Committee on Education, July 31, 2024

COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION The Sixth Man Center, PYB 4250 Wissahickon Avenue Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19129 Wednesday, July 31, 2024 11:10 a.m. PRESENT: COUNCILMAN ISAIAH THOMAS, CHAIR COUNCILMAN ANTHONY PHILLIPS, VICE-CHAIR COUNCILWOMAN NINA AHMAD COUNCILWOMAN KENDRA BROOKS COUNCILWOMAN JAMIE GAUTHIER COUNCILWOMAN QUETCY M. LOZADA

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Good morning, everybody. Good morning, everybody. (Good morning.)

You better be glad the Council President isn't here. He wouldn't stand for that type of good morning. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Good morning.

Thank you, Kenny. Before we get started with today's hearing -- actually you know what, good morning, everybody. Welcome to Philadelphia's City Council and the Committee on Education. I now note that the hour has come. Mr. Braveman, will you please call the roll of attendance to make sure that members are present. Members who are present, please indicate your presence by saying aye.

Sure. Chair Thomas.

Present.

Vice-Chair Anthony Phillips.

Present.

Councilmember Gauthier.

Present.

Councilmember Lozada.

Present.

And, Councilmember Ahmad.

Present.

Thank you. A quorum of the Committee is present and this hearing is now called to order. This is the public hearing of the Committee of Education -- I'm sorry. This is a public hearing on the Committee of Education on Resolution No. 240630. Mr. Braveman, will you please read the title of the hearing resolution today.

Yes. We will be hearing Resolution No. 240630, authorizing the Committee on Education to hold hearings investigating the incidence, rate, impacts and outcomes of homeless students in the School District of Philadelphia.

Thank you. Just a couple household things. Number one, clearly the setting of today's hearing is one that's not traditional. So as people come in and go back out, we'll just ask that you try your best not to be in the middle center part. For those who don't know, all public hearings are actually live so this is happening live right now on television. So based on the way we are set up, we'll just ask that you not walk across the front in the midst of leaving in and out. Also, I would like to thank -- first of all, thank all of the members of the Education Committee for being here. They say City Council go on vacation in the summertime. I don't know, Councilmember Ahmad, if that's necessarily the case. But we are here today to discuss an important issue. And again, I want to thank all of the members of the Committee as well as their staff for being here on this day. For those who have been on City Council with me for some time, you know that I've been advocating for an organization called Philadelphia Youth Basketball. We've been fighting for a number of organizations who provide quality Out-of-School Time programming. And at the end of the day, we're super excited to see a vision that was started nearly years ago 7 coming to fruition. 8 The facility that we're in 9 is called the Sixth Man Center, and 10 this space was essentially built and the ribbon-cutting was earlier this year. So we are some of the first group of people to be here in this essential space. I also want to thank all of the City Council President's staff, the Tech team and everybody who got here early to be able to make this hearing happen. My team and I were intentional about doing the hearing here because we want people to see this amazing space. Today's conversation is about youth homelessness, and we will do a deep dive as it relates to this particular issue. But a big part of making sure young people is on the pathway to success is to make sure that they have quality programming not just during school but after school and in the summertime. And PYB is doing that. I do want to take a moment to recognize that Governor Shapiro was actually here yesterday. And I want to give a shout-out to the CEO Kenny Holdsman, can you raise your hand. (Applause.)

As well as co-founder Eric Worley. Eric, can you raise your hand. (Applause.)

Kenny and Eric are the co-founders of PYB. And the City of Philadelphia over the last couple years has put in nearly $1 million to help make this $46 million facility come to fruition. While that million dollars is great, part of why I got y'all out here today, John, is hopefully we can get a few more dollars for PYB. My dream world, the City of Philadelphia will give PYB $1 million a year in operating money to put us in a position to be able to make sure that we have a partnership between PYB and our schools to ensure that young people who go to Philadelphia-based schools can participate in programming here for free. With that being said, I also want to thank my office for making this happen. My office is a youth-based office. And as you walked in, you seen a lot of young people escorting you in. We had 14 interns intern with us this summer, eight high school students and six college students. And this is pretty much the culmination of their work this summer. So I want to thank all of them, especially our clerk Mr. Braveman as well as Sonia, Sarah and Michael for pretty much leading the charge. I also want to thank the members of the Public Defender's Office who are here today joining us in the conversation. (Applause.)

Thank you to (inaudible). And I also want to thank Councilmembers who will be joining us, Councilmember Rue Landau, Councilmember Jim Harrity and I just seen former State Rep. and new Executive Director of Project HOME, Donna Bullock as well too for being part of this. With that being said, I want to open it up to members of the Committee who would like to make any other opening remarks as it relates today's conversation. (No response.)

Hearing none, Mr. Braveman, will you please call -- wait. And while they're entering, Mr. Braveman, will you please call the first panel to testify before us today.

First, we welcome the Director from the Mayor's Office of Education, Dr. Deborah Carrera. (Witnesses approached Witness table.)

Good morning, Doc.

Good morning.

Please state your name for the record and you may begin with your testimony.

Good morning. My name is Dr. Deborah Carrera. I am the Chief Education Officer for the City of Philadelphia and I direct the Mayor's Office of Education for Mayor Cherelle L. Parker. The Mayor's Office of Education is a cabinet-level position reporting to the Chief of Staff. We're responsible for education policy and programs, including K-12 higher education and adult education. We serve as the Mayor's liaison to the School District of Philadelphia, charter schools, colleges and universities and the organizations and institutions that support quality access and affordable education. Our role is to advance the Mayor's vision of a world-class system of education for learners of all ages and socioeconomic status as a foundational element of economic opportunity for all. I want to introduce my Deputy Chief Education Officer Sharon Ward who's with me today as well. On behalf of the Administration, I want to thank you for convening this hearing and drawing attention to a critical education issue. Students experiencing homelessness are among the -- have among the greatest risks to school success. They have higher levels of emotional and behavioral problems, have increased risk of serious health problems, are more likely to experience separation from families and are more likely to experience school mobility and have negative education outcomes. They are more likely to repeat a grade, be expelled or drop out of school and have lower academic performance. Nationally, children experiencing homelessness are nine times more likely to repeat a grade and three times more likely to be placed in special education and four times more likely to drop out of school. Reducing the incidence of homelessness by creating permanent affordable housing is a top long- term priority of the Administration, and there are multiple City resources to identify and provide services to children and families experiencing homelessness. Throughout my seven years as a high school principal before coming to work for the City, I worked with many students experiencing homelessness. Some of our students and their families moved into the city and lived with family members while working towards permanent housing. Other students' families were evicted or lost their homes, forcing them to live in shelters. Lastly, some of my students were kicked out of their homes by their families and couch-surfed in their homes of friends. LGBTQ students and students with involvement in the justice system were particularly at risk of family estrangement. Many of the students I worked with who experienced homelessness struggled with their education because for many of them where they were going to sleep, their next meal, the well-being of their family or siblings was their priority, not Algebra 1, not English 3. We worked hard to earn our students' trust by providing a caring environment, support and connecting them with resources. It is important to note that the statutory responsibility for students experiencing homelessness lies with the state education agencies, in this case the Pennsylvania Department of Education and with local education agencies, including the School District of Philadelphia and charter schools. The McKinney-Vento Homelessness Assistance Act requires that state education agencies ensure that each child of each homeless individual and each homeless youth has equal access to the same free appropriate public education, including a public preschool education as provided to other children and youth. Services must be provided to students up to age 21. Children and youth experiencing homelessness may be living in a family unit or may be unaccompanied youth.

McKinney- Vento requirements include immediate enrollment of homeless children and youth even if they lack the normally required documents; school stability, school districts must prioritize keeping homeless students in their school of origin; support services, schools must provide access to a wide range of educational services; liaison services, each LEA, Local Education Agency must designate a liaison to identify and provide support services to students experiencing homelessness. The School District of Philadelphia will provide details about its program and services during its testimony. The City of Philadelphia has a variety of points of intersection with both families and youth experiencing homelessness. One precondition for student success in school is that their basic needs are met. The City of Philadelphia works with the School District to meet those needs so students can get to school, focus on their studies and just be children. Philadelphia's Continuum of Care led by the Office of Homeless Services has developed a robust set of services to address the needs of youth and young adults experiencing homelessness as well as an opportunity for youth to provide input and informed local practices, policies, procedures and programming. S. 7 million in an award in 2022. Using HUD's guidelines, the program is primarily targeted to youth ages to 24, providing 17 transitional housing, rapid 18 rehousing and supportive housing as well as supportive services ranging from mental health, outpatient services, case management to assistance with transportation and child care. The bulk of the funds, 70 percent, will be used for the rapid rehousing with supports, with percent allocated to supportive housing and 20 percent to transitional housing. The scope of services was developed with homeless youth during the design phase of the YHDP process. The City will also (inaudible) funding from other funding streams from HUD's Continuum of Care program, including emergency housing vouchers, family unification program fostering youth to independence, vouchers to support this initiative. Individuals experiencing or at risk of experiencing homelessness encounter Philadelphia's coordinated entry, an assessment-based housing referral system at one of six access points, sites where youth can meet with staff and receive assistance and accessible available resources. The Continuum of Care has designated access points for youth that offer a friendly nonjudgmental space to seek assistance and receive targeted linkage to resources that are geared towards youth and young adults. These access points are operated by youth-centered provider agencies such as Valley Youth House and Eddie's House with staff who are trained to work with youth and young adults and guide them towards the resources and services they need. The City also partners with a variety of youth-serving agencies with many, including Valley Youth House, Eddie's House, HopePHL and Philly Homes for Youth Coalition offering housing programs with individualized supports for and comprehensive wraparound services. Additionally from 2022 to 2024, OHS received funding from the Philadelphia School District from its federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief, ESSER, funds to hire a homeless liaison to assist students experiencing homelessness by providing referrals to public benefits and referrals to enrichment programs, summer jobs and for students with disabilities referrals to transportation services. The City has also partnered with Pennsylvania Education for Children and Youth Experiencing Homelessness Program. This work has helped to inform the services provided by a liaison to better meet the unique needs of youth and young adults dealing with low-income, limited English proficiency, disability, racial and ethnic minority and LGBTQ students.

We've given you an appendix that shows an unduplicated count of youth from ages to that have been served through these programs. The Office of Children and Families Department of Human Services also intersect with and provide services to students experiencing homelessness. The DHS Education Support Center works with the School District to prevent disruptions to the students' education when they are placed in DHS care and identifies and removes educational barriers for children in the child welfare system. Additionally, DHS coordinates with the School District in an attempt for youth to remain in their school of origin as to not disrupt their education. The ESC and DHS providers will make referrals for services, rental support and resources to concrete goods in an effort to prevent youth from becoming homeless. Additionally, the DHS social work services managers who work in the District schools collaborate with the School District by helping to enroll youth in school and supporting school stability. Our community school coordinators also work to refer youth in danger of homelessness for services and support to help stabilize families. I want to thank Councilman Thomas and the Committee for elevating this important issue. We look forward to working with you to identifying barriers that impede school success, identify gaps in services that develop a strategy to best support this vulnerable student population. Thank you.

Thank you for your testimony. We appreciate it. Before we move on to questions, I just want to note for the record that Councilmember Mark Squilla from the 1st Councilmanic District has joined us as well as Minority Leader Councilmember Kendra Brooks has joined us as well too, so welcome. Thank you. You guys missed my opening remarks, but I'll be having my camp here, Councilmember Squilla, the week of August 19th. So you can come back then and we can talk about the facility and the amazing space. With that being said, I want to start with some questions. So first question: For all of us, not just for the members of Council, but for all of the advocates and people who really care about this issue, a big part of addressing homelessness for young people in the City of Philadelphia requires a collaborative effort between of course us the City and of course our School District. While we know young people go to all different types of schools in the city of Philadelphia, we know that the School District of Philadelphia houses a lot of homeless young people, whether it's couch-surfing like you talked about or young folks who are visibly homeless. Can you describe the interactions between the Mayor's Office of Education and the School District of Philadelphia and what your vision is moving forward? And I'll go into depth as we go throughout the course of the hearing, but what we know on our side is that we've run out of federal dollars. The ARPA funding is gone on our side so we're constantly thinking about what we need to do to offset that revenue that we essentially won't have anymore. The School District essentially has the same issue. While we know that Harrisburg has given us $232 million in new money for operating costs for the School District of Philadelphia, it still doesn't offset all of the dollars that we were using from the federal level to essentially operate as a District. So with the deficits on the horizon, both as it relates to us as a City and the School District, what is the vision as it relates to your office cooperating with the District and how do we make sure that we're not having a drop in services based on the programs and the people who are doing the work that's effective?

That's a great question. Thank you, Councilman. So we've been in this role since March 1st, for four months, but I'm excited to be in this role because as you've heard, I spent 27 years working with the School District of Philadelphia and three at the state. And so, this is something that is near and dear to me and I'm excited that you are taking on this issue. But the Mayor's Office of Education, one of our primary goals and responsibilities is to align the systems that are in place. And so, we have the convening power to be able to bring the groups to the table that are doing this work. As you heard, the School District of Philadelphia works under law, under McKinney-Vento, so they have a major responsibility in identifying students who are homeless and working with that liaison in each of those schools to provide support. So the District will talk about that. But our office will be working closely with the School District, we will be working closely with my colleague here from the Office of Homeless Services. We will be working also with DHS to better understand what the gaps are, to coordinate and to be able to support the initiatives because there's a lot that's happening, a lot that's going on and people are doing the work, but we want to make sure we bring that to the table. And to your point about the funding as well, to be able to think about what are some ways and some solutions that we can work together to be able to support young people and provide them with the necessary, as you said, the basic needs that's even the start of this work together.

So we've seen some issues as it relates to the Office of Homelessness. We know that the School District of Philadelphia has jumped significantly as it relates to the number of youth that they essentially served, over 10,000 youth in the 2022-2023 school year, and we know that those numbers will essentially increase. How will we be dedicating resources from the Admin's perspective, how will we be dedicating resources to stabilize this problem and to ensure that the numbers are moving in the opposite direction of what they're going in right now?

Yeah, I think our close collaboration is going to be with the Office of Homeless Services. That $8.7 million grant, that goes into effect now. So 70 percent of those dollars, as I stated before, are going into housing. And so, this is a youth- led initiative where young people have been at the table. They talked about the design, they talked about their needs. So that's a bulk of dollars that is going into rapid rehousing, sustainable rehousing treatment. And so, we're going to be working in collaboration with our colleagues at OHS to be able to make sure that those dollars get to the right places and support the work that many people are doing.

So I think our concern is a number of things. Number one, we really think that it's important that it's a coordinated effort essentially with the District. When you talk to a lot of people who are in the education space, one of the things that they'll say is that government operates in silos. So when're talking about having the number of beds and making sure that we're dealing with the homelessness issue as a whole, I think what we want to see is something that's specifically narrowed down and has a coordinated effort that's focused on children. We know that there's a lot going on, Councilmember Lozada. I'm hoping at some point you'll talk about some of the things that's happening in Kensington and some of the homeless issues down there. But when we're talking about youth homelessness, I think that there needs to be a specific maybe task force or effort that's focused on that demographic, because homelessness for young people, as you said in your testimony, looks very different than what homelessness can look like for anybody else. Honestly, a lot of young people who are technically classified as homeless, they don't even see themselves as homeless, right. They're staying with grandmom this week and auntie next week and maybe a friend a week after that. And to them that type of couch-surfing is essentially just a norm. So I think what we're looking for are ways to identify who the young people are as it relates to primarily the School District of Philadelphia, we know they'll be coming up pretty soon, but also having a coordinated effort. I'll open it up to members of City Council for questions that they may have for the Admin, but I think before I close out the last thing I'll ask: Have you identified organizations that you feel like, and we'll ask the School District the exact same question, have we identified organizations and providers that we feel like are specifically experts as it relates to dealing with youth homelessness? And if we have, who are they, how many do we have and how do we envision highlighting and funding those organizations so they can really put a dent in this problem that we know is essentially spiking right now?

Yeah. As I mentioned before, we've been having conversations with some of the current providers, Eddie's House, HopePHL, some of the others we've been engaging them in conversations. But again, we are very open to creating a table where we can convene those partners, learn about best practices, hear what they're doing so that we can be able to, to your point, identify the students, the needs and have, as we were talking about today, this is an early conversation about greater work. And so, this is just the beginning. So I think establishing that table, convening those partners, listening, learning, especially from the young people engaging their voice. That was one of the things even as a high school principal transformed our school, bringing the students to the table, having them talk, having them share their experiences and having them also tell us how to make this work.

So this resolution will be one that I will assure by the end of today's conversation we continue the conversation. So I won't close out this hearing because I think that it's important that we have a Part 2 of this conversation so we could put ourselves in a position where we could specifically identify organizations that we know are doing a phenomenal job servicing young people because when you're talking about youth, the needs will be different, right. They need transportation back and forth to school. We got to think about meals and extra- curricular activities. So that really is our focus on the Council side and we want to make sure that those organizations are getting the resources that they have. Normally, we have little things to ding up so I'm not quite sure if you were in the queue. Chair recognizes Councilmember Gauthier and then after that we'll go to Councilmember Lozada. Councilmember Gauthier.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good morning.

Good morning, Councilmember.

I have a few questions. One about the chart that you presented. Can you speak to the difference in the numbers pre-FY20? It seems like in total we were serving about 900 young people, but then those numbers jumped astronomically in the years following that and average about 2600 a year. So can you just speak to, number one, the difference in those numbers?

I'm going to have my colleague Mary Beth speak to that.

Okay.

As you come up, please make sure that you start by stating your name for the record before you begin your testimony and for anybody else who's coming to testify today, please always start with your name for the record.

Sure. Good morning, Council. My name is Beth Gonzalez. I'm the Deputy Director of Policy Planning and Performance Management at the Office of Homeless Services. So in regards to your question, this chart breaks down who we served from 2020 to 2024. Each year by age breakdown, through 12, to 17, to and then the total. The difference is in reference to the distinct age count. It's not always equal to the total for each year because some of the youth that we have when we're serving them, we only count them once in the total, but they might change by age in reference to years that they are so it's not going to always equal the sum total.

14 That wasn't the -- the question I'm 15 asking is we have one column that 16 says pre-FY20. It seems like we've 17 served 900 people in this program 18 in total pre-FY20, but then every 19 year following that the numbers 20 jump to like 2600 people. Can you 21 explain -- were the access points 22 not set up at a certain point and 23 we just set them up and we're 24 serving more people because they know about the program? I just want to understand the jump in the numbers. And then can you also speak about -- the most astronomical totals are in to 24. Can you 6 speak about the particular 7 challenges faced by that age group 8 that result in these numbers? 9

Sure. So in 10 reference to pre-'20 and in 11 reference to who OHS served, that 12 was pre-COVID. So obviously when 13 we looked, we had spikes during 14 some of these years. That's why it 15 jumped -- 16

I'm 17 sorry. If you could speak into the 18 mic so that the people can hear you.

Can you hear me?

That's better. Thank you.

So pre-20, obviously this was who we served pre-COVID. So we saw spikes during the COVID years, so that's why you see the uptick in those particular years and those numbers. In reference to what we see, in reference to to 24, I think 7 because of coordinated entry and 8 marketing it and destigmatizing the 9 topic of homelessness, like we said 10 a lot of people don't identify as 11 being homeless, but I think through 12 education and marketing and working 13 with our youth, marketing that out 14 more so more folks are coming to 15 the front door and getting service, 16 plus as we're getting more through 17 our Young Adult Leadership 18 Committee, through the grants we're getting, you know, before in early years pre-COVID, you know, we might talk about what we want to do around homelessness but there was no money. So now we have money coming in, programming ideas coming in, so I think more people are coming to the table and the youth are coming to help design that so we're getting more interest.

Are there particular challenges with that age group in terms of the risk they face with homelessness?

Sure. I think any young adult, you have human trafficking concerns, a lot of folks because of faith-based reasons might get kicked out of their homes. There's a lot of folks who in the LEP population as well. So I think really the key thing is not having that stigma tied to it and being comfortable to go to your McKinney-Vento folks and your teachers to get service, so then working with our network and our systems and all of our nonprofit providers to help people realize that there's help out there and they don't have to do it alone.

And then lastly, can you just explain for our understanding the gap in time between when we got the grant? And I guess it sounds like we're about to start using the grant but we got the grant in '22. I just want to understand --

Yeah. So in the fall of '22 HUD announced the awards. Then it's essentially a planning grant that you have to get first. So they said, we're going to give you this money, each community then has to go back, work with their youth and design, all right, depending on the allocated amount that you receive, how do you want to use that money. So then you had six to eight months to plan that process and get approved. Once that got approved which happened in '23, so now we're now in the process of standing up all those programs in housing.

Thank you so much. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you. Just real quick, I'm sorry, Councilmember Lozada. I'm going to go out of order. Chair recognizes Councilmember Phillips. I want to let him give some remarks.

