No Cost Solutions to Improve NYC's Emotional Health

The City's mandate to hire mental health professionals for all families living in homeless shelters is long overdue.

But I worry the vision will fail because of political inertia or budget battles or both. After all, the City has yet to fully hire other needed caregivers such as school social workers and early childcare teachers that we've needed for years.

But rather than give up hope, I suggest the City listen to the social workers and case managers to find out what can be done and what promising practices are happening. Because even if the City found $9.2 million to hire at least 1 full time social worker in every family shelter, that wouldn't be enough.

My team recently held a series of focus groups with 40 front line staff and managers of community-based social service organizations throughout the City. We wanted to hear what workers have been dealing with since the COVID19 pandemic. We also wanted to know how staff were coping with stressors and traumas in their jobs of helping others. We asked them what they've noticed, what they needed more of and what strategies they were utilizing to address participants' and staff mental health needs.

The backdrop to these focus groups was to find out what the City could or should be doing without burdening the budget. Conversations were held on behalf of a City agency looking for strategies and promising practices to support clients and staff without incurring more costs.

In addition to the need for more qualified staff, we learned about major burn-out among staff; and staff who are seeing children struggle more than ever with emotional regulation and anger management. We heard them witness frustration, anxiety and sadness from children more frequently than ever before. And with burn-out, they've seen higher turnover and the need to increase awareness and crisis management skills among staff.

In addition to listening to providers, our research surfaced resources and suggestions that, with good leadership and strategic thinking can be implemented at little to no cost. Because hiring more staff is only part of ensuring that attention is paid to the emotional and mental health needs of our City's most vulnerable.

Train all staff

Make sure all all staff are aware of basic mental health triggers and symptoms. This sounds pretty obvious but the reality is that training isn't always accessible with flexible locations and times to accomodate job schedules. Relevant training exists at little to no cost. The City and their contractors need to remove barriers to training so that more staff become comfortable handling emotional and mental health issues.

Develop a triage checklist or info graphic

So that staff know who to call, when and for what, if emergencies or non-emergencies occur; ensure that all staff have access to the protocols - post them in communal areas and update them at least annually. The checklist or infographic should be created in collaboration with frontline staff and case managers. They should be tailored to each program and community organization.

Strengthen community linkages

Identify brick and mortar locations where residents can be referred for specialized care that isn't accessible on site; make use of schools, afterschool and neighboring community based programs. Create and share a simple, easy to access directory that staff can access any time to advise clients or participants during their program hours.

Pay attention to staff's mental health needs

We cannot forget the stress and vicarious trauma experienced by staff in jobs that focus on supporting the most vulnerable and high risk populations. They also need support from employers and colleagues to do their jobs, avoid burn-out and be in good mental and emotional shape to help others.

Finally, I want to add that mental health care can sometimes be as simple as knowing how to manage human emotions such as stress, grief, anger or sadness. This isn't to downplay the need for more intense clinical services when needed. But as we've learned from the pandemic, some days can be extra difficult. We can wake up feeling anxious or get set off easily or feeling sad. When money and housing worries prevail, especially for families with young children, basic emotions may get magnified, making it harder to focus on the things that keep us healthy, productive and safe.

I hope these suggestions that came out of our conversations with social workers and case managers at several dozen CBOs will be considered by the NY City Mayoral agencies and all its community partners who help to take care of our city's most vulnerable.

How to Create Good Experiences for Public Customers

For years Mark Hurst, through his strategy firm Creative Good, has advocated for the inclusion of customers in product or experience design. His unwavering argument to include customers is audaciously simple: listen to what they want and identify their un-met needs in the design process. There’s a third critical step in creating solutions that satisfy customer needs or create positive impact. Real impact won’t happen without consensus of the vision and goals of the delivery organization.

Mark’s book, Customer’s Included describes various scenarios to illustrate his point with common every day products and experiences that most of us can relate to. He’s been advising mostly commercial or consumer market clients, including media, healthcare, technology, financial services, consumer products companies how to do this for 20 years. The goal being to help companies succeed in competitive markets.

In contrast, my work at Public Good Consulting has been propelled by a focus on delivering goods and services that are designed to meet needs that private markets fail to deliver because they can’t be easily commodified and priced according to a customer’s willingness to pay. In other words, I focus on things like public education, transportation, and recreation that are primarily financed through taxes and are mandated by law. My work ensures that services such as health care and education can be delivered to anyone who needs it without paywall barriers.

Like Mark, I focus on creating quality experiences for everyone. Because high quality experiences will achieve policy goals and result in better social outcomes. Unfortunately, it’s much harder to put a price tag on guaranteeing that everyone receives high quality education. Although we can estimate the cost of failing to do so. So public goods face the constant challenge of doing more with fewer dollars.

In my 25 years of working within and alongside government, nonprofits and mission-based for profits, I have always challenged our acceptance of the status quo without aiming to do better, to create better experiences for everyone.

I want to explore the possibilities of applying Mark’s approach designing good experiences for the public sector. To the everyday experiences that we all have: riding mass transit, sending our kids to public school, obtaining a drivers license, visiting local parks, and even more specialized experiences such as opening and running a business or doing anything that is regulated by public rules.

