Evaluation of SchoolDistrict-Based Strategies for 

Reducing Youth Involvement 

in Gangs and Violent Crime 

Final Report 

July 1, 2010 

Prepared by: 

Sukey Soukamneuth Leshnick 

Anna Rubin 

Jennifer Henderson-Frakes 

Heather Lewis-Charp 

Kimberly Foley 

Jill Leufgen 

This report was funded either wholly or in part with Federal funds 

from the U. S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training 

Administration under contract number J061A20362, Task Order 6. 

The contents of this publication do not necessarily reflect the views 

of the Department of Labor, nor does mention of trade names, 

commercial products, or organizations imply endorsement of same 

by the U. S. Government. 

S O CIA L P O L ICY R ESEA R C H 

A SS O CIATE S 

1330 Broadway, Suite 1426 

Oakland, CA 94612 

Tel: (510) 763-1499 

Fax: (510) 763-1599 

www.spra.com 

Prepared for: 

Dan Ryan 

U.S. Department of Labor/ETA 

200 Constitution Ave., N.W. 

Washington, D.C. 20210 

Contract No. J061A20362 

Project No. 1356-350 
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TABLE OF CONTENTS 

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY .......................................................................................... ES-1
 

I. INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................... I-1
 

Overview of the Evaluation .............................................................................................I-1
 

Research Questions and Overview of Report .................................................................I-2
 

Data Collection Methods .................................................................................................I-4
 

Site Visits .................................................................................................................... I-4
 

Case Study Youth .......................................................................................................I-5
 

Quantitative Data ........................................................................................................I-7
 

II. COMMUNITY CONTEXT ..................................................................................... II-1
 

Labor Market Conditions ................................................................................................II-1
 

Youth Crime ...................................................................................................................II-3
 

Youth Arrests Across Grantees .................................................................................II-4
 

Baltimore....................................................................................................................II-5
 

Chicago......................................................................................................................II-8
 

Milwaukee................................................................................................................II-12
 

Orange County ........................................................................................................II-14
 

Philadelphia .............................................................................................................II-17
 

Summary......................................................................................................................II-19
 

III. OVERVIEW OF GRANTEES .............................................................................. III-1
 

District-Level Context ....................................................................................................III-1
 

Enrollment and Demographics .................................................................................III-1
 

Trends in Performance .............................................................................................III-3
 

Key Changes in District Context ...............................................................................III-5
 

School- and Program-Level Context .............................................................................III-6
 

Traditional Schools ...................................................................................................III-9
 

Alternative Schools .................................................................................................III-11
 

i 
Other Program Sites ...............................................................................................III-11
 

Overview of Grant Goals and Services .......................................................................III-12
 

Grant Programs ......................................................................................................III-14
 

Changes Made to Grant Plans and Programs........................................................III-17
 

Approaches to Grant Administration ...........................................................................III-18
 

Grant Management Structure .................................................................................III-19
 

Grant Leadership....................................................................................................III-21
 

Staffing....................................................................................................................III-23
 

Budget......................................................................................................................... III-29
 

Related Initiatives and Programs ................................................................................III-32
 

IV. PARTNERSHIP MODELS AND OUTCOMES ....................................................IV-1
 

Summary of Grantee Partnership Profiles ................................................................... IV-1
 

Baltimore City Public School System (BCPSS) ....................................................... IV-1
 

Chicago Public Schools (CPS) ................................................................................ IV-2
 

Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) ............................................................................ IV-4
 

Orange County Public Schools (OCPS) .................................................................. IV-5
 

School District of Philadelphia (SDP) ...................................................................... IV-6
 

Cross-Site Analyses of Grantee Partnerships.............................................................. IV-8
 

Workforce Development Partnerships ..................................................................... IV-8
 

Juvenile Justice Partnerships ................................................................................ IV-10
 

Law Enforcement Partnerships .............................................................................. IV-12
 

Partnerships with the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the Mayor’s Office ..................... IV-13
 

Other Community Partnerships ............................................................................. IV-14
 

Key Outcomes ....................................................................................................... IV-15
 

Overarching Partnership Challenges and Lessons Learned...................................... IV-17
 

Challenges............................................................................................................. IV-17
 

Lessons Learned ................................................................................................... IV-19
 

Conclusion ................................................................................................................. IV-21
 

V. RECRUITMENT AND ENROLLMENT .................................................................V-1
 

Target Populations ........................................................................................................ V-1
 

In-School Youth (ISY) ............................................................................................... V-2
 

Out-of-School Youth (OSY) ...................................................................................... V-3
 

Recruitment................................................................................................................... V-4
 

Recruitment Methods................................................................................................ V-5
 

ii 
Recruitment Challenges ........................................................................................... V-7
 

Enrollment ..................................................................................................................... V-7
 

Summary..................................................................................................................... V-11
 

VI. PROGRAMS AND SERVICES............................................................................VI-1
 

ISY Programs within Traditional Schools ..................................................................... VI-1
 

ISY Alternative School Programs................................................................................. VI-6
 

OSY Programs ........................................................................................................... VI-11
 

Service Type and Frequency for ISY and OSY .......................................................... VI-16
 

Academic Services ................................................................................................ VI-18
 

Workforce Services ................................................................................................ VI-23
 

Supportive/Case Management Services ............................................................... VI-29
 

Gang and Violence Prevention Services ............................................................... VI-33
 

Services for Youth Offenders ..................................................................................... VI-36
 

Challenges and Lessons Learned.............................................................................. VI-37
 

Challenges............................................................................................................. VI-38
 

Lessons Learned ................................................................................................... VI-38
 

VII. OUTCOMES.......................................................................................................VII-1
 

Participant Characteristics .......................................................................................... VII-1
 

Characteristics of Case Study Youth .......................................................................... VII-7
 

Youth Outcomes ....................................................................................................... VII-11
 

Completion Status ................................................................................................ VII-11
 

Educational Outcomes.......................................................................................... VII-13
 

Workforce Outcomes ............................................................................................ VII-17
 

Juvenile Justice Outcomes ................................................................................... VII-21
 

Summary................................................................................................................... VII-24
 

Conclusion ................................................................................................................ VII-26
 

VIII. CONCLUSION ..................................................................................................VIII-1
 

Sustainability .............................................................................................................. VIII-1
 

Accomplishments ....................................................................................................... VIII-4
 

Challenges ................................................................................................................. VIII-7
 

Contextual Challenges........................................................................................... VIII-7
 

Implementation Challenges ................................................................................... VIII-8
 

Partnership Challenges ......................................................................................... VIII-8 

iii 
APPENDIX A: RESEARCH QUESTIONS .................................................................. A-1
 

APPENDIX B: SCHOOLS/PROGRAMS VISITED...................................................... B-1
 

APPENDIX C: TARGETED SCHOOLS ...................................................................... C-1
 

APPENDIX D: COMPARISON OF PLANNED ACTIVITIES SERVICES 

IMPLEMENTED .................................................................................................. D-1
 

APPENDIX E: MAJOR CHANGES TO GRANT PLANS DURING
 

IMPLEMENTATION .............................................................................................E-1
 

APPENDIX F: GRANTEE PARTNERSHIP PROFILES...............................................F-1
 

iv 
 

 

 

 

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 

In 2007, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) provided funding in the form of the School 

District Grant to five school districts so that the districts could improve services to youth who are 

involved, have been involved, or are at risk of involvement with gangs or the juvenile justice 

system.1

 The grantees used the funding to develop a variety of educational, employment, and 

violence-prevention programs and strategies designed to increase academic performance, lower 

the number of dropouts, and reduce youth involvement in crime and gangs.2 

This Final Report on School-District-Based Strategies for Reducing Youth Involvement in Gangs 

and Violent Crime summarizes findings from a three-year evaluation that included three rounds 

of site visits to each of the five grantees between spring 2008 and winter 2010. These visits 

included interviews with grant administrators, teachers, principals, staff from partner 

organizations, and employers who had worked with participants. Further, 25 youth were 

interviewed in depth to understand their views of the services that they received; many of these 

individuals were interviewed during each round of visits. Additionally, data from the 

management information system (MIS) used for the grants was obtained and analyzed to 

summarize the characteristics of youth participants and the outcomes that resulted from this 

grant. Findings in this report are divided into several key areas: community context, 

characteristics of the school district grantees, partnership models, recruitment and enrollment 

procedures, services for in-school and out-of-school youth, and outcomes. The report ends with 

a discussion of grantees’ plans for sustaining their projects and an examination of grantees’ core 

accomplishments and challenges. 

1 These school districts (the grantees) are the Baltimore City Public School System (BCPSS), Chicago Public 

Schools (CPS), Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS), the Orange County Public School System (OCPS), and the 

School District of Philadelphia (SDP). 

2 Most of these programs continue to operate as of the date of submission of this report, but in an effort to reduce 

complexity and enhance readability, we use the past tense to describe grantee efforts and activities in this 

Executive Summary. 

ES-1 
Community Context 

The labor market conditions in each of the grantee cities deteriorated during the course of the 

grant period. General unemployment rates increased across the cities, and youth unemployment 

rates remained especially high—higher than the national average. As a result, young people 

struggled to find employment, and youth respondents noted that competition with adults greatly 

limited their ability to find work. 

Although youth crime and gang activity are problems in all the grantee cities, data show that they 

have been in decline in most of the cities. Overall, there was a decline in the number of youth 

arrests in three out of the five grantee cities during the grant period. Baltimore showed a 

significant decline in youth arrests for both property crime (27 percent decline) and violent crime 

(28 percent decline) between 2006 and 2008. Youth arrests in Milwaukee and Orange County 

also decreased during this period. These reductions in youth arrests are most likely part of 

national declines in youth arrests over the past decade; they should not be taken as evidence of 

the efficacy of DOL’s grant-funded programs and services at the target schools. Rather, statistics 

showing declines in—but relatively high levels of—youth crime provide an understanding of the 

community context in which grantee programs operate. 

Despite the decreases in youth crime, several grantee cities experienced increases in violent and 

illegal activity from large, organized, nationally syndicated gangs such as the Bloods and the 

Crips. 

Overview of Grantees 

The School District grantees are large urban school districts that vary widely in size, the 

resources they have available for serving students, and existing systems/procedures for 

partnering with community agencies. Each grantee received an initial grant of $4.8 million and 

then an additional $1.06 million, for a total of $5.86 million. Overall, the grantees provided 

services at 41 schools and program sites and served 3,765 youth. All grantees provided services 

at traditional schools, and these schools made up the majority of the program sites (24 out of 41). 

The 2,295 in-school youth served at the traditional schools made up the bulk of the target 

population. Four grantees also provided services at 10 alternative schools and three grantees 

targeted 685 out-of-school youth at seven non-school program sites. 

Grantees hired a total of 130 staff to manage this grant and provide direct services, the majority 

of whom (69 percent) were subcontract hires; the remaining staff were direct-hires. Case 

managers make up the bulk of the staff who were hired (32 percent), followed by 

administrative/management staff (22 percent), teachers/instructors (16 percent) and job 

ES-2 
developers (13 percent). Grantees also hired other staff such as guidance counselors, mental 

health specialists, school resources officers, social workers, and gang specialists. Grantees were 

often delayed in hiring key staff to operate their projects due to bureaucratic delays at the district 

level. As a result, some project components were slow to launch. 

Across grantees, grant funding is less than one percent of each district’s budget. Although the 

grant is small relative to each district’s overall budget, it represents a sizeable increase in perstudent spending for those students who receive grant services. Estimated per-participant 

expenditures for this grant to date range from $2,528 at Chicago Public Schools to $7,067 at 

Milwaukee Public Schools. When this amount is added to the districts’ regular per-pupil 

spending, grantees’ overall per-pupil spending for grant participants is bumped up by an average 

of 42 percent. 

As of fall 2009/winter 2010, grantees differed in the amounts spent, mainly because projects 

were launched and implemented at different times. To date, each grantee has spent between 51 

percent and 89 percent of its original $4.8 million grant. The majority of funds were budgeted 

for personnel and/or contractual services, with the relative balance between the two depending 

on the degree of centralization of program services (at the decentralized end of the spectrum, 

represented by SDP, contractual services accounted for a full 93 percent of the budget). 

Partnerships 

Grantees are required to develop partnerships with the workforce investment system, the juvenile 

justice system, law enforcement, the local mayor’s office, and the U.S. Attorney General’s 

Office. In addition, grantees developed ties with community organizations in order to provide 

specialized supportive services to both in-school and out-of-school youth participants. 

Grantees developed their strongest partnerships with the workforce investment system. All 

grantees but one entered into formal arrangements with the local workforce investment board, 

and some grantees also involved community-based organizations (CBOs) in the provision of 

workforce services. Given workforce partners’ often pre-existing focus on serving out-of-school 

youth, school districts greatly benefited from these partnerships in their efforts to reach out to 

and serve this population. Furthermore, many local workforce entities play multiple, interrelated 

roles within the city that would make it difficult not to partner with these agencies. 

Grantees’ partnerships with the juvenile justice system (JJS) were more mixed in terms of 

strength and quality. Similar to workforce development partners, JJS partners have a natural role 

in dealing with the target populations—specifically, youth transitioning from detention back to 

the public school system. However, they are not traditional (nor desirable) service providers for 

ES-3 
these youth in the way that workforce partners are (e.g., they cannot provide academic and 

employment services). This helps explain why partnerships between school districts and local 

juvenile justice systems centered on information exchange (particularly referrals); it may also 

explain why partnerships that centered on service provision were particularly challenged. 

The partnerships with law enforcement are perhaps the most disappointing of the required 

partnerships for the School District Grant. While the argument can be made that law 

enforcement should be expected to have the least intense partnerships with school districts (given 

that law enforcement is not typically involved with youth service planning), law enforcement 

was nevertheless expected to play important roles with regard to providing security (e.g., School 

Resource Officers) and intelligence (e.g., crime data). The experiences of grantees suggest that 

the “culture gap” between school districts and law enforcement may be at least partially 

responsible for the relatively weak nature of the partnerships that developed, and that bridging 

this gap may require more focused effort in future collaborative efforts. 

Required partnerships with the U.S. Attorney General’s Office generally did not yield much 

beyond shared updates on School District Grant implementation, while the involvement of the 

Mayor’s Office was more substantial in some cases (e.g., co-located staff, overlapping 

initiatives). As a required partner, the Mayor’s Office is an understandable choice given its 

position as the “CEO” of the locality as well as a leader of other, potentially overlapping 

initiatives. However, while grantees often discussed other local initiatives, there was little 

focused effort to ensure that these initiatives and the School District Grant supplemented or 

cross-fertilized one another. 

Finally, the involvement of CBOs and faith-based organizations is decidedly mixed—being 

particularly strong in only two grantee sites, and not necessarily in the design phase. This 

appears to be a missed opportunity; although these organizations are not required partners, they 

perhaps should have been, as they are often grounded in at-risk communities in a way that public 

agencies cannot be, and often bring to the table unique and specialized resources (e.g., anti-gang 

and personal development services). 

Recruitment and Enrollment 

The School District Grant aims to reach the most vulnerable youth, who have been traditionally 

underserved in public schools and in youth programs. Accordingly, this grant targets in-school 

and out-of-school youth who are at risk of court or gang involvement, youth who have 

convictions and are currently involved or have been involved in the justice system, and youth 

who are currently incarcerated or were released from incarceration within 60 days of enrollment. 

Grantees used various other criteria to define their at-risk target populations; these criteria were 

ES-4 
used to target, for example, in-school youth with high truancy rates, a need for academic 

remediation, and/or an excessive number of disciplinary referrals or suspensions. Grantees also 

aimed to serve ninth graders to provide interventions that will keep them attached to school. 

Grantees coordinated with feeder schools and key partners to identify youth from these target 

groups. 

As of December 2009, grantees had enrolled 3,765 participants—3,123 in-school youth (83 

percent) and 642 out-of-school youth (17 percent). OCPS had enrolled the largest number of 

participants, whereas MPS had enrolled the fewest. Approximately 20 percent of participants are 

youth offenders and incarcerated offenders, with OCPS serving the largest number of offenders 

(368, or 38 percent of its total youth population). 

Grantees enrolled participants at different times. Because the first year of the grant was devoted 

to grant planning, few grantees enrolled participants during that year. The Orange County school 

district was the exception to this generalization: as the first grantee to launch its programs and 

thus the first to enroll participants, OCPS had enrolled 316 youth by December 2007. Most of 

the grantees began to enroll small numbers of participants between March and June 2008. These 

data show that grantees had different timeframes and foci for their projects; these differences are 

essential for understanding the outcomes achieved. 

Overview of Programs and Services 

The School District grant supported many schools and programs in their efforts to provide 

remedial academic, credit retrieval, job preparation, subsidized employment, case management, 

and violence-prevention services to in-school and out-of-school youth. At least 80 percent of inschool youth served by the grant were served within traditional schools (18 high schools and six 

middle schools). Grantees also created five alternative schools, three of which exclusively 

targeted youth offenders transitioning from detention. Three of the newly created alternative 

schools are “comprehensive” in that students can earn degrees from the program, while the other 

two are short transitional programs. The alternative schools use a team approach to teach and 

guide youth, maintain small class sizes to ensure that students receive individualized attention, 

offer online instruction so that students can complete units at their own pace, and connect 

students to wrap-around supportive services to help facilitate their success. 

Three grantees funded specific programs for OSY. OSY programs generally serve youth age 

16–21, have a strong focus on workforce services, and have open enrollment. Grantees funded 

well-established OSY programs with strong ties to the community; this strategy reduced the 

planning and oversight requirements for the school district, facilitated OSY recruitment and 

enrollment, and provided some insurance that services would be of high quality. To aid 

ES-5 
participant screening and retention, four of the five grant-funded OSY programs established an 

enrollment process with prerequisites (e.g., completion of job readiness training) and used 

incentives for program participation and completion (e.g. gift cards and stipends). 

Grantees did not generally differentiate services for youth offenders; yet, across the board, youth 

offenders received lower per-participant instances of workforce services than at-risk youth. This 

may be because it is more difficult to place youth offenders into subsidized or unsubsidized 

employment than it is to place at-risk youth, or it may be because youth offenders are less likely 

to qualify for workforce services. 

Grantees used the grant to create more personalized academic services for at-risk and adjudicated 

ISY. In traditional school settings, some grantees (BCPSS, OCPS, SDP) supplemented existing 

academic services for students in reading, math, or other core subjects. In alternative school 

settings, grantees (MPS, OCPS, SDP) sought to change students’ perspectives of themselves as 

learners by connecting them with targeted academic support and providing opportunities to work 

on content at their own pace. 

Job preparation classes and services were the most commonly provided workforce services. 

Grantees that were successful at developing subsidized employment relied on established 

workforce partners to provide this service. Programs that tried to develop internships 

independent of a workforce agency were less successful, because they lacked the expertise and 

networks to develop these opportunities. 

Supportive services were a central aspect of grant-funded services. The quality and dedication of 

case management and counseling staff was a core asset for grant-funded programs, and 

something that youth participants consistently pointed to as a key strength. In most cases, grantfunded case management and counseling staff became core members of the school community, 

helping to improve the school climate and prevent violence within otherwise under-resourced 

schools. 

Three grantees (BCPSS, MPS, and OCPS) contracted with partners to provide gang- and 

violence-intervention services. Although these programs were launched late in the grant cycle 

and therefore do not factor strongly into initiative outcomes, they showed promise for reaching 

gang members and reducing violence. 

Outcomes 

Grantees achieved outcomes that fall into three major categories: educational, employmentrelated, and juvenile justice-related. Outcomes data for reading and math gains among grantees 

ES-6 
 

that reported this data show that approximately 40 percent of youth achieved increases of two 

grade levels in each subject. BCPSS showed the largest gain in reading and math, whereas MPS 

made small gains in these areas. It appears that BCPSS’s program was strong for several 

reasons. First, BCPSS delivered the most instances of services per participant, especially in 

reading and math remediation. Second, BCPSS’s intensive case management approach meant 

that participants in the Future Works! program received services from Futures Advocates for 

three years. 

Youth offenders—both in-school and out-of-school youth—showed noticeably lower gains in 

reading and math skills, suggesting that intensive, targeted support in basic skills remediation for 

these groups is vital. Grantees provided second chances for youth offenders by offering safe and 

nurturing environments in which they could learn and using alternative methods of instruction, 

such as on-line learning, independent study, and project-based learning. These tactics were 

intended to encourage youth offenders to remain engaged and attached to school so that they 

could succeed. 

Educational outcomes in other areas were very modest. For instance, among the three out of five 

grantees that reported the ninth-grade retention rate, there was little change in this rate from the 

grantees’ established baselines. The Baltimore district was the exception; it achieved an almost 

six-percentage increase in the ninth-grade retention rate. Further, very few grantees showed 

significant gains in the number of students attaining high school diplomas, GEDs, and 

certificates (but this is primarily because most grantees served in-school youth who have not yet 

graduated). 

Workforce outcomes were modest because most of the youth who were served by this grant are 

not yet old enough to graduate. However, about 22 percent of out-of-school youth were placed 

in unsubsidized employment. Because two grantees have not submitted outcomes data, this 

finding is preliminary. 

Out of the 615 youth offenders who enrolled in the grant-funded activities, approximately 12 

percent recidivated, a result that surpassed grantees’ target goals for reducing recidivism. 

Lastly, most of the grantees exited few participants as of winter 2010 because they are 

continuing to provide some form of follow-up support, even though this support is inconsistently 

available. The exception is CPS; a majority of participants have exited its YES program, which 

serves youth for only one year. 

ES-7 
Conclusion 

School District Grantees have accomplished a great deal with this grant. As grantees wrap up 

their projects in 2010, they are working towards institutionalizing their grant-related efforts so 

that they can be sustained beyond the life of the grant. Continued funding of some of the 

services and programs depends on whether the school districts can leverage new funding and 

whether the projects align closely with each district’s current priorities. Some districts (such as 

CPS, MPS, and OCPS) have secured district funding to continue to operate the alternative 

schools for youth offenders that were either wholly or partially funded by the School District 

Grant, because these schools filled a big service gap for youth offenders. This commitment is 

significant given the severe budget cuts that the districts faced in the 2009–2010 school year. In 

general, however, most other services that were available through this grant—such as gang 

prevention and case management—are unlikely to be sustained unless additional resources are 

secured. 

While some programs and services will be difficult to sustain in such a difficult economic 

climate, it is likely that grantees will be able to sustain the knowledge and relationships that 

resulted from the work made possible by this grant. With regard to knowledge, a number of 

grantees described how the lessons they learned from the School District Grant—e.g., the 

importance of mentoring for at-risk youth, or how to best partner with other agencies—would be 

carried forward to future endeavors. With regard to relationships, grantees are optimistic that the 

connections they made with staff from partner agencies will continue beyond the life of this 

grant and facilitate future collaborative efforts. 

In addition to taking steps to sustain some of the grant-funded project components, school 

district grantees made a number of significant accomplishments throughout the life of the grant. 

They successfully mobilized core community partners to participate in grant activities, gained 

the support of local school leaders and staff for implementing new programs or expanding 

existing ones, and provided much-needed services to some of the most vulnerable youth in their 

schools and communities. Grantees developed some noteworthy practices for reaching at-risk 

youth (including youth offenders, over-age and under-credit youth, and out-of-school youth) by 

creating alternative pathways for them to resume their education and remain attached to school 

and programs. These pathways include alternative schools and special programs that supplement 

youths’ academic schedules (examples of the latter are SDP’s Bridge and Learning-to-Work 

programs). Grant resources also reached a significant number of schools and programs, enabling 

grantee staff to serve approximately 3,765 participants in just under three years. At the same 

time, grant resources provided additional staffing to under-resourced schools and community 

programs. This grant enabled grantees to hire a total of 130 staff who provided essential services 

to students despite drastic budget cuts across grantee districts. Lastly, several grantees (BCPSS, 

ES-8 
MPS, and SDP) overcame the difficult hurdle of sharing participant data across systems by 

developing inter-agency MOUs and methods of securing parental consent. 

Although grantees achieved a great deal of success with the School District Grant and will likely 

carry the lessons they learned from this grant to other initiatives at the district level, they also 

faced significant challenges. Some of these challenges were related to the school district context, 

some to grant implementation, and others to partnerships. The school district context is an 

important factor that influenced grantees’ abilities to implement their projects. All of the school 

districts were facing severe budget cuts, which meant that in at least three districts project staff 

(including teachers) were unable to be hired in a timely manner. As a result of budget cuts and 

other factors, some schools were closed, which meant that attendance boundaries for some of the 

target schools changed. As a result, rival gangs were suddenly attending the same schools, 

thereby increasing violence in the target schools. Lastly, the economic downturn of 2009–2010 

made it difficult to place participants, especially adjudicated youth, into employment. 

Grantees also faced challenges in grant implementation. Even though grantees met their 

enrollment goals for this grant, they struggled to recruit sufficient numbers of out-of-school 

youth, despite concerted efforts to do so. To address this challenge, grantees subcontracted with 

partners who had expertise in serving out-of-school youth, such as the YO! Centers in Baltimore, 

the E3 Power Centers in Philadelphia, and the Metropolitan Orlando Urban League in Orange 

County. In addition, many grant-funded activities had low attendance. Much of this challenge 

has to do with the population that grantees are serving—youth who have historically been truant 

or disinterested in structured programs. Further, follow-up services were difficult to provide 

consistently, especially as students left the target schools where project staff worked. As a result, 

few staff offered follow-up services on a consistent basis. 

Lastly, grantees had mixed success in linking with the grant’s required partners. Grantees 

sometimes struggled to adjust to the different organizational cultures of their partners. For 

instance, some school districts had difficulty reconciling their philosophies with law enforcement 

officials’ punitive approach to dealing with youth. This philosophical/cultural difference played 

a role in the communication gaps that developed between agencies. In addition, grantees that 

hired subcontractors to deliver services at target schools and programs sometimes struggled to 

have all parties coordinate successfully with one another and with the school staff, especially 

around the scheduling of services and activities. Further, while several grantees made important 

breakthroughs in developing procedures for sharing participant data, confidentiality issues and 

data-sharing challenges continually plagued a number of grantees and partners. These 

challenges often slowed down the process of efficiently providing services to youth. 

ES-9 
Despite these challenges, school district staff and their partners were energized by the prospect 

of continuing to serve the most vulnerable youth through the alternative schools that were 

developed with the generous support from this grant. Grantees have already begun to think 

about how to make use of the lessons they learned from this grant and are excited to continue the 

momentum that has been created by the School District Grant. 

ES-10 
I. INTRODUCTION 

In 2007, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) provided funding in the form of the School 

District Grant to five school districts to enable them to improve services to youth who are 

involved, have been involved, or are at-risk of involvement with gangs or the juvenile justice 

system. These school districts (the grantees) are the Baltimore City Public School System 

(BCPSS), Chicago Public Schools (CPS), Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS), the Orange County 

Public School System (OCPS), and the School District of Philadelphia (SDP). The grantees are 

using the funding to develop a variety of educational, employment, and violence-prevention 

strategies designed to increase academic performance, lower the number of dropouts, and reduce 

youth involvement in crime and gangs. DOL contracted with Social Policy Research Associates 

(SPR) to evaluate how these five school districts have designed and implemented their programs 

and services and to examine the outcomes that resulted from these efforts. This Final Report on 

School-District-Based Strategies for Reducing Youth Involvement in Gangs and Violent Crime 

summarizes findings from a three-year evaluation that included three rounds of site visits to each 

of the five grantees and an analysis of management information systems (MIS) data collected by 

the grantees. In this chapter, we provide an overview of the evaluation and the framework that 

guided the project, describe the research questions, the data collection methods and our approach 

to data analysis. 

Overview of the Evaluation 

This evaluation is an implementation study, relying heavily on qualitative data gathered from 

three rounds of site visits to each grantee. The primary goal of this evaluation is to assess the 

design and implementation experience of the five school districts that received funding. Thus, 

the evaluation identifies common patterns and themes and summarizes what grantee staff and 

partners believe to be important for improving youth’s academic performance, reducing youth 

violence and gang involvement, and preparing youth for the workforce. 

This evaluation is guided by a conceptual framework that focuses on several key aspects of the 

initiative, including the context in which grantees operate their projects, the partners that are 

involved, the grantees’ implementation experience, and their outputs and outcomes. We 

I-1 
presented the conceptual framework in the Design and Interim Reports, and summarize its key 

portions below. 

	 Community context. The evaluation examines both the school and community 

contexts, to understand how these factors influence grantees’ implementation 

experiences and students’ engagement in school-based interventions. The school 

context includes the presence of enrichment activities, the degree of parent 

involvement, the quality of teaching, and linkages with community organizations. 

We also examine the community factors that are external to the school, including 

the presence of crime and gangs and employment opportunities. 

	 Partnership model. An important goal of this initiative is to promote strong 

partnerships between the school districts and community agencies and 

organizations, including the workforce investment system, the Mayor’s Office in 

each city, the juvenile justice system, and other community partners. We 

examined core features of the partnerships that have been developed in order to 

assess grantees’ experiences mobilizing partners, coordinating referrals, and 

coordinating grant activities. 

	 Grant implementation. A core feature of the evaluation is an examination of 

grantees’ implementation experiences, including the ways in which they identified 

and recruited the most needy participants, their assessment and enrollment 

processes, and their approaches to serving youth and the quality of grant-funded 

services that were available through target schools and community programs. 

	 Outputs and outcomes. The context in which grantees operate, the partnerships 

that they formed, and their implementation experiences lead to participant 

outcomes. Although this evaluation is not designed to capture long-term
 

outcomes, we are documenting the intermediate outcomes that grantees are
 

achieving with regard to education, employment, and juvenile justice 

involvement. This study does not attempt to discern the impacts of grant-funded 

services on youth outcomes. Rather, it identifies trends and patterns across the 

five grantees and summarizes grantees’ approaches to improving educational and 

workforce outcomes of target youth. 

Research Questions and Overview of Report 

The framework described above serves as the basis for the major research questions for this 

project. A modified list of research questions, which are mapped to the chapters in this report, is 

included below. For a complete list of research questions, see Appendix A. 

I-2 
Chapter III: 

Overview of 

Grantees 

 What are the organizational and operational models for providing services? What 

challenges did grantees experience in implementing these models? 

 What is the leadership/management structure of the grant, including the areas of key staff 

and budget? What methods are used to manage the program and coordinate contracts 

among partners? 

 What is the scope of the program (e.g., district-wide, several high schools, one high school; 

expected number of participants)? 

Chapter IV: 

Partnership Models  Who are the key partners in this effort (required and non-required)? How were they 

selected and mobilized? What are their specific roles in this project? 

 What partnership arrangements have been established and how are resources being 

leveraged to achieve the grant’s objectives? 

 What types of linkages have been established between the grantee and the local juvenile 

justice system, including the police department? What types of linkages have been 

established with other required partners—the city’s Mayor’s Office, the local workforce 

investment board, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office? 

 What partnership models are effective in designing and implementing an initiative that aims 

to reduce dropouts and youth involvement in crime/gangs? 

 What have been the barriers and best practices for inter-partner communication and 

coordination (different philosophies toward youth, MIS issues, etc.)? 

 What have been the partnership-level outcomes of the grant project? 

Chapter V: 

Recruitment and 

Enrollment 

 How are youth recruited and/or identified for services? 

 How effective are outreach and recruitment services for in-school and out-of-school 

participants? For at-risk and adjudicated youth? For younger and older youth? 

Chapter VI: 

Services for InSchool- and Out-ofSchool Youth 

 What is the full range of education, employment, gang prevention, and supportive services 

available to youth, and how do they vary by status (e.g., younger vs. older youth, at-risk vs. 

adjudicated)? 

 What is the proportion of participants who take part in the various education, employment, 

gang reduction, and supportive services? 

 What practices are successful for serving in-school and out-of-school youth? 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Exhibit I-1: 

Research Questions and Overview of Final Report 

Chapter Research Questions 

Chapter II:  What contextual factors are important for understanding the design, implementation, and 

Community Context outcomes for the grants? 

Chapter VII: Youth 

Outcomes  What are the characteristics of participants enrolled in the program? 

 What education, employment, and justice outcomes have program participants achieved? 

 To what extent are recidivism rates lower? 

 How do outcomes vary by program design and implementation elements? 

 How do outcomes vary by different types of participants (e.g., at-risk vs. adjudicated youth, 

younger youth vs. older youth)? 

 Have there been any significant unanticipated outcomes for participants? 

 What are the key characteristics of successful approaches for reducing youth involvement 

in gangs/crime and preventing dropouts? 

I-3 
 

 

 How much variation is there in overall grantee performance after considering differences in 

local context and participant characteristics? 

Chapter VIII: 

Conclusion  What are strategies to sustain grant-funded services? What have been the most significant 

accomplishments that grantees achieved through this grant? What are they major 

challenges that grantees and partners have faced? What strategies were used to 

overcome these challenges, and with what success? 

Data Collection Methods 

This evaluation draws primarily on qualitative data to understand the ways in which grantees 

planned, designed, and implemented their grants. Qualitative data is drawn from three rounds of 

site visits to each grantee. In addition, we examined data from the MIS to summarize youth 

characteristics, the services received by youth, and grantee outcomes. Below we provide a brief 

overview of these data collection methods. 

Site Visits 

Three rounds of site visits were conducted to capture the contextual variables described above, 

the approaches and interventions that grantees implemented, and the barriers and facilitators to 

project implementation. The first round of visits was conducted in the spring 2008; the second 

of round of visits was conducted in the fall 2008; and the third round of visits was conducted in 

the fall and winter of 2009–2010. The first round focused on the grantees’ planning and design 

phase, which included the documentation of the goals and objectives of the projects and the key 

partners that were involved in them. The second round focused on project implementation, 

which included the topics of recruitment, assessment, and enrollment procedures; the specific 

services available; the partnerships developed; and the key challenges and facilitators that may 

have affected the grantees’ implementation experiences. The third round continued to document 

the implementation of key services and included an examination of grantee and partner outcomes 

and plans for sustainability. 

Each round of site visits lasted three and a half days. In general, research staff spent 

approximately half of their time in the target schools and programs to understand the 

interventions that were developed through the DOL grant. The remainder of the time was spent 

interviewing youth and partners. Individuals in the following roles were interviewed during each 

round of site visits: 

	 School district personnel, the grant administrator, and school staff. We 

interviewed principals, teachers, case managers/counselors, career specialists, 

outreach/intake/recruitment staff, and others to obtain a good understanding of 

how the projects were developed, administered and managed. These interviews 

solicited information on organizational and governance issues, as well as staffing 

and leadership. We asked these respondents about several programmatic issues: 

I-4 
(1) how youth access services, (2) how services are coordinated with those 

available through the workforce and justice systems (e.g., aftercare and alternative 

sentencing), (3) how services are tailored for youth offenders, and (4) how 

services are delivered (e.g., in-house, through referrals, or a combination of both). 

	 Community partners. We interviewed a number of relevant partners, including 

service providers, workforce development partners, juvenile justice staff, 

supportive service providers, law enforcement officials, and other communitybased organizations, to understand procedures for communication and 

coordination and the partners’ roles in project design and service delivery. 

Further, research staff observed project activities and classrooms where interventions were being 

held. At the target schools, research staff observed student interactions in the hallways during 

passing time and during lunchtime, and teacher and student interactions in the classrooms and 

program activities. Observations allowed us to get a sense of the school climate, including the 

interactions between students and teachers and between students and student resource officers. 

These observations enabled us to better understand the factors that may contribute to school 

violence and youth crime/violence occurring at the schools. 

We visited approximately 33 schools and programs, and conducted 292 in-person interviews of 

grantee, project, and partner staff across the five grantees throughout the course of this 

evaluation. Appendix B lists the schools and programs that were visited during each round of 

visits. 

The schools and programs we visited were selected to represent the grantees’ overall service 

strategy. We tried to visit the same schools or programs in each round of visits. In some grantee 

sites, we visited different schools or programs in the second and/or third site visit because 

services were not yet launched at the time of the first site visit. At the same time, we did not 

revisit some of the schools that we visited in the first visit either because the grantee shifted its 

program structure or because we selected schools or programs that were more representative of 

grantees’ service designs. 

Case Study Youth 

We collected in-depth, individual-level data on 25 case study youth. Four to five youth, 

representing both the in-school and out-of-school populations, were interviewed in each grantee 

community, for a total of 25 case study youth. These youth were selected purposively by the 

target school and program staff based on our recommendation that the youth represent the 

diversity of participants that they are serving. The youth case-study subjects, therefore, were not 

randomly selected. These interviews focused on youths’ educational experiences, contact with 

the juvenile justice system, perspectives on community influences (including the prevalence of 

I-5 
 

 

 

gangs), and family influences. We also asked youth to describe and assess the quality and 

adequacy of the services received through the school and project. These interviews were 

intended to provide rich stories of youths’ experiences in the program interventions that would 

illustrate the effects of grantees’ approaches and their successes and challenges. Exhibit I-2 

summarizes the number of youth who were interviewed in each round of site visits. 

We conducted in-depth interviews with the youth during each round of site visits.1 During these 

interviews, youth were asked to describe and assess the quality and adequacy of the services they 

received at their school or through their program. We made an effort to interview the same 

youth during each round of site visits in order to track youths’ progress over time. However, this 

was not always possible because some of the youth moved out of the area, enrolled in a different 

school, were incarcerated, and/or could not be located during subsequent rounds of site visits. 

As a result, not all 25 youth were interviewed in three rounds of visits; nine youth were 

interviewed twice and six youth were interviewed three times. 

Exhibit I-2: 

Number of Youth Participating in Case Study Interviews
 

Total Number of 

Round One Round Two Round Three Case Study 

Site Visit Site Visit Site Visit Youth2 

BCPSS 

CPS 

MPS 

OCPS 

SDP 

ISY 

0 

0 

2 

5 

3 

OSY 

0 

0 

0 

0 

1 

ISY OSY ISY

2 

4 

1 

3 

2 

OSY 

0 

0 

1 

0 

1 

3 

6 

4 

5 

7 

2 1 

6 0 

2 2 

4 0 

3 2 

Total 9 1 17 5 12 2 25 

In addition to gathering data from the interviews themselves, we gathered data from academic 

and/or program files for all 25 case study youth. These files included information about youths’ 

academic performance, such as their grades and GPA; attendance, such as absences and tardies; 

and behavioral incidents, such as suspensions, fights, and other infractions. Data about case 

1	 We did not interview youth at BCPSS and CPS during the Round 1 site visits because the grantees had not yet 

enrolled any youth. 

2	 The total number of youth is a tally of all the unique individuals who were interviewed. 

I-6 
study youth were also gathered from checklists that site visitors completed about each youth 

based on the information obtained during interviews and from case files. These data are used to 

learn about the services that youth received, their family and housing situations, their contact 

with law enforcement, their involvement in gangs, and changes in their academic performance 

and behavioral incidents throughout the life of the grant. A summary of the characteristics of the 

youth participating in the case studies is included in Chapter VII. 

Quantitative Data 

The second primary data collection and analysis effort for this evaluation was quantitative in 

nature. Specifically, we analyzed grantees’ quarterly MIS data submissions and social indicator 

data, including youth arrest data and dropout data. 

MIS Data 

Grantees collected MIS data on participants starting in the last quarter of 2007 (October to 

December).3 Each quarter, demographic data about enrolled youth were compiled and entered 

into an Excel template that was created for the grant. The template is organized to report on 

program participants in three categories: at-risk of court/gang involvement, offender, and 

incarcerated offender. Youth are further divided into in-school and out-of-school subcategories. The template is also divided into three major sections: enrollment data, project 

activities, and outcome information. Grantees submitted these aggregate-level participation data 

to DOL on a quarterly basis. 

Our analysis of the grantee quarterly report data is limited considerably by the fact that grantees 

submitted only aggregate-level data due to various privacy and data collection concerns. 

Without individual-level data, we cannot conduct an outcomes analysis that would allow us to 

explore the factors that affect participants’ outcomes, such as demographic attributes and 

services received. Thus, we use this program report data to help us understand broad patterns of 

enrollment, implementation, and outcomes at each grantee site, as well as to compare patterns 

among grantee sites. For example, in terms of enrollment, we examined each grantee’s trends in 

enrolling youth of particular racial/ethnic backgrounds, age groups, living arrangements, atrisk/offender status, gang experience, and school status (in-school versus out-of school). In 

terms of outcomes, we analyzed grantee trends in reading and math scores, as well as in various 

educational and workforce achievements, such as the number of participants securing a high 

school diploma or first-time unsubsidized employment. We examined how these numbers vary 

by participant type (e.g., at-risk/offender status, in-school/out-of-school status). 

I-7 
 

 

We also examine outcomes achieved by the case study students—based on in-depth interviews 

and case file reviews—to understand the changes in their academic progress, attendance, and 

behavior. Where possible, we weave in the outcome stories of the case study youth to illustrate 

the kinds of outcomes achieved as a result of this grant. 

Youth Arrest Data 

We gathered social indicator data on youth arrests in the areas where the majority of the students 

reside. The data was collected from local arrest records completed by local police departments. 

All states and localities getting federal funds use the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) System to 

classify and report offenses. Building off the UCR categories, we analyzed youth crime data in 

two major categories—property crime and violent crime.4 The data were then aggregated and 

analyzed to further contextualize the communities in which the participants live and provide 

additional information about the community-level factors that may affect their success in the 

interventions. 

The ways in which local areas enter crime data differ widely. Typically, arrests are recorded by 

street address, ZIP code, scout car, and/or precinct number. The address recorded in these data 

(and its associated zip code/census tract) most often represents where an arrest occurred; 

however, it also may signify where the crime occurred or, in a few instances, the place of 

residence of the perpetrator. Thus, the youth arrest data in this report reflect only the fact that 

arrests were made in the area(s) of interest, not necessarily that the youth arrested were from the 

area(s). Youth arrest data in this report were collected for three years—2006, 2007, and 2008. 

These data are summarized in Chapter II. 

In addition, we collected high school dropout data for each of the five school districts as a whole, 

as well as for those individual schools that are participating in the grant, in order to get a broad 

sense of dropout trends in the local community. The primary purpose of collecting dropout data 

is to document changes within a particular grantee site as a part of the community context, rather 

than to compare one grantee site against others. These data—presented in Chapter III—are 

collected from state department of education websites or local district data systems for the period 

covering the 2006–2007 school year until the 2009–2010 school year. 

The analysis of the social indicator data helps illustrate changes in each grantee’s community 

context over time, with particular regard to increases or decreases in the high school dropout rate 

However, because of differing start dates, not all grantees had data to report at that time. 

I-8 

3 
 

 

and number of youth arrests. As discussed in Chapter II, these data are useful only for 

conveying the larger environments in which the grantees are operating; it cannot be used to make 

causal attributions (e.g., a reduced number of youth arrests attributed to the success of grantee 

programming). 

Violent crime refers to crimes that involve aggravated assault, robbery, rape or murder. Property crime refers to 

crimes that involve burglary, theft, or larceny. 

I-9 

4 
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II. COMMUNITY CONTEXT 

In this chapter, we describe the community-level factors that may have affected the ability of the 

grantees to meet their goals. Specifically, we discuss the labor market conditions and the 

presence of youth crime and gang activity in the grantee cities. 

Labor Market Conditions 

One of the goals of the School District Grant is to engage youth in workforce services so that 

they are sufficiently prepared to enter the workforce. The labor market conditions in each 

grantee city, therefore, are an important external variable that may influence the grantee’s ability 

to place youth in unsubsidized employment. 

A primary indicator of labor market conditions is the unemployment rate. Exhibit II-1 shows, 

for each grantee city and the U.S. as a whole, the average 2006–2008 unemployment rates for 

16- to 19-year-olds, 20- to 24-year-olds, and the working-age population overall. 

As shown in this exhibit, all grantee cities have unemployment rates higher than the national 

average. Orlando (the largest city in Orange County Public Schools) has the lowest 

unemployment rate of all the cities, at 7.2 percent, while Baltimore has the highest 

unemployment rate, at 18.1 percent. In three of the cities (Baltimore, Milwaukee, and 

Philadelphia), the citywide unemployment rate is 10 percent or higher. Although not shown in 

the exhibit, unemployment rates have steadily increased since 2008, indicating that the 

unemployment problem in these cities is now even more pronounced than the exhibit suggests. 

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics,1 the national unemployment rate grew by more than 

one-third between 2008 and 2009. A rate of growth in unemployment at least this high was felt 

in all grantee cities except Philadelphia, where unemployment grew by just under one-third. In 

Orlando, unemployment increased 45 percent between 2008 and 2009. 

Bureau of Labor Statistics – Unemployment Tables 

II-1 

1 
 

 

Exhibit II-1: 

Youth Unemployment Rates in Grantee Cities2
 

2006–2008 

The unemployment rate for youth from 16 to 19 years old—the age group that represents the 

largest number of participants served through the School District Grant—is higher than the 

national average of 21.2 percent in all the grantee cities, and higher than 30 percent in four out of 

the five cities. The unemployment rate for 20- to 24-year-olds—some of whom are included in 

the School District Grant’s target population—is also especially high in the grantee cities, 

ranging from 10.3 percent in Orlando to 19.7 percent in Philadelphia. In four out of the five 

grantee cities, the unemployment rate for the 20- to 24-year-old age group is higher than the 

national average of 11.2 percent. Although data showing the most recent trends in youth 

unemployment are not available, site visit respondents noted that unemployment rates for youth 

were likely higher in 2009 than they were in previous years, due to the recession. Our interviews 

with grantees and program staff confirm that even for youth actively seeking employment, 

finding a job has proven to be very difficult. One 16-year-old described his experience looking 

for employment: 

I tried, but mostly they just turned me down...Most of the stuff they have 

on the paper, I don’t have...It’s mostly do I have experience with grills or 

cleaning or stuff like that. 

2006-2008 American Community Survey 3-Year Estimates 

II-2 

2 
 

 

 

High unemployment rates have not only made it extremely difficult for youth to find jobs on 

their own, they have also made it difficult for job developers to find jobs and internships in 

which to place youth. One program manager explained the situation: 

As we’ve looked at ways to get young people employed...[one of things 

we’ve] struggled with is that our young people are competing for jobs with 

people who’ve been laid off who have a track record of being employed, 

showing up on time, but have a mortgage to pay so will work at 

McDonald’s, Target, Wal-Mart, some of the jobs that our young people 

would typically get their foot in the door to start a career path. 

Overall, the current labor market conditions have made it extremely difficult for youth to find 

jobs, even with job readiness training and the support of job developers. This is a key contextual 

factor to consider when examining the workforce outcomes in Chapter VII. 

Youth Crime 

DOL seeks to reduce youth crime and gang involvement in the areas where the majority of youth 

live. According to the performance goals DOL established for this grant, grantees were each 

expected to reduce established gang and crime baselines by 20 percent by the end of the project’s 

first 12 months. SPR staff collected social indicator data in each of the five grantee communities 

on youth arrests in two categories—violent crime and property crime—to see whether there were 

changes in youth arrests over time.3 These data are intended to help illustrate the community 

contexts in which grantees are operating their projects; the data are not meant to be used to make 

causal attributions (e.g., a reduced number of youth arrests attributed to the success of grantee 

programming). As mentioned above, we focused the data collection in geographic areas in 

which the majority of target students lived. These data were derived from local arrest records 

completed by police officers of local police departments. We requested data from local law 

enforcement agencies to gather youth arrest data by police beat or district and mapped these data 

to the zip codes where the majority of participants lived. These data reflect only the fact that 

arrests were made in the area(s) of interest, not necessarily that the youth arrested were from the 

area(s). Although juvenile arrests are the most readily available measure of youth crime, it is 

also an imperfect measure. Juvenile arrests tend to over-estimate the extent to which youth are 

involved in crimes relative to adults because youth are more likely than adults to be detained for 

low-level offenses, get multiple arrests for a single crime, and to be cleared of their offenses. 

Violent crime refers to crimes that involve aggravated assault, robbery, rape, or murder. Property crime refers to 

crimes that involve burglary, theft, or larceny. 

II-3 

3 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The evaluation was also charged with collecting data on youth gang-related crimes. These data 

are difficult to collect for several reasons. The UCR System has not designated specific 

categories for some common youth offenses, including gang-related violence. As a result, SPR 

staff were unable to isolate youth arrest data specifically concerned with gang-related violence. 

Because of this challenge, SPR staff learned about youth gang activity from local law 

enforcement officials, who collect information about the membership, activities, and strength of 

various gangs in their jurisdictions. Although this information paints a good picture of youth 

gang activity, it is often anecdotal and descriptive, is not standardized, and is collected 

differently across the five grantee cities. 