Hi, everyone. Can everyone hear me? Perfect. Just really quickly before I excuse myself, just want a quick point of inquiry. Is there a liaison in the School District of Philadelphia that is there to touch basis with all of the young people who are experiencing homelessness? And are they constantly having that touchpoint with them in the schools? If it's just only a couple, but are there ones that just are solely responsible with visiting and touching even if they don't even contact them on a frequent basis and how those outcomes are coming along?

Yes. So through the McKinney-Vento Act, each school including charter schools have a liaison at their school and then all of those liaisons work together in close partnership. Colleen leads that charge in working with the students that are experiencing homelessness or at risk of homelessness. And then we work very closely as well, meet monthly, talk about ways of how we can improve that partnership as well as any identifying trends that are happening.

Thank you. I just want to learn maybe later about how effective those liaisons are with the young people because that would be really helpful.

Yep.

Thank you, Chairman Thomas.

Thank you, Councilmember Phillips. There's a number of people who want to come on in. It's a few spaces if you want to come on in. If you want to stay right there, you're fine too. But if you want to come on in, you can take a minute to do that now. Chair recognizes Councilmember Lozada.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I guess my question is following up on what Chairman Thomas said about providers and identifying who those providers are, I think that's extremely important to me, and I'm sure to all the members of this Committee because we want to be able to know who do we reach out to if families communicate with our offices that they are experiencing homelessness and have young people who are in our School District system and how we can be supportive to them. Somebody mentioned community coordinators. And so, I guess my question is how do those community coordinators help this particular population and through that support that they're receiving through these community coordinators, how are we measuring whether the work and the resources that they're connecting these young people with, how do we measure whether they're successful, right? We do tend to work in silos sometimes. And so, are we working -- and some of this population can be in the 7th Council District today. As a result of couch-surfing, they may end up in the 1st or in the 9th somewhere. And so, how are community coordinators working together to be able to ensure that this young person consistently is receiving the support that they need and how are we measuring whether those supports keep them in our academic system and on the path to a successful journey, academic journey?

Before you answer that question, I just want to remind everybody when you're speaking, please speak into the mic. It's a lot of different things happening here right now which makes this an amazing space, but we want everybody who cares about this issue to be able to hear the responses as well as the questions of members. So please speak into the mic. There's no 21 such thing as too loud and let's continue the dialogue.

So thank you. The exciting thing is that community schools is under my portfolio. And so, I'm really excited about working with the schools. And they serve as a direct contact with students that are experiencing homelessness. So, number one, they build relationships at the school. They build relationships with the leaders. They build relationships with the counselors. And students come to them and they are seen as trusted partners. So the community school coordinators do a very incredible, holistic approach, providing food to families, providing clothing, providing academic support for those students. But in addition to that, they work closely with the McKinney-Vento liaison at the school to support that young person if they need shelter or support that family if they need housing. And then I think as was mentioned before, they do the follow-up, right. They work with those families. They have a relationship. One of the most important things about McKinney- Vento is that the law requires for students to stay in their school of origin and that helps disrupt the mobility. A little bit harder when you're talking about teenagers because they might be staying at a friend's house tomorrow and another friend's house the next day. But at least for that younger population, the law requires that they do stay. To the measurement piece, the District can talk about that, how they're measuring attendance, how they're measuring academic success. Students also in the District have to complete surveys so they can probably talk about that piece, but the community coordinators are an excellent strategy in providing supports to the entire family around health, food insecurity and I think as we mentioned before, one of the biggest, most important things is that students that are facing homelessness that their basic needs are met, and that is very critical in this conversation.

If you can share with the Committee the list of where have we identified that these students are concentrated, right, where are the schools that maybe as a legislative body we can provide support or we can identify, we can reach out to see how we can better be supportive. When you had the opportunity to meet with some of these students, what are some of the programs or what are some of the needs that they have expressed to you that they need that we are currently not providing?

I'm going to start with this one: They want adults that care, they want adults that care. So it's very critical that we don't just say we care for kids, but we care about kids. And so, they want adults that see them, they want adults that hear them, they want adults that can respond to what they're asking for in realtime.

What are some of the things they're asking for?

So there's a blend of things. So, for example, it could be transportation with school, it could be employment, it could be child care, so our parenting youth and the needs that they have. It could be mental health treatment.

I'm sorry. Quick question.

Sure.

Why would a young person need support with transportation? What would be the situation that will present itself? And I'm putting my coach's hat on. All of the young people who live within -- if you live within a mile of the school and you don't have transportation but if you're homeless you don't have a house, so if you are a young person who's dealing with homelessness, why aren't we giving them a free transpass?

Right. So they could be couch-surfing and they're not near their school of origin so they might be hopping around so they --

So if a young person is in that category, they don't get a free transpass?

No, they would.

So why would they need help with transportation?

But they might have additional services and places they're going, employment, so they might need additional supports. So there might be internships or employment or --

We would want to -- I'm going to pass it back to Councilmember Lozada. But I would want to do a deep dive into that particular issue right there because at the end of the day, the amount of money that we as a City are putting into different initiatives specifically focusing on SEPTA as well as the School District, I can't understand why a homeless youth will have an issue with transportation dealing with anything. So I just want to note for the record between the School District and the Mayor's Office when we come back to have this conversation, we would definitely want more data as to why a homeless youth will have an issue with transportation. I can't comprehend how that would make sense when we give our young people free transpasses. I'm sorry. You can continue answering Councilmember Lozada's question.

Well, I agree with what you've just said and I also think that this Administration has an amazing relationship from what I can see, right, as it relates to labor, right. And so, how do we connect these young people to apprenticeship opportunities, to opportunities that will give them an opportunity to be self- sufficient at some point or another? And so, if we've not done that yet, then I think that part of the plan should be ensuring that we reach out and connect with all of these people who have provided this legislative body as well as the Administration with access to a workforce, right. We need to start thinking more outside of the box and really taking people up on the opportunities that they're offering us and our young people to be able to -- especially this population, right, an opportunity to be self- sufficient and succeed. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I can definitely say on a macro level HUD requires with the dollars that we get as a continuum of care, which is our coordinated response to address homelessness and those particular subpopulations such as older adults, students, it's getting everyone at the table so we don't work in silos. That's the intention of the CoC. So it's making sure we're not only streamlining all of their fiscal and finance resources that are coming in but also the soft pass- offs, so like when we're transitioning from one agency to another. So it's really important that not only Council and the Administration but making sure all of our providers, all the government agencies are really working together in a coordinated effort and kind of rowing in the same direction. So that's the goal of the CoC, and would love to talk to you guys further about that.

Just to follow up on that, the CoC has been meeting for how long?

So it's a requirement since HUD funding, so I don't know the exact year that would be.

I asked that question because this has been an issue for a long time. This is not new to the city of Philadelphia, right. And so, I think that recognizing that it's been happening for a long time and the fact that we're still having the conversation about how important this is, the fact that there's still not enough funding for it or that there are not enough partnerships built, the fact that we still don't have a concrete path towards a successful academic journey for this population to me is frustrating, right. And this is not the first time, right. So I'm not -- I'm frustrated, but I'm not surprised. At what point do we stop having conversations and we really start putting some of these things into practice, right? Dr. Debbie Carrera, you've been in the education world for many years. You've been working with the Office of Homeless Services for many years. There are many people in government that have been a part of this process for a really long time. At what point do we say this is enough talking, right. And I say that and I say that in frustration because I see the damage that we as government have caused in communities like mine. And some of the children who are in these systems are children of those who are living in the 7th Council District on Kensington Avenue. And so, if we don't want to lose the young people like we've lost their parents or the people who were responsible caretakers for them, then we need to take this seriously, right. We don't want to continue to lose young people to the environment that we as government are creating because we never are going to have enough money, right. There's never going to be enough resources, but how do we start to at least say these are solid success stories, these are children that we have saved from the systems that we have not invested in enough. So, Mr. Chair, I'd like to see at some point when do we stop talking so much about the needs that we have as a city and as a community and the needs that we have in the School District of Philadelphia and really start preparing our young people to be tomorrow's leaders successfully. (Applause.)

And I think that that's going to be part of that continued effort. For those who don't know, Councilmember Lozada represents what a lot of people have identified as one of the worst neighborhoods in the entire city, really on the entire East Coast. And I think that her efforts since she's been in office to really highlight the issues and begin to rectify some of them have been phenomenal, but I think the concern is that a lot of the schools in her District are struggling. Some of those things that we've seen last year, teacher being shot, students being shot, all of that is in her District. So we have to rectify this issue, not just for the her District but really for the entire city. Chair recognizes Councilmember Ahmad followed by Councilmember Brooks, and then we'll close out with Councilmember Landau. Now, very quickly I just want to note for the record that after these three members ask questions, I'm going to take the liberty as the Chair of the Committee to change the order. And after the Admin is finished, we're going to actually go to former State Rep. Donna Bullock, and then we'll go to our panel with the School District and a few others. Chair recognizes Councilmember Ahmad.

Thank you, Chair. Can you hear me? (Yes.)

So I echo the frustration of my colleague Councilmember Lozada. Even more broadly, we live in a country that is a first-world country, that is the richest country in the world. And here we are talking about young people being traumatized by lack of housing. While I'm a member of this Committee, I'm also the Chair of the Public Health Committee, and housing is a determinant of health. Educational status is a determinant of health. And those two are linked. And so, this is a deeply serious matter that I hear has been an ongoing issue and we really need to have a roadmap with accountability and deliverables that are measured. I know we can't measure everything, but at least we can try to get as much of a handle as we can on how things have improved or not improved and then pivot if that's not the right way to go. One of the things with government has been we start a process and we stay in it regardless of whether it's actually working or not. I know there's a lot of strings attached to money that comes from the federal government, right. But we need to advocate for flexibility of those dollars in order to pivot. So one of my questions I have is for the HUD grant, for the rehousing and supportive housing for youth to 24. What is the process if the youth is part of a family unit experiencing homelessness? Can the family access similar resources with their child or are they separated if the youth is over 18?

If it's 10 parenting youth, they would be part 11 of it. If they're part of a 12 family, it wouldn't be through that 13 grant. We have other funding and 14 other resources that the family 15 would utilize. 16

So 17 would that be concurrent is why I 18 was asking that question?

Yes.

So when we identify the 18 to 24 who can use the HUD money, there will be concurrent money that will be matched for the family that that youth is coming from to support them as well if they are homeless, if they're still part of the family unit?

But they would probably be a separate household if that was the case. It depends on how they present. So if they come with -- like the whole entire family's together, we figure out what funding source is the best match compared to if it's somebody by themselves to or a 13 parenting youth 18 to 24, yes. 14

Okay. 15 Then I have a question on the data 16 that you presented. When you go 17 from year to year, is it some of 18 the same youth you're counting 19 again? 20

Yes. 21

Okay. 22

Not in the 23 total but, yes, we might service 24 them more than one time or they might go from year over year, yes.

So this is a cumulative number, not necessarily the -- so the subtraction between FY20 and FY21 will give you either new or reduced numbers?

Yes.

So the core number is what we carried over?

Yes.

So since it seems long term like they're year to year, do we have a way of assessing how the programming that all of you are doing and the resources they're receiving, how is that impacting the outcome, say, educational outcomes or their mental health status or their overall health status?

So we have a monitoring unit within OHS that will monitor the programs as well as when we're competing for annual grants. We have a local competition, so we look to make sure is it cost-effective, what's the data quality, is it effective, is it addressing the gaps and needs in our community. In addition, what is distinct about YHDP, we actually have the youth who are designing the continuous quality improvement of those so that's where the pivot comes in. So as we design the programs, there's base services that we want to make sure all of the programs offer. So it's not like if you go to one YHDP and I go to another and this one offers 19 services and one -- we don't want 20 them to already have disparities right away, so there's some baseline services and then unique ones based on each individual program, and the youth have helped design to help monitor that and we're putting all that together and we'll be evaluating that quarterly. So then if we need to do pivots, we'll do so accordingly.

But you've had data for a while now, right. So the youth who have stayed year to year, what is their educational attainment? How are you assessing that and how are they doing?

We just document what their education status is within our system, so we would have to refer to the School District to get those specific details.

So that's when -- you talked about not having silos, right. The way to measure someone's success is going to be something that the School District measures, but somebody has to have all the descriptors for that one individual.

Yeah.

Where does that live?

So that's more integrated data and that's when we all partner together around that, so it could be a particular grant we're looking for or advocacy or --

But where does the data live? In spite of whether you're applying for a grant or not, how do you track the health of someone on all these measures, education, mental health, overall health --

Yeah, that would be our integrated data office.

And so, there is such a thing that I could go now today and look at the youth that are in this unhoused situation and I can see what they're tracked and I can see either improved status or not having made progress? So there's a data -- there's a dashboard already you're telling me?

No, not a dashboard for that specifically. Whatever those data elements are, we could pull those from those respective agencies to create --

So we're still in silos. What we need is a coordinated way to look at one child because we're talking about the one child's life. Right now you're telling me you'll have to pull this and pull that in order to define what is the status of this child who's unhoused. So we need a coordinated way to have descriptors following the child from Year to Year 2 to Year 3, and hopefully exiting out of the system with success, but we don't know that yet. So I would really, Chairman, like to see all the different strands of data that are lying around. And if we are really trying to break silos, the best way to do it is put it all together so we have a complete picture of the individuals who are getting these services and we don't have that yet. And finally, I have a question about our youth aging out of foster systems. That's a very vulnerable time and how well are we following them in terms of their housing, all of the needs, right. They fall in the to group. 17 And I just wanted to know similarly 18 to everybody in the system, the 19 foster youth have a particular 20 issue because there's no village 21 around them, right, and how are we 22 really looking at their success, 23 what is your information on how 24 they do with all the care you've given in that age group?

You're asking about to 24. I mean, I would definitely -- the School District is going to speak on that. I mean, I think by 18, students are 6 graduating, but the expectation 7 under McKinney-Vento is that there 8 aren't silos, that there is a 9 continuum in a pathway for 10 students, especially students with 11 special needs who can stay in the 12 system until 21 years old, so we 13 want to make sure that the School 14 District speaks on that when they 15 come up as to what do they do 16 specifically to support those 17 students. 18

So I'm going to ask that Councilmember Brooks ask her questions and then I have to move on to the next panel because they have a hard stop. But I'm going to ask that if Members still have questions for the Admin that we call you back up after the next panel because clearly Councilmember Ahmad has done a deep dive into some things that we are concerned about and we don't want to eliminate that line of questioning. So I'm going to allow Councilmember Brooks to go. And then after that, we're actually going to call up Professor Zachary Wood who's actually here from Washington and has a long flight as well as former State Rep. Donna Bullock. So after Councilmember Brooks, those will be the two members of the next panel. And then again if we need to, we would like to come back to the Admin Thank you. Councilmember Brooks.

Thank you. Thank you so much. So my questions are similar to Councilmember Ahmad so I'm not going to kind of repeat, but I do have some concerns around coordination of services. When I look at this chart from how the number incrementally increases like drastically, I'm concerned about the wraparound services that we have for young people as old as 12. My sisters are all elementary school teachers and you see the transition as early as 3rd grade. So if we're talking about building networks of success, we need to start as early as elementary school, especially because I'm pretty sure these 14 children that are in the age of 5 to 12, the situation probably doesn't change much and how much wraparound services that we have across the continuum is where my concerns are falling in reference to Councilmember Ahmad's coordination of care for a child even outside the family, because I've had several calls from children or families that were in homeless shelters that are elementary or middle school students calling last minute trying to get summer jobs. So my question goes to this liaison that you mentioned. Is there a liaison per school or is it a liaison per region?

The law requires there to be a liaison per school.

So if a child is identified as homeless in the system, why wouldn't the liaison pick up that they needed a summer job because we leave young people ages 13 and older free to roam the streets because they don't qualify for Pre-K -- I mean, for camp services and they can't stay at the shelter if their parents work? So we have 13-, 12-year-olds roaming the streets. And if they have a liaison at the school, wouldn't it be their responsibility to catch that before the last day for admissions for Out-of-School Time summer programs? And that's where my concern is because if it's one in every school in the city of Philadelphia that should not be the case. There are too many young people roaming around this city obviously and a lot of them are identified in some system, why aren't we catching them? You talked about young people want adults to care for them. What about the people that are assigned and being paid to care for them to make sure that they have adequate services? That's one of my questions. And the community coordinators, those are at community schools; am I correct?

Yes, that's correct.

And I know there are of them. So is it also their responsibility to make sure that children don't fall through the crack? So some schools could have a community coordinator and a liaison?

(Nodded 8 affirmatively). 9

And 10 this is where my concern falls. We 11 should not have 10-, 12-, 13-year- 12 olds roaming the streets of 13 Philadelphia that are not assigned 14 to some kind of programming if 15 we're offering adequate wraparound 16 services and if parents need 17 support. If the School District, 18 the Homeless Services, DHS, 19 whoever's involved with these 20 families are working together, we cannot do this. If we're talking about adults caring for young people, we need qualified adults that we are paying through City and tax dollars to make sure that our young folks aren't roaming idly because evidently there are situations happening at home that may prevent them from getting into those services. I'll just leave those all there. That's a lot of thoughts. I'm sorry.

These are all great thoughts, Councilmember, and they're important because I think part of this conversation, and as I shared I know I've been in the role since March 1st, is to identify the gaps, and what you have identified right now are gaps. And so, when the District speaks, they can speak more about the responsibilities of the liaisons per school which is by law McKinney-Vento and then also those responsibilities to coordinate those services that you're talking about, right, employment in addition to all the other things that we've mentioned before, the community schools component is critically as important as well. And I agree with you, so we have to do a better job in finding out why there's a gap and how do we close that gap by bringing all the partners together and convening them on an ongoing basis to do this work with what Councilwoman said, with some measurable outcomes.

And I just -- I'm sorry. When I think about the gap, I mean when you physically see the gap, the gap is young people getting killed in the street and being missing. And I think that we have to take this seriously, because my concern is like I just mentioned three agencies that should be touching a child that's in the homeless system. It's no reason any of these children should not have something out of -- even if they registered and they didn't go, we have people that didn't even register, they didn't even know the program was available and that is unacceptable when we have, what is it, 200-and-something public schools in the city?

Correct.

263 liaisons assigned to make sure the children are doing something on top of whoever their case manager is, whoever's handling their family's case management, all of these people need to be working together and it's kind of unacceptable for what we see happening in our city right now and we have to be accountable. There's no way that we can just turn a blind eye. And I really would like to dive deeper into these gaps because we're paying -- this is a job. And I bet you their kids are in programs.

So members of the School District, clearly you have some time. Please try your best to be able to answer that specific question because you know it's coming, and we're going to expect some type of tangible data to let us know what's going on. Thank you guys for being patient with us. Mr. Clerk, can you please call the next panel. And then again, Admin, we will want to call you back. Mr. Braveman.

Next we'll hear from former State Rep. and Executive Director of Project HOME Donna Bullock.

As well as?

As well as Zachary Wood, Professor at Seattle University and Vice-president of the Mockingbird Society.

Good morning. As our next panel is transitioning, anybody outside who wants to come on in we have some seats here if you want to come sit down. Anybody who wants to transition somewhere else, this is a great time for that. With that being said, I want to say congratulations to former State Rep. Donna Bullock. It's good to have you here in this capacity. And I also want to say to Professor Wood, thank you for flying all the way across the country. A couple of us here had to do that last week. It's no 16 pretty travel experience, but we appreciate your knowledge and your expertise joining us in our conversation today. Please whoever wants to go first, whoever has the harder -- whoever has to leave sooner we will request that you go first. State your name for the record, begin with your testimony. I'll ask that members of the Committee allow the entire panel to testify before we ask questions. And I would ask everybody in the audience to please try to be as quiet as possible so we can hear all of the testimony as well as the questions. Thank you.

Thank you, Chairman Thomas and to the members of the Council Education Committee. I am honored to be here before you to just share a little bit about my perspective both from a lived experience, my legislative experience and my current role here at Project HOME. Before I graduated from high school, I already had more than 10 addresses. It had became clear to me that on an average my mother and I moved every 18 months. Whether it was to avoid an eviction record or to escape an overdue utility bill, my mother was crafty about making sure we made that move so that we can maintain our housing voucher and other resources. During this time, the one thing that was consistent was my school. For most of that time I remained at my school of origin, my original K through school. I was 8 able to remain in my gifted classes, continue with my extra- curricular activities and also maintain perfect attendance for most of my 12 years of school. I attribute most of this to the support of my local school district in New Jersey but also the support of adults. My housing insecurity during childhood was impacted by both the incarceration of a parent, the mental health issues and needs of my mother and access to limited subsidized housing in our community. I may not have known where I was going to lay my head at night, but I can always count on always being able to return to the same desk, the same classroom, the same school. That provided me the stability I needed to achieve my academic goals. This lived experience informs my work today at Project HOME as well as it had informed my advocacy as a State Representative here in the city of Philadelphia. While in the Pennsylvania House, I worked with advocates, students with lived experiences, school administrators and policy organizations like Schoolhouse Connections, the National Center for the Homeless Education and locally HopePHL to gather data and consider policy gaps that weren't addressed by the McKinney-Vento Act or the state's Education for Children and Youth Experiencing Homelessness Program, which we called ECYEH in the Capitol. To this end, I had sponsored or co-sponsored legislation to recognize school professionals working with homeless students and to raise awareness on education of students experiencing homelessness, a day we recognize as Red Shirt Day in November. I also introduced legislation to increase access to vital documents such as birth certificates that are often required for school enrollment but can often be a cost barrier. To allow minors, years 14 of age and older, to be able to 15 apply for school and contract for 16 housing and other services on their own, particularly unaccompanied minors, this would allow them to move through those processes easier without having the burden of having adults sign for them. Legislation to provide financial aid to foster youth attending state colleges and universities, which I'm proud to say we were able to do with the help of Governor Wolf. Also, I worked on legislation to require colleges and universities to provide priority on-campus housing, a student liaison at those universities and other assistance to homeless students so that they may be able to access and complete their higher education goals, an issue that is not addressed by the McKinney-Vento Act, but one we've seen as many of our young people aged into higher education, as well as legislation to prevent school districts from across the Commonwealth from carelessly and heartlessly removing students from their school roles over residency disputes. This is an issue we saw in our surrounding suburban counties where we had many families doubling up, but school districts were accusing them of using other addresses so that they can attend their schools and therefore removing them from their school rolls.

