Recommendation to adopt My Brother’s Keeper Long Beach Local Action Plan; Authorize City Manager, or designee, to execute any and all necessary documents to receive and expend funding from the Long Beach Unified School District; Authorize City Manager, or designee, to execute Memorandum of Understanding(s) with community partners that are needed to implement the six milestones in My Brother's Keeper Local Action Plan; and Increase appropriations in the Community Development Grants Fund (SR 150) in the Development Services Department (DV) by $50,000. (Citywide)
And then we'll do 38. Report from Development Services Recommendation to Adopt My Brother's Keeper, Long Beach Local Action Plan Receive and expend funding from the Long Beach Unified School District and execute an MRU with community partners that are needed to implement the six milestones in My Brother's Keeper Local Action Plan Citywide. Councilmember Richardson Thank you, Vice Mayor. Tonight, I'm proud that we're adopting our My Brother's Keeper local action plan. I want to just start by acknowledging everyone who's come come out and waited for this item and and we apologize. We have business to get to. But we are here now as chair of our Federal Legislation Committee. I first heard of the My Brother's Keeper Community Challenge directly from the mouth of President Obama two years ago at the Congressional Black Caucus Conference in Washington, DC. I was inspired by those words and I thought it was a very worthwhile initiative. In October 2014, we asked the City Council to adopt a resolution for consideration. In January 2015, we formally accepted that challenge and in fact, we were one of the very first cities in Southern California to formally accept challenge with council action. In fact, following our acceptance, the city created My Brother's Keeper Task Force comprised of community leaders, partner organizations and city staff to build this action plan. I attended all the task force meetings. We were inspired by the passion and commitment from our task force members to ensuring better outcomes for our boys and young men of color of our city. We were also able to advocate for funding in the 2016 budget to complete this action plan, which proved our city's continued commitment to My Brother's Keeper. We've had on numerous occasions. We've traveled to D.C., met with Michael Smith, Special Assistant to MBK Broderick Johnson National MBK Task Force, and on numerous occasions we've advocated and updated on the status of this project, and they've been acknowledged that this plan that we submitted tonight is one of the top tier plans in the nation. Tonight we are one of the first in our region to adopt this action plan that covers all six milestones. This couldn't happen without partnership from Long Beach Unified School District and others. So I do want to acknowledge Dr. Felton Williams, who's here with us, who's been with us along the entire step of the way. There's also more work to be done, but we have a number of innovations at every step of the milestone. One in particular I want to highlight, which I'm really proud that made it into this plan, was the PATH program. We worked for 18 months to make sure that we are providing innovative approaches to support our young adults. And it was included in this plan. Now, the plan doesn't stop today. I know that there were concerns about the efforts not going. So as far as people would like, but there's more work to be done and there is a next step, which is implementation, where a lot of those concerns can be integrated into this. So we have to make sure that at that step we're inclusive of of all all different demographic groups. Just early this afternoon, I received my application from city staff for the My Brother's Keeper mentorship call to action. So I myself am participating and look forward to continuing this important work by becoming a mentor. So at this point, I want to acknowledge our entire city council, particularly our signers Councilman Austin, Councilman Ranga and Councilman Councilmember Gonzalez for signing on this initially. But the entire city council and city staff for really committing to this this plan. We also want to thank our our technical advisors, Bloomberg and policy link, but particularly my fraternity brother Mark Philpott and thank you to reinvent communications for a well laid out, well-designed plan into the members of the 40 members of the task force who worked tirelessly for months of this. The development creation is planned. Without you, this would not be done. That says it's my honor to move this item. Thank you, Councilmember Alston. Thank you. And it is my honor to support my brother in seconding this item. I think Long Beach has a lot to be proud of. I had the privilege to to represent our city in DC just two weeks ago at the task force and working with Bloomberg and many of other cities across the country. And we unveiled our local action plan there and it was it was well received. And I was very proud of the work that that our city is doing, our city staff business, this councilmember, this council leadership, our mayor, everybody has supported this 100%. And this is really