In our first conversation, we discuss the case of Prospect Park in the chapter on Unmet Needs in Customers Included. It’s a compelling case for working with the customer (public park visitors) to improve something. I especially like how it started with something simple - the dogs on a leash rule.

It reminded me of an article I read recently in Gothamist about “absurd” rules that prevent many landlords from converting basement apartments into legally habitable ones. The policy goal is to increase New York's affordable housing stock. It’s easy to criticize rules that are set by law makers or government bureaucrats when you're not aware of risks.

In our conversations, we explore the process of designing experiences that are not only good but are at a scale that is non-excludable. How should public customers be included to optimize policy goals of public goods?

A Real Live Chat

Join me and my long-time friend and good experience guru, Mark Hurst as we explore the art and science of creating good experiences that satisfy public needs!

When is it okay to break the rules? Listen here to our 35 minute conversation about NYC public parks!

Your Mental Health and Emotional Needs are Priority #1

We are all feeling overwhelmed and frayed these days. Our nerves are on high alert, we lash out easily and we turn to chemicals to numb the pain.

I recently spoke with almost 100 Directors, social workers and front line staff who provide after school and community development services for youth and families across New York City.  

What I heard was not a surprise. But the truths that were shared with me cannot be ignored. Kids are struggling with frustration and pain. They’ve fallen behind in both academic and emotional learning.  The adults they trust are struggling with their own worries and pain, impairing them from providing the assurance that kids need to feel like things will be alright. 

There aren’t enough social workers and counselors in schools, despite promises to hire more.  Visits with clinical professionals involves long waits and cash payments that many cannot afford.

The global pandemic didn’t spare anyone. Those of us who survived with our lives are still suffering the lingering psychological impact of the past three years.

You and I and our families and friends and neighbors and co-workers all deserve more compassion and care right now. Our individual and collective psyches deserve attention. 

In honor of National Mental Health Awareness Month and in remembrance of my brother Mike who took his own life 3 years ago and my brother Rob who has suffered a life of self-medication with alcohol and drugs, I want everyone to know prevention, early identification, and intervention, and integrated services work. Don’t wait for a crisis. #B4Stage4!   https://mhanational.org/b4stage4-philosophy  

Do yourself, your kids and your loved ones a huge favor and join a 1-day training on Mental Health First Aid. https://www.mentalhealthfirstaid.org/

Learn more here https://www.nami.org/Get-Involved/Awareness-Events/Mental-Health-Awareness-Month

Accelerating Careers With Learning Partners

It’s an exciting time to be an educator -if you embrace innovation. Because the future of learning for career development is exploding in all directions. New remote, asynchronous and hybrid options aren’t the only areas where education is innovating. In some courses of study, the apprenticeship model is being redesigned to embrace other creative ways to teach skills while giving students opportunities to practice what they learn, providing them with a degree and work experience at the same time. There are a lot of ways to deliver experiential learning: internships, externships, co-op programs and capstone projects are a few.

I’m going to focus on the capstone class and what I’ve learned from the experience as a professor who teaches and mentors students to highlight makes it different from traditional learning is the inclusion of a third party: the sponsor or client whose problem the students seek to solve by applying the knowledge they are gaining while in school.

Unlike traditional learning between a student and a teacher, experiential learning is a more complicated balance of student, teacher and client. The client is typically a business, government or non-governmental enterprise. Th client could also be an academic institution or researcher. But without this third party, team learning comes close, but without the complexity and richness of learning that can happen when a team of students has the opportunity to combine academic learning with the application of knowledge and skills to solve real-world problems.

Schools that want their students to graduate with this depth of knowledge (and the benefits of professional connections) must approach this unique experience with respect for the complex and nuanced needs and assets that each stakeholder brings to the table.

Having taught graduate student capstone classes at three schools in addition to a 20-year career as a strategy consultant to government, nonprofit, for profit and social enterprises, I’d like to suggest how to do experiential learning well. I share critical factors to consider so the experience is worthwhile for students, clients and faculty.

A successful experience for all stakeholders depends on three things:

Rule #1: Students with a firm grounding in required academic knowledge.

Schools requiring students to pass a capstone class in order to graduate, must support acquisition of foundational knowledge. If a project requires writing and presenting reports in English, students should have age-appropriate language skills. Weak communication skills between students and clients and lesson or assignment comprehension can jeopardize a project from the beginning. Likewise, if the learning project requires a foundation in collecting and analyzing data or college statistics that students are lacking, the project will be running on three wheels when it requires four.

Rule #2: Faculty with domain expertise, technical skills related to the project and a passion for teaching.

Experiential learning classes are atypical of traditional learning. There’s no standard exam to assess what knowledge is acquired or how much effort is made by the individual student. It’s messy and complicated. Students are given a project and are expected to figure out the approach while navigating complex relationships within the team, their sponsor and faculty. Capstone programs use school faculty to fulfill multiple roles (which are often vaguely bounded). Faculty may be expected to teach lessons in topics such as research methods, project management, team building, and presentation skills. While coaching teams on their progress, monitoring individual students’ participation, and playing intermediary with sponsors when students need it. This is in addition to defining and grading assignments, providing office hours and attending faculty meetings. It’s never a class that gets repeated because every semester the expectations change. Experiential learning requires flexibility and a love of teaching.