With this work, I worked so closely with young people in my district, young people that worked at Monkey & Elephant cafe that works with a lot of our youth aging out of foster care, the Young Adult Leadership Board or Committee at DHS and many others because I knew it was important to make sure that that legislation was informed by those most impacted. I hope to continue that work in my new role at Project HOME. The mission of Project HOME is to empower adults, children and families to break the cycle of homelessness and poverty, to alleviate the underlying causes of poverty and to enable all of us to attain our fullest potential as individuals and as members of the broader society. We strive to create a safe and respectful environment where we support each other in our struggles for self-esteem, recovery and the confidence to move towards self- actualization. Project HOME achieves its mission through a continuum of services comprised of street outreach and a range of supportive housing and comprehensive services. We address the root causes of homelessness through neighborhood-based affordable housing and access to employment opportunities, health care and adult and youth education. We have developed and managed over 1,000 units of supportive housing and provide other services through the Hub of Hope, which is located right under your place of business at City Hall as a drop-in center for individuals to come shower, wash their clothes, receive services or a meal as well as a federally qualified health center and a learning center in North Philadelphia. Since it was founded by Sister Mary Scullion and Joan McConnon in 1989, Project HOME's work has continuously expanded to meet the needs of our most vulnerable neighbors. We evaluate that need based on what we see firsthand through street outreach and the data collection undertaken through point-in-time and quarterly counts of those experiencing homelessness in our city. Children and families experiencing homelessness are often missed in that data collection because the definitions of homelessness are inconsistent and families may not disclose their living situations and lastly, because children and families are less likely to be living in shelters or on the streets. S. Department of Education, more than 65 percent of students experiencing homelessness in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania are living doubled-up with relatives and friends. Only percent in hotels or motels and 7 20 percent in shelters or 8 transitional housing, while less 9 than 3 percent are unhoused. But 10 65 percent are, in fact, living 11 doubled-up. These numbers are consistent in Philadelphia even with the different definitions of homelessness in our data. During the 2021-22 school year, Philadelphia reported more than 5,200 children and youth experiencing homelessness. This number includes children under the age of 5 and youth PreK through 12. However, the 2023 point-in-time count reported 825 children under 18 experiencing homelessness on a single night but zero unsheltered. That same night there were 409 young adults ages to experiencing homelessness, 69 of them unsheltered. Our focus at Project HOME is really focusing on those experiencing chronic homelessness, so we often serve mostly adults. However, recognizing the needs for housing for families experiencing homelessness, many with parents who experienced homelessness as a child, Project HOME expanded our housing services for single parents and most recently for young adults who are parenting. By providing resources and support, we can keep these families together thriving and a component of overcoming cycles of poverty. Project HOME currently serves more than 80 children living in our residences and an additional 80 young adults that live in our residences as well. For Project HOME, breaking the cycle of homelessness and poverty also requires us to look beyond housing.

While we believe that housing is the key to ending current homelessness, the key to preventing future homelessness is a quality education for every child and a continuing education for adults. Education for us is the E in Project H-O-M-E. We provide educational opportunities to our residents and our neighbors in the broader community. years ago through our 15 partnerships with local leaders in 16 the 19121 zip code, Project HOME 17 answered the community call for an 18 afterschool program and other 19 opportunities for the neighborhood 20 children. And in 2004, we opened the Hahnemann Learning Center Comcast Technology Labs, a 38,000 square foot, four-floor technology- loaded mega center with the most progressive hardware and software systems for education and learning, making it the largest and most advanced facility of its kind serving low-income populations in Philadelphia. It is quite impressive. I have watched our children and youth have access to all of our summer and afterschool programs, our robotics and coding courses, our music production studio, paid internships and all of this in a safe, caring environment. With access to technology generally found in wealthier school districts, we can close the gaps and opportunity for our children in this neighborhood. All kids deserve access to this kind of state-of-art technology, which is needed to thrive in the new and growing careers. And, Councilwoman Brooks, I heard you about summer internships and how important that is as well. We continue to support our students through mentorship, resources and community support to help them thrive. During the 2023-24 school year, our program served 187 students, including 67 K through 8, 98 high school students and 8 college students. And this past 9 week we celebrated our College 10 Access Program. We had six college 11 graduate students from that 12 particular community. They joined 13 dozens of students who collectively 14 earned 60 post-secondary 15 credentials, including Doctorate, 16 6 Master's degrees, 47 Bachelor's 17 degrees and 6 Associate's degrees. 18 We are incredibly proud of these 19 young people. 20 In the past, we have leased 21 space at the Hahnemann Learning 22 Center and Comcast Technology Labs 23 to other educational partners 24 understanding the need within our 25 community. We had an elementary school that has expanded and moved on to other premises, and we are currently working to partner with an early childhood education provider to maximize the use of that space and to fill the gap for parents in the neighborhood. We also plan to bring a mental health provider, a service requested by many of the families in the community. These partners help us move more fully to address the educational needs and overall well-being of the community. As we continue to expand our services to the children and families of our community and our residences, we rely on the School District and the City's resources to provide quality services for the children and youth we encountered through street outreach in our residences and in our programming at the Hahnemann Learning Center as well as our federally qualified health center. Our staff have working relationships with the District's Office of Education educating children and youth experiencing homelessness as well as OHS. However, we do see gaps in resources and services for our young adults who are aging out of those programs and seeking higher education. The School District's data and coordination are crucial to making sure homelessness is rare, brief and non-recurring for these families. Schools are community hubs and often the point of entry for much-needed services for families. Because of the protections of the McKinney-Vento Act, schools can be the consistent for a student that is experiencing homelessness.

Student-centered youth-led and intentional collaborations and data-sharing between schools and community providers like Project HOME can improve identification and ease of access to resources for families experiencing homelessness. The 2023 updated Ed Research for Action brief on educational practices to identify and support students experiencing homelessness cites a 2016 example of such collaboration in New York City. The City's Department of Education and Department of Homeless Services changed their data-sharing agreement so that the Department of Education now receives a daily list of students in shelters instead of on a monthly roster. This information can help school districts ensure a more supportive school climate for those students, removing barriers and providing the tools needed to improve attendance and academic achievement. Meanwhile the Department of Homeless Services in turn receives information about students' attendance, grade advancement and disciplinary incidence. This information is useful to shelter staff in their case management strategies. In 2019, New York went on to announce yet another data- sharing initiative. This one to address the City's truancy rates among homeless youth. Across 13 shelters in the City, data for 14 homeless students is now stored in 15 the digital portal and shared by 16 staff at both the City's education 17 and homeless services departments. 18 The idea is to improve both 19 transportation to schools and 20 facilitate case management for 21 those youth. 22 With similar data-sharing 23 initiatives and collaboration among 24 the School District, the City and 25 its community partners, we can provide both education and housing stability for our children and youth. I believe this is critical and Project HOME is committed to being a partner in this collective effort to end the cycle of homelessness and poverty in our city. Again, I thank the Council Chairman Thomas for this invitation and look forward to working with all of you as a partner.

Thanks so much. Hi, everyone. My name is Zachary Wood and I want to thank the Committee here and Councilman Thomas for convening this. I'm a Professor of Public Affairs and Community Development at Seattle University in Seattle, Washington. I flew here -- I'll just pretend like I flew here directly for this only because that sounds way cooler if I say that. I'm really truly honored to be here for a number of reasons. And I fly home to Seattle in a couple of hours, but I'm mostly honored because Philly is my home. Philly is my home forever. And that means I'm still a Sixers fan even though the Sonics are about to return to the NBA. It's also essential for me to acknowledge here today that I'm a White dude sitting up here at a very important table in a very important conversation. I have not experienced homelessness personally, so I'm not the expert. And I take that very seriously. I've simply been afforded the privilege to be able to work in this field for a long time and study these issues to be able to offer something into what truly is an expertise of many of the young people who I see in this room 23 today. And I'd like to make sure that we lean in on that. I worked on the issue of youth homelessness in Philadelphia for about a decade and then went on to doctorate work, which my colleagues at the time said was the dark side entering academia. I think they were right. Now, I do research on comprehensive community development mostly in urban environments and also the intersections of complex machinations of power. Power is something that we are mostly illiterate in and something that is deeply important into all the decisions and the processes that we're talking about today. I'm also the Vice-president of the Board of the Mockingbird Society in Seattle, which is a dynamic youth-centered advocacy organization that centers youth from the outset in everything we do that's reforming the Washington foster care system and responding to youth homelessness. It is an amazing organization. I'm lucky to be a part of it. I'm also the Chair of the Board for Youth Collaboratory, which is a national organization that is working on youth -- a membership organization for youth- serving organizations across the country doing a lot of national advocacy. This issue, quite literally, youth homelessness has grounded nearly everything that's in my heart and everything that's in my career. This is who I am and why I want to be here today. So first, I want to acknowledge the fact that these numbers of homeless students that we are seeing here today and that have been shared with me from various partners in Philadelphia are unacceptable. I feel the frustration and I see the anger that's happening here today. Councilmember Lozada, I really appreciate the frustration that you are openly sharing on this. I will also say that eight years ago I submitted testimony nearly identical to what I'm talking about today to another hearing on youth homelessness and the experience of this. This is not okay. We are stuck because we are trying to respond to a problem right now that is emergent for us. It is crucial for us, but we are forgetting the connections of the root causes of really what's going on here and we consistently focus on the symptom instead of actually focusing on the causes of this. The numbers are worse now than they were eight years ago when I submitted testimony to this Council -- well, that Council I guess I should say. So why is this? Are these numbers unacceptable because of their enormity or because of what they actually represent for who we are as a city and as a nation? Hopefully both. But framing critical questions like this is what's going to help us shape our goals and the kinds of impacts that we truly want to have on this issue. Second, we're here for identifying solutions. We all care about this immensely.

Every single person in this room is sitting here because they feel the unacceptability of this and they need to do something about it. That's wonderful, but we have to remain critical about the questions that we're going to ask in relation to this problem and critical about how we frame the true nature of the problem that is at hand. You're going to hear a lot of stark statistics today from a wealth of experts providing testimony both local, national. Those numbers are shocking. They need to be shocking. They're beyond the scope of simply identifying the right kind of program and tinkering at the margins right now of what we're doing and where we're kind of missing the mark. We are beyond just that. Doesn't mean that we don't have to diligently and exhaustively search for solutions to this issue. That's what we're doing here today and it's what we continue to do. Of course we have to. But we can't do it without a critical acknowledgement of the depth and complexity that is at play that is causing this issue to be at our table right now. As much as it feels simpler to tackle this part, youth homelessness where numbers of students experiencing homelessness within our school district, that's not going to be enough to truly resolve this issue. The task force idea that the Chair has raised here is probably an important element to be able to help in what we're doing. But if we simply look at this issue as youth homelessness in a vacuum, we're going to do this at the peril of thousands of families and young people. And shame on us if that's our way with coping with the true complexity of what's at hand right now. Philly's not alone in this struggle either. So I am now hailing from Seattle. Seattle has a brutally problematic homeless problem right now, and that includes young people in the same general statistical numbers as you're seeing here in Philadelphia. In both cities we're relying on very scarce and diminishing dollars to respond to this problem. And of course in the midst of that we see all kinds of really cool innovations that are going on within the community, within school districts to try desperately to respond to this, but the scarce and diminishing dollars are making our issue-based approach very, very silly. So I'm offering here today a critical reframing. I'm offering you a critical perspective to this particular issue and a statement to say, rising student experiences of homelessness in the School District of Philadelphia is not the problem. It's not the problem. Student homelessness is a systemic outcome. It's a symptom. It's a byproduct of much more challenging issues at the root of our society right now. Namely, I'm talking about wealth inequality. If you track all of the data of the wealth inequality that is happening here in Philadelphia and city after city after city across this country, that tracks and correlates perfectly with the experiences of homelessness. What we're talking about here is not an individual problem where one young person is having a specific experience or one family is having a specific experience. It is statistically correlated constantly with the rising, fast-rising wealth inequality in our nation. That wealth inequality is pressurizing a near total privatized housing market, right, making housing access just simply a result of who has more money. So now, city after city after city, and it's gotten exacerbated through COVID, that housing affordability has gone away. That's the root of what we're actually talking about here. Homelessness is a structural and systemic issue full stop. So if our aim here is to eliminate or reduce the number of young people experiencing homelessness, students experiencing homelessness, we have to acknowledge its true causes and its complexity. And I'm not saying that this issue is inevitable as a product of some giant forces outside of Philadelphia.

It's not inevitable and it's certainly not impossible for us to deal with, but acknowledging the interlocking complexity of the variations of forces and issues in our country is the first step to actually identifying and achieving dynamic solutions so that we can see this problem actually resolve. It's going to require a systems approach. It's going to take deep coordination as folks have been talking about and data sharing for sure. It's also going to take time because we're talking about massive issues. No perfect program is going to solve this issue alone. That's hard for us to accept because what we want is to identify what worked at one place and just try to put it on here. That's the simplest way for us to solve a simple problem, except it isn't a simple problem. It's a complex one and our solutions are going to have to match that kind of complexity. Even the best and most creative programs cannot stem the tide of an issue that is largely produced by more powerful systemic forces that go beyond the bounds of Philadelphia. If our goal is simply to identify the 6,000-plus, 6,000-plus students experiencing homelessness and better serve a larger portion of them, we do almost nothing to prevent the next families and the next young people that are going to face that experience tomorrow. We remain in a perpetual state of emergency. Perhaps we get a little bit better at holding that emergency at bay. That, my wonderful friends, that is unacceptable. So what is this truly going to take? So in my line of work, community development, community organizing, we talk about the dual agenda, deeply simple concept deeply complex in action. Effectively, it's a critical systems approach. We have to acknowledge and address our simultaneous dual agenda. The first part of that dual agenda is to address the emergency reality of an insane amount of students experiencing homelessness in the School District right now. This is what we focus on most. Even today in this hearing right now we're focused on the issue, the emergency at hand. But the second part of that dual agenda that often times gets forgotten is to identify and address the root causes of this issue to reduce and eliminate the creation of the homeless experience altogether. We feel we don't have the resources or the knowledge or the time to address the second part of the dual agenda almost every single time we raise this issue, but it's pointless to do one without the other and you can't separate these two agendas to be addressed independently. It's not possible. They are equally essential and they are deeply interlocked. So I offer a couple of value propositions before I close this practically. First, there's no magical solution to this issue alone. Most of the efforts that we're doing are quite noble. We celebrate the good, but we have to critically assess where those gaps are. I hear those questions today, but we have to be bold in our honesty and not punitive. This is not a punitive approach to deciding who's good and who's bad at this. We collectively have failed. We will collectively stand together to find the solutions that we need. The second, those most directly experiencing these realities are often times the most impactful experts. Maximize their access to the discussions and maximize their access to problem identification. I'm hearing bits and pieces of that as well. Let's ramp up that kind of activity. Empower young people through the active listening processes and partnering processes that we have at our disposal there are tools measures for meaningful community engagement. We rarely use them. The organization that I work with in Seattle now Mockingbird Society has a different structure and approach. It was designed in this kind of way, built entirely around youth-led advocacy and leadership development. We place youth at the creative center of the problem-solving space and the co-development of the kinds of solutions that are going to be meaningful.

Youth working in chapters with themselves are the leaders and they're the advocates. We at Mockingbird simply provide the framework for that to be able to happen. The result of this is 70-plus state policy wins reforming foster care and responding to youth homelessness as well as $250 million in revenue generated for the issue, young people at this table and at the forefront knowing and understanding their experiences in advocating. They've also created a totally new comprehensive foster care approach called Mockingbird Family, fantastic stuff. It's barely catching on in the states. The UK has taken that model and made it the entire model throughout the UK because they see the results of what this does. Being able to understand and hear those experiences is what is creating this possibility. Third, trust. Trust is essential. We often times lack it in this work, especially in fields like this. We've been incentivized to squabble and fight each other for resources, very scarce resources, throughout our time. If you want to reach young people for service, empowerment and partnership, you're going to have to lean in on the places where the trust is most robust. That's community organizations, places in communities that are actually trusted by young people. And never discount the importance of these trusted relationships, especially for system-impacted young people which is the majority of who we're talking about right now. Fourth, last, develop the interconnection of communication between interlocking systems of inequality. What does that mean? That means if we are bold enough to recognize inequality as the core root issue here, it means we cannot solve youth homelessness without addressing all of these systemic issues as well, housing access and affordability, race and gender inequity, wage and employment inequity, education inequity, foster care supports, criminal justice reforms, mental health and behavioral health experiences. All of these are interlocking. We cannot solve youth homelessness without also addressing all of these elements as well. This is a tall task and it's absolutely imperative for us to make inroads towards the real kinds of solutions and the reduction of these numbers that we are trying for. We have every bit of creativity, expertise and potential for collaboration to lean into both parts of our dual agenda and not just focus on the first part, but we need structure and incentives to nurture the kind of trust and collaboration that's going to require. The reason why data sharing is difficult is because we've had about 45 years-plus of squabbling over who owns what to what pieces of this and where those dollars are flowing from. That's not okay, but that's the structure we've been given. We need to listen and power those most at the margins and we need to continue to allow trusted relationships to be at the forefront of the direct work as a collaborative. Thank you very much. )

Thank you. Thank you both for your shared experience and your expert opinion. If at any time you feel like you have to go, we completely understand. I will open it up for questions. But before I do, I would like to acknowledge that our School Police Association has joined us today. Can you guys raise -- oh, they left? Aww, man. We got a Black president for the School Police Association, a Black sister, a Black woman is president. That's an amazing thing. We're not going to get into that right now. Chair recognizes Councilmember Gauthier for questions.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think my questions are for Donna with a little sprinkling of the Mayor's Office perhaps. I've been trying to wrap my mind in the hearing around the scope of the issue in how many people we're serving. But I noticed that there are big differences between what was presented earlier in terms of people accessing the Office of Homeless Services access points and the point-in-time count information that you presented. So in your testimony, you talked about the point-in-time count for 2023 counting 825 young people under and 409 people 18 18 to 24, but in the City's numbers of who we served at the access points, we counted serving 75 young people under 18 at the homeless service access points in 2023 and almost 2500 people 18 to at those same 24 access points. So my questions are -- and I know you don't directly control this, but I wanted to know if you had thoughts around the differences in those numbers. I'd love to hear the same from the Mayor's Office. And if the point-in-time numbers are correct, then we have a very large population of under youth, 9 825, but we only saw 75 of them, 10 what do we have -- that would seem 11 to suggest that we have 12 difficulties serving young people 13 who are homeless through our 14 homeless access points. And I 15 wanted to know why and what the 16 challenges are and how we plan to 17 address that, because I know our 18 HUD grant is focused on older youth?

So I got these numbers from our team. I'm pretty sure they're accurate, but I'm -- right, okay. So the point- in-time is one single night in January, right. So that number may be different from who's actually going in to receive services. And I'm not sure if the City can speak to that as far as who we identify on a single night and who's going to receive services. I'm not sure the number that they're reporting.

Can we have the Mayor's Office back to speak on that?

Yeah. You want me to take it from here?

Oh, yeah, yeah. You can do that.

All right. So the point-in-time --

Sorry. Just say your name one more time for the record.

Beth Gonzalez, Deputy Director of Policy Planning and Performance for OHS, and I'll hold this because this is not working. So the point-in-time is conducted the third week of January --

I'm sorry. It's not no one's fault. But for the purposes of the live broadcast, they need you to go over to the table to answer the questions. We do apologize.

And I might have forgotten the question walking over here. But the '23 count is conducted one night, the third week of January, and we count those who are unhoused and those who are in our shelter system.

Yes. Can you expound upon so our FY23 numbers for OHS show us serving about 75 people 18 and under in FY23. The point-in-time count in '23 suggests that there are a lot more homeless youth than that. Can you please speak to the differences between that count and who we're touching and what -- and if we need to do more and how we're thinking about that?

Yeah. So in reference to who comes to the front door and the access points, that's what that count is. Some other folks don't come to the brick-and- mortar access points. We have mobile assessors who might reach out to them or they may have other resources and different people that they partner with and connect with. So that's why that count would be different in reference to who shows up at the actual physical access points versus who we meet and survey the night of the count. That's why it would be different.