about changing outcomes for for boys and men of color. And that includes a lot of people in the city, probably more than 60% of our population. But in terms of at risk youth, this this provides us a leg up. And my hope is that there will be hopefully some some grant opportunities, some funding opportunities to to address some of our social ills in an effort to to reach the six crucial milestones. And I want to I'm sure staff will outline what those are. But, but, but it's going to require a full court press and partnerships from, from all of our public agencies and all of our city departments to to to make make this happen and to be successful, it's going to require a lot of help from our regional partners, our county agencies, as well as our state. It's going to require, like I said, a full court press to, uh, to make this happen. And so I'm very proud to say this and I look forward to supporting it and hear from staff. Thank you. Councilmember Andrew. Yes, thank you, Vice Mayor. You know, I also think this is an extraordinary program. And I want to thank Councilman Richardson and Austin and as well as Amy voting as her staff works so hard, you know that this is put into effect. This is something that I think our young men of color needs to think that the best things we can do is to move it forward and to continue to support this milestone. And thank you, Richardson, Austin and Councilman Gonzalez, thank you again. Councilwoman Mongeau. Yes. I was very fortunate to sit beside our our city team and I chair of the Federal Oversight the Federal Legislative Committee. Councilmember Richardson and Vice Chair Lena Gonzalez. When we went to the White House this year to talk about My Brother's Keeper and the projects and initiatives that have come from it, and I'm very proud that our project is really, according to the White House, one of the top, if not the top, most comprehensive, the only plan in the country that has all pillars. I mean, we should be proud of that. We should be proud of the prevention work that's being done. I'm a big thanks to the chair of the Federal Legislative Committee, Rex Richardson, and a big thank you to the city staff that have worked tirelessly to put that report together. It is very impressive and data driven and and a remarkable start down a path of prevention and keeping people on the right path towards a good quality of life and out of the jail system. So thank you. Councilwoman Gonzalez. I just want to send my congratulations to the city team as well as Councilmember Richardson in Austin. I know that this was a lot of hard work and I'm also very impressed at the document that was put together, because when we are saying that we're a city that really represents and supports young men, especially young men of color, we actually are backing it up with this this document because it's got a lot of great material in here that we can shop around when we go to the federal legislative committee or even to state legislative committee up in Sacramento, we can really speak to the many different metrics that we're providing for not only those stakeholders , but just for our residents internally. So great work on this all together and I look forward to this progressing and being an evolving document. And so, again, great job. Appreciate it. Thank you. Sir, any member of the public that wishes to address the Council, please come forward. Dr. Williams. By Samir Lowenthal, members of the Long Beach City Council staff. I want to extend greetings on behalf of my fellow board members, our superintendent Chris Steinhauser, teachers and staff in the district. And just a little background on the district's involvement in My Brother's Keeper, someone on separate but parallel tracks with the city and the fact that we have joined forces because it's absolutely necessary to make this thing work. But the council, the great city schools I serve on the executive committee of that organization, basically, he had initiated the pledge quite some time ago calling for its member school districts to support students of color throughout the schools that they represent. A little background on the council. The council is an advocacy organization that represents 72 of the nation's largest urban school districts, with a combined enrollment of 7.2 million students. And some of the districts that are members. San Diego, L.A., Fresno, Sacramento, San Francisco, on and on have rather large student populations, ethnic student populations. They're all members of the council, the great city schools. The council engages in extensive policy development on behalf of its members. It conducts major research on key issues facing urban school districts throughout America. We formally partner with Obama, President Obama and becoming part of My Brother's Keeper. And in 2014, the district approved the pledge, the resolution to become part of the My Brother's Keeper. From that point on, we we rolled out our portion of the pledge here in Long Beach through a town hall, and we pulled together a cross-section of members of the community to help plan that event, to include staff from the school district. And we conducted a town hall meeting at Cabrillo High