Rule # 3: Capable sponsors who bring projects with challenging but well- defined problems to be solved.

There is no shortage of potential clients and problems that could benefit from a group of smart, dedicated students excited to put their skills to use and impress potential employers. The key is conducting due diligence to assess whether or not client and project meet the criteria established by the school. Is there clear criteria for selection? Is it applied consistently to all prospective client projects? Do the clients and projects support the strategic goals the school has set (go back to rule #1).

In short, a successful learning experience that brings together students, teachers and industry experts should aim for the following goals each year:

1. Supporting students to produce quality deliverables and gain knowledge and experience that leads to meaningful outcomes

2. Hiring qualified faculty who and provide valuable mentoring/learning and networking experiences

3. Finding and keeping qualified sponsors who bring strong projects and come back as satisfied clients

Want to learn more about what I do and why? Visit us here and sign up for occasional email updates. https://www.thepublicgoodconsulting.com/

Why I’m qualified to advise on experiential learning:

• I’ve taught graduate capstones in three schools over the course of six years at: Columbia University, SIPA; NYU Wagner Graduate School of Public Service; and NYU Tandon-CUSP and have solicited and vetted project partners, and have taught and evaluated students in consulting and project management skills; and coached teams and individual students on consulting-based experiential learning projects.

• I’ve spent 20 years as a professional management and strategy consultant, advising clients on planning for change, while leading business development, sales, staff hiring, training and management, finance and project management

• My clients include government, nonprofit, for profit and social enterprises

PLACE MATTERS: Education, Location and Opportunity

For the past few years The Public Good has been using data science to explore issues of education, housing and social justice and how they affect the quality of urban lives.

In the coming weeks we’ll be sharing some of what we’ve learned. We hope to engage readers in a larger discourse and to explore further opportunities to continue diving deeper into the significance of place as it influences quality of life and socio-economic opportunity.

Our first piece explores the relationship between admission to NYC’s highly selective specialized high schools and NYC’s middle school neighborhoods. We look at offer numbers to understand the education pipeline that supports or neglects students to prepare for the most rigorous public high schools. We explore the pipeline through the lens of middle school location and environment.

Two months into his tenure, Chancellor David Banks outlined his vision for building trust in New York City’s public school system. Part of that involves focusing on what the individual schools and community districts need to improve educational outcomes for their children and a promise to listen and learn from communities:

“I do not want to create policy where families have not been part of the process… Our Families and Community Empowerment department will also be supporting superintendents, school leaders, and other school staff with professional development to find ways to permanently embed families’ voice in their particular school communities.”

Appropriate support for families, superintendents, school leaders and staff requires awareness of the physical environments where schools exist. Preparing students for admission to competitive high schools starts early and is influenced by daily experiences and opportunities. Are elementary and middle school neighborhoods safe from drugs and crime and are they pedestrian friendly? Do they have a variety of options for after-school enrichment, early childcare and affordable recreation for families?

In 2021 only 17% of all NYC middle schools had more than five students with offers to Specialized High Schools. Seven of the top 10 middle schools in terms of offers are in Manhattan; two are in Brooklyn and one is in Queens. While District 26 in Queens had the greatest number of schools in the top 20 middle schools in terms of offer numbers.

When it comes to creating education policies with the goal of increasing equity, we think it’s worth taking a deeper look at what’s happening on the ground locally and listening to the voices of those who live there.

It’s a New Year: Time to Face Your Financial Fears!

A guest blog from our friends and partners at Pockets Change:

But first we want to share some exciting news!

“Pockets Change will receive the 2022 Innovation Award for its creativity and ingenuity and its ability to connect financial topics to a diverse audience. Inspiring financial conversations across generations, Pockets Change Hip Hop pedagogy promotes youth-led learning and professional relationship building for social impact “to address systemic issues of education equity and the racial wealth divide”. Their HipHopFinFest annual concert brings together learners and leaders to change the way we talk about money. Students and artists create songs that unpack systems, express personal values, and inspire advocacy.”
#jumpstart #pocketschange #awards #innovation #financialliteracy

---

At Pockets Change, we’re thrilled to team up with The Public Good in offering community education programming. This month, we want to offer some words on how to move forward with our financial fears, and learn to push beyond them. Money is emotional, and dealing with financial systems can be scary. 

We recently had the pleasure of speaking at the 60th annual Economic Education conference, where we shared the 5 Steps to Financial Resilience. We want to share those 5 steps with you this month as well, in addition to a couple of gems from the Asking For A Friend webcomic.

When we talk about money we can face fears and take action together to advocate for ourselves and others, and the earlier we start, the better. That's why bringing financial education into our classrooms is so important.

But don't just take our word for it – check out this interview with Education Secretary Miguel Cardona about the value of including personal finance lessons in early education. 

The big takeaway this month is that in order to face our financial fears, we just need to take things one step at a time. Not everything is as scary as it first seems.

What We Do to Make Change 

Pockets Change builds financial resilience through Hip Hop pedagogy. By connecting Hip Hop and Finance, we develop an understanding of ourselves and our relationship with money. We build financial habits that resonate with our personal identity. We discover how we process information and how to effectively communicate & collaborate. By starting with self-care and personal agency we build our individual capacity to take part in social justice efforts and create change in our lives, our communities, and our world. 