In the testimony, we described the access points as a main way that we are serving people, unless I misunderstood that. So -- am I misunderstanding that?

Yeah. So the access point, anybody who wants assistance whether it's prevention or needs shelter, we have them go through that coordinated entry process. So the way to do that is through the access points.

Okay. So if we serve 75 homeless young people in '23 through the access point, but the point-in-time count showed that they're over 800 --

They may not necessarily come to the access point. They're homeless, but they may not come to the access point. That's why it's different.

Do we have a sense that we're touching them in another way? Can you speak to that?

In reference to any outreach efforts and working with our youth partners, we get feedback from them and whether we identify hotspots when we're doing the count and figuring out if they're having touchpoints with those particular folks and encourage them to come in or to access services or partnering with the schools as well, any touchpoints as well with that.

I think my question is do we have a good amount of confidence that we are serving those folks? They're not coming to the access points, but they may be going to all these other places, right?

Yeah.

What is our confidence level that those folks are receiving coordinated and sustained services even though they're not coming through the access points?

So we always have to improve coordination, so I can say that out front. But in reference to people that are literally homeless and come to OHS in reference to who we're serving at the access points, confidently I can say, yes, we're assisting those. The other ones who are identifying or maybe don't identify or identify by our McKinney-Vento staff are our youth partners. That's another way of tracking and assisting and encouraging, so we do track that as well in reference to who we're servicing and to identify those gaps. But I wouldn't say we're servicing everybody, obviously, one if they don't identify or because they're stigmatized they don't come forward. So that's part of that important work of marketing and messaging, we're here for you and can support you and give you the services you need.

We identified them enough to count them in the point-in-time count.

If they are unhoused and we see them -- now, when we do the point-in-time which is distinct compared to the HUD definition versus McKinney-Vento, HUD does not count those that are doubled-up as homeless, so that's why it's different. So they have a different definition when it comes to collecting the data. So on a local level we have talked and we did try two years ago just so we know locally what are we seeing to try to count those that are doubled-up and working with the youth around that, and we're revisiting potentially doing that again picking a time where we can have folks they could call in and report out if they're doubled-up so we can see locally what's happening because that's not defined by HUD, but it would help us from an advocacy perspective.

Thank you. And then lastly, I know that the $8-plus million that we got from HUD is primarily focused on youth to 24. This data would 6 suggest that we also have a pretty 7 large problem with young people 8 under 18? 9

Yes. 10

11 What are we thinking about from a 12 resource perspective in order to 13 meet that need? 14

So 15 obviously, the first line of 16 defense obviously is prevention and 17 diversion so we want to divert 18 families from even entering the system, so we're ramping up and trying to get funding dollars on the front door and then on the back end for permanent housing, those that need it or those who have supportive services and they don't need that connection, developing move-on strategies so we can open up those units for those who do need the services and the housing. So there's two things that we're working on. And then with our Service Provider Commission and with our youth coming up with additional funding dollars, we're in the middle of a competition now for additional CRC dollars and constantly creating more affordable units and really ramping up prevention services.

Thank you.

Sure.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Councilmember Gauthier. Chair recognizes Councilmember Lozada.

Thank -

Professor, I'm sorry. If you can join us back at the table please. I do apologize.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think that before -- I have some questions for Dr. Wood, but I think that before I ask him my questions, it's important for us to recognize that as a city we need to figure out how we're counting, who we're counting and when we're counting, right, because one of my biggest frustrations when trying to identify the number of people that are living homeless in the 7th Council District is frustrating because I can't get a solid number from anybody. Everyone counts differently. Everyone considers a homeless person differently. And when we're looking at numbers and we're talking about how HUD counts or what HUD considers a person to be homeless and what we consider a person to be homeless or what they consider themselves, whether they consider themselves as homeless, they are all three different things. And so, at what point do we all come together as legislators on every level of government to figure out let us come up with one definition so we can get a true number and really identify the resources that we need to be able to move people out of this particular population and onto sustainability. I don't understand why we are still having these conversations but it's really frustrating. And I don't think we're going to be able to move the needle anywhere as it relates to a homeless conversation for anybody in this system until we're able to figure out what is the real number, what is the real need, when do we count, how do we count, what is the best time of the year to count because we're going to really see them and find them in the elements, right, not couch-surfing. I don't understand how HUD doesn't consider you homeless if you're on somebody's couch, but you really can only be there two or three days and need to move to another -- that's a homeless person. And so, I just wanted to say that, to put that out there, right. We need to figure out how we count better, how do we identify these folks better. And then, Dr. Wood, you mentioned that eight years ago you were in front of a panel and having this very same conversation. Was it an emergency then?

I'm laughing out of tears because it was of course an emergency then. I'll also just clarify for the record I didn't give testimony in person on that. I submitted testimony after sitting in the hearing for the entire time and realizing that we were not talking about the root causes of that problem. So my testimony came in several days after that. But, yes, it was an emergency at that time. We've been essentially in a crisis of homelessness since way before we knew exactly what homelessness meant, right. So maybe at least since the '80s is what I would say we have. The numbers if you track what's going on, even in the short distances, are rising, right. The numbers of young people, the numbers of adults, they're all rising at this point. Now, we recognize that some of that might be that we're learning how to count better to your point of trying to find different ways of actually measuring and understanding that problem. Sometimes we're getting better at that and sometimes it really is a result of the changes and the forces within the economic structure that's causing more experiences of homelessness overall. Either way we're coming nowhere close to serving the amount of people that are having this experience.

And eight years ago were funding, coordination, time, access and affordability all things that you all talked about in order to address this need?

I will selfishly say that that was all included in my original testimony. As I said, that got sent in a couple days after that hearing. I will say that the conversation in the hearing itself was fairly limited on those issues but certainly raised.

I find it really frustrating that when we're talking about issues in Black and Brown communities in a city that is predominantly Black and Brown, that it's taken us eight years to continue to have the same conversation and the matter has only gotten worse. The leadership in this city has always had Black and Brown representatives. And so, the fact that we are allowing for this to get worse in our community, in a community where the leadership has really looked like the communities that we're serving is a problem, because if we don't do for ourselves there's nobody going to want to do for us, right, nobody's going to want to do for us. So are we going to be here eight years from now having this very same conversation? The conversation of community engagement became a really sexy word, but communities have always been screaming about a need. Communities have always been screaming about the lack of access, the lack of educational accessibility. The Black and Brown communities have always been talking about having a seat at the table and we allow them to come to the table, but eight years we still haven't figured out a way to listen and respond to addressing to the need, right. And so, Mr. Chair as the Chairman of the Education Committee, figuring out a way to hold the School District, the Office of Homeless Services, the Office of Children and Youth, DHS and all of these other City agencies that we should be relying on to help us address this issue is one that I would hope that in our next legislative calendar we can focus in on so that eight years from now we're not sitting here having this conversation, right. We tend to call things a crisis because it allows us to apply for funding, funding that never gets to the neighborhood, right. And so, my expectation is that having someone at Project HOME now that has been a legislator, right, that understands and recognizes how policy and legislation can really impact neighborhoods like ours I would hope that in working with you and having you at the table alongside departments like Office of Homeless Services, that we're able to really move the needle not just for young people but for families, right, because they're never going to be able to connect back to their families if all of them are trying to figure out a bed to be able to lay on for the night, for the week, for the month and for the year. So I would hope that eight years from now Dr. Wood's not back here having a conversation with us trying to figure out how we make this better. And so, I hope that you stay in the conversation from as far as where you are, right, because I think that -- and that you continue to hold us accountable, you continue to put pressure on us so that we can make our city a better place, right, so that we can continue to support young people so that they are better contributing citizens to our to our city.

I will just respond just briefly to say I too hope that in eight years we are not having this exact same conversation. It's completely ridiculous and unacceptable. I will also say that part of this, as I said in my testimony, is not something about the punitive response. We respond to the ways that we do in these issues largely based on the funding streams that we have access to or might have access to and that's leading us to these different silos over time. So it is on us to go and find the communicative ways that we create a space for all of these issues to be talked about jointly, because as I said if we simply tried to respond only to the issue of youth homelessness, we will never stem the tide of truly what's going on here. We are currently plugging gum into a leaking dam and it is a massive dam. So if we don't start to respond to the true root causes and address the kind of wealth inequality in poverty and housing inaccessibility that we are facing and is getting worse in Philadelphia, we will end up here eight years from now having the same conversation.

Thank you, colleague. Chair recognizes Councilmember Nina Ahmad. Before Councilmember Ahmad goes, anybody on the outside who wants to come inside there are plenty of seats. So if you're standing on the outside and you want to come in, feel free to come have a seat. Councilmember Ahmad.

Thank you, Chairman. I thank you for your testimony, particularly sharing your lived experience, Representative Bullock, I have to keep calling you that, and Professor Wood. What I would love from you since we are here -- and this is a public venue, we are being recorded -- I would love to hear from each of you a solution, like how do we move forward? It doesn't have to be comprehensive. It can be something you're finding in your work that needs to be fixed asap. It could be the global issue of understanding what brings us here, the underlying issues. I just want us to walk away from here to say you are a practitioner in this field and you are studying this field, right. So I just want concrete feedback so we can actually work to see how actionable that concrete feedback can be.

Thank you, Councilmember, for that question. I want to focus in on what I think part of your reason from the resolution that I understand for this hearing is around data, you know. It's really important that we have concrete data, real data that we understand what the scope of the problem is, first of all, so that we can come up with the solutions. There are definitely issues around housing and access to housing and connecting families to quality housing while attending school, connecting the two, right. And so, figuring out how we can have both our Office of Housing and Homeless Services and other housing agencies coordinating with the School District to make sure that they're sharing data and following students K through 8, K through 12. I think that's just critical as we look at the focus of today's hearing. That's my takeaway right now.

So coordinate the data into accessible entry point for someone like you who can see it and say this is what we need to do. We heard this, yeah.

We need to be able to follow students and coordinate both their housing situations with what they're dealing with at school, because you'll see that those things are going -- if housing is impacted, it's going to everything.

Yeah. There's a cascade effect, yes. Professor.

Yeah. Thanks. As a professor, I would sit here for about five hours probably nonstop and not take any breaks, so I appreciate that I have some deadlines here. I jotted a couple notes down as you asked this question because I think there are a lot of actually practical things we can do, and I think you're going to hear from a couple of other testimonies. One that I would say from the outset is the coordination across fields. We're all talking about whether it's a definitional problem or the dollars can kind of go this way but not really this way. That's a coordination issue that we can actually tackle right here, right. So, yes, we'll still be beholden to a lot of the funding streams that are there from the federal level for which we don't define how you can use it really, but it can give us a space by which we're going to have that collective conversation. This is not just an education issue, right, like that's a simplified statement that I'm just making. But it absolutely intersects with all of these other issues that I also raised within my testimony. So a coordination across all the different bodies, both the city level but then at the state level as well gives us a lot of power to be able to help define what these things mean for us, how we will measure them, how we will decide what those programs and impacts are going to be even if we're beholden to some strict or narrow sources of funds. The other bit that I would say, and just to say, yes, I totally agree with Councilmember Lozada that community engagement has been a buzz term since the '60s, right. I mean, I'm not even going to go into the history. You all know the history. The background of this is that we've done community engagement very, very poorly for a very long time. The reality too is that there are tried and true methods for actually doing this that mean actual empowerment and active listening to communities. We tend to not do them. I'll give you about 50 different examples of how the Philadelphia city has not done community engagement well over the last three decades alone. I'm not going to do that today, but certainly give me a call and I'll talk your ear off about all the ways that I talk about it in my Seattle classrooms. Critical community engagement is essential and we can do it well. The last thing I will say is that this is about housing. Homelessness is a housing issue. It is a wealth issue when you have a fully privatized housing market like we do, so we need a dramatic increase in the numbers of affordable housing and access to these things, and they need to be spread out throughout the entire city. I will say just as a point of record here that in Seattle we are moving on this idea through something that we are now -- we're using the terminology from the international space of social housing, which in effect the folks abroad will say, you mean public housing. And I say, no, you have to see public housing in the United States to know why we're calling it social housing. It is effectively pulling land and pulling housing off of the private market to ensure that we as the collective of the city not just those on Council, we have the collective power to determine and maintain affordability because we own it collectively. That is something we have been trending dramatically against for many decades because we love the idea of privatizing housing. It creates wealth but not for the people that we are ultimately talking about today. So I would say that there is a dramatic need to be able to socialize a portion of housing so that we actually maintain the power to determine what affordability can look like. We're trying that in Seattle right now. We passed it as a ballot initiative. It is binding. (Applause.)

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Councilmember Ahmad. I think that there are no 10 more questions for this panel, so safe travels to you both. Thank you for taking the time to give us your expert opinion. It's very much appreciated. (Applause.)

I'm going to ask that the Admin come back up. I can promise that we're not going to ask you to stay long, Admin. I just want to allow Councilmember Rue Landau to ask her questions and then get maybe one or two members and the Chair to close out with their questions. And then we have -colleagues, we have about two or three more panels. So if we can get through this panel, I want to try to make sure that we give our other speakers adequate time to be able to ask their questions and provide their testimony. So with that being said, Chair recognizes Councilmember Landau.

Chairman Thomas, thank you so much for this opportunity. I actually think my questions might be best placed after the School District testifies so I'm not sure if -- but I do have to leave in about 18 minutes. So I don't know if you 19 want me to put my questions on the 20 record now or if you want me to wait until after the School District testifies.

I think you could put the questions on the record now so the School District can hear those questions and they can prepare answers to those questions as we transition. And after Councilmember Landau puts those questions on the record, we'll close out with Councilmember Brooks for the Admin.

Thank you so much. And I appreciate you having me here. I'm not a member of the Education Committee, but I am Vice-Chair of the Housing Committee. Many of my questions have been asked by my colleagues, but I had a couple of more digging down a little more granularly into how we do the outreach and the work in the schools. I will say for everybody who's here that we as a city of Philadelphia, especially as a brand new Council with a brand new Mayor, we are definitely working on issues of housing and homelessness throughout this City in a very different way. Some of us just came from Oakland where we were talking about social housing. We want to tackle it in ways in which we may not have seen before. So as much as I saw the heads nodding and the clapping, trust me we're on the same page and we understand what the root cause is. We understand it's also about wealth inequality and lack of affordable housing for so many people and we are definitely dealing with that. I really wanted to understand more -- I get that the numbers are all off. Our point-in- time count might not be accurate, who we're counting in the schools might not be accurate. But I'm very curious as to who we are actually calling -- what do we call the liaisons in the schools. Are they really called McKinney-Vento liaisons? I'm not so sure that most young people would know to go talk to somebody called the McKinney-Vento liaisons. How are we doing the work to reach the young people? And while we're in a sports facility, I want to talk about are we doing offense or defense. If we're doing defense, we're waiting for the kids to kind of self-identify and to go reach out to an adult at school who they trust. Maybe that person is the McKinney-Vento person, maybe not, did they get through the process. But if we're doing the offense work, we're actually trying to find these kids. We're even looking for the patterns in their attendance. We are looking for other issues and other ways in which we can identify them and also reaching out to the parents. I also wanted to know how are we describing this, what words are we using. Are we using all of the words we need in ways in which to describe homelessness or not adequate housing in order to have everybody recognize in their own lives what is happening? I represented low-income tenants for many years of my life, and I've got to tell you as many parents who came into my office who were facing eviction, it was clear to me many of the young people, their kids they brought with them had no idea what was going on. They did not know they were facing eviction and that it was a possibility. So maybe using -- I'm very curious about the words that we're using, whether we're playing offense, if not defense. We definitely need to play offense. And the last thing is clearly having a goal, the win. The win is to not have no more homelessness in the schools, right. And I don't want us to do the work gathering this information without the goal of collectively trying to eradicate this and to make sure everybody is adequately housed. Thank you so much.

Thank you, colleague. Chair recognizes Councilmember Brooks.

So I had a little bit of time to kind of think of this a little deeper. So my question still goes back to who -- Councilmember Landau kind of brought this home, who is primarily responsible to make sure that the young people receive the adequate services? If we think about all the touchpoints systemically, if a child is identified as homeless, the families usually report it to the office of the School District. The School District puts on record to make sure this child isn't moved out of their neighborhood school and give them whatever transpass, whatever resources they need. Sometimes the parent does not get the transpass to be able to take their kids back to school, back and forth to school, which I don't understand why that happens. But then the next step is making sure the family has all the Out-of-School Time programs that they may need to be sustained, who handles that? What department in our City government is responsible for making sure that the families have wraparound services to get families out of the situation? Because in order for you to be out of homelessness, you have to work. So we have a working mom with two or three kids, trying to get them back and forth to school. Who is responsible to help her navigate this very complex system, identify schools in her neighbor -- I mean Out-of-School Time programs in her neighborhood, make sure that her young adult is registered for an Out-of-School Time program or a summer job and making sure they're able to get there? If you're already homeless, you're already mentally constrained with trying to get your child out of this horrible situation. Who in our city out of all the services that touch these families, and I'm just naming some of them, who is primarily responsible to make sure that a family is stabilized enough to move out of this system? And I want to focus on the young kids because if we have a system that we're not caring about adults, who is responsible for making sure that these babies have the adequate services to break this cycle of homelessness and poverty and their family? And it's our responsibility so I'm really concerned. Because when I did the numbers, I did from to 17. If 5 every school has a liaison, that's 6 only one or two kids in their 7 school that they're responsible 8 for. If we had did it from 5 to 9 24, that's 35 kids in one school 10 that multiple people are 11 responsible to make sure that 12 they're okay, and it's probably the 13 same family. So I'm still like it's a level of -- it's just unacceptable. These are paid jobs from multiple City agencies to care for young people and people are dropping the ball. And then we pick it up on the other when kids are in jail, when the family is disconnected in DHS or they're dead. We need to find a solution. I just need to know who is responsible. So when I get this phone call in my office, who is the person that's responsible to make sure that a homeless child in a school has wraparound services they need to make -- and if there's no 6 one, do we have a coordinated effort that everyone is talking to support the young people?

Yeah, definitely. I think the school is responsible, right. So the school is that -- like you just explained the school --

Who?

The liaison, who many times is also the school counselor.

See, that's not --

So I'm just going to -- but they are the folks that are -- based on McKinney- Vento, the folks that work -- and the School District can talk more about that, so I don't want to talk about those pieces and the responsibilities and how that works. But when that family is identified for support, that liaison is responsible to work with those services and it should be a bi-directional communication where it's not just I'm going to pass it over to Congreso, Concilio or Turning Point but what's happening, there's a feedback cycle, a feedback loop to that. And I did want to answer the other -- I thought about your other question as well. One of the things that I want to share that our Mayor is doing and it's one of the first things that has been done in a while, the extended day, extended year program. And that initiative is really to help keep our schools open between the hours of 7:30 to 6:00 throughout the school year, winter break. So this year the School District has a two-week winter break, spring break and summer break so that those students that you're talking about, those 12-year-olds have access to programming.

I get that. I get the extended program. I get it. What are we going to do to make sure that the families who are most impacted are into those programs? It's only of them. 12 So how are we going to make sure 13 our families that need it the most 14 know that it exists, know that they 15 have access to receive it. Because 16 to the same point, we're talking 17 about the same kids here. So we 18 have multiple summer school 19 afterschool programs, extended 20 School District programs, but we still have children that are within this homeless population running around the city with nothing to do. So my concern is we can set up the programs. Who is making sure that the family, even if the parent needs their hand held to fill out the application, is making sure that the young people are in the program? Because now we're talking about the School District of Philadelphia. It can't solely fall on a counselor when we're short staffed a counselor and one counselor can have an entire school. So when you said a liaison, I thought you were talking about a separate job. An added job for the counselor is unacceptable because the counselor is also handling all the special ed., all the DHS cases, whatever comes, homelessness, college transition, high school transition, application, so that's unacceptable. That's why when we think about it, it can't solely fall on the School District. The School District is understaffed. And these children that we're talking about are being touched within multiple agencies. It's very few that aren't falling or knocking on another City service door for support and I don't understand why we're dropping the ball. Like I said, this is life or death. If we walk out to Hunting Park here today, you'll see young kids just out here randomly with nothing to do. What are we going to do to solve this situation? And we can't pass the buck as adults. People are getting paid six-figure salaries to solve this problem wherein young people are dying in our neighborhoods every day. We have to tighten up this loop and we can't just pass the buck. I need for the School District, Homeless Services, DHS, every group, every organization that's being paid with City funding to make sure that we find a solution to make sure our young folks have the resources they need to end this cycle.

And I agree with you. I think one of the things that I said early on is that our office, the Mayor's Office of Education can be that convener, can be that coordinator. Even listening to what Professor Wood was saying to bring everyone that you just said that has a touchpoint, DHS has social workers in the schools that has a touchpoint to all of these children to make sure that we're accountable, we know who they are, we know what services they're getting and that we're able to see measurable outcomes and see them move on in academically or the component of housing that's really important as well.

And we can't expect young people to come and say I need help.