Below we describe the youth arrest data for all grantees from 2006–2008. We then describe the 

patterns of youth arrest and gang activity in each grantee city. 

Youth Arrests Across Grantees 

Exhibit II-2 summarizes the number of youth arrests for property and violent crime between 

2006 and 2008. Because the School District Grant was awarded in 2007, the evaluation tracked 

the changes in youth arrests between 2006 and 2008. These data show that there has been a 

decline in youth arrests in three out of the five cities. Baltimore showed the largest decline in 

youth arrests for both property crime (27 percent) and violent crime (28 percent). Youth arrests 

in Milwaukee and Orange County also decreased between 2006 and 2008. 

Exhibit II-2: 

 Youth Arrests for Property Crimes and Violent Crimes in Grantee Cities 

2006 to 20084
 

2006 2007 2008 

% Change 2006– 

2008 

Property Violent Property Violent Property Violent Property Violent 

Baltimore 1413 772 1195 625 1029 556 -27.2% -28.0% 

Chicago 3413 7788 3200 7596 3553 8459 4.1% 8.6% 

Milwaukee 829 905 837 808 751 768 -9.4% -15.1% 

Orange 

County5 1686 1539 1396 -17.2% 

Philadelphia 3870 3447 3532 3374 4721 3861 22.0% 12.0% 

4	 The age range for what is considered juvenile varies widely by city. Baltimore: 8 to 17; Chicago: 14 to 21; 

Milwaukee and Orange County: 17 and under; Philadelphia: 21 and under. 

5	 Orange County does not break out its youth arrests by crime category. 

II-4 
 

 

There are likely multiple factors responsible for the decrease in youth arrests observed in 

Baltimore, Milwaukee, and Orange County, including declining violence associated with drug 

gangs, effective community-oriented law enforcement efforts, and the existence of numerous 

school and community-based efforts to prevent violence.6 Several communities in Milwaukee, 

for instance, have been actively organizing to address youth crime, and several neighborhoods 

have developed community-based programs to specifically address gang violence. Other factors, 

such as fluctuations in the juvenile population, may also be in play, but it should be noted that 

the youth population increased in these three cities during the period in question. 

Chicago and Philadelphia, in contrast, are experiencing a steady increase in the number of youth 

arrests for both property and violent crime. In Philadelphia, arrests for violent crimes increased 

by 22 percent, the largest increase among the grantee cities. Chicago’s increase in the number of 

youth arrests was moderate by comparison, but it was an increase nonetheless. As explained 

below, some of these arrests are tied to gang-related crimes, which are on the rise in Chicago. 

The next section describes youth arrest patterns and gang activity in each grantee city. Included 

is this section is a map of each city that shows the changes in youth arrests by geographic area 

between 2006 and 2008. 

Baltimore 

The overall crime rate has decreased in Baltimore since the start of the grant. At the same time, 

however, respondents noted an increasing prevalence of activity associated with highly systemic 

gangs such as the Bloods and the Crips. 

Juvenile Arrests 

The number of juvenile arrests in Baltimore decreased steadily between 2006 and 2008. As 

shown in Exhibit II-2, the number of youth arrests for property and violent crimes decreased by 

about 10 percent in most of the city’s zip codes. The exceptions were in areas of north Baltimore 

and the areas around the target schools for this grant—Forest Park High School (HS) and 

Garrison Middle School (MS), where property crimes increased by more than 10 percent. 

In general, law enforcement officials attribute citywide decreases in crime to several tactics, 

including the creation of the Gun Offender Registry Unit in 2008. This unit is the only one of its 

kind in the State of Maryland and is modeled after the concept of requiring sex offenders to 

register with police departments so they can be monitored. In this case, offenders who have been 

Jeffrey Butts, “Youth Crime Drop.” Urban Institute, December 2000. 

II-5 

6 
convicted of certain gun crimes are required to register with the Baltimore Police Department. 

Since its inception, the Gun Offender Registry Unit has registered more than 500 gun offenders, 

nine of whom have violated the terms of their registration. The city also continues to build 

community linkages to improve the communication and understanding between community 

members and police officers. For instance, the city hosted a National Night Out in 2008, in 

which police officers “took to the streets” to meet community members. 

II-6 
Exhibit II-3: Percent Change in Juvenile Crime from 2006 to 2008 by Zip Code in Baltim

Property Crime Violent Crime 

II-7
 

 

 

 

 

 

Gangs 

Despite the decreases in youth crime, Baltimore is experiencing an increase in violent and illegal 

activity from large, organized, nationally syndicated gangs such as the Bloods and the Crips. 

Respondents noted that gang presence grew from neighborhood “crews” and “sets” in the early 

1990s to larger organized gangs by 2003–2004. By 2006, the Baltimore Police Department 

estimated that the city had about 1,300 street gang members, including more than 400 Bloods 

and 100 Crips whose ages ranged from the early teens to the mid-thirties.7 Juvenile gangs are 

present in many of Baltimore’s public schools. In 2006, the Baltimore City School Police 

estimated that there were more than 50 different gangs in the public schools, comprising 450 to 

500 youth members.8 

Gang activity has increased significantly since 2006. Based on current estimates, there are 

approximately 45 known criminal street gangs with more than 1,800 members, including more 

than 900 Blood and 300 Crips members. Some of these gangs are primarily youth gangs and 

others are more highly organized drug gangs. The number of youth gangs has risen since 2006; 

officials estimate that there are approximately 60 different gangs in the high schools and 50 in 

the middle schools and that these gangs boast about 1,200 members. In addition, there are 150 

known members of motorcycle gangs and 250 gang members in the Baltimore City Detention 

Center.9

 One 22-year-old out-of-school youth commented on the prevalence of gangs around 

him: 

They have Purple City. They have Bloods. They have Crips. It’s really a 

dominant thing because everybody wants to rep a certain territory. They 

feel like if you in a gang, it’s a unity I guess. But it’s not really a unity 

because they kill each other and they kill people for no reason. 

Chicago 

The city of Chicago and its public schools have been plagued by continued violence and gang 

activity since the beginning of the grant period. Law enforcement officials estimate that about 

55 percent of the crimes in Chicago are committed by youth, many of whom attend Chicago 

Public Schools. During the 2008–2009 school year, 36 Chicago public school students were 

killed, up from 31 during the 2007–2008 school year and 27 during the 2006–2007 school year. 

7	 The Baltimore City Criminal Justice Coordinating Council. “The Baltimore City Gang Violence Reduction 

Plan,” November 15, 2006. 

8	 Ibid. 

9	 http://gangs.umd.edu/wfrmByLocationDetail.aspx?county=Baltimore%20City. Retrieved on April 14, 2010. 

II-8 
 

 

These murders tend to happen on the way to or from school and are turf- or gang-related. As of 

April 2010, 24 public school students had been killed during the year, a record high number for a 

four-month period.10 

As shown in Exhibit II-4, statistics from the CPD about youth violence show an increase in 

youth arrests during the last three years. Between 2007 and 2008 alone, there was a 15 percent 

increase in homicides. We provide more details about these crime trends below. 

Youth Arrests 

As shown in Exhibit II-4, youth arrests for both property and violent crime have increased in 

most areas of the city, especially in the areas where the majority of students live, which in 

Chicago is also where they attend school. Arrests for property crimes have increased by more 

than 10 percent in most of the areas surrounding the target schools. Exhibit II-4 shows that there 

has also been an increase in youth arrests for violent crime throughout the city, but this increase 

is not as great that for property crime. 

According to site visit respondents, much of the violence near Chicago schools has to do with 

passage to and from school. The problem of “safe passage” came to national attention in 

September 2009 when an honors student was beaten to death a half-mile from Fenger HS, one of 

the schools targeted by this grant. According to the police, the fight was the result of ongoing 

tensions between youth from a particular housing project, many of whom transferred to Fenger 

HS after their neighborhood school was converted into a military academy. As a result of this 

incident and others, students and parents at this school see the trip to and from school as laden 

with potential danger. Respondents reported that this has affected the attendance of after-school 

grant-funded activities, including the School District Grant-funded YES project. One 15 yearold tenth grader explained his view of the situation: 

I feel like it’s hard for people to go to school and actually get an 

education with all this happening around. Some kids are transferring 

because they’re scared to come to school, like what happened to that boy 

at Fenger High School. People feel unsafe because of all the things that’s 

going on. 

10 Ibid. 

II-9 
Exhibit II-4: Percent Change in Juvenile Crime from 2006 to 2008 by Police District in Chi

Property Crime Violent Crime 

II-10
 

 

 

 

Gangs 

Respondents noted that much of the youth violence in Chicago stems from gang wars. The 

Chicago Police Department estimates that there are approximately 70 to 100 different gangs in 

the Chicago metropolitan area, including the Latin Kings, Black Gangster Disciples Nation, 

Latin Disciples, and Vice Lords, among many others. Police estimate that there are more than 

100,000 gang members in Chicago.11 

Grantee staff report that gang violence has increased since they received the DOL grant. They 

attribute this increase to several factors. First, a number of neighborhood schools have recently 

closed, forcing students to travel outside their neighborhood boundaries and into gang territory. 

As a result, members of rival gangs are now attending the same schools. In addition, 

respondents attributed the upswing in crime and violence to the emergence of new, “rogue” 

gangs. Chicago has historically had several major gangs with established rivalries and 

relationships that each control a certain territory. These newer gangs have disrupted the 

established boundaries and relationships of the older major gangs, making it more difficult for 

police to predict when gang violence will occur. As a result, grantee staff think it is unrealistic to 

expect youth violence to decrease as a result of this grant. As one staff said, “We chose six 

schools in six tough areas. We can’t control whether a kid will shoot someone a block away.” 

Chicago is taking steps to address youth violence, however. The new superintendent, Ron 

Huberman, has a plan for ending youth violence that involves counselors and social workers in 

the most dangerous public high schools. He wants to create a “culture of calm” in the schools by 

retraining security guards and by de-emphasizing suspensions and expulsion in favor of peer 

mediation. The district is also coordinating with police districts to ensure safe passage for 

students as they travel between home and school. As an example of the coordination that is 

occurring citywide, grantee staff are participating in a local task force on how to create safe 

passage for students, focusing specifically on improving communication and responses to the 

problems that arise in areas surrounding the school. For example, the representative from the 

park district assured CPS that it had space set aside for afterschool programs and hired a parttime police officer to provide extra support so that students could hang out in the parks after 

school. In addition, the representative from the Chicago Transit Authority was able to add more 

buses to the routes serving high-need schools so that students did not have to wait too long for 

buses or get on crowded buses. This representative ensured that the bus for Dyett HS, one of the 

11 Estimate of Chicago gang members provided by U.S. Department of Justice in 2008. Reference found at: 

http://www.usdoj.gov/ndic/pubs27/27612/estimate.htm 

II-11 
target schools, would go straight to the front of the school to pick up students and run express 

through the parks and neighborhoods of rival schools in order to avoid potential gang conflict. 

Milwaukee 

According to respondents, many communities throughout the city of Milwaukee are struggling 

with high unemployment, poverty, the presence of gangs, and the drug activity that is associated 

with gangs. Despite these challenges, crime in the city as a whole has decreased over the past 

three years. However, respondents noted that some parts of the city continue to battle with youth 

crime and the presence of youth gangs that are growing in membership. 

Youth Arrests 

The number of youth arrests for property and violent crime decreased in most areas of the city— 

including the areas surrounding most of the target schools—by at least 10 percent between 2006 

and 2008. One exception is the area north of the city, where property crime increased by more 

than 10 percent. This area, one of the most impoverished parts of the city, is also where one of 

the target schools, James Madison HS, is located. This school was closed in 2008 due to 

persistently low academic performance and was reopened in 2009 as a charter school. 

II-12 
Exhibit II-5: Percent Change in Juvenile Crime from 2006 to 2008 by Police District in Milw

Property Crime Violent Crime 

II-13
 

 

 

 

 

Gangs 

Gangs and gang-related violent crimes are challenges that continue to affect communities and 

schools throughout the city of Milwaukee. Respondents reported that a number of gangs 

prevalent in the city of Chicago have expanded to the Milwaukee area, and have continued to 

grow. Known gangs include The Latin Kings, Gangsta Disciples, Mexican Potsy, Black Stone 

Angels (formerly known as Brothers of the Struggle), Vice Lords, Cobras, and El Ruckins. A 

number of small gangs have grown out of these larger gangs, further expanding the gang 

networks. Respondents explained that the majority of the Latin gangs are located on the south 

side of Milwaukee, near target schools South Division High School and Bradley Tech, while the 

majority of the black gangs are located on the north side, near target schools North Division 

High School/Transition High School. 

As a result of the large number of gangs throughout the city, youth experience some territorial 

issues in their neighborhoods. Youth respondents indicated that neighborhood cliques such as 

the “4 Boys” and “Trey’s” commit most of the crimes in order to claim and protect their 

territory. 

To address youth crime, the city has selected some of the “hot spots” where most of the crimes 

occur for participation in the city’s Safe Streets Common Ground Initiative.12 These “hot spots” 

include areas where a few target schools are located. In addition, several communities with gang 

issues have begun organizing a number of community coalitions and neighborhood block clubs, 

often in collaboration with faith-based organizations, law enforcement, and other communitybased organizations. 

Orange County 

Crime in Orange County and the Orlando area has reportedly gone down. According to the FBI, 

Orlando violent crime rates are down 30 percent and homicide is down 43 percent in 2009. 

Although Orlando had 127 murders in 2008—a record high—the number of murders dropped 

back down to 74 in 2009.13 

12 This local initiative was implemented in December of 2006 as part of the U.S. Department of Justice Project 

Safe Neighborhoods program to address gang violence in the city of Milwaukee. The idea is that Milwaukee 

can reduce its violence and rebuild its community by finding one place from which law enforcement, the faith 

community, prosecutors, elected officials, residents, and community-based organizations can stand and work 

together. Funds are being used in two north and south side Milwaukee Police Districts where gang crime and 

associated violence are most severe. 

13 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orlando,_Florida 

II-14 
While juveniles commit few of the murders in Orange County, according to respondents, most 

violent crime happens in the neighborhoods where target schools are located. Murder hot spots 

include the Parramore and Pine Hills areas, both of which are served by the grant. A couple of 

students noted that there was a drop in crime over the last several years, due primarily to an 

increase in police presence. One case study student described the change: 

In the area that I live, it used to be one of the most violent areas to live—
 

but now they have a police officer right at the entrance—so violence has 

died down. 

Youth Arrests 

Youth arrest data for Orange County differs from the data collected from other grantee cities in 

two respects. First, Orange County provided only youth crime data in the aggregate, rather than 

by type of arrest (property or violent crime). Second, despite multiple requests, we did not 

receive the zip codes for where the majority of students live. As a result, Exhibit II-5 shows only 

the overall youth crime patterns throughout the city. The data provided by the county indicate 

that juvenile crime in the areas surrounding the target schools has dropped over the last three 

years by at least 10 percent. 

II-15 
Exhibit II-6: Percent Change in Juvenile Crime from 2006 to 2008 by Police District in Orange 

II-16
Gangs 

Gang activity in Orange County includes both entrenched multi-generational gang activity and 

less serious and informal “gang” activity on the part of disenfranchised youth. Respondents 

identified at least eight large gangs in Orlando; these include the Latin Kings, the Pine Hill Gang, 

the Mercy Hills Drive gang, the Snakes, and the L-Dogs, as well as a number of smaller gangs. 

According to respondents, violence has increased as gangs have become more prevalent. As 

reported above, the number of murders decreased in 2009, implying perhaps a drop also in 

organized gang activity. Gangs continue to be an issue, however. For instance, on February 2, 

2010, the FBI collaborated with Orlando County police to arrest multiple members of the Latin 

Kings in Orlando. 

Some of the target schools have experienced considerable gang activity around the community, 

but school leaders noted that they do not have gang activity on campus. One school leader 

reported that some of the students come from gang families but they leave their gang activity 

outside of the schoolyard. At another school, youth reported that while gang activity is minimal 

on school grounds, it is a pervasive part of life within the surrounding community. One youth 

indicated that he was constantly harassed by gangs and felt that gangs were threatening his 

safety. 

Philadelphia 

Youth arrests in Philadelphia increased throughout most of the city between 2006 and 2008. 

Perhaps as a result of the increase in youth crime in the city, the number of schools identified as 

“persistently dangerous” in Philadelphia increased from 20 in 2008 to 29 in 2009. 

Youth Arrests 

The number of youth arrests for both property and violent crime increased by at least 10 percent 

in many areas of the city. Pockets of the city with the largest increases in arrests include those in 

the northeastern and western sections of the city. The western part of the city is also home to 

many of the schools targeted for this grant, including Overbrook HS, University City HS, and the 

E3

 Power Center, West Branch. Decreases in youth arrests can be seen in the area surrounding 

the newly created North Philadelphia Community HS, an alternative school for youth offenders 

and other at-risk students. 

II-17 
Exhibit II-7: Percent Change in Juvenile Crime from 2006 to 2008 by Police District in Phila

Property Crime Violent Crime 

II-18
Gangs 

Respondents noted that highly organized gangs are generally very rare in Philadelphia, but small 

gangs are increasingly growing in size and influence. Some of these smaller gangs, often 

referred to as “squads,” “crews,” or “cliques,” identify themselves by certain neighborhoods. 

They view themselves as groups offering a form of social support. 

Summary 

In sum, this chapter summarizes the conditions under which grantees operate their programs and 

services. The labor market conditions in each of the grantee cities have deteriorated since the 

start of the grant, showing increasing unemployment rates across the cities. The youth 

unemployment rate in the grantee cities is especially high, and higher than the national average. 

As a result, youth respondents are struggling to find employment, noting the competition with 

adults as an important barrier to their ability to find work. This chapter also provides data on 

youth arrests and gang activity in the areas where the majority of students live. Overall, there 

was a decline in the number of youth arrests in three out of the five grantee cities. The fact that 

youth crime is declining in most cities suggests that this decline may be related to national 

declines in youth arrests over the past decade. This finding does not provide evidence regarding 

whether DOL’s grant-funded programs and services at the target schools have caused these 

declines. Rather, they contextualize the types of communities where youth live and the kinds of 

challenges they face each day as they seek to better their lives. 

II-19 
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III. OVERVIEW OF GRANTEES
 

To provide a context for the partnerships, services, and outcomes discussed in the remainder of 

the report, this chapter gives an overview of the grantees. The chapter begins by describing each 

district that received the School District Grant, highlighting characteristics that affected grant 

design and implementation. Next it discusses the schools and program sites selected by each 

district to be part of the grant. Following this topic, the chapter details the goals for this grant, 

the approaches grantees took to meet these goals, and each grantee’s scope of work for the grant. 

The chapter concludes by describing each grantee’s administrative structure for the grant and its 

budget. 

District-Level Context 

Five large, urban districts were chosen to receive the School District Grant. Although the 

districts share a demonstrated need to provide additional services to youth who are involved, 

have been involved, or are at risk for being involved with gangs or the juvenile justice system, 

they vary widely in size, resources available to serve students, and existing systems/procedures 

for partnering with community agencies. These differences must be taken into account when 

considering each grantee’s partnerships, services, and outcomes. Below we summarize the most 

important and grant-relevant aspects of each grantee. 

Enrollment and Demographics 

All the grantees serve large, diverse student bodies that are typical of urban school districts. 

Exhibit III-1 provides an overview of each district’s student enrollment and demographics. 

III-1 
Baltimore City Public School 

System (BCPSS)3

84,396 82,266 African American: 87.8%

White: 7.8%

Latino: 3.1%

Asian: 0.9%

Amer Indian: 0.3%

3.2% 83.6%

Chicago Public Schools (CPS)4 390,243 409,729 African American: 45.0%

Latino: 41.0%

White: 9.0%

Asian: 3.6%

Amer Indian: 0.2%

12.2% 86%

Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS)5 90,925 82,444 African American: 56.6%

Hispanic: 22.6%

White: 11.9%

Asian: 4.8%

Other: 3.2%

Amer Indian: 0.8%

9.5% 80.9%

Orange County Public Schools 

(OCPS)6

175,155 175,363 White: 64%

Hispanic: 32%7

Black: 28%

Asian: 4%

Multicultural: 3%

Amer Indian/Alaskan 

Native: 1%

19.4% 48.6%

School District of Philadelphia 177,431 163,064 African American: 61.2% 7% 76.7%

(SDP)8 Hispanic: 17.6%

White: 13.3%

Asian: 6.2%

Other: 1.6%

Amer. Indian: 0.2%

Exhibit III-1:

School District Demographics (SY 2009–2010)

Total Enrollment Limited Low Income or 

English Eligible for Free/

06–071 09–10 Race/Ethnicity2 Proficiency Reduced Lunch

 

1 See footnotes 10-14 for sources of 2006–2007 enrollment figures. 

2 May not equal 100% due to rounding.

3 http://www.bcps.k12.md.us/news/PDF/FastFacts2009_10.pdf

4 http://www.cps.edu/About_CPS/At-a-glance/Pages/Stats_and_facts.aspx

5 http://mpsportal.MPS.k12.wi.us/portal/server.pt?open=512&objID=367&mode=2&in_hi_userid=2& cached=true

6 Total enrollment and race/ethnicity data from https://www.ocps.net/Documents/pocketfacts2009.pdf for school 

year 2009–2010. All other data is from, Education Information & Accountability Services, Florida Department 

of Education for school year 2008-2009.

7 In OCPS, Hispanic is not its own racial/ethnic category, and can be chosen in combination with any other 

category. Therefore, the total for OCPS is over 100%. 

8 Total enrollment and race/ethnicity for 2009–2010 from http://www.philasd.org/about/; 

All other data from PreK-12 School Statistics, Pennsylvania Department of Education. Limited English 

Proficient data from 2006–2007 school year. Free and reduced lunch data is from October 2009. 

III-2
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Exhibit III-1 shows that the districts range in size from just over 82,000 students in BCPSS and 

MPS to more than 400,000 students in CPS. Despite the fact that all the districts serve a large 

number of youth, in three out of the five districts—BCPSS, MPS, and SDP—enrollment 

numbers have dropped in recent years. This has led to decreased district funding, forcing 

districts to lay off teachers and/or reconfigure schools. In contrast, CPS’s enrollment has 

increased in recent years while OCPS’s has remained relatively unchanged. 

African Americans and Latinos make up the majority of students in all the districts except OCPS. 

Students in the Baltimore district are predominantly African American (87.8 percent) while the 

other districts’ populations are more diverse. For example, the student body in the Milwaukee 

district is 56.6 percent African American, 22.6 percent Hispanic, 11.9 percent white, and 4.8 

percent Asian. The grantees are also serving significant numbers of low-income students, 

ranging from 48.6 percent in OCPS to 86.0 percent in CPS. Finally, in the Orange County 

district, where almost one-third of the student population is Hispanic, 19.4 percent of the 

district’s students are classified as limited English proficient. 

Trends in Performance 

Grantees were selected for the School District Grant based on their high dropout rates. 

Accordingly, one of the intents of the grant was for the districts to use funds to design 

interventions that focus on the youth at a high risk of dropping out. To provide a sense of the 

severity of the dropout problem in each district, Exhibit III-2 shows trends in dropout rates and 

graduation rates in comparison to state averages. 

Grantees are facing many of the issues that other large, urban districts are facing, specifically 

relatively high dropout rates and low graduation rates. It is important to interpret these rates with 

caution because the reporting of dropout and graduation rates varies by state, making crossdistrict comparisons problematic.9 State averages and longitudinal figures provide a more 

accurate point of comparison for each district. That being said, all districts have dropout rates 

above the state average except for OCPS. However, two of the districts with dropout rates 

higher than the state average—BCPSS and SDP—have each decreased the dropout rate in recent 

years.10 MPS’s dropout rate, on the other hand, has increased since the 2006–2007 school year. 

9 For more information on variations in how dropout and graduation rates are calculated, see The Urban Institute’s 

Education Policy Center (2004). High School Graduation, Completion, and Dropout (GCD) Indicators: A Primer 

and Catalog. Washington DC: Christopher B. Swanson. Retrieved from 

http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/411116_GCDCatalog.pdf 

10 Because dropout data was not available for 2008–2009 for SDP, this only represents a one-year change. 

III-3 
Trends in CPS’s dropout rate are less clear. The 2008–2009 rate is lower than the 2007–2008 

rate, but higher than the 2006–2007 rate. Additionally, all grantees have graduation rates below 

the state average. With the exception of OCPS, this difference is more than 15 percentage 

points. On a more positive note, three districts show improved graduation rates since 2006– 

2007, with OCPS making especially sizeable gains towards meeting the state average. However, 

in the Philadelphia and Milwaukee districts, graduation rates have worsened. 

Exhibit III-2: 

District Performance Trends 

Dropout rate Graduation rate

06-07 07-08 08-09 State Ave.11 06-07 07-08 08-09 State Ave.

BCPSS12 9.4% 7.9% 6.2% 2.8% 60.1% 62.7% 62.7% 85.2%

CPS13 8.3% 12.5% 9.7% 3.5% 66.0% 68.7% 69.8% 87.1%

MPS14 5.8% 6.0% 6.5% 1.6% 68.6% 67.7% 67.2% 89.4%

OCPS15 1.7% 1.5% 1.1% 2.3% 68.6% 72.9% 75.3% 76.2%

SDP16 7.9% 5.7% n/a 1.8% n/a17 73.0% 67.0% 89.0%

Overall, while some districts have shown improvements in performance in recent years, all the 

districts continue to struggle to engage students in a meaningful way, as evidenced by their 

relatively high dropout rates and low graduation rates. In this context, this grant presented a 

unique opportunity for focusing on youth who have traditionally been the most difficult to 

engage in school. However, it is nearly impossible to make causal links between the School 

District Grant and changes in the district-wide dropout and graduation rates. A host of factors 

affect these rates, including shifts in student demographics and resources and other district 

11 All state averages are from 2008–2009, except for Pennsylvania’s dropout rate which is from 2007–2008. 

12 2009 Maryland Report Card (http://www.mdreportcard.org/).

13 2009 Interactive Illinois Report Card.

14 Wisconsin Information Network for Successful Schools.

15 Florida Department of Education, Education & Accountability Services Data Publications and Reports.

16 Graduation rate from 2008–2009 District Report Card. 

Dropout rate from Pennsylvania Department of Education, Division of Data Quality. 

17 District level data were not available for the 2006–2007 school year. 

III-4
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

efforts. Additionally, because the grant is serving a relatively small number of students in each 

district, it is unlikely that effects will be evident when looking at district-wide data. 

Key Changes in District Context 

During the life of this grant, a number of key district-level factors changed, affecting grant 

implementation. These factors—most notably budget deficits and leadership turnover—are not 

uncommon in urban districts. For example, one study of urban district superintendents found 

that only 18 percent had been in the office for five or more years.18 As will be discussed below, 

budget deficits tended to make grant implementation more difficult, but leadership turnover, in 

some cases, actually improved district conditions for the grant. 

Budget Deficits. All of the districts faced budget deficits during the life of this grant that 

affected grant implementation in key ways. For example, BCPSS faced a $76.9 million deficit in 

2008, and CPS faced a $475 million deficit in 2010. Although this grant can be considered a 

“separate” funding stream for the districts, budget shortfalls still had negative repercussions for 

grant-funded programs. For example, district-wide hiring freezes in CPS, BCPSS, and OCPS led 

to delays in hiring key staff for grant programs, ultimately delaying program implementation. 

In other cases, budget shortfalls lead to changes that affected the overall context in which 

grantees were providing services, most notably by reducing the number of other, pre-existing 

supportive services available to youth. For example, as a strategy to address its budget shortfall, 

BCPSS underwent a decentralization process, drastically cutting central office staff and shifting 

the majority of resource distribution responsibility from the central office to individual schools. 

As a result, school principals had increased oversight of their budgets and were often forced to 

choose between funding teacher salaries or supportive services, resulting in many cuts to the 

latter. To meet its own budget deficits, OCPS cut 642 teaching positions for the 2009–2010 

school year, leading to larger class sizes and less individualized support for students. In both of 

these examples, budget deficits did not affect grant implementation directly, but rather created 

environments in which less support was available for students overall. 

Leadership Turnover. Three of the five districts received new district leadership during the life 

of the grant or shortly before, leading to major reforms and administrative restructuring that 

affected the implementation of the grant. In the Philadelphia and Chicago districts, leadership 

turnover improved the district-level context for grant implementation in important ways. A new 

III-5 
 

 

 

 

 

superintendent started at SDP in 2008, leading to the restructuring of the district’s central and 

regional offices. As a result, the Office of Multiple Pathways (OMP), which housed this grant, 

was moved to the Office of School Operations. Because of this move, OMP gained a direct link 

to the Alternative Schools Region. This aligned the focus of alternative education with the 

overall vision of teaching and learning throughout the district and removed bureaucratic barriers 

to providing services supported by the School District Grant. Under CPS’s new CEO, a variety 

of reforms were instituted at the district level, including restructuring district management and 

creating a new Chief Area Officer position for alternative schools. According to respondents, 

this new position created more emphasis and focus on alternative schools and serving youth 

offenders. Grant-funded programs will strongly inform this work as it moves forward and 

receives increased visibility. 

In contrast, the reforms resulting from the Baltimore district’s 2007 leadership turnover were 

more of a hindrance to grant implementation. The new superintendent led an initiative to 

decentralize the school district, which included cutting 25 percent of the district’s central office 

administrators. This greatly disrupted the planning and implementation of grant programs 

because most of the grant administrator’s chain of command changed dramatically. 

As demonstrated above, the district context affects grant design and implementation in 

significant ways, and grantees had to be flexible in their responses during the life of the grant. In 

the next section, we examine the schools and program sites selected by grantees to be part of the 

School District Grant and highlight relevant contextual factors at this level. 

School- and Program-Level Context 

School district grantees selected schools and programs that had access to and an ability to serve 

in-school and out-of-school youth at high risk for involvement in gangs and/or the juvenile 

justice system. In order to provide context for grantees’ approaches discussed throughout this 

report, we summarize grantees’ services and programs in Exhibit III-3. Detailed information 

about services and programs is available in Chapter VI. 

18	 Council of Great City Schools (2008/2009). Urban Indicator: Urban School Superintendents: Characteristics, 

Tenure, and Salary Sixth Survey and Report. Retrieved from http://www.cgcs.org/Pubs/Urban_Indicator_08­

09.pdf. 

III-6 
Exhibit III-3:

Summary of Grantee Programs

Major Program Features Target Group

BCPSS

Futures

(Future 

Works!)

New Visions

for Youth 

Services 

(NVYS)

YO! Centers

(Westside 

Center and 

Eastside 

Center)

Department of 

Juvenile 

Services (DJS)

CPS

YES Program

Banner 

Schools 

(Banner South 

and Banner 

North)

• Traditional schools offer afterschool dropout 

prevention services (academic, workforce,

enrichment activities) and intensive case 

management services through Futures

Advocates.

• Gang prevention and mediation services and 

mentoring to Future Works! Participants at target 

high schools.

• YO! Centers provide academic services (pre-GED 

or GED classes) and workforce services (job 

readiness training, internships, vocational training). 

• DJS plans to provide employment services and 

internships for participants enrolled in the city’s 

Operation Safe Kids Program, an intensive case 

management program for youth that have been 

detained.20

• Participants attend afterschool Freshman 

Seminar class, based on Johns Hopkins Talent 

Development School Reform model during the 9th 

grade. Participants receive job readiness training 

and will participate in internships during Year 3 of 

the grant. “Student Engagement Specialists” 

provide case management services. 

• Banner Schools are transitional schools created 

by the School District Grant to provide temporary 

academic services for students who are typically 

over the age of 17 and transitioning from 

detention to their home schools. Workforce 

services such as internships will become 

available in 2010. 

 

Eighth and ninth graders at 

two middle schools (Garrison 

and Lemmel Middle 

School19) and two high 

schools (Douglass HS and 

Forest Park HS).

Ninth and tenth graders at 

Douglass HS and Forest 

Park HS.

Out-of-school youth ages 

16–22.

Youth offenders

Ninth graders at six traditional 

high schools (Clemente HS, 

Crane HS, Dyett HS, Fenger 

HS, Hirsch HS, and Manley 

HS).

Youth offenders transitioning 

out of detention.

19 Lemmel MS closed down during the grant period and was replaced by Dukeland Campus, which houses three 

alternative schools.

20 This approach was modified from DJS’s original contract. DJS was initially contracted to recruit 100 youth with 

a record in the Juvenile Justice System and enroll them in school or the YO! Program.

III-7
Major Program Features Target Group

MPS

Futures First 

Initiative (FFI)

Transition High 

School

OCPS

YES program

YES Positive 

Pathways 

Transition 

Center

Five School To 

Work (STW) 

alternative 

Schools 

Workforce 

Central Florida 

(WCF)

Metropolitan 

Orlando Urban 

League 

(MOUL)

Parramore 

District

Recreational

Center

• Intensive case management services offered to 

students through site-based teams, which include 

a social worker, guidance counselor and youth 

career development specialist, provide case 

management services as needed. 

• Transition HS provides services to youth 

offenders looking to re-engage with an 

educational pathway. Students receive 

employment services from an employment

specialist who is located on site.21

• “Intervention Specialists” provide case 

management and supportive services. Services 

are offered in unstructured format during the 

school day.

• The YES Positive Pathways Transition center is a 

multiple pathways program for students 

transitioning from detention. 

• Students apply for these selective alternative 

schools, which are for students who are over-age 

and under-credit. 

• WCF provides academic and employment services 

for out-of-school youth 18–21. Participants can 

receive training in the National Retail (NRF) 

Customer Service Certification program, and are 

placed into jobs or other training programs. 

• MOUL provides GED and workforce services (job 

readiness training and internships) for out-ofschool youth that are gang-involved or 

adjudicated, ages 16–21. 

• Grant funds one outreach worker to mentor youth 

and connect them to community services such as 

career and recreational activities. 

Ninth to twelfth graders at 

four traditional schools (N. 

Division HS, S. Division, 

James Madison, Bradley 

Tech HS).

Youth offenders

Eighth and ninth graders at 

four middle schools 

(Meadowbrook MS, Memorial 

MS, Stonewall Jackson MS, 

Walker MS), and four high 

schools (Colonial HS, Evans 

HS, Jones HS, and Oakridge 

HS) 

Youth offenders

Over-age, under-credit youth

Out-of-school youth ages 18­

21

Out-of-school youth ages 16­

21

In-school and out-of-school 

youth

21 This aspect of the program has been slow to start. 

III-8
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Major Program Features Target Group 

SDP 

Learning to • LTW provides college and career-related services Ninth graders at Overbrook 

Work (LTW) and receive job preparation and internships in a HS and University City HS 

Program structured classroom format. 

North 

Philadelphia 

Community 

• NPCHS is an alternative, project -based 

educational program for youth aged 17–21 with 

13 or fewer credits. 

Over-age and under-credit 

youth 

High School 

(NPCHS) 

E3 Bridge 

Program 

(E3

=Education, 

Employment & 

Empowerment) 

• The program is a “bridge” program for students to 

earn credits while waiting to transfer to an 

accelerated high school. Participants also receive 

academic remediation when necessary. 

Out-of-school youth ages 14– 

21 

Occupational 

Skills Pathway 

Program 

(Community 

College of 

Philadelphia 

• Participants participate in occupational skills 

training (automotive, hospitality, IT) at existing 

programs such as the Community College of 

Philadelphia and NPower. Participants are placed 

into subsidized employment after their training. 

Participants at the E3 Centers 

who are over 18, have their 

GED or are enrolled in GED 

courses, and have completed 

job readiness training. 

and NPower) 

Grantees offer these services at a number of traditional schools, alternative schools, and other 

program sites, as described below. 

Traditional Schools 

Traditional schools served by this grant were chosen for a number of reasons, including the 

presence of gangs, crime, under-achievement, and readiness to implement new programs. In 

general, schools were chosen based on both their need for additional student services and their 

readiness to implement these services. In the Milwaukee district, for example, schools were 

chosen based on the presence of school- or neighborhood-based efforts to improve outcomes for 

students most in need of additional support. These efforts included the Safe Streets Initiative22 

and school-level reforms involving the creation of small learning communities. In the Chicago 

district, schools were chosen through a proposal and interview process based on factors such as a 

high incidence of youth violence/crime, the strength and commitment of the school leadership, 

22 The Safe Streets Initiative is a cross-sector effort to reduce gang- and drug-related violence in targeted 

neighborhoods in Milwaukee. 

III-9 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

the presence of a freshmen team to support incoming ninth graders, schools’ experience with or 

exposure to restorative justice practices, and the presence of community partners. 

Appendix C provides detailed information on each of the traditional schools that are targeted by 

this grant. In general, the schools tend to have exacerbated performance challenges compared to 

the districts as a whole. In particular, they all have very high dropout rates. For example, in the 

Milwaukee district, with a district-wide dropout rate of 6.5 percent, all of the targeted schools 

have dropout rates of nine percent or more. Similarly, in the Chicago district, where the dropout 

rate is 9.7 percent overall, three out of the five schools targeted by this grant have dropout rates 

of more than 12 percent. The Orange County district is an exception to this pattern; the dropout 

rates of its targeted schools are the same as or less than the district’s overall dropout rate. 

The differences in performance between the districts and the schools are less pronounced for 

graduation rates. Only in the Chicago and Orange County districts do a majority of the 

traditional target schools have a lower graduation rate than the district average. In the 

Milwaukee district, most schools targeted by the grant actually have higher graduation rates than 

the district average, and in the Baltimore and Philadelphia districts, half the schools have higher 

graduation rates and half have lower. 

These traditional schools also have a disproportionately large number of minority students 

compared to the overall student bodies of their districts. In the Philadelphia district, where 61.2 

percent of the student body is African American, the two traditional schools served by this grant 

have an African American population of 97 percent or above. Similarly, in the Orange County 

district, where white students make up 64 percent of the district as a whole, all of the traditional 

target schools are predominantly minority, and in all except one white students make up less than 

three percent of the student body. 

Several traditional schools underwent major changes after the start of the grant that affected 

grant implementation. In many cases, these changes led to climate management challenges. In 

at least two districts, students increasingly attend schools outside of their neighborhoods as 

districts closed or combined schools and shifted school enrollment boundaries in response to 

declining enrollment, poor performance, or an increase in the number of charter schools. As a 

result, youth from different neighborhoods have to cross several gang territories to get to school 

and come together in one building, both of which are potentially dangerous situations. In the 

Chicago district, this danger came to a head in the fall of 2009, when an honors student at Fenger 

HS, a school targeted by this grant, was beaten to death a half-mile from school. According to 

the police, the fight was the result of ongoing tensions between youth from a particular housing 

III-10 
 

 

 

 

 

 

project—many of whom transferred to the target school after their own neighborhood school was 

converted into a military academy—and youth from the community surrounding the target 

school. The Baltimore district closed Lemmel MS—partly in response to a murder that took 

place on campus—and moved three alternative/charter schools into the building. In order to 

proactively address any potential climate challenges, the grant provided funding for five New 

Vision Youth Services23 advisors to work in the building. Additional climate management 

challenges arose from some schools having to close off entire portions of their buildings because 

of declining enrollment. This made managing the flow of student traffic more difficult and 

resulted in giving students places to “hide” and potentially cause trouble between and during 

classes. 

Other types of school-level changes also affected the context for grant implementation. For 

example, in the Philadelphia district, two targeted schools implemented OASIS, a new program 

serving over-age, under-credit ninth graders. Because Learning to Work, the district’s workforce 

readiness program, targeted a similar group, the two programs were merged. A targeted school 

in the Milwaukee district—Madison HS—was closed due to a district intervention and reopened 

as a charter school with funding from the Gates Foundation. Several targeted schools also 

experienced principal turnover during the life of the grant. 

Alternative Schools 

All grantees except for BCPSS also targeted in-school youth at alternative schools. Detailed 

demographic information, dropout rates, and graduation rates were not available for the majority 

of alternative schools, mainly because a number of these schools were newly created through this 

grant. However, based on respondents’ reports, we know that many of the students in alternative 

schools are over-age, under-credit, and/or former dropouts. Students at these schools have 

struggled in traditional school environments and, as a result, their behavior and attendance often 

pose problems for traditional school staff. Finally, alternative schools are also serving larger 

proportions of youth offenders than traditional schools. 

Other Program Sites 

Three grantees are using the grant to provide services to out-of-school youth at other program 

sites, most commonly youth or community centers. The out-of-school youth program sites in the 

Philadelphia and Baltimore districts are similar. In both cities, these program sites are run by the 

23	 New Vision Youth Services’ youth advisors provide intensive one-on-one case management services, violence 

prevention programs, and climate management support. 

III-11 
 

 

 

 

 

district’s workforce partner for the grant. Additionally, the centers have been open for many 

years, and therefore have long histories of serving out-of-school youth, including dropouts and 

youth offenders. Although these centers are located in neighborhoods known for gangs and 

violence, these issues tend not to spill over into the centers, according to respondents, because of 

zero-tolerance policies and the respect youth have for the staff. Program sites for out-of-school 

youth in the Orange County district are slightly different. The grant funds services at three 

sites—Workforce Central Florida, the Metropolitan Orlando Urban League, and the recreation 

center at the Parramore Kidz Zone. 

Overview of Grant Goals and Services 

DOL’s School District Grant funds services for at-risk youth so that they can successfully 

complete school and obtain long-term employment. This grant focuses on youth, both in-school 

and out-of-school, who are at-risk for dropping out or have already dropped out, are at-risk for 

gang involvement or already involved in gangs, or are youth offenders. Exhibit III-4 below 

provides a summary of district goals and DOL performance goals for this grant. 

III-12 
Exhibit III-4:

Overview of District Goals and DOL Performance Goals

District Goals

Education • Improve participants’ reading and 

math basic skills

• Reduce the dropout rate by providing 

supportive services to youth 

• Develop alternative educational 

pathways for youth who have dropped 

out or are at risk of dropping out

• Increase the number of participants 

who recover credits, obtain a GED, 

and/or graduate from high school

Workforce • Prepare participants to successfully 

find, apply for, and remain in a job

• Provide job readiness training to 

participants to develop the soft skills 

needed for employment

• Provide internships and/or job 

placements for youth as a means of 

career exploration

Juvenile • Create stronger pathways between 

Justice youth detention centers and schools 

• Reduce the dropout and recidivism 

rate for youth offenders by providing 

intensive supportive services 

DOL Performance Goals24

• Literacy and numeracy gains: Increase 

math and/or reading scores for those youth 

served by the grant who have a 

demonstrated deficiency in either or both 

areas

• Long-term placement rates: Improve 

employment and education outcomes for 

out-of-school youth offenders

• Youth offender rate: Reduce the number 

of formerly incarcerated youth offenders 

who drop out of high school

• Ninth grade retention rate: Reduce the 

number of students in the total ninth grade 

class who drop out in the ninth grade

• Long-term placement rates: Improve 

employment and education outcomes for 

out-of-school youth offenders

• Youth recidivism: Reduce the recidivism 

rate of participating youth

• Youth offender rate: Reduce the number 

of formerly incarcerated youth offenders 

who drop out of high school

• Juvenile crime reduction and gang 

incident rates: Reduce the number of 

youth involved in gangs and crime

In order to meet these goals, grantees provide a variety of services. The majority of services fall 

into the categories of case management/supportive services, education services, or workforce 

services. Not all grantees use every approach described below, but the services highlighted in 

the list represent major themes across grantees. Chapter VI provides more detailed information 

on the services provided by grantees.

 

24 Some of DOL’s performance goals fall into more than one category. 

III-13
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

•	 Grantees take an intensive case management approach to serving youth. 

Fundamental to the approach of most grantees is providing personalized and 

individual case management support. Given that the population targeted by this 

grant is one of the hardest to engage in schools, intensive, individualized support 

is deemed to be a key strategy in engaging this population. Specifically, grantees 

match youth with advocates who help them navigate through the challenges they 

face in their schools, jobs, and/or lives. 

•	 Grantees provide support to improve basic literacy and numeracy skills. 

Recognizing that many of the participants do not have the basic skills needed to 

be successful in high school or beyond, grantees provide services to improve 

participants’ literacy and numeracy skills. These services take the form of both 

group classes with a focused curriculum as well as individualized tutoring. 

•	 To meet the workforce goals, all grantees provide job readiness training to 

participants. Grantees recognize that without the proper preparation, participants 

will not be ready to successfully join the workforce. To address this problem, 

grantees provide training on topics such as how to find a job, how to interview 

successfully, how to create a resume, and how to behave on a worksite. 

Additionally, some grantees also match youth with paid internships and jobs— 

both as a means of workforce exposure and as an incentive for participation in the 

academic components of the grant. 

•	 Grantees provide re-entry and transitional support for juvenile offenders. 

Knowing that the transition back to the community for youth exiting juvenile 

placement can be difficult, grantees offer several types of services designed to 

ease this process. Specifically, grantees created “pathways” for juvenile offenders 

as they exit placement and transition back into an academic setting. Often these 

pathways take the form of specialized schools or transition centers designed to 

help participants re-enter academic settings; they may also consist of vocational 

and job readiness training to help juvenile offenders secure meaningful 

employment. 

•	 Grantees help over-age, under-credit youth get back on track through credit
 

retrieval programs. To address the fact that many participants are not on track
 

to graduate on time, grantees offer programs that allow participants to obtain
 

credits at an accelerated rate so that they may graduate directly from the given
 

program or else enroll in a traditional or alternative school at the appropriate
 

grade level.
 

Grant Programs 

In order to get a sense of the scope of each grantee’s work to provide the services outlined above, 

Exhibit III-5 provides an overview of the schools and programs where grantees are providing 

services and the number of youth targeted at each as of Fall 2009/Winter 2010. In total, grantees 

are providing services at 41 schools or program sites, targeting 3,505 youth. Given that the 

grantees are school districts, it is not surprising that traditional schools make up the majority the 

III-14 
schools/program sites (24 out of 41), and that all grantees provide services at traditional schools. 

Consistent with these facts, the 2,295 in-school youth at traditional schools make up the majority

of the target population. Four grantees are also providing services at alternative schools;

targeting a total of 525 youth at 10 alternative schools. Finally, three of the grantees are 

targeting out-of-school youth at other program sites; these grantees are targeting a total 685

youth at seven program sites.

Exhibit III-5:

Schools, Programs, and Youth Targeted (as of Fall 2009/Winter 2010)

Total 

Target Target Target Schools/ Total

Traditional # Alt. # Program # Program Target # 

schools25 Youth schools Youth sites Youth Sites Youth

227 BCPSS 4 70526 0 0 250 6 955

CPS 6 750 2 200 0 0 8 950

MPS 4 140 1 125 0 0 5 265

OCPS 8 500 6 100 3 210 18 810

228 SDP 2 200 1 100 225 5 525

Total 24 2,295 10 525 7 685 41 3,505

Grantees vary somewhat in the number of schools/program sites served. While four out of the 

five grantees are providing services at between five and eight schools/program sites, OCPS is the 

outlier at 17 schools/program sites. One reason that OCPS is reaching many more 

schools/program sites is that fewer staff are at each location and therefore less intensive services 

are provided at each site. For example, one intervention specialist serves each of the eight 

traditional schools served by the grant, and three sheriff deputies rotate among the schools. By 

comparison, in the Baltimore district, the grant supports 10 staff positions at two of the 

traditional schools and five positions at the third traditional school. Another reason for the 

 

25 In both BCPSS and OCPS, three of the targeted traditional schools are located in one building. 

26 Up to 225 of these youth may be counted twice, although exact numbers are unknown.

27 DJS also plans to provide workforce services to an additional 100 OSY, but this component had not yet been 

implemented at the time of the site visit. However, these youth are included in the target number.

28 A small amount of the grant also supports the district’s Re-Engagement Center, but because no specific target 

numbers have been set for this Center, it is not included in this count.

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variation in the number of schools/program sites is the variation in grantees’ program models. 

Some grantees chose to use this grant to create new alternative schools, which requires a much 

higher level of investment than merely providing supplemental services at pre-existing schools. 

Across sites, there is also variation in the number of youth targeted, ranging from 265 youth in 

MPS to 950 in CPS. Much of this variation is also due to differences in intensity of services. 