Resources to Make Change in Your Community

Financial education is about much more than numbers. Our world needs change makers addressing individual challenges and institutional barriers around finances. Starting money conversations equips us as individuals and communities take action.

Check out the Pockets Change Toolkit for student, parent, and teacher resources!

---

The Other PPP: Principal-Parent Partnership

New York City school principals have the most challenging jobs I can imagine. I thought so way before COVID threw our school system into chaos, maybe because I've depended on our public schools from PreK to high school for both my kids. The NYC school system is a megalith with over 1.1 million students and 135,000 employees. I experience the challenges almost daily.

Principals manage the safety and learning of hundreds, if not thousands, of children every day. They depend on reliable highly functioning staff every day. They must answer to parents with wide demands and capacities for engagement. Principals must also follow the political whims of their elected overseers, not to mention the bureaucratic hurdles of their administrators at the Department Of Education.

But principals also have a lot of latitude in deciding how to make things work. Every school functions as its own ecosystem, with infinite opportunities to create community and solve problems collaboratively.

Collaborative problem solving doesn't mean everyone jumping in at once. But everyone (students, parents, teachers and staff) should feel that their experience matters and their voices are heard. Each constituency has a perspective that can contribute to solutions.

Parents and guardians are one of a school's greatest assets in finding solutions and offering help in a pinch. They volunteer time, share skills and donate money, benefiting all students (not just their own). A big part of what made my kids' elementary school so successful was the collaborative spirit of our families, principal and teachers. So it frustrates me when I see a school that needs help, and its principal fails to take advantage of the help that many parents want to give.

I don't blame school principals entirely for not accepting help when its needed. They were probably never trained in the kinds of management and leadership skills required to build community and consensus in a school environment. But if principals and the DOE saw parents as allies, and the school environment as a real community, with us working towards common goals, think how much more we could accomplish, together.

Empowering Schools Through Community Voices

Focus groups are a valuable strategy for gathering evidence and nurturing community. Here's how:

Successful focus groups give stakeholders space to share their lived experiences and perspectives. They allow facilitators to collect valuable data for responding to community needs. Focus groups also give neighbors and colleagues the opportunity to connect over common goals. And yet, community building only happens when all voices are valued. To create genuine community engagement, here are 3 pillars for supporting successful outcomes.

Start with structured goals.

Decide what you hope to learn. Why do you want to invite your community to share their experiences and thoughts with you? What is the purpose of creating these events? Your goals should inform the groups you create and the questions you ask.

Create an environment that is safe and welcoming to diverse perspectives and experiences.

Your community starts with stakeholders who share a common interest, such as the well-being of local school-age children.

Say you are the Principal of a PreK – 5th grade school and you want to learn why families in the neighborhood are hesitant to enroll in your PreK or K program (your application numbers are much lower than the PreK-5th grade school 3 blocks away).

You may want to hear from parents whose children are currently enrolled in your PreK and K programs. Their voices can provide tips and insights. Their experiences as school "insiders" may differ from the neighborhood parents making first-time enrollment decisions. Hosting a focus group for each sub-group of parents would contribute to more focused discussions, yielding insights that could strengthen outreach and enrollment strategies.

Be willing to commit to action.

We all resent being invited to share our expert opinions, or our honesty in describing our needs only to have them ignored. If you are seeking feedback from stakeholders so you can check off a box, please don’t. Time is valuable – respect the time that stakeholders donate to share their lived experiences and honest feedback. Of course, some requests or demands for change may be impractical. Building consensus is also an important part of community building. But at the very least, enter the community conversations with open mind and willingness to listen, learn and consider what’s possible.

Conditions for shelter: whose rules are they?

Ask an economist, an investment banker or a policy maker and the solution to homelessness is by increasing the supply of affordable housing.  But even if we decided to invest the money to build more very low income housing and keep policies that protect the inventory we already have, we’d still always have dysfunctional people living doubled up, sleeping rough and moving from place to place for a place to sleep and store belongings.  Why?  Because housing instability is not just a symptom of economic vulnerability.  It’s what happens to people who don’t play by society’s rules.

Untreated mental illness and emotional disorders, self-medication with mind-numbing chemical substances that overtake the individual’s judgement and ability to self-manage are the real causes of homelessness.  Urges and choices that involve illegal activities, sometimes violence, and often, a disregard for the impact of one’s choices on others (family members, neighbors, community supports and random strangers) are what perpetuate homelessness for the vast majority.  I don’t mean to say it’s deserved or that we should accept this reality without trying to solve the underlying human challenges.

I know what I say sounds harsh and unsympathetic.  But I don’t say it lightly.  I say it because I have a brother who has spent 30 years living a rebellious life revolving around alcohol and drugs include crack and crystal meth and at the age of 55, he is barely hanging on to a shelter with a bed he can call his, regular meals and place to store his meagre belongings. 

My brother has had jobs in between stints in jail, rehab and hospitals and while holding down jobs he paid rent regularly. But he also lost homes due to his choices and he knows the rules our family has laid down: if you continue your uncontrolled drinking, you cannot live with us.

I recently found out he has been heavily medicated for bi-polar diagnosis.  He has spent the past 16 months talking about wanting to die.  And he’s been in and out of 4 rehab centers, sober houses and hospitals including an involuntary psychiatric stint.   

