PUBLIC TESTIMONY
Testimony by David Garcia, Program Director at Center for Family Life on Summer Rising Program
2:45:36
·
3 min
David Garcia, Program Director at Center for Family Life, provides testimony on the Summer Rising program, highlighting challenges and offering recommendations for improvement based on his four years of experience running the program.
- Advocates for a more diverse program model and the release of educational data for students needing academic intervention
- Emphasizes the need for more buildings to reduce overcrowding and improve program quality
- Suggests changes to the enrollment process, including allowing CBOs more control and offering multiple program models for families to choose from
- Discusses issues with attrition rates and unfilled slots due to current enrollment policies
David Garcia
2:45:36
Hello, everybody.
2:45:37
My name is David Garcia.
2:45:39
I'm a program director at the Center for Family Life.
2:45:42
I've ran summer rising now for my 4th year since the 1st summer we've done this.
2:45:49
I second my colleague in advocating for more expansive program model that meets a more diverse set of needs and acts that educational data be released, particularly for students who are identified as needing academic intervention.
2:46:02
Additionally, if the city wants to invest in young people and offer high quality free programming, it must open more buildings.
2:46:13
For the last 2 summers, Center for Family Life has been in buildings collocated to up to 4 CBOs and 11 feeder schools.
2:46:23
You talk about overcrowding, that's one reason why.
2:46:26
This is unsafe and ensuing logistics passing, determining special needs, transitioning from academic classes to CBO run camp, administration, practice, launch snack, rendering it nearly impossible to provide young people with a high quality summer experience they deserve.
2:46:46
In our experience, when buildings are as overcrowded as we've seen the past 2 summers, it becomes logistically impossible for camps groups to access spaces like the gym or the schoolyard.
2:46:58
More than once per week, resulting in children spending most of their week sitting in one classroom or day long.
2:47:06
The summarizing enrollment process will be far more effective at schools and see CBOs could collaborate and support families in enrolling in a summer program that meets their children's needs.
2:47:16
If the city recognizes the value in altering choices to families and there were multiple models to select from, families, schools, and CBOs could determine the best fit.
2:47:26
Be tailored academic interventions, high quality camp or hybrid model.
2:47:31
This will leverage the relationship capital referenced earlier between schools and CBOs and their families, and we believe result in a less attrition and more student family engagement.
2:47:43
Our observations over the past 4 summers have been that families drop out of summer rising at rates far higher to the rates we saw prior to summer rising.
2:47:52
When city fund the CBS with City's funding CPOs to run the full day camps and allow them to control the enrollment process.
2:48:00
Additionally, when slots do open, they remain unfilled for anywhere between 3 9 days due to the mandate that there's a 3 day wait period to be observed before offering the slot to another family.
2:48:13
Often families were receiving simultaneous offers for CBS or slots where one offer was accepted The other CBO was required to make an offer to a new family and wait in another another additional 3 days for a response, leaving a funded slot open for 6 days.
2:48:31
This happened dozens of times over the course of summer 2024 to Central rampy life resulting in a resveraging doll of participation, which is detrimental to the students in the group, experiencing such instability and wasting depression slots that should remain filled for all 7 weeks of the summer.
