A bill for an ordinance amending the Denver College Affordability Fund Article, Article IV, Chapter 11 of the Revised Municipal Code to clarify operations related to the Fund. Amends Article IV, Chapter 11 of the Revised Municipal Code, the Denver College Affordability Fund Article, to clarify operations related to the Fund. Councilmember Herndon approved direct filing this item on 5-7-20.
Hi, Madam Secretary. Please. Because of ordinance results. 1339. Is comfortable. 131 has passed. Councilmember Cashman, will you please put accountable to zero seven on the floor? Yes, Mr. President. I move the. Council bill. 20 20207 be placed upon final consideration and do pass as amended. Uh, I'm sorry. And just do pass so far. Yes. Okay. It has been moved and seconded. But Councilmember Herndon. And you do have a motion to amend. Do you want to go ahead with your motion? Yes, Mr. President. I move that council bill series. Of 2020 0207 be amended in the following particulars on page two Strike Line 15. All right. It has been your motion to amend has been moved and seconded comments on the amendment. Councilmember Herndon. Yes, Mr. President. And this amendment. Will allow the changes to become effective upon passage. Should have passed. Thank you. Uh, I don't see any other comments on the amendment. Madam Secretary, roll call on the motion to amend. Black. I see tobacco and Flynn i Gilmer i. Herndon, i. I. Cashman Kenny Ortega I. Sandoval. I. Sawyer Torres, I. Council President. Hi, Madam Secretary. Please close the voting. Announce the results. 1339 accountable to zero seven has been amended. All right, now, Councilmember Cashman, we need another motion for 207, uh, to pass as amended. Can't just roll the tape. Rewind and play. Doh. Thank you, Mr. President. I move the council bill 20 20207 to be placed upon final consideration and do pass as amended. Thank you, Councilmember. It has been moved and second in the required public hearing for council bill 207 is now open. May we have the staff report? Hi. Good evening. Council President Clark and members of City Council. My name is Teresa Pena and I reside in Councilman Cashman's District at 2626 South Madison Street. Regrets from our board chair, Steve KURTZ, who has done heroic work with our college corporation. He has a very important day. It's kind of top secret with a proper name, Tiger Woods. Otherwise, he'd be here with you in a moment. After I make some comments from the board, I'm going to turn this over to John Williams, the executive director of the Office of Children Affairs. Since Prosperity Denver Initiative past, we have worked diligently to launch the Denver College Success Corporation Initiative and really in compliance with all of the ordinance requirements and consistent with the will of the Denver voters. As part of that work, since we began meeting over a year ago, a year ago, actually this year, this month, we have met with over 100 scholarship organizations. They are the beneficiaries of this money, over 100 opportunities that our staff and our board have met with and received. A lot of feedback on how best to serve the Denver students that this tuition reimbursement and support services would serve. As we have been meeting with our scholarship organizations, we've identified some technical hurdles that were in the language. And so that's why we're in front of you tonight, asking you to please re amend the ordinance. If you approve these changes tonight, we will distribute over $5 million in tuition. Scholarship into scholarship reimbursements, over $2.3 million in student service supports. More are pending, and over 800 Denver students, at a minimum, will be served by this ordinance, many of them first gen and low income. Speaking on the board tonight, I respectfully request your support of these changes. It is a critical resource that we get this money out to our scholarship organizations and more importantly, to these students whose lives, as you know, have been upended with the COVID 19 crisis. It is critical that we get this money out as soon as possible. With that, I will turn it over to Don, who will take you through the technical changes, knowing that we have met and discussed many of these changes with you. Thank you for your support and we appreciate your time. Good evening. See. I'm looking for a presentation. I'm not. Sorry. I'm looking for a presentation. I don't see it. Um. Do we? Do we know who might know where the presentation is? That was actually the whole just seconds during it that ironed out. We got word that they're putting it on a thumb drive to bring it up right now. So we're making progress. Thank you. Do you. Do you know how to sing or juggle or. I know how to play the trumpet, but I don't have it with me tonight. Oh. But next. Imagine 2020. As See. I'm sorry. Excuse me. Thank you very much. All right. Thank you for your patience. Good evening. Council members and Diane Williams, executive director of the Office of Children's Affairs. Here to talk to you about the proposed changes to our Denver College Affordability Fund ordinance. This is Bill 2207. As Teresa mentioned, this this ordinance was passed by Denver voters in November of 2018. It created a new charitable organization, the Denver College Success Corporation, or DCC. This fund is funded by a point 8% sales tax increase or about $0.01 on a $10 purchase. The total projected revenue for 2019. This is our first year of operations. It's about $11.8 million that we're talking about. Here's a list of our current board members. As Theresa mentioned, our board chair is Stephen KURTZ. We have seven board members and one city council appointee. On Councilman Chris Herndon Oversight for the Denver College Affordability Fund is provided by our office, the Office of Children's Affairs. We have an annual contract with DCC with the renewal of the city's option, and the current ordinance calls for a sunset provision after 12 years of operation. The ordinance does set some restrictions on our spending for the College Affordability Fund. We're limited to 5% of the tax collected and administrative costs 10% the first year and 5% every year after, and 95% of the tax reserved for reimbursement to our support organizations. So we wanted to share a little bit with you about who Denver College is. This corporation serves, as you can see here in this district map. We currently have identified about 1800 young people who have scholarships or support services that are eligible for reimbursement with the Denver College Affordability Fund. And this is the distribution of those students. Currently, those numbers are growing every day as more students partake in those services. We've identified more than 60 supported organizations or so that provide those scholarships and support services throughout the Denver area. And we've done quite a bit of outreach to those supported organizations in the last year to really understand what their needs are and understand how they would apply those funds and use those reimbursements. Also, as Teresa mentioned, we are serving many, many of our most needy students with the Denver College Affordability Fund. As you can see, the breakdown here by gender and also by ethnicity, we have a large proportion of students of color and we also have a large proportion of students who are low income based on the requirements of the ordinance. This is a list of just some of the organizations that excuse me, some of the organizations that provide those support services to students. Not an exhaustive list by any means. We have many, many other organizations that are eligible for reimbursement. But this is a list of just some of them. The reasons that we are coming before you tonight and asking for changes to the ordinance was really based on feedback that we've received from our