He’s also been very fortunate to have been placed in half-way houses for those in recovery or who are post-incarceration.  He usually shares a room, gets 3 meals a day and must respect house rules and participate in resident responsibilities for a nominal monthly rent that he can afford on SSDI or whatever savings he has accrued.  And even when he’s broken the rules – drinking himself to oblivion and ending up passed out on the street where an ambulance recovers him, he’s generally given the option for redemption by these shelters. 

But my brother doesn’t like rules. He never has, since he was a kid.  And for once, I sympathize with his choice to not follow rules.  The last place he stayed was a therapeutic home for recovering substance abusers as well as for child traffic survivors.  They had a different set of rules.  Operated by a Christian organization, their rules required him to carry a “Jesus Saves” sign outside near his shelter.  He refused this requirement so ended up back on the street.

NY State Education Dept: Testing Over Learning

The NY State Education Departments plans to administer state ELA and Math tests in a few weeks.

WHY?

Despite the most obvious argument against it , the fact that the past 12 months have been a national disaster for families experiencing all kinds of trauma and the fact that New York City, the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic has experienced more chaos and loss in learning than any time since state standardized tests began, there are other blatant reasons why replacing four days of learning with four days of test-taking show such a lack of care and understanding.

Fully remote students will be automatically excused for the test because they haven’t figured out how to include them; while blended students may opt out (as in past years), leaving a tested cohort per school that is too small to have much validity.

And what would the students who are excused from the state tests (probably close to half of students in non charter, non private NYC district schools) be doing during those four days? Maybe they’ll be in the park if the weather is nice. Or maybe they’ll be at home watching video games and playing Minecraft.

Instead of teaching and learning, teachers and a few students will get to spend 4 days with tests for the sake of bureaucratic rules from the Federal and State education departments.

Email, call or write your federal and state representatives and remind them that our children have been suffering for the past year and they deserve better. Money for education - ESPECIALLY this year- should not be contingent on test results!

Challenging the digital divide during the pandemic.

When COVID shut down our schools and libraries in Spring of 2020, I knew something had to be done to give kids screen-free alternatives to reading. Through multiple calls with parents, school leaders and Scholastic, Inc., I got 446 new books mailed to the homes of 160 middle school students in a low-income neighborhood, to keep them reading through the summer.

This was an experiment of sorts. As the parent of an 8th grader and 5th grader in NYC public schools, I was hoping at least 80 kids in my son’s middle school would express interest, to see if young adult readers who live for cell phones and screens would be interested in reading real books. It was also a challenge to technology as the de facto learning solution.

I also wanted to see how a diverse school with an underfunded PTA, where the majority of students qualify for free lunch, could manage to sponsor a book give-away without asking anyone to qualify their need. I wanted to give away new books to anyone in need of resources with out having to qualify their need or feel ashamed to ask.

In normal times, kids would have access to school and public libraries to find free, age-appropriate books for daily reading assignments. That changed on March 16. Now reading has become a bigger chore, and not just for my kids.

In April, following the New York City-wide school shut down, my 8th-grader’s teacher asked her students to read a book a week from a list of suggested titles. She included links and tips for downloading. That’s when I decided to make it my mission to challenge our dependency on screens.

Don't get me wrong, I like what’s possible on the internet. But I rarely get frustrated with real books and paper and pencils and basic learning tools that still function well and don’t create friction. Okay, I may occasionally nag my kids to put down the paperback they’re engrossed in, but it doesn’t compare to the nagging to get off their screens.

My family is fortunate to have several electronic reading devices at home, along with high-speed internet. We've logged into all the free apps for downloading and sharing books online. But I realize that depending on new apps and devices is a bigger burden on some families than others.

Besides, my kids still prefer to read books they can hold and pages they can flip by hand. And I’m glad they do. They spend too much time as it is sitting 12 inches from screens for so much of the day.

My son’s middle school has an economic needs index of 62% averaged over the past 5 years. And that’s only going to get worse with job losses and escalating living expenses.

So far, most of the proposed solutions to education during COVID-19 involve screens and technology. That has become the de facto solution to learning from home. And it assumes that all families have the same facility with technology.

Kids need learning opportunities that don't require screens and that don't increase the gap between the have’s and have not’s or the savvy and not so savvy adults. And as parents and teachers, we can't allow reading literature on phones to become normalized. Public school is supposed to be there for all of us, to provide access to education regardless of financial status. Schools may be closed but kids still need access to affordable, frictionless learning tools.

We couldn’t have done this without our Principal, staff, and parent leaders at Tompkins Square Middle School, a diverse community school in District 1 on the LES who were willing to support the idea.

How Government Procurement Disadvantages Small Businesses

New York City says it wants to help small businesses (including Minority & Women-Owned Business Enterprises) MWBEs thrive. First, it needs to rethink some outdated procurement policies.

Many small businesses are denied the chance to sell to the City simply because certain purchasing opportunities aren't advertised. Hundreds of opportunities for MWBEs are lost because the City does not publish RFPs that are valued lower than $100,000. And yet, small and new businesses are the ones who would benefit most from these “small purchase” opportunities to sell products or services at lower price points. In fact, they often rely on smaller jobs until they can build their capacity to deliver much bigger ones.