For example, although CPS is targeting 750 in-school youth at traditional schools, a new cohort 

of 50 ninth-graders is enrolled each year of the grant at each of these schools. CPS does not 

provide follow-up services for youth after this initial year. Therefore, at any given time, CPS is 

only targeting 300 youth at traditional schools. In contrast, although MPS is only targeting 140 

youth at traditional schools, these students are enrolled in the program for the entire length of the 

grant unless they graduate or transfer out of the school. Unlike CPS, MPS does not re-enroll a 

new cohort of youth each year. Therefore, while Milwaukee is targeting much fewer youth than 

CPS, it plans on providing services to each youth for a longer period of time. As evidenced 

above, target numbers therefore do not necessarily provide a complete sense of each grantee’s 

scope of work. Other factors discussed in detail in Chapters V and VI—such as length of 

enrollment and intensity of services—provide a more comprehensive picture of the reach and 

depth of services that each grantee is providing. 

Despite differences in each grantee’s scope of work, there are some important similarities in 

terms of how grantees structure grant programs at traditional schools, alternative schools, and 

other program sites. 

•	 The majority of services at traditional schools focus on intensive case 

management/supportive services. Specifically, grantees designed these services 

to be a means of promoting school success and reducing participants’ likelihood 

of dropping out. For example, MPS is using grant funding to support schoolbased teams consisting of a guidance counselor, a social worker, and a career 

development specialist to provide academic, social, and workforce supportive 

services to at-risk youth at four traditional schools. 

•	 All grantees except for BCPSS are using grant funding to create new
 

alternative schools. In addition to providing services at traditional schools
 

designed to supplement pre-existing services and programs, all grantees but one
 

are using the grant to provide seed funding for new alternative or transition
 

schools.29 (CPS, OCPS and MPS used the grant to open schools specifically for
 

youth transitioning out of detention.) Therefore, while the overall number of
 

alternative schools served by this grant is less than the number of traditional 

29 OCPS also provided services at five existing alternative education sites in addition to opening the YES Positive 

Pathways Transition Center. 

III-16 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

schools served, the impact that the grant has at each new alternative school is 

arguably much greater than the impact at each traditional school because the 

alternative schools represent whole new structures intended to serve a hard-toreach population. 

•	 Three grantees are using the grant to provide additional services and enroll 

more youth at out-of-school youth program sites. Specifically, BCPSS used 

the grant to fund an additional literacy specialist and job developer at each of the 

two YO! Centers. SDP expanded the occupational skills training program and 

created a new credit recovery program at E3 Power Centers, and OCPS provided 

educational and employment support to out-of-school youth at three different 

program sites (the Metropolitan Orlando Urban League, Workforce Central 

Florida, and the Parramore Kidz Zone). 

Changes Made to Grant Plans and Programs 

In response to changing circumstances, all the grantees ended up shifting grant components in 

one way or another to ensure that their programs remained feasible.30 A detailed summary of 

changes from the original grant plans is provided in Appendix D, and a detailed summary of 

additional changes that occurred during implementation is provided in Appendix E. Grantees 

changed their scope of work for several common reasons: 

•	 Grantees were forced to shift their grant plans in the face of budget cuts 

and/or (resulting) hiring freezes. All of the districts faced budget cuts that 

affected the grant in important ways. First and foremost, budget cuts meant 

reduced staffing across the district, even for grant-funded programs. For example, 

in the Baltimore district, due to a district-wide hiring freeze, plans to hire eight 

math and reading remediation teachers had to be scaled down to only four 

teachers. As a result of similar budgetary challenges, the Orange County district 

decided to create a Transition Center rather than a Consequence Center, 31 because 

the latter would have required extensive and cost-prohibitive security. 

•	 Three grantees shifted their grant plans as part of continual program 

improvement. In some cases, as grantees started implementing services, it 

became clear that the original program model needed to be modified in order to 

achieve better results. Three examples follow: (1) BCPSS moved its reading and 

math remediation program to a time during school hours in order to encourage 

more consistent attendance. (2) Staff from Philadelphia had to find a new 

location for the district’s Occupational Skills Pathways Program after they 

concluded that serving out-of-school youth on a high school campus posed too 

30	 All changes were approved by the federal program officer for the grant. 

31	 The concept of the Consequence Center was tied to a statute in Florida state law that allowed judges to use 

Consequence Centers as an alternative to detention for youth offenders. The legislation, however, does not 

provide any funding for the creation of Consequence Centers. 

III-17 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

many challenges. (3) CPS extended the length of time students stay at its 

transitional schools—from 10 weeks to 30—after realizing that youth needed 

more time to prepare to return to traditional schools. 

•	 In a few cases, grantees changed plans in order to be in better alignment with
 

DOL’s performance goals for the grant. Reasons for needing better alignment
 

include misunderstanding DOL’s classification for out-of-school youth and
 

realizing that current program plans were not sufficient to meet all of DOL’s
 

performance goals. As an example of the former reason, Workforce Central
 

Florida in OCPS erroneously classified youth with a high school diploma or GED
 

as out-of-school youth and thus had to expunge 70 youth from its records and 

shift its focus to only serving youth without a high school diploma or GED. As
 

an example of the latter, gang reduction/violence prevention services in the
 

Baltimore district were expanded midway through the grant after the grant
 

administrator realized that the district was not on track for meeting the
 

community-wide performance goal for DOL.
 

•	 Grantees had to change their plans due to various other unforeseen 

circumstances. Occasionally, obstacles arose during the implementation of the
 

grant that impeded grantees’ ability to implement services as originally intended.
 

For example, in the Baltimore district, the Department of Juvenile Services (DJS)
 

was supposed to refer adjudicated youth for services, but was not able to do this in 

a timely manner. As a result, DJS changed its scope of work to provide
 

employment services to adjudicated youth already enrolled in the city’s Operation 

Safe Kids initiative. In another example, because of a riot at Chicago’s youth 

detention center in February 2008, residents of the facility were not allowed to 

attend Nancy B. Jefferson Alternative School, a site where CPS had planned to 

provide services. In response, the district decided to open two transitional schools
 

to facilitate the process of youth returning to traditional schools from the
 

detention center. 

In general, although grantees are providing similar types of services in order to meet DOL’s 

performance goals for the School District Grant, the specifics of these services—such as intensity 

and program length—vary across grantees. Each grantee also chose to provide services at a 

different number of schools/program sites and target a different number youth with this grant. 

Similarly, grantees are taking different approaches to grant administration, as discussed in the 

following section. 

Approaches to Grant Administration 

Each grantee differed in how it administered the School District Grant. Specifically, grantees 

took different approaches to grant management structure, leadership, and staffing arrangements. 

In the following section, we discuss each of these aspects of grant administration in detail and 

the implications for grant implementation. 

III-18 
 

Grant Management Structure 

Each grantee chose to house the grant within a specific district-level department. Typically, but 

not in all cases,32 these departments oversee the districts’ alternative education programs. 

Beyond that, each grantee’s management structure varied according to the degree of 

centralization. Exhibit III-6 illustrates the different models in conceptual terms along a 

continuum from centralized to decentralized and locates grantees along this continuum according 

to which model each grantee most adhered. 

Exhibit III-6:
 

Management Structure for the Grant 

In a centralized model, the district hires program staff directly. In a decentralized model, a 

district contracts with partners or community-based organizations that in turn hire program staff. 

In a hybrid model, districts hire some program staff directly but also contract with other 

organizations to run programs and hire staff. In actuality, no grantee is using a completely

centralized or decentralized model to run and staff grant programs. In many cases, however, 

their hybrid models lean heavily toward either the centralized or decentralized ends of the 

32	 BCPSS housed the grant in its Office of Safe and Supportive Schools, which oversees grants to reduce gangs, 

youth crime, and drug use. CPS housed the grant in its Office of Pathways to Graduation, which oversees all 

high schools in the district. 

III-19 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

continuum. As discussed below, each of these program models has its own set of advantages and 

disadvantages, which were often contingent on the larger district context. 

Centralized model. In the centralized model, grant leadership has direct oversight over 

program staff and design. This model ensures that district staff are closely connected to grant 

activities and are kept abreast of implementation status and challenges. It also allows the district 

to provide direct support when needs arise. Additionally, positions directly supported by the 

district tend to have better prospects for sustainability. To date, the grant-funded positions that 

have already been integrated into districts’ budgets, and therefore will be sustained, have tended 

to be positions directly supported by the district. For example, in Orlando, the teacher positions 

at the Positive Pathways Transition Center were grant-funded for the first nine months of the 

center’s existence but are now funded through Title I funds. This centralized model also has its 

drawbacks, however. Direct district hires are often delayed because of hiring freezes, union 

requirements, and/or district hiring cycles, as was the case for three districts. 

At the start of the grant, CPS used a highly centralized model, hiring all program staff directly. 

Only later in the grant period were subcontractors brought on to run the district’s transition 

schools. This highly centralized model led to the district having a large amount of responsibility 

for program design and staff hiring, and district staff were in regular communication with school 

principals. Even in the transition schools run by a subcontractor, the district retained a high level 

of program oversight, as the grant administrator meets weekly with transition school staff. 

Decentralized model. Districts with a decentralized grant management structure, such as 

BCPSS and SDP, chose to contract out the majority of services to grant partners and/or 

community-based organizations (CBOs). In many cases, these partners and CBOs have 

longstanding relationships with the districts and experience working in district schools. By 

contracting with these organizations, grantees are able to work around the district hiring 

impediments mentioned above. This is particularly the case in the Philadelphia district, where 

stringent union requirements make direct district hiring especially difficult. Additionally, by 

contracting with other organizations, grantees are able to leverage these organizations’ expertise 

in areas such as juvenile offenders, workforce development, and gang-involved youth. For 

example, to run its transitional schools, CPS contracted with Banner Schools, an organization 

that has experience operating transitional high schools, alternative schools, and therapeutic day 

schools for “low credit” and overage youth and youth offenders. 

The decentralized model is not without its own set of challenges. Many of the grantees using 

this model faced delays in putting out RFPs and/or setting up contracts, as these decisions often 

have to be approved by high-level district leadership, such as the school board. Although these 

III-20 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

districts tend to play a less hands-on role in grant management, allowing the contractor to sort 

out the “nuts and bolts” of program implementation, having to manage contracts—including, in 

some cases, renewing contracts on a yearly basis—creates an extra level of coordination for 

grant administrators. Finally, subcontractors are not guaranteed to lack their own internal strife, 

and problems such as budget-related hiring freezes can slow down grant implementation. 

BCPSS is an example of a grantee that faced considerable challenges in working with 

subcontractors. In this district, the school board must approve all contracts, and this ultimately 

caused much delay. Additionally, the school board deemed that the district’s original RFP for a 

mentoring provider did not properly follow bidding guidelines and therefore the RFP had to be 

re-issued. Finally, in contracting with the Department of Juvenile Services for job developers, a 

state-level hiring freeze meant that special permission was required to hire staff, delaying the 

process greatly. These staff were also subject to state-wide furlough days, even though their 

positions were grant funded. 

Hybrid model. The Orange County and Milwaukee districts both chose to use more of a hybrid 

approach to providing services. Structuring grant administration in this way gave the districts 

flexibility to hire a combination of district staff and subcontractor staff as needed. In the case of 

MPS, district staff and subcontractor staff work together directly on school-based teams. These 

teams are comprised of a guidance counselor and a social worker hired directly by the district 

and an employment specialist hired through the workforce development partner. OCPS chose to 

parse out its staffing in a different way. In general, direct hires were responsible for in-school 

youth services while subcontractor staff provided services to out-of-school youth. 

Overall, grantees used some combination of direct hires and staff hired through subcontractors to 

deliver services, although the balance between these two models varied by grantee. In all cases, 

however, district-level leaders played a key role in overseeing grant programs. Below, we 

discuss each grantee’s leadership for this grant. 

Grant Leadership 

In each district, designated staff in the department where the grant is housed were responsible for 

overseeing grant design and implementation. In most cases, this leadership has remained fairly 

stable over the life of the grant, although there has been some turnover. 

•	 BCPSS. Due to district-level changes, April Lewis, the original grant
 

administrator, was moved to a new position in July 2008. As a result, Alice Cole, 

who previously held the position of project coordinator for the grant, became the
 

new grant administrator and assumed the responsibilities of both positions. Alice
 

Cole is a natural fit for this position because of her vast experience with DOL
 

III-21 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

youth programs. She is the school district’s liaison with the city’s workforce 

agency, runs the WIA youth programs for the district, and is the leader of the 

local WIB’s Youth Council. 

•	 CPS. Carmita Vaughan, a recent MBA graduate and head of the Department of
 

Pathways to Graduation provided high level oversight for the grant until her
 

departure from the district in April 2009. Molly Burke, whose previous work 

with the district focused on dropout prevention and recovery, has served as the
 

project director since the start of the grant. Both joined the district through the
 

Broad Residency in Urban Education, a program that places participants with
 

private-sector experience into managerial positions in school districts. The
 

district also employs three other administrative staff responsible for this grant.
 

One such staff person is Kahldun Everage, the Student Engagement and 

Community Outreach Manager. His background is as a gang specialist, having
 

worked with the city police and the CPS Crime Commission.
 

•	 MPS. Several key staff members have overseen the grant in the Milwaukee 

district. Marty Lexmond, the Director of School Innovation, and Kristi Cole, the
 

project director for the MPS Safe Schools/Health Students initiative, initially
 

oversaw the grant. Then, Jim Koleas, a former police officer, was hired as the
 

project coordinator in the spring of 2008. His position became part-time in the
 

summer of 2009, and his responsibilities now include coordinating with external
 

partners and developing the quarterly reports for DOL. At this time, Diane
 

Rosado was brought on as the project director. As a former principal and grant
 

coordinator for MPS, she is able to efficiently work within the district’s systems
 

and structures. 

•	 OCPS. Margaret Gentile, the Senior Director of Student Services, is the director
 

for the grant. She has worked for 14 years as the supervisor of alternative
 

education in the school district. Shirley Johnson-Delgado, the grant
 

administrator, is responsible for the day-to-day coordination of the grant. She has
 

over 30 years experience in working both with juvenile justice and school-towork programs. Immediately prior to this project, she worked as a senior
 

administrator for the Department of Student Advocacy and has also worked as an 

assistant principal at the school located at the local juvenile detention facility.
 

•	 SDP. Courtney Collins-Shapiro, the Director of the Multiple Pathways to 

Graduation department, is the director for this grant. Nihessah Almond serves as 

the project coordinator, and is responsible for managing and overseeing the 

implementation of the grant. Ms. Almond was hired to work on this grant 

because of her previous experience with Project U-Turn, the citywide campaign to 

reduce the high dropout rate. 

In summary, individuals who had experience working in their particular districts, expertise in the 

content area of the grant (e.g., gangs, juvenile offenders, dropout prevention), pre-existing 

relationships with grant partners, experience working with DOL, or some combination thereof 

were chosen to lead the grant in each district. Often grant leaders have been able to leverage 

these aspects of their experience in managing the various grant components. For example, in 

III-22 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

OCPS, Ms. Johnson-Delgado’s strong personal relationships with staff at the Department of 

Juvenile Justice and the sheriff and police departments are critical in coordinating work under 

this grant. In BCPSS, Ms. Cole’s involvement with the local WIB’s Youth Council allows her to 

funnel key pieces of labor market information, such as training alerts, to the job developers at the 

YO! Centers. 

All grantees are required to engage a variety of community partners,33 some of whom also play 

leadership roles in the grant. Several grantees convene partners on a regular basis to help design, 

plan, and oversee grant components, or have formal coordinating committees that fulfill this 

function. MPS has a particularly strong committee structure, which includes a coordinating 

committee and numerous subcommittees consisting of management staff, line staff, and/or 

students. For some grantees, particular partners play especially strong leadership roles. The 

Orange County district’s juvenile justice partners, for example, played a large role in launching 

the new transition center for this grant. In two other examples, SDP and BCPSS both rely 

heavily on their workforce system partner to provide leadership for this grant. Philadelphia 

Youth Network’s extensive experience with DOL and its reporting requirements made the 

organization a natural leader for this grant in the Philadelphia district. The organization is 

responsible for training and convening partners as well as managing the MIS system and 

reporting data to DOL. Similarly, in the Baltimore district, the Mayor’s Office of Employment 

Development is responsible for reporting to DOL. Overall, the level of leadership that partners 

assume depends on their actual roles in the grant, how relevant the grant programs are to their 

work, and whether they have any previous experience with DOL-funded programs. Chapter IV 

provides more detail on the role of each community partner. 

Staffing 

As shown in Exhibit III-7, grantees hired a total of 130 staff to manage this grant and provide 

direct services. These numbers include all staff hired for this grant at 50 percent or more fulltime equivalency34 in both the administrative/management and line/program categories. The 

majority of these staff (69 percent) are subcontract hires; the remaining staff are direct-district 

hires. All but 11 staff are full-time. 

33	 Required partners include the local workforce investment system, juvenile justice, law enforcement, the Mayor’s 

Office, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office. 

34	 In some cases, the grant minimally supplement funding for other staff positions. Because such a small amount 

of these staff’s time is dedicated to grant activities, they are not included in this count. 

III-23 
Exhibit III-7:

Summary of Project Staffing as of Fall 2009/Winter 201035

Total # of Staff Direct Hires Subcontract Hires

BCPSS

CPS36

MPS

OCPS

SDP37

Total

50 (47 FT, 3 PT)

20 (19 FT, 1 PT)

10 (9 FT,1 PT)

24 (24 FT)

26 (20 FT, 6 PT)

130 (119 FT, 11 PT)

5 

14

6 

14

1 

40

45

6 

4 

10

25

90

The staffing level of each grantee depends on a number of factors, including the number of youth 

served, the number of schools/program sites, and the intensity of services. BCPSS hired 50 staff 

persons, the highest number among the grantees. Consistent with the large number of staff, there 

are high concentrations of staff at each program site. On the other end of the spectrum, MPS 

hired a total of only 10 staff. This lower number is a reflection of the fact that MPS is targeting 

the least number of youth; it is also a result of budgetary constraints causing decreased staffing 

levels for the extension year of the grant. The number of staff hired by the other three 

grantees—20 for CPS, 24 for OCPS, and 26 for SDP—is about halfway between these two 

extremes.

Staffing arrangements depend on the level of centralization or decentralization of each grantee’s 

management structure. In CPS, where the management structure is the most centralized of the 

grantees, 70 percent of staff are hired directly by the district. MPS and OCPS, which use more 

of a hybrid approach, direct-hire 60 percent and 58 percent, respectively, of their staffs. At the 

other end of the spectrum, the vast majority of staff are hired by subcontractors in the 

Philadelphia and Baltimore districts. As will be discussed below, the level of centralization or 

 

35 These numbers include both staff hired directly through the district and staff hired through subcontractors. CPS, 

MPS, and SDP all hired some of its subcontractors based on a per pupil cost, so staffing levels are difficult to 

determine. Only in CPS’s case were grant administrator able to give us reasonable estimates of staffing levels 

for these contractors.

36 CPS’s contract with Banner Schools is based on a per-pupil cost, but reasonable estimates of staffing levels 

given by the grant administrator are included. 

37 SDP’s contract for North Philadelphia Community High School is based on per-pupil costs. Accurate estimates 

of staffing levels were not available, so staff at this school are not included in this count.

III-24
 

 

 

 

 

 

decentralization of each grantee’s administrative structure did not have a large effect on staffing 

levels, beyond the number of administrative/management staff hired. 

In some cases, grantees are providing funding for additional staff to expand existing services. 

For example, BCPSS provided funding to two YO! Centers to hire an additional literacy 

instructor and job developer so the centers could serve more youth. In other cases, grant funding 

created staff positions to provide entirely new services. OCPS’s intervention specialists are an 

example of this. While the staff who filled these positions were not all new to the district—many 

had been guidance counselors or held other positions in the district—the services they provide as 

intervention specialists are new. Whether the services provided by grant staff are expansions of 

previous services or entirely new, this grant allowed districts and their subcontractors to “staffup” in order to better reach a traditionally hard-to-serve population. 

Shifts in Staffing 

It is important to note that the numbers in Exhibit III-7 only represent staff positions as of the 

third round site visit in fall 2009/winter 2010. While the number of staff overall increased as the 

grant progressed and program components were implemented, staffing levels decreased in a few 

instances as the grant progressed. Below are key reasons why some grantees reduced staffing 

levels. 

•	 At the district level, hiring freezes caused delays in hiring staff and some grantees
 

eventually eliminated staff positions as a result. For example, BCPSS intended to 

hire eight teachers for math and reading remediation, but was ultimately only able 

to hire four. 

•	 In other cases, staff positions were not eliminated per se, but rather the grant no 

longer provided funding for them. For example, the teacher positions at OCPS’s
 

Positive Pathways Transition Center were grant-funded for the first nine months
 

of the Center’s existence, but are now funded through Title I funds. Therefore, 

while at one point in time the grant funded 31 full-time staff, it now funds only
 

24. 

•	 Finally, a few grantees made the programmatic-level decision to eliminate staff
 

positions. MPS eliminated the positions of two career specialists and a guidance 

counselor for the extension year of the grant because of budget constraints. SDP
 

eliminated the Microsoft Office Occupational Skills teacher position because few
 

students were completing the certification process and grant administrators felt
 

the program model could be improved. 

Type of Staff Hired 

Districts used grant funding to support a variety of positions to staff grant programs. Exhibit 

III-8 provides a detailed look at each grantee’s staffing structure, breaking staff out by 

III-25 
administrative/management staff and program staff. Across grantees, the majority of staff hired 

were program staff, although districts did hire a sizeable number of administrative staff as well.

Exhibit III-8: 

Types of Staff Hired by Grantees as of Fall 2009/Winter 2010

Program Staff

BCPSS 10 23 6 5 - 4 - - 2 50

CPS39 6 8 4 - 2 - - - - 20

MPS 2 - - 3 3 - - 2 - 10

OCPS 2 10 2 4 - - 3 - 3 24

SDP 8 1 9 5 - - - - 3 26

Total 28 42 21 17 5 4 3 2 8 130

Administrative/Management Staff. Administrative/management staff positions make up a 

sizable portion of staff hired (22 percent). These staff positions include the district-level 

leadership staff discussed previously,40 managerial staff at subcontractors and partners, and 

administrative staff whose responsibilities include tasks such as data entry. BCPSS and CPS 

support the greatest number of administrative/management staff positions. This is partly due to 

the fact that they have the most subcontractors, who each require in-house managerial and 

administrative support for their specific grant components. 

Program Staff. Grantees chose to hire a variety of program staff, but the majority of program 

staff hired by this grant fall into three categories: case managers/intervention specialists, 

teachers/instructors, and job developers. 

 

38 Includes gang specialists, conflict resolution specialists, AmeriCorps interns, etc.

39 CPS also funded school social workers and guidance counselors on a per hour basis, but these positions are not 

included in this count.

40 In a few cases, high level district leadership staff are not supported directly by grant funds, but still provide 

oversight for the grant. 

Administrative 

/Management Staff Case Managers/Intervention SpecialistsTeachers/InstructorsJob DevelopersGuidance CounselorMental Health SpecialistsSchool Resource OfficersSocial WorkersOther38 

Total

III-26
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

•	 Case managers/intervention specialists. Making up 32 percent of all staff, these 

positions are by far the most commonly funded. These staff provide intensive, 

one-on-one and group services to participants. The majority of case 

managers/intervention specialists work with in-school youth. In OCPS, for 

example, intervention specialists work in schools to connect youth with additional 

academic services, keep regular contact with students’ teachers and parents, and 

assist with credit retrieval. MPS is the only grantee that did not hire case 

managers/intervention specialists with this grant, although their school-based 

support teams of guidance counselors, social workers, and job developers 

provided similar individualized support to students. 

•	 Teachers/instructors. These positions make up 16 percent of all staff. These 

staff most commonly provide individualized and group support to youth for basic
 

skills remediation, credit recovery, and/or GED preparation. In Baltimore, 

teachers lead Voyager remediation courses at traditional schools. Other
 

teacher/instructor positions are housed in transitional schools, such as CPS’s
 

Banner Schools. Finally, other teachers/instructors provide services to out-ofschool youth, such as for GED preparation in OCPS. MPS does not support
 

teachers/instructors with this grant because its program model focuses on 

providing other supportive services to students rather than supplementing the
 

academic services already provided by the schools.
 

•	 Job developers. These positions comprise 13 percent of all staff. Job 

developers’ responsibilities include providing workforce readiness training to 

youth and developing and placing youth in internships. Like teachers/instructors, 

job developers provide services to both ISY and OSY. For example, SDP funds
 

several job developers for its in-school Learning to Work program, but also 

provides funding for a job developer for OSY involved in the Occupational Skills
 

Pathway Program. CPS is the only grantee not to hire job developers because its
 

job readiness training program is taught by teachers at each school.
 

Grantees also hired other types of staff under this grant. MPS and CPS both fund guidance 

counselors for in-school youth. Mental health specialists, school resources officers, and social 

worker positions are also funded by one grantee each. Grantees also used this funding to support 

other positions such as gang specialists and conflict resolution specialists. 

Grantees were thoughtful about hiring staff who they felt would work well with the target 

population for this grant. Grantees hired staff with backgrounds and life experiences that were 

similar to those of targeted youth so that they would be able to relate to youth in a deep and 

meaningful way. In many cases, this meant hiring staff who grew up in the community and/or 

attended the school. These staff are also able to integrate more easily into participants’ social 

structures outside of the school/program site when needed. As such, they are able to provide 

support to participants in additional ways, such as working in conjunction with participants’ 

families towards common goals, or mediating conflict between participants and other community 

III-27 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

members. The text box below provides two examples of program staff who have been especially 

successful in providing services under this grant. 

Examples of Strong Project Staff 

BCPSS. Staff from New Vision Youth Services (NVYS) provide services to particularly hardto-reach in-school youth from a unique vantage point. The staff themselves are 

predominantly young African American men and former gang members who know the “ins 

and outs” of gang culture in Baltimore. The Executive Director of the organization, Billy 

Stanfield, is a former gang member who served time in federal prison and later became a 

pastor. NVYS takes a unique, asset based-approach to its gang reduction work called 

“Growing a New Generation” (GANG). Rather than focusing on getting youth out of gangs, 

NVYS’s approach focuses on redirecting gang-involved youth away from violence. Mr. 

Stanfield explains: 

You can’t go to kids and say, ‘You gotta leave gangs.’ That will cost
 

them their lives. Our main concern is to stop the killings and the 

violence. Being in gangs is not wrong. It’s the intent that’s wrong.
 

NVYS staff draw on the connections they have from their former lives as gang members to 

mediate conflicts as needed. As one staff member explained, 

We know people, so if there’s beef going on and we can’t get to the 

bottom of it, we get a hold of their homies and call them and say, ‘Hey
 

man . . . we’re trying to do this program. Can you tell them to slow
 

down?’
 

NVYS’s connections with the faith-based community, ability to successfully mediate conflict 

in the community, and asset-based approach to reducing youth violence are all important 

aspects of its promising work. 

OCPS. The Parramore Kidz Zone used funding from this grant to hire Stanley Comartie as 

an outreach worker. Although Mr. Comartie does not have a background in this type of 

work— he was an athlete early in life and later a college basketball coach—he truly believes 

that he has found his calling. As an outreach worker, he has been able to make connections 

with neighborhood youth and provide them with much-needed services. Others in the 

district point to him as a case study of what is working under this grant. 

Mr. Comartie is able to leverage his life experience to engage youth in a unique way. He 

used his connections with the NBA to secure the construction of a new basketball court at 

Jackson Neighborhood Center and has set up a very popular basketball league. Mr. 

Comartie started this league with the understanding that the center needed something 

attractive to draw in and build trust with the out-of-school youth in the community, and 

participation levels have been high. Through this league, the Center has been able to 

engage older youth who previously would not come to the Center. Once this initial 

connection is made, Mr. Comartie is able to build trust with the youth, talk to them about 

their lives and career goals, and connect them to appropriate services. Respondents report 

that Mr. Comartie is a particularly strong role model for young African American men in the 

community. 

III-28 
Budget

Each grantee received an initial grant of $4.8 million. In 2009, this grant was supplemented by 

an additional $1.06 million. Therefore, in total, grantees received $5.86 million each. Exhibit 

III-9 compares this grant amount to each district’s overall budget to give a sense of its relative 

size. 

Exhibit III-9:

Overview of School District Grantees’ Budgets

DOL Grant as District Per- Estimated PerFY 2010 District Percentage of Pupil Participant Grant 

Annual Budget Budget Expenditure41 Funding42

BCPSS

CPS

MPS

OCPS

SDP

$1.265 billion

$5.328 billion

$1.072 billion

$1.321 billion43

$2.192 billion44

0.15%

0.04%

0.18%

0.12%

0.09%

$15,265

$13,018

$13,012

$7,533

$11,49045

$5,581

$2,528

$7,067

$3,488

$5,931

The School District Grant represents less than one percent of each district’s annual budget. 

However, since each district is using the grant to serve a relatively small proportion of its 

students, comparing each district’s per pupil expenditure with the estimated per-grant-participant 

funding provides a more accurate picture of the value of this grant. The per-grant-participant 

funding ranges from just under one-fifth to two-thirds of the district’s per pupil expenditure. In 

other words, although the grant was small relative to each district’s overall budget, it represents a 

sizeable increase in per-student spending for those students who receive grant services. Grant 

participants in the Milwaukee district, for example, enjoy annual per-pupil expenditures topping 

an estimated $20,000 when the grant funding is factored in. (Note, however, that the high 

estimated per-grant-participant expenditure in MPS is due in part to the district serving a 

 

41 This was calculated by dividing the annual budget by number of students.

42 This number was calculated by dividing the budget expended to date by the number of participants served to date 

at the time of the third round site visit. It is important to note that this is only an estimated amount and 

represents average cost per participant. 

43 The FY 2010 budget was not available. This number represents the FY 2009 budget.

44 The FY 2010 budget was not available. This number represents the FY 2008 Operating Budget.

45 Based on Fiscal Year 2006 Actual Budget including categorical funds.

III-29
 

 

 

 

 

relatively small number of participants to date.) Even in the Chicago district, where a relatively 

large number of participants have been served by the grant, the grant funding bumps up per-pupil 

spending for grant participants by an estimated 19 percent. 

As of fall 2009/winter 2010, grantees differed in the amount spent to date, mainly because 

projects were launched and implemented at different times. Exhibit III-10 details how much 

each grantee has spent to date; it also includes the estimated end date for the grant. 

Exhibit III-10:
 

Budget Expenditures to Date
 

(Fall 2009/Winter 2010)
 

Estimated end date 

Amount Spent % of Original Grant of grant 

BCPSS $3,600,000* 75%	 9/30/2010 

CPS $2,450,000 51%	 12/31/2010 

MPS $3,149,513 66%	 6/30/2010 

OCPS $4,260,000 89%	 8/31/2010 

SDP $3,600,000* 75%	 6/30/2010 

* These numbers are based on estimates given during the third-round site visit. 

To date, grantees have spent between 51 percent and 89 percent of the original $4.8 million 

grant. All grantees except for CPS have an estimated end date for the grant some time in 

summer 2010. CPS has spent the least amount of the grant (just over half), but it is also planning 

to continue to provide services until December 31, 2010. This relatively low expenditure amount 

is due to the fact that CPS experienced a number of delays in grant implementation and has had 

to modify its work plan drastically since the start of the grant. In comparison, SDP and MPS— 

which experienced fewer delays in implementation and deviated less from their original work 

plans—have the earliest estimated end dates for the grant (June 30, 2010). Although BCPSS has 

spent a relatively large amount of its grant to date, it requested a contract extension through 

September 30, 2010, in order to hold a summer bridge program and expend all funds. 

As previously mentioned, each grantee received an additional $1.06 million in 2009. All 

grantees are using at least a portion of the additional funding to lengthen the timeline for 

providing grant services. Two grantees (SDP and BCPSS) are also using the additional grant 

funding to expand services. Below we detail how each grantee is using the additional funding: 

•	 BCPSS is using the additional grant funding to continue and expand services. A
 

portion of the additional funding is used to continue Futures Works! case
 

management services and mental health services, both of which would have been 

III-30 
spent out without the additional funds. The rest of the additional funding went to 

hiring a gang specialist to coordinate a community-wide gang reduction plan, a 

new program component. 

• CPS is using the additional grant funding to extend the traditional school program 

until June 2010 and the transitional school programs until December 2010. 

• MPS is using the additional funding to support staff positions and contract

services for an additional year, through June 2010. 

• OCPS is using the additional grant to extend services through August 2010. 

• SDP is using the additional grant funding to provide services beyond the original 

grant completion date, to June 2010. Without the additional grant, services would 

have ended in December 2009. In the final year of the grant, SDP also expanded 

its Learning to Work program to one additional school. 

Grantees also differed in how they spent their funds. Exhibit III-11 provides a breakdown of 

grantee budgets by key categories. 

Exhibit III-11:

Overview of Grant Budgets46

Fringe Equipment/ Indirect 

Personnel Benefits Travel Supplies Contractual charges Other

BCPSS 11% 4% 0% 2% 76% 7% 0%

CPS 34% 10% 1% 1% 36% 1% 16%47

MPS 19% 7% 1% 0% 71% 2% 0%

OCPS 34% 12% 5% 10% 38% 3% 2%48

SDP 2% 1% 0% 1% 93% 3% 0%

By far, the majority of funds were budgeted for personnel and/or contractual services, with the 

relative balance between the two depending on the degree of centralization or decentralization. 

In SDP, which is contracting out most of its services, the vast majority of the budget (93 percent) 

went to contractual services whereas only two percent went to personnel. Somewhat similarly, 

BCPSS budgeted 76 percent of its grant to contracts and 11 percent to personnel. In contrast, the 

personnel and contractual line items were fairly equal for both CPS and OCPS (34 percent/36 

 

46 For all grantees except MPS, the budget includes the original plus the additional grant amount. Only MPS’s 

budget for the original grant was available. 

47 This includes the following line items from CPS’s budget: administration and other. 

48 This includes the following line items from OCPS’s budget: training stipends, rentals, and purchased services.

III-31
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

percent and 34 percent/38 percent respectively). For CPS, this balance is reflective of the fact 

that the district had a fairly centralized grant structure for the first two years of the grant and then 

began working with a subcontractor once it decided to use grant funding to open transition 

schools. For OCPS, the balance can be attributed to services being provided by a combination of 

district and subcontractor staff throughout the life of the grant. 

Related Initiatives and Programs 

Efforts funded by the School District Grant were often supplemented by existing programs and 

initiatives dealing with dropout reduction, violence prevention, or gang reduction. Because of 

these programs, most grantees were able to build off and coordinate with work already occurring 

in their schools, districts, and communities. Specifically, initiatives that pre-dated the grant 

helped to inform grantee plans and provided lessons on which grantees could base their work. 

At times, concurrent initiatives also provided services complementary to grant-funded services, 

adding value to both. Finally, some grantees were able to use grant funds to expand on work that 

was already occurring in the community by providing funds for additional staff. Overall, where 

strong, pre-existing initiatives existed, grantees did not have to “reinvent the wheel,” but were 

rather able to leverage and expand upon promising work and fill in any gaps. The bullets below 

provide a brief summary of other relevant work occurring in each of the districts and target 

cities: 

•	 BCPSS. The Baltimore district was able to expand two of the city’s gangreduction initiatives using grant funding. The grant also allowed the district to 

continue a previously existing dropout prevention program in four targeted 

schools. 

•	 CPS. In the Chicago district, the grant does not directly build on existing
 

initiatives per se, but incorporates some of the principles of anti-gang work that
 

the city is promoting.
 

•	 MPS. Milwaukee has several, violence prevention initiatives in place and grant
 

funded-programs both expand and compliment these initiatives. These initiatives
 

include Safe Streets Common Ground, the Violence Prevention Program, the
 

MPS Violence Free Zone, and Safe Schools/Healthy Students.
 

•	 OCPS. A key component of OCPS’s grant program, the Positive Pathways
 

Transition Center, grew out of the work of the Juvenile Justice Taskforce, whose
 

members included the district, the juvenile justice system, and the police
 

department. OCPS has also been able to use grant funding to complement the
 

III-32 
 

 

 

 

 

 

anti-gang and violence prevention work of the Orlando Police Department’s Gang 

Unit49 and of the city’s Parramore Kidz Zone. 

•	 SDP. Grant-funded programs align with and add value to the Youth Violence
 

Reduction Partnership program, which previously had a hard time focusing on 

school and career opportunities for its youth. Additionally, grant programs
 

expanded Project U-Turn, a citywide campaign to reduce the dropout rate. 

Overall, the School District Grant represents an important opportunity for districts to focus on a 

specific population as a means of reducing the dropout rate. As shown in this chapter, each 

grantee chose to structure the grant in a slightly different way in response to its own needs, 

opportunities, and strengths. The next chapter on partnerships details how each grantee was able 

to work with the required community partners and engineer key partnership outcomes. 

49 Although funding for the formal gang unit ended early in the grant, the sheriff’s department continues to have an 

ad hoc gang unit. 

III-33 
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Insert blank page here when making double-sided copies 
IV. PARTNERSHIP MODELS AND OUTCOMES 

Given the multiple and interrelated service needs of the target youth population, an important 

goal of the School District Grant is to facilitate strong links between school districts and various 

local partners—particularly the workforce investment system, the Juvenile Justice System, law 

enforcement, the local mayor’s office, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office. In addition to these 

required partners, it is anticipated that grantees will develop ties with other community 

organizations in order to provide specialized, supportive services to both in-school and out-ofschool youth participants. 

In this chapter, we first summarize each grantee’s partnership arrangements, focusing on their 

partnership outcomes and prospects for sustainability. (Appendix F provides the complete 

partnership profiles for all five grantees.) We then analyze key partnership themes, outcomes, 

challenges and lessons across grantees, before concluding with final thoughts and implications. 

Summary of Grantee Partnership Profiles 

Baltimore City Public School System (BCPSS) 

Initiative Name: Workforce Development Initiative to Reduce Youth Gangs and Violent 

Crime 

Partnership Model: A focus on social service partnerships 

Capsule Summary: The Baltimore City Public School System’s initiative is designed to 

serve in-school youth at the middle- and high-school level, primarily with the expansion of 

the Futures program—a dropout prevention program. Out-of-school youth are provided 

additional services—including literacy and GED instruction, job development, and paid 

work experiences—at local YO! Centers. Mentoring, mental health, and anti-gang 

services are also key features of the design for both in-school and out-of-school youth. 

While Baltimore City Public School System is characterized by a strong link with workforce 

development, its partnership model stands out more because of the emphasis on social service 

IV-1 
partners. Specifically, BCPSS emphasizes anti-gang, mental health, and mentoring services as 

key features of its partnership and intended service design. 

Key Partnership Outcomes 

One significant partner- and system-level outcome from the School District Grant was a new 

arrangement allowing BCPSS, the Mayor’s Office of Employment Development (MOED) and 

the Department of Juvenile Services (DJS) to share youth data. Data-sharing challenges and 

processes emerged as BCPSS and MOED were trying to get DJS to verify youth’s offender 

status so that they could verify their eligibility for grant services. Given confidentiality and 

privacy concerns, DJS developed a waiver form that students must sign in order to receive grant 

services. The waiver allows the various partners to share data on the youth’s arrest records, 

school information, and progress in school district programs. 

With regard to sustainability, BCPPS is attempting to plan for the continuation of core 

partnerships, though a number of these center on particular program components that are heavily 

or wholly dependent on grant contract funds. Since the district is facing severe budget cuts, 

many of these partnerships are likely to dissolve with the end of the grant. However, gang 

prevention and intervention services from the CBO New Visions Youth Services (NVYS) will 

continue in the schools due to a grant that the district secured from the Open Society Institute. 

To date, no alternate funding sources have been identified to continue providing mental health 

services at the same level supported by the School District Grant, though mental health 

specialists will likely continue working at the schools at a lower capacity. 

Chicago Public Schools (CPS) 

Initiative Name: Project Youth Engaged in School (YES) 

Partnership Model: Centralized 

Capsule Summary: Chicago Public Schools’ (CPS’) Project YES is a dropout prevention effort 

with two main target groups and service components: (1) incoming ninth graders at six 

traditional high schools who are served by the YES Afterschool Program, and (2) youth 

offenders transitioning out of detention (whose home school is one of the six traditional high 

schools) who are served by the CBO, Banner Schools. 

Chicago Public Schools’ Project YES represents a relatively centralized model of partnership 

that stems partly from the district’s style of administration and service provision. The fourperson grant team at CPS provides oversight for nearly the entire grant. CPS also provides 

nearly all of the grant services itself, rather than relying on a team of subcontractors as other 

IV-2 
grantees have done. The major exception is Banner Schools. CPS contracted with Banner 

Schools late in the grant initiative to launch Banner South and Banner North Transitional 

Schools for youth transitioning from the Cook County Juvenile Detention Center back to their 

home schools. 

Key Partnership Outcomes 

Key partner-and system-level outcomes occurred for CPS in three areas: increased coordination 

between CPS and the Juvenile Justice System (JJS); increased attention to student transfer and 

data-sharing challenges; and increased attention to serving CPS’s youth offender and at-risk 

populations. 

The Banner Schools that were implemented in Year Three allowed for new levels of 

coordination between CPS and the JJS. The YES team members who are co-located at the Cook 

County Juvenile Detention Center implemented a multi-step process to identify, recruit, and 

enroll eligible youth in the Banner Schools. The success of this process depends on data sharing 

with the JJS, particularly around youth’s upcoming court dates and lengths of stay at the 

detention center, so that YES staff can recruit and enroll youth in the Banner Schools before they 

leave detention. CPS leaders are currently considering ways to sustain and expand this 

transitional school model throughout the city so that an increased number of youth offenders can 

be served. 

Grant program activities also resulted in greater attention to two key transfer and data-sharing 

challenges. The first challenge was ensuring the accuracy of the projected number of entering 

ninth grade students transferring from middle school to any given high school. Eighth graders 

who choose to proceed to a charter school do not have to inform CPS of their decision to enroll 

in these schools. As a result, CPS high schools often have inaccurate projections for their ninth 

grade enrollment figures. A solution proposed by the YES program is currently being 

considered by the Mayor’s Office: to have eighth graders formally commit to a secondary school 

by a certain point in the academic year. 

As a result of YES activities, another data-sharing issue to receive more attention was the 

transition of youth offenders back to their traditional high schools upon release. Schools are 

often inadequately prepared for the re-enrollment of released youth offenders: they do not know 

when these students will arrive or what educational activities they completed while in detention, 

and often the necessary paperwork—such as the alternative school at the detention center 

formally dropping the youth—has not been completed. As a result of the grant, the Banner 

Schools offer an alternative model and transition point for this difficult process. As previously 

mentioned, CPS leaders are currently considering ways to sustain and expand the transitional 

school model throughout the city, thus demonstrating sustained attention to this issue. 

IV-3 
 

Finally, the YES program has allowed CPS to focus as never before on serving its special 

population of youth offenders and gang members. The still-nascent Banner School model in 

particular performs three important functions: (1) facilitates data-sharing and coordination 

between CPS and the JJS to ease the transition of youth offenders to traditional school; (2) 

allows youth to make up lost credit with online instruction so they may return to their home 

schools on schedule; and (3) helps avoid the return of youth to detention for parole violations by 

helping to ensure their academic engagement and success. 

Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) 

Initiative Name: Futures First Initiative (FFI) 

Partnership Model: CBO-partner involvement 

Capsule Summary: Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) has implemented the Futures First 

Initiative, which includes funding for Transition High School, a new school for students 

transferring out of detention, as well as services in five traditional high schools for at-risk 

students. Both programs include case management, academic support, and employment 

services. The grant approach consists of the use of School-Based Teams (SBT) as well as 

contracted life skills and enrichment services. 

MPS’s partnership model for the Futures First Initiative is most distinguished by its strong 

relationship with CBOs as service providers, as well as a relationship with the local workforce 

investment system that has been substantial in nature, even from the initial design and proposal 

stage. 

Key Partnership Outcomes 

MPS’s most notable system-level outcome is that Transition High School, launched as a part of 

the School District Grant, will be sustained by district funds after the grant has ended. This 

school provides a critical alternative for youth who are transitioning from detention back to 

school. The value of this school is made particularly clear by the district’s decision to absorb the 

school’s costs despite facing dramatic budget cuts. Other system-level outcomes are simply the 

lessons learned by this grant’s implementation and partnership experience—which include, 

according to respondents, the importance of mentoring for at-risk youth, the need for schools to 

have gang reduction plans in place, and the ability of MPS to partner with other agencies in 

terms of increased communication and mutually informed decision-making. 

IV-4 
Orange County Public Schools (OCPS) 

Initiative Name: Youth Enrichment Services (YES) 

Partnership Model: Fast-track 

Capsule Summary: Orange County Public Schools’ (OCPS’) goals for the YES initiative are to 

reduce the number of juveniles engaged with the Juvenile Justice System; increase the 

percentage of students who complete high school; and provide extra support to youth struggling 

with academic achievement. In order to provide individualized attention and care to these 

youth, OCPS-funded staff—including the Intervention Specialists—provide counseling and 

supportive services at four middle schools and four high schools, the Positive Pathways 

Transition Center (where youth leaving detention can earn their GED/degree or earn credits 

needed to transition back to their home schools), the Juvenile Assessment Center (where youth 

are first taken upon arrest), and at recreational centers within target communities. 

Relative to other grantees, Orange County Public Schools enjoyed a much quicker start-up of 

grant services. The district’s success in this area was due in part to strong, pre-existing 

relationships with a number of the key grant partners. This foundation allowed OCPS and its 

partners to fast-track from grant planning to grant implementation. 

Key Partnership Outcomes 

The key partner- and system-level outcomes are clustered around two critical partnerships: that 

between OCPS and Workforce Central Florida (the local workforce investment agency), and that 

between OCPS and the Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ). 

In addition to being very pleased with WCF’s services and youth outcomes under the School 

District Grant, OCPS administrators and line staff have gained critical knowledge of WCF 

programs and strategies for serving youth, and WCF employees have gained a broader 

perspective on youth issues by working with a broader youth population than they are 

accustomed to. As one local respondent noted, 

[WCF has] typically served an older youth population. This grant has 

provided them the opportunity to work with 18-year-olds and that has 

changed their perspective on youth. They have also provided support to 

in-school youth, because they have worked closely with the Intervention 

Specialists. 

The grant has also led the staff of the two agencies to form strong interpersonal ties, which 

appear to be critical to successful inter-agency partnerships in Orlando. In fact, stakeholders 

consider the strengthened relationship between OCPS and WCF to be one of the most significant 

outcomes of the School District Grant. OCPS now views WCF as more of a working partner in 

IV-5 
serving Orlando’s vulnerable in-school and out-of-school youth populations. However, despite 

the strengthened ties between the two agencies, the actual work of the partnership is not 

necessarily sustainable. Although all partners would like the work of WCF to continue at the 

Jackson Recreation Center, WCF has made it clear that this will not occur, due to a lack of 

resources after the end of the grant. 

The School District Grant allowed OCPS and DJJ to deepen a relationship that was already 

strong when the grant began. This occurred partly through mutual education; for example, joint 

trainings allowed for each agency to better understand the other. The Positive Pathways 

Transition Center in particular allowed the two agencies to really come together over a common 

concern with youth coming out of detention and returning to school. While the two agencies 

might have previously shared data—such as sending over requested attendance information— 

now there are more sit-down conversations, joint planning, and coordination on how to best 

transition youth. OCPS is participating more consistently in commitment hearings, and OCPS 

and DJJ are more coordinated in working with parents. For example, probation officers are now 

participating more in parent-teacher conferences. The Positive Pathways Transition Center is 

expected to continue as a primary mechanism for the OCPS-DJJ partnership, as the center will be 

sustained after the grant with Title I funds. However, the OCPS counselor position at the 

Juvenile Assessment Center will be discontinued due to lack of funding. 

School District of Philadelphia (SDP) 

Initiative Name: Project U-Turn Expansion 

Partnership Model: Complex 

Capsule Summary: The School District of Philadelphia (SDP) is implementing multiple 

programs to expand Project U-Turn, an initiative to address the city’s high dropout rate. For inschool youth, the district created North Philadelphia Community High School (an accelerated 

school serving court-involved, dropout, overage and under-credit youth) and implemented a 

Learning to Work strategy at this school, Overbrook High School, and University High School. 

Implemented at six high schools is the OASIS program, which uses an accelerated school 

model to target overage, under-credit ninth graders at a “school within a school.” Out-of-school 

youth are being served by the Bridge Program housed at the E3

 Power Center (which helps 

skill- and credit-deficient youth attain the competencies needed to enter an educational 

pathway), the Occupational Skills Pathway Programs for older and formerly incarcerated youth, 

and the newly launched Student Re-engagement Center (which provides various services, 

including assessments, to connect out-of-school youth to an appropriate educational/Project UTurn pathway). 