I agree.

We know we come from Black and Brown communities and you keep your business in your house. It's some adults' responsibility to step in and identify children is chronically late, chronically absent, clothes dirty. It's so many different things that trigger that something could be happening in the family and we have to find a way to support families and children when not making them feel like they're going to be separated from their families and DHS is going to take them and they're going to be in foster care. (Applause.)

So we have to find a better solution to that. And children aren't going to be the ones that come to adults and say, we've been sleeping in a car for two days.

Sure, I agree.

Thank you, Councilmember Brooks. Before I -- I know Councilmember Lozada has a comment. I just want to make sure I'm understanding for the record. Am I hearing that you're saying that your office is going to be responsible for coordinating with the Mayor's Admin, the School District of Philadelphia in the different departments that's responsible for supporting homeless children to make sure that there's a coordinated effort to address this issue moving forward?

Yeah. My office is going to have to do that, yes.

Awesome. Great. So that's one tangible walkaway. Chair recognizes Councilmember Lozada.

That was going to be one of my questions, right. Is your office going to do that?

Right.

And then earlier I don't know if I misunderstood or what, but I was under the impression earlier that you all said that there was either a liaison or a community coordinator in each school, not that the counselor was that person.

I'm going to let the District talk about that because they're the ones that oversee that. There are only 20 community schools with coordinators. But in some of the -- and they'll share that, that sometimes in some of the schools the liaison is the counselor. The McKinney-Vento liaison is the counselor, but they can share more about that.

So how does for those schools where we know that there is a high concentration of children who are living in this situation, what role does or can the Office of Homeless Services and their outreach workers play to be able to support these counselors? Because as my colleague has said, the counselor becomes the everything. The counselor becomes the social worker, the case manager, the application completer, the college connector. So if we are supposed to be colleagues regardless of where we work for the City of Philadelphia and we know that this is a crisis, right, and we know your office is mainly responsible for providing services to those who are identified as homeless, how can you then support the school system, the School District to be able to ensure that these children are receiving the wraparound services that they need, right? And because we know that this is an issue, why have we not done that? What is preventing us from doing -- and please don't respond with money because I will lose a gasket, right, because we find money for everything. And so, we know that this is a vulnerable population. We know that this is a -- Dr. Wood just said that we've been having this conversation for eight years, right. So at what point do we say this is a crisis and these are young people we're talking about, we need to figure out how do we provide those counselors, those teachers, the necessary support that they need in order to get the services to the children who need them most?

So we definitely work together and have lots of different efforts and supports that we have created. For example, our youth with lived experience help design a training for new teachers so they can identify children who are experiencing homelessness. That's used in the School District. With the ESSER funds like we spoke about, we created a position embedded in OHS to deal with that digital connectivity, truancy issues, making sure they have community-based supports that's supported and funded by the ESSER funds from the School District, so we had that current position which we're trying to get funding to sustain that position. But we obviously are going to have to create more inroads and more different ways. There's lots of different things that are happening, getting different feedback from the parents, getting feedback -- we're in the middle of beginning our strategic planning process so that's a big role that we're going to be looking at, in particular students as well as older adults, so those are two targeted folks that we're really looking at to see how do we improve that. But we're open to collaborating with everyone. That's the whole point of our CoC and getting everyone at the table to figure out. It's not just going to be data integration. It's going to be different ways of how bring resources, how to bring philanthropic dollars to the table and just do things differently.

Thank you, Councilmember Lozada. I want to thank the Admin for participating in today's hearing and honestly for owning the idea of making sure that there's a coordinated effort between all of these parties. We're hoping that that effort is mirrored with a coordinated database. I think that was one of the other things that came out of today's hearing so we can be able to track our homeless youth based on the different services and systems that they may be a part of. Please keep in mind that we do have monthly meetings with the School District as you know. But for those of the listening audience, the City Council's Education Committee meets monthly with the School District, and we will be sure to make sure that this issue of homeless youth is on the agenda every month until we move in a position where we've seen a significant dent as it relates to the numbers. So we've received some alarming information. I'm super excited to hear from the School District and I'm going to --

(Inaudible).

And Councilmember Lozada reminded me that the Advisory Council should also be part of the work as well too. So thank you for that, colleague. It's very much appreciated. With that being said, Mr. Braveman, I'm going to ask you to call the next panel to come testify today. And please make sure that the School District is on this next panel.

Sure. Next we have Rachel Holzman, Deputy Chief of Student Rights and Responsibilities for the School District of Philadelphia. And she will be joined by Erin Patterson, Director of Education Initiatives at Schoolhouse Connection. (Witnesses approached Witness table.)

As folks are transitioning in and transitioning out, we're going to ask that the members of this next panel please start by stating your name for the record. And after that, we will proceed with the testimony.

Could you state your name for the record please before you testify.

Good afternoon. My name is Erin Patterson. I'm Director of Education Initiatives at Schoolhouse Connection.

You can proceed.

Thank you. Thank you so much for the opportunity to be with you all today. I commend you for taking up this issue. I can count on one hand the number of City Councils who are laser-focused on this, so thank you very much. million PreK to students and an additional 10 600,000 children ages birth to 5 11 nationwide who are experiencing 12 homelessness. My organization Schoolhouse Connection provides strategic advocacy and practical assistance in partnership with early childhood programs, schools, institutions of higher education, service providers, families and youth. We believe that change must be rooted in the realities of local communities. We first listen and learn and then we advocate and implement. 2 million. We have worked tirelessly over the past three years to ensure those funds, our HCY funds, are spent well because we know that access to education from early childhood to post-secondary gives children and youth the tools to end their homelessness and achieve their dreams. During my time today, I hope to paint a picture of the unique challenges that students experiencing homelessness face, the ways in which the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated those challenges and the urgency we now face to ensure the critical support that started with ARP-HCY funds not only continues but expands. I'll hope to leave you with some practical and tactical considerations and recommendations so that you in your role as City Council can act on behalf of the thousands of children and youth experiencing homelessness in Philadelphia. The first thing to say is that students experiencing homelessness face unique challenges. Homelessness is a traumatic experience with potential long-term consequences. Yet child and youth homelessness is largely hidden from sight. This is why we call it hidden homelessness as you've noted earlier. Homelessness is defined by the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act as children and youth who lack a fixed, regular and adequate nighttime residence. This includes students living in shelters or who are visibly unsheltered and it also includes those staying in a motel or hotel temporarily. And as you've mentioned, those are who are staying with others, what's referred to as doubled-up. I want to acknowledge the frustration you must feel as a City Council whose job is to provide oversight to multiple agencies working with different definitions of homelessness. And I want to acknowledge where that stems from at the federal level. And like I said, hope to provide you with some tactical recommendations for how to act in your role. Families with children experiencing homelessness are less likely than single adults to stay on the streets and other outdoor locations often because they are afraid their children will be removed from their custody. Unaccompanied youth experiencing homelessness, those are youth on their own and in homeless circumstances, fear interactions with authorities and exploitation from older adults, whether in a shelter, on the street or staying on someone's couch. For these reasons, families and youth are much more likely to stay temporarily with other people or in motels. Situations that themselves are very unstable, often unsafe and put them at risk of great harm, including trafficking. They often move between situations and may not know where they will sleep from one night to the next. Nationwide 76 percent of PreK-12 students experiencing homelessness are part of this doubled-up, hidden homeless population. D. S. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. As a result, they are not eligible to be assessed for and receive HUD homeless assistance services. Yet the children and youth who are excluded from HUD's definition of homelessness are extremely vulnerable and are at great risk of continuing to experience homelessness as adults. For this reason, public schools are very often the only source of support for some of our families and youth with the greatest needs.

Public Schools provide the structure, stability and education that are necessary to avoid homelessness as adults. And indeed lack of a high school degree or GED is the single greatest risk factor for continuing to experience homelessness as a young adult. Yet homelessness creates unique barriers to school access and success that must be removed intentionally, including with dedicated resources. S. S. 3 percent, which is 13 percentage points below other low-income students and nearly 18 percentage points below all students. These data underscore how the impacts of homelessness can actually be seen above and beyond poverty alone and why actions and funding that are targeted to support students experiencing homelessness must be pursued. We cannot assume that actions that target low-income families will meet the specific needs of children and youth experiencing homelessness. Students experiencing homelessness do not just face challenges graduating from high school. Nationally, the chronic absenteeism rate of students experiencing homelessness is 52 percent, well above the average for all students at 31 percent. Students experiencing homelessness are also more likely to be English learners or have a learning disability, and homelessness disproportionately impacts our LGBTQ youth and there are correlations between youth homelessness and teen pregnancy and mental health challenges. And then COVID-19 happened and exacerbated these challenges for students experiencing homelessness, and we are learning that those impacts did not end when the pandemic was declared over. These impacts are potentially long-lasting. During the pandemic, identification of students experiencing homelessness decreased not because homelessness itself decreased, but because students were even more hidden and unseen in virtual settings by the educators and liaisons who are usually first to identify them. In fact, a report that my organization Schoolhouse Connection released estimated that nearly 42,000 students experiencing homelessness across the country were simply lost and unaccounted for in our systems during the pandemic and switch to virtual learning. This move to virtual learning had significant academic consequences making it difficult or impossible for students experiencing homelessness to access their classes due to inconsistent Wi-Fi, lack of technology and being in environments like shelters or crowded homes where the background was noisy, stigmatizing or dangerous. The trauma of homelessness was exacerbated and mental health and other needs increased. For many students experiencing homelessness, school is not just a safe place and an escape but it's a hub and connector to other critical resources. And as I mentioned earlier, this is particularly true for students staying in doubled-up living situations or the hidden homeless who do not qualify for HUD homeless assistance services. And so, the American Rescue Plan Act dedicated $800 million worth of funding specifically to meet the needs of our homeless children and youth in our public schools. And across the country we have seen some innovative and inspiring examples of how school districts have taken advantage of this one-time funding to meet those unique needs, exploring innovative ways of providing services and standing up programs and supports that should really always be available to homeless students and families. According to Schoolhouse Connection's national survey in February of this year, school district homeless liaisons report many positive impacts of our ARP-HCY funds, including increased school stability, identification and attendance. Liaisons that reported they received ARP-HCY funds were nearly twice as likely to report an increase in student homelessness due in part to better outreach and more staffing capacity, which is desperately needed.

I'll highlight a few of those examples in the hopes that it gives you some fodder for exploring your own role in building and growing your homeless education program before I close out with just a few quick recommendations. To get at some of the points that have been raised earlier in this hearing, one way that these relief funds have been used is to partner with community- based organizations to meet the comprehensive needs of students and families experiencing homelessness. Some examples include partnering with housing organizations so that families who fall under the McKinney-Vento definition of homelessness are eligible for housing services when they would not otherwise be because school districts use their relief funds to match that funding. Some school districts provide access to legal resources. For example, one school district in Ohio partnered with legal aid to support families in navigating and working through housing and eviction needs as well as other legal needs affecting housing. The School District conducts a legal assessment for families who need services and refers them to the legal aid office. And this partnership includes both attorney hours and training for staff and has increased both housing access and stability and educational stability. Lastly, I'll say that Boston public schools and Richmond public schools leverage private philanthropy to expand the impact of their funds to move families into housing. And again, those are families who were identified by the school district under the broader McKinney-Vento definition of homelessness. Lastly, I want to point out a few ways that we believe Philadelphia can and should act now to fill the fiscal gap that will be left by the expiration of these one-time funds and actually increase resources for students experiencing homelessness. As you know, these funds must be obligated by September 30th of this year and in states that are applying for extended liquidation, they may be continued through March of 2026. If not, they have to be liquidated by January of 2025. And so, a few examples of how you might consider filling that gap that come from around the country: In Washington state for example, they created a statewide Homeless Student Stability Program or HSSP, which awards nearly $9 million in competitive grants to local education agencies across the state. And those grants are to supplement existing federal McKinney-Vento homeless education funds. Other local education agencies have found ways to use other education funding that can be reserved and earmarked for homeless students, including Title 1, Part A funds which school districts are allowed and required to provide a set aside for. Additionally, we encourage you to consider using your existing data and analysis to assess and inform your current homeless education funding and budget. For example, liaison capacity is a concern across the country and I believe it is a concern here in Philadelphia. And so, we encourage you to assess how your liaisons are able to meet the needs through staffing of students experiencing homelessness. You can expand your partnerships, develop MOUs and cooperative agreements with community-based organizations like shelters but also early childhood providers, legal aid offices. Thinking about the needs of families and students experiencing homelessness, you could create a fund for dedicated housing and services specifically for students experiencing homelessness. We've seen this being piloted in places like Baltimore, again putting the power of resources into the hands of the school district who are the most likely to see and identify all students and children experiencing homelessness. I'll also lastly say we always encourage you to consult the experts, in this case not only your liaisons and administrators, but your students and parents and families with lived experiences themselves to understand better what their barriers are and what they most need.

We as a national organization at Schoolhouse connection are actually eager to see how you in Philadelphia will make innovative, equitable investments to support students experiencing homelessness by ensuring critical services and programs can continue and expand. I'm happy to answer any questions and I thank you for your time today.

We're going to allow the entire panel to testify and then we'll open it up for questions. Thank you for your testimony.

Good afternoon. My name is Rachel Holzman and we thank you for inviting the School District of Philadelphia today to testify on this incredibly important topic. I'm the Deputy Chief for the Office of Student Rights and Responsibilities, and I'm joined here by my colleague Colleen Landy who heads the Office for Students Experiencing --

So I'm going to ask if the School District can introduce yourself. We have your testimony. For the purposes of time, I want to ask that you don't read your testimony because we have that to submit for the record. I think if we can just jump into some of the answers. There's been a lot of information that's been communicated. And based on a lot of the questions that we had for the Admin, we've been told that the District has those answers. So we do have your written testimony. We'll adopt that for the record. If you could state your -- well, you've already stated your name. If you can state your name and we can just dive into some of the questions that were asked earlier by Councilmembers, that would be appreciated.

Sure. Good afternoon, Council. Colleen Landy-Thomas, Director of Education for Children and Youth Experiencing Homelessness at the School District.

I'm sorry. Are you going to pose the --

Oh, sure. I'll let Councilmember Brooks go. She was very passionate in her remarks earlier. I'm not sure if you heard, but she asked a lot of in-depth questions that the Admin said the District would be able to provide answers to. So I'll start with Councilmember Brooks and other members who have questions for the District, we could dive right into them.

I'm going to start with the questions about the liaison because I think that's number one. How many actual liaisons individually are there in the School District? I mean earlier it said that there's one at every school and then it was switched to the counselor's responsibility. So we need a clear answer of how many actually liaisons are in the School District of Philadelphia, what schools are they representing and are they concentrated in areas where homelessness is a critical issue?

Thank you for the question. So every counselor in the School District of Philadelphia is considered the homeless liaison. So if a building has three counselors, those counselors are the homeless liaisons. If a building has one counselor given students in that building, that counselor is the homeless liaison.

So to your point, most schools do not have three counselors. That's like a struggle that we have in the District ongoing. So in the event that the schools have no counselor, who handles the situation with homeless youth?

When there is a vacancy that hasn't been filled, then the principal will designate someone in the counselor's absence to take that role.

Will that person potentially be a teacher who also has other responsibilities and acting as a counselor?

It could be, but those positions are generally filled. And I just spoke to the head of all counselors. At this point, I'm not sure if we have any vacancies -- I think we're at a 96 percent fill rate for counselors.

So what about in schools that have maximum capacity and do not have the maximum number of counselors that they need for the student ratio? I think it was like every 500 young person, there's one counselor to a school if my numbers are correct.

So one of the things we did with the ARPA funding is we looked -- and I think one of the Councilmembers asked this question. We looked at the schools with the high populations of identified homeless students and we partnered with the organizations that are here today, HopePHL, Valley Youth House and Eddie's House to help support the counselors in identifying and connecting those students to community resources. We are hopeful that they will continue that work even though the ARPA funding has gone from the District and some of them are securing their own funding to be able to continue that work. So that's one of the ways we support in schools with high numbers.

So I think those two organizations primarily serve teenagers and young adults. What about young -- or they serve all children?

No, we have them serving children of all grades.

So I know the -- I can't remember your name. She said that her office will take it up. So in the past, who was responsible for coordinating the resource for a young person to be identified? So the School District is allowing an outside agency to come in and help support with that work. Who is responsible to make sure that School Homeless Services, DHS, all that stuff is coordinated to make sure that a family or a young person is able to access all the services that they require? Because an agency that we're contracting with, that's a whole separate entity. Who is responsible to make sure that our young people are getting all the resources that they need? And it can't be an outside agency. Who is tracking that information back? Because to my point, there are too many young people that are free and roaming the streets with lack of service. Who's responsible to make sure that young folks, especially those -- if we want to make it a niche population, especially those that are tagged in our system, identified as being homeless, who is responsible to make sure that they're signed up for Out-of-School Time programs, summer employment, whatever program they need to transition out of poverty?

The counselor ultimately is in charge of making sure that everything is coordinated. When we hire outside agencies to help support counselors, there's always a feedback loop to the counselor. The counselor does also work with students for summer opportunities. They work with families for summer opportunities. The Office of Secondary in the District works with families, but ultimately it is the counselor's role.

So we can say that the counselors are already overworked. That's not really happening. And this is not a shot on counselors. I come from being a home and school parent that handled all the high school transitioning, including making sure the kids get to high school's back-to-school night because the counselor was over inundated with other things that were deemed far more critical. Where within priority do the number I estimated, 35 kids potentially, that are identified as homeless fall within the priority list to make sure that they receive what they need because they also have to transfer IEP information; am I correct?

Some --

What is it the psychology, psychologist with programming, so all of this falls on the counselor. Who really is responsible for taking care of these young people?

The ultimate responsibility is the principal of the building, but the counselor is the coordinator of services.

Before I -- I know, Councilmember Lozada. Real quick, how long have you had this position? How long have you guys been in the position that you're in?

I've been in this position over these offices for years. 14

Don't 15 need you to answer this question, but I'm a father. I would not send my child to a school where a counselor is responsible for all the things that you said that they are. I don't think you would either. I think that the concern that we have is that when we look at the numbers and we listen to who's responsible for what, we don't see the needle moving the way it should. And I'm trying to communicate this in a way because I really don't want to offend you or insult you in the work that you've done because we work in government too, and we understand that there's a lot of bureaucracy, it's a lot of hurdles and moving stuff. But I have to ask you, and I'll pass it to you, Councilmember Gauthier, what recommendations have you gave to leadership, to superintendents, to people about the system that exists right now? I mean, clearly you can't believe that the system that we have works if we're asking counselors and principals to be the point people in schools to identify homeless folks. I was a dean at a school. I touched young people way more than the principal and the counselor do. And I know for a fact that that couldn't be my responsibility, and I only had 200 children in my high school. It would have been impossible for me. So if I'm the person that's in charge of mental health support, collegiate transitions, any type of social, emotional issues -- and last I checked, sometimes we ask counselors to cover classes too when we're short on teachers; is that correct?

(Nodded affirmatively).

Has there ever been a complaint or a paper or a memo that you've ever sent to maybe Watlington or Hite where you've been like, look, I'm sounding the alarm, the system we have right now doesn't work and we need to do something different? I'm also thinking about all of the ARPA funds that came through. We spent a ton of ARPA money on reoccurring expenses which this legislative body pushed back against. We thought that that was a bad idea to spend money on things that would create a reoccurring cost, but you did it anyway, fair. Some of that reoccurring cost that you've accumulated from, what we've been told go specifically to homeless services for youth. So it's a two-part thing. I'm wondering what have you done to sound the alarm in the past based on the system that we have that we're discussing today that clearly doesn't work? I'm wondering what response you got, right? And then on the other side, when the money runs out, how is this going to impact your services and the work that you do?

Thank you for the question. We have over the last several years realized that the one of the first problems, and some of you have recognized this, is actually getting an accurate number. And because there is such a stigma attached to this, we have spent a great deal of time training adults. And as Ms. Gonzalez said, we also made a podcast for kids so that we could have adults see warning signs so that kids were not responsible for coming and saying can you help me, so that we could recognize that. So what we've done is in the last years, and that's in the testimony, is increase the number of children that we have identified. And we think that's very important because if we don't know who they are, we can't support them, and we don't expect them to come to us. We have to find them. So that's one of the bells we rang, and we were able to increase staff and we were able to raise those numbers. Making children understand that doubled-up and couch-surfing all count and that we are here to support you. So that's one thing that we thought was super important, was first getting accurate numbers. Part of the way that we got increased numbers of identification was by increasing our own internal staff, which we asked for and got. It was also contracting with community agencies. We are concerned about what happens if they don't continue to get funding to continue to support us because that is one of the ways that we gave support to specific schools who have high number of kids, so we are concerned about that for our students. And in the last few years we've also tried to -- we changed the transportation protocol so that kids at mile were getting transportation. We've increased our Title funding again this year. There was some testimony a minute ago about how school districts have done that. We've put some of the ARPA-funded things back on Title 1 so that our kids are still having all the things they need in terms of uniforms and transportation. We started a teen group a few years ago so that we have youth voice telling us what we need to do and listening to them. So those are some of the things that we've done trying to at least identify correctly and support the children who identify as homeless.

