Doing More With Less?

Our programs are increasingly asked to do more with less. Again, after the Governor of MA announced the "9C cuts" (post budget cuts that are part of the state office's executive privilege), already lean programs are asked to "be creative." This is a strange request - but then, what have we come to take as normal? We put bumper stickers on our cars that exclaim, imagination a world where education has limitless funding and the Air Force has to have a bake sale to buy an F15! We tell our friends we wish for that to happen - but then we snicker people who try to make that happen saying they don't know how the world works. Perhaps deep down we don't want that to happen. We seem to ensure that for every 42.3 cents that go to the military that only 4.4 cents go to education, training, and social services not just one year, but each year. Do we not control over our priorities? Are these things the way that are because people actually want them that way? Perhaps we need to spend a moment and really reflect on the world that we really want not by our words alone, but by our actions and those of our extended networks. With our programs vying for those 4 cents (shared by schools, training, and social services, what are our proper investments and how does OST play a role in making those investments rather than responding time and again to cuts?

Investing in Out-of-School programs is usually cast as charity money - that old worn social services mantel that the inner cities are limitless slums and the people within them desperate and only able to provide their children with chaos and uncertainty for which OST programs are solutions to crisis after crisis. We need to rethink OST's role as neither an add-on to school nor only about intervention in cycles of abuse and poverty, but as investment in local economies. This investment is for today, and not for a distant future. This investment produces meaningful employment for young adults and integrated learning for children, the kind found less and less in Public Schools and increasingly the privilege of a private (voucher, charter, parochial, home) school.

"Children are our future" is a cliche we traditionally sell for investment in these programs. Today, we need less "future" outcomes and more delivered to our economy right now through meaningful jobs for our young adults, community foundations for working families, and quality learning environments where children get the privilege of get to have a childhood that is not tested or drilled.

Out of School Time programs can provide:
Meaningful employment for young adults
Learning experiences that move beyond homework and synthetic seamless days
Serving as micro economic redevelopment of a block or street
Making a low income area more attractive to families
Responding to community needs
Being able to influence school and community relationships

These are some potential ways programs can position themselves is they so choose to. The 9C cuts may be only the beginning of our economic hardships. The OST field must look now and really consider, what world do we want to belong to? We are already being asked by our policy makers to be more creative and true, many programs can survive or limp along using tried and true methods of funding and description of services. However, are we taking some of our own advice and "reaching for the stars"?

Perhaps it is time we answered that call with some actual creativity.

New Directions in Youth Policy

At the invitation of PPV, BOSTnet was able to attend the New Directions in Youth Policy event October 7th, 2008 in New York City. Held at the Ford Foundation (supporter of PPV), a large building reminiscent of the now-distant era of Cold War philanthropy, the agenda was dominated by the discussion of the economy. Not as you would expect the economy at hand - the financial meltdown that is occurring now and which may last for years - but the economy of youth as workers. This loss in employed youth is not a new trend, the result of video games and youtube, but a hollowing out of our economy over the past thirty years. It was proposed that young people who work at 17 are more likely to work at 18 and so on. They develop habits of mind as well as need to work in situations that get them in contact with people different from themselves - and the back room of McDonald's does not offer that socio-economic as well as skill set diversity.

Andrew Sum, Director of the Center for Labor Studies at Northeastern University and a professor at the same institution painted a bleak picture of the landscape of young people in this country. According to the data on youth, young people are struggling to achieve economic and social stability. They are failing to sustain long-term personal relationships beneficial to the economic well being of children. They are failing to learn common job skills. Life expectancy and fertility are increasingly correlated to income level in ways that haven't been since in this country.

Andrew Sum proposed that this was the result of several administrations not taking youth employment seriously and allowing the industrial economy to be replaced with, what Wilbur Toss, an older businessman interviewed on NPR's Marketplace recently said out service economy was a sham. That we cannot build the sort of level of prosperity we are accustomed to by "flipping burgers, selling scraps of papers, or suing each other." This loss of employment with low barriers to entry (not requiring degrees and certifications) that connected young people to a world of work was not the inevitability of "globalization" but a lack of policies that protected our workforce and nurtured our native economy.