School that drew over 600 people. As part of the briefing session after the My Brother's Keeper town hall, we recognize that there was a dire need to include the city and other constituents as part of that. For this to work at all. You know, one of the Donnie tapes that we have here in our in our in our in our city is that 72%. Of our of our school districts defined as free and reduced lunch. And in some places it's close to 90% at 90% is part of my district is also pork part of North Long Beach. We have some daunting problems with respect to our students. So what transpires when you have students who are in that kind of an economic situation? Well, they have extreme difficulty focusing in the classroom. Why? Other issues take precedence over school. They're sitting in the classroom thinking about food, shelter. And they become easy targets for gang recruitment because schooling is not part of that agenda. The need for the city wide partnership is absolutely necessary because in that partnership we can enhance safety and security throughout the city. Another piece that is very important is to look at how we get employment opportunities for students and parents. Extremely important. Dr. Williams And I'm going to sum this up very quickly build on and identify existing services and and resources to support our youth and communities. One good example of that is a Washington middle school where we did some amazing work in helping that one school district. And I can't go through that because of time. But my closing comments are that we can expand on that concept. At Washington Middle School, we interlink critical resources and efforts across the city, and then we can evaluate the results of these efforts. And I know we have that plan in place that allows us to do that. But also, as I'm closing out, that we would see as I think a part of that a systematic decline in gang membership and activity, increased school attendance and graduation rates, improve quality of life in the impact of communities, increase participation by parents and guardians in schools and community activities. Can we make a difference? The health and vitality of our city depends on it. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Hi City Council. Thank you. On behalf of the Long Beach Mentor Connection. My name is NOLA Guard. M.A., the executive director for Long Beach Blas. So I want to thank you for your support in this, and thank you, Tracy, for bringing the Long Beach Mentor connection to this wonderful MBK launch and local plan. We're very excited to be part of it. The Long Beach Metro connection consists of power for youth, Operation Jumpstart, Long Beach Blast, Catholic Big Brothers, Big Sisters of Los Angeles and Big Brothers, Big Sisters of Greater Los Angeles. So on behalf of all of us. Thank you for supporting this. We appreciate it. Thank you. Good evening, Vice Mayor. Council staff. My name is Wendy Nichols. Julianne. I'm executive director of the California Conference for Equality and Justice. I've been serving the city of Long Beach for over 53 years with a mission of eliminating bias, bigotry and racism. So as you can imagine, I'm here to speak in very strong favor of your adoption of the My Brother's Keeper plan and in support and thanks of Councilmember Richardson and the other members of council and Tracy and the rest of the staff who have worked so hard on this issue. I'd also just like to say the kind of leadership that Councilmember Richardson shows in saying that he's bringing this plan here to you, despite the fact that it's not perfect, is a really crucial statement, because the plan isn't perfect. It's great. And I really think that it's a wonderful place for us to launch from. But there are a couple of things that I'd like to just address in terms of adding to the plan. First is that we have really strong relationships between the city and our nonprofit organizations that serve in workforce development and elimination of bias and bigotry in education and mentorship. And we need to make sure we're not reinventing the wheel in this effort and some of the work that's been going on for decades. And secondly, we need to make sure that we are focused on policy changes and on action. And this is such a great time to celebrate that Long Beach is the best and that this is the best of the best and celebrate just for a minute and then get forward on to continuing on our work. So I'd like to say that that I'm really proud of this work and proud to have been a member of the task force and thank you for your support of the of the My Brother's Keeper initiative. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Good evening, Councilman. Women. My name is Tyrone Lowe. I'm from Los Angeles. And growing up in Los Angeles. As a kid. I used to go out and try to go to Boys and Girls. Clubs because there was nothing to do. I wasn't a gang member at that moment, but just being living in a certain area, I got jumped and I couldn't go back to that Boys and Girls Club. So my mentors became. The guys that was on. The block. Negative mentorship. Well, after growing up spending time in prison, I came to Long Beach and I went to a group called Long Beach Advocates for Change. The group was positive. It was productive. So I joined the group prior to the well. After that, I became a community organizer. My supervisor, Miss Karen. Why? She said, Well, you should go to the My Brother's Keepers meetings. I didn't know what that was. I went to the My Brother's Keepers meetings where. I met Tracy. And a lot of the other people that was there. And I realized how important it was for men of. Color to see other. Men. Of color do positive things in the community and have hope for their self. You don't have to be in a gang. You don't have to be dealing drugs or hanging on a street corner. It's a place for you to come where you can receive productive conversation. The mentor program. I signed up for that and just to give back because I didn't receive no mentorship. If I did receive mentorship, I probably wouldn't end up doing a lot of the things that I've done. So I think that this program is very good. I love this program and I want to see it continue and I want to be able to come to this program all the time. My Brother's Keeper, thank you for your time. Thank you. Thank you for sharing your personal testimony. Councilmember Austin. So I'd like to go after the. Staff report. And that's my failure. I'm sorry, I didn't ask for a staff report. Mr. City Manager. Thank you, Vice Mayor and Council Members. As noted, a lot of time and energy has gone into this and it's been under the leadership of the deputy city manager, Arturo Sanchez, in the city manager's office with a lot of other help. And I'm going to turn this over to our total. Thank you, Vice Mayor Lowenthal, members of the city council, through the chair to those council members who gave such glowing thanks and praise to staff. I just want to say thank you, especially for the staff who will be giving the report. They put in a lot of time and effort. I do want to also acknowledge the comments of the members of the public. This is a starting point for us. Staff was tasked with an immense challenge. How do we take the assets that we have within our community and build upon them? So that I think it was once said by four that might have been President Kennedy. A rising tide lifts all boats and Long Beach is rising. It is it is a place of immense opportunity. And as Dr. Williams said, we just have to find a way to make sure that we do not leave those that children should not be left behind. And so that's what this plan is about. It was a challenge put forward by Councilmember Richardson and Councilmember Austin and the rest and Councilmember Gonzalez and staff has taken that. And so the staff leading that charge was Tracy Kalinga, our special projects manager in the Development Services Unit, and she will be giving a brief presentation on the work that was put in for My Brother's Keeper initiative. Thank you. Honorable Vice Mayor and City Council. It's my pleasure to give you a very brief overview. I'm just going to hit a few key slides to let you know what we've accomplished and where we're headed. Just a reminder, My Brother's Keeper is part of our citywide safe Long Beach violence prevention plan, which is really focused on reducing families, school and community violence. And we have six distinct initiatives under the Safe Long Beach work, safe families, Safe Schools, Safe Communities, My Brother's Keeper, which you're hearing about this evening, My Sister's Keeper, which is our Long Beach Group grant and our Human Relations Commission. And moving forward, My Brother's Keeper will continue to be housed under the umbrella of safe Long Beach. But from a policy perspective, the Joint Youth Committee, co-chaired by Long Beach Unified in the city of Long Beach, will actually oversee the policy work of My Brother's Keeper, as well as will have a MBK Community Advisory Council made up of government, community based organizations and faith based providers who really provide input on the day to day implementation of the plan. We hope to have an MBK program coordinator, which we'll hear in another agenda item this evening about some creative funding that we've put together and that will be housed under the work that I oversee a neighborhood relations division. And last but not least, we have identified a nonprofit fiscal sponsor that we would like to coordinate with in terms of government funding, both state and federal grants. That will be through the city of Long Beach, of course. But there will be some foundation funding that we can go after as a city and will partner with a nonprofit fiscal sponsor to house that funding. I also want to mention that there are several community partners in the audience today and I really want to thank them. They journeyed with us for a 12 month planning process and you can take some time and read through the slides about the overview of of the concepts and implementation as we move forward. I do want to highlight that it's important for us to know that all boys in young men of color don't have the same issues. We need to be very creative and careful as we look at issues of the LGBT community, the Cambodian community and undocumented youth, and not just framing this as a one issue area, but really tailor