Speaker numbers apply only to this recording.
The Education Opportunities Committee met on October 20, 2026, to discuss three major agenda items: a proposed Ambassador Internship Pilot for opportunity youth, a presentation on student chronic absenteeism, and an overview of the After School Challenge Program. Chair Galvan presided, and discussions included presentations from city staff and community partners, followed by committee direction on data collection, program metrics, and interdepartmental coordination.
Rebecca Flores, Education Programs Administrator for the Department of Human Services, presented an 8-week paid internship pilot for 25 disconnected youth (ages 16-24). The pilot prioritizes foster youth, those experiencing housing instability, LGBTQ+ youth, and youth with court involvement. It would be funded by reallocating $200,000 from the Ambassador Summer Internship Program, reducing its university cohort from 200 to 150 interns.
Julia, from the Barricade Education Coalition, presented on the distinction between chronic absenteeism and truancy, the negative impact of attendance-based school funding in Texas, and tiered strategies from the Attendance Playbook. She highlighted the influence of after-school programs, transportation (VIA pilot), safe school routes, health services, and home visits.
Melody Weasley, Human Services Director, provided an overview of the 30-year-old program. In FY26, it served 6,176 students across four ISDs (SAISD, Harlandale, Edgewood, Southwest) with a $2.1 million general fund budget. FY25 metrics showed 90% grade promotion, 74% achieving a C or better in reading, and 80% not chronically absent. Parent fees generate roughly $336,000.
All right. It is 10, 10 a.m. and we will call the education opportunities committee meeting to order. Madam Quickly, please call the roll. Councilmember Corps. Councilmember McKee Rodriguez. Councilmember Bungia. Councilmember Castillo. Chair Garvan. Here. Sir, we have a quorum. Thank you so much. First things first, can we get a motion to approve the minutes from the last meeting? All in favor. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Beautiful. Aurora, do we have any public comment? Great. Then we can jump right into it. We have a whole bunch of uh different conversations today, but all around making sure we're serving our youth. So we'll start with the potential ambassador internship pilot program for opportunity and justice involved youth. Number two, presented by Rebecca. Good morning. I'm like getting old and need my reading glasses. Good morning, Chair and Committee members. I'm Rebecca Flores, the Education Programs Administrator for the Department of Human Services. And today I will be talking about the ambassador internship pilot for opportunity and justice involved youth. To kind of level set everybody and how this idea came to be. So that's going to take a special employer to work with those types of youth. We'll really need to work with the supervisor for preparation. So we want to set up, you know, realistic job descriptions, realistic milestones for those youth to accomplish. And here are the three internship programs that we shared with the governance committee on other internship programs that had kind of research-based uh results. Chicago, Boston, and New York City. All three had you know, mostly at risk, justice-involved youth, all had very positive outcome experiences. And the two things that we kept hearing over and over with these programs that there has to be the social emotional component in each of your programming, and those internships have to be meaningful for the youth. They have to feel engaged, they have to feel it's something they can actually do and feel that they can accomplish it. And here is our proposed pilot model. We kind of got all of the best practices, and again, from what we know, working with youth, looking at other communities, and we've developed an eight-week program for our opportunity youth. Two weeks will be workforce readiness training. The next six weeks will be with the work experience. The eligibility for this, it will be for disconnected youth, 16 to 24 years, reside in San Antonio. We will have priority outreach for the foster youth in the foster care experience, those experiencing housing instability, LGBTQ plus youth, and the juvenile and municipal court involvement. It was designed for access, so there will be no education or prior work experience required. We will be focusing on burial removal. So those first two weeks that we will be working with youth, we'll be working with them on mentoring, career coaching, making sure they have transportation assistance, making sure that they have the appropriate work clothing and addressing any other barriers that negatively be may be impacting our youth.