supported organizations as we started to work on the business rules and the requirements for releasing funds for reimbursement. The current language has caused some unanticipated barriers to participation, and we're requesting these changes to allow more supported organizations to be eligible to apply for funds. Our current projections show that without these changes, the vast majority of our supported organizations would be unable to provide the required documentation to receive reimbursement. And it really is. More than 90% of the organizations would not be eligible to apply based on the current restrictions. Nonprofits right now are under tremendous financial strain. We think that the nonprofits we know that the nonprofits who provide these critical supports to the community need access to these funds now more than ever so they can continue to provide those supports to our students. We really want to ensure that every dollar is delivered to our support organizations, as promised to the voters. The proposed changes that we're asking you to approve tonight. We have eight changes that we're asking you to make to the ordinance language. We're changing all references from tuition to scholarships, amending the residency verification for the first year disbursement only to allow organizations to really build those processes that will allow them to gather the correct data. And the following years to be able to apply for funds allows nationally accredited institutions eligibility. We're also changing language to reflect the full cost of attendance and not just tuition and scholarship, allowing financial need to be reviewed just once. And that one time is the first year of post-secondary education. Revises Dooley, Inc. to encompass a wider range of nonprofits as not limited to for our Board of Directors discretion to support services and removes restrictions on charter school affiliated organizations. This is a more detailed breakdown of the changes that we are proposing. And as you can see, as I just mentioned, a lot of what we're doing are technical changes that we think will allow us to have more discretion in how we distribute the dollars and also allow for more flexibility for support organizations to be able to receive the funds. The first proposed change changing the word tuition to scholarships, advances the intent of voters. As we all know, tuition is really only a portion of the total cost of attendance. And it also satisfies concerns that we heard from many of our nonprofit partners and removes barriers for nonprofit partners who may have different ways of categorizing their scholarships. The residency verification is that continues that we're proposing also advances the intent of our voters. Historically, residency is really challenging for nonprofit partners to collect. As I mentioned earlier, we want to give them some lead time to be able to build systems that will collect that information is needed. And we also want to make sure we're removing barriers for families who are requesting scholarships and for our reimbursements. The next proposed change is an option to be registered at a nationally accredited institution. This is another technical change. The original language allow for regional accreditation. And this includes national accreditation. Updating that language. Also updating our language to define scholarship using the term cost of attendance. As I mentioned earlier, it aligns the audience with universal and well deferred, well defined term cost of attendance, and also gives the board more discretion to determine which cost of attendance are reimbursable. The next change. We are changing the language to add, but not limited to under definition of support services. This gives our board explicit discretion to determine the services or category of services that are reimbursable and allows much more flexibility and inclusion of support services from what is currently listed in the future. The next proposed change replaces the words a given with the student's first academic year. It specifies that first year of post-secondary education. This is an important change because we don't want to create barriers by continually asking for financial eligibility verification from our students. Financial need is only determined once, which is for the student's first year of post-secondary education. Adding this language creates more specificity and also clarity. The next change removes the language of duly incorporated. It replaces in good standing under the Colorado revised nonprofit Corporation Act with In Good Standing with the Colorado Secretary of State's office. This removes the potential limitation of eligible nonprofits to Colorado entities or nonprofits defined as corporations and explicitly makes it possible to include scholarship granting organizations that take other forms and or incorporated in other states but are serving Denver students. The next change removes the words operate independently from any school district or charter school management organization. From the definition of requirements for participating organizations. Really, it's just removing unnecessary barriers for otherwise qualified organizations. These are some of the changes, and we'll be happy to answer some questions. We have some other members of our Denver, Colo. Success Corporation and any here tonight, if you have questions. Thank you very much. All right. Tonight, counsel has not received any written comments for this section of our hearing on Council 207. But we do have three individuals who signed up to speak. First up is Jesse Pearce. Good evening, members of council. My name is Jesse Paris and represent for Denver homicide allow Black Sox movement for self defense positive and commitment for social change as well as the Unity Party of Colorado and Mile News. I just wanted to say I wish there was something like this when I was in high school and in college . So I'm in full support of this being out of high school for 15 years and being out of college for eight years. This would have been really great, my first year of college to have. I will be in some ways debt. But so I'm definitely in favor of this and I urge the Council to vote in favor of this as well and follow the lead of Denver voters as I voted yes on this in 2018. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, Laurie Rabinowitz. President Clark Council members. Thank you. My name is Lori Rabinowitz and I serve as the CEO of Denver Scholarship Foundation based in Denver, where I also reside. I am honored to speak this evening on behalf of more than 60 area nonprofit organizations that provide scholarships and wraparound supports to Denver students. As we ask you for your approval of the amendments put forth by the DCC this evening. The current health crisis has made this timing even more imperative as students throughout our community are making decisions right now about their plans for the fall. We respectfully request your approval of these amendments tonight to allow even more students to have access to opportunity during this pivotal time. You may know that nationally there are reports that as many as 20% of students are contemplating not going to college or not going back. Given the current uncertainty created by COVID 19, we as organizations are committed to doing everything we can to keep this pandemic from completely derailing our students futures. Futures they have worked so hard to pursue, so many of our students and families have been disproportionately impacted by the virus hit the hardest with job loss, food insecurity, housing instability , and diminished access to technology. These are incredibly challenging times, and yet our families remain extremely passionate about their students pursuing higher education, beginning or continuing this