Why doesn’t the City expand the government marketplace and share all sales opportunities with all potential suppliers? Expanding the marketplace would also benefit agency buyers. Purchasing agents and the program staff have a better chance of finding the most qualified supplier at the most competitive price when their purchasing needs are more widely advertised (assuming that purchasing agents and program staff have a fair and rigorous method for evaluating price and quality.)

The Public Good has been a City-certified women-owned business for more than 10 years and we (and many others) can attest to the frustrating lack of transparency in purchasing opportunities. It’s time for policymakers to consider the challenges of small business owners. Does it make sense to not publish items worth more than say, $20,000? And considering the efficiency of on-line marketplaces, why not take advantage of technology?

Wouldn’t expanding the market also help City agencies? They still rely on random calls and pre-existing relationships with vendors. Does that help them find products and services of the best value? My firm often receives random solicitations for services that have no connection to the types of work that my firm does. Are these a result of erroneous algorithms and bad AI or inexperienced purchasing agents? A recent request from the Dept. of Health was looking for a contractor to provide disease control services. Three minutes on my website would tell you that we are not at all qualified. And yet the request came from a human being sending personal emails. I’d much prefer that City agencies publish their needs through the City Record Online where I can search for more business opportunities and am free to compete with other MWBEs.

Separate and unequal.

NYC school children are separate. And their schools are definitely not equal.

Take middle school, the point at which most families must apply to school, based on preference beginning with the following choices: public charter school or private parochial school or private independent school or home school or public school in the district where you live or public school in the district where your child attended elementary school?

The vast majority of NYC families opt for public school. But the decision-making doesn't end there. The complicated and overwhelming process of choosing a school continues. Because public schools are not equal or interchangeable –by design. Over the years, each school has emerged with unique features, offering different pedagogical approaches to meet changing community needs.

Even in a small community district on the Lower East Side, where there are only seven district middle schools to consider, the process is highly fraught and extremely time consuming.

Some offer dual-language Mandarin. Some require Spanish every year. Most do not. Some offer Regents algebra to prepare for high school, some do not. Some start in 6th grade and end in 12th. Some have 30 kids per class; some have 18. Some screen, but each screen is unique. Those with screens are not required to share their screening rubric. Some schools have a critical mass of above average test-takers. While some serve a disproportionate number of struggling learners.

The anxiety is fed by information asymmetries between the parents (consumers in this education “market”) and the school officials (suppliers in this “market”). Information that consumers want to know in order to compare options may be very difficult to access because of how school information is distributed and shared. Families bear the burden in filtering out what is relevant, valid, and even accurate. School (and DOE) websites are not always complete or up to date. They lack descriptions of extra-curricular or academic support programs. I’ve emailed principals with questions and received no reply. Parents also rely on generic school tours. School visits are by far the best way to get a true picture. But how many working parents are able to take time off from work or spend evenings visiting all of them?

Adding to the confusion over school choices, the rules and procedures that families are required to follow change, almost every year. There are deadlines, forms and applications. Some schools have their own unique screening process that includes more tests, essays and interviews.

So word of mouth continues to act as the default influencer that sways families towards or away from certain schools because seeking the opinion of others who we most identify with is usually the easiest.

Parents want two things: they want easier and more complete access to information about their school choices. Every school should be required to report on a standard set of characteristics including and especially, the academic resources they provide for learners at all levels.

Every school should offer academic interventions for struggling learners as well as opportunities that challenge all students, including those who excel. And every school should have appropriate staff to provide social and emotional counseling for their students. As a parent, these critical supports are what we consider as we are choosing schools. What school would best fit our child and meet their needs? Unfortunately, this critical information is rarely communicated clearly to all families. And yet, the schools know what they have to offer.

Academic offerings and schedules for each grade level must be posted, on all DOE and school websites, and on the walls of school entrances. And the school must update this information every year.

Parents also want assurance that, whichever school their child is assigned to, will provide them with a learning environment that is as good as, if not better, than the schools they don’t get assigned to. Unfortunately, parents are not confident that equal opportunities and high quality experiences exist in every school. Hence, the hysteria over school applications.

The bottom line is, we don't trust that the educational experiences offered by public schools are all equitable. The disparity that exists in our schools is a result of the cherry picking of the DOE as much as it is the families who invest whatever resources and authority they have to mold their school into one of the exceptions.

High School Lock Up

Ever been greeted at a public school with a metal detector and half a dozen security guards where parents are forbidden to enter?

Six high schools share space inside one building that I visited on a recent afternoon to drop off my son’s high school application. I’m having second thoughts about the school now.

When told I couldn’t get a receipt for the application, I asked if I could step inside to bring it to the school’s administrator. Nope. Only with an appointment. There was a flank of security officers standing near the chest-high security desk straight ahead. They were adamant and not too friendly. And even though it was 4:00, security wouldn’t escort me either.

I told the guard at the door that the school I was applying to doesn’t offer tours, and I was curious to see how the school "felt." How many schools in the building? Were they big? small? And most of all, what’s with the high level security that made me feel I was entering a juvenile detention facility?