IV-6 
 

 

 

The linkages formed under the School District Grant by the School District of Philadelphia 

represent a highly complex model of partnership. This is due to a number of factors, including 

the fact that SDP contracts out the majority of grant services to a significant number of CBOs,1 

which, in turn, often provide services for more than one major service component and/or to more 

than one of the grant’s service sites. The contracted partners have also developed various 

relationships amongst themselves, rather than manifesting the more typical partnership 

arrangement in which the school district is at the center, or hub, of otherwise unconnected 

partners. Philadelphia’s effort also represents an expansion, as well as an extension, of previous, 

large-scale efforts—namely Project U-Turn and the Re-Entry Transition Initiative–Welcome 

Return Assessment Process (RETI-WRAP).2

 The district’s previous involvement with these 

initiatives introduces additional layers and players to the partnership model. 

Key Partnership Outcomes 

SDP realized a number of key partner- and system-level outcomes in the areas of referral 

mechanisms, changes in district practices, and data sharing. 

One of the most significant outcomes of the grant was the creation and institutionalization of the 

Re-Engagement Center, which allowed for a more streamlined referral process for out-of-school 

youth and youth transitioning from detention. Although SDP had begun this work before the 

expansion of Project U-Turn, the School District Grant provided the seed funding for the ReEngagement Center that really allowed for a more coordinated referral process to the Bridge 

Program, North Philadelphia Community High School, and other district schools and programs. 

The coordination is facilitated, in part, by co-located city staff: two Department of Human 

Services case managers and two behavioral health specialists from the Office of Mental Health. 

Sustainability of the Re-Engagement Center is assured, as its funding has been assumed by the 

district. 

The School District Grant also led to the creation of a sustainable accelerated high school model 

that, in turn, has led to an expansion of efforts in this area. North Philadelphia Community High 

School was launched with School District Grant funds and its success, as well as the success of 

1 The Philadelphia School District has such strong unions, that it’s easier to contract out to CBOs for services 

rather than try to get district staff to perform functions outside of union contracts. 

2 Project U-Turn is a dropout prevention collaborative made up of district officials, the Department of Human 

Services, the Juvenile Justice System and other key organizations. RETI-WRAP is a collaborative that provides 

transitional support and education and workforce development activities for youth returning to the public school 

system from residential delinquent placement. By bringing together representatives from the SDP, Juvenile 

Probation, Department of Human Services, Behavioral Health Services and the Defender Association, the 

IV-7 
 

earlier efforts at the Fairhill Community High School, led the district to realize the strength of 

the accelerated school model—identifying youth in greatest need, placing them in a smaller 

cohort, and providing needed services. From the successes at these two schools, the idea for 

OASIS—an accelerated “school within a school”—was born and implemented. Sustainability 

for North Philadelphia Community High School is assured as the district has assumed funding 

responsibilities; the school will continue to offer 180 slots for youth and is applying for 

additional grants, including a 21st Century Skills grant, to continue its Learning to Work 

component and Center for Literacy work. 

A third major system-level outcome was simply that the School District of Philadelphia agreed to 

give credit to youth for work completed as part of the Bridge Program, which operates outside 

the district school setting in the E3 Power Center. This development furthers the aim of the 

Bridge Program—to assist out-of-school youth in transitioning back to an educational pathway. 

Finally, on both the system and partner levels, there were also breakthroughs with regard to data 

sharing and usage. As of December 2009, SDP, the Department of Human Services, and the 

Division of Juvenile Justice Services’ Court and Community Services were poised to sign a 

memorandum of understanding that would allow these three parties to share youth case 

management data on a sustained basis. Although not completely attributable to the School 

District Grant, this agreement is considered groundbreaking. The School District Grant 

administrator also developed informal mechanisms for sharing data with DJJS, though it is not 

clear to what extent these mechanisms will be formalized and sustained. Also, staff at partner 

North Philadelphia High School reported that the School District Grant led to an increased 

proficiency with and reliance on quantitative data that helped it better document and illustrate 

their success with students. 

Cross-Site Analyses of Grantee Partnerships 

Given the summaries above of grantee partnership models, we now turn to cross-site analyses 

that allow us to examine key findings and outcomes across grantees. 

Workforce Development Partnerships 

School districts have most commonly established linkages with the workforce development 

system by subcontracting with local workforce investment boards (LWIBs) to provide academic 

and employment services for out-of-school youth—a population with which LWIBs typically 

program works to ensure youth receive a full range of supports (including academic, health, mental health, life 

skills, and social services). 

IV-8 
 

have significant experience. However, the intensity of these partnerships naturally varies, with 

some grantees choosing to capitalize on workforce partners’ expertise and staff in different ways, 

and for different youth sub-populations. Following are key findings with regard to grantees’ 

partnerships with workforce partners. 

	 All grantees but one (CPS) have a contracted partnership or MOU with the 

local workforce system.3 However, the intensity level of these contracted 

partnerships varies. Three grantees in particular (BCPSS, SDP, and MPS) 

involved their local workforce partners in substantial ways from the earliest stages 

of grant planning and proposal-writing. For example, Philadelphia Youth 

Network (as the workforce partner) identified and convened partners for the 

School District Grant, selected CBOs to deliver services, developed a data 

tracking system to record participant data, and provides overall oversight and 

communication among partners. The workforce partner in Baltimore, the 

Mayor’s Office of Employment Development (MOED), helped determine which 

partners should be at the table and how the different service components should 

be structured for the in-school and out-of-school youth populations. The 

Milwaukee Area Workforce Investment Board wrote the employment portion of 

the proposal and was initially slated to be the school district’s partner in overall 

grant management. 

	 Two grantees (MPS and OCPS) have co-located workforce staff as part of 

their partnerships. MPS has five Youth Career Development Specialists colocated at the target schools serving in-school youth. These specialists provide 

youth with job readiness, career counseling and job search assistance services. 

OCPS has two job recruiters co-located at a recreation center serving older, outof-school youth with soft skill workforce trainings and subsequent connections to 

employment, the armed forces, Job Corps and/or additional career training. While 

Baltimore City Public School System’s workforce partner does not provide colocated staff, it provides staff and direct services for out-of-school youth at its two 

well-established YO! Centers. YO! is providing training in several high-growth 

industries (such as hospitality and healthcare) and offers a number of employment 

services such as work readiness training, job search assistance, and subsidized 

employment opportunities. 

	 Only two grantees provide relatively strong workforce services for in-school 

youth. For three of the grantees, limited services for in-school youth are due to 

budget shortfalls and/or incomplete implementation of project plans. However, 

Milwaukee Public Schools and School District of Philadelphia both have a 

relatively strong focus on workforce services for in-school youth. In Milwaukee, 

dedicated specialists from the local workforce investment board provide 

employment readiness and training activities, as well as paid work experiences as 

part of the five School-Based Teams. Unlike other grantees that have the LWIB 

serve in-school youth, School District of Philadelphia contracted with three CBOs 

Orange County Public Schools is the only grantee with a MOU (instead of a contract) with its workforce partner. 

IV-9 

3 
to provide job readiness skills, career planning assistance, and paid work 

experiences at three schools as part of a larger Learning To Work (LTW) 

program. 

	 Workforce services for out-of-school youth are provided by CBO partners, 

as well as local workforce entities. As previously discussed, all but one grantee 

has an established relationship with the local workforce entity to provide 

workforce services. Baltimore City Public School System and School District of 

Philadelphia also capitalize on strong, pre-existing programs at the YO! and E3 

Power Centers. However, CBOs also play an important role in providing 

workforce services, particularly to out-of-school youth. In Chicago, a CBO (A 

Knock At Midnight) provides youth transitioning from detention to traditional 

school with various skill-building activities such as resume writing and career 

exploration. In Orlando, in addition to job developers from the LWIB, out-ofschool youth are served by a CBO (Metropolitan Orlando Urban League or 

MOUL), which provides two job developers who are responsible for placing 

youth in paid work experiences at local CBOs or faith-based organizations. 

MOUL specializes in serving gang-involved youth and/or youth with criminal 

records. Philadelphia works with Community College of Philadelphia and a CBO 

(NPower) to provide older, formerly incarcerated youth with automotive, 

hospitality industry, and information technology training as part of a larger 

Occupational Skills Pathway Program (OSPP). 

Juvenile Justice Partnerships 

The transition process from juvenile detention back to the public school system is often a 

challenging one. Schools are sometimes reluctant to re-enroll youth offenders; school staff and 

programs have inadequate capacity to provide all the needed services to successfully transition 

youth offenders; schools and detention centers do not communicate well about when and how 

these students will return (e.g., when in the academic year and to which grade); and many 

students return with incomplete documentation (e.g., academic records, re-enrollment forms, 

etc.). Confidentiality guidelines within the Juvenile Justice System (JJS) can also make 

coordination with the public school system difficult or impossible. Given these challenges, the 

School District Grant called for school districts to partner with JJS to better coordinate the 

transition process and ensure a smoother return to an educational pathway. 

The most typical forms of the linkages between these two systems are data-sharing agreements 

and joint participation on advisory groups or commissions aimed at coordinating services 

between youth-serving systems. We can also make an observation about how these linkages are 

typically used: they frequently focus on securing youth referrals, though other forms of 

important data sharing are occurring as well. We also see that while these partnerships are most 

concerned with sharing information rather than providing direct services, they are also greatly 

strengthened by concrete and jointly-created structures, as discussed further below. 

IV-10 
 

	 Co-located school district staff play an important role in facilitating the 

referral- and information-sharing-based partnerships with the JJS. For three 

grantees, co-located school district staff help facilitate the partnership with the 

JJS. For example, Chicago Public Schools has staff co-located at the Cook 

County Juvenile Detention Center that allows the two entities to share data and 

for the detention center to ultimately help grant staff identify and enroll eligible 

youth at the Banner Schools. Orange County Public Schools has a guidance 

counselor co-located at the Juvenile Assessment Center that helps inform 

Department of Juvenile Justice Staff about youth’s academic status and how they 

might best return to an educational pathway. While School District of 

Philadelphia does not make use of co-located JJS staff to procure referrals, they 

nevertheless are able to work closely with Philadelphia Juvenile Probation and 

pre-existing programs (Philadelphia Reintegration Initiative4 and RETI-WRAP) to 

identify eligible juvenile offenders and transition them to grant-funded schools 

and programs, such as Learning to Work and Occupational Skills Pathways 

Program. The remaining two grantees intended that the JJS would serve as a 

prime source of youth referrals, but this arrangement was stymied by 

confidentiality and information-sharing challenges, as well as cloudiness around 

eligibility and target group criteria. 

	 While providing youth referrals is the most notable intended and actual 

aspect of JJS partnerships, JJS representatives also provide other forms of 

information. For example, Chicago Public Schools and School District of 

Philadelphia significantly capitalized on the expertise of JJS representatives in the 

early grant-design and proposal-writing phases. In Chicago, the project director 

met with a number of representatives of the city’s Juvenile Justice System to 

secure advice on how to structure a program that would support youth offenders. 

In Philadelphia, SDP worked closely with representatives from the Philadelphia 

Reintegration Initiative and Philadelphia Juvenile Probation to integrate their 

expertise in working with court-involved youth and to draft portions of the grant 

proposal. Finally, Orange County Public Schools engages in critical information 

sharing with the JJS in the form of shared training opportunities that allow each 

agency to learn more about the youth population and services of the other. For 

Chicago Public Schools, the School District Grant has led to similar inter-agency 

education—through the school district’s and the JJS’ participation on a 

community task force dedicated to improving relationships between CPS and the 

court system, and coordinating the transition process between detention and 

school. 

	 While a number of grantees planned for their JJS partners to share youth 

recidivism data, School District of Philadelphia appears to be the only 

grantee able to secure this data. SDP receives this information from 

Philadelphia Juvenile Probation through a shared spreadsheet. This school district 

Philadelphia’s Reintegration Initiative is a program launched by the Philadelphia Family Court and the 

Department of Human Services to support youth as they transition out of residential placement. 

IV-11 

4 
is also able to secure incarceration data for enrolled youth from Division of 

Juvenile Justice Services. 

	 Service-centered partnerships with the Juvenile Justice System generally 

have not materialized. As discussed above, most of the partnerships with the 

JJS center on providing referrals and other forms of information, not services. 

However, two grantees (Baltimore City Public School System and Milwaukee 

Public Schools) had intended for their JJS partners to provide more direct 

services. In Baltimore, the Department of Juvenile Services was to hire three 

workforce specialists to provide job readiness and job development services for 

adjudicated youth. However, these staff were not hired until January 2010, and, 

while potential youth participants have been identified, planned internships have 

not. In Milwaukee, it was anticipated that the Children’s Court Center would not 

only have the primary responsibility of identifying and referring youth, but also 

the shared responsibility (with the school district) of providing case management 

and service planning for youth. This did not occur due to various challenges, 

including the logistics of dividing service responsibilities and sharing youth 

information. 

	 A joint project serves as one of the strongest mechanisms for creating an 

effective school district-juvenile justice partnership. Though only partially 

funded by the School District Grant, the launching of the Positive Pathways 

Transition Center in Orlando served as a way to greatly enhance the partnership 

between the school district grantee and the Department of Juvenile Justice. The 

Transition Center allowed these two agencies to collaborate on successful 

transitions for youth leaving detention and returning to school. Likewise, the 

initiation of Chicago Banner Schools allowed for new levels of coordination 

between the school district grantee and the JJS. However, in this case, the level of 

partnership is less intense given that a CBO is in fact operating the transitional 

schools, and there is no formal partnership agreement in place between Chicago 

Public Schools and the JJS. 

Law Enforcement Partnerships 

To some extent, it is understandable that partnerships with law enforcement would be less 

intense than those with other required partners. While law enforcement agencies possess critical 

expertise on youth violence and gang activity, including within the specific environment of 

school campuses, they are much less involved than the Juvenile Justice System with regard to 

case management and service planning. School districts’ linkages with law enforcement (for the 

purposes of the School District Grant) often took the form of joint participation on local 

violence-reduction initiatives and the planned provision of SROs at the school level. However, 

the roles anticipated for law enforcement in the area of information exchange generally did not 

occur as planned. 

	 Overall, grantees have very weak partnerships with law enforcement for the 

purposes of the School District Grant. While a number of grantees enjoyed 

IV-12 
positive, pre-existing relationships with law enforcement (e.g., from joint 

participation on city commissions, or from the provision of SROs at schools), for 

the specific purpose of the School District Grant, links are relatively superficial or 

non-existent. To the extent these links did occur, they included grant staff 

meeting with police officers to share local gang developments, a new SRO being 

established at a target school, and grant staff working with law enforcement on 

safety task forces at high-need schools. 

	 Anticipated roles for law enforcement, primarily in the area of information 

exchange, were generally not realized. At least three grantees planned on 

linking with law enforcement for the purposes of securing data on youth crime, 

gang-involved youth, and encounters between enrolled youth and law 

enforcement, for training in anti-gang strategies, and for receiving advice on the 

types of services needed by youth exiting detention. However, these types of 

information exchanges did not, for the most part, occur as planned, sometimes 

due to bureaucratic obstacles within law enforcement. Orange County Public 

Schools had the most significant anticipated relationship with law enforcement, as 

officers were to meet regularly with participating youth and school staff. 

However, staff turnover, as well as a revision of grant plans, challenged the full 

implementation of this partnership. 

Partnerships with the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the Mayor’s Office 

While the School District Grant requires that grantees partner with the U.S. Attorney’s Office 

and each city’s mayor’s office, the Interim Report found that these partners were generally more 

involved during planning than they were during the implementation stages. Typical among 

grantees is a relationship whereby the Attorney’s Office is “kept in the loop” on grant activities 

and developments. The involvement of the mayor’s office is a bit more diverse, given the varied 

roles, responsibilities and pre-existing programs of this office among grantee sites. For example, 

in Chicago, the Mayor’s Office controls the school district and thus there is, by default, a tighter 

relationship between these two partners. In Baltimore, the Mayor’s Office of Employment 

Development is the local workforce entity and runs the two YO! Centers, as well as the Futures 

dropout prevention program. The involvement of the Baltimore Mayor’s Office was thus 

assured on multiple levels. 

However, when we look for evidence of new connections or functions of the mayor’s office for 

the purposes of the School District Grant, two grantees stand out due to co-location and other 

resource-sharing arrangements: the School District of Philadelphia and Orange County Public 

Schools. In Philadelphia, city staff is supplementing district staff at the Re-Engagement Center. 

The Mayor’s Office of Mental Health co-locates two behavioral health specialists at the center 

one day a week and two full-time case managers from the Department of Human Services are 

also co-located there full-time. The partnership with the Mayor’s Office in Orlando represents a 

unique intersection between a neighborhood-based initiative to reduce crime (Parramore Kidz 

IV-13 
 

Zone) and a traditional government agency (two job recruiters from Workforce Central Florida 

funded by the School District Grant). The School District Grant supports the job recruiters in 

providing mobile One-Stop services in the troubled neighborhood and coordinating with a 

Parramore Kidz Zone outreach coordinator—a position also supported by grant funds. The 

Mayor’s Office is also providing in-kind resources in the form of recreation center space for the 

two job recruiters. 

Other Community Partnerships 

In the design of their initiatives, many grantees anticipated the involvement of CBOs and faithbased organizations (FBOs), particularly for the delivery of various supportive services to inschool and/or out-of-school youth. However, grantees ultimately were quite varied in terms of 

how much they involved these organizations and other social service agencies. 

	 Baltimore City Public School System is the only grantee that planned for the 

significant involvement of mental health and anti-gang/anti-violence 

partners. This finding is surprising, given that all the grantee districts have target 

populations that could significantly benefit from the involvement of such partners. 

While the School District of Philadelphia’s grant allowed for two behavioral 

specialists to be co-located at the Re-Engagement Center once a week,5 BCPSS 

dedicated more than $600,000 of its grant budget to Baltimore Mental Health 

Services to expand mental health clinician positions to full-time at YO! Centers 

and at target schools—thus focusing on the mental health needs of both out-ofschool and in-school youth. While previously discussed implementation 

challenges prevented the realization of this plan, BCPSS’s plan nevertheless 

reflected the high priority it gave to addressing of youth’s mental health needs. 

	 Baltimore City Public School System is also the only grantee to significantly 

involve a CBO (New Visions Youth Services) in the provision of specific antigang/anti-violence services at multiple schools.

6

 While law enforcement 

arguably also provides anti-gang/anti-violence services, CBOs offer unique 

advantages in this area. At-risk youth who are not open to a positive relationship 

with law enforcement may not view CBOs in the same negative light. CBOs can 

also offer specialized services such as providing non-violent conflict resolution 

trainings and information about the local gang landscape. Finally, CBO staff may 

be more grounded in the local community, with positive implications for building 

trust with local youth and becoming integrated into the school. For example, New 

Visions Youth Services is led by a local pastor and businessman who spent time 

in a federal prison, and most of its staff are former offenders who can relate to the 

5	 Two full-time case managers from another social service agency (Department of Human Services) were also colocated at the Re-Engagement Center. 

6	 Milwaukee Public Schools worked with a CBO partner, Ambassadors for Peace, to provide youth with peer 

mediation and non-violent conflict resolution services at one of its five target schools. 

IV-14 
 

students in a personal way. The organization provides climate management and 

intensive services to hard-to-reach, gang-involved youth within three target 

schools, and also leads an effort to develop a community-wide gang reduction 

strategy on the city’s Westside. 

	 Most grantees expected youth mentoring to occur on a relatively informal 

basis. Orange County Public Schools expected the SROs (who are not grantfunded) to work with the intervention specialists and deans at the target schools 

on mentoring programs. (In its grant proposal, OCPS also listed one of its 

partners as a community college that has access to mentors for youth.) 

Milwaukee Public Schools also expected its SROs (grant-funded) to mentor 

students at target schools, but only one of the five target schools ended up with 

SROs and it is unclear to what extent they ultimately provided such 

counseling/mentoring services there. The only grantee to feature mentoring 

services prominently in its initiative design was the Baltimore City Public School 

System; however, even in this case mentoring services ended up figuring less 

prominently in the implementation phase. (Due to contracting difficulties and the 

desire to mentor more youth than initially planned, BCPSS was delayed in finally 

contracting with a provider.) 

	 CBOs play a particularly strong role in the Milwaukee and Philadelphia 

school districts. Milwaukee Public Schools contracted with several CBOs to 

provide youth with a range of academic, life skills, supportive, and enrichment 

services. Local respondents, including youth, indicated that these CBO partners 

are among the strongest components of the School District Grant. The School 

District of Philadelphia is notable in contracting out services to more CBOs than 

the other grantees. These CBOs were contracted not only to provide supportive 

services, but also core education and workforce services. For example, SDP 

contracted with three CBOs to implement its Learning to Work program, a fourth 

CBO to implement the OASIS program, and a fifth to help provide workforce 

training under the Occupational Skills Pathways Program. SDP involved three 

additional CBOs in designing, managing and/or providing technical assistance on 

school models or programs (e.g., the Bridge Program and the accelerated high 

school model at North Philadelphia Community High School). 

Key Outcomes 

Across grantees, the most significant and sustainable partner- and system-level outcomes 

are related to the creation and/or expansion of new schools or program models. All 

grantees but BCPSS used School District Grant funds for new schools or program models that 

served as critical mechanisms for and manifestations of inter-agency partnership. Furthermore, 

IV-15 
 

despite funding challenges and the discontinuation of many grant-funded program elements, all 

of these sites have chosen to sustain their new schools or program models.7 

The other key sustainable partner- and system-level outcome across grantees is augmented 

inter-partner relationships. In some cases this augmented relationship takes the form of 

enhanced data sharing. For example, for Baltimore City Public School System, a major outcome 

from the School District Grant is the ability to share youth data with the Mayor’s Office/LWIB 

and the Juvenile Justice System through a student waiver form. Likewise, in Chicago, district 

staff and JJS staff implemented a multi-step information sharing process to identify and enroll 

detained youth in the Banner Schools. In other cases, the augmented inter-partner relationship 

takes the form of enhanced knowledge of another agency’s culture and operations. The most 

notable example of this is in Orlando, in the partnerships between the school district and 

Workforce Central Florida, and between the school district and the JJS. In both cases, through 

staff presentations and mutual education activities such as shared trainings, staff acquired a deeplevel knowledge and understanding of the other partner’s target populations, services, and modes 

of operation. 

The augmented inter-partner relationships also simply take the form of closer personal ties— 

which can be critical to effective business relations and potential future collaboration. Orlando 

County Public Schools, for example, now views Workforce Central Florida as more of an 

ongoing working partner in serving the city’s vulnerable youth populations. Orlando County 

Public Schools and the Department of Juvenile Justice now have more interpersonal “sit-down” 

conversations that facilitate joint planning and coordination for transitioning detained youth. 

From its experience with the School District Grant, Milwaukee Public Schools now has greater 

confidence in its ability to partner with other agencies in terms of increased communication and 

mutually informed decision-making. While arguably a “softer” outcome, closer interpersonal 

and inter-agency ties can be critical because even if the substance of the current partnership 

ceases with the end of School District Grant funds, a sustained relationship can lead to future 

collaborations serving the same target populations. 

Other key partner- and system-level outcomes vary by grantee and ranged from a school district 

agreeing to grant academic credit for non-district courses to heightened awareness among 

partners of the data-sharing challenges involved with transitioning youth offenders from 

detention to their home schools. 

Chicago Public Schools’ Banner Schools; Milwaukee Public Schools’ Transition High School; Orange County 

Public Schools’ Positive Pathways Transition Center; and School District of Philadelphia’s Re-Engagement 

Center. 

IV-16 

7 
Overarching Partnership Challenges and Lessons 

Learned 

In this final section of the chapter, we use a broader lens to look at partnership challenges and 

lessons learned that are not specific to a particular type of partnership (e.g., workforce 

partnerships), but are rather more overarching in nature. 

Challenges 

	 Variations in grantees’ definitions of their out-of-school youth target 

populations raised questions about the appropriateness of required partners. 

Grantees varied in terms of how they defined their target out-of-school youth 

population. Two grantees (Milwaukee Public Schools and Chicago Public 

Schools) chose to focus their out-of-school youth efforts on youth who were 

transitioning from detention back to a traditional or alternative school 

environment. Thus, in these two sites, partnership efforts for out-of-school youth 

actually took place in new transitional schools launched with School District 

Grant funds. The School District of Philadelphia, Orange County Public Schools, 

and Baltimore City Public School System define out-of-school youth using a 

combination of criteria that include age, involvement with gangs, involvement 

with the courts, former incarceration, and reading level. Because of this 

considerable variation, it is not clear to what extent grantees should have had 

different sets of required partners to effectively reach these youth. For example, 

perhaps it makes sense to require the involvement of a CBO partner with gang 

expertise if a grantee defines its target out-of-school youth population as ganginvolved. On the other hand, a literacy partner might be required for a grantee 

that defines its target out-of-school youth population as below a certain reading 

level threshold. 

	 When grantees were not specific about their out-of-school youth target 

group, there were implications for recruitment practices and service 

provision. For example, a key challenge for one grantee’s partnership with the 

JJS was that it was unclear which specific groups of youth JJS should be targeting 

and referring for grant services (e.g., youth with which levels of offense). 

Likewise, another grantee and its JJS partners had different understandings of the 

appropriate out-of-school youth population to be referred to a transition center, 

with serious implications for the center’s ability to provide appropriate services 

and resources (e.g., security and behavioral health specialists). 

	 Confidentiality issues and data sharing challenges plagued a number of 

grantees and partners. These challenges not only made partner operations less 

efficient, but also challenged their effectiveness. For example, YO! Center staff 

in Baltimore had to secure signed waivers from youth attending their orientations 

before sending their names to the Department of Juvenile Services to determine 

which of these youth were eligible for grant-funded services. The Department of 

Juvenile Services then had to send the list back to YO! staff. In Milwaukee, 

information about youth’s criminal records is confidential and not shared with the 

Youth Career Development Specialists, which means that these staff may place 

IV-17 
 

youth in inappropriate job situations. Youth Career Development Specialists also 

do not always receive data/paperwork from a youth’s intake process, thus risking 

the possibility of duplicated assessments of that youth’s skills and interests. 

Bureaucratic obstacles with regard to data sharing also occurred with law 

enforcement partners. In Philadelphia, for example, these obstacles stymied plans 

to secure data from police on gang-involved youth. Finally, School District of 

Philadelphia described data sharing as a challenge across multiple agencies, 

specifically citing the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act 

(HIPAA) and the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). 

	 School districts sometimes experienced challenges in working with agencies 

possessing philosophies, cultures, and practices different from theirs. The 

primary example of this was in the partnership between a school district and law 

enforcement. In this case, respondents felt that, compared to the school district, 

law enforcement had more of a punitive culture and orientation toward youth. 

This philosophical/cultural difference played a role in the communication gaps 

between agencies, particularly with regard to clarifying expected partner roles and 

responsibilities for the School District Grant. Grant-funded law enforcement 

representatives from this site also described a traditional tension between schools 

and police/SROs, as principals are often mistrustful of law enforcement 

representatives and may “hide” negative incidents on campus in order to avoid 

publicity. A subtle or overt power struggle may also be present between the 

principal and SROs, who do not fall under the principal’s authority. 

Differences in agency culture and practices also posed some challenges in the 

relationships between school districts and workforce development agencies. For 

example, in Orlando, these two agencies had different philosophies on the 

provision of student stipends. While such stipends are common in youth 

workforce programs, the school district initially held back, given the negative 

implications in the education arena of paying youth to learn. For another grantee, 

the main confrontation of cultures occurred between the school district and city 

government (Mayor’s Office)—not only because the two agency cultures are 

inherently quite different, but also because of a largely negative history of 

interaction. As one local respondent stated, 

I’d say 75 percent of our challenge is getting people to overcome 

prejudices over what the systems can and can’t do, how reliable they 

are, how trustworthy, whether it’s worth putting time into 

collaborations because people have [been] burned in the past. 

Finally, school districts sometimes faced internal challenges with regard to 

agency practices and restrictions. For example, in Philadelphia, two of the 

community college instructors teaching workforce training courses could not 

(because of union contracts) work during school holidays, which raised the 

problem of students possibly dropping out over the long winter and spring breaks. 

	 Grantees that contracted out a majority of services sometimes faced 

coordination and sustainability challenges due to the multiplicity of layers 

involved. For example, in Philadelphia there are three sets of organizational staff 

IV-18 
involved with running the Learning to Work/OASIS program, in addition to 

school administrators and district staff. Having this many layers of partnership 

has raised questions of efficiency in looking toward sustainability. It also raises 

the possibility of managing a more complex partnership dynamic, in that the 

many different partners may develop relationships amongst themselves, and not 

just with the prime school district partner. 

	 Performance measures posed a challenge in terms of coordination among 

School District Grant partners and coordination with other systems’ 

measures. Grantees sometimes struggled with the definitions of various 

performance measures, as well as coordinating the logistics of collecting and 

entering accurate program activity and outcome data from multiple partners. In 

some sites, grantees addressed this challenge by charging the local workforce 

entity with this responsibility, given this partner’s experience with DOL 

performance measures. Philadelphia Youth Network partly addressed this 

challenge by providing trainings to providers on performance outcomes, how to 

use the MIS system accurately, and how to manipulate and utilize the data in the 

MIS for their own organizational purposes and everyday use. Some grantees also 

reported that they have “multiple masters” because of the need to meet different 

sets of performance measures—e.g., one for the school district and one for DOL. 

As one grant administrator observed, “It made us shift our focus a little bit and 

say, we can accomplish both, but how do we translate? It’s basically serving two 

masters.” For School District of Philadelphia, the need to meet multiple sets of 

performance measures had implications for selecting partners. In order to meet 

the district’s goals for academic credits and graduation rates, while also honoring 

DOL’s focus on literacy and numeracy, the school district contracted a CBO, 

Center for Literacy (CFL), to provide instruction in foundational skills while also 

offering district credit for the CFL coursework. 

Lessons Learned 

	 “Super-partners” that brought to the table their own networks of partners 

and resources played an important role in creating effective collaborative 

models. In many cases, these “super-partners” brokered relationships with other 

key stakeholders and/or helped facilitate connections between the School District 

Grant and other related initiatives. Philadelphia Youth Network serves as a prime 

example of a “super-partner” as it identified and convened partners for the School 

District Grant and selected CBOs to deliver services to out-of-school youth during 

the planning phrase, and then took responsibility for overseeing subcontractors 

and coordinating partner communication. Outside of the School District Grant, 

some of PYN’s key functions include staffing the Philadelphia Youth Council 

(the council responsible for launching Project U-Turn), managing WIA and 

TANF youth funds, convening and overseeing the Project U-Turn Collaborative, 

and leading WorkReady Philadelphia (the city’s workforce development system). 

Therefore, PYN already had strong and numerous local partnerships that they 

IV-19 
 

 

were able to leverage for this grant.8 For other grantees, “super-partners” were 

either departments or individuals. The Mayor’s Office helped the Milwaukee 

School District identify partners to address gang and crime issues and identified 

common goals between the School District Grant and the Safe Street Common 

Ground Initiative. An individual consultant in Baltimore connected the school 

district with some required partners, including the Attorney General’s Office, and 

identified overlap between the School District Grant and other city work, 

particularly under the Office of Crime Control and Prevention. Finally, the YO! 

Centers in Baltimore and the E3

 Power Centers in Philadelphia also served as 

“super-partners,” in that they brought considerable and well-established resources 

to bear for the out-of-school youth population, including connections to 

supportive services in the community. 

	 Partner integration is key to program coordination and success. This was a 

rich lesson, learned in different ways at different sites. For some sites, this simply 

meant that different partner staff needed to interact with one another more 

purposefully in order to coordinate schedules and services. For example, in order 

to overcome challenges related to scheduling workforce-related activities around 

school schedules, Milwaukee Public Schools’ Youth Career Development 

Specialists developed closer relationships with schoolteachers to coordinate 

schedules for students inside and outside the classroom. Sites that suffer from a 

lack of partner integration demonstrate the flip side of this lesson. It may be, for 

example, that grant-funded staff from different agencies at the same school do not 

have regular meetings or formally collaborate, and thus miss opportunities to 

supplement one another’s work. At one particular grantee site where grantfunded staff are not well integrated into the school, services for youth are fairly 

light-touch (e.g., checking attendance, informal lunch meetings with students). 

This is partly attributable to the need for more relationship building between the 

grant-funded staff and the school administration, and for more participation by 

grant-funded staff in school activities (such as attending staff meetings and 

extracurricular activities). 

	 Partner integration is exemplified by a relationship in which both parties let 

go of ownership and work as a team rather than as separate agencies. On the 

topic of ownership, one partner of the School District of Philadelphia observed, 

One of the things we realized is that you really have to ground the 

work in a mission that’s directly connected to the young people you’re 

serving. In doing that, it helps people let go of ‘We as an 

organization have a policy that it should be done this way’...and 

really come to a consensus about how it should be done. 

PYN’s traditional role in the city has been as a neutral party or convener, but this is only one of the roles PYN 

plays for the School District Grant, which has created some degree of confusion among other stakeholders. PYN 

has addressed this challenge by providing multiple staff with different roles/functions at School District Grant 

meetings (e.g., one staff as convener/facilitator and another staff as contract provider). 

IV-20 

8 
Both the Philadelphia and Baltimore school districts have learned important 

lessons about the importance of teamwork in partner integration. In Baltimore, 

teamwork is exemplified by the way the CBO, New Visions Youth Services, has 

integrated itself into the three target schools. Rather than approaching its work as 

a contracted service provider, NVYS first builds relations and consensus about its 

approach with school staff and students. As the NVYS Director describes, 

The success of the program is totally linked to the collaboration with 

the school. Even though we have a contract with the school, we still 

need an MOU with the principal...We first meet with the principal to 

get the needs of that school. We need to make it specific to the 

principal what we do. Then we ask for an introduction to the entire 

staff. Then we ask for a school assembly so the children know what 

we do...that allows the entire student body to make a connection with 

us. 

	 CBO staff can be so successfully integrated into a target school that they 

seamlessly coordinate with school staff and don’t appear to students as being 

part of a different organization. For example, at North Philadelphia 

Community High School, Center for Literacy staff are not identified as the CFL 

math or reading specialists, but rather as math or English teachers. This CBO has 

integrated itself not just into the classroom, but also into the “fabric” of the entire 

school by participating in school staff meetings and school-wide activities. As the 

principal observed of CFL, 

They participate in all school activities. They do after school clubs. 

They’ve gotten into the school spirit. They aren’t just here to do their 

little part in English and then go home. They are a part of the school. 

The principal also observed that her involvement in the CBO interview and hiring 

process was key to ensuring their integration in the school, and that their deep 

level of integration allows her to address issues with them directly, rather than 

with their organizational supervisors. 

Conclusion 

From our case studies and analysis, we have seen that grantees vary tremendously in terms of 

their overall partnership approach as well as in terms of their individual partnerships. Overall 

partnership approaches range from the centralized, self-providing model of Chicago Public 

Schools to the complex, multi-layered model of School District of Philadelphia. Partnerships 

with individual agencies also range widely—from non-existent to inextricably linked. Overall, 

of the required partnerships for the School District Grant, the workforce development 

partnerships appear strongest in that all grantees but one had formal arrangements with the local 

workforce investment board, and some grantees also involve CBOs in the provision of workforce 

services. Given workforce partners’ often pre-existing focus on serving out-of-school youth, it is 

perhaps not surprising that school districts are most likely to link effectively with these partners. 

IV-21 
Furthermore, many local workforce entities play multiple, interrelated roles within the city that 

would make it difficult not to partner with these agencies. 

As we have seen, grantees’ partnerships with the Juvenile Justice System are more mixed in 

terms of strength and quality. Similar to workforce development partners, JJS partners also have 

a natural role in dealing with school district target populations—specifically, youth transitioning 

from detention back to the public school system. However, they are not traditional (nor 

desirable) service providers for these youth in the way that workforce partners are (e.g., they 

cannot provide academic and employment services). This helps explain why intended 

partnerships between school districts and the JJS centered on information exchange, particularly 

referrals; it may also explain why intended partnerships that centered on service provision are 

particularly challenged. 

The partnerships with law enforcement are perhaps the most disappointing of the required 

partnerships for the School District Grant. While the argument can be made that law 

enforcement should be expected to have the least intense partnerships with school districts given 

that law enforcement is not typically as involved with youth service planning, law enforcement 

was nevertheless expected to play important roles with regard to providing security (e.g., SROs) 

and intelligence (e.g., crime data). The experiences of grantees suggest that the “culture gap” 

between school districts and law enforcement may be at least partially responsible for the 

relatively weak partnerships, and the bridging of this gap may require more focused effort in 

future collaborative efforts. 

Required partnerships with the U.S. Attorney’s Office generally did not yield much beyond 

shared updates on School District Grant implementation, while the involvement of the Mayor’s 

Office was more substantial in some cases (e.g., co-located staff, overlapping initiatives). As a 

required partner, the Mayor’s Office is an understandable choice given its position as the “CEO” 

of the locality, as well as a leader of other, potentially overlapping initiatives. However, while 

grantees often discussed other local initiatives, there was little focused effort to ensure these 

initiatives and the School District Grant supplemented or cross-fertilized one another. 

Finally, the involvement of CBOs/FBCOs is decidedly mixed—being particularly strong in only 

two grantee sites, and not necessarily in the design phase. This too appears to be a missed 

opportunity; although these organizations are not required partners, they perhaps should have 

been, as they are often grounded in at-risk communities in a way that public agencies cannot be, 

and often bring to the table unique and specialized resources (e.g., anti-gang and personal 

development services). 

IV-22 
Across grantees, many of the School District Grant program components are unlikely to 

continue. As we have seen, those components most likely to continue are those that can be 

described as new structures or program models that often represent a mutually beneficial overlap 

between agencies’ interests. However, given the unsustainable nature of many other program 

components, the question is raised of whether partnerships arranged for grant-funded services 

can be considered true partnerships if they end with the grant. To what extent must these 

contracted arrangements grow into something stronger and more sustainable in order to be 

considered true partnerships? A partial answer to these questions lies in one of the key outcomes 

of grantees’ partnerships—augmented inter-agency and inter-personal ties. Though these ties 

can be intangible and informal in nature, they are nevertheless real outcomes that can facilitate 

continued collaboration outside the scope of the School District Grant, but for the same at-risk 

youth populations. 

IV-23 
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V. RECRUITMENT AND ENROLLMENT 

This chapter provides details on the specific types of youth that are targeted for services under 

the School District Grant, the recruitment practices that grantees use to reach their intended 

target groups, and the enrollment that has occurred at the grantee sites. 

Target Populations 

This grant is designed to serve the following types of in-school and out-of-school youth, as 

defined by DOL: 

	 Youth at risk of court or gang involvement. These youth have no history of 

court involvement, but demonstrate risk factors for becoming court- and/or ganginvolved. These risk factors, as defined by DOL,1

 include poor school attendance, 

low grade-point average, low standardized test scores, discipline problems or 

suspension from school, special education placement, and low reading and math 

skills. 

	 Offenders. These youth have convictions and are currently involved or have 

been involved in the justice system. 

	 Incarcerated Offenders. These youth are currently incarcerated or were released 

from incarceration within 60 days of enrollment. 

Consistent with the goals established for this grant, all grantees target youth who fall into these 

three categories. All grantees established additional criteria as well, so that they could more 

narrowly define their target groups and thereby better plan program services and use resources 

most efficiently. These additional criteria were typically related to grade level, age, basic skills 

level, and offense history. 

US DOL ETA Notice of Availability of Funds and Solicitation for Grant Applications (SGA) for Building 

School District-Based Strategies for Reducing Youth Involvement in Gangs and Violent Crime through a 

Workforce Development Approach. 

V-1 

1 
 

 

 

 

 

 

In-School Youth (ISY) 

The target group that DOL established for this grant provides a solid foundation upon which 

grantees can build in order to meet their goals. Using a variety of different criteria to target the 

DOL-identified youth populations and in some cases specifying particular sub-groups, grantees 

are targeting in-school youth at different grade levels who are “at-risk,” such as those youth who 

have high truancy, are in need of academic remediation, and/or have an excessive number of 

disciplinary referrals or suspensions. 

Exhibit V-1: 

ISY Target Group 

Grade Level 

Eleventh 

and 

Eighth Ninth Tenth Twelfth 

BCPSS X2 X X 

CPS X 

MPS X X X 

OCPS X X X X 

SDP X 

Total # of 

grantees targeting 

these ISY 

2 5 3 2 

Exhibit V-1 shows that two grantees—BCPSS and OCPS—target eighth graders (in addition to 

those in other grades). OCPS targets eighth graders at four middle schools; BCPSS targeted 

eighth graders at two middle schools for the Futures Works! Program in the 2008–2009 school 

year. The Baltimore Futures Works! Advocates are following these eighth graders as they 

transition to the ninth grade, and did not re-enroll new eighth graders in SY 2009–2010. 

All of the grantees aim to serve ninth graders because the ninth grade is a time when many 

students struggle academically and socially and are therefore at the highest risk of dropping out 

of school. Chicago’s YES program is targeting ninth graders (and ninth graders only) at six 

traditional high schools. Similarly, the School District of Philadelphia funds Learning-to-Work 

interventions for over-age and under-credit ninth graders (i.e., repeating ninth graders) at two 

Baltimore targeted eighth graders at two middle schools (Garrison and Lemmel) for its Futures Works! Program 

in the school year 2008–2009. Lemmel Middle School closed at the end of the 2009 school year, due to poor 

academic achievement. The Futures Advocates then followed these eighth graders as they transitioned to the 

ninth grade, and did not re-enroll new eighth graders in the 2009–2010 school year. 

V-2 

2 
 

 

 

high schools and is not targeting students in other grades. Baltimore’s Futures Works! Program 

targeted ninth graders at two high schools in the 2008–2009 school year and continued to 

provide services to these same students as they transitioned to the tenth grade in the 2009–2010 

school year. The Milwaukee Public Schools and Orange County Public Schools aim to serve 

ninth graders as part of a broader intervention strategy that targets at-risk high school students of 

any grade level (grades nine through twelve). 

Consistent with the grant goals, grantees seek to serve youth who are either already involved in 

the juvenile justice system or are showing signs of gang involvement (i.e., affiliating with known 

gang members, using gang signs, etc.)3 Chicago, Orange County, and Milwaukee are targeting 

adjudicated ISY by creating transitional schools that link directly to the juvenile justice system. 

Out-of-School Youth (OSY) 

All grantees except for CPS are targeting out-of-school youth up to age 21. In general, youth are 

considered OSY if they had dropped out of school without obtaining a high school diploma or a 

GED at the time of enrollment. However, all the grantees specify further criteria that more 

narrowly define the out-of-school youth whom they are targeting, as shown in Exhibit V-2. 

Out-of-school youth who have been adjudicated make up the bulk of the OSY population that is 

being targeted for services. For example, in the Baltimore district, the YO! Centers target youth 

who are at risk of court involvement or who are on probation or formerly incarcerated. As 

discussed in Chapter IV, although the YO! Centers originally intended to serve only adjudicated 

youth, challenges with the DJS referral mechanism prevented this vision from being realized. 

Similarly, OCPS’s Homebuilder’s Institute exclusively targets youth involved with the 

Department of Juvenile Justice. 

This includes juvenile offenders who have been adjudicated and have been or are currently on probation, and 

incarcerated youth, who have been or are currently in a committed residential program. 

V-3 

3 
 

 

Exhibit V-2: 

OSY Target Group 

OSY Target Population 

BCPSS 

YO! Centers Youth who are either at-risk of court involvement, on probation, or were 

formerly incarcerated 

Operation Safe Kids Adjudicated youth who have been arrested for drugs, violence, and/or 

gun possession and youth who are most at-risk of becoming victims or 

perpetrators of violence 

MPS 

Transition High School4 Youth who have dropped out and are six or fewer credits away from 

graduation 

OCPS 

Metropolitan Orlando 

Urban League 

Youth aged 16–21 who are gang-involved or have criminal records 

Workforce Central 

Florida 

Youth from a downtown recreational center aged 18–21 

Homebuilder’s Institute Youth involved in the Department of Juvenile Justice 

Parramore Kidz Zone Youth who live in a 10-square-block-area of the Parramore District and 

are at least 14 years old 

SDP 

Bridge Program Youth aged 16–21 in need of skill remediation or credit attainment and 

who are performing below the 6th-grade level 

Occupational Skills 

Pathway Program 

E3 Power Center youth over age 18 who are currently or were previously 

enrolled in GED courses and who have completed or are currently 

enrolled in Job Readiness Training and who have an eighth-grade or 

higher reading level 

Recruitment 

In general, grantees have been successful in recruiting youth. Many of them have met or 

exceeded their enrollment goals. To understand how they did so, it is important to examine the 

specific recruitment strategies that grantees used. At the most general level, these strategies 

naturally differed for in-school youth and out-of-school youth. 

Although MPS did not specifically target OSY, grant-funded staff provided follow-up services to youth who had 

graduated from Transition HS and thus classified them as OSY. 

V-4 

4 
Recruitment Methods 

To recruit in-school youth, grantees work with teachers and guidance counselors at the middleand high-school levels to identify students who could benefit from grant-funded services. For 

example, in the Chicago, Milwaukee, and Orange County districts, school-based teams at target 

schools (composed of counselors, social workers, and teachers) identify students whose 

academic performance, attendance, and behavior suggest that they are at risk of school failure. 

In the Chicago district, high school staff also examine student-level data from their feeder middle 

schools to identify incoming ninth graders who, based on attendance and academic performance, 

have the most need. Baltimore Futures Works! staff also look at student data to identify at-risk 

students, looking specifically for students whose test scores put them two or more grade levels 

behind in math and reading. 

Grantees’ success in recruiting in-school youth varied depending on their program models. 

Grantees that offer afterschool programs (e.g., CPS and BCPSS) tended to have a tough time 

motivating students to enroll because of competition with other extracurricular activities. In 

contrast, the Orange County district’s program has not faced challenges recruiting in-school 

youth, probably because services are offered to students during the regular school day and 

students do not perceive them as being optional. 

To recruit out-of-school youth, grantees rely on a combination of word-of-mouth referrals and 

targeted outreach activities. OSY programs such as Philadelphia’s E3 Centers and Baltimore’s 

YO! Centers have been able to make good use of word-of-mouth referrals because of the 

programs’ strong reputations in their communities. For example, one YO! participant described 

how he heard about the program: 

My cousin told me about the center. He came to me one day and said, 

‘If you are trying to do something better with yourself, go to the YO! 

and they’ll help you out.’ 

In another example, a case-study youth learned about MPS’s Transition School at his local 

church. He and his uncle were talking about enrolling him back in school when a member of the 

congregation, who happened to be a teacher at the school, overheard and told him about the 

program. 

Grantees realize, however, that in order to reach the youth who can most benefit from their 

services, they also need to be strategic about their recruitment, by securing referrals from key 

partners and investing in designated staff who can focus on recruiting out-of-school youth. As 

an example of this strategy, grantees are working to varying degrees with juvenile justice and 

community-based partners in order to recruit adjudicated youth to grantee-funded programs. The 

Orange County district’s grant staff, for instance, receive lists of the youth offenders attending 

grant-funded high schools so that these students can be targeted for services. The Orange 

V-5 
 

 

County district also coordinates recruitment with DJJ to refer youth to the Positive Pathways 

Transition Center. Prior to being released, youth at the detention center meet with a case 

manager who refers them to appropriate schools or programs so that youth can resume their 

education. Philadelphia’s E3 Centers, which are home both to the Bridge program and the 

Occupational Skills Pathway Program, have a steady stream of potential out-of-school youth 

participants because they are designated “Welcome Home Centers” for youth who are released 

from placement. As a final example of this strategy, the Milwaukee district worked informally 

with key individuals from local correctional and detention facilities to refer court-involved youth 

to Transition High School. 

Some grantees, such as the Chicago, Milwaukee, and Orange County districts, have created staff 

positions at juvenile facilities whose role is to recruit youth for grant-funded interventions. OCPS 

hired a guidance counselor to work at the Juvenile Assessment Center, while at CPS intervention 

specialists are co-located at the juvenile detention center to meet with youth and assess their 

interest in attending the Banner Schools (transitional schools for adjudicated youth). Having 

designated staff responsible for conducting outreach to out-of-school youth gave these grantees 

an assured method of reaching their target population. 

