on third grade, whatever reading start reading.

And so if you saw those side by side in uh either some like heat like coloring kind of scheme or even just data points, I think it would show more relevance than just showing the educational outcomes.

So I think my goal would be to see like how could we layer what they're doing from a citywide basis on top of what not only that our city is doing, but then what our nonprofits are doing.

So the next layer I think would be to find external way to gather information from all of our nonprofits to, and this is going to Alex's point of like the number of the volume.

But if there was a way that we could easily enough at least try to track where kids are coming from to be able to put that on top of this, I think it would help go to address our um the phase three of our violent crime prevention program, which is really investing in our nonprofits, and in order to invest more in our nonprofits, we have to see who's doing work where and make sure that the places that we are seeing um issues with safety, issues with uh health and education, that's where we are asking our nonprofits to invest more in.

So I think it could be used as a tool to track to see where things are so that we can then put more investment.

Um that's my long rant, but I hope that some of that made sense.

Yeah, no, I think that's helpful.

Um, I think you're particularly right in the I printed this packet for you, some folks from my team for everybody.

Uh just the original presentation we first got on this, and on the last second last page, it has the upstream determinants, which is to your point, right?

The housing, the infrastructure, the health, everything else that overlaps with all this that has a significant impact on educational outcomes as well, versus just the direct programming into your Instagram club or you're in this, which is still important, but can have a larger or a different impact.

Um I share that's happening a lot too.

And so interesting to see how maybe we can collaborate um with the integrated community safety office as well as um with Metro Health and DHS, we believe we're leading a lot of the data tracking um for this work or for this committee and seeing where we can overlap there if possible.

Um yeah, just wanted to show that.

So I just want to make sure were you looking for all the the things, or was it specifically more so an upstream focus?

It's okay to say what you feel.

I I my idea would be to take what they've at least already done for maybe this committee to be able to vet some of those points, right?

Because it's also important to know if we're looking at 311 calls, it's just calls, it's not actually you know, it's it it may not be a hundred percent reflective, but let's let's look at the data points that are already collecting.

Um we're gonna get new sidewalk data soon, but let's look at those and see if we can overlap that second slide of like all the different points that were shared on there so that these things are kind of upstream, matched up to that, and then I think the last piece that's not on either of these is our um uh NHSD nonprofit, like their work too.

Got it.

Okay, thank you.

Any other thoughts?

Counselor Mugheo.

I'll add to that because I agree with Council and Core and data.

Uh I just hope that that data and those overlays and those heat maps would help change the hearts and minds of some folks that currently disagree with some of what we're trying to do.

Um trying to come up with um getting that data, but then putting that into like an equity lens, right?

So, you know, every school district has their issues, but obviously, like this, you know, kids and students in this district specifically are having such a large barrier.

And I mean, access to these programs, you know, and some of which you know necessitate the fact that you are uh documented lower income, right?

So the fact that there's a lot of people, maybe from one area of town going to these specific programs means that there's a huge wage issue there also.

I mean, that's the other end of that, right?

And it's a great program, but we have to make sure we have to understand why people even qualify for that program and why we have so many kids and students qualifying for programs that are for reduced wages, because ultimately it comes down to to that.

And I think another thing too that would be helpful is you know, in housing, right?

There's a a lot of momentum and um committees for removing barriers to housing, and maybe we also look at something here about removing barriers to education from the city's perspective, right?

So, you know, we've heard some folks say, well, you know, the city mandates that we do this, or the city is asking us to report this data, uh, and it's somewhat of a burden to those institutions, and so how do we engage with them to remove any barriers that we just simply don't need, or maybe are antiquated um metrics or data points that we request that you know don't even go anywhere.

So I think we need to you know make it as easier for them to to work with the city as possible.

Um so I think that's important.

Um also obviously developing some sort of um legislative agenda priority will be helpful for us in the long term.

And I think um, you know, with some of this data, of course, um focus trying to do a larger focus on the early childhood education, because I think that's where you make such a huge impact if you get the first few years of a kid's life right with education.

I mean, the the results are just there in perpetuity more than likely.

Um, and we know that there's huge issues with child um uh care deserts, right?

And especially in my district.

So um I think kind of doing a narrow focus on that with some of the data is also important.

Thank you.

Um yeah, I think just want to make sure I heard right too, right?

Talking a little bit about the communication with ISDs, some of the child care providers, the higher education students to see what things are they needing in particular too versus just what we're looking for all the time.

I think is helpful.

I think about a lot too, right?

Um this is harder to get into, I think, in terms of the city side, but even understanding a bit the you know, teacher and staff needs any kind of even resources that the school districts need in terms of mental health resources, et cetera, uh that whether the city or not can provide, who can't provide that kind of support, um, and how that leads into the outcomes a little bit more there, or the educational outcomes that we're looking for, looking at um that's helpful.

Anyone else?

Counselor McKee Rodriguez?

Uh thank you, Chair.

Um can we go to slide three real quick?

