REMARKS
Council member reflects on progress and ongoing challenges in Summer Rising
0:39:32
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118 sec
Council Member Althea V. Stevens acknowledges the progress made in the Summer Rising program while highlighting ongoing concerns. She emphasizes the need to prioritize public school students and address the increasing enrollment of charter school students.
- Stevens notes improvements but stresses the importance of prioritizing vulnerable public school students
- Expresses concern about the rising number of charter school students in the program
- Calls for a focus on ensuring public school families have access to the program
Althea V. Stevens
0:39:32
I I mean, the numbers even I know and I wanna say this.
0:39:34
I wanna start off.
0:39:35
I know that we have come a long way.
0:39:37
I wanna also say thank you all for always listening to myself and and chair Joseph's feedback.
0:39:45
I think we always come back with something and you guys look and try to adjust and fix.
0:39:50
And so, you know, I think we've come a long way.
0:39:52
One of the things I heard a lot this summer was it's gotten a lot better, but I think we were it was a lot of bumps those first couple of years.
0:40:01
So I think we had nowhere else to go butt up.
0:40:04
And I think that we've been rising through the occasion, but I know there was a huge effort around trying to prioritize.
0:40:11
Obviously, with, like, mandates, we can't turn away young people.
0:40:16
But I've then, you know, when we have a program where we have especially young people who are struggling in a public school system, and then parents are choosing to migrate out during the school year, but come back for the summer thinking about how are we prioritizing our young people first.
0:40:31
And so just to hear the number of 10,603 young people and listen out, all the kids are my babies.
0:40:37
Right?
0:40:37
All of them.
0:40:38
But just just showing how we're prioritizing young people who are in public schools.
0:40:43
And I know there was great effort around young people in temporary housing, foster care youth, and all these different criteria.
0:40:52
But we're we're going in the wrong direction if we had 8000 a year before.
0:40:56
Now we have 10000, which means that 10,000 public school students who show up every day during the school year are not part of it because these young people our families are taking advantage of it and rightfully so, but I just wanna make sure that, like, whatever we're doing, we're prioritizing those families who are coming persons.
0:41:14
So I just wanted us to just, like, kinda stay there for a moment because I don't want us to to, like, skip over that because that's important.
0:41:23
I guess it's not a question.
0:41:25
Like, what are we doing to kinda kinda like figure this out because that's a problem for me?