fall. Our organizations look to the day that all students have access to financial and wraparound supports to go to and through college completion, building economic mobility, future workforce, and growing our own talent right here in Colorado. Our organizations are committed to our students success, our students, our first gen, low income and or students of color, and our students dedication, resiliency, perseverance, coupled with the investment of the human and financial resources of our nonprofit organizations, see our students thriving and working to address the most common barriers to post-secondary education . Our organizations are very lucky to learn from our students every day. They are wise beyond their years. I will leave you with a quote from Daniel Rivera Ibarra, who received several scholarships in support of his journey to the University of Colorado Denver, where he is currently enrolled and persisting toward completion of his bachelor's degree. When asked why he was. Persisting during the COVID 19 crisis, Daniel writes When we get on an airplane, flight attendants tell us that in case of loss of cabin pressure, we must put our own oxygen masks on before helping those around us. Continuing education has the same effect. The more we invest in our own success, the more we can invest in the stability of our families and communities. I will be the first within my immediate family to graduate from college. I want to leave a path for the next generation to follow. That is what we get to do this evening. Your approval of the proposed amendments brings us all one step closer to bringing college within reach for all and addressing this critical equity issue with vigor. Thank you so much for giving this to our students and families tonight. Thank you. Next up, Jim Chavez. Good evening, members of council. Nice to see you all tonight. My name is Jim Chavez. I'm a I'm the resident of Highlands Ranch, Colorado, but I work here in Denver as the executive director of the Latin American Educational Foundation. We are a 71 year old college access and success program that provides direct scholarship support and critically important student support services to hundreds and hundreds of college students and their families each year throughout the state. But in particular to students here in Denver. I'm here also tonight on behalf of many, many other scholarship organizations or supporting organizations that, like the Latin American Educational Foundation, are hoping to participate in the Denver College Affordability Fund program. I'm here to express our support and, frankly, to ask for your support for these proposed and requested technical corrections to the original ordinance. The Denver College Affordability Fund was established by the voters to increase the college enrollment and degree completion of Denver residents with a particular focus and goal of supporting students from lower income families. We scholarship organizations are all deeply committed to helping students pursue their college education and creating a more educated workforce for Denver. We are even more excited that together with the city of Denver, we can make college education available and affordable to an even greater number of students. As a number of our supporting organizations began to work with the Board of Directors of the College Denver College Success Corporation, we identified several issues with the original ordinance that were significantly troubling. These issues are not just administratively challenged and burdensome. They are prohibitive. These issues, if not corrected, will severely limit. And in fact, they're going to prohibit many, if not all of the scholarship organizations from participating in this program. Ultimately, if not corrected, it will be the future generations of Denver's young, talented and aspiring students who will be the ones to pay the price and will be left out and not provided the financial support needed to pursue their college education. So we're asking for your support in correcting all eight of these technical issues, which, if approved, will ensure that students across Denver will have a greater opportunity to afford and attend college. So thank you again for your commitment to Denver's young people and our next generation of leaders of this great city. Happy to answer questions as well. Thank you very much. All right. That concludes our speakers this evening. Questions from members of council. First up, Councilmember CdeBaca. Thank you, Mr. Chair. First of all, thank you all for bringing these changes forward. I think a lot of them, having worked with youth, are really important to making or to facilitating a more streamlined approach to the scholarship. I do have some questions about number eight. Originally, there was a prohibition on reimbursing organizations that were associated with charter school organizations or the district. And so I'm wondering, what kind of analysis do you guys have that tells us why this change is important and who would be able to step in. Or how many. Inquiries you've had that warrant this change? I'm going to invite Trey Rogers, the lead counsel for the Denver College Success Corporation, to answer that. Favorites. Pear Tree Rodgers 4131 East 26th Avenue here in Denver. I believe I'm in Councilman Herndon's district. Thank you, Councilman, for the question. So this measure ran twice. It ran once unsuccessfully, and then again in 2018 when we looked at amendments for the 2018 run. We left that language in from the first run. Frankly, as we talked to the group that put the original measure together, no one can recall why those exceptions were included. I'm sorry. If I could just ask if you get a little closer to the microphone, things better? Yes. So we're not sure what the reason was that it was included. It was frankly never to have it in the second time. Now, why the change? Two reasons. First, we've identified a number of supported organizations. These are nonprofits that support students that are affiliated with Denver high schools, Denver East, Denver, North, South. All of these have nonprofit organizations that provide scholarships and support to kids. It is a reasonable interpretation of the ordinance, as it's written, that those organizations could not benefit, that those scholarships could not be reimbursed because those nonprofits are affiliated with schools. Perhaps that could be read to mean affiliated with a district. What are what are some examples of those orgs? Some examples of those. Which orgs are we talking about? You know, I know that at least those three high schools have, you know, it's the East Foundation or something like that, the South High School Foundation. These are typically small organizations that are funded by parents and community members that then provide scholarships to students. So and I believe there are others. Those are the three that I'm familiar with. The second reason is we've identified at least one nonprofit organization that is affiliated with a charter school, and that is the New America School. It has a foundation that provides support to kids that go on after graduation from that high school. That organization would be excluded from participation without this amendment. So it's these types of organizations, those affiliated with public high schools. And the one is the only one that we're aware of, affiliated with a charter school. Those organizations would be excluded. It is the philosophy of this board that this ordinance should serve as many Denver kids as it possibly can, especially in this time of great need. I hope that answers your question. And so. For the reporting. That you guys do annually to council, how does the public access that kind of information, disaggregated information about where the dollars are reimbursed to? You know, we haven't done a report yet. There are great details in the contract between the city and the organization that detail what must be included. That's a contract that was approved by this council. It would certainly be the report would be provided to the mayor or to the council to I believe the auditor is required to receive it. And then we certainly anticipate anticipate publishing that report on the organization's website. So it would be totally publicly available. I would also anticipate that there would be a listing of the organizations and what they receive. So there would be really total, total transparency there. That would be awesome. I think the transparency and disaggregating would be really important to people who may have originally kept that language out of there for a reason. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Councilmember Councilmember Leach. Thank you, Mr. President. I want to thank the members of the board and the organization for answering a lot of my questions from committee and following up with me afterwards. But I had one I only sent a couple of hours ago, so you might not have had time to see it. But one of the questions I had was, you know, is there an unintended consequence by opening the doors up so much to additional organizations in terms of not having enough funds and how to prioritize and making sure that there's a fair and transparent way to prioritize. So can someone just talk to me about, you know, if you're how how right now, like, are you already having to prioritize or in future years? And then I have a follow up question about the revenue after that. So, Councilman, thank you for that question. I think we are actually afraid that we're not going to have enough, because if this language doesn't change, as Jim said, we're definitely not going to be able to distribute the $11 million we had from 2019. So right now, we're going to be able to keep a reserve and we are continuing to do outreach, whether it's an organization that gives to scholarships like the West High School Alumni Association or whether it's a larger organization that's giving hundreds out. So we don't feel like we're at a point yet, and we will be able to establish reserves, at least for the first couple of years, to ensure that we could have the right criteria to not run out of money and establish that. Does that answer your question? It does. And I think that my sense is when we talked about this, you know, there's because this is in arrears, the goal is that you're growing the pie because folks are still fundraising. But I also think we are going to see organizations knowing these dollars are there, give more scholarships. So I do think that the transparency of how your prioritize so it might not be that everyone gets the so equal would be to give every organization 80% of the funds they requested. But for smaller organizations that might not be equitable, you might need to give a little less to larger organizations, a little more to smaller, I don't know. But I just think, you know, you have a lot more applicants and they will give more scholarships knowing this money is there. And so I do think that that is going to become an issue probably quickly. And I guess that would be a good thing. That would mean we have more youth from Denver that are, you know, in these income guidelines that are going to be getting help. So I think it's a good outcome. I just think that the fairness question becomes a factor as you have this broader pool. So I just want to know that that's on the radar. So you raise two important questions. One is in the language, we can give up to 75% in both the scholarship as well as the student support services. If we felt that we end that equally across the board, we couldn't adjust it for one organization to another. So if we were in a situation where there was a limited pot of money and a greater demand, we would probably just sort of melt down. So the language gives us that possibility. The other issue is in Denver public schools. As you know, our enrollment has peaked this last couple of years. So what we're going to see is a significant reduction. So we're we're seeing the greatest peak is in the next five years. And after that, as the students roll out, we're going to see a pretty significant decline in students enrolling in DPS and therefore graduating. Okay. Can I follow up on that, Mr. President? So I just want to go back. So what you said is that you can it's a maximum of 75%, but it's not a guarantee. So you in theory, could say, listen, we're going to give the full 75% to a small organization and we're going to give the 60% to a large organization. I mean, like you could you have some discretion in the language I'm seeing nods and shakes, so you might want to team up a little bit on the incentives. Which does give us up to 75%. If the board were to adjust it down, it would be for all of our scholarship organizations, not for scholarship organization, a 60% scholarship organization, be it 75. It's equally distributed across every scholarship organization that is submitting for their scholars. Okay. I just want to clarify what the ordinance says versus where you may have adopted a policy. And so what you're saying is you will not prioritize. You will treat every organization the same. You've made a policy decision as a board about that. I just I think, okay, same might not always be equitable, which is why I think that I'm not sure I would be supportive if I, if I'm going to be supportive of the ordinance rate and this is the question portion, but I don't want you sitting there thinking I'm going to change my vote. I just want to clarify what I expect and hope will happen after these votes and see if I'm on the same page with the organization about that process. So the only policy the board has adopted at this point pertains to there's a requirement for a sliding scale, right? And so the board has put in place that sliding scale and that's need based. So need based for organization issues for student per student. Okay. Now we have a councilwoman to address the issue that you're raising yet because we haven't had to write, we will not distribute all of the dollars in this first distribution, probably not in the second distribution. But I agree with you that the board does have the discretion to adopt a different mechanism once we get to the point where there aren't enough dollars to satisfy all of the requests. I think the board has the discretion to come up with a mechanism that takes into account size, equity, etc. We're just not there yet and the board hasn't considered it. Totally hear you. And I'm just also absorbing the very sobering news that we'll be graduating fewer kids. And, you know, I mean, anyways, so so my one other question was about revenue for this year, which seeing as you think that I mean, you obviously for 20 $20, you already have your 20 $19. So you're starting ahead. I'm assuming you revised. On your 2020 estimates considerably. So I'm not sure about the reserve situation given 2020 sales tax. So can you just someone speak to me about how you are proceeding given the fiscal climate and the drop in sales tax that's likely coming in 2020? Yes, it's a very good question. So currently we're working with the Budget Management Office to finalize what they think the revised projections will be for 2020. We've been receiving our regular payments so far, but we do anticipate that we will have to adjust our on our our payments basically for the remainder of 2020. We haven't received the projections yet for 2021, but it is something we're going to have to deal with as we look at the economic picture throughout the city. We are relying on sales tax. So we've had a lot of conversations with budget about what might be coming for for 2021. I