Recruiting Out-of-School Youth from a Transition Center 

The Re-Engagement Center (REC) is a city entity housed at the School District of 

Philadelphia’s administrative building. The REC is a one-stop shop for former SDP students, 

a place where they can go to receive information and placement services that will reconnect 

them to an educational pathway (e.g., traditional school, accelerated school, career or 

technical school, etc.). The center is staffed with a specialist who reviews students’ 

academic histories; conducts basic skills, bio-psychosocial and behavioral assessments; and 

makes academic and supportive service referrals. Key partners of this center include the 

School District of Philadelphia, the City of Philadelphia, and the Philadelphia Youth Network. 

At the Re-Engagement Center, youth can have their Individual Education Plans (IEP) 

updated, complete academic and career-interest inventories, and obtain transcripts and other 

pertinent academic documents (e.g., test scores). After completing these activities, out-ofschool youth can be connected to one of the target interventions that are supported by the 

School District Grant.5 

This includes North Philadelphia Community High School, E3 West Power Center, Occupational Skills 

Pathways Program, Overbrook High School, and University City HS. 

V-6 

5 
Recruitment Challenges 

A number of core challenges surfaced as grantees conducted outreach and recruitment. 

	 Grantees are unable to predict which students will enroll in target high 

schools, despite efforts to recruit them in middle school. Even though grantee 

staff work closely with middle schools to identify incoming ninth graders who 

could benefit from program services, the staff are not able to reliably predict 

whether these youth will attend the target schools because students often decide to 

enroll in charter schools or other schools outside their neighborhoods. As a result, 

project staff do not always know the exact number of youth who will enroll in 

program services, which resulted in lower-than-expected enrollment at the 

beginning of the grant period. 

	 As described in Chapter IV, grantees have weak partnerships with their 

juvenile justice partners and this has made it difficult for grantees to 

coordinate recruitment. For instance, at the onset of the grant, Baltimore 

Futures Works! staff anticipated that they would be able to use information from 

DJJ to identify and recruit youth offenders. Futures Work! staff provided DJJ 

with a list of more than 1,200 students who were behind two grade levels and 

asked them to identify the youth offenders on this list so that the program could 

target those youth for services. But DJJ delayed the identification process for so 

long that Futures Work! staff were unable to verify youths’ offender status prior 

to enrolling them. 

	 Contact information for potential participants often changes frequently, 

making it difficult to reach youth who are targeted for services. Grantees 

noted that even if they are able to obtain a list of potential program participants 

from the schools, the contact information for these youth is often outdated, 

usually because of the transient nature of many of these youth and their families. 

	 Youth offenders are sometimes reluctant to enroll in transitional schools 

after leaving detention, preferring instead to return directly to their home 

schools. A few grantees, such as Chicago, Milwaukee, and Orange County, 

struggled to recruit youth offenders for their programs. Chicago, for instance, had 

trouble reaching enrollment targets for its Banner schools due to the small number 

of youth transitioning out of detention and reluctance on the part of these students 

to attend the schools because they felt like the schools were extensions of their 

prison sentences. 

Despite these recruitment challenges, grantees have enrolled sufficient numbers of youth, as 

discussed below. 

Enrollment 

According to DOL’s guidelines, a youth is enrolled into grant-funded services when he or she 

has completed the entire application process and has begun to receive services. In order to 

receive services, youth must complete the required paperwork and those under 18 must obtain 

V-7 
 

 

 

 

 

     

parental consent. Some grantees also require youth to complete waiver forms that allow release 

of information from DJJ. 

As of December 2009, grantees enrolled 3,765 participants—3,123 in-school youth (83 percent 

of the total) and 642 out-of-school youth (17 percent of the total). OCPS has enrolled the largest 

number of participants and MPS the fewest. Grantees vary in the relative proportions of inschool and out-of-school youth that they enrolled, suggesting differences in program focus. CPS 

is serving the largest proportion of in-school youth (100 percent), followed by MPS (89 percent), 

and OCPS (80 percent). On the other hand, SDP enrolled the largest proportion of OSY (37 

percent), followed by BCPSS (26 percent), and OCPS (20 percent). 

Exhibit V-3: 

ISY and OSY Enrollment by Grantee 

July 1, 2007–December 31, 20096
 

310

977

393

969

474

180

244

47

0

171

0 500 1000 1500

SDP

OCPS

MPS

CPS

BCPSS

Number of Youth Enrolled

ISY

OSY

Exhibit V-4, below, shows that the vast majority (84 percent) of ISY served by the grant are 

categorized as “at risk” of court or gang involvement. Youth offenders and incarcerated youth 

offenders make up about 16 percent of the ISY served by the grant as of the end of December 

2009. Exhibit V-4 also shows that grantees vary considerably in the numbers of at-risk vs. 

offender/incarcerated ISY that they enrolled. Orange County has identified and enrolled a very 

high number of ISY offenders (62 percent of the number of all youth offenders served by the 

grant), due at least in part to the strong working relationship between the OCPS and the DJJ. In 

contrast, Philadelphia and Baltimore have enrolled few ISY offenders to date, due to delays in 

the launch of programs and in difficulty accessing data on the offender status of ISY. 

Between July 1, 2007 through September 30, 2008, Baltimore submitted two quarterly reports, Chicago 

submitted one, Milwaukee submitted two, Orange County submitted four, and Philadelphia submitted three. 

V-8 

6 
Exhibit V-4: 

Enrollment of In-School Youth 

July 1, 2007–December 31, 2009 

Similar to the situation with the in-school youth population, the vast majority of out-of-school 

youth (82 percent) are considered “at-risk” of court/gang involvement, as shown in Exhibit V-5. 

Just under a fifth of OSY are either youth offenders or incarcerated offenders (18 percent). 

Given that this grant aims to serve the most at-risk youth, including offenders, the actual number 

of offenders served is small. It is possible, however, that more youth offenders will be enrolled 

as grantees continue to roll out their projects, especially grantees that were slow to launch their 

projects. CPS, for example was delayed in launching its transitional school program (Banner 

Schools) and expects to enroll more youth offenders by the end of the summer. 

Exhibit V-5: 

Enrollment: Out-of-School Youth 

July 1, 2007–December 31, 2009 

V-9 
     

Exhibit V-6 displays the cumulative number of enrollments from September 2007 to December 

2009, the last month for which we have data. As the exhibit shows, enrollments were slow to 

start but jumped significantly in the fifth quarter (July to September 2008), when the grantees 

added about 1,264 participants. Enrollment numbers continued to climb steadily into 2009 as 

grantees rolled out their projects and subsequently reached more youth. By September 2009, two 

years after grant funds were awarded, grantees had enrolled more than 3,000 participants. This is 

a remarkable achievement given the slow pace of enrollment during the first year of project 

implementation. 

Exhibit V-6: 

Participant Enrollment 

0

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

3000

3500

4000

Number of Youth

Quarter (with end date)

Exhibit V-7 shows that grantees enrolled participants at different times. Because the first year of 

the grant was devoted to grant planning, few grantees enrolled participants during this year. The 

Orange County school district was the exception to this generalization: as the first grantee to 

launch its programs and thus the first to enroll participants, OCPS had enrolled 316 youth by 

December 2007. Most of the grantees began to enroll small numbers of participants between 

March and June 2008. The exception is the Chicago Public Schools, which was the last grantee 

to begin enrolling participants. 

V-10 
 

     

Exhibit V-7: 

Enrollment Patterns Across Grantees 

0

200

400

600

800

1000

1200

1400

Number of Students

Quarter (with end date)

BCPSS

CPS

MPS

OCPS

SDP

These data show that grantees differ greatly in their projects’ scale and focus. The school district 

in Orange County has served about 1,221 participants, while the Milwaukee and Philadelphia 

districts have served just a little under 500 participants each. (In terms of focus, it has already 

been noted, in relation to Exhibit V-3, that grantees differ in the extent to which they focus on inschool or out-of-school youth.) 

The length of program enrollment also varies significantly by individual grantee. The Chicago 

district’s programs last from 20 weeks (Banner Schools, maximum length) to one year (YES 

program), while Philadelphia’s programs last anywhere from 12 weeks (Learning to Work 

program) to 10 months (North Philadelphia Community High School and the E3 Power Centers). 

OCPS’s YES program, BCPSS’s Futures Works! program, and MPS’s Futures First Initiative all 

made a significant effort to keep students enrolled in the program over the length of grant. In the 

case of Orange County and Baltimore, case workers followed up with youth at regular intervals 

even after they had moved on to non-grantee schools and programs. These differences in 

projects’ scale and focus are essential for understanding the types of outcomes—such as 

workforce outcomes—that can be expected. (See Chapter VII for a discussion of outcomes.) 

Summary 

This chapter discussed the types of youth that grantees aim to serve, the ways in which they 

identified and recruited these youth, and the numbers and types of youth they actually enrolled. 

V-11 
We documented the tremendous effort grantees undertook to ramp up their programs in order to 

enroll youth from the start of the grant period to the end of December 2009. Few grantees 

enrolled participants in the first year of the grant period because they devoted their time to design 

tasks and mobilizing partners. Towards the beginning of the second year, however, grantees 

enrolled more than 2,000 participants, suggesting that grantees were gaining momentum around 

project implementation. 

While grantees enrolled youth who they set out to serve, they enrolled smaller proportions of 

out-of-school youth than may have been expected based on the grant’s focus on serving youth 

with the greatest needs. While grantees made a concerted effort to reach and serve OSY by 

linking with core partners, ultimately grantees enrolled, overall, a fairly small percentage of OSY 

(17 percent). As grantees move into the last stages of grant implementation, program enrollment 

numbers will likely continue to rise and there may be some shifts in the types of youth served. 

The next chapter describes the services available to youth. 

V-12 
VI. PROGRAMS AND SERVICES 

The School District Grant is funding interventions for youth offenders and youth who are at risk 

of becoming involved in violence. To meet the needs of these youth, and to reduce violence in 

the target schools and communities, grantees have developed and implemented a range of 

educational, employment, case-management, and violence-prevention strategies. Grantees have 

used the School District Grant to create new programs and structures to meet the needs of the 

target population, providing services within traditional schools, alternative schools, and 

community-based programs. This chapter provides an overview of grantee programs for inschool youth (ISY) and out-of-school youth (OSY), and then presents in-depth data on the types 

of services that grantee programs provide and the frequency with which participants receive 

those services. 

ISY Programs within Traditional Schools 

Grantees have created a range of programs within traditional schools, all of which share the goal 

of creating a more personalized learning environment for at-risk and adjudicated students. 

Exhibit VI-1 provides an overview of these programs. 

The exhibit shows that grant-funded programs are active at 18 traditional high schools and six 

traditional middle schools. Ninth graders are the most common target group, though the grant 

serves grades eight through twelve. The length of programs within traditional schools varies by 

site. Two of the programs (those of CPS and SDP) last for one year, with new cohorts of 

students enrolled at the beginning of each new school year. The other three grantees (BCPSS, 

MPS, and OCPS) enroll youth for two to three years in order to provide continuity and support 

over time. 

VI-1 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Exhibit VI-1: 

Overview of Traditional School Programs 

New w/ Program 

Major Program Features Schools ISY Served Grant? Length 

BCPSS 

Futures  Students earn academic credit for 

(Future attending afterschool program. 

Works!) Services are offered in a structured, 

classroom format. 

	 Program “advocates” provide case 

management, job preparation, and 

academic support. 

Two 450 No1

 Two to 

middle 

schools Grades: 

8–10 

three 

years 

Two 

high 

schools 

CPS 

YES 	 Students earn academic credit for 

Program	 attending afterschool Freshman 

Seminar series, based on Johns 

Hopkins Talent Development School 

Reform model. Services are offered 

in a structured, classroom format. 

New cohorts of students are recruited 

each academic year. 

	 “Student Engagement Specialists” 

provide case management services. 

Six high 800 Yes One year 

schools Grade: 9 

MPS 

Futures 

First 

Initiative 

(FFI) 

 Students are exposed to a range of 

enrichment and life skills classes, 

most focused on violence prevention. 

Services are offered in an 

unstructured format during the school 

day and afterschool. 

Four 

high 

schools 

250 

Grades: 

9–12 

Yes Two to 

three 

years 

 Site-based Teams, which include a 

social worker, guidance counselor 

and youth career development 

specialist, provide case management 

services as needed. 

The Futures initiative has a long history in BCPSS, but was implemented at middle schools for the first time with 

the School District Grant. 

VI-2 

1 
 

 

 

 

 

 

New w/ Program 

Major Program Features Schools ISY Served Grant? Length 

OCPS 

YES 

program 

 “Intervention Specialists” provide 

case management and supportive 

services. Services are offered in 

unstructured format during the school 

day. 

Four 

middle 

schools 

Four 

700 

Grades: 

9–12 

Yes Two to 

three 

years 

high 

schools 

SDP 

Learning 

to Work 

(LTW) 

Program 

 Students earn credit for enrolling in 

the OASIS credit retrieval program 

and receive job preparation and 

internships in a structured classroom 

format. 

Two 

high 

schools 

200 

Grade: 

Repeating 

9 

Yes One year 

The structure of the programs varies. Two of the five grantees (BCPSS and CPS) offer 

afterschool programs, where students attend structured classes after school and are exposed to a 

mix of job readiness training, life skills training, and academic tutoring or remediation. In the 

Chicago district, for example, the afterschool program follows the Talent Development 

curriculum and includes topics such as introduction to high school, study skills, social skills, 

conflict resolution, career exploration, post-secondary decisions, technology, and work-readiness 

skills. The class lasts about one and a half hours. In contrast, programs offered by the other 

grantees are fairly unstructured. In the Milwaukee and Orange County districts, for instance, 

grant-funded staff pull students from their classes to provide counseling and to address 

behavioral or attendance issues as they arise. 

The MIS aggregates the data on ISY, so it does not provide information on exactly how many 

ISY received services in traditional schools versus alternative schools. Qualitative data indicate, 

however, that at least 2,400 ISY youth received services in traditional schools, representing more 

than 75 percent of all ISY served by the grant.2 The total number of ISY influenced by the grant 

is larger than this figure indicates, however; this is because some grantees used the School 

Because we rely on conservative qualitative estimates for program enrollment, our estimate for the number of 

ISY served by traditional schools and alternative schools combined equals only 84 percent of total ISY 

enrollment. 

VI-3 

2 
 

 

District Grant to fund staff and services that benefit the whole school (this topic is discussed later 

in this chapter). 

While the programs that grantees implemented differ widely, they share the following 

overarching goals: 

	 Facilitate trusting relationships among school staff and target youths. As will be 

discussed further in the case management section of this chapter, grantees hired staff 

to act as counselors, monitor student attendance and behavior, and connect youths to 

resources. Grantees share the goal of making sure that students have at least one 

strong connection with an adult within the school, someone to whom they can turn as 

an advocate and resource. 

	 Create small-scale supportive peer environments for students within larger 

comprehensive schools. Four of the grantees (BCPSS, CPS, MPS, and SDP) hold 

classes for students either after school or during the school day.3

 In many cases, 

grant-funded staff at target schools facilitate same-gender peer support groups and 

enrichment activities. Grantees are engaging students in a range of trust-building and 

relationship-building exercises designed to enhance peer relationships, improve 

students’ communication skills, and reduce interpersonal conflicts. 

	 Connect youth to academic services, workforce services, and other 

supportive services. Because programs are offered within traditional schools 

that already provide extensive academic services to students, most grantees (CPS, 

MPS, OCPS, SDP), through the use of case managers, are connecting target ISY 

to academic services that are already offered by the school. For instance, students 

are assigned to afterschool tutoring or to classes that provide academic 

remediation. BCPSS is the only grantee to fund additional remedial services for 

students in traditional schools, but other grantees connected students to existing 

services within the target schools. Four grantees (BCPSS, MPS, OCPS, and SDP) 

used the grant to create additional workforce services for ISY, while the other 

(OCPS) connected target students to workforce opportunities in the community. 

Grantees also connected students to other supportive services, such as drug and 

alcohol counseling. 

	 Increase communication among school staff about how to address the needs 

of at-risk and adjudicated students. One goal of the grant is to systematically 

enhance structures and processes within traditional schools designed to identify 

and serve at-risk students and to improve the overall climate of peer relations at 

the school. To further this aim, grant-funded staff worked closely with teachers, 

SROs, and other school counselors to address the needs of enrolled students. For 

instance, case managers at the Chicago Public Schools receive attendance data 

SDP’s school-based LTW program is somewhat different in that it provided services to students enrolled in the 

OASIS program, which operates as a small school-within-a-school for students who are over-age and undercredit. In the case of SDP, therefore, the LTW program serves students who are already in a smaller 

environment and are not attending regular classes at the comprehensive high school. 

VI-4 

3 
from the office each day and review it carefully to see whether participants are 

absent. When a student is not in class, either a member of the school staff or the 

case manager calls the student’s home. The case manager then informs the 

student’s teachers why the student is absent. 

Scheduling grant-funded services is more challenging for programs operating within traditional 

schools than it is for alternative schools or programs for OSY, because the traditional schools 

have limited authority over how the school day is structured. To address this issue, most 

grantees (BCPSS, CPS, and OCPS) offered services either afterschool or informally during the 

school day (during students’ study periods and passing periods, for example). Grantees that offer 

afterschool programs sometimes have low attendance, because many students, particularly at-risk 

students, do not want to stay after school. Average daily attendance in the Chicago district’s 

YES program’s Freshman Seminar afterschool program, for example, is only 40–60 percent. 

Example of Integrated Services in a Traditional School: 

The Multiple Roles of a Case Manager 

Ms. Cruz is an intervention specialist at a school in Orange County, Florida. She is a vital 

member of the school community who plays multiple roles within the school. Ms. Cruz 

does the following: 

	 Works on interventions to improve school climate. She and the SRO consider 

themselves a “team” in helping to address issues of school climate. Ms. Cruz and the 

SRO designed a school-wide curriculum for Anti-Violence Month, which included crosscurricular lesson plans for all grade levels, oriented towards the Civil Rights Movement. 

	 Monitors students on her caseload. She meets with students one-on-one during their 

“research period,” observes their classes, attends their parent–teacher conferences, 

and keeps regular contact with students’ parents. She also participates in the 

teachers’ “Team Meetings” where strategies for meeting the needs of “challenging” 

students are raised and addressed. 

	 Develops students’ organizational skills. She reported that many youths do not 

complete or turn in their work because they lack the organizational skills needed to 

manage multiple classes and assignments at once. During her first meeting with a 

student, therefore, she and the student organize a binder for the student’s schoolwork. 

	 Conducts team-building exercises with small groups of 8–10 youth on her caseload. 

Team building exercises are approaches she uses to help enhance students’ trust and 

communication skills. 

	 Runs the afterschool tutoring program at her school, which is open to all students. She 

encourages all of the students on her caseload to come to afterschool tutoring to get 

one-on-one help. 

VI-5 
 

 

 

 

ISY Alternative School Programs 

Creating alternative schools is a core strategy that grantees are using to help meet the unique 

needs of two target sub-populations: youth offenders who are transitioning out of juvenile 

placements and students who are over-age for their grade level and low on academic credits. 

Alternative schools differ from traditional schools in that they adopt nontraditional curricula and 

teaching methods, and often offer a more flexible program of study. Four grantees (MPS, OCPS, 

SDP, and CPS) have used the School District Grant as seed funding to create alternative schools, 

and OCPS has also used grant funds to support case management at five existing alternative 

schools. While each of the newly created alternative schools has a specific focus on youth 

offenders, SDP and MPS have funded schools that are also open to out-of-school youth who are 

looking to reconnect to an education pathway. OCPS and CPS, on the other hand, are funding 

schools designed exclusively for school-age offenders transitioning out of a residential 

placement. Exhibit VI-2 provides an overview of the alternative school models that have been 

funded by the grant. 

As is illustrated in Exhibit VI-2, the alternative schools funded by the grant are generally very 

small, serving between 50 and 180 students. With the exception of the Banner Schools that were 

launched late in the grant cycle, the programs are reaching full enrollment. Although the MIS 

does not provide information on the specific programs that ISY are enrolled in, our qualitative 

data indicates that at least 350 students (11 percent of all ISY) were being served by the grant at 

the time of the third evaluation site visit.4 

Eight of the ten alternative schools are “comprehensive,” in that they provide a comprehensive 

set of services, including credit retrieval and coursework that can lead to a HS diploma. Only 

one alternative school (OCPS) provides GED preparation. CPS’s Banner Schools act as short 

transitional programs and do not award degrees. MPS’s Transition High School is also a timelimited program, as youth can earn a degree only if they can complete the coursework in one 

year or less. Students at time-limited schools can earn accelerated credits while they are waiting 

for a natural break in the academic calendar to begin classes at either a traditional high school or 

another alternative program. 

Because we rely on conservative qualitative estimates for program enrollment, our estimate for the number of 

ISY served by traditional schools and alternative schools combined equals only 84 percent of total ISY 

enrollment. 

VI-6 

4 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Exhibit VI-2: 

Overview of Alternative School Program Models 

Enrollment New Type Program 

Major Program Features as of 12/09 w/Grant? Program Length 

CPS 

Banner  Banner Schools provide temporary 

Schools academic services for students who 

(Banner are typically over the age of 17 and 

South and transitioning from detention to their 

Banner home schools. 

North) 	 Students gain credits through selfpaced online learning curriculum, 

attend life skills training, and receive 

employment services.5 

Goal: 120 Yes  Credit 10–30 

(60 per 

school) 

retrieval weeks 

Actual: 43 

(21 Banner 

North, 22 

Banner 

South) 

MPS 

Transition 	 Transition HS provides services to 

High School	 youth offenders and OSY students 

looking to re-engage with an 

educational pathway. 

	 Students receive an individual 

education plan and use an online 

curriculum to earn credits in an 

accelerated manner. 

	 Students receive employment 

services from an employment 

specialist who is located on site.6 

Goal: 175 Yes  Credit One year 

retrieval Actual: 100 

 High 

school 

diploma7 

OCPS 

YES Positive 

Pathways 

Transition 

Center 

 The YES Positive Pathways 

Transition center is a multiple 

pathways program for students 

transitioning from detention. 

 Students attend five classes a day, 

and can earn credits in an 

accelerated manner through an 

online curriculum. Some students 

are placed into subsidized 

employment. 

Goal: 60 

Actual: 54 

Yes  Credit 

retrieval 

 GED 

 High 

school 

diploma 

Variable, 

depending 

on student 

5	 The employment aspect of the Banner Schools’ programs has been slow to start. It is expected that once the 

program launches, students will receive $450 to attend the workforce component at the transitional Banner 

Schools. 

6	 This aspect of the program has been slow to start. 

7	 A student can graduate from Transition High School but only if he or she has one year of work to complete 

before graduation. It is not designed for students who need an extended period in order to complete their degree. 

VI-7 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Enrollment New Type Program 

Major Program Features as of 12/09 w/Grant? Program Length 

Five School  Students apply for these selective 

To Work alternative schools, which are for 

(STW) students who are over-age and 

alternative under-credit. 

Schools 	 Students spend the first half of the 

day earning accelerated academic 

credits and then spend the second 

half of the day in subsidized work 

experience. 

Goal: 50 No8	 One year  Credit 

(across all retrieval 

five  High schools) school 

diploma Actual: 65 

SDP 

North 

Philadelphia 

Community 

High School 

(NPCHS) 

 NPCHS is an alternative project -

based educational program for 

youth aged 17–21 with 13 or fewer 

credits. 

 Students earn the credits they need 

to graduate at an accelerated rate. 

Students can earn up to 2.75 units 

for each eight-week session. 

 Students attend Learning To Work 

(LTW) for one period every day, 

which provides job readiness 

training. They are also assigned to 

internships in the summer. 

Goal: 180 

(100 are 

supported 

by School 

District 

Grant) 

Actual: 90 

(Supported 

by School 

District 

Grant) 

Yes  Credit 

retrieval 

 High 

school 

diploma 

Variable, 

depending 

on student 

Three of the comprehensive schools (OCPS’s Positive Pathways Transition Center, MPS’s 

Transition High School, and SDP’s NPCHS) create distinct educational pathways for students 

depending on their age and academic needs. For instance, at the Positive Pathways Transition 

Center in Orange County, students who are 15 and under are generally encouraged to return to a 

regular high school, while those who are 18 and older are encouraged to complete their diplomas 

or GEDs at the Positive Pathways Transition Center. Students who are 16–17 are given the 

option of (1) catching up on credits and returning to their home school, (2) remaining at the 

Transition Center until they graduate, or (3) transitioning to another academic program. 

The youth attending these alternative schools have varying skill levels, and face a number of 

barriers that prevent them from performing at their potential. Some have life responsibilities 

(e.g., children or a sick parent) or face other challenges that make it difficult for them to focus on 

The five alternative schools existed prior to the School District Grant. The grant funded an intervention 

specialist, however, who was new to the school.
 

VI-8 

8 
their education. Many students are in alternative schools because they have had a negative 

experience with regular schooling. Recognizing this challenge, grant-funded alternative schools 

have implemented the following core strategies. 

	 Use a team approach to teach and guide youth. This team typically includes 

teachers in the core subjects, reading and math specialists, social workers, 

guidance counselors, and mental health providers. These teachers and staff work 

with the youth one-on-one, using a multi-disciplinary approach to meeting their 

needs. The team also works to connect students as needed with a full range of 

wrap-around services. For instance, at CPS, the entire team of case managers and 

reenrollment specialists work closely to enroll youth at the Banner Schools and 

coordinate their service plans. 

	 Maintain a small class size to ensure that students get individualized attention. 

As described previously, alternative schools are characterized by their small student 

bodies, with three of the schools having an enrollment of 35–60 students. The small 

class sizes allow teachers and staff to provide youth with the individualized support 

and instruction they need. Within classes, teachers used a variety of education 

techniques, including individual and group instruction. For example, at Transition 

High School (MPS) teachers work on credit retrieval with groups of three to five 

students. 

	 Offer online instruction so that students can complete units at their own 

paces. With the exception of North Philadelphia Community High School, the 

grant-funded alternative schools offer self-paced computer-based instruction so 

that students can work independently and begin coursework the day they enroll. 

Teachers, staff, and youth all spoke highly of these online learning programs, 

because the assignments are tailored to students’ levels. These programs are 

described in detail later in this chapter. 

	 Connect students to wrap-around supportive services that help ensure their 

success. Grantees are also collaborating with a number of community partners to 

provide employment and supportive services (e.g., job readiness training, 

restorative justice, mental health, life skills, etc.) to enrolled youth at the 

alternative schools. These services have also allowed grantees to address barriers 

that prevent youth from attending school. For instance, students at alternative 

schools often receive bus passes that help to address transportation barriers. 

VI-9 
Example of an Alternative School: 

Transition High School in Milwaukee 

Transition High School opened March 2008 as a part of the Futures First Initiative (FFI). 

Students are eligible to enroll at Transition High School if they have been incarcerated, have had 

contact with JJS, or are a known gang member. Students are also eligible if they show signs of 

potential school failure, such as significant truancy and/or low academic credits. The goal of 

Transition High School is for students to receive a high school diploma and to transition into 

employment and/or a post-secondary education program. 

Each student at Transition High School has a personalized educational plan structured around 

virtual learning, employment, and community service. Students complete online coursework, 

with in-person instruction by MPS teachers. Students participate in workshops and classes led 

by community-based partners that are focused on conflict resolution (Ambassadors for Peace) 

and leadership and life skills training (Urban Underground). 

Josh Smith is an example of a student who benefited from Transition High School’s supportive 

and self-paced environment. Josh enrolled in Transition HS after having been released from a 

residential juvenile facility. The staff at Transition HS pushed him to do his best and helped him 

to get back on his feet. Josh explained: 

This is not the school for you if you don’t want to succeed...if you’re not determined, if 

you’re not motivated, this is not something that you want to do. Because they’re going 

to push you, because they know it’s in you and they want the right stuff for you...This is 

not your typical normal high school. 

Josh graduated from Transition HS with his high school diploma and found a job with the help of 

the Futures First Initiative (FFI) employment services. He said, 

Transition [High School] just helped me get my life together. It helped me see who I 

was and who I can be.
 

One of the core challenges facing transitional schools, particularly the two that are exclusively 

for youth offenders (Banner Schools in Chicago and Positive Pathways Transition Center in 

Orange County), is that students often view the school as an extension of their juvenile 

placement. As a result, programs that are recruiting students, such as the Banner Schools in 

Chicago, are finding it difficult to reach their enrollment targets. To address this problem, DJJ is 

requesting that judges require that students attend OCPS’ Positive Pathways Transition Center. 

A DJJ staff member described the situation: 

Students would say, ‘show me on this court order where it says that I have 

to go this school.’ We had no orders saying that they needed to go there. 

So, that’s why we had to build it in as a [court] order at the beginning of 

the program. 

VI-10 
 

 

 

The court order facilitates enrollment of ISY offenders in the schools, but in some cases students 

remain very resistant, attending school only because it is a condition of their parole. A teacher at 

a Banner School in Chicago said, 

The only issue that I think is different from us [as a transitional school for 

offenders] and the traditional schools is the anger. They come here with a 

lot of anger. 

 In short, the older youth offender population is a challenging population to reach, even in the 

smaller and more supportive settings of the alternative schools. A grant staff person in Orange 

County explained: 

When kids get out of commitment, they aren’t cured. It’s a wonderful 

opportunity for them, but some of them are just not taking advantage of 

that. 

Despite the challenges of working with the target population, local stakeholders see the 

alternative schools as one of the lasting outcomes of the School District Grant. For CPS and 

OCPS, the schools represent a new level of synergy and coordination between the school district 

and the department of juvenile justice. Likewise, the other alternative schools that have been 

funded are offering students a second chance to complete their education and get on a path 

towards employment. 

OSY Programs 

Programs for OSY differ from those for ISY because they are targeted towards an older youth 

population and are generally more oriented towards workforce services. Three grantees (BCPSS, 

OCPS, and SDP) funded specific programs for OSY, while the other two (CPS and MPS) serve 

primarily ISY.9 Grant-funded programs for OSY are described below in Exhibit VI-3. 

The OSY interventions funded by BCPSS, OCPS, and SDP share many commonalities. First, all 

grantees contracted with established partners to deliver OSY services. This was primarily 

because, as school districts, grantees felt that CBO partners are better positioned to provide these 

services. The most common target group for OSY programs is youth between 16 and 21. 

Furthermore, OSY programs all have open enrollment and because the programs are self-paced 

the length of the program varies from participant to participant. Although the MIS does not 

provide enrollment information for specific programs, our qualitative data suggests that OSY 

programs have served at least 550 youth. 

Although MPS did not fund programs specifically for OSY, MPS enrolled 47 OSY into Transition High School, 

an alternative school model described in the previous section of this chapter. 

VI-11 

9 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Exhibit VI-3: 

Overview of OSY Program Models
 

Program and Enrollment New Program 

Partner Major Program Features 1/10 w/Grant? Length 

BCPSS 

YO! Centers 

(Westside 

Center and 

Eastside 

Center) 





Participants are OSY, ages 16–22. 

Participants go through an orientation, take a 

TABE test, and attend a four-day job readiness 

training prior to enrollment. 

Participants attend pre-GED or GED classes 

Goal: 150 

(75 per 

center) 

Actual: 143 

No Varies by 

participant; 

open 

enrollment 

four days a week and are also placed on an 

employment track. Participants in the 

internship track work 15 hours a week at 

$7.25/hour. Participants also receive 

supportive services and wraparound services. 

Department of  DJS plans to provide employment services and Goal: 100 Yes Varies 

Juvenile internships for participants enrolled in the city’s Actual: 011 

Services (DJS) Operation Safe Kids Program, an intensive 

case management program for youth that have 

been detained.10 

OCPS 

YES Program: 

Workforce 

Central Florida 

 Participants are OSY, ages 18–21. 

Participants attend an orientation, take a TABE 

test, and attend three YES workshops prior to 

enrollment. 

 Participants attend job preparation training, can 

receive training in the National Retail (NRF) 

Customer Service Certification program, and 

are placed into jobs or other training programs. 

Students receive incentives for achieving 

milestones, such as obtaining NRF 

certification. 

Goal: 100 

Actual: 169 

youth12 

Yes13 Varies by 

participant; 

open 

enrollment 

10	 This approach was modified from DJS’s original contract. DJS was initially contracted to recruit 100 youth with 

a record in the Juvenile Justice System and enroll them in school or the YO! Program. 

11	 BCPSS had not yet implemented this program as of January 2010. 

12	 Seventy youth did not technically fit the criteria for OSY, because they had earned a GED or diploma, but were 

unemployed and looking for job training. 

13	 The YES program is newly created with the School District Grant, but it was built on an established model that 

WCF uses to provide workforce services. 

VI-12 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Program and 

Partner Major Program Features 

Enrollment 

1/10 

New 

w/Grant? 

Program 

Length 

YES Program: 

Metropolitan 

Orlando Urban 

League 

 Participants are gang-involved or adjudicated 

OSY, ages 16–21. All participants take TABE 

test and receive an Individual Career Plan prior 

to enrollment. 

Goal: 60 

Actual: 52 

youth 

No Varies by 

participant; 

open 

enrollment 

 Participants work towards GED completion and 

are placed in a part-time subsidized 

employment. Participants receive stipends for 

participating in different program elements, and 

receive supportive services (clothes, food, 

transportation assistance). 

Parramore  Grant funds one outreach worker to mentor Goal: 50 Yes Informal 

District youth and connect them to community services Actual: 51 Recreational such as career and recreational activities. youth Center14 

SDP 

E3 Bridge 

Program 

(E3

=Education, 

Employment & 

Empowerment) 





Participants are OSY, ages 14–21. The 

program is a “bridge” program, as the goal is 

for students to earn credits while waiting to 

transfer to an accelerated high school. 

Participants take a TABE test and go through 

an orientation prior to enrollment. 

Once enrolled, participants earn up to five 

Goal: 150 

(35 at a 

time) 

Actual: 157 

Yes15 Varies by 

participant; 

cohorts 

participate 

in 12-week 

training 

intervals. 

credits in twelve weeks via an online 

curriculum. Participants also receive academic 

remediation when necessary. 

Occupational 

Skills Pathway 

Program 

(Community 

College of 

Philadelphia 

and NPower) 

 Program targets participants at the E3

 Centers 

who are over 18, have their GED or are 

enrolled in GED courses, and have completed 

job readiness training. 

 Participants undergo occupational skills training 

(automotive, hospitality, IT) at existing 

programs such as the Community College of 

Philadelphia and NPower. After training 

program, participants are placed into 

subsidized employment. 

Goal: 150 

Actual: 2916 

No Varies by 

training 

program 

14	 This intervention is discussed in more depth later in this chapter in the section on violence prevention programs. 

Although the intervention is targeted at OSY, the outreach worker serves both ISY and OSY. 

15 The E3

 Programs existed prior to the grant, but the Bridge Program is new. 

16	 The Occupational Skills Pathway program faced challenges in the start-up phase of the grant, including difficulty 

locating space to operate the program. As a result, the program was slow to start providing services. 

VI-13 
OSY participants spoke very highly of program staff and services, and both participants and staff 

highlighted the following as best practices. 

	 Grantees contracted with well-established OSY programs with strong ties to 

the community. This approach reduced planning and oversight requirements for 

the school district, facilitated youth recruitment and enrollment, and provided 

some insurance that services would be high quality. Thus, though contract 

negotiations contributed to a generally slow launch of OSY services, most 

programs rapidly reached or exceeded enrollment targets. 

	 OSY programs have strategies to screen and retain students. The majority of 

OSY is over the age of 16 and therefore not required to attend school. As a result, 

OSY programs are more likely than those for ISY to assess participants’ 

commitment to the program prior to enrollment, for instance by requiring that 

they attend a series of workshops. Several programs also provide financial 

incentives to encourage participation. One OCPS provider, Workforce Central 

Florida (WCF), offers participants $100 for obtaining National Retail Customer 

Service Certification, $100 for completing an online mentoring program, $150 for 

obtaining employment, $50 for retaining employment for 45 days, and $100 for 

retaining employment for $90 days. Youths also can earn $1,200 through a WCF 

work experience position and $50 for referring other eligible youth to the 

program. 

	 Program staff prioritize youth leadership and encourage participants’ sense 

of autonomy and voice in the program. In interviews, youth within OSY 

programs frequently drew sharp contrasts between their experiences within the 

program and their experiences in traditional schools. As emerging adults,
 

participants particularly valued that program staff treated them with respect, 

listened to their ideas, and provided opportunities for them to provide input. 

Program staff said that they encourage participants to take responsibility for their 

success in the program, and to communicate with staff regarding what they need 

in order to be successful. E3

 Bridge Program staff, for instance, encourage 

participants to be their own “social agents” and make an effort to regularly have 

conversations with participants about “what works and doesn’t work” in order to 

improve the program. 

	 Programs provide wrap-around services in order to address employment 

barriers. The YO! Center in Baltimore, for instance, is a comprehensive 

community center with many onsite resources, including health and childcare 

services. Participants can also receive drivers’ training through the center. The 

Metropolitan Urban League program in Orange County is a small program, but it 

raises money from the community so that it can provide participants with 

clothing, regular food baskets, and transportation assistance. 

VI-14 
Example of a Comprehensive Program for OSY: 

BCPSS’s YO! Program 

My cousin told me about the center. He came to me one day and said, ‘if 

you are trying to do something better with yourself, go to the YO! and 

they’ll help you out.’

 – Participant, YO! Westside Center 

Although the YO! Westside Center is located in a neighborhood with relatively high rates of 

violence, the atmosphere inside the center is warm and inviting. A participant at the center 

said, “the neighborhood is a bad drug area, but when I’m inside the [YO!] Center I feel safe.” 

The YO! Center has a gym, a recording studio, a recreation room that has video games and a 

pool table, and several large rooms for classes and activities. 

Participants at the YO Center receive at least 20 hours of education services a month. 

Participants take a TABE test that places them in one of the following educational tracks: adult 

basic education, Pre-GED, GED, or online credit recovery. Academic classes for each track 

are held four days a week. One participant said of the educational services, “The teachers in 

high school, they teach more out of the book, less real life. Here, they interact with students. 

The teachers [at the YO! Center] have more of a passion for teaching.” 

In addition, participants at the YO! Center receive at least 10 hours of workforce services a 

month. Because most participants do not have work experience, they are initially placed into 

four-month internships, where they work for 15 hours a week at $7.25 an hour. For example, 

the YO! Center has worked with Baltimore City’s Department of Transportation (DOT) to 

develop internships for participants as general laborers and administrative aids. 

Approximately 15 Westside Center youth have been placed into these internships. 

Finally, YO participants receive extensive case management from YO! Advocates. YO! 

Advocates develop an Individual Opportunity Plan for each participant and refer them to inhouse services such as the drivers’ education program, parenting support groups, or legal aid. 

One YO participant described the role of the advocate in the following way: 

My advocate came to my house one time because my phone was off. He 

was like ‘What’s going on. I have all these opportunities. Come to the 

Center.’ The [advocates] always ask about your barriers, what’s stopping
 

you from what you want to do, and they jump right on it and help you out 

with it. 

The economic recession of 2009–2010 created challenges for OSY programs, as job developers 

found it increasingly difficult to locate jobs and internships for program participants. According 

to staff, participants are competing for entry-level jobs with “people who’ve been laid off and 

who have a track record of being employed, showing up on time, and have a mortgage to pay.” 

The lack of employment opportunities contributed to a sense of urgency among OSY in the 

target communities. For instance, when walking in the target community with one of the 

evaluation’s site visitors, a youth worker was approached by three separate youth who asked 

VI-15 
 

plaintively, “When are you going to get me a job?” Program staff discussed how difficult it was 

for them to watch youth search for work during the recession. For example, 

We’ve seen people week after week after week looking for jobs. It breaks 

your heart, because we have done everything we feel that we can do to 

arm them and you want that success. You know that they are trying, but 

the jobs are not there. They really are not there. You wish that you could 

just hand them one. 

Despite the challenging economic climate, targeted programs for OSY were successful at 

engaging OSY in education, training, and enrichment activities. The textbox in this section 

highlights in more detail the types of services that the YO! program in Baltimore provided to 

OSY. 

Service Type and Frequency for ISY and OSY 

This section is oriented around an analysis of the “instances” of services, as they are reported by 

grantees in the MIS. To provide a context for this discussion, Exhibit VI-4 gives an overview of 

core services, broken out by service strategy and grantee. 

We focus on “instances” of participation rather than the “total number of youths” served for a 

particular service because the numbers in the MIS system are duplicative. That is, grantees 

report the total number of times a service is delivered for every month of the grant, even if that 

service is received by the same youth multiple times.17 To ease cross-site comparison, service 

data are reported as the average instances of service per participant.18 It is important to recognize 

that differences in service approach may lead to grantee-level differences in what constitutes an 

“instance” of service, thus, the “dosage” or intensity of an “instance” of service may vary from 

grantee to grantee or between different types of service for the same grantee. For example, in 

some cases an individual “instance of service” may represent attendance at a two-hour workshop 

on job preparation, while in others it may represent 60 hours of subsidized employment (i.e., 15 

17	 Total instances of services participation were calculated by summing the participation numbers for each month 

the grantees reported in their quarterly report submissions. In a given month of participation, grantees report 

instances of service received, not a count of unduplicated participants. Therefore, in a single month of reporting, 

the count of the instances of a given service may exceed the total number of unduplicated participants served in 

that month. 

18	 The “per-participant instances of service” is calculated by summing the total instances of services and dividing it 

by the “unduplicated number of youth served.” This number is an average across all participants in a given 

service category and does not reflect the service mix of the “average participant.” Thus, individual participants 

may have received more or fewer services than what is represented by the number for average instance of service 

per participant. 

VI-16 
 

 

 

 

 

hours a week for one month). They both represent one “instance” of service, even though 

subsidized employment is a more intensive level of service than the workshop. 

Exhibit VI-4 

Summary of Services 

Service Strategies BCPSS CPS MPS OCPS SDP 

Academic Services 

Credit Retrieval     

Reading Remediation     

Math Remediation     

Academic Tutoring  

GED Prep  

Workforce Services 

Vocational Training/CertificateBased Programs 

 

Other Job Preparation 

Class/Activity 

    

Community Service  

Subsidized Work 

Experience/Internships    

Unsubsidized Work Experience  

Life Skills     

Supportive Services 

Case Management     

Substance Abuse Counseling   

Mental Health Counseling   

Mentoring     

Gang and Violence Services19 

Conflict Resolution     

School Resource Officers  

Exhibit VI-5 provides an overview of the average per-participant instances of academic, 

workforce, and supportive services provided by each grantee. In order to illustrate the overall 

mix of services provided by each grantee, Exhibit VI-5 groups together services of each 

19 Gang and violence prevention services are not tracked as a separate service category in the MIS. 

VI-17 
particular type (academic, workforce, and supportive). Academic services, for instance, include 

instances of reading remediation, math remediation, academic tutoring, and credit retrieval. 

As illustrated in the exhibit, all grantees provide a mix of academic, workforce, and supportive 

services. In general, grantees are providing more instances of academic services per participant 

than they are workforce or supportive services. The School District of Philadelphia appears to be 

providing more instances of academic services per participant (18.8), on average, than others. 

Meanwhile, BCPSS appears to be providing more than two times as many instances of 

workforce services per participant than other grantees. 

Exhibit VI-5: 

Per-Participant Instances of Academic, Workforce, and Supportive Services 

Differences in the level of services that grantees provide is based to a large degree on grantees’ 

service design. The next sections provide in-depth information on the types of services that 

grantees provided. 

Academic Services 

Grantees provide two different types of academic services. First, they provide academic 

remediation, which includes reading remediation, math remediation, and academic tutoring. 

Second, they provide credit retrieval services, which are targeted at over-age and under-credit 

ISY and OSY. 

VI-18 
 

 

 

Academic Remediation Services 

One of the performance goals for the grant is that students increase two or more grade levels in 

math and reading ability. Given this goal, literacy and numeracy remediation, along with 

academic tutoring, is a common emphasis of grant-funded programs because target students are 

often below grade level. Exhibit VI-6 provides an overview of the instances of academic 

remediation services (reading remediation, math remediation, and academic tutoring) provided 

by each grantee, broken out by ISY and OSY. 

Exhibit VI-6: 

Per-Participant Instances of Academic Remediation Services by Grantee20
 

BCPSS, OCPS, and SDP provided more instances of academic remediation per participant than 

other sites. As illustrated in Exhibit VI-6, MPS provided relatively few instances per participant 

of academic remediation to ISY, and no academic remediation to OSY; this is because MPS 

focused primarily on providing credit retrieval services. Below are descriptions of some of the 

interventions that grantees are using to provide remediation services. 

 BCPSS provides intensive academic remediation services to ISY and OSY. 

BCPSS provided the highest number of per-participant instances of remedial 

service to ISY and relatively high instances of service to OSY. BCPSS provides 

academic remediation using the Voyager curriculum, with two grant-funded 

teachers at each target school to deliver this curriculum. The Voyager math and 

English classes combine individual work, group work, and online work. Teachers 

track student progress through a series of online assessments and benchmarks, and 

have access to detailed information regarding individual student progress. 

20 Includes reading remediation, math remediation, and academic tutoring 

VI-19 
Teachers also aim to integrate real-world applications for math and English into 

classroom activities. In 2008–2009, this class was available to all eighth graders 

at the target middle schools. In 2009–2010, the class was available to ninth grade 

Futures Works! participants performing below grade level. BCPSS provides 

academic remediation to OSY through the YO! Centers. The Adult Basic 

Education classes at the YO! Centers are offered four days a week, with ninety 

minutes of direct instruction and thirty minutes in the computer lab. Each week, 

there is one class session on language arts, one on reading and writing, and two on 

math. The teacher provides one-on-one tutoring two days a week, which is 

mostly geared towards students who struggle with reading. 

	 SDP partnered with Center for Literacy (CFL) to provide academic 

remediation to ISY at North Philadelphia Community High School (NPCHS) 

and OSY at the E3 Bridge Program. For the literacy component at the Bridge 

Program, CFL instructors work with youth who are reading below an eighth-grade 

level in small classes of about five students per class. For the numeracy 

component, CFL instructors work with up to fifteen students at a time whose 

numeracy skills are at the sixth grade level or below. At NPCHS, CFL instructors 

operate as regular math and English teachers, but work in small classes with 

students who test below a fifth-grade level. In both settings CFL instructors focus 

on establishing a strong, personal connection with the students, tailoring 

instruction to individual student needs based on diagnostics, using games and 

real-world examples to make the curriculum engaging and relevant, and on using 

“high interest, low-level” texts for reading. One CFL staff said, 

When they relate to it, that’s when you can start the real education...You 

can teach them the things that they need to know, but in a context they can 

relate to. 

	 OCPS connected ISY to academic remediation services within its traditional 

schools. Most of the instances of remediation recorded for OCPS occurred when 

case managers for the YES program connected ISY to tutoring or remedial 

services already offered by their traditional middle or high schools. When 

students are enrolled in the YES program, they take a TABE test. If they score 

below grade level, the case manager enrolls the youth in additional remedial and 

tutoring services offered by the school, and then follows up with youth to make 

sure that they are attending regularly. Also, YES case managers sometimes work 

one-on-one with students on their homework. 

Credit Retrieval Services 

Credit retrieval is a core component of alternative programs and interventions for over-age and 

under-credit students. As is illustrated in Exhibit VI-7, MPS, SDP, and OCPS have a strong 

focus on credit retrieval services, which are provided mostly within grant-funded alternative 

schools. BCPSS is not providing credit retrieval services at the same rate as other grantees, 

largely because BCPSS is not using the grant to fund an alternative school. CPS has not 

provided many instances of credit retrieval services to date, because the Banner Schools 

launched in Fall 2009. 

VI-20 
Exhibit VI-7: 

Per-Participant Instances of Credit Retrieval Services by Grantee
 

Most of the alternative schools use a combination of online curriculum and small group 

instruction to guide credit retrieval. Highlighted below are some specific examples of the credit 

retrieval strategies adopted by grantees. 

	 At Transition High School in Milwaukee, students work on credit retrieval
 

using the online curriculum Class.com. Each teacher is assigned to a caseload 

of 5–6 youth, and is responsible for monitoring students’ progress, assessing 

students, and providing targeted one-on-one instruction. The Class.com
 

curriculum requires youth to work on content in one subject at a time, and then 

take an exam at the end of each subject to show that they have mastered key 

skills. 