This was also not an issue with recessions apparently, since the only time where the numbers of employed youth increased was for a few years during the late 1990s. Youth in the labor market have been facing trouble whether the economy is robust or recession and the past eight years have been dismal. One issue is a loss of job usually held by young people to undocumented workers. Another issue is that adult workers are increasingly needing to fill jobs once held by teens. (Not spoken about but of note is the expansion of elderly in the workforce - such as at Walmarts and the like). For teens and young adults who still want to work, few of these jobs expose young workers to skilled people, train them in marketable skills, or pay them a wage they can live on. This, Andrew Sum argues, has led to an across the board decline in living standard that is not left behind when this generation grows up but leads to a lifetime of underemployment of unemployment. Sum noted a rise in unstable single parent homes, increasing numbers of children born to proportional to the lack of income, and lower life expectancies - especially for native-born minorities.

The presentation was compelling, as it was dismal news, especially to a room of people who had worked in philanthropy for thirty years or more. However, within this great problem there is great opportunity for Out-of-School programs. More than reaching out to teach more children in need and to compensate for the shortcomings of young parents unable to provide for their off spring, Out-of-School programs can serve as a place of meaningful employment for young people and job creation so that these young workers can learn meaningful skills as they provide needed labor to programs that cannot afford to pay high wages and yet need qualified and quality people.

What are the costs of Out-of-School programs? What are some ways to maximize their benefit to communities, especially low income communities? There is usually a coordinator/director and then "direct-service" or line staff. Those Direct Service staff are paid perhaps $8.25 - $11 per hour and in some areas or programs as much as $20 per hour. The major and constant issue with staffing is employee turn over and (at least prior to the melt down) many programs have constant trouble attracting staff at all. Staff come in, work a few months and leave. In New York State these after-school employees were considered "migrant workers" the same as farm help. Very telling. This is a labor issue, and an issue of compensation but also an issue of who is the appropriate workforce. If compensation is raised too much, it may put the programs out of business since overhead will outstrip resources. If a constant drum beat is on professionalization with its certificates, degrees, and career ladders, will that actually prevent the creation of a viable workforce? Young people need meaningful employment. Out-of-School programs need low-cost quality staff for direct service. Looking at a particular segment of the population as these workers would allow for more refined approach to training and development.

Out-of-School programs, if intentionally done, can learn to market to that workforce outreach, training and technical assistance, and provide dual services - one to children and youth development, the other to economic development of communities and the youth who need to learn how to work as they learn how to do that work. (The US military looks towards a particular age group and skill level, why not OST?). Youth learn marketable skills working at an out-of-school program they may not folding shirts or waiting for the buzzer of the fry-o-later to sound. They learn critical thinking skills, problem solving, and perhaps project management if their program has a project-based learning focus. Many young people may themselves want to go into youth work as a career. Many will see adults with skills they can learn from. Trainings are no longer cattle calls trying to reach out to diverse skills and competencies (how many OST trainings include teachers of 10 years and 16 year old high school students?) but can focus on a certain level and develop and refine a language to speak to that level. Staff turn over need not be seen as a bad thing, if the staff last for the academic year. In this way, the turn over is build into the system rather than fought against. A battle that cannot be won by increasing moral, raising a low wage a few cents, printed certificates, or top heavy college degree programs.

Perhaps after-school and OST programs can serve as that job that made a difference as the programs are to make a difference to children. We need to use this crises in youth employment and see the opportunities OST can provide. Perhaps rather than another set of competencies we need come up with who we see actually doing this work now, and in the years to come.

Thoughts on the Economics of Out-of-School

Mention that there has never been a more uncertain time, and chances are that someone will bring up a past uncertain time - even if they have to reach back to 1529 to make their tortured point.

Call it what you will, a "market correction" or the "end of capitalism," the direction forward has not been fought with so many variables since... perhaps 1848. What is at stake is the heart of how we fund social programs. How we care for ourselves. How we individually and collectively raise our children. How we want our children to learn out-of-school and what kind of places we want them to enjoy on weekends and the summer. Today, the Out-of-School Time field works with youth uncertain as to who we are shaping those children to become when they grow up. We talk about 21st century skills uncertain as to what those skills need be or where they will work in this world. We are uncertain as to what sort of world we can look forward to as more and more people on the planet ask for more resources and contribute less to common goals. This current uncertainty in this nation is the result of more than thirty years of struggle (or since ... AD 476) as the New Deal and the Great Society social programs have eroded and we have altered our society to a consumer nation taking up a disproportional amount of natural resources. This struggle has intensified between two opposing views of capitalism and the nation state as our place in the world is contested by ancient powers again restored (China, Russia). The view that the state cares for social needs and is the manager of society collides with the view that the private sector is solution to all social issues. Not-for-profits, particularly those that work with youth, blend together capitalism and socialism in what the head of the New York Historical Society once said did not create democracy but "feudalism." Perhaps this is more a neo-feudalism invading all sectors (hence "private public ventures", corporate bailouts, etc).