just think that underscores it may not be as far in the future that you have to prioritize as you might think. It'd be great news if you did have that much time. But thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilmember. Next up, Councilmember Ortega. Thank you, Mr. President. I'm not sure who to direct these questions at, but first of all, will you remind me how the board was seated? Were they appointed by the mayor? Were they selected? Yes. The ordinance calls for the board members to be appointed by the mayor. And there's one city council person on the board who was appointed by city council. Okay. So on page 11, it talked. So this is about the residency verification and it talked about gap years and it would allow. It says work care for parents, travel, etc.. So is that currently or any of those costs currently covered? And in this allows for them to be covered. Any of the cost of well of get here. Let me just pull this up. So this is page 11. So the proposed changes. Option to be registered at a nationally accredited institution. I think I'm reading that from the right page. Or not. Maybe that's 17. So. I think I think I've got your question, if I could. The ordinance now reads that the student must have lived continuously in Denver for the 36 months prior to beginning post-secondary education. So under the current ordinance, a student who wanted to take a gap year or needed to work to earn money to attend or had a sick relative could lose qualification by moving out of Denver to work or care for that family member, etc.. So this amendment creates the opportunity for that student once they have met the requirement to then take take that break or take that gap without losing eligibility. So it doesn't mean that we're covering any of those costs, not that person during that time frame that they're taking that gap year off. That's okay. It's simply that they don't. That's a clarification because this didn't really explain that in your PowerPoint. So for the qualified organizations, so it removes language about operating independently from school districts, etc.. So give me an idea of what kinds of eligible entities this opens the door for that currently are not allowed. So Councilwoman, again, that's there are we've identified a number of organizations that are affiliated with Denver Public High Schools. So there's a foundation at at least one at South, one at North. I think there are others. You're talking about some of the scholarship foundations attached to the schools. Some of them are alumni associations, that kind of thing. Exactly. Okay. But beyond that, give me some other examples. Another example. This opens the door for. Another example is there's a there's a nonprofit organization affiliated with the New Americas School that's a charter school. And so under the current language of the ordinance, that organization could not participate simply because it's affiliated with a charter school. So but charter schools technically are part of the school district, so why would that be excluded currently? Is that simply because of the language of the ordinance? And as I mentioned earlier, frankly, in going back and looking at this, we're not sure why it was drafted that way in the first place. And I guess on the flip side, does this open the floodgates for every charter school to now come in and access for their students? It does not. And so a support organization has to be a501c3. And so and it has to serve that purpose of providing scholarships and support and or support services. So a charter school would not qualify as an independent organization if I were 1c3 affiliated with a charter school or a school, a public school would go to America . Isn't that a national organization that works with different charter schools across the country? I don't know the answer to that, Councilman. It's not I'm. It it come to the mikes. We could hear you. Governor Polis, when he was on the state board actually started. And it was for immigrants who were from 18 to 21 and their school district hadn't been served well. DPS didn't approve that particular charter initially, but then all the surrounding school districts. Another example would be like the DPS Foundation. So the foundation currently doesn't give scholarships, but if they were to start, they couldn't qualify to be reimbursed as part of this language as it currently stands. Okay. I have one more question, Mr. President, and this is for Kim Garcia, if you wouldn't mind, coming up. So Jim, in your comments, you saying you were hoping to participate in the College Affordability Fund? And it's my understanding you guys have already been participating. Is that not the case? Thank you for that question, Councilman. And we have not yet, like ignored. Nobody else has yet participated. We've we've submitted an application and been and been been deemed an eligible institution. Assuming we get these changes made. So we've not participated. We've given out scholarships and tried in the prior years to make ourselves eligible. But there's been there has been no first step yet where we have participated. In the thought that these were issues that were resolved when the fund was originally created. Because I remember you being one of the active proponents of the fund being created and alone, that your organization is ineligible. It sounds like it's part of why this particular change that I was just asking questions about is is being asked to to be considered for change. So we've been deemed eligible as a as a qualified by the 23 that's established and has already put scholarship dollars out to our students, like in the prior year. However, without these changes, we couldn't we could not currently we could not currently verify and meet some of the requirements of the actual reimbursement process. So we would not be able to be a recipient of dollars moving forward. Okay. And remind me of Trey, how often the reports are provided to city council that gives a full accounting of the the spend of the dollars. So there there are two reports, categories of reports required under the contract with the city. The first is a comprehensive annual report. The second is a quarterly report. And I think and maybe you can help me, I think that quarterly report goes to the Office of Children's Affairs. Yes. So our current contract between Office, the Children's Affairs and the Denver to Assess Corporation requires a quarterly report as they have been disbursements. Yet we don't have any reports yet, but we do require a quarterly report and an annual update to city council. Okay. So the one of the committees wanted you to come in and give some of the updates that we're seeing in the quarterly reports. We could have you share that with us. Absolutely. Okay, great. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Councilmember next up, Councilmember Gilmore. Thank you, President Clark. What are the total projected expenses for 2020? No less than 10% of the total facts are gathered. You know, this has been a start up here. It's been a fairly expensive year in terms of kind of getting this organization up and running. I don't know the number. I do know that we are remaining substantially below the 10% maximum, which would be about 1.2 million. And we're well under that. I would I don't have the numbers handy, but we're well under the the threshold that we could spend in the first year. If you could please follow up with us, because I would assume you are well below that 10% for the first year. But it would be helpful for us to understand exactly what your projected expenses are for 2020. And then my second question is, with these changes, first and foremost, we really appreciate the 1800 youth that you're serving currently, and there's a large portion of them in District 11, and we really are appreciative of that. But with these changes, what are your projections around increasing the number of students who will now be eligible? Yeah, more and not very specific. I would tell you, we can't we cannot fund the full 1800 without these changes that 1800 figure considers the changes we have as we've worked with the supported organizations. We have said, look, let's just assume we're going to get this done. If we don't, then we'll come back and we'll figure out what portion of the 1800 we could reimburse for, but it would be substantially lower. I can't tell you how much lower, but it would take a substantial chunk of that 1800 to make those reimbursements ineligible. And you've got do you have any data on that? Okay, leave it. We'll leave it at that. Okay. Well, we'll follow up, please. And maybe in the quarterly reporting that goes to Diane and her team with the mayor's Office of Children's Affairs. Some of these questions could be answered and then you could forward on that information to us, because I'm interested in the conversation where this is going to allow more organizations to be eligible . Thereby they're serving probably more students. And it would be helpful, especially with the grossly reduced sales tax revenue that we're going to see for 2020, that we are not promoting this and getting a lot of student students excited about the scholarship, a scholarship opportunity. And then we unfortunately don't have the money. So where we can follow up and get that. Information, I guess absolutely in our contract requires in those quarterly reports that we give a full accounting of the number of students who are eligible, the number of organizations, the dollar amount. Also some demographic information about the students who are eligible. Remember, the students don't receive funds directly, but the organizations receive reimbursement and all of that detail is required in those quarterly reports. Great. Thank you. Thank you, President Clark. Thank you, Councilmember. Next up, Councilmember Hines. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. President, as the the council member for District ten, what happened? How come our number is so low? I mean, we do have people who go through door more. I know that we're generally an affluent district, but we do have some diversity in our neighborhoods. So I'm just curious why the District ten number is as low as it is. Mm hmm. Rod McDaniel, 2200 block of Hudson Street here in Denver. Thank you for the question. My organization is helping DCC process all of the initial applications. The way the fund works is ultimately the supported organizations asked for reimbursement. They're supported organizations maintain and have the relationships with the scholars. So I think really the question is, are your constituents who would otherwise be eligible? Finding the scholarship organizations that are doing the scholarships for Denver students. So unfortunately, I don't have a great answer for you in the in the why those kids aren't applying. But certainly I think we'll be able to in the quarterly reports that the John mentioned, offer up a list of all of the organizations that are granting those scholarships and potentially help you help those students reach out to the appropriate resources. So one ask and I'm in favor of this as well. So I don't think that I'm going to change my vote. But but one ask that perhaps we could all benefit from some information that could help that we could provide to our, you know, the people, our stakeholders, our constituents. And so that we can encourage people to to be aware and to apply when when it is necessary and relevant. So thank you. Certainly. And we'll take. That forward to the to the board and staff. Thank you. Great. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank Councilmember. Next up, Councilmember Flynn. Thank Mr. President. Who is the best person to answer this? But speaking of the point that Councilman Hines just raised on the presentation says nearly 1800 Denver youth received scholarships. But when I added up all the numbers from the 11 council districts, I came up with only 1500 can. Where are those other 300? Thank you, Councilman. So the number there's two fundamental figures here where students live now and students where they went to high school. So the map is where students are living today in the Denver area, attending various universities. So the 1500 is actual students that are still in the Denver area that are benefiting from the scholarship organization. So it's where they're living now. We don't know where they were living when they got the assistance. So maybe they all 300 were in Councilman Hines district. That's right. So there's really two figures. Where are they today? So it's representative of the fact that these tax dollars are not only helping graduates from Denver, many of those graduates still live in Denver as they're studying at university. And there's also a group, of course, that go to universities outside. So that 300 is going to be largely the kids that are in schools and don't live in the Denver area anymore. Mm hmm. All right. Thank you. And I guess just as an observation, well, I'll save it for comments. Thank you, Councilmember. Councilmember said walk you back up for questions. Yes. Somebody who can speak to income verification. Which one again? So my question is, we're trying to eliminate some of the barriers related or associated with. Income. Verification. And so we're not going past that first year. But since it's a reimbursement, what do you guys require? As for the income verification proof? Like what is the documentation or what is the figure? Do you all use EFC or what do you use? So for most students, that is going to be their Pell application. And so the threshold for eligibility is 2.5 times the Pell threshold. As far as verification. We have asked the support of the organizations to verify that their students meet that threshold. And then within our eligibility criteria, there is a higher compensation rate for students that are higher on that need threshold. So we've also asked those organizations to tell us if the students are where they are within that 2.5 or are they above 1.5, or are they between 1.5 and 2.5 times the pill threshold? What do we require? As for the backup documentation? So at this point, it's a certification from the organizations. We do reserve in our contract with the organizations the opportunity to claw back dollars if we find out that there's been a mistake or a misrepresentation. But at this point, it's a it's a verification from the support of the organizations. And so if the scholarship ever gets audited and the auditors say, okay, we've had a complaint that students who are getting the scholarship are not they don't have a EFC of zero, they don't have a low EFC. What what is our, I guess, defense to that? So the remedy there would be for the organization to claw those dollars back from the nonprofit. It would also really put that nonprofit's participation in the program at risk. And so that's a that is certainly an incentive for those supported organizations to do their due diligence and to give us accurate and complete answers. So when you guys do the report. To us, is it possible to include information on it even without identifying information, but information on EFC ranges that each organization is. Putting forward? Because I think that when it does come down to. Prioritizing funds for students, going the organization route. Might not be the best idea. But prioritizing students based on EFC or their documented need could be the direction we go. So you might. Have kind of. A smattering of scholarship reimbursements at different organizations. But not. Fully reimbursing all of the invoices from one organization at the expense of other