So you've never sound the alarm and said, a memo, anything like that where you said the idea of having counselors serve in these point positions to be on ground zero to identify young people is probably not the best system in place?

So I can get back to you on that because I -- well, because I don't oversee that role.

So who oversees that role?

There's a deputy chief -- an interim deputy chief and a chief, Dr. Jayme Banks. She oversees --

How long have those people been in place?

For -- the chief position was just made, but she was a deputy chief for the last three years I believe.

Okay. So to your knowledge, there's been nothing done to sound the alarm to say this system doesn't work. I've never heard a complaint from the District that said that there's an issue with homeless youth and we do not have the proper systems in place we don't have the proper staff, we don't have the proper -- like you're telling us you don't have what you need, but we're the ones who give you money. So I don't understand how you have a problem, right. I'm thinking about my kids. I'm a teacher. If my student has a problem, I'm expecting him to come to his coach. If my child has a problem, I'm expecting him to come to me as the parent. I'm not protesting to be your parent, but last I checked we raised property taxes from 55 percent to 56 percent and we give the District more money right now today than the School District has ever gotten in the history of the city of Philadelphia from the City. So if we're funding you blindly, right, at this enormous level, I'm wondering why has nobody ever came to City Council, gone to Harrisburg and said, listen, this system we have doesn't work, we're not able to properly identify young people who are homeless because we don't have the proper staff. I understand what you're saying about training. Training is great. But if I'm the athletic director at Frankford High School and you've trained me to identify a homeless youth, I identify a homeless youth and I go to my principal and he's like, well, there's not much I can do about it, what are we doing? I'm asking a specific question. I'm not making a speech, and I will pass the mic. But my question is the exact same since we started this conversation. Has anybody sounded the alarm? You can't -- it's not fair to the people that's sitting here today to tell us you're going to get back to us with all due respect when you've been doing a job for 15 years. At some point somebody had to send a memo or have an email or have an emergency meeting or a conversation. And maybe you did. And maybe Dr. Hite or Superintendent Watlington didn't make it the priority that it needs to be. But Councilmember Brooks said earlier, we don't want to ask people's salaries, but people are getting paid a lot of money to handle this issue. And it seems like everybody who's come up here today has pointed to somebody else to say it's not me. We got to go back out and answer the people. Councilmember Lozada can't go into the 7th District and say, oh, that's not me, that's the Mayor, that's not me, it's the School District. Those people are going to say it's her. So we need some answers, and we need to know has anybody sounded the alarm about the concerns that's been communicated here today?

My director and myself have spoken to leadership about the concerns we have about the staffing and particularly as ARPA has sunsetted, the concerns we have about how are we going to continue to support and identify the students experiencing homelessness.

So what was their response? What's the plan?

That I can't speak to. That I can ask the District to get back to --

Sure. I just want to put on the record that it's extremely disturbing that Dr. Watlington isn't here. It's also extremely disturbing that he sent folks here to be able to testify before us today that do not have the ability to provide answers to the questions that we have. I meet with Dr. Watlington and the School Board on a monthly basis. This hearing was no 4 surprise. We had an in-depth conversation. My team sent over the information that was needed to be sent. And it's unfortunate that we've all been sitting here for hours waiting for you to testify in the heat, not eating lunch or anything like that, and we really expected some tangible answers. And I think the only answer we're getting today is we'll get back to you. I'll stop. Chair recognizes Councilmember Lozada and -- oh, I'm sorry. Chair recognizes Councilmember Gauthier. And after Councilmember Gauthier, it's Councilmember Lozada.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I wanted to again just pause and reflect on the numbers that are in your testimony. So you guys stated that between the 2022 and 2023 school year, your office served 10,000 children that you've identified as experiencing homelessness. You also stated that for '23 to '24 you think that that number has increased by percent. 10 So I just wanted to pause for a 11 second to say that that is a huge 12 number. That means that for 13 '23-'24 we think that 12,000 young 14 people are experiencing some form 15 of homelessness. There are 200,000 16 students in the District if I'm 17 correct. That's over 20 percent of 18 the population, so that is an 19 emergency. If that's not an 20 emergency, I don't know what is. When the Mayor's Office presented earlier, they stated that they served 75 young people under 18 at the homeless services access point for FY23. There's a huge gap between 75 people and 10,000 and now 12,000 young people who are experiencing homelessness in the District. And I understand from reading through all the testimony that the District's Office of Education for children and youth experiencing homelessness, your goals are to reduce barriers to education and learning for these students. But whose job is it to make sure they're housed? Who's focused on making sure that those 12,000 students now actually have a home? Can you speak to that?

Any housing issues the counselor is going to make referrals for. I mean, we don't control the housing. We work with the City. We make referrals to appropriate agencies for housing or housing support.

But that is a very -- and I give honor to our counselors and everybody working in a school. And I agree with Councilmember Brooks that counselors are under an enormous burden. Making a referral to housing when percent of our 7 students are homeless is a very 8 passive way to deal with an issue 9 that -- it's disastrous for the 10 City that 12,000 young people don't 11 have anywhere to lay their heads at 12 night consistently. That's a very 13 passive way to deal with the issue. 14 Whose job is it to make sure not 15 only that a referral is made but 16 that people are housed? 17

I mean, I 18 would ask the City about their 19 housing department. We don't -- we 20 don't oversee that so we don't have control to make sure that that student is housed. We work in collaboration with the City supports.

I'll bring back the Mayor's Office then.

Just real quick you want --

(Nodded affirmatively).

Correct. So when we say 75, that's young adults who showed up to the access point by themselves. We do help households with children. Last year overall we served a little bit over 17,439 unique individuals, so it's households with children versus youth unaccompanied who might show up by themselves for service. So we just want to clarify that.

Okay. That is helpful. As it relates to the near 12,000 number that the District is reporting for young people experiencing homelessness, how are we doing? How are we doing housing them and how are we doing with tracking that number? How many of those young people do we think are on a path to housing?

So of those, some of them we offered prevention services, some go to emergency shelter, and then once they're placed and assessed, put into permanent housing. So I can send you those numbers so you can see for last year.

I think the part that's bothering me is that it doesn't feel like we know. It feels like the conversation --

Oh, we know. We definitely know.

-- seems very vague or we just didn't bring it or --

Yeah, I thought I sent it. I thought we sent that, but I believe it was in the stuff that we emailed over so it should be in there. But I can definitely send it to you.

I think the size and scope of the issue demands some more definitive answers about our progress. And if we're not where we want to be, what are we doing, right, to improve progress. 12,000 out of 200,000 students is an enormous amount of students to be experiencing housing insecurity. I would want us to be able to talk more specifically and definitively about how we're doing with that and where people are at and even if we're not where we want to be today as a city, how we plan to get there.

Yes, I can definitely send the numbers of the households with children we served through our system, I can send those over.

Thank you, Councilmember Gauthier. Chair recognizes Councilmember Lozada followed by Councilmember Ahmad.

Very quickly, you mentioned in your testimony that we received $2.2 million through the American Rescue Plan. If that number is correct, can you tell me what specifically were we as a school district supposed to use that for as it relates to students experiencing homelessness?

Thank you for the question. I can speak to the federal requirements and allowances and then invite my colleagues from the School District to share more nuanced examples of how they use those funds. American Rescue Plan Homeless Children and Youth funds were sent to states. States took a set aside and then up to 20 or 25 percent, and then the rest went to school districts through the state. So the first thing I want to say is that we hear from a lot of school districts that they got those funds very, very late in the timeline and that's been a challenge for school districts capacity-wise. Those funds were intended to be spent on all of the allowable uses under the existing federal McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act. There are 14 allowable uses that cover a range 15 of activities again to remove 16 barriers to participate fully in school, and these Rescue Plan funds had some flexible uses. For example, school districts could use these funds to pay for a few nights in a hotel. That's the first time educators in school districts have ever been able to directly put up a family in a motel for a few nights. And by doing that when the family stays in a motel on someone else's dime for a few nights, they are then knocked into eligibility for HUD homeless assistant services. So we advocated for school districts to choose to spend their funds those ways very flexibly because these are one-time funds. I also want to point out that the liaisons very infrequently were able to decide how those funds were spent. It's the budget officers within the districts who made a lot of spending decisions without consulting the homeless education programs. Again, I am at a national organization. I was not in those conversations in Philadelphia, so I encourage you to perhaps find out a little bit more about the decision-making process within the District, but we were very excited about the flexible uses of those funds. Another one being to provide both post-secondary transition services and early childhood services. We saw a lot of school districts and states hire early childhood homelessness navigators so that younger children could have access to education if they met the McKinney-Vento definition of homelessness. And I'll stop there.

So can the School District tell me of that 2.2 that they gave to the state, how much did we receive and how did we use it?

We received about 4.5 million and we used it -- we had a tiny central office staff that was doing most of -- a lot of the identification of the students, and then we used it to increase internal staff which we're able to keep by moving that funding to Title 1, and we used it to contract with the community partners I mentioned before and the Office of Homeless Services which you also heard, and all of those went into schools where there were high numbers of homeless children identified to help support them and to help make referrals to community resources.

And can you tell me of that money how much was spent on hiring internal staff as opposed to services that we know are so critical?

Give us just one second. I think it was about 600,000 of the 4.8 -- 4.5.

So that went to staffing. And then the balance went to providing services?

Yes. The three agencies and partnering with the City for a liaison in their office as well.

And can you tell me what is the racial breakdown of the internal staff that is responsible for providing these services to this vulnerable population?

Do you mean the Central Office staff?

(Nodded affirmatively).

I'm going to let my colleague answer that.

Hi. Can you just repeat that question? The racial breakdown, is that what you said?

(Nodded affirmatively).

So we have 15 total staff and out of that 15, there are two people who are White and one person who is Hispanic and the remainder are African American.

I have a point of information. Did you say that the School District is paying for a liaison in OHS?

Yes. We set up a contract with OHS so that we would have a City person doing very good cross-collaborative work.

So that person -- I can explain a little bit more. That person actually sits at the shelter access point. And any time a family comes in that has children, they meet with that family, make sure they understand McKinney-Vento, ask them if they have any school needs and are able to connect them immediately to the school's liaison and then to get them enrolled if that's needed. It's been very helpful.

I'm not disputing that it's helpful. I just don't understand why the School District is paying for that. Why wouldn't OHS just assign or appoint someone from the City to sit over in the School District of Philadelphia. And you would think it would fall under the office of, what is it, Children and Youth or something. I don't understand why would the School District take its money to pay somebody in OHS who's responsible for services for the City to be a liaison. Is it like bureaucracy or --

No, no. So part of the usage of how you can use the ESSER funds, it was to make sure that certain subpopulations of students didn't fall through the cracks and one of them were homeless students, so that was why we designed that position specifically to be funded by that to help with that process.

I think part of my frustration is, and I'm going to go back to what our Chair was responding to, why have we not sounded the alarm and why have we not been able to report on the ineffectiveness of what we have in place currently and why if folks at the School District recognize that this is an issue and that there's such a large number of youth in our school system experiencing homelessness, why did we not use some of that emergency money to hire liaisons for actual schools? Because the fact that counselors are swamped is not a secret, right. That has been something that we've been talking about for a long time. I'm having a difficult time in these hearings dealing with the nonsense that we all talk about exist but none of us seems to want to do anything about it, right. And so, if we're receiving emergency funds and we're able to respond to something that is so serious, that is a crisis, why are we hiring internal staff when what we should be doing is hiring people to be able to work and respond in our school buildings. I can't seem -- it's commonsense to me. And so, we need to make our government a commonsense government if we really want to make change. I don't understand why and who made the decision not to respond to the need that we have, because that's really who we need to -- that's really who needs to be sitting in this seat, not you. We need people who are the decision- makers. We want to know from the people who choose not to respond and address the issue, we need them sitting in that seat.

Yes, thank you for that question and I actually can address that. Some of the additional District staff that we hired were to be school-based, so we actually have right now four school-based staff, not enough, but we have four school-based staff who are in the schools, assisting and supporting the counselors and working specifically with students experiencing homelessness. And each of those staff have four assigned schools that they go to. So they're there either once or twice a week. Of course we need more support, but that was our way of sort of seeing how that extra support would work. And luckily we're able to maintain those staff through our Title 1 funding, but that's sort of how we're trying to see if that could work.

And has that staff ever come back to say that they need support too, right, that four is not enough and that each of them having four schools having to respond -- how many students do each of those individuals -- how many individual clients do they respond to?

So they actually -- and the schools have said this to us too. They said, we love your person that you gave us, we want that person here every day. You know, we need that support every day. But I don't have the numbers right now of how many each of them support, but we did place them in schools that have one of the highest numbers.

How many do each of them see, what is the individual clients? How many young people do each one of these individuals see?

I can get back to you with that exact number for each school if that would be helpful. I don't have it off the top of my head.

Let me help a little bit with this one. What's their daily responsibility? So when they go to a school, they get there o'clock. What are they doing all day if they're going to four different schools throughout the course of a week? What goes on in their daily schedule that puts them in a position to get to know young people where young people develop a relationship with them and they're comfortable telling a stranger who's in their building one time a week I sleep in a car?

Yes. So they work in collaboration with the other staff in the school so that if any student is identified, they are connected to that person. They make themselves known and available to the school community to say, hey, if anyone's in this kind of situation, if you have any kind of housing insecurity, talk to Ms. So-and-so, and that's how they are able to connect them.

So what's their salary?

What's their salary? Can I say that?

It's public information.

45,000 around, 50,000. Something around that ballpark.

Mr. Chair, I'm going to ask that this Committee receives a breakdown of staffing, what their salary is, what schools they are in, how many clients they're seeing. And if somebody could at some point tell us who has to set off the alarm, whose responsibility is it to set off the alarm and whose responsibility is it to respond to the alarm, right, because if not, eight years from now we're going to be sitting here having this same conversation, right. We also should get a breakdown of where these students are identified, how many counselors are there, how many days of the week is that counselor there because as far as I'm concerned in my schools, I don't have counselors there five days a week. And so, it is irresponsible and unheard of that we would depend on a counselor to respond to something that we're calling a crisis. And I think that as I'm sitting here and I'm listening, it seems to be the way that the City operates, and it is not acceptable. And for us to have to talk to people who are not decision- makers about a very serious issue happening, to me is disrespectful. And we can't continue to allow for City departments to continue to come in front of Committees and respond with I don't have that information, I need to get back to you. And in no way is this disrespect being disrespectful to all of you, right, because I think shit rolls downhill. But at some point we need to figure out who's going to give us the real answers, who's going to be transparent with us, because we're not going to be able to fix the issue and we're not going to be able to address and connect people with resources and put them on a real path, a successful path if folks are not honest with us. And so, I think it's disrespectful for your leadership to have sent you here without the information that they knew we were going to be looking for.

And I'm going to -- Chair is going to recognize Councilmember Nina Ahmad next and then that'll be it for this panel. What I will say is I want to echo what Councilmember Lozada said as far as the District not sending people here who can answer the appropriate questions. And please understand this is no knock on you. We appreciate the work that you do. We understand that there is a lot of bureaucracy dealing with government. We also understand that it's a thankless job working with our children. But at the end of the day, if the School District doesn't know anything, they know me. They know. Folks know what my energy is when we have these conversations, and we try our best not to have public quarrels. We try to do this stuff behind the scenes because we don't want people to see a dysfunctional government, but simultaneously transparency is important and this is a huge problem. And so, for us to intentionally come here today without data, without facts, without the information that you knew we were going to ask, to us we view that as a slap in the face and more importantly, a waste of taxpayer dollars. This is a remote hearing, right. And everything that we're doing here it cost taxpayer dollars to have this conversation here. And while we did get some good things here, we have some good takeaways, in large part this conversation would have been way more productive if we would have had leadership of the School District of Philadelphia here. So we will put that in writing. We will go public with that part because it's 100 percent unfair. And I think more importantly, and as Councilmember Lozada said, is disrespectful to this legislative body as well as the taxpayers of the City of Philadelphia. The Mayor, while not having every answer, the Mayor sent her leadership. The Mayor sent the people in her office who are responsible for education. So at the end of the day, the people who are sitting here representing the Mayor, the buck stops with them and we appreciate that. We would only ask for the same courtesy from the School District of Philadelphia because when you come before us, we are here. You speak to Members. You don't speak to our staff and we would want the same courtesy moving forward. Chair recognizes Councilmember Ahmad. And then after that, we'll move on to the next panel because we're running short on time.

Mr. Chair, can I just make a comment based on what you just said? I also want to recognize the fact that out of everybody that has sat in front of us today the only person that has accepted responsibility and has committed to doing something about the conversation that we had here is Dr. Carrera. And I want to recognize that because she could have very well said I need to go back and talk to my leadership to figure out whether I can assume this responsibility or not. And so, I want to publicly say thank you to you. Thank you for your leadership and assuming what could be a very difficult task, right, as you can see. The work that you have committed to doing is not going to be easy, so I commend you for assuming that responsibility.

Yes, I echo that. Thank you, Chairman. I just wanted to highlight what everybody has said thus far. It seems like there's a great lack of accountability. That is the takeaway message, the most vulnerable population, the unhoused community, the most vulnerable don't seem to garner enough attention so that when you brought this issue about adequate, you know, what the counselors are doing, is that enough, you did not get a response from your leadership. What is surprising to me is I don't see one School Board member here because they're the ones who actually make the decision what you can or cannot do. So I don't know who you've been talking to, but these are the devil in the details. If we don't see that cascade of how this problem goes up or down, we don't know where to make the correction. So we talked about before this a data dashboard, making sure we don't have silos around our data. We can beat that horse as much as we can. You all know that. And the fact that you can sit here, you can sit here without these answers knowing this is what the hearing is about, I can't re-emphasize that. My colleague Rue Landau just left, but she wanted to make a point about the ARPA spend, that that is supposed to by September 30th be obligated, she wanted to make sure that that is happening and we don't lose that. So I just wanted to make that point. But once again to a young unhoused child who might be listening or their family who's listening, I want to tell you how deeply disappointing it is for them to know they don't matter, that we can have -- and we are paying overhead to 440. If we add up all the salaries that are going who should be addressing this, we have enough money to say that we can do this. We are constantly -- our Chair just talked about our increase in our property tax. We are giving you the resources. It seems to me there's a dereliction of duty of how resources are being used and allocated and the lack of accountability doesn't even allow us to see where it's going. So I behoove you for all of us, because we answer to our constituents, to give us those answers and to fix what the disaggregated data will show us is a problem. If you already knew this coming here and didn't bring us that data and this particular issue of counselors doubling-up doing so many tasks, this is unbelievable that we are doing that. And this is not something new. This has been happening for a while. So where we put our priorities, where we are allocating our dollars is going to be only we can go down that road. If you can tell us where all of it's going now and where we can move things around, so we were hoping for a solutions-oriented hearing. Some folks did give us some solutions, but I'm not hearing the solutions from the most fundamental entity, which is the School District who touches our most vulnerable population members on a daily basis. So I'm deeply disappointed. Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Councilmember Ahmad. We want to thank this panel for being here today. We're sorry that we did not get to do some of the in-depth questions that we wanted to ask you. We kind of got a little derailed based on the lack of content that was provided, so we do apologize to that. Thank you for the work that you do with the School District of Philadelphia. To the Mayor's team, thank you for being here. We do have two more panels. And I think the next panel that we're going to hear is the most important panel. Councilmember Ahmad apologized to the children as it relates to the lack of services they're getting and who better to hear from at this point than the young people who are most affected by this issue. So with that being said, Mr. Braveman, if you can please call the next panel to come testify, we would appreciate it. (Applause.)

And I would ask -- and I know we're running late, right. I would ask for two things. Number one, I would ask all of the adults who have a direct impact or influence on the decisions that we're discussing today to please stay and listen to our young people, and I would ask that everyone is quiet when the young people talk. At the end of the day public speaking is one of the most difficult things to do and we all are here because we care about our children and we want to give them the platform and opportunity to communicate things from their perspective. So with that being said, Mr. Braveman, if you could please call the next panel.

As a side note, I know we are aiming to wrap up around 3:30. So any speakers after this point, please just keep that in mind. Right now we welcome student guest speakers Oriana, Kamyra and Layla. (Applause.)

Those young people, if you could come to the front. (Witnesses approached Witness table.)

We're going to allow all three of you to speak consecutively so you can just go one after the other. We'll start by asking that you please state your name for the record, your first and last name. Please state your name for the record and feel free to proceed with your testimony. You can decide who goes first. That's up to you all.

Hello. Before I get into who I am, it's sad that I was told we only had two minutes to talk. But how do you guys --

Hold on, hold on. You can start by stating your name for the record and you have as much time as you need. All right. So you don't have to worry about two minutes. Two minutes is like the protocol that we kind of tell people in the framework of creating their testimony, but this is the last time somebody will cut any of you off. So say everything you have to say. Say your name for the record, take your time and we're here to support.