	 OCPS’s Positive Pathways Transition Center and SDP’s Bridge Program 

offer credit retrieval coursework online via APEX. APEX learning provides a 

comprehensive curriculum to meet high school graduation requirements in math, 

science, English, social studies, world languages, and selected electives. The 

curriculum is designed to support academic success for students at a range of 

academic levels. Students have the opportunity to earn five credits in 12 weeks. 

Students take these courses in a computer lab, and have instructors available to 

assist them. 

	 The Banner Schools in Chicago use Aventa, an online curriculum that is 

tailored to students’ individual progress and that gets increasingly more 

demanding as the student moves forward. Staff view the online medium as 

effective at addressing the auditory, visual, and kinesthetic needs of these 

students. Students take their courses online in distinct sections and at the end of 

each section take a quiz. If they pass the quizzes, they take a unit exam. In 

addition to the core content sections, the Banner instructors hold remediation 

VI-21 
sessions, in which they work with all the students together to address common 

issues with the content. 

As illustrated in the examples above, computer-based learning programs are an advantage in 

schools that must teach students who are at very different academic levels. Because students can 

work through content independently, instructors are free to move around the room and work with 

students in a one-on-one format. For instance, one student said, 

I was embarrassed [at my other schools] to say if I didn’t know something. 

So what I liked about [this school] is that I could email my teacher to tell 

them to come over and help me with something. They wouldn’t be loud 

about it and be like ‘oh you didn’t know that?’...I didn’t have to raise my 

hand or go get her. People didn’t know that I didn’t know stuff. 

An instructor at the Banner Schools indicated that most students attending the school have about 

a sixth-grade reading level and have a wide range of proficiencies in math. Thus, teachers at the 

grant-funded alternative schools have to strike a balance between remediation, content 

instruction, and basic skills development, while moving students closer to the goal of graduating. 

A principal of a Banner School said, 

They’re getting hit from all angles academically to address their basic 

skills as well as their content knowledge and abilities. 

Other Academic Services 

Grantees provide additional academic support services for students, including academic coaching 

and group study sessions. These services are typically available to all students in the grantees’ 

target group. SDP has a strong emphasis on academic coaching at the NPCHS, where “academic 

advisors” act as teaching assistants or mentors to target students. Each academic advisor is 

assigned to a specific class, and assists students with academic and other needs (e.g., behavioral, 

organizational, etc.) to help them succeed in school. In addition, staff at NPCHS implemented a 

school-wide reading program, in which every student in the school is required to read every day 

for a half an hour. 

As demonstrated by the academic services described above, grantees used the School District 

Grant to create a more personalized academic experience for at-risk and adjudicated ISY. In 

traditional school settings, grantees are supplementing existing academic services for students 

who need additional support in reading, math, or other core subjects. In alternative school 

settings, grantees sought to change students’ perspective of themselves as learners by connecting 

them with targeted academic support and providing them opportunities to work on content at 

their own paces. The following text box explains how North Philadelphia Community High 

School creates a school culture that values hard work and supports students to do their personal 

best. 

VI-22 
 

Example of an Alternative School Providing Personalized Academic Services: 

North Philadelphia Community High School 

North Philadelphia Community High School (NPCHS) was launched in 2008 with seed funding 

from the School District Grant. NPCHS is an alternative project-based educational program for 

youth aged 16–21 who have 13 or fewer credits. Students can earn the credits they need to 

graduate at an accelerated rate. Each student attends the following core courses: English, 

Math, Science, Humanities, Art, and Learning To Work (LTW), the career development course. 

Classes are broken up into eight-week sessions, and students have the opportunity to earn 

0.25 to 0.5 credits at the end of each session. 

The principal said that approximately one-third of NPCHS’s students are youth offenders exiting 

placement who are required to attend NPCHS as a condition of probation. Because of this, the 

principal said that teachers have to work hard to win students over once they get to NPCHS. 

When [youth offenders exiting placement] go to interviews at the school 

district and the school district is saying this is where we’re placing you, they 

kind of interpret us as an extension of placement. They come in angry and 

hard, and once they get here and see it’s not like that, that hardness and 

streetness, it falls away. 

One way that NPCHS staff earn students’ trust is by taking special care to celebrate students’ 

successes and reward them when they work hard. They have found that this helps to motivate 

other students and create a supportive school culture. For instance, students are recognized 

with “pins” if they make the honor roll, demonstrate good attendance, or increase their TABE 

scores by one or two grade levels. Students put the pins on their school ID badges and call the 

pins “school bling.” School staff also invite parents to attend regular ceremonies at which 

student success is acknowledged. At one type of regular ceremony, the school recognizes 

students with an ADA of 85 percent or above. 

Workforce Services 

Grantees varied considerably in the types of workforce services that they provided. The breadth 

of services depended on the quality of relationships between the school district and workforce 

partners. This section of the report describes the job preparation services, subsidized 

employment, vocational training, and other workforce services provided by grantees. 

Job Preparation Services 

A lot of the skills I learned in [the LTW program], I’m going to remember 

the rest of my life: social skills, public speaking, interviewing, job 

applications and how to do a resume. 

– Student, LTW program (SDP) 

The most common workforce services provided by grantees are job preparation services, which 

include activities such as career exploration, resume development, and interview preparation. As 

illustrated in Exhibit VI-8, BCPSS’s Futures Works! and YO! programs provided the most 

VI-23 
 

instances of job preparation per participant, more than double that of the other grantees. In 

contrast, CPS provided few instances of job preparation services per participant due to delays in 

launching workforce services. 

Exhibit VI-8: 

Per-Participant Instances of Job Preparation Services by Grantee
 

Below we highlight the specifics of grantee services in this area, with a focus on those grantees 

that provided the most extensive services. 

	 Advocates in Baltimore provide job preparation services to ISY and OSY. 

Advocates create workshops on interviewing, dress for success, and resume
 

writing, and also help students fill out job applications for the summer jobs 

program. For ISY, workforce training occurs during students’ afterschool class 

and tends to be informal in nature. Youth who are enrolled in the YO! program
 

through the School District Grant are required to complete a four-day work 

readiness training, which includes resume writing, job search skills, and 

guidelines for how to dress for an interview. 

	 ISY and OSY enrolled in SDP’s Learning-to-Work program are exposed to 

many different careers. Students complete career interest surveys, participate in 

job soft-skill workshops, and build a career portfolio (e.g. resume, cover letter, 

project work, letters of support, internship assessments, etc.). The LTW program 

at NPCHS has a guest speaker series, which features professionals who have a 

background similar to that of the students. LTW students are chosen to attend 

these presentations based on grades, attendance, and attitude. Each guest speaks 

for 15 minutes and then answers questions for 15 minutes. In the following quote, 

one student who attended these presentations describes how they helped motivate 

him. 

VI-24 
They bring in speakers who do the jobs that we want to do. They 

tell you what their circumstances were, how they came up, what 

college they went to, how it was hard. But they all basically send 

the same message: just don’t quit . . .It helps me a lot because their 

words are inspirational and sometimes a lot of what they went 

through we’re going through right now. 

	 Workforce Central Florida (WCF) provides job preparation services to OSY 

and ISY in Orange County. Participants in WCF’s YES program are required to 

go through a series of workshops on job preparation, which include a career 

assessment and workshops on preparing resumes, managing time, interviewing, 

and job search. In addition to providing grant-funded services for OSY, WCF 

takes in-school youth from targeted schools in Orange County district on a tour of 

the local One-Stop Center. During this tour, students receive lunch and general 

information about how to apply for a job. WCF also facilitated workshops for 

OCPS staff on youth employment opportunities and services available at OneStop Centers. 

	 MPS hired five Employment Specialists to work with students at its high 

schools. The Employment Specialists provide students with soft skills training 

and connect them to paid internships. Each student receives an Individual 

Employment Plan (IEP), a career assessment, eight hours of work readiness 

training (held on a weekend), and case management support to address personal 

and family barriers to employment. 

Subsidized Employment/Internships 

I was mainly interested in Futures First because of the job program. They 

find a job for you through the...workforce agency. I just got out of jail 

and I needed some money. I was pretty broke. 

– Student, FFI (MPS) 

As illustrated by this quote, job opportunities are a major draw for the programs for at-risk and 

adjudicated youth. For this reason, some grantees use subsidized employment (internships) as an 

incentive to encourage youth to attend other program activities such as tutoring. All grantees are 

working to create internship opportunities for ISY and OSY that will provide students with 

hands-on experiences in fields such as customer service, equipment maintenance, and sales. 

However, Exhibit VI-9 shows that instances of subsidized employment per participant are low 

(ranging from 0.1 to 2.1 instances per participant) when compared to other types of grantee 

services. One reason for this is that grantees sometimes were slow to launch subsidized 

employment opportunities, and therefore had less time for instances to occur. A second reason is 

that paid internships are expensive for grantees and can therefore be offered to only a relatively 

small number of youth. 

VI-25 
 

 

Exhibit VI-9: 

Per-Participant Instances of Subsidized Employment by Grantee
 

Grantees that were the most successful at placing youth into subsidized employment relied on 

established workforce providers to develop these opportunities. For instance, the Milwaukee 

Area Workforce Investment Board (MAWIB) developed a number of internships for ISY in 

Milwaukee, and YO! Center staff (in partnership with MOED) placed a number of OSY into 

internships in Baltimore. Philadelphia Youth Network (PYN) also developed a number of 

internships for ISY and OSY.21 Details about two of these programs are highlighted below. 

	 MPS partnered with MAWIB to offer subsidized employment to FFI 

students. MPS’ strong partnership with MAWIB has resulted in a high number 

of paid internships for participants. Eighty percent of students who are enrolled in 

the FFI are placed into subsidized employment. Although the majority of these 

internships take place in the afternoon, some students work as teachers’ aides 

during the school day. The students are being paid $7.25/hour for 15 hours a 

week, working between November 2009 and the end of June 2010. MAWIB 

identified 151 subsidized internship positions, with employers like the Bicycle 

Federation, MPS, YWCA, and the Milwaukee Christian Center. 

21 SDP faced some data reporting issues, which is one reason that MIS data on subsidized employment does not 

match well with the qualitative data. 

VI-26 
 

 

 SDP partnered with PYN to create internships and vocational training 22 opportunities for students in the LTW and E3 Bridge Programs. At NPCHS, 

for instance, LTW students are required to participate in at least two internships to 

graduate. During the school year, the internships are 50 hours over a six-week 

period. During the summer, they are 80 hours. Students are paid a minimum of 

$7.25 an hour. Placements included law offices, city hall, summer camps, 

doctor’s offices, a rehabilitation center, and a mechanic. Students who are placed 

in internships complete weekly journals, so that staff can closely monitor and 

address any challenges students may face in their positions. Youth enrolled in the 

Bridge Program at the E3 Center have the option to participate in a 12-week “Job 

Readiness Training” program that the center already has in place. Once students 

complete this 12-week training program, they are placed in an eight-week paid 

internship. Last summer, 170 of the LTW students at Overbrook and NPCHS 

(about 75 percent of the total number of students) completed internships. 

Programs that tried to develop internships independent of a workforce agency were less 

successful, because they lacked the expertise and networks to develop these opportunities. The 

age of target youth is another factor that contributed to the relatively low level of subsidized 

employment opportunities. Programs that target older youth generally placed more youth into 

subsidized employment than those that targeted younger participants. 

Vocational Training Services 

Vocational training creates alternative career pathways for at-risk and adjudicated youth. As 

illustrated in Exhibit VI-10, however, the instances of vocational training provided by School 

District Grantees are relatively few (less than 1.0 instance per participant). SDP has the highest 

instances of vocational services, which it provides to students through the Occupation Skills 

Pathway Program. This program had just launched at the time of the third evaluation visit, so it 

is likely to serve many more youth in 2010. In contrast, two grantees (CPS and MPS) provided 

no instances of vocational training. 

22	 Philadelphia Youth Network (PYN) oversees the administrative side of the internship component for all the sites, 

including making sure the necessary paperwork is collected (W-4, I-9, waiver, etc.) and processing the payroll. 

Students are paid every two weeks on a debit card and submit timesheets to get paid. 

VI-27 
Exhibit VI-10: 

Per-Participant Instances of Vocational Training by Grantee 

As was true for unsubsidized work experience, the grantees that provided the most perparticipant instances of service in vocational training (OCPS and SDP) relied on established 

workforce partners to provide this key service. The specific interventions are highlighted below. 

	 Philadelphia’s Occupation Skills Pathway Program. The OSPP Program
 

targets out-of-school youth enrolled at the E3

 Power Centers for training in a 

variety of fields. Youth can enroll in automotive, hospitality, or IT training
 

through PYN’s partnerships with the Community College of Philadelphia and 

NPower, a CBO. Youth have the opportunity to earn professional certificates 

through these programs and are guaranteed a six-week paid internship upon 

successful completion of the training program. 

	 OCPS’ vocational training options. OCPS has partnered with multiple 

organizations to provide vocational training to out-of-school youth. Workforce 

Central Florida, the primary employment service partner, provides a job readiness 

curriculum that develops youths’ soft skills and prepares them to look for jobs. 

Upon completion of this training, youth can be placed in a National Retail 

Customer Service Certification training and from there into employment. In 

addition, OCPS has partnered with the Home Builder’s Institute (HBI). At HBI, 

adjudicated youth participate in a six-month construction job training program, 

where they can receive a certificate in construction trades. 

Other Workforce Services 

In addition to the core workforce services highlighted above, grantees sought to enhance 

students’ work readiness by connecting them to community service opportunities and 

VI-28 
unsubsidized employment. Across all grantees, the instances of service per participant for these 

other workforce services are low, primarily because grantees did not have a systematic approach 

for providing these services. For instance, Futures Works! advocates connect students to 

community service opportunities so that they can get a “head start” on satisfying BCPSS’s 75 ­

hour community service requirement for HS graduation, but this was not a central aspect of 

BCPSS’s service design. Some programs, particularly those for OSY, tried to place youth into 

unsubsidized employment. In almost all cases, however, the recession made it very challenging 

to place youth into jobs and as a result the per-participant instances of unsubsidized employment 

are low. 

Supportive/Case Management Services 

We serve as an anchor for the kids. We give them a reason to stay in 

school. For the first time, they have someone to talk to and provide them 

things that they are missing from home, like love and care. 

– Futures Works! Advocate (BCPSS) 

One of the core functions of the School District Grant is to provide targeted case management 

and wraparound supportive services for at-risk and adjudicated youth. Although case managers 

had different titles at different sites (i.e., Advocate, Intervention Specialist, or Student 

Engagement Specialist), they all had similar roles vis-à-vis youth. Case managers assess 

students’ needs, monitor academic performance and attendance, interface with parents, and 

connect students to wraparound supportive services as needed. The MIS did not track case 

management services per se, but instead tracked instances of mentoring, follow-up mentoring, 

substance abuse counseling, health, and follow-up developmental services. In almost all cases, 

case managers either provided these services or connected youth to these services, and thus 

instances of supportive services is also a measure of case management. 

As illustrated in Exhibit VI-11, grantees consistently provide more supportive/case management 

services to ISY than to OSY. This is because ISY programs fund staff whose specific role is to 

provide case management and connect youth to services, whereas programs for OSY often 

provide these types of wraparound services in a less formal way. Case management services are 

central to OCPS’s service design, explaining the high number of instances of supportive services 

reported by this grantee. Case management is also a core service provided by BCPSS and CPS. 

VI-29 
 

Exhibit VI-11: 

Per-Participant Instances of Supportive/Case Management Services by Grantee23 

The role of case managers in connecting youth to supportive services at these sites is described in 

detail below. 

	 At each of its target schools, OCPS’s YES program employs Intervention 

Specialists (ISs), whose caseloads range from 50 to 90 students in grades nine 

through 12. ISs have a caseload of adjudicated or at-risk students, whom they 

meet with three times weekly. ISs monitor attendance and students’ grades, have 

regular phone contact with students’ parents, observe students during their 

classes, and help to connect students with wraparound support services. Because 

OCPS is serving a relatively high number of youth offenders through the YES 

program, ISs work closely with parole officers, the School Resource Officers 

(SROs), and the SAFE coordinators24 at the school. Students in OCPS are 

enrolled in the YES program until they graduate or move out of the district. ISs 

continue to follow up at least monthly with students who have changed schools, 

have dropped out of school, or are in juvenile placements. According to one 

youth offender who participated in the YES program, his relationship with his IS 

made a big difference in his life: 

[My IS] helped me because, if you think about it, all the other years I was 

in school, I didn’t have somebody checking in with me, asking me how I’m 

23	 Includes mentoring, follow-up mentoring services, substance abuse, follow-up development services, health 

services, and ‘other’ services. 

24	 SAFE Coordinators run the Student Assistance and Family Empowerment Program (SAFE program) at each of 

the OCPS target programs. The SAFE program provides prevention and intervention services for students and 

their families, with a focus on alcohol, tobacco, other drugs, and violence prevention. 

VI-30 
doing, asking me if I needed any help keeping up. Telling me, ‘you got to 

do better in these classes. I want to see you do better.’ She was giving me 

advice. If I was about to do something wrong, I was always thinking, 

‘what is [my IS] going to do when she finds out?’ ‘What would [my IS] 

do?’ 

	 At each of its high schools, CPS’s YES program employs Student 

Engagement Specialists (SESs), whose caseloads range from 40 to 140 ninthgrade students. An SES helps coordinate all YES activities within the school 

(including Freshman Seminar), watches over all students on his or her caseload, 

and provides more intensive case management to a few of the 25 very high-risk 

ninth grade students in the school. Students on this “hot 25” list receive daily 

check-ins and have individual success plans. For the rest of the students on his or 

her caseload, an SES monitors attendance, grades, and behavior and has weekly 

check-ins. When necessary, SESs work with teachers on how to address the 

needs of specific caseload students, sometimes observing the student in his or her 

classes. SESs are committed to doing all that they can to help their students 

succeed. For instance, one SES reported that he calls students with poor 

attendance at 6:30 every morning to encourage them to come to school. 

	 BCPSS’s Futures Works! program employs Advocates, who work with 

caseloads of 50 to 60 ISY in ninth and tenth grades and with OSY at the YO! 

program. Futures advocates act as mentors, counselors, and “mom, dad, uncle” 

to the students. Advocates at the high schools meet with students regularly to 

monitor their progress in school and check their grades and attendance. One 

student in the program described the role of his advocate in the following way. 

My advocate came to my house one time because my phone was off. He 

was like ‘What’s going on? I have all these opportunities. Come to the 

Center.’ They always ask about your barriers, what’s stopping you from 

what you want to do, and they jump right on it and help you out with it. 

Advocates also provide or organize enrichment activities such as field trips after 

school and are an integral part of the school team. As was true of the Intervention 

Specialists in OCPS’s YES program, Futures Works! Advocates continue to track 

their caseload students over time. The Futures Works! program also has four 

“traveling advocates” who follow up with students who have graduated from the 

program’s two target middle schools. The “traveling advocates” go to more than 

30 schools in Baltimore to meet with and provide case management services to 

students. Students consider the Futures Works! office to be a “safe haven.” As 

one advocate noted, 

Students know that there is a person in the building that they can go see 

and [who will] advocate for them. 

In the Philadelphia, Milwaukee, and Baltimore districts, social workers and mental health 

counselors also provided grant services. In each of these cases, grant-hired staff are an integral 

part of the team of specialists who address the needs of at-risk students within the target schools. 

In Baltimore, for instance, a mental health specialist initially conducted screenings for all of the 

VI-31 
Futures Works! students and has since provided group and individual counseling on anger 

management, conflict resolution, interpersonal skills, and relationships. Staff stressed that in 

order to build trust with students, counseling and support staff need to have opportunities to 

interact with students over time. 

Most kids if you say ‘you are going to be sent to a mental health person,’ 

they’ll say ‘I’m not crazy. I don’t need to talk to anyone.’ But if you have 

someone who is at your building and they’re doing group activities with 

you, you’re familiar with that person, you see them all the time, if you’re 

having a problem at home, you’re having a relationship problem, 

whatever it is, you can go talk to them because it’s not a new person. So 

we’re trying to raise that comfort level and also dispel the myth that 

there’s something wrong with you if you need to talk to a [mental] health 

clinician.
 

Grantee staff spoke of the pressing need for this type of support given the challenges faced by 

the target population. In particular, the need for grief counseling arose at multiple sites, 

particularly in communities with high rates of gang violence. 

Another example of a counseling model is the use of “discussion circles” at the Banner Schools 

in Chicago. The Banner Schools use the Johns Hopkins University Talent Development 

Curriculum to work on life skills and conflict resolution. The instructors lead the students in 

discussion circles, which allow the students to release some of the issues and stress that they deal 

with in their daily lives. In some cases, students provide advice and feedback to their peers on 

how to handle certain situations. One Banner Schools teacher said, 

The students really enjoy the circle portion...It surprises me; some 

students actually give other students positive feedback on how to handle 

certain situations so it’s not just us teachers [giving the advice].

 Instructors report that students are very engaged in this component and that at times it can be 

difficult to stop the circles and move onto other parts of the program. 

The supportive service aspects of grantee programs are particularly strong and well-developed. 

The quality and dedication of supportive service and counseling staff is a core asset for grantfunded programs, and something that youth participants consistently point to as a strength. 

Among program stakeholders, there is a near unanimous consensus that supportive services are 

key to creating a more personalized and connected school environment for at-risk and 

adjudicated students. Further, in most cases, grant-funded supportive service staff are core 

members of the school community, helping to improve the school climate and prevent violence 

within otherwise under-resourced schools. 

VI-32 
 

Gang and Violence Prevention Services 

You can’t go to kids and say, ‘you gotta leave gangs.’ That will cost them 

their lives. Our main concern is to stop the killings and violence. 

– Staff member, New Visions for Youth (BCPSS) 

One of the core goals of the School District Grant is to reduce violence in the target 

communities. All of the grant-funded services discussed previously in this chapter seek to 

reduce violence indirectly, by providing youth with viable and concrete alternatives to the gang 

lifestyle. Although violence prevention is a core priority of all grantees, only three— BCPSS, 

MPS, and OCPS—used the grant to fund programs focusing explicitly and directly on gang and 

violence prevention. Exhibit VI-12 provides an overview of these grant-funded services. 

Exhibit VI-12 

Overview of Gang and Violence Prevention Services 

Services Sites 

BCPSS 

New Vision Youth Services Intensive case management, gang 

intervention, mentoring, and conflict 

mediation. 

Three traditional high 

schools 

MPS 

Urban Underground (Flood 

the Hood with Dreams) 

Leadership and life skills training to 

students, tied to a framework of 

individual and community change. 

Five traditional high schools 

and Transition HS 

Ambassadors for Peace Training for youth leaders in conflict 

mediation and nonviolence. 

Five traditional high schools 

and Transition HS 

OCPS 

One officer from Orlando 

Police Department and three 

officers from Orange County 

Sheriffs Department 

Officers work with case managers at 

target schools and on the truancy and 

Orange County Sheriff Department gang 

task force. 

Eight traditional schools 

and the Positive Pathways 

Transitional Center 

YES program, Outreach 

Worker, Parramore Kids 

Zone, City of Orlando 

Outreach worker organizes basketball 

league, teen nights, and college fairs 

from downtown recreation center. 

Downtown Recreation 

Center, Orlando 

All three grantees funded partners to provide the gang and violence intervention services. Due to 

the slow pace of contract approval for CBO partners, these services were generally slow to 

launch. For instance, the Baltimore-based program New Visions for Youth Services (NVYS) did 

not begin working in the schools until Fall 2009. Although these programs were launched late in 

the grant cycle and therefore do not factor strongly into initiative outcomes, they show promise 

for reaching gang members and reducing violence. 

VI-33 
 

BCPSS contracted with NVYS to provide comprehensive gang prevention and intervention at 

three target high schools.25 NVYS has placed five staff, called advocates or urban specialists, at 

each school. The leaders and staff of NVYS are former gang members themselves and thus 

understand the pressures that students are under to join gangs. Although NVYS staff work with 

all students, they also have caseloads of students who have been identified by school 

administrators as being gang members or “tough kids.” According to the principal at one of the 

target high schools, having staff who understand students’ experience is key to reaching those 

who are most at risk: 

In order to change or help the situation, you have to understand that 

situation or come from that situation. This is what New Visions has. 

They’re from what our kids are from...they’ve been through bad times and 

all kind of situations...The kids see themselves in them. Real recognizes 

real. If you tell these kids something they don’t know...they won’t trust 

you. 

One aspect of NVYS’s program that stands out is that it operates as a fully integrated and valued 

partner within the school environment, rather than a separate program. NVYS staff meet with 

the school principals regularly, greet the students every day as they enter the building, and 

monitor the hallways during lunch periods and immediately after school to “maintain order.” 

NVYS staff work to develop caring and positive relationships with students so that they can 

identify conflicts in the early stages, hopefully early enough to prevent them from leading to 

violence in the school or in the community. At the time of the third site visit, NVYS was serving 

a caseload of 42 students at Forest Park High School, with plans to reach its enrollment goal of 

75 by the end of March 2010. 

Starting in January 2010, BCPSS also contracted with NVYS to develop a community-wide gang 

strategy on the Westside of the city, so that prevention and intervention services for youth gang 

members are coordinated. A NVYS staff member explained the importance of this effort: 

There is a lot of good work in Baltimore [on how to address gangs] but 

it’s fragmented and there are territorial issues. It takes someone with 

authority to pull people together, someone like an officer. That’s because 

each church and each non-profit is doing their own thing to address crime 

and gangs, so New Visions is looking to bring these efforts together. We 

want to have a large group to strengthen these efforts and have strength in 

numbers. 

25	 Target high schools include Forest Park High School and Douglass High School, where the Futures program 

operates. Another target school is the Dukeland Campus, which is a high school that was created in the building 

formerly occupied by Lemmel Middle School (the Futures Works! middle school that was closed in the summer 

of 2009). 

VI-34 
 

 

By addressing gang-related issues at the school and community level, BCPSS is hoping that the 

city will be able to address this issue in a more seamless fashion. 

MPS also has used the School District Grant to complement existing efforts to address gang 

violence within target schools.26 The CBO partners in Milwaukee provide workshops and 

activities on topics such as youth leadership, conflict resolution, restorative justice, and trust 

building. One such project is Flood the Hood with Dreams, which is a sub-project of the Urban 

Underground. Flood the Hood with Dreams offers conflict resolution training to students who 

face behavioral challenges. Students attend a workshop once a week for five weeks. The 

training is titled, “Rewriting Your Story—A Journey from Tragedy to Triumph.” The class 

provides a space for students to talk about the painful experiences of their lives, let go of their 

loss and anger, and determine how they want to live their lives moving forward. MPS also has 

funded the Ambassadors of Peace program, which strives to make students aware of how to 

resolve conflict nonviolently in their daily lives. 

OCPS used the School District Grant to fund additional deputies who rotated through various 

schools to provide services. The role of grant-funded officers is to counsel and mentor students 

engaging in violent acts, to build relationships with the school staff, to educate school staff about 

when to call law enforcement, and to decrease law enforcement’s response time to violent school 

incidents. Although officers assigned to work with schools as SROs or deputy liaisons often 

have backgrounds similar to those of the students, students often have such a strong mistrust of 

the police that it is difficult for police to develop trusting relationships with them. The School 

District Grant provided officers an opportunity to interact with youth in a new way and to help 

improve youths’ perception of the police. 

Finally, grantees provided enrichment activities for youth in an attempt to engage them 

positively and reduce violence. OCPS, for instance, is supporting a position for an outreach 

worker in a high-crime and high-poverty neighborhood. The outreach worker, who is a former 

college basketball coach, created a “Blacktop Basketball” league that attracts crowds of youths 

and other community members to the center and has contributed to a revitalization of the 

recreation center’s park and sports facilities. Although Blacktop Basketball is unique, all 

grantees have created enrichment activities for ISY and OSY, including camping trips, field 

26	 All of the target schools in Milwaukee, with the exception of Transition High School, are participating in a 

Violence Free Zone initiative. The Violence Free Zone initiative funds two youth advisors at each school who 

provide conflict resolution, mentoring, and other supportive services. The goal of this program is for youth 

advisors to identify emerging conflicts between students and intervene before they turn violent. 

VI-35 
trips, fairs, and other events designed to reduce violence and provide youth with positive and 

pro-social activities. 

One challenge in providing violence prevention services is that it can be difficult to document 

the outcomes of these programs. The types of outcomes that the MIS is tracking for this 

initiative (i.e., math and reading scores, employment outcomes) are unlikely to change 

immediately because students learned how to negotiate conflict better or became better listeners. 

Grantee staff also said that they need more assistance in understanding best practices for violence 

prevention programs and designing programs accordingly. Although grantees received technical 

assistance from DOL on gang intervention services, at least one grantee indicated that this 

assistance came too late in the project to influence its service design. Still, the School District 

Grant has given all grantees an enhanced capacity to systematically address these issues. 

Services for Youth Offenders 

One of the primary goals of the School District Grant is to target youth offenders for services, 

particularly those transitioning to their home schools from juvenile placement. As described in 

Chapter V, grantees developed a range of strategies for targeting youth offenders. With the 

exception of the alternative schools created by CPS and OCPS, however, grantees did not 

differentiate services for youth offenders from the services directed toward the other youth 

targeted by this grant. That is, most youth offenders served by the grant have access to the same 

set of services as at-risk students. 

Exhibit VI-13 compares the per-participant instances of services for youth offenders to those of 

at-risk students (across all grantee programs). The exhibit shows that the overall per-participant 

instances of service for youth offenders are the same as those for at-risk youth in the area of 

academic services, fewer in the area of workforce services, and greater in the area of supportive 

services. The fewer per-participant instances of workforce services and the greater instances of 

supportive services hold true regardless of whether the youth offender is an ISY or OSY. 

VI-36 
Exhibit VI-13: 

Per-Participant Instances of Services for Youth Offenders and At-Risk Youth 

A further analysis of the data shows that the greater per-participant instances of supportive 

services for youth offenders are due primarily to the influence of OCPS. OCPS served 

approximately half (51 percent) of all the youth offenders served by the grant and also provided 

the highest per-participant instances of supportive services. When OCPS is removed from the 

analysis, it can be seen that youth offenders received supportive services at a rate similar to that 

of at-risk youth. 

The lower levels of workforce services for youth offenders, however, hold true regardless of 

whether OCPS is included in the analysis or not and is consistent across all grantees. Qualitative 

data suggest two potential reasons for the fewer per-participant instances of workforce services 

for offenders. First, respondents indicated that youth offenders are more difficult to place into 

subsidized or unsubsidized employment, which suggests that the fewer instances of workforce 

services for youth offenders may reflect low rates of placement in these opportunities. Second, 

some grantees use workforce services, particularly internships, to reward students’ participation 

in other grant activities. In this case, the reduced instances of workforce services may derive 

from youth offenders having a more difficult time qualifying for workforce services, due to 

academic or behavioral challenges. 

Challenges and Lessons Learned 

As discussed throughout this chapter, grantees implemented a diverse range of educational, 

workforce, and violence-prevention service in traditional and alternative school settings for inschool and out-of-school youth. The grantees’ implementation process continues to move 

VI-37 
forward in the final year of grant funding. Throughout the implementation process, grantees 

reported a number of challenges and lessons learned that surfaced as they aimed to provide 

comprehensive wraparound services to the most at-risk youth. 

Challenges 

	 Several of the grant-funded programs had low rates of attendance. Staff 

report that achieving good attendance is a challenge both within programs and 

more broadly within the target schools. Programs that operated after school often 

had particularly low levels of attendance, partially because parents encouraged 

their children to come home directly after school. In addition to student-level 

factors leading to poor attendance, poor weather in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and 

Chicago caused attendance rates to plummet during the winter months. Many 

staff also reported that while youth on probation attend regularly when required, 

they stop attending as soon as they are off probation. To address challenges with 

attendance, many of the programs provided incentives to participants in the form 

of bus passes, movie tickets, and so on. 

	 Some sites have difficulty recruiting youth offenders to alternative schools. 

Juvenile Justice and grantee staff noted that some students are resistant to 

attending alternative schools because they view their assignment to the school as 

continued punishment. To address this problem, Juvenile Justice staff in some 

cities are working with judges to make sure that court orders include requirements 

that students attend transitional schools. Meanwhile, school staff are working 

closely with students to help them see the transitional schools as vehicles for 

achieving their goals. 

	 Follow-up with students is logistically difficult, particularly in large school 

districts. Both OCPS and BCPSS have created systems for following up with 

students who have transitioned from grade eight to grade nine or who have left 

their schools to attend other programs. Follow-up is challenging for a number of 

reasons, but mostly because students are located at a number of different high 

schools and alternative schools. BCPSS has addressed this issue by creating 

“traveling advocates” whose job consists entirely of following up with students 

who are spread across thirty high schools in the district. 

	 The economic downturn of 2009–2010 made it difficult to place participants 

into employment. Placing at-risk and adjudicated youth into employment is 

difficult in the best economic climate. The economic downturn exacerbated 

obstacles to employment for this population. Grantees that were more successful 

at placing youth into employment relied on established workforce partners to 

provide this service. 

Lessons Learned 

 Long-term case management is a key strategy for ensuring that youth remain 

attached to schools and programs. Case management is a central aspect of 

grantees’ interventions, and program stakeholders often viewed this aspect of 

VI-38 
grant-funded programs to be the most influential. Stakeholders also agreed that 

case management is most effective when it happens consistently over time. 

	 Alternative schools and programs are a key strategy for engaging at-risk and 

adjudicated youth. These youth benefit from the small class sizes, 

individualized attention, and self-paced instruction that are available in these 

settings. 

	 Contractor staff who work within traditional schools are most successful if 

they are able to become an integral part of the school team. In order to build 

solid relationships and become core resources for teachers, other school staff, and 

parents, grant-funded staff need to be on-site full time and have job 

responsibilities that include school-wide outreach. 

	 The most meaningful workforce opportunities are provided when school 

districts partner with established workforce providers. Grantees that tried to 

develop internships or vocational training opportunities independent of a 

workforce agency were less successful, because they lacked the expertise and 

networks needed to develop these opportunities. 

	 The lower rate of participation of youth offenders in workforce services 

suggests that this population requires a more targeted set of workforce 

services. For the most part, grantees did not differentiate services for youth 

offenders, and this approach proved inadequate for addressing the exceptional 

barriers to employment faced by this population. 

In conclusion, the School District grant is supporting many schools and programs in their efforts 

to provide remedial academic, credit retrieval, job preparation, subsidized employment, case 

management, and violence-prevention services. Grantees have created new mechanisms for 

identifying and serving at-risk and adjudicated students and are providing students with multiple 

pathways for achieving their goals. The next chapter summarizes youth outcomes arising from 

grantees’ efforts. 

VI-39 
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VII. OUTCOMES 

This chapter summarizes the outcomes information captured in the grantees’ management 

information systems (MIS) and through youth case studies. We begin with a discussion of the 

characteristics of all the youth participants and the case study youth. We then provide a 

descriptive overview of the outcomes for the overall youth population and the case study youth. 

We end the chapter with an analysis of the factors that may have influenced outcomes. 

Participant Characteristics 

A summary of participant characteristics is included in Exhibit VII-1. As of December 2009, 

grantees enrolled 3,765 youth. This number represents significantly more than originally 

planned because of the additional $1 million in funding from DOL in the final year of the grant. 

The majority of participants are African American (82 percent), more than half are male (57 

percent), and 59 percent are between 15 and 17 years old. Hispanics make up about one-fourth 

of the participants in the Orange County and Philadelphia districts, reflecting the racial diversity 

in those local communities. More than half of the participants (56.9 percent) were deficient in 

reading and only slightly fewer (54.3 percent) were deficient in math at the time of enrollment. 

The Baltimore district enrolled the highest percentage of youth who are deficient in reading (69 

percent) and Orange County Public Schools enrolled the lowest percentage of students who are 

deficient in reading (47 percent). The finding that over half of the youth served by grantees are 

skill deficient in at least one area suggests that grantees are reaching their target group—youth 

who are in need of academic remediation or support. Lastly, the majority of the youth 

participants live in stable housing arrangements (97 percent);1

 few participants (one percent) are 

living in temporary housing or are homeless. 

Having stable housing means living in a stable household with a parent or relative at time of enrollment. 

VII-1 

1 
 

 

 

 

Exhibit VII-1: 

Demographic Characteristics of All Youth Enrolled 

Number of 

Enrolled Youth 

Total 

(All Sites) 

3765 

BCPSS 

645 

CPS 

969 

MPS 

440 

OCPS 

1221 

SDP 

490 

Gender 

Male 57.0% 52.8% 59.8% 62.7% 59.2% 46.6% 

Race/Ethnicity 

White (non 3.4% 0.3% 0.1% 3.3% 8.7% 1.0% Hispanic) 

African American 82.2% 99.5% 93.2% 82.4% 67.9% 73.0% (non-Hispanic) 

Hispanic 12.4% 0.0% 6.3% 10.7% 20.7% 21.9% 

Other Groups2 2.0% 0.2% 0.4% 3.6% 2.7% 4.1% 

Age at Enrollment 

Age 14 and 25.9% 53.3% 32.3% 1.3% 26.1% 0.2% under 

Age 15 to 17 59.3% 31.3% 67.7% 67.6% 52.0% 89.4% 

Age 18+ 14.9% 15.3% 0.0% 31.2% 21.9% 10.4% 

Academic Skills3

 at Enrollment 

Skills Deficient, 56.9% 69.1% 49.1% 65.0% 57.8% 46.9% Reading 

Skills Deficient, 54.3% 60.0% 45.5% 65.7% 57.7% 45.5% Math 

Housing at Enrollment 

Stable Housing 97.3% 97.8% 97.7% 90.4% 98.0% 100.0% Arrangements 

Foster Care 1.0% 0.5% 1.2% 3.6% 0.7% 0.0% 

Independent 0.7% 0.0% 0.6% 2.2% 0.7% 0.0% Living 

Temporary 

Housing/ 

Homeless 

1.0% 1.7% 0.4% 3.8% 0.6% 0.0% 

2 Includes Native American, Asian Pacific Islander, multi-racial, and other. 

3 Skills deficient, reading, and skills deficient, math, are not mutually exclusive. 

VII-2 
 

 

 

Exhibit VII-2: 

Demographic Characteristics of In-School Youth (ISY) 

Total 

(All Sites) BCPSS CPS MPS OCPS SDP 

Number of 

Enrolled In-School 

Youth 

3123 

(83%) 474 969 393 977 310 

Number of “At- 2623 Risk” In-School 465 840 342 669 307 (84%) Youth 

Age at Enrollment 

Age 14 and 34.9% 72.9% 36.4% 1.1% 41.6% 0.0% under 

Age 15 to 17 59.1% 27.1% 63.6% 69.7% 54.4% 92.5% 

Age 18+ 6.0% 0.0% 0.0% 29.2% 4.0% 7.5% 

Academic Skills4

 at Enrollment 

Skills Deficient, 56.8% 76.1% 45.7% 72.8% 57.5% 38.4% Reading 

Skills Deficient, 52.4% 56.1% 41.3% 73.4% 59.2% 38.8% Math 

Number of Youth 500 Offender In- 9 129 51 308 3 (16%) School Youth 

Age at Enrollment 

Age 14 and 10.8% 55.6% 5.4% 1.9% 13.3% 0.0% under 

Age 15 to 17 81.6% 44.4% 94.6% 73.1% 78.6% 100.0% 

Age 18+ 7.6% 0.0% 0.0% 25.0% 8.1% 0.0% 

Academic Skills5

 at Enrollment 

Skills Deficient, 69.4% 44.4% 71.3% 62.7% 71.1% 0.0% Reading 

Skills Deficient, 

Math 65.8% 22.2% 72.9% 64.7% 64.9% 0.0% 

4 Skills deficient, reading, and skills deficient, math, are not mutually exclusive. 

5 Skills deficient, reading, and skills deficient, math, are not mutually exclusive. 

VII-3 
 

 

As shown in Exhibit VII-2, a substantial majority of participants (83 percent) are in-school 

youth. Among the in-school youth, 84 percent are classified as at risk of court/gang 

involvement,6 and 16 percent are classified as “offender or previously incarcerated offender.” 

Among the in-school youth who are offenders or have previously been incarcerated, higher 

percentages of them are deficient in reading and math—69 and 66 percent, respectively, than the 

youth that are at risk of court/gang involvement. The Orange County and Chicago districts serve 

the greatest numbers of in-school youth (977 and 969, respectively). OCPS’s in-school 

population makes up 80 percent of its total participants, while all of the Chicago district 

participants are in-school youth. Serving the majority of in-school youth meant that the bulk of 

the interventions focused on helping students succeed in school, such as intensive case 

management support, mentoring, and academic tutoring. 

As shown in Exhibit VII-3, grantees serve fewer out-of-school youth—642 or 17 percent of the 

total participant population. More than half of the out-of-school youth (57 percent) are over 18 

years old and about half of the youth are deficient in reading and math. There is also variation in 

the number and types of out-of-school youth that grantees are serving. Orange County Public 

Schools serves the largest number of out-of-school youth (244), followed by Philadelphia (180) 

and Baltimore (171). Almost three-quarters of the out-of-school youth served in the Baltimore 

district are deficient in math, which is why the district has hired a basic skills instructor to serve 

them at the YO! Center. 

Exhibit VII-4 summarizes the core differences between the in-school and out-of-school youth 

served by the grantees. The major difference between these two groups is age—out-of-youth are 

older than in-school youth. Differences according to the other dimensions displayed—housing 

status, race/ethnicity, academic skill deficiencies, and gender—are much smaller. 

Youth classified in this way are not offenders, past or present, but have risk factors that clearly indicate a risk of 

court and/or gang involvement. 

VII-4 

6 
 

 

 

Exhibit VII-3: 

Demographic Characteristics of Out-of School Youth (OSY) 

Total 

(All Sites) BCPSS CPS MPS OCPS SDP 

Number of 

Enrolled Out-ofSchool Youth 642 171 n/a 47 244 180 

Number of “AtRisk” Out-of- 527 147 n/a 33 184 163 

School Youth 

Age at Enrollment 

Age 14 and 0.2% 0.0% n/a 0.0% 0.0% 0.6% under 

Age 15 to 17 45.7% 41.5% n/a 50.0% 10.3% 88.3% 

Age 18+ 54.2% 58.5% n/a 50.0% 89.7% 11.0% 

Academic Skills7

 at Enrollment 

Skills Deficient, 45.4% 43.5% n/a 6.1% 42.4% 58.3% Reading 

Skills Deficient, 

Math 54.8% 72.1% n/a 6.1% 45.7% 59.5% 

Number of Youth 

Offender Out-ofSchool Youth 

115 24 n/a 14 60 17 

Age at Enrollment 

Age 14 and 0.9% 0.0% n/a 7.1% 0.0% 0.0% under 

Age 15 to 17 28.7% 45.8% n/a 35.7% 16.7% 41.2% 

Age 18+ 70.4% 54.2% n/a 57.1% 83.3% 58.8% 

Academic Skills8

 at Enrollment 

Skills Deficient, 59.1% 100.0% n/a 21.4% 40.0% 100.0% Reading 

Skills Deficient, 

Math 45.2% 75.0% n/a 21.4% 40.0% 41.2% 

7 Skills deficient, reading, and skills deficient, math, are not mutually exclusive. 

8 Skills deficient, reading, and skills deficient, math, are not mutually exclusive. 

VII-5 
Exhibit VII-4 

Characteristics of In-School and Out-of-School Youth 

Because youth offenders are a prime target group of this grant, we also examine their key 

characteristics, as shown in Exhibit VII-5. OCPS serves the highest number of offenders (368, 

or 38 percent of its total youth population) and the School District of Philadelphia serves the 

VII-6 
 

 

fewest number of offenders (20, or six percent of its total youth population).9 ISY offenders are 

predominantly ages 15 to 17, while OSY offenders are older. About two thirds of ISY offenders 

are deficient in reading or match, while rates of skills deficiency are a little lower among OSY 

offenders. 

Exhibit VII-5: 

Characteristics of Youth Offenders 

Total BCPSS CPS MPS OCPS SDP 

ISY OSY ISY OSY ISY OSY ISY OSY ISY OSY ISY OSY 

# of 

offenders 

(% of 

youth) 

615 (20%) 33 (7%) 129 (13%) 65 (17%) 368 (38%) 20 (6%) 

500 115 9 24 129 0 51 14 308 60 3 17 

Age (%) 

14 and 

under 

11% 1% 56% 0% 5% 0% 2% 7% 13% 0% 0% 0% 

15 to 17 82% 29% 44% 46% 95% 0% 73% 36% 79% 17% 100% 41% 

Age 18+ 8% 70% 0% 54% 0% 0% 25% 57% 8% 83% 0% 59% 

Academic Skills (%) 

Skills 

Deficient, 

Reading 

69% 59% 44% 100% 71% 0% 63% 7% 71% 100% 0% 100% 

Skills 

Deficient, 

Math 

66% 45% 22% 75% 73% 0% 65% 21% 65% 40% 0% 41% 

Characteristics of Case Study Youth 

Exhibit VII-6 summarizes the demographic characteristics of the case-study youth. 

SDP staff noted during the site visits that they faced challenges categorizing youth offenders because they had 

difficulty verifying participants’ offender status. According to the principal at the North Philadelphia 

Community High School (NPCHS), about a third of the students are offenders even though the MIS data reflects 

a much smaller percentage. 

VII-7 

9 
 

 

Exhibit VIII-6: 

 Demographic Characteristics of Case-Study Youth 

Percent of 

Percent of Case- Enrolled Youth 

Study Youth Served by Grant 

N=25 N=3,765 

Male 60% 57% 

Race/Ethnicity 

White 4% 4% 

African American	 80% 82% 

Hispanic 16% 12% 

Age 

Age 14 and under 16% 26% 

Age 15 to 17	 60% 59% 

Age 18 + 24% 15% 

Living situation 

Living with both parents 20% --

Living with one parent10 48% --

Living with spouse/partner 16% --

Living with extended family (no parent)11 16% --

Transience 

Moved at least once in the past year 80% --

Suspensions 

Suspended (2006–2008) 60% --

Gang Involvement 

Ever in a gang 36% --

Currently in gang (at time of visit) 8% --

Contact with Police 

Ever stopped by police	 68% --

Ever arrested	 44% --

Ever incarcerated 40% --

10	 This could include living with any one of the following: one biological parent, a stepparent, siblings and 

extended family. 

11	 This includes those living only with extended family and no parents. 

VII-8 
 

 

 

 

As shown in the exhibit, the case-study youth are similar to the overall youth population that 

grantees are serving. In both cases, most youth are African-American males between the ages of 

15 and 17. 

Although not shown in the exhibit, in several other respects the case-study youth are 

representative of the type of youth that grantees are targeting. The majority of the case-study 

youth were ninth graders at the time of their first interview (seven out of 11 youth in Round 1).12 

Two grantees—the Baltimore and Orange County districts—targeted eighth graders, so a small 

number of case study students (three) were eighth graders at the time of their first interview. 

Further, many of the case study youth are over age for their grade level: seven out of 10 ninth 

graders were 15–17 years old at the time of the first interview. 

Although housing was not the core focus of the case studies, the housing situations among the 

case study youth are broadly similar to those of the overall youth population, but have a higher 

incidence of transience and higher likelihood of not living with parents/guardians.13 Among the 

youth who were interviewed, about half (48 percent) reported living with one parent or 

guardian—usually their mother, grandmother, stepparent, or siblings—and few youth (20 

percent) were living with both parents. Further, transience is common among case study 

youth—more than three-fourths of them reported that they moved at least once in the past year, 

often because financial stress forced youths’ families to move in with extended family, or 

because youth chose to move into their own apartments. A few youth also reported that they 

moved because of chaotic home environments, such as not getting along with their guardians. 

Most of the case study students struggled in school and were frequently cited for various 

infractions. For instance, at least 15 of the youth (60 percent) were suspended at some point over 

the course of the three-year evaluation. Many were suspended multiple times; on average, each 

was suspended about three times.14 Youth reported a number of reasons why they were 

suspended, but one common reason was for fighting. 

About a third of the case-study youth (36 percent) reported that they were either currently or 

previously in a gang. It is possible that more of the case study youth were involved in gangs, 

because it was clear they were uncomfortable about disclosing this information. Among the 

12	 Because many of the same youth were interviewed over a three-year period, we give their age and grade status as 

of the time of the first interview. 

13	 Data for the overall youth population show that 97 percent of youth live in “stable housing” which, as defined by 

DOL, means that youth are living with a parent or relative at time of enrollment. 