students who may qualify. But, you know, maybe they're a new org or something. Yeah, it's a good point. I mean, this is why we have that stratification for the students of greater need. There is a greater reimbursement rate. I think Robert Daniels probably the best person to speak further to this, although I would note that. Well, let me leave it at that and Rob can address that one. Thank you, Councilwoman. So I think the key thing here, what we have is, is this outreach has happened. And, yes, those have become part of this new organization, privacy. And the idea of COPPA, the Privacy Act around education becomes a critical element. So many of the services, even the larger, most effective. Hated ones only work with the financial aid offices at the specific colleges and get yeses and nos in terms of Pell eligibility or above Pell eligibility. So the information that even the CEOs have is going to be somewhat limited in terms of what we can report on. So we're asking for the tranches, the the tiers in the number of students within those tiers, and they'll be the organization will be able to report back on that. But getting into very, very specific sort of sub tiers, dividing that up between, you know, more than a few is going to be very difficult because the CEOs themselves don't have authorization to access that information. And then the other part of it is FAFSA is the critical element. And what the audience lays out is this idea of 2.5 times Pell estimated family contribution that allocates to that. The other piece of it is free and reduced lunch in high school. That's 185% of FPL, as most folks know. So that group is, well by virtue of being in the free and reduced lunch category in high school, would be eligible. But again, that's a it's not a stratification where we're going to be able to say at a very detailed income level where families are and. I hear. You and I hope. That eventually you guys figure out how to do that in case we do have a situation where we have to break it down to that level to decide who rises to the top when there are limited dollars. And for me, I think it would be important to see that disaggregated information in our reports, because it's not helpful to see the East Alumni Foundation get reimbursed for $30,000. It's not helpful to, like, not see how many kids was that, what tier did they fall in so that we could understand the impact that we're having as a city. Thanks for that information. We'll take it back to the board. And thankfully, as the organization evolves, they'll be able to get there. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Councilmember Ortega, you back up with another question? The question. Yeah, I just wanted to confirm that the 36 month prior for the eligible students to get reimbursed has not changed. Right. So we were well, I was talking about the gap year in trying to get clarification on that, that that's for somebody who had already lived in Denver, the gap is when they have to, as you were saying, maybe take care of a family member or whatever. But they had been eligible. They had been deemed to have lived in the city of Denver. And as long as that 36 months still remains intact, will you just verify that? I can verify that going forward? That's correct. What we found, Councilman Ortega, is that the first this first group and none of the supported organizations have any method to collect three year that that information. So essentially the board is asking council to make this amendment to give them the first year of leeway to help themselves get on board and modify their processes and applications to collect all that information. So the 36 month is in place going forward. They're just asking for the start up period right now. Okay. And being able to look at the data and confer, you know, how many kids are Denver kids versus, you know, just waxing things so much that we're taking more kids outside of Denver? I mean, we do this with our cadet program today, right? We serve more kids outside of Denver than we do Denver kids with Denver dollars. And so I don't want to see that happen. I mean, I understand we've had kids have to leave the city. And if we can verify that, then I'm good with those kids being covered. But I want to make sure that we're not making it so flexible. We're we're just kind of hand-picking kids outside of Denver. Understood. I want to continue to prioritize our Denver kids. So thank you. Thank. Councilmember Councilmember Flynn, you back with that other question? Yes, thank you, Mr. President. Along those same lines and I don't know if these amendments change this in any way. Tell me if they do. I don't know who would answer this. But for students who live in Denver but go to, say, a private school or go to a public school outside the city, how what's their point of entry? Is it through the SOS or where do they go? And does this change any of that? Thank you, Councilman. The Essos will be their point of entry. The CEOs would certify that they meet the qualifications of the ordinance. And these amendments do not change that. With the exception of the possibility for a gap year and the exception that Rob spoke about, which is in this this the exception for the first year, which is just administrative necessity. Do we do the do this? Are they the the. What does that so stand for and for the support organization? Thank you. Too much too much acronyms. Are they given the standard guidance from the board as to how they do that outreach? How do we identify where they might be? And very, very much so. We have a contract with the ASOS that requires them to comply with the ordinance and spells out what those requirements are. And then Rob and his staff have worked very closely with these ASOS as they're passing out their data to help them interpret correctly and to give the the the to give us accurate information for reimbursement. Does that make it any more difficult or does it make it less difficult along the lines, what Councilman Ortega was just asking to keep a separate track of students and Denver residents, students versus students who who have gone to school outside the city versus nonmember residents, students, perhaps, who even went to school in Denver. Right. That will get easier going forward. The issue that we're addressing here is, is really the fact that we're now reimbursing for academic year 1819. A senior in college in 1819 would have started four years ago. So 14, 15. And then to go back three years before that means that we would be asking for residency verification from 2020 11, 2012, that that information was not collected by the SOAS and there is no way for them to get it in any reliable way. Right. And so that's why we have the one year if you went if you went for three years to a Denver high school, we can reimburse that going forward. The SOS, the support organizations will collect that information as part of their application process. And so in the future, we will have the information to make sure that the that the request for applicable reimbursement comply. And I'm and I'm very good with that. I completely understand that we can't go back and construct records that were never gathered. And that's understandable. Understandable. I'm just hoping that all of the organizations are aware of that. To verify Denver Addresses. I've had a few experiences in my district lately where city agencies didn't even realize that part of my district was in Denver, including a homeowner in Bear Valley who was turned down for a building permit saying You don't live in Denver. Yeah, which is kind of odd. And I know that there's zip codes around the northern end and the western end and even out toward Aurora that are Denver zip codes, but they're in Adams County or in Jefferson County. So I'm hoping that that we're very strict about