When I asked a student at the High School Fair to tell me what she liked and didn’t like about the school, the didn’t like was obvious. Metal detectors and no cell phones allowed by anyone at any time in the building. I didn’t think much of the student’s complaints until I visited for myself.

Standing in the doorway I thought, this may be one of the only times I’lll get a sense of the environment where my kid could spend most of his waking time for the next three years. So I asked more questions, partly because I was disturbed by the sense of arbitrary power these uniformed guards demonstrated. The guard at the door showed some sympathy. He turned to me in a low voice and explained that the building was also headquarters for school safety, so they had to be on their toes.

But it all felt wrong. It felt like an environment with six disparate schools that treats everyone like a possible criminal. As my son put it, no wonder the 12th graders at the school he was applying to take all their classes somewhere else.

I had heard that a few of the schools in the building were the reason for the extra security. And if that’s true, wouldn’t that warrant more social workers and guidance counselors? Don’t we all know by now that adolescent violence acted out through mass shootings or fights with blades and guns (presumably what metal detectors are for) are a result of trauma experienced by the perpetrator? By untreated psychiatric or social/emotional scars? So why not hire more mental health professional for high-risk kids? Why turn a school building into an unwelcome fortress? Why create a place where every day the majority of visitors and students are treated like potential criminals, incapable of behaving like thoughtful human beings?

What a sad way to start the school day.

Scaling with partners: starting off right

Doing it right boils down to assessing the risks and rewards of your partner before you flip the on-switch.

Recently, a community-based nonprofit asked us for help finding a strategic partner in order to scale their impact.  Our goal was to help them find an organization that would allow their teen internship program to expand into new neighborhoods by the following year. They began not knowing where or how to start looking. Our advice to start was simple.

Begin with your program requirements. Our client required a working relationship with a community center that serves an average of 75 seniors per day in Queens or Brooklyn.  We continued building and fine-tuning a list of requirements with them by focusing on their program’s goals and mission: what impact are you hoping to have? On whom? How? They also knew from prior experience that a partner had to guarantee a critical mass of older adults every day during the summer months when teen interns would be on site. 

How do you start building partner leads? You can start with a Google keyword search to find leads with specific criteria. But if you’re looking to cast a wide net, organizations that receive government support can often be found through government data portals which is where we found a list of hundreds of City-funded programs for Seniors.

Do you need to narrow down by geographic target?  Who are your targets and where are they?  How should they reflect your current program?  Remember, you’re not building from scratch. You’re building from success. So think about what aspects of your program make it work well.  

Talk to your contacts in membership and advocacy organizations. Leverage your networks and professional relationships and talk to those you trust.  Focus on those who already know what you do well. Remember you’re looking for leads with potential; talk to those who are positioned to suggest organizations you may not have thought of but who understand your value.

 Ask your funders for recommendations – do they support the kinds of organizations you are looking to partner with?   This is especially true if your efforts to scale are being supported by one of your funders. Your success is also their success so they have an incentive to help you succeed with a new partner. But be careful not to let their goals and motives override your own. It’s important to maintain fidelity to your program's own goals. 

 So how do you manage difficult conversations about who would make a good partner if your opinion differs from your funder’s or another influential stakeholder?  Create and use a vetting tool. Starting with the requirements list that you began, fine-tune the list and add a scale for scoring how well each prospect meets your criteria; then assign a weight for each criterion to account for its relative importance in the final score. 

How do you narrow the list when it’s very large? Besides validating difficult decisions, a vetting tool can also help you in narrowing a long list of potential partners based on the relative risks and merits of each.  How?  By creating and using a standard vetting tool that’s based on your program requirements and goals to evaluate each prospect’s capacity to add value to your program.  The relative importance of each criterion is also important.  For example, an organization’s operating budget and where their funding comes from maybe two criteria; but budget size may weigh more heavily than the source of funding.  Your assessment criteria should help indicate the organization’s position in terms of their risk or reward as a strategic partner. Evidence should be easy to find. Use the vetting tool to rank each potential organization in terms of their riskiness and reward as a scaling partner.  The evidence you collect through this methodical process should also help you during negotiations with stakeholders.

Thanks for reading and stay tuned for our next post soon!

High School Directory. Now online!

At The Public Good, we explore free and open government data, with an eye towards making public information accessible to the public. Besides analyzing data as part of our policy research and program design work, we look at the impact of improving access to public information and its value for ordinary citizens.

We believe that information about publicly funded programs should be accessible to everyone. Because increasing knowledge about government policies and services helps public consumers find the resources and make the choices best suited to meet their needs.

This is especially true when it comes to public education. However, with a school system as large as NYC’s, ensuring that everyone can easily access all the information they need to make timely and significant decisions is a constant challenge.

This spreadsheet is a test case that has filtered criteria such as graduation rate (87% minimum) which is an important indicator to me, holding everything else equal. Keep in mind, there are close to 100 columns and it can be hard to associate variables specific to each of multiple programs within schools because it was saved as a flat-file, rather than a conventional database that can parse relationships between columns. It’s still a heck of a lot easier than working with the monstrous print directory and it respects my family’s needs and preferences - unlike the current My Schools search tool.

The Catch-22 of De Blasio's PreK

Thanks to Mayor De Blasio, NYC now guarantees free Universal Pre-Kindergarten to four-year-olds.  Seats are available in many elementary schools where the child can seamlessly graduate to Kindergarten and remain until middle school; and UPK typically follows the same schedule as the rest of the school.  