14	 In total, the 15 youth received about 47 suspensions. 

VII-9 
 

reasons youth cited for joining gangs were the following: to have a sense of belonging and 

friendship, to gain protection and respect, and to make money through the drug trade. 

Youth Involved in a Gang 

Ben Jones15 is a 19-year-old youth who enrolled in one grantee’s alternative school for out-ofschool youth. Ben reported that he has been part of a specific gang his whole life. Not only 

did both of his parents also belong to this gang, but many of the older youth that he looked up 

to when he was growing up were also in a gang. He explained the situation: 

As far as anybody that was of age and was older than you, you looked up 

to them. Either they was doing something good or they was doing 

something bad. It was the road you wanted to choose. So, the road I 

chose was that I wanted to do bad.
 

Ben’s gang involvement resulted in his being imprisoned for two and a half years, but now that 

he has two children and another on the way, he no longer considers himself an active member 

of this gang. Most of the members of his gang have been killed or imprisoned, and many of 

the remaining members have chosen to focus on taking care of their families instead of 

actively participating in the gang. However, Ben still has ties to this lifestyle and still feels a 

sense of allegiance to the gang: 

I can’t say I’m part of it because I got my family. But if a major issue 

kicked off, like somebody was trying to kill me or kill my brothers or my
 

kids or something like that, then it would be serious.
 

Many youth reported living in neighborhoods where gangs or violence are very prevalent, a 

factor that restricted some participants’ movement or activity in their communities, and 

threatened their safety. Several youth mentioned knowing gang-affiliated family members and 

peers. 

Local police officers are often present in many of the communities where youth live and many 

youth have mixed opinions about the role of the local police in their communities. Sixty-eight 

percent of case study youth indicated that they had some contact with the police within the last 

year. Some youth felt harassed by the police due to racial profiling, suspected gang affiliation, 

and/or suspected involvement in drug-related activities. As a result, many youth tried to avoid 

contact with the police by going straight home after school or avoiding activities at the school 

that would require them to stay late. 

15 All youth names are pseudonyms. 

VII-10 
Youth Outcomes 

This section discusses the youth outcomes for all grantees combined, and highlights the variation 

in outcomes across the different grantees. For most outcomes categories, data from the quarterly 

reports are available through the fourth quarter of 2009, though as noted below some data are 

missing for some grantees. 

The outcomes discussed below align with the performance measures DOL established for this 

grant, which fall into three major categories: educational, employment-related, and juvenile 

justice-related. As was discussed in more detail in Chapter III, the educational outcomes are 

concerned with improving literacy and numeracy for in-school youth and increasing ninth-grade 

retention. The employment outcomes are concerned with improving employment outcomes, 

either by providing job placements or long-term education or training placements for out-ofschool youth offenders. The juvenile justice outcomes are concerned with reducing recidivism 

and reducing the dropout incidence among youth offenders. 

As stated in Chapter I, the MIS data provide information about the patterns of participant 

enrollment, trends in reading and math gains, and various other educational and workforce 

achievements. While these data provide descriptions of outcomes in the core areas of interest, 

they are limited by the fact that grantees submitted the data only in the aggregate. Without 

individual-level data, we are unable to conduct analysis of how services received and 

demographic attributes may be associated with outcomes. Similarly, while the data are 

disaggregated by the type of youth served (at risk of court/gang involvement, offender and 

incarcerated offender, and in-school versus out-of-school), they are not disaggregated by 

participants’ age. This limitation may have some implications for the measurement of outcomes, 

because grantees noted that older youth are generally more difficult to engage in school and 

programs. Further, because the data are aggregated, outcomes cannot be discussed based on the 

program components and sub-components (i.e., educational services and reading and math 

remediation) in which youth participated. Thus, it is difficult to know whether gains in reading 

in math, for example, are associated with youth receiving intensive supports in reading and math 

remediation. Because of these limitations, relations between variables are difficult to tease out 

and comparisons across grantees are subject to uncertainty as to their meaning. However, we 

can generate some hypotheses on why outcomes for some grantees or programs are more 

positive than those of others; these are discussed at the conclusion of this chapter. 

Completion Status 

Exhibit VII-7 shows data for program completion status, as of the end of December 2009. 

Approximately 17 percent of participants have completed the programs while two-thirds of the 

participants are still enrolled and receiving services. This finding is consistent with the fact that 

VII-11 
 

all grantees were still operating their programs at the end of 2009 and some will not complete 

them until the end of 2010. Grantees have also experienced some attrition; overall, 15 percent of 

youth have either dropped out of their programs or have not been participating in program 

activities since they enrolled. 

Exhibit VII-7: 

Program Completion and Exit16
 

Baltimore City Public Schools is still serving the majority of its participants, who are the same 

individuals as those enrolled at the beginning of the grant. As discussed in Chapter VI, BCPSS 

is serving participants throughout the life of the grant because of staff’s strong belief that at-risk 

youth need follow-up support as they transition to high school. Chicago Public Schools, in 

contrast, has exited a significant percentage of participants (44 percent) because its program 

model serves youth for one year only, during the ninth grade, and does not provide follow-up to 

students once they exit the program. These differences in approach may affect outcomes, as 

discussed below. 

16	 Please note that numbers for “completed or no longer enrolled” were corrected for Milwaukee because the 

grantee reported this field without including the number of participants who were “no longer enrolled.” 

VII-12 
 

 

 

Educational Outcomes 

Completing the program is not the only goal of the interventions. Grantees hope that participants 

make gains in reading and math and obtain high school diplomas, GEDs, or certificates. As 

mentioned above, many participants are still receiving academic services, which will likely affect 

the educational outcomes discussed below. 

As shown by the basic-skills-gains data contained in Exhibit VII-8, more than 40 percent of the 

participants who were skills deficient in reading and math at enrollment increased their scores by 

at least two grade levels in each subject area. The Baltimore district is showing the largest gains 

in reading and math, with 77 percent and 88 percent of its participants showing two-grade 

increases in reading and math, respectively. This is significantly better than the other grantees. 

One possible reason for BCPSS’ high reading and math gains may have to do with the fact that 

BCPSS is delivering a large number of instances of services per participant in the category of 

academic services, including reading and math remediation (see discussion in Chapter VI). 

Exhibit VII-8: 

Basic Skills Gains by Grantee 

# Skills 

# Skills Deficient 

at Enrollment, 

% Showing TwoGrade Increase, Deficient at 

Enrollment, 

% Showing 

Two-Grade 

Grantee Reading Reading Math Increase, Math 

BCPSS 446 76.7 387 88.1 

CPS17 476 -- 441 --

MPS 286 3.1 289 3.1 

OCPS 706 32.3 704 35.7
 

SDP 230 42.2 223 35.4
 

Total w/out CPS 1668 40.5% 1603 42.4 

Exhibit VII-9 shows reading and math gains by type of youth, including in-school and out-ofschool youth who are at risk of court involvement and youth offenders. The data show that 

youth offenders and previously incarcerated offenders who are skills deficient at the time of 

enrollment are having more difficulty achieving reading and math gains than the general at-risk 

youth population, despite the fact that youth offenders are receiving about the same instance of 

academic services per participant. The difference in outcomes between these two groups among 

17	 Chicago has not tested its participants on basic skills gains as of December 2009. This grantee is using the 

district’s standardized test and plans to test students in the near future. 

VII-13 
 

 

ISY is about 31 percentage points in reading and 17 percentage points in math. This finding 

highlights the challenges that youth offenders face. According to grantee staff, youth offenders 

tend to have low attendance and be difficult to engage in school and programs, factors that may 

contribute to difficulties in achieving gains in reading and math skills. To address these and 

other challenges, four out of five grantees have created specific pathways for youth offenders by 

developing new schools for youth offenders and other out-of-school youth. Moving forward, 

grantees will need to reflect on what they have learned about helping youth offenders stay 

attached to school and make gains in academic performance. 

Exhibit VII-9 

Basic Skills Gains by Type of Youth18
 

Other outcomes that grantees are reporting include the attainment of a high school diploma, 

GED, or certificate; these results are reported in Exhibit VII-10. Not surprisingly, since most 

grantees serve in-school youth who have not yet graduated, very few grantees show high gains in 

any of these areas. Further, some programs for out-of-school youth were slow to launch, so they 

18	 This data represents the basic skills gains by type of youth of those that were basic skills deficient at enrollment. 

This exhibit does not include data for Chicago Public Schools, because it has not yet tested its participants in 

reading and math gains. 

VII-14 
 

 

did not have much time to show gains in this area. The exception is in the Milwaukee district, 

where about 11 percent of the participants obtained a high school diploma through the Transition 

High School, a school for over-age, under-credit, and/or adjudicated youth. A small percentage 

of youth received certificates in the Baltimore and Orange County districts. The School District 

of Philadelphia had hoped to make greater progress in providing occupational skills training 

programs that would lead to certificates, but was slow to launch these programs due to delays in 

hiring staff. 

Exhibit VII-10: 

Degree Attainment 

Grantee 

% Obtained 

HSD 

% Obtained 

GED 

% Obtained 

Certificate 

BCPSS 0.0 2.3 1.2 

CPS19 0.0 0.2 0.0 

MPS 10.7 0.5 0.0 

OCPS 8.0 4.7 3.3 

SDP 3.5 0.0 0.0 

Total w/out CPS 

This grant also seeks to improve the ninth-grade retention rate of all youth entering the ninth 

grade. Each grantee established a baseline rate for retention based on the number of youth who 

entered the ninth grade at participating schools in the fall of the 2006–2007 school year and were 

still retained in school in the fall of the 2007–2008 school year.20 Exhibit VII-11 summarizes 

grantees’ retention goals and their outcomes under this grant. Among the grantees that submitted 

data for this category, the ninth-grade retention rate stayed about the same as the baseline rate. 

The exception is the Baltimore district, which showed a small increase of six percentage points 

in retained ninth graders. There are several reasons why BCPSS may be showing an increase. 

First, BCPSS is serving mostly ninth graders through its Futures Works! program and providing 

intensive case management support through the use of Futures Advocates, who closely monitor 

students’ academic progress, check up on their attendance, and intervene when there are 

behavioral incidents. BCPSS has experienced little staff turnover among the Futures Advocates, 

enabling students to form strong bonds with their advocates, who, according to staff, also serve 

19 Chicago has not tested its participants on basic skills gains as of December 2009. This grantee is using the 

district’s standardized test and plans to test students in the near future. 

VII-15 
 

as mentors and surrogate moms and dads. These features within BCPSS’s approach may be 

positively affecting its ninth grade retention rate. 

Exhibit VII-11: 

Ninth-Grade Retention Rate 

Baseline % of Ninth # of Students 

Grantee 

Grade Students 

Retained 

Entering Ninth 

Grade 

% Retained 

in School 

Percentage 

Point Change 

BCPSS 84.9% 238 90.8% 5.9% 

CPS 87.3% 1894 86.2% -1.1%
 

MPS n/a n/a n/a n/a 

OCPS 89.5% 2992 89.7% 0.2% 

SDP 89.0% n/a n/a n/a 

On the other end of the scale, the ninth-grade retention rate for CPS is slightly lower than its 

baseline rate. CPS recognizes this as a problem and has decided to focus its efforts on the “hot 

25” students, who have been identified as the most at-risk of school failure. This shift in focus 

occurred midway through the grant period, suggesting that CPS may not yet have had time to 

show the effects of this strategy in its ninth-grade retention rate. 

While the MIS data are intended to capture the core educational outcomes that the DOL grant 

aims to achieve, there are other outcomes that the performance measures may not be capturing. 

Chief among these is students’ engagement in school and connectedness to caring staff who were 

hired by this grant to motivate youth to succeed in school and beyond. Our interviews with casestudy youth show evidence of the programs’ success in other areas. Below are some examples. 

20 Milwaukee did not provide data on ninth-grade retention for the baseline or the grant participants. While 

Chicago provided a baseline ninth-grade retention rate, it did not report a rate for the grant participants. 

VII-16 
 

 

 

Youth Reengaging in School 

	 Miranda Jones21 was an over-age sophomore when she was first interviewed. She had a 

criminal record, mostly for drug-related charges and car theft. She was out of school for a 

year, in and out of youth detention centers. As a result, she was very behind on credits and 

was skeptical about catching up. When we met her during the second interview, things had 

turned around for her. Through the onsite credit retrieval program that was funded by DOL, 

she had caught up on units and was scheduled to graduate on time. She was working 

closely with the intervention specialist to make plans to attend college. This connection to 

the case manager was critical to her reengagement in school. 

 Claudio Ramos was a sophomore when he was first interviewed and a senior during the 

last interview. He was a very troubled young man in the first interview, having been 

harassed by gangs to join, and saying that he didn’t trust any adult at the school. He said,

 “But, me, I don’t trust nobody. The way I see it, everybody has got a gun. 

You either avoid that or you get shot. That’s how I see the world. It’s 

either live or die.” 

By the third interview, Claudio had put the gang issues behind him, was in honors classes, 

had formed a very trusting relationship with his case manager, and had only a few more 

units to earn in order to graduate on time with his class. He attributed his turnaround 

largely to the assistance of his case manager: 

Ms. Stone did help me get through school last year. To tell you the truth,
 

she did. Last year was the first year that I ever got through the whole 

year, until the very end, without getting a referral. This year, I ain’t got no
 

referrals. 

Workforce Outcomes 

In this section, we examine the workforce outcomes for out-of-school youth. Exhibit VII-12 

summarizes these outcomes, 22 which are defined in the following ways in the MIS: 

 Youth who obtained unsubsidized employment, including a formal 

apprenticeship, for the first time since program enrollment. 

 Youth who entered the military.
 

 Youth who entered long-term occupational training. 

 Youth who entered full-time post-secondary school. 

 Youth who are placed in a job and enrolled in post-secondary education. 

21	 All youth names and the names of their schools have been disguised to protect their anonymity. 

22	 The Philadelphia district did not report on workforce outcomes in its quarterly report submissions. Therefore, 

Philadelphia participants are not included in the discussion of workforce outcomes. 

VII-17 
 

 

 

 

Exhibit VII-12 shows that for all grantees combined about 140 of the 642 out-of-school youth 

(22 percent) have been placed in unsubsidized employment. A small percentage of out-of-school 

youth have pursued additional educational opportunities, including long-term training or 

postsecondary education.23 

Exhibit VII-12: 

Workforce Outcomes for OSY24
 

Exhibit VII-12 also shows workforce outcomes by subgroups of out-of-school youth. The 

outcomes for the at-risk out-of-school youth population are higher than those of the overall youth 

population, with about a third of them (34 percent) having been placed in unsubsidized 

employment. However, a smaller percentage of out-of-school youth with an offense record (15 

percent) have achieved the same outcome. Interestingly, a good proportion of out-of-school 

23	 The MIS reporting template was not designed to capture outcomes data for program “exiters” and “non-exiters.” 

The inability to do so is the likely reason for the low outcomes reported in this section. 

24	 Because the Philadelphia district did not report workforce outcomes the “All” category in Exhibit VII-12 does 

not include participants from Philadelphia. The Chicago district did not serve any OSY and its participants are 

therefore not represented in this graph. 

VII-18 
 

 

 

 

 

youth offenders (eight percent) have pursued postsecondary education, suggesting that some 

youth are pursuing an additional pathway to meeting their career goals. 

Further, workforce outcomes differ widely by grantee, as shown in Exhibit VII-13. The 

Baltimore district reported a relatively high percentage of youth placed in unsubsidized 

employment (54 percent). 

Exhibit VII-13: 

Workforce Outcomes for OSY By Grantee25
 

BCPSS MPS26 OCPS 

Total OSY Enrolled 171 47 244 

First-Time Unsubsidized Employment 54.4% 0.0% 19.3% 

Entered the Military 0.0% 0.0% 0.8% 

Entered Long Term Occupational Tng. 3.5% 0.0% 3.3% 

Completed Long Term Occ. Tng.27 1.2% 0.0% --- 

Entered Full-Time Post Secondary 

School 0.0% 0.0% 4.1% 

Because age is likely to be a key determinant of workforce outcomes, we present these outcomes 

for out-of-school youth who are 18 years old and older in Exhibit VII-14. For these youth, 

BCPSS is showing the highest percentage of placement in jobs, long-term training, military 

service, or postsecondary school (90 percent). At least two factors may be contributing to these 

outcomes. First, BCPSS has contracted with the YO! Center, a program with a long-standing 

history of job placement for out-of-school youth. BCPSS has also developed a strong linkage 

with the Department of Transportation, which places youth in internships, with the expectation 

that youth will be hired by this agency upon program completion. 

While BCPSS’s placement rate is impressive, especially considering the national recession, 

workforce outcomes for OSY overall are fairly modest compared to those of other programs such 

as YouthBuild.28 

25 Philadelphia is omitted from these tables due to lack of data/data quality issues. 

26 Out-of-school at MPS did not achieve any workforce outcomes as of December 2009. 

27 Orange County is omitted from this field because of data quality issues. 

28 In the Evaluation of the YouthBuild Youth Offender Grants conducted by Social Policy Research Associates 

(SPR), approximately 52 percent of participants were placed in unsubsidized employment upon program 

completion. 

VII-19 
 

 

Exhibit VII-14: 

Placement in Job, Long-term Training, Military Service, or Full-time Post-Secondary
 

School for OSY Age 18+ 

18+ OSY 

Enrollees % Placed 

BCPSS 99 89.9% 

CPS29 0 n/a 

MPS 26 0.0% 

OCPS 215 14.4% 

SDP30 n/a n/a 

Total 340 35.3% 

Youth spoke at length about the challenges of finding employment. These challenges are 

exacerbated by youths’ limited work experience. One 18-year-old high school senior related his 

experience: 

I’ve been looking in the newspaper. I’ve been going on-line. I’ve been 

going in places. I’ve been talking to friends. I’ve been talking to my 

coach, but nothing seems to be working...I tried out a lot, McDonalds, 

Wendy’s, Best Buy, Toys R Us, Boston Market. I basically went for 

anything I could fill out. Sometimes I put homework aside to fill out 

applications. 

Youth with an offense history face a particularly tough time finding work, as noted by this 21-

year-old out-of-school youth: 

When I go for an interview, I know how to talk, I know what to say, I know 

what not to say, I know how to present myself, I know all those things. So 

when I do go into an interview...as soon as we start talking about the 

felony, that’s when everything changes, their whole demeanor changes on 

me. At first it was, ‘Hey...I think you’re going to do good with this 

company,’ and then as soon as we start talking about the felony it’s, 

‘Okay, we’re going to get back to you.’ The felony is really beating me up 

hard right now. 

Despite these modest outcomes overall, some of the youth who we interviewed are showing 

noteworthy successes after long and uncertain paths of gang involvement and crime. Josh Smith 

29 Chicago did not enroll any OSY. 

30 Philadelphia did not report these data. 

VII-20 
 

is a good example of someone whose life took a positive turn after enrolling in an alternative 

high school that was funded by the School District Grant. 

Youth Offender Achieving Educational and Workforce Goals 

Josh Smith had spent one year in prison on an armed robbery felony charge and was placed 

in a traditional high school upon his release. He struggled with the transition back to his 

home school and did not have much support there. He was eventually referred to the local 

alternative school that had received seed funding from DOL. 

At this alternative high school, Josh reported that the staff provided extensive counseling and 

helped him earn credits and improve his reading and math skills. He said that after years of 

struggling and being too embarrassed to ask questions in a traditional school environment, 

the alternative high school’s online program and small class size helped him realize that he 

was an intelligent person who could succeed in school. 

And now since hooking up with [this school], I feel so great about myself. 

I feel like I’m actually going to do something with my life. I got my own 

apartment. I pay my own bills. I feel good. I’m not depressed anymore. 

I don’t have low self-esteem. I think I’m somebody now...I have 

standards now. I feel like I’m worth something. I think I’m valuable. I 

think now when I say something, it means something.
 

The school staff helped Josh find work after he graduated. He was working as a youth 

advisor at a nearby school until the position was eliminated due to discontinued grant funds. 

He continues to look for work and lives with his girlfriend and son, and is optimistic about the 

future. 

Juvenile Justice Outcomes 

Other goals for this grant are to reduce the recidivism rate of participating youth and to reduce 

the dropout rate among former youth offenders. To meet these goals, grantees are offering a host 

of wraparound services, including case management, supportive services, and transitional 

support for youth who are leaving detention. As discussed in Chapter VI, grantees also 

coordinate aftercare services with parole officers to ensure that youth transition smoothly back to 

their schools or community programs. 

Each grantee was asked to provide a baseline rate of juvenile recidivism for its community. Per 

DOL instruction, grantees were to provide either state or local juvenile recidivism rates for the 

VII-21 
 

 

 

 

 

most recent period available.31 DOL determined that each grantee’s target recidivism rate for its 

participant youth offenders should be 20 percent less than the baseline recidivism rate for its 

community. Exhibit VII-15 displays the baseline recidivism rate, the target recidivism rate, the 

number of youth offenders enrolled, and the actual recidivism rate achieved for each grantee. 

Initially DOL instructed grantees to define recidivism as they felt appropriate as long as this 

definition was consistent in the baseline and follow-up periods. However, in March of 2009, 

DOL established more formal guidelines for calculating recidivism rates, which included 

calculating recidivism only for participants who had enrolled in the grantees’ program within 

three months of release and who had reached the 12-month post-release point. However, 

because the data-reporting format was fixed to include all enrolled youth offenders in the 

recidivism calculation regardless of their program entrance date, it seems highly unlikely that 

recidivism was calculated for participants at the 12-month post-release date. Instead, the 

recidivism calculations included all enrolled youth offenders, even those who had begun in the 

most recent reporting quarter.32 Thus, these recidivism rates should be considered provisional. 

Exhibit VII-15: 

Recidivism for All Offenders33
 

Target 

Baseline Recidivism 

Recidivism Rate Rate34 # Enrolled % Recidivated 

BCPSS 53.0% 42.2% 33 6.1% 

CPS 39.0% 31.2% 129 15.5% 

MPS n/a n/a 65 15.4% 

OCPS 30.0% 24.0% 368 11.1% 

SDP 25.0% 20.0% 20 5.0% 

Total Enrolled n/a n/a 615 12.0% 

31	 To date only Chicago and Philadelphia have provided explanations of the sources of baseline recidivism data. 

The baseline rate supplied by Chicago is the recidivism rate for juvenile offenders in Cook County during 2007. 

Philadelphia’s baseline is the recidivism rate for juvenile offenders in Philadelphia from 1997 to 2005. 

32	 Grantee quarterly reports define recidivating youth offenders as those who were (1) convicted of a crime after 

entering the project, but not incarcerated, (2) convicted of a crime after entering the project and incarcerated, or 

(3) had their parole or probation revoked after entering the project and incarcerated. 

33	 Includes incarcerated offenders. 

34	 Per DOL instruction, these rates are 20 percent less than the corresponding baseline rates. 

VII-22 
 

Keeping in mind these caveats, all of the grantees that provided target recidivism rates reported 

that the recidivism rates for their enrolled youth offender participants were substantially lower 

than their targets. In total, the recidivism rate for all grantees was 12 percent,35 and no grantee 

reported a recidivism rate above 16 percent. 

There is no national recidivism rate for juveniles and thus no ready benchmark against which to 

compare grantees’ recidivism rates. However, one report including multi-state data estimated 

that within one year, 55 percent of juveniles released from state incarceration were re-arrested, 

33 percent were re-convicted or re-adjudicated, and 25 percent were re-incarcerated or reconfined (including revocations of parole/probation).36 While these figures provide a general 

context for juvenile recidivism rates, they are not directly comparable to grantee recidivism rates 

because the grantees’ rates were not necessarily calculated using a 12-month follow-up period. 

Among the case study youth, four have either been arrested or incarcerated—two were 

incarcerated and the other two were arrested. Below is a brief summary of one of the youth who 

recidivated. 

Youth Offender Achieving Negative Outcomes 

At the time of his interview, Jamie Rawlings was an over-age freshmen who had just been 

released from juvenile detention and placed in his home school. He was in a known gang, 

having been initiated into the gang by his older brother. As part of his gang life, he had 

committed a number of offenses, mostly related to possession of stolen goods, car theft, drug 

sales, and assault. As a result, he had been in and out of juvenile hall since he was 13 years 

old. At the time of his interview, his brother had been recently murdered by a rival gang 

member, shot to death a few blocks from the target school. Jamie did his best to come to 

school every day and meet with his case manager despite this tragedy. However, he was 

severely traumatized by his brother’s death and was unable to focus in school. Eventually, 

Jamie sought revenge for his brother’s murder by attacking a rival gang member; Jamie was 

soon rearrested. The research staff were unable to locate Jamie for another interview 

because he dropped out of school. Grantee staff believe he moved out of state and may be 

incarcerated. 

35	 In SPR’s Evaluation of the YouthBuild Youth Offender Grants, 25 percent of grantees had negative justice 

outcomes, meaning that at least 25 percent of youth re-offended or had their probation or parole revoked after 

entering the YouthBuild Program. 

36	 Virginia Department of Juvenile Justice. 2005. “Juvenile recidivism in Virginia.” DJJ Research Quarterly. 

Richmond, VA: VDJJ; cited in Snyder, Howard N. and Melissa Sickmund. 2006. Juvenile offenders and victims: 

2006 national report. Washington, D.C.: Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. 

VII-23 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jamie’s story is an example of the kinds of challenges that grantees face in attempting to reduce 

recidivism. Jamie’s case also confirms other research findings, which indicate that offenders 

with former gang ties and a history of crime are more likely to recidivate.37 

The School District Grant also seeks to reduce the dropout rate among youth offenders. We 

examined the youth offender school retention rate to understand the extent to which grantees met 

this goal. Unfortunately, OCPS is the only grantee that reported these data as of December 

2009. As shown in Exhibit VII-16, OCPS has retained about 61 percent of the 70 youth 

offenders that it enrolled, a change of 2.3 percentage points from baseline.38 

Exhibit VII-16: 

Youth Offender School Retention Rate39
 

Baseline % of 

returning YO # of YO returning % retained in 

Grantee retained to school school Change 

BCPSS 11.1% n/a n/a n/a 

CPS 49.0% n/a n/a n/a 

MPS 72.9% n/a n/a n/a 

OCPS 59.1% 70 61.4% 2.3 

SDP n/a n/a n/a n/a 

Summary 

This chapter summarized the core youth outcomes that grantees achieved and reported in the 

MIS. We also included outcomes data from the 25 case-study youth who we tracked over a 

three-year period. In examining these data sources, we made the following core observations: 

37	 Huebner, B., Varano, S., Bynum, T. “Gangs, Guns and Drugs: Recidivism Among Serious, Young Offenders.” 

Criminology & Public Policy, Volume 6, Number 2, May 2007. pp. 187-221(35). 

http://www.umsl.edu/~ccj/pdfs/CPP_Huebner.pdf Accessed April 20, 2010. 

38	 Per DOL instruction, grantees were to establish a baseline measure of the rate of grant-participant youth 

offenders returning to schools. This baseline rate is the percentage of youth offenders who returned to school 

from a correctional facility in either the 2005–2006 school year or the 2006 calendar year who remained in 

school 12 months later. The youth offender retention rate for grant-funded programs used a similar calculation. 

The rate is the percentage of returning youth offenders who have reached their first anniversary of enrollment 

who are still enrolled in school. 

39	 Only Orange County reported data for this measure. 

VII-24 
Participant Characteristics 

	 Grantees are serving primarily in-school youth between 15 and 17 years old. 

These youth represent some of the most at-risk youth populations within the target 

schools and programs, facing multiple barriers to employment and school success. 

More than half of the youth were identified as deficient in reading and math at the 

time of enrollment. Consistent with this finding, many youth are over-age for 

their grade and under-credit, requiring specialized interventions to help them get 

back on track for school completion. In addition, grantees are serving a good 

proportion of youth offenders (20 percent), most of whom are in-school youth 

who will require focused support in order to successfully resume their educations 

after leaving detention. Most youth (97 percent) live in stable housing 

arrangements 

	 The 25 case study youth are similar to the overall youth population that grantees 

are serving in most respects. These youth are about the same age as the overall 

youth population and are over-age for their grade. Many also struggle in school 

and were suspended a number of times for misconduct. About a third of the casestudy youth participants admitted to being in a gang, and these youth said that 

being in a gang provides a sense of brotherhood and camaraderie. 

Program Outcomes 

	 Most of the grantees have exited few participants because they are continuing to 

provide some form of follow-up support, even though this support is somewhat 

inconsistently available. The exception is CPS; a majority of participants have 

exited its YES program, which serves youth for only one year. 

	 Outcomes data for reading and math gains among grantees that reported this data 

show that approximately 40 percent of youth achieved increases of two grade 

levels in each subject. BCPSS is showing the largest gain in reading and math, 

whereas MPS made small gains in these areas. It appears that BCPSS’s program 

is strong for several reasons. First, BCPSS is delivering the most instances of 

services per participant, especially in reading and math remediation. Second, 

BCPSS specifically targeted youth who were two grade levels behind, allowing it 

to focus its interventions on students’ academic needs. Third, BCPSS’s intensive 

case management approach means that participants in the Future Works! program 

have been receiving services from Futures Advocates for the last three years. 

	 Youth offenders—both in-school and out-of-school youth—are showing 

noticeably lower gains in reading and math skills, suggesting that intensive, 

targeted support in basic skills remediation expressly for these groups is vital. 

Grantees are providing a second chance for youth offenders by offering safe and 

nurturing environments for them to learn using alternative methods of instruction, 

such as on-line learning, independent study, and project-based learning. These 

tactics are intended to encourage youth offenders to remain engaged and attached 

to school so that they can succeed. 

	 Educational outcomes in other areas are very modest. For instance, among the 

three out of five grantees that reported the ninth-grade retention rate, there has 

been little change in this rate from the grantees’ established baseline. Baltimore is 

VII-25 
 

the exception, which achieved an almost six percentage point increase in the ninth 

grade retention rate. Further, very few grantees show significant gains in the 

number of students attaining high school diplomas, GEDs, and certificates (but 

this is primarily because most grantees serve in-school youth who have not yet 

graduated). 

	 Workforce outcomes are modest because most of the youth who are served by this 

grant are not yet of age to graduate. However, about 22 percent of out-of-school 

youths were placed in unsubsidized employment. Because two grantees have not 

submitted outcomes data, this finding is preliminary. 

	 Out of the 615 youth offenders who enrolled in the grant-funded activities, 

approximately 12 percent recidivated, which is lower than grantees’ target goal 

for reducing recidivism. Among the 25 case study youth offenders, four of them
 

recidivated (16 percent). 

As discussed throughout this chapter, grantees differ in the types of outcomes that they achieved. 

There may be a host of reasons why these differences exist, some of which may be related to the 

program features or the district and school contexts. For instance, some grantees experienced 

delays in hiring project staff and in approving contracts for service providers, due to the 

bureaucracy at the district level. As a result, the implementation of some project components— 

such as mentoring, academic remediation, and workforce services—was slow to launch. In a 

few grantee sites, some aspects of the projects were not launched until the second year of grant 

funding. At MPS, for example, the school-based teams that are responsible for recruitment, 

developing individual service plans, and connecting youth to supportive services were not hired 

until midway through the project. As a result, participants did not receive the full array of grant 

services until Year Three of the grant. Further, there is some variation in the intensity and 

duration of services offered by grantees. One grantee offers services for one year without 

providing follow-up services. Several other grantees offer services to the same youth for the 

duration of this grant, or three years. As a result, youth participants overall are receiving not 

only different types of services, but also different intensities of services. Further, as discussed in 

Chapter V, participants differ in the length of time that they were exposed to program services. 

Participants who have been enrolled for longer periods are likely to have received more instances 

of services than those who have enrolled more recently. Lastly, grantees were universally 

affected by the declining national and local economy, which made it extremely challenging to 

find unsubsidized employment for out-of-school youth. For this and other reasons discussed 

above, grantees are showing mixed outcomes for job placement. 

Conclusion 

In sum, grantees designed programs and interventions that would enable them to meet DOL’s 

performance goals. As mentioned in Chapter VI, the primary focus of the interventions and 

VII-26 
 

 

programs is on providing personalized supports through intensive case management. 

Accordingly, grantees invested heavily in hiring case managers, who are also called advocates, 

intervention specialists, or student engagement specialists. By connecting at-risk youth to caring 

adults, grantees believe that youth will engage better in school and become attached to the 

institutions of which they are a part. Given the tremendous obstacles facing the participants, this 

approach makes sense. An abundance of research shows that youth fare well in school and 

programs when they have strong relationships with caring adults.40 

At the same time, however, it is not clear whether there is a direct link between this approach and 

some of the core outcomes that DOL has established for the grant. For instance, DOL has placed 

a strong emphasis on achieving two-grade-level gains in reading in math. While all grantees 

reported providing basic skills remediation, not all of them focus specifically on structured 

reading and math remediation. Orange County Public Schools provides some form of 

educational support through GED classes, credit retrieval, and tutoring, but formal classes and 

other interventions focused on reading and math support are not provided through this grant. 

The Chicago School District is using the Talent Development curriculum through Johns Hopkins 

University, but reading and math remediation is not a core focus of this curriculum. The 

decision that the majority of grantees made not to focus heavily on reading and math intervention 

has to do with the perception that these supports are adequately provided at the target schools. 

While we can expect that target middle schools and high schools offer core classes that may 

contribute to achieving two-grade-level gains in reading and math, we cannot be assured that 

such supports are focused sufficiently on the special needs and barriers of the target groups, 

particularly in-school youth offenders. 

On the other hand, case management support can lead to increased attachment to school and 

programs, as we have noticed among many of the case study youth. Youth made it clear that 

they valued the support that they received from their case managers and, after working closely 

with them, youth saw that school had meaning in their lives. Some of the youth also realized that 

their education was important to them as a gateway to independence, opportunities, and material 

goods. In spite of adversity and challenging life circumstances, these youth expressed a desire to 

better their lives through connections to their schools, case managers, teachers, and other school 

staff. Qualitative outcomes demonstrate youths’ ability to develop positive relationships with 

adults, solicit help from them about schooling choices and career pathways, and gain skills that 

can contribute to success in adulthood. Thus, while improvements related to learning, 

employment, and staying out of trouble with justice system may be modest among the grant 

40	 Trends in Youth Development: Visions, Realities, Challenges. Benson, P. and Pittman, K. (eds). Kluwer 

Academic Publishers: Norwell, MA. 2001. 

VII-27 
participants, qualitative data show that grantees appear to be making a difference in the lives of 

some of the youth they served. 

VII-28
 
VIII. CONCLUSION
 

This evaluation set out to explore the strategies that school district grantees developed to 

improve the educational pathways for at-risk youth and reduce youth’s involvement in crime and 

gangs. The specific goals of the evaluation were to learn about best practices for serving these 

youth, to identify the barriers that grantees faced in designing and implementing services for 

their target populations, and to document youth outcomes. In this report, we provided a 

description of the community context, an overview of the school district grantees, an 

examination of partnership models, an analysis of recruitment and enrollment practices and 

challenges, an overview of the core service approaches that grantees are using, and a summary of 

youth outcomes. In this final chapter, we discuss grantees’ plans for sustaining the services that 

were developed through the School District Grant, summarize the core accomplishments of 

grantee schools, and review the challenges grantees faced as they designed and implemented 

their projects. 

Sustainability 

Grantees are working towards institutionalizing their grant-related efforts so that they can be 

sustained beyond the life of the grant. Grantees are mindful of the need to sustain their projects, 

but are understandably concerned about their ability to do so because of the uncertain economic 

context in which their school districts operate. Budget cuts across the school districts likely 

mean that it will be impossible to sustain all grant-funded activities, even with newly identified 

funding sources, forcing school leaders to make difficult decisions about where to devote their 

limited resources. Those components that are most likely to continue are those that can be 

described as new structures or program models, particularly those that represent a mutually 

beneficial overlap between school districts and partners. Below is a summary of each grantee’s 

key project components and their prospects for sustainability. 

Baltimore City Public School System. BCPSS hopes to continue core grant programs, but the 

severe budget cuts at the district level are going to make it difficult to sustain many of the 

programs that were funded by the School District grant. For instance, the Futures Works! 

program faces considerable sustainability challenges because of dramatic district restructuring 

VIII-1 
that gives BCPSS schools and principals much more autonomy with regard to how to use their 

financial resources for programs and staff. Thus, it is unclear whether leadership at the target 

schools will continue the Future Works! program, unless other grant funds become available. To 

date, no alternate funding sources have been identified to continue providing mental health 

services at the same level supported by the School District Grant, though mental health 

specialists will likely continue working at the schools at a lower capacity. Mentoring services 

from Community Law in Action will not likely be sustained, but will be provided in another 

form through the work of staff from New Visions for Youth Services (NVYS). 

Some of the services that will be sustained include those offered by NVYS, which will be funded 

by a grant that the district secured from the Open Society Institute. Celebrating its ten-year 

anniversary, the YO! Center (Westside) expects the majority of its services to continue, though 

some may be scaled back next year for budgetary reasons. Nevertheless, youth served under the 

School District Grant will still be able to receive services from the YO! Center because, as one 

staff said, “once a YO! member, always a YO! member.” 

Chicago Public Schools. The new Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of CPS is looking to the YES 

program as a model for new initiatives in the upcoming school year. Because the CEO recently 

created a new Chief Area Officer position dedicated to alternative schools, transitional schools 

and services for youth offenders will likely receive increased attention, with the YES program 

strongly informing this work. The district is currently exploring ways to sustain and expand the 

Banner Transitional Schools implemented as part of this grant. In addition, early discussions 

with grantee staff about sustainability suggest that the district believes the YES’ Student 

Engagement Specialists—who provide intensive case management services to keep youth 

engaged in school—are key in the district’s effort to effectively serve at-risk youth. Thus, the 

positions that were created specifically through the YES program will likely be expanded to 

more, if not all, schools in the district. 

At the school level, at least two of the target high schools (Crane HS and Hirsch HS) reported 

that they are proposing a continuation and/or expansion of YES program elements as part of their 

individual proposal for the “Culture of Calm” initiative—a $30 million, district-wide initiative to 

reduce violence and create serene atmospheres in schools. 

Milwaukee Public Schools. MPS’ most notable accomplishment under this grant is the creation 

of the Transition High School, a school that provides critical alternative education services for 

youth who are transitioning from detention back to school. This school will be sustained by 

district funds after the grant has ended. The district’s decision to absorb the school’s costs 

despite facing dramatic budget cuts gives a clear indication of the perceived value of this school. 

VIII-2 
No other Futures First Initiative (FFI) program components will be sustained, although some of 

the employment services component will be maintained as part of another contract at the district, 

and CBO providers may be retained at the discretion and funding capacity of individual schools. 

With regard to the administrative staff hired through this grant, the current grant manager and 

Intervention Coordinator have been retained in positions with MPS. It is likely that the 

Intervention Coordinator will be able to continue certain components or strategies of the School 

District Grant. She may also be motivated to apply what the district learned through this grant’s 

implementation and partnership experiences: that it is important to mentor at-risk youth, have 

gang reduction plans in place, and partner with other agencies to enhance communication and 

mutually informed decision-making. 

Orange County Public Schools. OCPS is expected to continue to operate the Transition Center 

with Title I funds after the School District Grant ends. Because it allows OCPS and the 

Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) to do joint planning and coordinate services, this center is 

likely to continue to serve as the primary mechanism for partnering between the school district 

and the DJJ. However, the OCPS counselor position at the Juvenile Assessment Center will be 

discontinued due to lack of funding. Sustainability of other grant components is uncertain. 

Although the Metropolitan Orlando Urban League is considered a strong partner and provides 

valuable GED and work training to out-of-school youth, the relationship is not likely to be 

sustained without another grant, as Orange County Public Schools is not a core funder of these 

types of out-of-school youth programs. Resource officers from the Orlando Police Department 

(OPD) and Orange County Sheriff’s Department (OCSD) will continue to work for their 

agencies on youth-related issues, but will not be supported to continue grant-related functions. 

Because the intervention specialists are considered one of the most successful components of the 

grant, OCPS is currently exploring the possibility of sustaining these staff with Title I funding. 

School District of Philadelphia. SDP is hopeful that all School District Grant components can 

be continued and has identified preliminary sustainability plans. One identified challenge in this 

area was simply that the many layers of partnership involved in SDP’s service delivery 

approach—there are, for example, three different sets of staff involved with the Learning To 

Work (LTW) program at University City and Overbrook High Schools—might not be the most 

efficient way to sustain services. 

Because PYN already manages WIA youth funds for the city, its staff are looking at potentially 

harnessing this funding stream for continuation of some of the School District Grant elements. 

However, issues of eligibility for WIA youth funds—and how they intersect with the target 

populations being served by the School District Grant—may pose a challenge. 

VIII-3 
With specific regard to the sustainability of the LTW program at University City and Overbrook 

high schools, grant staff hope that the program will become permanently embedded as part of the 

OASIS model, assuming it remains successful. The internship component of the LTW program 

will be sustained by youth participating in PYN’s other internship programs in its youth 

readiness portfolio. The program director of the Bridge Program at the E3 Power Center hopes 

that funding will be sustained directly by the Public Health Management Corporation (parent 

organization of the Bridge Program), rather than being funneled through PYN. Other funding 

possibilities are being explored: raising funds by offering drug and alcohol rehabilitation services 

on-site and asking the district’s accelerated schools to purchase slots for students in the Bridge 

Program. To sustain the Occupational Skills Program, PYN recently applied for another U.S. 

Department of Labor grant to continue serving E3 Power Center youth. 

In sum, the decision to continue to fund some of the services and programs depends on whether 

the school districts can leverage new funding and whether the projects align closely to the 

district’s current priorities. Some districts such as CPS, MPS, and OCPS have secured district 

funding to continue to operate the alternative schools for youth offenders that were either wholly 

or partially funded by the School District Grant because of the service gap these schools fill for 

youth offenders. This commitment is significant given the severe budget cuts that the districts 

are facing in SY 2009–2010. 

Lastly, when discussing sustainability, we must not only cover sustainability of funding and 

program components, but also sustainability of knowledge and relationships. With regard to 

knowledge, a number of grantees described how the lessons they learned from the School 

District Grant—e.g., the importance of mentoring for at-risk youth, or how to best partner with 

other agencies—would be carried forward to future endeavors. Sometimes this scenario was 

made more plausible by the continuation of key grant staff in new school district positions, as is 

the case in Milwaukee, where the Intervention Coordinator will continue to work at other schools 

in the district, in the hope of applying the lessons learned from this grant. On the other hand, 

sustaining ideas, knowledge, and relationships will not be easy. One grantee pointed out the 

relative danger of having key grant staff who are in contracted positions (rather than permanent 

staff at a partner organizations) since knowledge gained from the grant experience is lost with 

the individual at the end of the grant rather than being sustained within organizational memory. 

Accomplishments 

In addition to taking steps to sustain some of the grant-funded project components, school 

district grantees achieved a number of significant accomplishments throughout the life of the 

grant. They successfully mobilized core community partners to participate in grant activities, 

VIII-4 
 

 

gained the support of local school leaders and staff for implementing new programs or expanding 

existing ones, and provided much-needed services to some of the most vulnerable youth in their 

schools and communities. Below we highlight other key findings. 

	 Grantees developed some noteworthy practices to reach at-risk youth, 

including youth offenders, over-age and under-credit youth, and out-of-school 

youth. Some of the strategies include personalizing services for youth by 

connecting them with mentors and other caring adults, and creating specific 

pathways for youth offenders to resume their education after they leave juvenile 

detention. 

	 As a result of grantees’ work, grant resources reached 34 traditional and 

alternative schools and eight program sites and served about 3,765 youth. 

The programs and services in which youth participated appear to be making a big 

difference in the lives of these youth, as shown by the stories of the case study 

youth whose lives were transformed by the services that they received. 

	 Grantee programs served mostly in-school youth (83% of the total served). 

By reaching so many in-school youth, grant resources effectively augmented the 

resources that are available to struggling schools and the students that participated 

in grant-funded services. 

	 Grant funds significantly increased the per-pupil spending for the students 

who were enrolled in grant-funded activities. Estimated per-participant 

expenditures for this grant to date range from $2,528 at Chicago Public Schools to 

$7,067 in Milwaukee Public Schools. When this amount is added to the districts’ 

regular per-pupil spending, grantees’ overall per-pupil spending for grant 

participants is bumped up by an average of 42 percent.
 

	 Grantees are providing multiple pathways for youth offenders to resume 

their educations. The School District Grant provided an opportunity for grantees 

to develop special programs and alternative schools so that youth can successfully 

transition from detention to the public schools. Grantees used seed funding from
 

the School District Grant to develop four new alternative schools for youth 

offenders—at Chicago Public Schools, Milwaukee Public Schools, Orange 

County Public Schools, and School District of Philadelphia. Within these schools 

and at target schools, grantees developed specialized educational and workforce 

programs that are geared towards offenders, such as the Learning to Work and 

Bridge programs at SDP. School districts are pleased with the work that is 

currently being done at these alternative schools and as mentioned above, are 

planning to sustain them after the sunset of this grant. 

	 The grant has provided additional staffing to under-resourced schools and 

community programs. This grant enabled grantees to hire a total of 130 staff,1
 

including case managers, administrators, teachers and job developers. Other staff 

who were supported through this grant include school resource officers, gang 

The 130 staff positions include both full-time and part-time positions. 

VIII-5 

1 
specialists, counselors, social workers, and mental health specialists. Grantees 

such as Chicago Public Schools and Milwaukee Public Schools were 

comprehensive in their approach to staffing their projects, making use of a 

specialized team of staff made up of teachers, counselors, social workers, mental 

health specialists, and career development specialists in order to sufficiently 

address students’ needs. Given that many of the districts have faced staffing cuts 

and imposed hiring freezes over the past three years, injecting additional staff into 

schools enables the lowest performing schools to continue to provide essential 

services to students. 

	 Grantees were able to convene and mobilize diverse ranges of influential 

stakeholders who brought to the table their own networks of partners and 

resources. As discussed in Chapter IV, “super-partners” were able to broker 

relationships with other key stakeholders and/or helped facilitate connections 

between the School District Grant and other related initiatives. As a result of 

increased connections with community partners, grantees noted that they are able 

to leverage new resources and valuable information about how to best serve 

vulnerable youth. 

	 Partnerships with the workforce investment system appear to be the 

strongest of all the required partners for this grant. All grantees but one have 

formal arrangements with the local workforce investment board, and some 

grantees also involve CBOs in the provision of workforce services. Given 

workforce partners’ often pre-existing focus on serving out-of-school youth, it is 

perhaps not surprising that school districts are most likely to link effectively with 

these partners. Furthermore, many local workforce entities play multiple, 

interrelated roles within the city that would make it difficult not to partner with 

these agencies. 

	 Several grantees developed formal procedures for sharing participant data. 

Because data sharing is a complicated and difficult challenge to overcome, 

grantees worked hard to address this challenge at the onset. Three grantees in 

particular—BCPSS, MPS, SDP—successfully created formal procedures to share 

participant data across systems by having youth’s guardians sign waivers that 

would give consent to grantee staff to share information about youths’ 

background and service plans with relevant partners. At BCPSS, gaining the 

ability to share data between the district, the Mayor’s Office of Employment 

Development, and Department of Juvenile Services qualifies as a major 

accomplishment. 

As described above, grantees have achieved considerable success in creating systems and 

procedures to continue supporting youth beyond the life of the grant. As grantees wrap up their 

projects in 2010, additional accomplishments, and perhaps renewed prospects for sustainability, 

are likely to surface. 

VIII-6 
Challenges 

Although grantees achieved a great deal of success with the School District Grant and will likely 

carry their lessons learned from this grant to other initiatives at the district level, they also faced 

significant challenges. These challenges are clustered into three major categories: (1) contextual 

challenges, (2) implementation challenges, and (3) partnership challenges. 

Contextual Challenges 

	 Budget cuts and leadership changes at the district level delayed the 

implementation of key grant-funded activities. Project activities were affected 

by these changes in significant ways. For instance, at least three school district 

grantees imposed hiring freezes, which meant that project staff, including 

teachers, were unable to be hired in a timely manner. As a result, BCPSS, for 

instance, was unable to implement the Voyager Curriculum and hire a mentoring 

provider until the second year of the grant. The large-scale budget shortfalls at 

OCPS resulted in a number of teacher layoffs, cuts in student services, and a 

hiring and spending freeze at the district level. Although one might expect the 

School District Grant to be immune to financial uncertainties at the district level, 

project staff noted that many aspects of the grant were indeed affected. 