Um what I think about this committee or what I would like to see out of the committee and future items.

Um what I would like to always have as the overarching question is are we making the investments and policy decisions necessary to um improve our educational outcomes and increase educational opportunities?

And so I I love GIS uh data and maps and I like overlaying and all the stuff.

I'm uh I have a math bias.

Uh, but I would what I would love to see is if we were to choose three different milestones, like kind of readiness, opportunity youth, and probably I would probably say third grade literacy or uh reading.

Um I would want to know then are the I would want deeper data, I think, from each of the we have a good idea of the ecosystem of educational partnerships and programs that are going on.

If we could get participation data and service data, um to say, hey, this is where we see that kindergarten readiness is the lowest.

Are we making a targeted effort to address tying in that equity piece that uh councilman mentioned?

Um, you know, are we investing in ways that are going to improve this outcome in the communities that need it most?

And I would probably, I mean, if I would love if we could look at you know, the comprehensive all milestones.

I don't know that if it's an issue of time and focus for now.

I mean, if we could start off with maybe those three, I I agree with kinder readiness and opportunity youth and breaking those down ideally as as deep as we can.

If we can get zip code data data, I think that would be helpful.

Um, but I would say kindergarten readiness, opportunity youth is then third grade reading proficiency.

Um, but eventually I would like us to have this sort of deep data on all of these milestones.

That way we can um I don't know, maybe we identify that we can reallocate resources in a way that helps achieve better outcomes for each of the milestones.

Um so I think it's I think I'm echoing quite a bit of what Councilmember McGill and Core said, but that's the perspective I have.

I think is that would love to get to all of the data if we can by the I mean we have four years, right?

Uh if we can get all the data, but if we have to start with a set, I'd probably say not just the two, but probably three or four.

Thank you.

Got it.

Thank you.

Councilman Castillo?

Thank you, Chair.

Um, I I'm supportive of what Dr.

Core has proposed.

Uh, in addition to that, I do believe there'd be value in inviting the community action advisory board uh to give updates as well.

Uh there are several educational uh committees in which we appoint uh residents to represent us, where I think there's also value getting updates, uh, whether it's the higher education advisory board, um, the early education board and the youth commission to provide council or committee rather with updates on what are initiatives that they're working on, what have they already identified as policy priorities for us to then build upon and support?

Uh and I think in terms of the the areas to focus, of course, kinder readiness and opportunity youth.

Uh I I do find the value in data, but as a historian, oftentimes the data overlaps and it tells a continued story, and there's policy recommendations um that committees recommend that I think that we should um get briefed on to see where is their opportunity to file CCRs or agendized within uh designated committee to move uh that recommendation forward.

Um I I I do want to go back to like the original task of the committee, which is also to take into account uh uh or into consideration indirect factors like housing um during the San Antonio Housing Trust retreat, right?

We um saw a presentation on school closures, uh and what stood out to me is they highlighted the role of uh essentially RAD in essentially removing housing, housing vouchers given to students, students now live on the outskirts of the city, and then you now have school closures, right?

So there's just a lot of overlapping opportunity, but looking at the committee uh goal or expectations set out in our mission is to also talk about those indirect factors, but then we're also having the same conversation at PCDC, right?

So, how do we not duplicate uh efforts and where do some of those um conversations fall under the PCDC or education opportunities and what do we feel comfortable with?

Um, but those are my thoughts.

Thank you for that.

Alex, what do you think based on the conversation?

What'd you hear?

I think there's still an interest to understand more of those indirect factors that contribute towards educational outcomes, but there is some alignment around um getting a little bit more specificity on some of the the milestones that we've seen.

Um so I I appreciate that.

It does give us give us a little bit of focus.

Um I think initially I had really thought that we would focus on the programs and the data from the briefings that you've already received, but it sounds like y'all y'all really want to see more.

So I think I'm gonna touch base with um my colleagues on PCDC staffing um to see what kind of data y'all may already be preparing again to not duplicate, but it sounds like there's some interest in understanding how those policies and programs are the indirect um contributors to educational outcomes, if I'm understanding that correctly.

Okay.

Got it.

Okay.

Well, is anything also any consolation here?

I'm interested in seeing what ways we can tap into any partners who can help with the data collection or data analysis as well.

Um, whether it's a partnership or it's the urban education institute or any other groups that would be helpful that we're aligned with.

Um I feel very similar to go into all the details as much as possible and provide any recommendations we can uh to any other committees to say, hey, this is a factor that we're looking at.

How can this committee look at the housing policy or the workers policy or the public safety policy that can or funding sources that can adjust all these things?

Um yeah, well, thank you so much.

Yeah, Councilman Gear.

I was well, I was gonna say the good news is the four of us are all on PCDC.

So uh we can obviously work together really closely too, depending on that to help parse out the agenda better.

All right.

Well, thank you all so much.

I know it was a pack uh conversation today, but I appreciate uh the direction here.

At 1203 p.m., just about right on time, we will officially adjourn the education opportunities committee meeting.

You and I both are