I am Kamyra Brown. I was born and raised in and all over Philadelphia. I am a youth advisor and board member at Valley Youth House Synergy In Schools and the Juvenile Law Center where I advocate for child welfare injustice and homelessness. I was on the Youth Advisory Board at the Support Center for Child Advocates where I spoke up for victims and survivors of human trafficking such as myself. Not all of the City's missing children are runaways. Some of us were taken from bus stops on our way to school. I survived the unthinkable and I am now a student at CCP where I study to obtain my GED and my Associate's Degree in Social Work to later transfer to a university where I can turn my trauma into my career. It's never too late to get a diploma or GED, but I'll never know what it feels like to graduate with my expected classes. I know a handful of youth that will and we can pull together a great support team and minimize the student homelessness. I transferred from a lot of middle schools and high schools across Philadelphia, including accelerated schools with the Re-engagement Center. I didn't know one person could attend so many schools. But when you're going through housing instability and homelessness, it's kind of hard to stay in one school or even stay in a school. It was quite the journey. I didn't look like what I was going through -- I didn't look like what I was going through because I had the newest iPhone and nice Jordans. No wonder you shouldn't really judge a book by its cover. It's not no longer hard to identify depression and homelessness. I struggle with one because -- I struggled with one because of the other. I slept in parks, in movie theaters, in public bathrooms, on Southeastern Transportation vehicles and sadly the rooftops of schools that I should have been learning at. I remember sleeping on top of the roof of a charter school. And by the time that I awoken, the school day already started. I stayed up there not wanting to be seen or get down trying to make it to class. I started experiencing unstable housing at 15. There was a custody battle that resulted in foster care. The child welfare system eventually failed me. I was placed in homes that weren't safe for me. After so many attempts for long-term housing and my diploma, I dropped out and ran away. I had no trusted adult to talk to. And my friends and family didn't understand me or what I was going through at times. I wish that a trusted adult was at my school. They did what they could but they could only do but so much. I went several days without eating or sleeping. I had a guidance counselor at many schools, but as a mandated reporter they called DHS instead of thinking it through and talking about what I needed. But I guess keeping a job can be more important than keeping one more youth from a suicide attempt. I'm kind of glad I failed all of those. I began to struggle with mental and emotional health. I felt unheard. I cried silently but spoke so much about what I needed and wanted, especially in school. I felt limited to resources and disconnected from the community and my family. I felt emotionally, mentally and spiritually lost for hope. That was the result of an overpromised lack of resources that I barely had access to. All I needed was a resource -- all I needed was more resources, but I wish there was a resource center in Philadelphia where we could just go to that was open hours. But I think I'll 21 just make one of my own. If there 22 was a building that I could walk 23 into full of nothing but resources 24 for youth, women, children and families, I'd have an early start and I'd bring all my sisters and brothers and peers for a better experience in school. We will get that done Journee's way. Someone like her will bring a big difference in the visual change. We need more ordinary heroes. And it really takes for someone like Tiana Wilson from the Re-engagement Center to believe in a better life for the youth. Ms.

T knew my struggle, but it was only so much she could do. I needed a mentor and not just someone with a title. It's never what you know. It's who you know. I still don't have a mentor, but I know how to advocate for myself and use my voice. And I didn't back down until I had what I needed. I was always guided based off the system and their pay. If you ask me, they don't get paid enough. There are some School District staff and workers who really care and give it their all. They deserve more pay, but that's not my call. I'm just here to tell you that there's youth that needs more heart-to-heart believers and a better system to help them reach their dreams and goals. They can't be reached without an education. Services need to be tailored because everyone is different and every experience is a different journey. Mine just happened to be graduating with me. I haven't gotten my GED because I was so focused on finding food, clothing, housing and safety and support. Shelters didn't feel safe or structured. I remember asking for help at a shelter that OHS put me in and for a specific need, and was told I'm a supervisor, not an assistant. Those words hurt deeply and I never forgot those words because I know you have to give a child what they need by meeting them where they are and bringing them to where they need to be. I learned that by giving someone the chance to show me that there is a care for the youth in Philly. I made a call to Valley Youth House and that call changed my whole life. It was rocky in the beginning but there's hills everywhere you go. The Synergy team eventually got me where I needed to be and didn't care for credit or control. My needs were met as they occurred and unfolded. I then was able to focus on better education, join more programs and stay out of trouble. I am able to be my best self and live up to my potential when I have a community in my corner and not just at a desk or on the phone. Hands-on help with homelessness and youth is necessary. It takes patience and time. Organizations can only help one youth at a time and then there's Philadelphia as a whole. The City's main problem is they are filled with workers that have a degree and trying to keep a reputation but who's really representing us youth. One can't do anything without stable housing. It's more than just a roof over your head. It's somewhere you feel mentally and emotionally safe. I wish I had an exact number in the amount of high school drop-offs the City actually has. It's hard to stay in school because you're in school thinking about where you're about to sleep. Eventually you end up not wanting to go to school because you feel like you don't fit in because of hygiene challenges, housing and other needs. There's so many young men who think selling drugs and music is the only way out of poverty. Stable housing is the first step to ending poverty. Prostitution and drugs isn't the way either. A lot of youth are damaged from trying to survive. Things that we don't think we would ever have to go through and eventually start losing connections because we end up at the Youth Study Center. There is a decent amount of citizens that went to the Youth Study Center and ended up on State Road or worse. I shouldn't have had to be on my own. It started at home but it starts at school too. For eight hours during the school day, we are not our guardians' responsibility. We are at school with adults who are supposed to keep us safe, keep us out of harm's way and help us meet our needs, not just teach us math, science and history. As a youth starting out young on their own, another reason I dropped out is because I had trouble with transportation. Why? Because I was tired, I stayed up walking around trying to find housing throughout the night and some sense of safety. By the time the trains were running, I was sleeping on one. I didn't know how to use SEPTA for anything other than sleep.

When I learned to navigate public transportation in Philly, it was hard to learn routes and directions without Google Maps. Unfortunately, I wasn't in school long enough to know how to use or read a physical map. It's even more challenging for youth that are parents and traveling to and from school with children. Child care is expensive and although CCIS is an option, the requirements involve a work or school schedule. And how can you focus on either one when you can't even put a key in a door and say I'm home. You can actually try to fulfill your purpose-driven life when you have stable housing in the city. We normalize trauma and struggle when it doesn't have to be that way. OHS and DHS play a major role on families and youth getting needs met. No family is too big and no problem is too much. The Appletree Family Center affected how long I was homeless with my child. I may be 22, but I'm still part of the youth as the City's youth go up to 24. This past winter was a rough one, but imagine if I had mental and emotional support in school and high schools I attended. I may have beat teen pregnancy. But while I was pregnant with my child at the same age that my mother was pregnant with me, I was going through the same things my mom went through just years later. My mom was in 4 and out of shelters with me, couch- 5 surfing and struggling with 6 education and employment. I was on 7 the same road she went down. Only 8 thing is I knew there was a way out 9 and more help offered than what she 10 had such as the Achieving 11 Independence Center, Valley Youth 12 House and Nurse Family 13 Partnerships. 14 NFP is a first-time parent 15 program and helps with so much more 16 than just parenting. I was born in 17 2002. NFP began in Philadelphia in 18 2001, but my mom was not aware of 19 this program. Maybe if she was, 20 she probably would have had better help and stable housing and probably wouldn't have dropped out of school, but I was aware because of somebody I knew who knew about it. Everyone knows about the rising rate of homelessness in Philadelphia. Housing stability is not just a want. It's a necessity. We can build dreams one home at a time. It takes a community to get a diploma, not a certain amount of credits. If I had stable housing in school, I would not have been a victim of the City's gun violence, missing children, overall unprotected youth. The change in this City won't walk around the corner and it won't happen overnight. But if we are heard, we feel at home. No 17 matter where we have lost hope, it can always be found in a stable home or sometimes an organization. We need more Synergy in schools to help students stay in school. I heard everything that was said before I spoke and I'm open to all questions. Every point you guys made was monumental, and I hope that we're not just sitting in this room talking and actually come up with a solution to solve the homelessness in schools. )

I'm going to give you a minute. Anybody want to come in, come on in, have a seat. We do have some questions for you. I want to allow the other young people to go ahead with their testimony and then we'll allow the dialogue with the young people to continue.

I need a minute. Hi. My name is Oriana Fuks. I am years old. I had went to James 19 Rhoads Elementary School most of my 20 childhood. I'm going to share a 21 little bit about my journey dealing 22 with homelessness and the hope to reduce the amount of homelessness in children across the city. So many children are born into the generation curse that only the city as a whole can break. I attended several different schools. Sometimes I wouldn't -- I attended several different schools. Sometimes I wouldn't be at school for even more than a year because of how often I moved around. Each time I moved I would have to get new uniforms but my mom didn't have enough money to buy uniforms each time. I wish that they was more affordable or a free and change situations, attending new schools and moving to new neighborhood meeting new people and overwhelmed with social activities can cause a lot of my anxiety. I eventually had to get on medicine for my behavior and my anxiety and my ADHD from moving around so much. I had to get a therapist, STS worker. That is a one-on-one, somebody you could talk to. Income was also an issue. Sometimes my mom had to figure out some ways to figure out for us to eat. That time was really challenging for me. Sometimes I only ate at school and I can just imagine if I didn't go to school. When I was experiencing homelessness, I wish I had more support than what I had back then, someone I can talk to without unnecessary reporting and actually really helping me and talking to me more. And programs for people my age would help a lot that is going on now in this time frame. I think it would have stopped a lot of homelessness. There are opportunities out there. I really just had a limit across -- I had accepted a limit of them, the time that our knowledge of them. I messed up. I'm sorry. I am now in transitional housing. I want to thank Valley Youth House for helping me and the support they gave me on my journey with them, helping me find something that fits me and my kids. I know it's not a home that actually I can call mine -- I know it's not a home that I actually can call mines but I make it a home. And the amount of care that I give into my homes, I wish the Synergy school team, the money found in this program is expiring and all the youth they are helping now won't have the support from anywhere else. Anyone can break at any moment if they don't have the type of support they need. It's okay to cry, but it's okay if you can talk to someone too or about the issue. Maybe someone could care about what is really going on through -- let me slow down a little bit. Let me slow down. Maybe someone should care about what's really going on. It's like they in this for money and not what actually matters. Our experience in school matters. I want to talk about the young adults. We really can't get a good-paying job because half of us haven't graduated school yet or almost there or dropped out. We can't really get anything in our names because our parents use our names for things. So when it's time for us to actually move on with our lives, we have to go back and fix some things. I think addressing homelessness is important because you really don't know what someone is going through if you don't get the help that you need. If it wasn't for my mom's job to live in a city that's known as brotherly love, but I haven't seen any of it until later. I'm sorry. I'm stuttering --

You guys, you don't have to apologize for anything. We hear people come before us and testify all the time and you're doing an amazing job so please don't apologize. We're listening to every single word you're saying and it's important. So go ahead. Please continue.

I just wish that y'all can really just help the programs that we are in and the programs that's really out there for us. I have kids. Everybody else have kids. I don't want to experience me going through another homelessness with my kids. It's very hard out here for us young adults. Maybe the older ones -- but us really, we got kids. They old enough. They can really get on their feet. We really can't. Our parents got water bills in our names. What if we get our own stuff and that don't even work out for us, what we can do? I just want y'all to help us. (Applause.)

Hi. My name is Layla Shay. I'm years old. I'm 5 from Philadelphia, but I grew up in 6 Arizona. And pretty much I was 7 going through homelessness since I 8 was like 11, and I guess you could 9 say I was in the streets. I was in 10 the streets like really bad. 11 The only thing that really 12 held me together throughout all the 13 homelessness was all five of my 14 brothers, my mom and my stepdad. 15 But unfortunately in 2020, she 16 passed away so I had to come back 17 to Philadelphia and it was even 18 harder because my dad, he was an 19 alcoholic and it was hard to go to school, especially with all the drama going on. They didn't know that I had to come back home to an abusive father. So you got this -- I'm not trying to cry. I'm not trying to cry, too many tears. But pretty much after my mom passed away that's when everyone just separated. Nobody really got along with my mom because of how much she wanted to get away from everyone out here in Philadelphia and no one appreciated the fact that she wanted to start a new life somewhere else. Even though this is like a painful situation, I can say that I'm happy to have this opportunity and I'm happy to be able to express and actually be heard. But if it wasn't for my mother, I wouldn't be where I am today. I wouldn't be able to graduate high school like I did. I wouldn't have been able to get my diploma. I wouldn't have been able to get accepted into a college. I wouldn't be able to have any of that so because of the woman that she was when I was younger, she really left that with me. And even though my dad was an alcoholic, I prayed every single day and now he don't even drink anymore. And it's like my dad, that's my best friend for real. And me and my dad, our bond may not be as great as it was when I was little. But because I can see that he is trying and because I can see that I have a family that looks up to me is what makes me want to push myself. There's so much that I can say and it's so much more deeper than what I am bringing to y'all. But honestly because of my strength and honestly because of my determination and me just being very optimistic, that's the word, that's honestly what kept me together. And, no, I ain't really got no speech or nothing like that. I'm just here to like let y'all know like I'm pushing myself still and I made it. I ain't there yet, but I made it. (Applause.)

I want to start by saying thank you all for your testimony. Thank you for making yourself vulnerable. It's not easy to share your lived experiences and be the example for the greater good. So I truly, truly commend you for being here today and sharing your story. A couple questions real quick. First question, you talked about an organization that has been supporting you. I think at least two of you kind of briefly mentioned it. Who's the organization that has been supporting you and what services have they been able to provide? And if you want to answer that, I'm fine with it. But help us get more information.

The Valley Youth House, they've been helping us.

You got to talk into the mic. I can hear you, but they can't hear you in the back.

The Valley Youth House, Ms. Quidira, she has the Synergy program, she helped a lot. But I went through the Valley House to get my transitional housing through the situations that I went through.

Where is it at?

It is on --

1500 Sansom Street, Suite No. 300. (Applause.)

How many caring adults do we have that's here today from Valley House? Can you just put your hand in the air for us? (Hands raised.) (Applause.)

Thank you all. Thank you all. Thank you. Thank you very much. One last question and then I'll open it up for members of the Committee. You all have been here since we started the hearing; is that correct? (Yes.)

You've heard all of our questions. You've heard the responses to those questions. We've listened to the School District. We've listened to the City. Two questions, right, and I don't care who answers what, whatever you're comfortable with. When you were a student in the School District of Philadelphia, can you tell us what schools you went to and what services they provided? That's the first question. And then the second question is, what are your thoughts? What's your opinion based on what you heard today in this hearing?

You want us (inaudible).

I'm sorry. I didn't hear that one.

Sorry. You want us to go list by list what schools?

I want you to communicate what you're comfortable with, what you remember. You don't have to say every school and every experience, but maybe a school or two that you might have went to and services that you remember being there or not being there. And then I do want to hear your thoughts on today's conversation because at the end of the day you've been here since the beginning. You all know more about this issue than arguably everybody in the room and you are the ones who really need to call us out, right. When we say we're accountable to the people as far as us up here, the people we're talking about are y'all. So we want to hear your past lived experience and your perspective of today.

For a person that's been homeless the majority of her youth and childhood, I only remember addresses. There's a accelerated high school on 4th and Spring Garden where we wear a light blue shirt and dark blue pants and black shoes. That was the school that gave me the most support. They asked me what I needed help with, where I was coming from, how I was getting to school. And it was more like a specific person. I don't remember her name, but she was like a guidance counselor basically and she communicated with the rest of the school. And not only did the principal meet my needs, the school teachers for specific subjects met my needs. I only ate at school. The teachers didn't let that just happen. They gave me rides and made sure I was able to get somewhere safe and did things that I appreciated. I kind of wish -- I wished they had Synergy in Schools because Valley Youth House Synergy team is an organization of a family. They're not just workers or employees. They're family. Quadira, Alyssa -- Alyssa is behind me -- and Erica, Erica is not here, but they watched me go from a youth who never wanted children to a big belly, you see the little girl you see standing in front of the table and all that while having unstable housing. And they led me and referred me to organizations and programs that helped me. And they dealt with so much one-on-one and as a group that were results of unstable housing such as violent behavior and outburst and so much more, and not once did they give up on me. And I think that was the main problem that I had in school. Everybody gave up on me. I either got suspended or expelled. I understand you can't have certain behaviors in certain environments, but they never tried to figure out where the problem was coming from. They just got rid of the problem, which just happened to be me. (Applause.)

And about today's conversation, I think every single thing that we discussed from trafficking to transportation to attendance to the why's, I think a lot of your answers to the why's are going to come from the youth that experienced it and then also talking to youth that haven't experienced it and ask them what they would actually need to avoid going through homelessness in school, and that's what the Synergy in Schools team is trying to do at Valley Youth House. I'm a Board member there myself. We're trying to keep -- we're trying to avoid homelessness in students. And I think that you all have knowledge of the rate of homelessness. I think that everyone in this room can have some idea of where it comes from, but we all have some type of idea of how to solve it. I think there needs to be actual programming that will actually work. All the programs in the city, the things that the School District does, some of them are helping and some of them are keeping kids in school and then some of them are just pushing us away. And I can't speak for all the youth, but I just want us to do better. And one of the things that I had said when I was talking was we're going to try to change it Journee's way. My daughter's name is Journee, and I actually have an Instagram where it's nothing but resources for Philadelphia. And I kind of wanted to take it -- not take it off of social media but expand it into a location where people can actually go because that's actually what we need where there's no limit of race, age or religion where we could just go and get the resources we need. (Applause.)

Say your Instagram page. Say your Instagram page.

It's called Journee's Way, Journee's Resource Center. It's --

Spell it for us. Everybody's not as good as you.

All right. Hold on. Let me open Instagram --

We're going to get you some followers today, because somebody's going to be able to take advantage of them resources you sharing, right?

Yes.

That's important. And if you understand the problem, you are a person who've done it through lived experiences, who better than you to provide the resources that other young people are going through to try to support them. So say it, put it on the record.

The Instagram is Journee's Resource Center. It's spelled J-o-u-r-n-e-e-R-e-s-o-u-r-c-e-C-e-n -t-e-r. The profile picture is pink, black and white.

That's why I told you to spell it. There's no way we would have been able to find that page with all those e's in it. But we love your creativity. It's extremely amazing. And just at first glance, you could tell that the page is something --

Thank you.

Yes, absolutely. Does anyone else want to answer? Does anyone else want to provide any -- yes, please provide some perspective.

What was the question again?

So we wanted to hear about the resources that you experienced or didn't experience when you were in high school or school in general and then we also wanted to hear your perspective on today's conversation and the name of the school. And if you remember the name of the school, that would help us. But if you can't, it's no pressure at all.

Okay. So I went to Strawberry Mansion High School. I'm sure everybody knows that school. But pretty much a lot of my teachers there was helpful. There was this guy named Mr. Peterson. He was my counselor and he got in contact with Mason right there, that's Mason. And pretty much it's like ever since Mason came along, I've been helped with like gift cards, transportation, what else. It was a lot of stuff. But, yeah, Mason was very helpful. My counselor was helpful. Pretty much all my teachers was helpful. Like when I didn't have nowhere to go, the counselor before the other counselor they pretty much referred me to a shelter. And I'm pretty much not there anymore because my girlfriend got me out of there. But, yeah, honestly it's like Strawberry Mansion, it might seem like a bad school because of the students I must say -- I'm not one of them students, but it really might seem like a bad school. But it's like if you were to ever grow a bond with your teachers and don't give them a reason to consider you as a bad student, you'll have a lot of help and a lot of support and a lot of resources.

Thank you and thank you to the staff and people at Strawberry Mansion for making sure that you had that positive experience. We'll let you close us out if that's okay with everybody.

I went to Crossroads. That's on 40th and Westminster. It's this one counselor. Her name is Ms. I, Ms. Imperelli or something like that. She was a great help. If she knew that I was coming in with a bad day, come into my office, I already know what's wrong with you. Like I said, I used to take medicine for my behavior, for my anxiety and all that, my behavior. Everyone knew Oriana, the crazy Oriana, she's not on her medicine Oriana. So she used to pull me to the side and like, you're not on your -- you didn't take it today so you're a little off but we're going to help you out, we're going to talk to you, we're going to figure out the plan for today and you need transportation or did you eat today or did somebody tell you good morning, they love you today? Well, I'm going tell you good morning, I love you today. It was a -- (Applause.)

Little things right there make a big difference. She didn't know me from a can of paint. All she knew that I was being bad in school. My mom didn't probably even tell me she loved me that day but she did, but we're not going to go off topic. We're not going to go off topic. But, yes, one bright (inaudible) I'm at Crossroads was that school that actually helped me. And all I'm going to say is I just hope y'all help us today and the young adults. That's it.

I know you said that she was going to close out, but I somehow just had a flash of memories so if you can hear me. All the schools I attended in Philadelphia were Sankofa Freedom Academy Charter School, Stern Elementary School, El Central, Crossroads Accelerated School, all four campuses on One Bright Ray. I also attended school inside of the Youth Study Center and I also attended another school. You went to the school. I don't remember the name -- Strawberry Mansion High School.

Thank you. Thank you for sharing. I'll ask -- did you want to close out?