Until 2:30.   If you’re a parent in need of After-School, you most likely have some tough choices. Apparently, NY State thinks the school building is safe enough for PreK students from 8:30 - 2:30 but not after that.  And the State doesn’t trust the same After-school staff who care for Kindergarten children to care for PreK children.

If you’re a working family who can afford to hire a nanny, that’s one solution. Or you can cobble together school pick ups of your four year old with friends and family for a year. But if you are one of the 74% of DOE students who are economically disadvantaged, and you need reliable child care every day, your PreK child may have to leave their school to commute to a day-care center for the last 2-3 hours of each day.  Or you may prefer to keep your child in a Head Start program where free (working person’s) 8-10 hour day is offered rather than enroll them in a nearby public school.

Because the State oversees the licensing of child care programs, including After-School.  While the City Department of Education manages education programs at District schools. Despite expanding the availability of UPK in NYC, the City and State have created a gap in educational opportunities for children not yet in Kindergarten.  And these archaic regulations limit what the City will offer in terms of After-school options.

Another program expanded under De Blasio, provides free After-School for many more students. Yet it excludes PreK students.  So the Mayor oversees district schools, including UPK, the State oversees After-school regulations and the Mayor decides who gets funding. And the parents don’t have much say in any of this. Or do they?

New York is designed to keep kids segregated.

As founder of The Public Good, I’ve invested countless hours over the past eight years to understand why schools that are blocks away present stark contrasts in educational culture and opportunity to nearby families. I’ve researched the demographics, the outcomes and the differences in resources and personal choices that contribute to the disparities of NYC’s public schools.

And I’ve learned that our schools and neighborhoods will continue to grow more disparate and segregated until New York’s policy makers treat early childcare, education and extra-curricular enrichment as an investment in whole families all along the income scale.

What is evident is that the education pipeline of early childcare, UPK, Kindergarten, Middle School and High School is a system where access is skewed from the beginning.  It’s not as simple as private vs. public money. The segregation happens within the public system at the earliest age. Moreover, the current system of early childcare and education in NY has the pernicious effect of reinforcing socio-economic segregation, system gaming and the community conflicts that come with a model of education based on scarcity.  

I came to this as a parent during the process of applying to Pre-K for my first child. Once he got a seat at a local school (no easy feat) I got involved in his elementary school which at that time, was still eligible for Title I money and under-enrolled.  I was so thrilled to be part of a small, nurturing school with such a diversity of families where everyone seemed to know and care about each other. I organized book sales, wrote grants for enrichment, became Treasurer of our parent association and helped organize a parent-led after school program after we lost our subsidized program.

My family lives on the Lower East Side where our community school District 1 is un-zoned, small and experiencing rapid gentrification.  It’s also a neighborhood with the highest concentration of public housing in Manhattan and long history of immigrants and many languages.

Besides lived experience, I also bring a professional and academic background in public policy analysis and nonprofit management, having spent 20 years working in government, social service agencies and as a business strategist for public sector clients. My graduate school research looked at the impact of divorce, education, and discrimination on economic outcomes, especially for women.  

My choice to study social welfare policy and work in the public sector was probably influenced by my experience growing up in a non-traditional household where my family was coping with deafness, mental illness, unemployment, divorce, juvenile alcoholism, drugs and delinquency. Barely held together by a mother supporting the five of us with minimum wage jobs.  

Now with kids of my own, I am sensitive to their needs as well as the diverse needs of families in our school and community environments.

I know that there are no simple policy solutions that will yield the kind of results our politicians and advocates are looking for.  But it seems to me that the public conversations continue to avoid some of the most obvious barriers. Such as the lack of affordable after school care for all working families, including children in PreK.

Many of our current programs are based on policies that were designed 20 or more years ago. And they haven’t kept pace with the needs of today’s families.

So I’ve decided to share everything I learn and discover through this space. As a way to encourage public discussion and action that will help create education policies and opportunities that are designed to meet the needs of a wider and more diverse audience in today’s NY City.

Middle School Community Search Tool

It’s finally here! a Google map we’ve created that includes every District, Boro and City-wide middle school for Manhattan students/residents. Easy to use and including some basic info. you need to help narrow down your search.

Middle Schools Manhattan Map

Basic stats like total enrollment and percent of students passing state tests as well as admissions criteria and priorities are included.

And best of all, this link allows you to open up the map on your mobile device using Google maps application. So you can navigate commute routes, estimate travel time, and see what else is in the school’s neighborhood.

We created this free and simple tool because we believe that access to public information should be accessible to all. Especially when it comes to finding community resources. So please share this link with anyone know who might find it useful.

School District1 walks the diversity talk.

Community leaders in NYC School District 1 are serious about promoting our schools and supporting families. To demonstrate, they’ve organized a walking tour of (almost) every District 1 middle school for families to visit. Doors will be open this Saturday for parents and students (especially those who have a hard time touring during the work week) to meet teachers, principals and other parents from each school, to ask questions and learn about options. The goal is to encourage families to expand their choices and encourage the community to engage in diversifying our schools in this highly segregated neighborhood. We’re looking forward to joining the walk!