Andy Shallal Candidate Survey - DC Alliance of Youth Advocates

Candidate Youth Issue Questionnaire
Conducted by DC Alliance of Youth Advocates
ANDY SHALLAL
Mayoral Candidate
100
What youth-specific legislation would you introduce in your first 100 days of office?
I would begin by convening a meeting of key stakeholders: youth, parents, teachers, principals, government
representatives, and nonprofit and business leaders. Our current policies suffer from multiple disconnections. Too many
city departments and community agencies operate within their own silos. My goal is to bring all of these people and
groups together to develop a truly integrated approach. As Mayor, the first three actions I would ask this stakeholder
group to consider would be to:
a. Expand the Summer Youth Employment Program (SYEP) into a year-round program.
b. Create neighborhood-based youth engagement centers to with wrap-around services.
c. Amend the language of HSRA so that minors are defined as “individuals” and are therefore entitled to shelter on
freezing nights.
From this starting point, the group could go on to address other short-term and long-term needs of Washington, D.C.
youth such as homelessness, education, and community engagement.
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Homelessness is a clear and present issue in the District of Columbia. Homelessness among
minors (under 18), youth (18-24), and young parents (under 24) is a particularly acute and complex
issue. How will you address this issue?
Young people become homeless for many reasons, including parental abuse and conflict in the home, youth
delinquency, parental substance abuse, eviction for not contributing to rent, and parental loss of housing. This complex
mixture is a clear demonstration of the need discussed in (1 above) to create an integrated approach.
On the front end, we need more effective collaboration among service providers and the programs aimed at prevention.
We should integrate government services with services from private and civil society organizations to help families stay
together.
For youth who have already left home, we should immediately redefine youth as “individuals” so that the city’s Winter
Plan provides beds for these young people on freezing nights.
We should also define unaccompanied minors with their own children as a “family” so that they can access the Homeless
Services System for Families.
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Only 13.2% of 16-19 years olds and 42% of 20-24 years olds were able to find paid, unsubsidized
employment that they were qualified for in DC in 2011. What is your plan to improve successful
entry to the workforce for DC youth?
The city needs to mount a much more aggressive effort to get young people into paid, unsubsidized employment for
which they are qualified.
The major city program aimed at youth unemployment is the Summer Youth Employment Program (SYEP). As Mayor,
I would support extending this program into a year-long effort. For those young people in school, we need to integrate
more programs that provide internships and volunteer opportunities, and more access to training in schools, like Career
and Technical Education (CTE) classes. We should seek out federal money available for training in hospitality and
tourism, health services, IT, and business administration, all of which are growing industries with new jobs.
With both short-term and long-term goals in mind, I would also encourage partnerships between the metropolitan area’s
universities, community colleges, and the public school system in DC, to provide a very large peer-to-peer mentoring
program.
F
Recent studies have shown that quality expanded learning improves DC youths’ cognitive and
non-cognitive skills. Yet, each year there are thousands of DC youth who remain unable to
participate in programs that improve academic, social/emotional, health and workforce readiness
outcomes. What do you think are the barriers? How would you remove the barriers you’ve
identified?
Many youth need access to more than one form of support. Having to go from place to place to access these programs
is a serious barrier. Another barrier is inadequate funding.
I would create several neighborhood-based youth engagement centers which would offer wrap-around services to deal
with the multiple problems that DC youth struggle with. And I would conduct a cross-departmental evaluation of all of
the city’s expanded learning programs. We have to get rid of the youth workforce silos that can spring up among the
many DC agencies that deal with these problems, including OSSE, DCPS, the Charters, UDC-CC, DOES, the WIC,
DHS, CFSA, and the Children and Youth Investment Trust Corporation.
In addition, I would ask the relevant departments to set up a task force to survey best practices in this field across the
U.S. and make recommendations of programs that DC should consider testing.
In DC, around 14,000 youth are disconnected from school and work. The majority of them are
trying to re-engage, but there are many obstacles including a time-consuming childcare voucher
system, costly public transport, and having to go to several bureaus to get proper documentation.
How would you most effectively address these barriers?
I would create several neighborhood-based youth engagement centers which would offer wrap-around services to deal
with the multiple problems that DC youth struggle with. As this question points out, forcing youth who are already
disconnected from school and work to have to pay for traveling from agency to agency is a prescription for failure for all
involved. Following the argument in question 4, I believe that the alphabet soup of departments, programs, and
nonprofits who work on these issues all too often present themselves to disconnected youths as a series of silos, with
little or no cross-communication. Young people cannot break down these silos by themselves. As Mayor, I will support
an integrated approach to dealing with disconnected youth that focuses on breaking down these bureaucratic silos.