how we read the addresses and verify. We very much are in. Our understanding is that the auditor has the definitive the definitive database on who's in Denver, who's outside of Denver. And so we're using that kind of as the touchstone for whether an address is in Denver or outside of. Excellent. Thank you. It's almost great. Thank you. Councilmember seeing Councilmember Ortega. Just one last quick question. Is there some standardization of the format in which the data is being collected? So it's consistent from everybody so that everybody's filling in the same data fields and all of that. Can you just speak to that? And was that created by the the governing body, if you will? Sure. We've so my company has worked very hard to help standardize those templates that we're handing out to the supported organizations so that all the information is collected in a standard way across the board, so it can be reported in a standard way. And we're essentially treating everybody the same in terms of what they need to submit. The organization is still to answer the second part of your question. The organization is still in a startup mode, so a complex, fully baked database is not in place, but it's on plan to be done this year. Yeah, I mean, that will make it simple for everybody if they're utilizing the same format. I mean, everybody may not have the same tracking system, but as long as they're using the same database, if you will, to to provide the data, that's what's what's critical. So thank you for that. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Councilmember. All right. The public hearing for accountable to zero seven is now closed. Comments by members of Council Councilmember Herndon. Thank you, Mr. President. I want to thank my colleagues for their astute questions as we are moving forward with these consideration for these changes. And the. Obviously, my colleagues know I serve as a council rep for this, but I'm not sure if all of my colleagues know when this was first brought forward to the voters in 2015, I was the council's sponsor. This has been something that I have been very passionate about when it comes to investments, how they should be. And people, some of when they're younger and. Just our youth, are the best investments. That we can possibly make. And so I was significantly disappointed when it wasn't successful in 2015, but excited when it came back and nervous election night because it was closer than I would have liked. And then it was proven successful. And then about a year ago when I applied Councilman Council President Clark, because I, I quickly said, I want to be on this board for us to come together with nothing about a year ago and get us to a point now where we are we're we're have the possibility to deliver $5 million to our supporting organizations who are working diligently to support kids of color, lower income, who don't let this COVID crisis prevent them from seeking out that higher education that they desperately need to be successful. I candidly run out of words to say how important this is, and so I just want to say thank you to my colleagues for my consideration. I do hope that this passes because these dollars can't be anymore, can't be delivered at a more crucial time. If you think about how our nonprofit, nonprofit community is getting killed because of what is happening through COVID. So I obviously am in support of this, too. Everyone has been involved for the board members to rob Trey to Loma. I mean, there are so many people, if I try to name them, I know I would forget someone and I would feel horrible because of that. So I'm not going to do that and just say thank you for everyone who's been a part of this, because this has been a huge lift. And for my colleagues, we will overload you with data because these board members, we have gone through so much data as we're looking at supporting organizations or students and making sure we're doing this right. There will be no concerns about the amount of data we're going to put in these reports. And I would urge my colleagues to support this as I am thoroughly in favor of this and look forward to getting these getting these disbursements out. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilmember. Councilmember Hines. Thank you, Mr. President. I am excited to support this tonight as well. I would say my dad was in the Army. He was a railroad engineer. He was a letter carrier. He never did a day in college. And it is entirely possible to do to have a fine, productive career without going to college. My dream was to go to college and I was I was a Pell Grant recipient. I was very you know, I grew up poor and I would have loved to have a program like this. And so so I'm really excited that it is here that it's available for Denver kids. I didn't qualify because I wasn't in Denver, but but you get the idea. And so I'm I'm really you know, I'm really excited to to support it. One other thing that I had mentioned I'm sorry Mr. Paris isn't here for this. I am. I'm really excited to see that 100% of the people who testified tonight for this and for everything tonight was was in favor, which I took office July 15th of last year. I think this is the first time, predominantly because Mr. Paris likes to argue against things. But but that shows in many ways the the success of this program that we can get someone who often testifies against things to get on board. So it's a thank you for all you do, and I'm excited to support it. Thank you. Councilmember Councilmember Sawyer. Thank you, Mr. President. I also am really excited to support this night. I just wanted to congratulate all of you for your hard work and for the incredible accomplishment that you have brought to the community tonight. And this is just really exciting and, you know, it's going to change the lives of kids in Denver. So thank you for what you have done and the gift that you've given our community. And congratulations. Thanks. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilmember Councilmember Torres. Thank you, Mr. President. I just want to thank everybody who's built this and the voters who approved it and just want to make sure for our residents and our students, this is inclusive of our immigrant community. Of our undocumented students. And so I really do hope they take advantage of it. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Councilmember Sandoval. Thank you. I would like to take the board and everyone here who spent time on with me to get me to support this this evening. And for me, my father worked on the bilingual bi cultural act of 1975, and he always said that it was education that. Is our passport to our future. And I really believe right now that in this time of COVID, the people who have and those who don't, it's going to even be a greater divide. And it's my job as a councilperson to make sure that I can do anything possible, to make sure to lessen that gap. And this is one way to do that. So in the words of Cesar Chavez, once, you cannot you cannot and educate the person who has learned to read. You cannot humiliate the person who feels pride. You cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore. And so thank you for doing this. Denver's not afraid to educate our youth. I think, Councilmember, I will add my thanks for everyone's hard work. I'm definitely supportive of this tonight. And let's vote Secretary Roll Call. Black Eye. CdeBaca. Eye for an. Eye. Gilmore Eye. Herndon High. High Side. Cashman. All right. Kenny. Ortega. All right. Sandoval. I. Sawyer, I. Torres, I. Council. President. Hi, Madam Secretary. Please close the voting. Announce the results. 3939 accountable to zero seven has passed. Kels will not meet on Monday, May 25th in observance of Memorial Day. We'll see you at our next meeting on Monday, June 1st.