making the data as well as our program implementation for those young particular young men. And the milestones were mentioned earlier. This was developed by President Obama's MBK task force. The six milestones include enters school, ready to learn reading at grade level by third grade, graduating from high school, college and career ready, completing post-secondary education and training, successfully entering the workforce and being safe from violence and provided second chances. City jurisdictions have the opportunity to really be creative and how we address these six milestones. And I would like to say that I'm proud of our city because we were very open and transparent about the data, both including race, ethnicity and gender around each milestone. So I won't belabor the process, but I do encourage you to take some time and read through the PowerPoint and read through the plan, which is also available on our city's website, about how we propose to move forward with each of these particular milestones and really begin to moving moving the needle on data for young men and boys of color in our city. I also would like to mention that all the pictures you see are actual young men that live here in the city of Long Beach, and they were graciously willing to be part of the photo ops for the My Brother's Keeper plan. So these are young men that live here in our city. In closing, there is a call to action for mentors. We have over 70 adults in our city who've signed up to be mentors to young men, and we encourage you to sign on. You can go on WW dot MBK Long Beach dot com and there's a link there that you can click and you can sign up to either mentor or school based. So during your lunch hour you can go on campus and either read to a third grader or you can mentor a middle school at risk student. You can mentor in the evenings and weekends with some of our community based partners who are here tonight, as well as focus on probation and foster youth. And last but not least, we have the City Prosecutors Pact program where parents can mentor other parents and helping their students attend school regularly. So there are many options and we encourage our leaders in our city, our community based organization and any community resident who's willing and ready to give back to a young man in this community to sign up online. And we look forward to it. And in closing, again, the MBK plan is available on the city's website and will continue to update the community as we move into plan and implementation. That concludes my report, and thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Alston. Yes. I just wanted to briefly thank you, Tracey, for the great staff report and just reflect and celebrate this this beautiful plan. This plan. If you haven't had an opportunity in the public to see it, please take a look at it. It's there's a lot of good material here. I think it's very inspiring and well well thought out. I think Mr. Sanchez deserves a lot of credit here. It's everybody. Tracey Kalinga has really established herself as a as a national leader, I think, in this program. And let's give her a big round of applause. Yeah, it was a real treat, like I said, to go back to Washington, D.C. and see how highly regarded and well regarded our plan is. But our city is is being thought about on a national level. Other cities across the country are looking at the work we're doing here in Long Beach. We are really an example of the diversity of the city, I think sets us apart from from any other cities, but it also provides unique challenges for us in terms of, you know, the fact that, you know, our city is not monolithic . We and we can't one size does not fit all. And so making this plan a success is going to require deep commitment and commitment from, like I said, this body, but but also partner agencies, our school district, who has come to to to our assistance and is a real partner in a big way. So thank you, Dr. Fulton Williams, for being here today and for your work and commitment to this. And it will require a commitment, like I said, of many others. I can tell you that that I, for one, as long as I'm on this council, will work to make sure that this plan comes to fruition. But I understand it is not a panacea, but it's a great document to to work from and to plan from. You know, Long Beach has has actually been doing a lot of good work for a long time. I think the MBK platform allowed us to package it just right to bring all of these great community organizations that have been doing it so much in our community for for many years together. And for one, we're all in the same room now talking about solutions and truly changing outcomes. And so, again, I wanted to just make sure that we we gave the the staff there their wages and we pay them well. But in terms of letting you know that we really appreciate the work, your commitments and this is my brother's keeper, but you know, it needs to be supported and has to be supported by our sisters as well. And so thank you, Tracy, for your efforts. You know. Thank you. There's been a motion in a second and we've had public comment. Members, please cast your vote. Motion carries. Thank you. Am 38.