Committee on Education, July 31, 2024

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. )