Yeah. I just heard her say she went to Crossroads and I actually went there too in my freshman year. And what was her name, Ms. I, she actually got me into therapy once my mom passed away. So shout-out to her. (Applause.)

Councilmember Brooks said we got to figure out who this Ms. I is. So whoever that is, what we're going to do is we're going to ask you three as you leave this panel, not saying you got to leave this space, to follow up with Ben from my office. Ben, can you raise your hand. Ben is going to take all three of your contact information. And I'm going to go ahead and volunteer the Education Committee up here to go ahead and adopt all three of y'all to make sure that you have any supports that you need, right. (Applause.)

I also need a round of applause for Quadira, Alyssa who's with Journee and Erin -- (Applause.)

-- from Nurse Family Partnerships who I would not have been giving my daughter a better experience if it was not for her and my --

Are they here?

Quadira is right here.

Please stand up. We're on T.V. People got to know who it is. It's not just us here. Who's the other person?

Alyssa is with Journee on the basketball court.

Okay.

Alyssa.

Thank you. Thank you.

And Erin is right behind me.

Erin, can you raise your hand? (Applause.)

There you go. Thank you. Thank you for doing that. That's very important. And to all of the adults who are a part of the Valley Youth House, honestly I appreciate you guys being here. I feel like I speak for the entire Education Committee. You've made an amazing first impression on me, first impression on us. We talk all the time about finding solutions and partnering with organizations who are effective and do the work. And as a former teacher and a current basketball coach, it's no 8 better way to assess the work that adults are doing than by talking to the kids. You can't fake what they did, right. I don't know who wrote your speech, right. Somebody texted me and said, you need to be somebody's speech writer. Your speech was amazing, sis. You all did a really good job, but you have a gift from God as it relates to your ability to public speak. It's a real thing. (Applause.)

I'm actually a writer and a poet --

See, you were right, John.

I write children's books and write my experience. And to be honest, I wouldn't have been able -- he can't hear y'all, but I wouldn't have been able to do my speech if my best friend who's also an Ordinarie Hero at the organization, if he wasn't on the phone with me keeping me calm, I would not have been able to do this. (Applause.)

Amazing, amazing. Well, look, thank you all for being here. And again, thank you to everybody involved in the Valley Youth House. Please make sure you see Ben so he can get all of your contact information. If other Council staff members are here, please go ahead and convene with the young people over on the side. Let's get all of their information and let's hug them like we do in City Council. So thank y'all. We appreciate it. (Applause.)

Mr. Braveman, can you call our final panel for today please.

Next we hear from Director of Emergency Services, Alyssa Weinfurtner and Vice-president, Senior Vice- president Shani Meacham; Legal Director at Education Law Center, Maura McInerney. (Witnesses approached Witness table.)

All right, folks. If we can have quiet. Thank you everybody. We appreciate your patience. Thank you to the final panel. We appreciate your patience and kind of sticking it out with us. It was important that we have conversations with the School District, with the Mayor. Of course we have to hear the voice of young people. And I think out of all the information we heard today, nothing was as powerful as listening to the young people who are actually going through this. So we appreciate your patience. We appreciate you listening to those lived experiences and we really want to hear from you. But before we do, can I get a -- I'm losing my voice. Please state your name for the record and the order is up to you. We're going to allow you all to provide the testimony first and after everyone provides their testimony, we'll then come with questions. So whoever wants to go first please.

Hello, everybody. Alyssa Weinfurtner, Director of Emergency Services at Valley's House. And I'm joined today by my -- she is having some dental issues. So I'm joined today by my Senior Vice-president of Programming at Valley's House. Bill Willard is still here -- yeah. He's also here to support me in answering questions. They have much more years of experience than I do. (Inaudible). Do you want the full testimony?

No. Condensed or just go to questions.

Okay. I think I'll give a quick overview. I also would like to clarify some of what was said today, at least from a proprietor perspective. So Valley House has been around since 1973. Our first ever program was a shelter, really a grassroots initiative in the Lehigh Valley. We've since expanded into 15 different counties across the state so we're a pretty large nonprofit. I'm solely focused in Philadelphia, and my department is the Emergency Services Department. So we also operate the Achieving Independent Center for young people with history of DHS involvement as well as we have housing program, transitional and rapid rehousing to over 200 youth on a given night across our city. My programs, you've heard a little bit about them, or not mine, the Emergency Services Department programs that I have the pleasure and honor to oversee began in 2015 with one of the Philadelphia's first ever youth designated street outreach programs. And I think I want to highlight it just because of its blended funding. We've talked a lot today about what is a solution with all of the different silos and gaps. And I think the agency providers that we're here to talk about today, HopePHL and Eddie's House and Valley Youth House, we do that, right. We blend the funding so that we can serve youth and create a no-wrong-door approach. So any time they come to us, we have an ability to intersect them with our housing specific expertise. So back to 2015, Synergy Project Street Outreach Program that's funded through Runaway Homeless Youth underneath Family, Youth and Services Bureau at the federal level, we saw a lot of need. And then in 2018, we were first funded by the Office of Homeless Services to be the City's first youth designated access point, and that allowed us to increase. So one piece that makes youth homelessness challenging is everyone defines even the age differently, right. So that allowed us to fund or to serve young people through their 24th year. Every year in our programs we serve over 1,200 young people experiencing homelessness and provide much-needed supports both from an emergency supply standpoint to case management to actually being able to have the pleasure of helping them move into stability. Once we started the youth access point, we realized that -- and different numbers will tell you different pieces from our program data. 40 percent of the young people and at other points in time it's been 60 percent had not completed their high school education or GED. Coming through our doors at once they knew they 17 could sign their own lease so 18 they'd be eligible for housing through the Office of Homeless Services, and honestly we got tired of hearing the stories of what their high school experience was, right. It was four years of sleeping outside and sneaking into parents' houses to get clean so they could show up to school the next day and not appear as if they're struggling. And we would hear all of these stories at 18, 19, 20, 21. So this collaboration and partnership with the School District was an incredible opportunity. I've heard a lot of kind of questioning what they did with that American Rescue Plan dollars, and we can always talk more specifics, but it was a historic investment in the School District. The ECYEH Department does amazing work and is vastly underresourced. That partnership was able to fund Valley Youth House Synergy In Schools, Eddie's House education team and then HopePHL's Thrive Project. Some benefits of utilizing community organizations, right, is that not only do we have the housing expertise, that even in doing this work for five years, navigating eligibility requirements is complex. There's still cases that come across my desk that I'm calling my boss for, right, or I'm reaching out to Beth at Office of Homeless Services for, it's very complex. Some we have the ability to change right here in the City and I think that we should definitely get to talking about those solutions.

Others are at a federal level. I'd love for us to move all the way up because it's really difficult, it's really, really hard. So we need people specifically trained in the housing eligibility criteria and navigation. At the same time we also need people who pride themselves, right, as organizations. We strive -- the whole heart and point of our work is to build relationships with young people, so we're starting with trust or at least attempting to, right. We're starting with have you eaten today, have you been drinking water, have you slept, are you ready to have a conversation. Sometimes youth just need to come to our space and sleep for a minute because they haven't slept in many days, so we're not going to dive into a goal plan when your basic needs aren't met. Additionally, aside from kind of those different pieces we also -- all three agencies that were kind of on the table to discuss today, we have different housing services and as I mentioned that blended funding. We have the ability to intersect young people not just in schools. So this partnership allowed us to be in schools to the best of our ability. Honestly Synergy In Schools at Valley Youth House, we got tasked with about 40 schools so that doesn't look alike every day, right. We're a team of four people and a supervisor. Two are peer advocates who were young people that went through our programs that we hired on and then two case managers. Being tasked with 40 schools is a lot but we're getting started. We are getting somewhere, but right now we're at the risk of our initial start to be taken away before we're even really in the groove of it, right. That funding came to the agencies January of 2023. Nobody ever faxed in like startup costs for programming so it's really challenging for funding to be spent, right, the day you get it, the day you know that you have the award, right. So it takes time to hire people. It takes time to build the program, kind of actually implement. So we collected data from the three programs from this past school year, August 2023 to June 2024. And between the three agencies we were able to identify over 1,000 young people that were eligible for the McKinney-Vento status, which we see as something that we are doing our jobs and we're doing it well. And it's not enough, right. We're talking about potentially 12,000 people, but we're getting somewhere with innovative solutions that are informed by young people. And I think that we all need to be at these tables to have the conversation. Often times the youth get left out. I know often times providers get left out. We have a coalition of organizations specifically focused on youth homelessness that pays young members to participate in meetings. We have four work groups. We can't get funding for that coalition so we're struggling. We're drowning, but we have the impetus because people in Philadelphia care. And we're engaged with our young people about the issues. So I'm getting a little bit off my actual testimony, but I think it's important to note, right, through our access point 40 percent didn't have their high school diploma or GED. I saw a statistic on Covenant House's website that only percent of the 14 youth that come through their 15 shelter which serves a given 70 16 youth on any night also having -- 17 or sorry, 21 percent are engaged in 18 school, right. So then we're 19 looking at close to 79 percent who 20 aren't. 21 So we need this cross- collaboration, right, and we also need to trust the experts and the people doing the work so that we can partner with our community members and expand the innovative solutions that honestly the American Rescue Plan money has given. That liaison between Office of Homeless Services and the School District is crucial. Now, we can talk about who pays for what, but the fact that it exists is honestly a godsend. Usually the data issues are big, but they look retrospectively, right.

So you look at the end of the year we're going to compare all the numbers to then see what's our big number. And that's more so on I think the state department. I'm looking to the School District. That's not so much locally. That's on the state level. But this position allows us to actually see in realtime. Yes, we need the data. We need the numbers. But we also need that to intersect people who need services at that moment when they're seeking shelter, so that liaison has been so crucial. All of the coordination and support from that department and between the three agencies has truly been an effort that's never been seen before. So I do want to make sure that we don't lose sight of that. It is a huge issue. It is ridiculous and unacceptable. And also, there's been a lot of progress. One thing I do want to highlight just as a clarity point because there's also been a lot of progress on the Office of Homeless Services end in terms of expanding services for youth 18 to 24. However, when we talk about students experiencing homelessness, 80 percent of them are doubled-up, couch-surfing or overcrowded, right. Unless they're fleeing domestic violence, they're not eligible for tangible housing services. So we need to -- so I see that there's some eyes on the Office of Homeless Services, but I think it's also important for us to look at how -- that's a federal definition, right. How do we actually look at the whole issue with all of our different partners where we should have housing services in medical clinics. We should have them in schools, and we're trying to do that, but it can't all just be on one department that quite honestly it's because there's so many folks who are street homeless. Within that definition, our youth-designated access point we assess about 600 youth per year. Only 190 of them actually move into housing. So even for youth who qualify for that there's not enough resources. And so, we have to really put our heads together to try to think of a viable solution and understand these silos, yes, and have the right people at the table so we can truly be an example for our nation, right. This work with the American Rescue Plan dollars also garnered us national attention. So Synergy In Schools was able to receive the first ever Homeless Prevention Demonstration grant from Runaway Homeless Youth. That is the single prevention program focusing on youth homelessness in our city. So I'll stop there because I could go on and on. I've gotten kind of off my track --

No, it's fine.

But I'll pause there.

The content is amazing and we could tell that you are passionate about the work. The only issue is that we have a hard stop at 3:30 with the space and I want to allow the other members of the panel to kind of provide your testimony. You don't have to read your testimony because we have it here. The way you just paraphrased that and the content was great. We just want to make sure that we can leave time for us to ask you questions. So if the other members of the panel can kind of give a brief synopsis of your testimony. We want to ask you a few questions and we have about 14 minutes before we have to unfortunately shut it down.

Okay. Thank you so much for having me here today. My name is Barbara Huggins. I am the Community Strategies Associate for the National Network for Youth. We are a national nonprofit membership organization that focuses on two branches of runaway and homeless youth, so really legislative advocacy at the federal and statewide level, community level but also community work. S. on developing youth action boards. I also help co-lead or I'm (inaudible) the leadership of the Pennsylvania Legislative Advocacy Committee to end youth and young adult homelessness, so we've worked with Representative Donna Bullock on several of those pieces of legislation that she mentioned. I also want to say, and this is just an addendum and I can send this information to you, that we are currently pushing two pieces of federal legislation, one of which would unify the federal definitions of homelessness. So that is worth noting. We are looking for, you know, they're hitting the ground running. They have several meetings every month, the team to focus on that, and also a law that would reauthorize and expand the Runaway and Homeless Youth Act. So I just wanted to add that as a potential piece of advocacy work for this group. So just to -- yeah, where do I even summarize. I would say that part of the biggest work that I do is youth action boards and it is crucial. And as you heard, young adults are at the table. I as an advocate believe that there isn't any table that is too big or obscure enough that a young person could not be at, especially if it is about them. So if it's confusing to you, it's confusing to them, but they can join in with you on the confusion. You may not have it figured out or organized or know who's going to pay for what or contracts where, but I think it's a statement of purpose. It's a statement of belief that the persons with lived expertise no 3 matter the issue that you're facing should be at the table and they can learn right alongside you. So I was here to kind of give a few examples of school districts that are doing it well. You have that in front of you, but just for the record today -- sorry, all right. And I'll just say these are some of the themes of the schools that I mentioned today. Dedicated staffing has become a really big topic today. It is so hard to focus on the needs of our most vulnerable youth and deal with administrative work, deal with the other needs of youth and young adults that they're teaching. So having that dedicated staffing, it also allows the time and the energy to seek out those partnerships. I'm a community strategies associate. I'm blessed to work full-time to make those relationships that our community members aren't able to do. Another theme is obviously the dedicated funding which was another big topic today. Flexibility in that funding, a lot of the schools presented had the flexibility and ability to contract and procure services from community-based organizations such as Valley Youth House, Eddie's House, HopePHL was mentioned today. And then also just widen that. As a community strategist associate, there's no why that's too big and there's no one that doesn't belong to the table. So people to consider having at the table as you're moving forward is obviously mental health, juvenile justice, disability and accessibility. We have a big population of youth and young adults who do have disabilities and they do have needs that aren't always addressed as you know they're facing homelessness. Child welfare and living transition, so there's a lot of funding for youth who are aging out of foster care beyond FYI vouchers or Foster Youth Independence vouchers. I'm also a big advocate of making sure that we have affordable housing developers at the table, that we're talking to the Department of Economic Development, teaching youth entrepreneurship. We're always talking about resiliency and sustainability and that is one key way to really teach them how to do that.

Youth action boards in schools are crucial points in a young person's life to get that strength-based mentorship, leadership building a social capital that young people need to really thrive and be independent. So I had a lot of other great things to say here, but I'm going to turn it over to the next person. Thank you. MS. McINERNEY: Thank you so much. My name is Maura McInerney. I'm the Legal Director at the Education Law Center. Thank you so much for including us in the discussion today. We greatly appreciate it. I don't think I have a sufficient amount of time to go through all of the solutions that we would recommend. But I wanted to highlight for you a framework and an approach to this problem. 4 billion. While we're trying to get additional dollars through our school funding lawsuit that we won that declared that our public school funding system is unconstitutional, we can't drive additional dollars fast enough to the District who needs it and to the children who are most educationally disenfranchised, and that includes students experiencing homelessness. My organization works across the state on this issue. We've worked on Act 1. We've worked on HB 663 which is recently introduced and the tuition waiver for children as well. So we've worked on these issues a number of fronts. But I think we need to keep three things in mind: Number one, everything is really siloed here in the City and it doesn't have to operate that way. We need to think about a task force that would be in existence for more than 100 days as we did in the past and think about what would the solutions be. There needs to be not only better communication, collaboration but even knowledge of what is the School District of Philadelphia able to do, what are different associations able to do. We have great models here. They're here in the room and we need to draw on that. Number two, we don't have an integrated data system. As you see in Pittsburgh, which has been in existence for now I think it's years, where everyone can draw 16 down on information and therefore 17 we can identify gaps and services 18 for children. We need to look into 19 making that critical investment. 20 Number three, I want to give you an idea of an approach to look at this problem. It isn't a monolith, right. I think we need to think about it the way we do about population cohorts. So we're dealing with, one, children who are older youth, some of whom, in fact a third to 50 percent of children and age out of our foster care system and into homelessness. So we've got older youth that we need to think about housing to be available to them when we don't have that. We need to grow it. I gave you examples from California and other places that have transitional housing programs for children for different ages, and think of it in a creative way including having a host transitional provider who would be paid that the child would live with who they already have a relationship with. Number two, we don't do a great job of discharging children out of the foster care system with a 90-day discharge span that is specific as to housing education and to other issues. And number three, we need to make sure that we're equipping our youth with additional skills that they need to be on their own. We don't do that enough, enough independent living skills. And there are ways to integrate what's offered in the School District with what could be offered through DHS. Number two, we need to look at a different cohort that no one seems to really look at very much who are immigrant youth who are on their own. They're invisible in many ways. They are living on their own. They are sometimes not recognized. There are Title 3 dollars that could be leveraged to provide for those children. Again, I gave you about three pages of examples from across the country of places that are providing those services, but we need to make sure that we are looking at that population. Number three, children who are in shelters.

I think there has been an increased focus on communication between the School District and shelters in terms of what's provided. There needs to be better coordination with that. We want to ensure also that children in shelters have access to PreK, have access to early intervention services which they need. And number four, the last cohort because I know I'm running out of time, are students who are what we call invisible children and youth. They're not in shelter. Sometimes they are not identified. We have recommended that the School District use a universal screen that is nonstigmatizing. First of all, let's stop calling them homeless. How about we call them children, youth in transition, students in transition. We got to drop this homeless stigmatizing marker because it's been done in other states across the country. Florida hasn't called them homeless in a very long time. We need to incentivize children to want to identify recognizing they'll have extra supports and protections on which they do have. We want a majority 65 percent are living doubled-up, so we want to make sure that we are really reaching out in a more proactive way. Having a list of services that are available through other resources that the School District of Philadelphia is providing or we also want to make sure that we're preventing children from becoming homeless. So some of the examples that I provided are cities where there are landlords who actually recognize children before they're being evicted and to see whether there's a way to get supports to those families so that they don't become homeless. So we really need to, I think, work around an approach that recognizes the very, very different needs of these different cohorts. In addition, what we see in the models across the country is that there is much greater, deeper collaboration that anyone who touches that child is able to access information about what that child is currently receiving and able to notify them of what they need. So I do think that there are ways that we can approach this issue that aren't just looking at the students currently experiencing homelessness but really looking further upstream at the root causes of why we have this increasing population. And we know that these children are grossly underidentified. Philadelphia according to Research for Action, who had a publication explaining that they are underidentified, many more cities who have the deep poverty rates that we have here identify many more children, so we want to make sure that this information is out there in order to identify students and in order to serve them, but also that we are taking a different approach of looking further up of how can we prevent homelessness from coming on. And some of it is our foster care system and the trajectory of children who have been in foster care and have gone from place to place because the placements aren't appropriate. All of those things need to be scrutinized. But we're not collecting the data, we're not sharing the data and we're not integrating the data. So thank you. )

So first of all, I want to say thank you for your testimony. Thank you for your expert opinions. I want to -- I know we're pressed for time. I did have one question. You talked a little bit earlier about funding and you talked about the fact that the School District has provided significant funding to be able to address this issue. Can you give us numbers? So prepandemic what type of numbers are you getting? Clearly the pandemic happens. ARPA funding comes down, you're getting more funding. So help us understand what those dollar amounts are so we can begin to think about things from our perspective. And I do also want to thank on top of Valley Youth House, Eddie's House and HopePHL as well too for partnering with us to make this hearing a huge success. Help us out.

I completely echo that. We have to be -- we're better together. So we received zero funds from the School District of Philadelphia. There wasn't this opportunity prior. They operated I think -- and Colleen can provide more information, but on a team smaller than people, right. She said 12 the 15 people were with that 13 expansion, so they're very small, 14 very underresourced department 15 within the School District. So we never got funding from the School District prior. So we had our street outreach program and then our access point through OHS. Street Outreach was RHY, FYSB funding. That allowed us to see the need. So when this came up, they put out an RFP and we applied, because we're like we see all of these people, we know that this is an issue. We also used to prior be in schools more. And since then with our access point, we see so much demand just coming through our doors. Our team struggled with the ability for capacity. We used to serve 1,000 youth a year with three staff. Luckily with the YHP funds we've now more than doubled in size. And then these contracts were months and they're being 15 extended, though the money is not 16 being added, right, because there's 17 no more money left. So what we're 18 asking and have been asking actually the City and the Mayor's Office and Council is for $3 million to replace those funds. And because I -- or the School District, whoever can, but we're calling on everybody. That was the impetus for this hearing.

No, you could call on us. It's fine. I was looking over at the School District because I'm wondering, and you can give me a thumbs up or a thumbs down, is that about the amount of money that you all have been spending in ARPA funding to be able to provide contractual services to organizations like this? It's about $3 million a year?

Yes.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you.

Chair recog -- real quick, at some point can the District give us in writing how many organizations are able to provide services based on the $3 million a year funding? Is it for 2 nonprofits, 22 nonprofits, whatever those numbers are? I don't expect you to know that right now. But if we can get that information, that'll definitely be beneficial to us.