In this neo-feudalism of the not-for-profit world, youth workers have been bounced between the camps. Those closest to direct service run faster and faster as they manage programs, deal with children and youth, are asked to train staff with no time or resources, and educate themselves on the latest funder focus/report format/evidence/ outcome target/and educational fad taking more and more time away from direct service and building quality programs. The non-for-profit corporate management seems to try to solve this neo-feudalism by creating more and more committees, debating more standards, and saying the word "evidence-based research" a great deal (isn't the nature of research based on evidence?) as not-for-profits proliferate until in Massachusetts they account for 14% of the total workforce. Youth Development has suffered in the meantime as well meaning people on the ground are pulled apart to please everyone. In the process, practitioners are told to do more with less and less and each year, those children we are here to tend to grow up and - ready or not - move uncertainly into the adult world.

Our current situation of neo-feudalism comes in part from uncertainty in all aspects from funding to practice. It comes in not knowing who we are, and our being caught up in the fog of a culture war that blazes in our national consciousness while those embers of Watts and Newark may be resting under the apparent economic improvement of new condominiums and renovated science museums. Our current uncertainty comes from not knowing our economic place as organizations, programs, and projects. Are we free market? Are we New Deal? Can private organizations meet complex social challenges when funding is erratic and organizations change directions every few years in the light of new business-minded executive directors, boards, and "marketing" as if these were for-profit company products in the realm of New or Vanilla, or Zero, or C2 Coke. The funding has already been uncertain and often inexplicable and now we are told there will be a "shake out" of the not-for-profit sector as the wine and roses days (at least for trendy causes) vanishes.

Federal support shrinks while their mandates grow, states step in and out, and an increasing landscape of foundations move about with impunity as they sprinkle their endowments according to the whims and applications they dictate as their own regulation and accountability shrinks. Large banks acquire and manage trusts appointing bank trustees who dictate funding to their pet projects or spend inordinate amounts of their funds on administrating those funds. Our program live in constant fear of being closed and not because of poor performance or lack of need in the community, but because of a far-off board room flip of the coin. Usually when a job has this level of uncertainty, the compensation makes up for it. However, people who work with youth have learned to live this this uncertainty, and yet it increases. Our uncertainty today is compounded from the far-off financial markets of New York, Taipei, and London and their impact of these foundations and their activities. In addition, unlike the era of the New Deal, the Federal government has to contend with tax cuts and further spending on internal defense (homeland security is another word for internal defense) and external defense with Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts and their impact on the budget. Those who work in with youth must also face the economic challenges at home of "9 C" cuts in the budget (the power of the governor of the Commonwealth to remove line items in the budget after these items have been approved) and the progress of "Question #1" (the removal of the 1916 income tax) as an issue this year which appears to be a grassroots effort opposed by organized labor, the state, schools, and nearly every traditional institution within the Commonwealth impacted by a close to 40% reduction of taxpayer money.

These two issues alone would send shivers down the spines of most who work in in Out-of-School time doing Youth Development. However, these issues in the Commonwealth are but footnotes in a nation in trouble. They are folded into a landscape where funding has always been erratic and never up to the demands placed upon programs and practitioners. What Out-of-School time may have going for it, however, is that we in this field know how to get the most value with the least resources. Even in the prosperous times in this nation, most programs were making do. It may just be that no matter what direction this economy and by extension the nation takes, programs will continue to provide safe environments where clever youth workers create wonderful programs using whatever is at hand because they are at their heart not professionals, but human beings who care about children, anybody's children. After all, the best teaching aids don't have to be more than twine and bits of wood and paper and the best teacher is not that person with the highest degree but the most intense willingness to share, guide, and explore this world with young people. Most who provide our youth with care do so at the detriment of their incomes. It is perhaps to those people those in the board rooms of foundations and backrooms of policy should look to and stop trying to build systems that squash the very people it is intended to systematize.

In the coming months and years much will have to be settled about who we are and how we care as a society about society. We must face these issues and talk more about how we are funded amongst ourselves and to our current funders. We must create more open conversations between youth serving organizations and identify those issues that are complex and often uncomfortable - such as executive pay of hundreds of thousands versus direct service care giver pay of between 8.25 - 15 bucks or, given an 180 day school year at three hours a day, $4,455 - $8,100. We must do what we can with what we have and not wait for a bail out. Whatever direction we take, we have to take it now. Our children are not waiting for us to decide on a direction before they grow up.