Recommendation to request the Commission on Youth and Children review the current after school programs offered throughout the City of Long Beach and make recommendations to the City Council on how after school programs can be improved and/or expanded in the City in order to better serve our youth; Request the Commission on Youth and Children include in their analysis the following elements and report back to the City Council: • The number of youth we have in the City of Long Beach; • The benefits of after school programming for our youth; • The number of working families where both parents work outside of the home; • The need for children to have a safe place to go after school where they are presented with learning and/or play opportunities; • After school programs in highly dense neighborhoods with historically high crime rates; • Proximity from the school site to the after school program site; and Request the recommendations made by the Commission include non-fiscal options such as changing program hours or offering d
Item number 19. Communication from Councilwoman Price. Councilwoman Gonzalez. Vice Mayor Lowenthal and Councilman Austin. Recommendation to request the City. Request the Commission on Youth and Children to review the current afterschool programs offered throughout the City of Long Beach and make recommendations on how afterschool programs can be improved and or expanded in order to better serve our youth . Okay. Thank you. There has been a motion in a second by Councilmember Austin and seconded by Councilwoman Mongo. Councilmember Austin. And I'd like to defer to Councilmember Price on this. Councilwoman Price, Thank you. I want to thank my colleagues for signing on to this item. I believe that our city commissions, some of them are a bit underutilized. And this one in particular, I think, could definitely assist us in exploring what afterschool and youth programing we have in the city where there are areas of deficiency and what we might be able to do to improve those areas. I want to thank our mayor for all the work that he's done to improve our city commission since taking office and providing them with appropriate tools to be able to participate in the governance that we do. I think that we've come a long way in regards to making our commissions relevant in the regards to this particular commission. This particular commission is designed to advise the Mayor and City Council on issues relating to the city's provision of services to youth and children. They were derm. They have been dormant for a while and I look forward to giving them this task. I'm a firm believer in letting our youth have a meaningful voice when it comes to city government. Currently, my office has partnered under the leadership of Councilman Richardson, who led the way with participatory budgeting. But we are working with the participatory budgeting staff, and we've undertaken the second youth led participatory project in the country. We've set aside $75,000 of our one time funds to allow our youth to decide how to spend those funds in order to improve a park project within our district. As a working mom, I also understand the importance of providing quality afterschool programing and opportunities for our kids to learn leadership skills and to be meaningful members of the environment where they will hopefully be future leaders. So I hope that my council colleagues will support me in this and send forward to our Commission on Youth and Children . This item for them to explore, study and provide recommendations for our consideration. Thank you. Thank you very much. Councilwoman Monga was a second year of that motion. Okay. Okay, great. So now I'm going to Vice Mayor Lowenthal. Thank you. Just simply to thank Councilmember Price for raising the issue. And I do realize it's been dormant for quite some time. So I look forward to hearing the commission's feedback and really working on this very important extension of the school day for many students and working families. So, Councilwoman, thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman Gonzales. Yeah. I'm glad. I think Councilwoman Pryce as well for bringing this forward. As a mother, myself, of three boys, I think it's very important that children have a place to go after school. And especially, you know, in communities like the first district that I often see where Park Park places are very, you know, sparse. And it's very over populated, it's dense. There isn't much many places to go. And so I think it's important that we look into this a little bit deeply as far as, as we mentioned here, neighborhoods with potentially historic high crime rates, proximity from schools to sites or school sites to the afterschool programs, sites and so on. And so I think, Councilman Price, again, for bringing this forward, this is much needed. Thank you, Councilman Mongo. Having already been involved with some of the principals in our district related to child care, I hope that we will work to include our school board members from all of each unified school district. As someone who's worked in child care for many years, I find it important to know the options available to each of our schools and on campus. Programs are really a huge component of that. And so I hope we'll work collaboratively, collaboratively with our school board members and our local principals to make sure that this is a very partnership, a big partnership between organizations. Councilman Richardson. Thanks, Mr. Mayor. I think this is a good item in terms of giving our commission something relevant to work on over the course of the summer. I want to just encourage city staff and the city council to not keep not take our eye off the ball in terms of the summer as our Game of Thrones friends, my might might know Summer is coming. And for a lot of our communities that means a lot of kids out of school, and that means that we need to make sure that we do have a comprehensive plan inclusive of our parks, libraries and public safety to ensure that, you know, as Councilmember Andrews would say, a tiger kid is a good kid. So so I want to make sure that we that we have that. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember. I think that was an O'Donnell quote. Quote, by the way. Yeah. You got the creative in that. Watch out for those dragons in the summer. I'd like to also just echo the comments and express my enthusiastic support for this item. Thank you for bringing it forward. Bringing it forward. Councilmember Price. We potentially have two new parks that could be developed in the eighth District, which will add great greenspace and recreational opportunities for our youth . I've developed a youth advisory council for the eighth District. I know they're going to be engaged in that process, and we can call that participatory budgeting as well, because there'll be significant resources put into that part, those parks. But that said, you have my full support on this item. Thank you. And I also want to thank Councilwoman Price. She had mentioned this to me before, and I very thankful. I think any time the council brings things forward for the commission to look at, I think it's great. I also added that the the Commission on senior issues as well is looking for some additional work. And so if anyone has suggestions for them, I. I met with a bunch of them this last weekend, a great group of people. And if the council wants to bring something forward and not on that end, that would be really, really helpful as well. Any public comment on this item? Okay. Please cast your votes. Motion carries nine zero. Thank you. Item number ten.