	 Changes in the attendance boundaries at several of the target schools led to 

increased gang violence and conflicts. The budget cuts at the district level 

meant that some schools within some of the districts were closed, due to low 

attendance and/or persistently low performance. Because of the school closures, 

attendance boundaries for some of the target schools changed, which meant that 

rival gangs were suddenly going to the same schools. As a result, project staff 

needed to pay special attention to community conflicts that might spill over into 

the school.
 

	 Changes in school leaders required grantees to rebuild relationships and 

regain buy-in for programs and interventions. Many of the target schools 

struggle with high turnover among their principals. It is therefore not surprising 

that the principals at some of the target schools shifted during the course of this 

grant (e.g., Manley High School in CPS, Forest Park High School in BCPSS). 

When principals changed at the target schools, project staff needed to “start 

fresh,” to establish trust and gain buy-in from the school leaders and their new 

staff. One school, for instance, hired a new principal who supported the grantfunded project but wanted to change how it was operated. This required some
 

discussion and coordination with grantee staff, who were not expecting to make 

changes to the projects that were designed under this grant. 

	 The economic downturn of 2009–2010 made it difficult to place participants 

into employment. Placing at-risk and adjudicated youth into employment is 

difficult in the best economic climate. The economic downturn exacerbated 

obstacles to employment for this population. Grantees that were most successful 

at placing youth into employment relied on established workforce partners to 

provide this service. 

VIII-7 
Implementation Challenges 

	 Although grantees met their overall enrollment goals for the grant, some of 

them struggled to recruit youth whom they targeted, particularly out-ofschool youth. Grantees acknowledged the critical importance of serving out-ofschool youth, especially those who are transitioning back into the community. 

However, reaching out-of-school youth proved challenging because the school 

district grantees have limited experience serving this population, and as such, 

needed to develop new strategies to reach them. To address this challenge, 

grantees subcontracted with partners who have expertise in serving out-of-school 

youth, such as the YO! Centers in Baltimore, the E3 Power Centers in 

Philadelphia, and the Metropolitan Orlando Urban League in Orange County. 

	 Attendance in program activities has been inconsistent and difficult to 

maintain. Many grant-funded activities have low attendance. Although we do 

not have exact attendance figures for program activities, grantee staff indicated 

that achieving consistent attendance in program activities has been a struggle 

from the onset. Much of this challenge has to do with the population that grantees 

are serving—youth who have historically been truant or disinterested in structured 

programs. To address this challenge, case managers closely monitor participants’ 

school attendance, and call students in the morning to remind them to come to 

school. In addition, grantees are offering various incentives such as bus passes 

and gift certificates to encourage youth to attend school and their programs. 

	 Follow-up services are difficult to provide consistently, especially as students 

leave target schools where project staff work. A student’s ability to succeed in 

school and the workforce may depend on maintaining an ongoing connection to 

the staff person with whom he or she has developed a positive relationship. Thus, 

follow-up services are important for ensuring that participants stay focused on 

their academics and their search for employment. All grantees except one are 

providing follow-up services. However, many youth are difficult to reach (they 

often move to different schools, for example) and the case managers are mixed in 

their ability to reach youth and build connections with the school staff to 

coordinate case management services. As a result, the provision of follow-up 

services has been spotty at best. 

	 Gang and violence prevention services are not a core feature at most grantee 

sites. Although many project activities provide youth with alternatives to 

violence and gang life, only three grantees are intentionally offering antiviolence/anti-gang services as part of their scope of work. Of the grantees that are 

offering such services, some of them are “light touch” in nature, because they 

were either offered one-time only, or in at least one grantee site, such services are 

indirect in nature, as project staff gather information and share knowledge about 

gang activities by participating in a community-wide gang task force. 

Partnership Challenges 

	 Grantees sometimes struggled to adjust to their partners’ cultural and 

philosophical differences. For instance, grantees differed with law enforcement 

VIII-8 
 

officials, who took a punitive approach to serving youth. This 

philosophical/cultural difference played a role in the communication gaps 

between agencies, particularly with regard to clarifying expected partner roles and 

responsibilities for the School District Grant. 

	 Grantees that contract out most of their services faced coordination 

challenges. Grantees that hired subcontractors to deliver services at target 

schools and programs sometimes struggled to coordinate successfully with one 

another and with the school and/or program staff. The target schools in one 

grantee site for example, had multiple contractor staff to provide counseling, 

employment services, and case management services. At times, these staff had 

difficulty coordinating students’ service plans, and coordinating with school 

counselors and teachers to make sure that students’ schedules would enable them
 

to participate in grant-funded services such as internships and meetings with case 

managers. 

	 Sharing participant data across systems has proven to be difficult. While 

several grantees made important breakthroughs in developing procedures for 

sharing participant data, confidentiality issues and data sharing challenges 

continually plagued a number of grantees and partners. These challenges often 

slowed down the process of efficiently providing services to youth. For example, 

in Baltimore, YO! Center staff must secure signed waivers from youth attending 

their orientations before sending their names to the Department of Juvenile 

Services to determine which of these youth are eligible for grant-funded services. 

In Milwaukee, information about youth’s criminal records is confidential and not 

shared with the Youth Career Development Specialists, which means that these 

staff may place youth in internships that are inappropriate. 

Our evaluation of the School District Grant has been exciting and rich in lessons learned. The 

grantees’ work under this grant confirmed the extraordinary importance of reaching at-risk 

youth, including youth offenders who may otherwise get lost in the system as they navigate their 

way through schools, the juvenile justice system, and workforce programs. By designing 

programs and services geared towards at-risk youth, school district grantees are demonstrating 

their commitment to enhancing the supports that these youth need to be successful. Efforts from 

the School District Grant have yielded numerous promising practices and lessons learned for 

how to best support at-risk youth and coordinate between school districts and community 

partners. Moving forward, DOL can build from the lessons learned presented in this report to 

continue to support multiple pathways of success for the most vulnerable youth. 

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APPENDIX A: RESEARCH QUESTIONS 

Context 

	 What contextual factors have been important for understanding the design, 

implementation and outcomes of the program, including the school district and 

community context? 

Design 

	 What was the grantee planning and design process? 

	 What is the scope of the program (e.g., district-wide, several high schools, one 

high school; expected number of participants)? 

	 What is the nature of the program, including target groups and strategies for 

improving academic achievement and reducing youth crime/gang involvement? 

	 How does the program align with and bring value-added to the school district’s 

dropout prevention plan and the city’s gang reduction plan? 

	 What initial plans for sustainability (after federal funds end) were developed 

during the design phase? 

	 How were appropriate partners/providers selected for participation in the 

program, including during the planning/design phase?
 

	 What is the leadership/management structure of the grant, including key staff and 

budget? What methods are used to manage the program and coordinate contracts 

among partners? 

	 What were the challenges and effective strategies of the planning and design 

process? 

Partnerships 

	 Who are the key partners in this effort (required and non-required)? How were 

they selected and mobilized? What are their specific roles in this project? 

	 What partnership arrangements have been established and how are resources 

being leveraged to achieve the grant’s objectives? 

	 What is the nature of the grantee’s referral system with partners to ensure that 

participants’ various needs are met? 

A-1 
 

 

 

	 How well have these partnerships worked overall and how have they evolved over 

time? 

	 To what extent are these partnerships formalized (e.g., memoranda of 

understanding, letters of commitment, cost-sharing agreements, referral systems, 

etc.)? 

	 What have been the barriers and best practices for inter-partner communication 

and coordination (different philosophies toward youth, MIS issues, etc.)? 

Service Delivery/Implementation 

	 What are the characteristics of participants enrolled in the program? 

	 How are youth recruited and/or identified for services (e.g., using indicators such 

as chronic truancy, discipline problems, special education placement, low reading 

and math scores)? 

	 How effective are outreach and recruitment services for in-school and out-ofschool participants? For at-risk and adjudicated youth? For younger and older 

youth? 

	 What types of basic intake services, such as assessments of needs and interests, 

are provided and how do they vary by participant-type? 

	 How is ongoing case management provided to participants, and by which specific 

provider(s)? 

	 What is the full range of education, employment, gang prevention and supportive 

services available to youth, and how do they vary by status (e.g., younger vs. 

older youth, in-school vs. out-of-school, at-risk vs. adjudicated)? 

	 Which services are available to participants through the local One-Stop Career 

Center system? Which of these services are actually used by participants? 

	 To what extent do partners effectively coordinate education services with 

workforce services? 

	 How well do the education, employment, gang reduction and supportive services 

meet the needs of different participant-types (e.g., in-school vs. out-of-school, 

younger vs. older youth, adjudicated vs. at-risk)? 

	 What are the primary challenges in working with these groups of youth? What are 

the facilitators? What practices are particularly effective? 

	 What strategies does the program use to promote high expectations among 

program participants? 

	 What strategies does the program use to ensure that staff are appropriately 

equipped to work with program participants (e.g., professional development, 

training in gangs and the juvenile justice system, how to intervene with youth, 

etc.)? 

	 What data collection and reporting procedures have been implemented by the 

grantee? What challenges have they faced in implementing the management 

A-2 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

information system (including reporting on those fields required by the DOL 

template)? 

	 What types of coaching and technical assistance (TA) did grantees receive? What 

are the benefits and drawbacks of extra coaching and TA? 

	 What have been the most significant implementation issues that grantees and 

partners have faced? What strategies were used to overcome these challenges, 

and with what success? 

Attributes of Effective Programs 

	 Does the program promote high academic standards and a culture of high 

expectations?
 

	 What types of applied learning opportunities are available in the programs? 

	 Do programs provide opportunities for youth catch up academically and have 

individually tailored learning? 

	 Does the program have, and promote, high-quality teachers through institutional 

practices? 

	 What is the physical layout of schools and programs? What types of security 

measures are in place? What practices do schools and programs use to promote 

safety? 

	 Does the program’s leadership have administrative autonomy over the program’s 

design? Do they have flexibility in how they operate the program? 

Outputs and Outcomes 

	 What is the number of participants in the program? 

	 What is the proportion of participants who take part in the various education, 

employment, gang reduction and supportive services? The proportion who 

complete particular services? 

	 What is the typical duration of services? 

	 What education and employment outcomes have program participants achieved?1 

	 What recidivism rates have been achieved? Why do they recidivate (e.g., new 

crimes versus parole violations)? What factors affect recidivism? 

	 What is the offense rate among participants who were not previously involved 

with the juvenile justice system? 

	 Has the number of participants with self-professed gang associations decreased? 

As will be discussed later in the report, our ability to detail participant-level outcomes will be greatly limited by 

the nature of available MIS data. However, we will be able to examine participant-level outcomes in more detail 

among our case study youth. 

A-3 

1 
 

 How do outcomes vary by program design and implementation elements? 

 How do outcomes vary by different types of participants (e.g., at-risk vs. 

adjudicated youth, younger youth vs. older youth)? 

 Have there been any significant, unanticipated outcomes for participants? 

 To what extent are grantees able to effectively capture, track, and report 

participant outcomes, including those required by the DOL template? Major 

challenges? 

 What have been the partnership- and system-level outcomes of the grant project? 

 How much variation is there in overall grantee performance after considering 

differences in local context and participant characteristics? 

 How do grantees that are successful differ from those that are not (e.g., in design, 

implementation, contextual factors)? 

A-4 
 Garrison MS (1,2) 

 William H. Lemmel MS/Dukeland Campus (1,3) 

 Douglass HS (2,3) 

 Eastside YO! Center (1) 

 Westside YO! Center (1,2,3) 

 Forest Park High School (3) 

Chicago  Clemente HS (2) 

 Dyett HS (1,2,3) 

 Hirsch HS (1,2,3) 

 Manley HS (1,2,3) 

 Nancy B. Jefferson Alternative School (2,3) 

 Banner School South (3) 

Milwaukee  Bradley Tech HS (2,3) 

 North Division/Multiplex – Genesis HS, Truth Institute HS, 

Milwaukee African American Immersion HS (1,2,3) 

 South Division HS (1,2) 

 Transition HS (1,2,3) 

 CBOs:1 

 Ambassadors for Peace (1) 

 Flood the Hood with Dreams (2) 

 Milwaukee Area Workforce Investment Board (1,2,3) 

 New Leaf Coaching (1,2) 

 Urban Underground (2) 

 

 

 

APPENDIX B: SCHOOLS/PROGRAMS VISITED IN ROUNDS 1,2,3 

Baltimore 

Orange 

County 

 Meadowbrook MS (1,2,3) 

 Stonewall Jackson MS (1) 

We interviewed staff from these CBOs at the four schools visited. 

B-1 

1 
 Jones HS (1,2,3) 

 Dr. J.B. Callahan Neighborhood Center (2) 

 Juvenile Assessment Center (1) 

 Positive Pathways Transition Center (2,3) 

 Orlando Downtown Recreational Center (1,2) 

 Orlando Metropolitan Urban League (2,3) 

 

 

 

Philadelphia  North Philadelphia Community HS (1,2,3) 

 Overbrook HS (1,2,3) 

 E3 Power Center - West Branch (1,2,3) 

 Re-Engagement Center (2,3) 

 CBOs:2 

 Center for Literacy (1,2,3) 

 Communities In Schools (1,2) 

 Education Works (1,2) 

 International Education and Community Initiatives (1,2,3) 

 Philadelphia Academies, Inc. (1,2,3) 

 Philadelphia Youth Network (1,2,3) 

 PYN’s Occupational Skills Pathway Program (3) 

We interviewed staff from these CBOs at the four schools/centers visited. 

B-2
 

2 
APPENDIX C: TARGETED SCHOOLS 

Baltimore1

% Eligible 

for Free/ % Limited Dropout Graduation Dropout Graduatio

# of Reduced English rate Rate rate Rate 

School Demographics Students Lunch Proficient 2006-7 2006-72 2007-83 2007-8 

Forest Park HS 97.7% Afr. Am. 

0.3% Asian/Pac. Isl. 0.3% Hispanic 1.6% White 

753 69.9% 0.0% 5.6% 68.9% 5.7% 65.5% 

Frederick Douglass HS 

98.8% Afr. Am. 0.8% White 0.2% Hispanic 0.2% Asian 

1,010 68.0% 0.0% 9.0% 43.4% 10.9% 57.0% 

Schools at the Dukeland Campus 

ConneXions Community Academy 

99.1% Afr. Am. 0.4% Asian/Pac. Isl. 0.4% White 

239 66.1% 0.0% N/A4 N/A N/A N/A 

1 Data are drawn from Maryland State Department of Education - 2009 Maryland Report Card for the 2008-2009 school year unless o2 Data are drawn from Maryland State Department of Education - 2007 Maryland Report Card for the 2006-2007 school year.3 Data are drawn from Maryland State Department of Education - 2008 Maryland Report Card for the 2007-2008 school year.4 Data marked “N/A” were either not available or not applicable, if the school has not yet been founded.

C-1 
% Eligible 

for Free/ % Limited Dropout Graduation Dropout Graduatio

# of Reduced English rate Rate rate Rate 

School Demographics Students Lunch Proficient 2006-7 2006-72 2007-83 2007-8 

Institute of Business and Entrepreneurship High 

98.6% Afr. Am. 0.1% Asian/Pac. Isl. 1.2% White 

631 62.6% 0.0% 15.8% 84.0% 11.0% 82.7% 

Liberation Diploma Plus HS 

N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A 

C-2
Chicago5

% Limited Dropout Graduation Dropout Graduation 

% Low- English rate Rate rate Rate 

School name Demographics # of Students income Proficient 2006-76 2006-7 2007-87 2007-8 

Clemente HS Hispanic 63.9% 

Black 33.6% White 2.3% Asian 0.1% Amer Indian 0.1% Multi-racial 0.1% 

1,942 84.5% 8.8% 8.7% 55.2% 15.7% 67.7% 

Crane HS Black 97.5% 

Hispanic 1.9% White 0.5% Asian 0.1% 

755 86.8% 0.1% 6.5% 60.8% 20.8% 61.1% 

Dyett HS Black 99.8% 

Hispanic 0.2% 

583 80.3% .5% 14.3% 31.4% 20.2% 63.0% 

Fenger HS Black 99.2% 

White 0.1% Hispanic 0.4% Asian 0.1% Amer Indian 0.2% Multi-racial 0.1% 

1,291 97.8% 0.2% 22.8% 55.2% 16.0% 63.4% 

Hirsch HS Black 98.8% 

Hispanic 0.9% White 0.2% Amer Indian 0.1% 

1,003 86.4% 0.8% 15.9% 54.8% 18.2% 64.3% 

Manley HS Black 99.5% 

White 0.2% Hispanic 0.3% Multi-racial 0.8% 

1,108 0.0% 91% 1.5% 60.7% 13.0% 76.7% 

5 Data are drawn from Illinois State Board of Education - 2009 Illinois School Report Cards for the 2008-2009 school year unless oth6 Data are drawn from Illinois State Board of Education - 2007 Illinois School Report Cards for the 2006-2007 school year. 7 Data are drawn from Illinois State Board of Education - 2008 Illinois School Report Cards for the 2007-2008 school year. 

C-3 
Banner YES 

North 

N/A8 N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A 

Banner YES South at AKAM 

N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A 

Data marked “N/A” were either not available or not applicable, if the school has not yet been founded. 

C-4 

8 
Milwaukee9

% Eligible 

for Free/ % Limited Dropout Graduation Dropout Graduation 

# of Students Reduced English rate Rate rate Rate 

School Demographics Enrolled Lunch Proficient 2006-7 2006-7 2007-8 2007-8 

Bradley Tech HS 74.7% Black 

14.3% Hispanic 9.0% White 1.4% Asian 0.6% Amer Indian 

1,385 73.9% 3% 2.8% 88.2% 3.8% 89.1% 

James Madison HS/ Madison Academic Campus 

87.5% Black 6.7% Asian 4.4% White 1.3% Hispanic 0.2% Amer Indian 

1,029 82.5% 1.7% N/A10 N/A 8.4% 96.4% 

South Division HS 52.1% Hispanic 

33.4% Black 9.6% Asian 4.3% White 0.6% Amer Indian 

1,386 80.7% 33.5% 4.7% 68.2% 7.5% 70.0% 

Transition HS 93.1% Black 

1.7% Asian 3.4% Hispanic 2.2% White 

58 22.4% N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A 

Schools at N. Multiplex/N. Division) 

Genesis HS 99.5% Black 

1.7% White 0.9% Am Ind. 0.9% Hispanic 

234 88.3% 0.4% 8.5% 93.0% 7.0% 58.9% 

Truth Institute HS N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A 7.6% 76.3% 

9 Data are drawn from the Wisconsin Information Network for Successful Schools. All data, except dropout and graduation rates, are 

year. Dropout and graduation rates are for the school years noted. 

10 Data marked “N/A” were either not available or not applicable, if the school has not yet been founded. 

C-5 
% Eligible 

for Free/ % Limited Dropout Graduation Dropout Graduation 

# of Students Reduced English rate Rate rate Rate 

School Demographics Enrolled Lunch Proficient 2006-7 2006-7 2007-8 2007-8 

Milwaukee African American Immersion HS 

96.9% Black 1.5% White 0.2% Asian 1.3% Hispanic 

457 78.3% 0.4% N/A N/A 14.2% 93.8% 

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Orange County11

% Eligible 

for Free/ % Limited Dropout Graduation Dropout Graduation 

Reduced English rate Rate rate Rate 

School name Demographics # of Students Lunch Proficient 2006-712 2006-7 2007-8 2007-813 

Meadowbrook MS 

77.7% Black 17.0% Hispanic 2.2% White 1.2% Asian 0.6% Amer Indian 

1114 88.1% 2.5% N/A14 N/A N/A N/A 

Memorial MS 87.3% Black 

8.7% Hispanic 2.5% White 1.4% Asian 

797 91.2% 37.1% N/A N/A N/A N/A 

Stonewall Jackson MS 

9.3% Black 71.2% Hispanic 13.5 % White 2.9% Asian 

1202 85.4% 46.4% N/A N/A N/A N/A 

Walker MS 15.5% Black 

53.5% Hispanic 22.6% White 5.6% Asian 

1057 79.7% 39.5% N/A N/A N/A N/A 

Colonial HS 9.3% Black 

65.9% Hispanic 19.4% White 2.7% Asian 0.1% Amer Indian 

1984 62.1% 27.0% 2.7% 67.8% 2.8% 71.9% 

Evans HS 86.0% Black 

7.5% Hispanic 

1083 72.0% 14.8% 8.9% 51.0% 2.2% 67.6% 

11 Data are drawn from Florida Department of Education, Education & Accountability Services Data Publications and Reports and Ad

Report for the 2008-2009 school year. 

12 Data are drawn from the Great Schools website for 2006-2007. 13 Data are drawn from Florida Department of Education, Education & Accountability Services Data Publications and Reports and Ad

Report for the 2007-2008 school year. 

14 Data marked “N/A” were either not available or not applicable, if the school has not yet been founded. 

C-7 
% Eligible 

for Free/ % Limited Dropout Graduation Dropout Graduation 

Reduced English rate Rate rate Rate 

School name Demographics # of Students Lunch Proficient 2006-712 2006-7 2007-8 2007-813 

3.0% White 1.5% Asian 0.6% Amer Indian 

Jones HS 95.9% Black 

3.2% Hispanic 0.4% White 

518 47.4% 8.3% 2.5% 58.0% 0.3% 66.0% 

Oak Ridge HS 47.8% Black 

38.2% Hispanic 10.0% White 2.6% Asian 0.2% Amer Indian 

1204 71.1% 31.2% 0.6% 55.0% 0.5% 65.2% 

Transition High School 

N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A 

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Philadelphia15

% Eligible 

for Free/ % Limited Dropout Graduation Dropout Graduation 

# Reduced English rate Rate rate Rate D

School Demographics of Students Lunch Proficient 2006-7 2006-7 2007-8 2007-8 

North Philadelphia Community HS 

N/A16 N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A 

Overbrook HS 98% Afr. Am 

1% White 1% Latino 

1697 83% 0% N/A N/A 9% N/A 

University City HS 

97% Afr. Am 1% White 1% Asian 1% Latino 1% Other 

1034 89% 2% N/A N/A 16% N/A 

15 Data are drawn from Pennsylvania Department of Education PreK-12 School Statistics Reports, Academic Achievement Report: 20

District of Philadelphia websites. Data marked “N/A” were not available. 

16 Data marked “N/A” were either not available or not applicable, if the school has not yet been founded. 

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APPENDIX D: COMPARISON OF PLANNED ACTIVITIES 

SERVICES IMPLEMENTED 

Glossary: 

	 Not implemented: None of this grant component was implemented 

	 Partially implemented: At least one part of this grant component was not 

implemented or not implemented to the degree stated 

	 Fully implemented: All parts of this grant component were implemented to the 

degree stated. 

	 Expanded: All parts of this grant component were implemented beyond the 

degree stated. 

Status of Implementation 

Planned Activities 

Notimplemented PartiallyImplemented FullyImplemented Expanded 

Baltimore 

Expansion of FUTURES, a dropout prevention program to 240 eighth and 

ninth graders. Additional reading specialists to improve basic skills. X 

Two Youth Development alternative programs to serve 125 eighth grade 

students who are academically behind, returning from detention, and 

have a history of suspension/expulsion. 

X 

Expedition of access to Twilight and Credit Recovery Program and the 

Alternative Options Program (AOP) by hiring additional reading and math 

specialists.

 X 

Services to 150 out-of-school youth who participate in the YO! Program. 

Provide an additional literacy instructor and job developer at the two YO! 

Centers. 

X 

Internships and paid work experiences for 320 out-of-school youth 

offenders. X 

Additional half-time mental health clinician at two YO! sites. X 

D-1 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Status of Implementation 

Planned Activities 

Notimplemented PartiallyImplemented FullyImplemented Expanded 

Chicago 

Student advocacy periods addressing academic, career, and 

personal/social development, including gang and violence issues. X 

Work experience opportunities, including paid and unpaid summer 

internships and jobs for students in ETC and alternative high schools. X 

Advanced academics for ETC students taking college credit classes and 

support for taking honors and AP courses. X 

Summer programs that (a) prepare ETC ninth graders with a counselingcareer-academic focus and (b) help off-track entering tenth graders make 

up failed courses, and (c) additional counseling to target youth. 

X 

Structured transitional programs for students in alternative schools that 

includes guidance, support, and monitoring to help them transition from 

alternative settings to regular school and/or postsecondary training

 X 

Restorative justice program for incarcerated youth X 

Professional development seminars and workshops for teachers. X 

Milwaukee 

Academic and supportive services that (a) assist students with reading 

and math skills, (b) provide an individualized and self-paced learning 

environment, (c) GED/HSED placements, and d) mentoring and tutoring. 

X 

Work readiness training, job placement, and support for youth 

participating in the initiative. X 

Violence prevention programs and supports that provide peer mentors, 

peer role models, conflict resolution, and school resource officers. X 

Restorative justice program that provides an alternative to traditional 

justice responses. X 

Transitional programs for students reintegrating into a traditional high 

school setting. X 

Professional development training for teachers. X 

Orange County 

Academic intervention and support for youth offenders and at-risk youth 

improve students’ attendance and academic achievement in reading and 

math. Eleven intervention specialists will work with youth transitioning 

from detention to schools and youth at risk of gang involvement. 

X 

Employability skills training and paid work experience. Dropout specialist 

will coordinate services between the schools and the workforce system 

partners to support students returning to school and encourage them to 

complete training.

 X 

D-2
 
 

 

 

 

 

Status of Implementation Not implemented Partially Implemented Fully Implemented Expanded 

Planned Activities 

employ outreach workers to coordinate youth’s transition to and service 

delivery with the school programs. 

X 

Philadelphia 

An alternative school to enroll 100 court-involved youth, youth retuning 

from delinquent placement, former drop-outs, and/or overage, undercredit. X 

The Bridge Program targeting 75 in-school and out-of-school youth 

reading below the sixth grade level. X 

Learning to Work programs (LTW) at Overbrook HS and new 

accelerated school to serve 200 students X 

Augmentation of occupational skills training at E3 Centers for 150 youth. X 

Gang units in the Sheriff’s Office and the Orlando Police Department will 

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APPENDIX E: MAJOR CHANGES TO GRANT PLANS DURING 

IMPLEMENTATION1

Baltimore 

In-School Youth 

	 Education. Baltimore changed its program design to provide reading and math remediation during 

school hours instead of before or after school. Although Baltimore planned to hire eight reading and 

math remediation teachers, delays were caused by a district wide hiring freeze and only four 

teachers were eventually hired. 

	 Case management/ supportive services. The majority of students who received case 

management services in the eighth grade did not attend one of the two targeted high schools as 

expected. Therefore, “travelling advocates” rotate among 30+ high schools in the district. Students 

at these schools receive less in-depth services than students at the two targeted high schools. 

	 Gang reduction /violence prevention. The original grant plan did not include a major gang 

reduction/violence prevention component. To address this, Baltimore contracted with New Visions 

Youth Services to provide intensive support to “deeper-in” youth at three schools and to coordinate a 

community-wide Westside gang reduction plan. 

Youth Offenders 

	 Workforce. The Department of Juvenile Services was supposed to refer adjudicated youth to one of 

the two YO! Centers. This did not happen in a timely manner and the YO! Centers ended up 

recruiting youth on their own. DJS is now responsible for providing workforce services to out-ofschool youth offenders involved in Operation Safe Kids 

Chicago 

In-School Youth 

	 Education. Intensive academic support services for youth at traditional schools were never 

implemented. 

	 Workforce. Chicago originally planned on contracting with Afterschool Matters, a CBO, to provide 

internships for youth. Afterschool Matters was unable to coordinate internships because of an 

internal budget crisis. Therefore, Chicago adopted Orange County’s career exploration curriculum 

for its youth in the second year of the grant. Chicago currently has no plans to provide internships to 

youth. 

Youth Offenders 

	 Education. Originally, Chicago planned to provide services to youth enrolled at Nancy B. Jefferson, 

This table focuses on changes made between the first round of SPR’s site visits (Spring 2008) and the third 

round (Winter 2009). 

E-1 

1 
a CPS school for youth detained at the Cook County Juvenile Detention Center. However, due to a 

riot at the Center that resulted in the temporary closing of the school, CPS was not able to implement 

services as planned. Instead, Chicago decided to contract with Banner Schools to open two 

transitional schools for youth as they come out detention. After opening these schools, Chicago 

increased the length of time students stay at the Banner schools from 10 to 30 weeks in order to 

better prepare students for the transition back to a traditional high school. 

Milwaukee 

In-School Youth 

	 Case management/ supportive services. Due to the budget, in the last year of the grant, the 

number school based support teams was reduced. Each of these teams now serves multiple 

schools. 

Plans to include a mentoring component as part of the grant were not realized. 

Orange County 

In-School Youth 

	 Education. Orange County originally intended to create a new consequence center that 

corresponded to state of Florida statutes. However, a Transition Center was opened instead. The 

Transition Center is different from a consequence center in important ways. First, it is not a place 

where truant students can be assigned or a place where suspended students can be assigned. The 

Transition center is only for those youth who are transitioning back to OCPS from 

detention/residential placement. Second, the transition center does not have the security 

requirements or supports that a consequence center would have. It is more like a regular school— 

though all students are youth offenders. 

	 Case management/ supportive services. The level of support that deputies from OCPS Sherriff 

Department and Orlando Police Department is not as in-depth as originally intended. 

Out-of-school Youth 

	 Workforce. Workforce Central Florida had a misunderstanding regarding what constitutes an “outof-school” youth. They thought that they could serve any youth, including those that had earned a 

degree or GED. This turned out to be out of step with the goals of DOL, and DOL asked them to 

expunge these 74 youth from their records. Thus, 74 youth were erroneously served, at a cost of 

$76,292. At the time of our third visit, WCF had removed these youth from their outcome measures 

and had applied to have the cost of these youth forgiven by DOL. 

Initially, the outreach worker at the Parramore Kidz Zone was supposed to connect with OSY and 

refer them to Workforce Central Florida and the mobile One Stop Center. This did not occur to scale. 

Philadelphia 

In-School Youth 

	 Workforce. Philadelphia expanded the Learning to Work program to a third high school for the last 

year of the grant. 

Out-of-School Youth 

	 Workforce. The Occupational Skills Pathway Program went through many iterations. Original plans 

were to do skills training at the E3

 Centers, but facilities turned out not to be adequate. After an 

unsuccessful attempt to coordinate with a local high school, a Microsoft Office instructor was hired to 

rotate amongst the E3

 Centers to provide training. This program too was unsuccessful. In the fall of 

2009, Philadelphia partnered with Philadelphia Community College to provide automotive and 

hospitality training. A nurse’s aid program was also on track to be launched in early 2010. 

E-2 
 

APPENDIX F: GRANTEE PARTNERSHIP PROFILES 

Baltimore City Public School System (BCPSS) 

Initiative Name: Workforce Development Initiative to Reduce Youth Gangs and Violent 

Crime 

Partnership Model: A focus on social service partnerships 

Capsule Summary: The Baltimore City Public School System’s initiative is designed to 

serve in-school youth at the middle- and high-school level, primarily with the expansion of 

the Futures program—a dropout prevention program. Out-of-school youth are provided 

additional services—including literacy and GED instruction, job development, and paid 

work experiences—at local YO! Centers. Mentoring, mental health, and anti-gang 

services are also key features of the design for both in-school and out-of-school youth. 

While Baltimore City Public School System is characterized by a strong link with workforce 

development, its partnership model stands out more because of the emphasis on social service 

partners. Specifically, BCPSS emphasizes anti-gang, mental health, and mentoring services as 

key features of its partnership and intended service design. 

Workforce Development Partnerships 

BCPSS’s partnership with the local workforce system appears to be one of the most developed in 

terms of the length of collaboration, as well as the nature of the collaboration in place. The 

Mayor’s Office of Employment Development (MOED) is the local workforce entity in Baltimore 

and has worked with BCPSS from the earliest stages of grant planning and proposal writing. 

MOED is contracted to fulfill three major roles: 

 Administer the Futures (later, Futures Works!) program for in-school youth. 

The Futures program, a dropout prevention program administered by MOED, has 

been offered at BCPSS high schools for more than 20 years. The School District 

Grant has allowed the Futures program to be offered at the middle school level for 

the first time. Although MOED was originally charged with providing internships 

and paid work experiences for in-school youth, full implementation of this 

component has not occurred. Overall, employment services for in-school youth 

F-1 
 

 

are minimal; the job readiness training they receive is informal in nature, and 

varies widely by advocate1

 and school. 

	 Oversee the two YO! Centers (Westside and Eastside). Because MOED 

operates the YO! Centers, BCPSS contracted with MOED to serve out-of-school 

youth at these centers. MOED is responsible for providing educational and 

employment services, as well as internships, to participants. Out-of-school youth 

are thus served by a pre-existing and well-established program that did not require 

much in terms of planning by School District Grant stakeholders. The YO! 

Centers offer three paths for participating youth who are ready for employment: 

internship, trial employment, and direct hire. The YO! job developers work with 

local businesses to develop internship and employment opportunities. Internships 

have also been developed in partnership with the city’s Department of 

Transportation. 

	 Collect and manage the MIS data for reporting purposes. MOED oversees 

the MIS data collection and reporting aspect for the grant, which includes 

preparing monthly grant activity reports to BCPSS and quarterly MIS reports for 

DOL. MOED is also responsible for MIS troubleshooting and training partner 

staff on how to report outcomes. 

Juvenile Justice Partnerships 

Due largely to personnel and data-sharing issues, BCPSS’s partnership with the Department of 

Juvenile Services (DJS) changed considerably from what was anticipated. Initial plans called for 

DJS to refer eligible youth leaving detention to the YO! Centers for out-of-school youth services, 

and to report data on the recidivism of program participants. DJS was also to hire three 

workforce specialists to provide job readiness and job development services for adjudicated 

youth. DJS leveraged grant funding to secure additional state funding that was to provide, inkind, a new community services coordinator and two family liaisons to work with both in-school 

and out-of-school youth. Finally, DJS was to help support up to an additional 100 adjudicated 

youth not enrolled in target schools or YO! Centers by referring them to other programs and 

services. Instead, the DJS partnership unfolded as follows: 

	 Due to DJS delays in hiring staff, the YO! Centers spent a significant amount of 

time simply waiting for DJS to begin referring eligible youth and as a result, the 

out-of-school youth component was considerably delayed. Ultimately, DJS was 

not able to fulfill its obligation to serve as a new referral source for eligible 

adjudicated youth. Instead, the YO! Centers began recruiting their own out-ofschool youth as they had before and then—through a DJS-MOED informationsharing agreement—checking with DJS to see whether these youth were eligible 

As part of the School District Grant, the Futures program pairs each participant with an advocate who helps the 

youth stay in school and graduate. 

F-2 

1 
 

 

 

 

for services under the School District Grant.2 The agreement stipulated that youth 

who attend the regularly scheduled orientations3

 at the YO! Centers must sign 

information-sharing waivers, which YO! staff were then to send to DJS. DJS was 

then to look up each youth in its records in order to determine whether each youth 

was eligible for grant services by being classified as at-risk, adjudicated, or 

previously incarcerated. This information was then passed back to YO! Center 

staff. The process has proven to be imperfect (e.g., names of youth sent to DJS 

without their waivers) and time-consuming. 

	 As a result of its inability to serve as a primary referral source for the out-ofschool youth component, DJS modified its scope of work in the third year of the 

grant by offering to provide employment services and internships to 120–130 

youth who it was contracted to serve under the School District Grant. In January 

2010, DJS hired three employment specialists to carry out this work. As a result 

of these changes, DJS will not be recruiting its own youth, but will work with 

youth identified as part of a pre-existing violence-prevention program, Operation 

Safe Kids. Participating youth will be compensated for subsidized training, 

internships or employment. Internships will need to be identified and completed 

by September 2010. 

Part of the challenge for the DJS partnership may have been the specific office within DJS that 

was responsible for this grant: the DJS Office of Community Engagement. Having this statelevel office oversee a local-level effort proved difficult, because staff from this office were 

unable to successfully coordinate with local probation officers to encourage them to refer large 

numbers of youth to the YO! Centers. 

Law Enforcement 

Although there was some discussion of contracting with the Baltimore City Police Department 

and the School Police Department for the purposes of reporting youth crime data and providing 

training to school staff on gang affiliation and activity, ultimately there was no formal 

partnership for the purposes of this grant. However, BCPSS as a whole works closely with the 

police department, as there are two police officers stationed at most high schools, and at least one 

police officer located at each middle school and elementary school. Police officers who are 

stationed at the schools see their role not just as law enforcers, but also as people who engage 

2	 The information-sharing agreement grew out of another challenge that delayed the implementation of out-ofschool youth services. Initially, DJS was unable to report on the status and eligibility of specific students that 

MOED and BCPSS asked about because of confidentiality and consent laws that require youth and guardian 

consent for DJS to share their information with other agencies. Another related challenge was that, due to 

delayed data entry, DJS records with regard to youth’s juvenile justice status may not have been accurate at the 

time of query. 

3	 While the YO! Centers witnessed more youth attending these orientations, they did not know if these youth were 

coming from DJS referrals because they did not have a referral form. 

F-3 
 

 

with youth and help them see police officers in a positive light. Police officers also keep school 

officials abreast of events in the local neighborhood that may impact the local school 

environment. 

Other Partnerships 

BCPSS’s other partnerships for the School District Grant reflect its relative emphasis on social 

services—specifically on mental health, anti-gang and mentoring services. 

	 Baltimore Mental Health Services (BMHS) received a very significant portion 

of the School District Grant (approximately $650,000 over three years), thus 

reflecting the grantee’s priority on addressing youth’s mental health needs. The 

grant provides funds to extend mental health clinicians’ time from part-time to 

full-time at YO! Centers and at target BCPSS schools. However, a number of 

challenges arose. First, contract delays meant that BMHS did not sign a contract 

with BCPSS or begin enrolling students until sometime between the first and 

second site visits. Second, due to cuts to outside funding that was paying for half 

their salaries, the mental health specialists were unable to go full-time at the target 

schools under the School District Grant. Third, due to relatively informal 

interactions, the mental health specialists were not able to fully coordinate with 

Futures staff at the schools in order to discuss their respective work functions, 

specific youth, and who might benefit from mental health services. 

	 In the third year of the grant, BCPSS acted quickly to provide missing gang 

prevention and intervention services in the target schools and in the community 

by contracting with New Visions Youth Services (NVYS), a CBO led by a local 

pastor and businessman who spent time in a federal prison. NVYS began 

providing climate management and intensive services for at-risk youth during the 

2009–2010 school year at three target schools: Douglass, Forest Park, and the 

Dukeland campus.4

 The target group is gang members or students who are 

considered potential gang members, and those who are considered “tough” and 

hard to reach. NVYS staff, who have expertise on local gang culture, get a list of
 

these students to serve from the principal/administration. Key to NVYS’ 

approach is ensuring that the school buys in to the NVYS program and that 

NVYS staff is well integrated into the school.
 

	 NVYS was also contracted by BCPSS to lead an effort to develop a communitywide gang strategy on the west side of the city, so that prevention and intervention 

services for youth/gang members are coordinated. This strategy is an attempt to 

mirror the work that is currently underway on the eastside of the city, where a 

police lieutenant is leading an effort to bring together businesses, CBOs, and 

Since the last site visit, BCPSS closed Lemmel Middle School (one of the target schools) because of low 

enrollment and underachievement. BCPSS opened the Dukeland Campus in its place, a facility that houses three 

alternative high schools. 

F-4 

4 
faith-based organizations to participate in a task force that will develop a 

community development strategy that focuses on reducing gangs. 

	 Mentoring services have always featured prominently into Baltimore's grant 

design. However, these services have figured less prominently in the 

implementation phase. BCPSS was originally going to subcontract with Big 

Brothers and Big Sisters to provide 25 enrolled participants at each middle 

school with mentors. Mentoring had not begun by the time of the second site visit 

because BCPSS had to reissue a new RFP in order to adhere to the district’s RFP 

procedures. Ultimately, Community Law in Action (CLIA) was chosen as the 

new provider and will serve 100 youth. As of January 2010, CLIA had matched 

85 out of 100 youth with mentors. 

Finally, another partner is a consultant from the Johns Hopkins University Urban Health 

Institute, who worked closely with BCPSS on previous projects to serve at-risk students. For the 

purposes of the School District Grant, this consultant attended planning meetings, assisted with 

the hiring process for a new program coordinator, and connected BCPSS with key required 

partners, such as the district attorney. The consultant also identified connections between the 

School District Grant and the city’s work, particularly under the Office of Crime Control and 

Prevention. 

Key Outcomes 

One significant partner- and system-level outcome from the School District Grant was a new 

arrangement allowing BCPSS, MOED and DJS to share youth data. Data-sharing challenges and 

processes emerged as BCPSS and MOED were trying to get DJS to verify youth’s offender 

status so that they could verify their eligibility for grant services. Given confidentiality and 

privacy concerns, DJS developed a waiver form that students must sign in order to receive grant 

services. The waiver allows the various partners to share data on the youth’s arrest records, 

school information, and progress in school district programs. 

With regard to sustainability, BCPPS is attempting to plan for the continuation of core 

partnerships, though a number of these center on particular program components that are heavily 

or wholly dependent on grant contract funds. Since the district is facing severe budget cuts, 

many of these partnerships are likely to dissolve with the end of the grant. However, services 

from NVYS will continue in the schools due to a grant that the district secured from the Open 

Society Institute. To date, no alternate funding sources have been identified to continue 

providing mental health services at the same level supported by the School District Grant, though 

mental health specialists will likely continue working at the schools at a lower capacity. 

F-5 
 

 

Chicago Public Schools (CPS) 

Initiative Name: Project Youth Engaged in School (YES) 

Partnership Model: Centralized 

Capsule Summary: Chicago Public Schools’ (CPS’) Project YES is a dropout prevention effort 

with two main target groups and service components: (1) incoming ninth graders at six 

traditional high schools who are served by the YES Afterschool Program, and (2) youth 

offenders transitioning out of detention (whose home school is one of the six traditional high 

schools) who are served by the CBO, Banner Transitional Schools. 

Chicago Public Schools’ Project YES represents a relatively centralized model of partnership 

that stems partly from the district’s style of administration and service provision. The fourperson grant team at CPS provides oversight for nearly the entire grant. CPS also provides 

nearly all of the grant services itself, rather than relying on a team of subcontractors as other 

grantees have done. The major exception is Banner Schools, a CBO that operates transitional 

high schools, alternative schools, and therapeutic day schools for low-credit and overage youth 

and youth offenders. CPS contracted with Banner Schools late in the grant initiative5

 to launch 

Banner South and Banner North Schools for youth transitioning from the Cook County Juvenile 

Detention Center back to their home schools. At Banner Schools, students receive academic 

remediation, credit retrieval, and case management and employment services, but cannot earn 

their GEDs or diplomas. Rather, students are expected to return to their home schools after they 

earn sufficient credits to resume their coursework. 

Workforce Development Partnerships 

Unlike other grantees that have formal, subcontracting arrangements with the local workforce 

investment system, CPS established relatively informal relationships with two CBOs that offer 

some degree of workforce training. 

 For the six traditional high school sites, Chicago originally planned to partner 

with the CBO Afterschool Matters, an arts-based organization that connects 

students to a variety of recreational- and work-based programs, including paid 

internships. CPS did not provide funding for this partnership and due to severe 

budget cuts at Afterschool Matters, this CBO was ultimately able to provide 

Original project plans called for youth offenders to be served at the Nancy B. Jefferson Alternative School, 

within the Cook County Juvenile Detention Center. However, unstable conditions at the school called for a 

revision of project plans; Banner Schools was not contracted until 2009 and has received a project extension 

until December 2010. 

F-6 

5 
services at only one of the six schools. For workforce training at the other five 

traditional school sites, the same career exploration curriculum used by the 

Orange County Public Schools grantee was implemented during the 2009–2010 

school year, though it is delivered by internal school staff rather than by a 

contracted partner. 

	 Workforce services at the two Banner Schools were not implemented until 2009 

by A Knock At Midnight (AKAM), a subcontracted CBO that works with youth 

on resume building, career exploration, mock interviews, computer literacy and 

other skill-building activities. AKAM provides the teacher and curriculum, 

though the Banner educational teachers are also present. 

While AKAM has conducted an assessment of the local job market, internship and job placement 

program components are still under development. As with the YES program in the traditional 

high schools, Banner Schools hopes to formally partner with other CBOs and local businesses in 

the future in order to create these paid opportunities for students. 

Juvenile Justice Partnerships 

CPS does not have a traditional out-of-school youth component for this grant, but instead focuses 

on serving youth offenders leaving detention and returning to their home schools. This transition 

process is often challenging due to schools’ sometimes reluctance to re-enroll youth offenders, 

inadequate communication between schools and detention centers about when and how these 

students will return, as well as incomplete documentation (e.g., academic records, re-enrollment 

forms, etc.) 

CPS does not have a formal MOU or subcontract with the local Juvenile Justice System (JJS) for 

its effort to serve youth offenders in transition. The partnership between these two entities has 

centered mostly on co-located staff and data-sharing at the Cook County Juvenile Detention 

Center and high-level information sharing at regular meetings between CPS and JJS. Highlights 

of CPS’ links with JJS include the following: 

	 The School District Grant allowed CPS to hire co-located staff at the Cook 

County Juvenile Detention Center—a YES Counselor, a Re-Enrollment 

Specialist, and two Juvenile Justice Engagement Specialists (JJES). CPS’s close 

relationship with the detention center allows for the two entities to share data and 

for the detention center to help YES staff identify and enroll eligible youth at the 

Banner Schools. Particularly critical to the YES staff is the ability to identify and 

recruit eligible youth before they transition out of detention. Because youth spend 

various lengths of time in detention (depending on their court dates), YES staff 

rely on the detention center to alert them of youth’s scheduled departure dates. 

	 The two JJESs not only interface between the juvenile detention center and the 

Banner Schools, but also between the Banner Schools and the traditional home
 

schools to which the students eventually return. With dedicated staff overseeing 

F-7 
 

 

 

the students’ transition from both a case-management and data-sharing 

perspective, students can return to their home schools with the appropriate notice 

and information, and thus receive the specialized support they need from the 

grant-funded Student Engagement Specialists (SESs) located there.6 

	 The Banner School model also affords the opportunity for CPS and juvenile 

probation to think differently about how probation officers’ caseloads might be 

consolidated so that all the YES students do not have different officers. At one 

point during the grant period, one probation officer had five Banner School 

students on his caseload. This allowed the officer to spend more time and be 

more involved with the students and the school, thus facilitating more 

coordination between probation and CPS. The JJESs noted, however, that the 

strength of their partnership with probation varied by individual officer, and was 

more likely to succeed if the probation officer had more of a case-management 

approach than a compliance approach in working with youth. 

	 The School District Grant has also led YES staff to partner with the JJS through 

joint participation on a task force called the Community Partnership Team, aimed 

at improving relationships between CPS and the court system and coordinating 

the transition process between detention and school. Participation on the task 

force has led to increased communication between CPS and the Juvenile Justice 

System and a better understanding of CPS processes by the courts and juvenile 

probation office. The YES staff hope this improved understanding will lead to 

increased referrals of eligible students to the Banner Schools and successful 

transitions to traditional high schools, thus helping to reduce the number of youth 

re-arrests due to parole violations. 

Law Enforcement Partnerships 

CPS has not developed a formalized partnership with law enforcement for the purposes of the 

School District Grant. Prior to the grant, CPS and law enforcement were both involved in 

broader, citywide efforts to reduce violence in the schools that led to police officers being 

assigned to all schools. More recently, YES staff have been involved in relatively high-level 

meetings with law enforcement, as the following examples show: 

	 The YES Student Engagement and Community Outreach Manager meets weekly 

with the Chicago Police Department, CPS’ Chief of Security, and other 

community agencies so that all can share information about the latest gang 

developments in Chicago. 

	 The YES Student Engagement and Community Outreach Manager and the 

director of CPS’s Office of Safety and Security have also been working with law 

enforcement on several task forces at high-need schools to promote safe passage 

for students traveling to and from school. Respondents felt that these task forces 

SESs are responsible for coordinating all YES activities in the schools, including provision of intensive case 

management services for target students. 

F-8 

6 
 

have improved communication between partners and their collaborative responses 

to challenges in the community, such as ensuring a police presence at a local park 

so youth could safely spend time there after school. 

As a former police officer and gang expert, the YES Student Engagement and Community 

Outreach Manager was expected to serve as a critical link between CPS and law enforcement for 

the purposes of this grant. Although this link was ultimately meant to inform the work of the 

Student Engagement Specialists by keeping them informed of recent gang developments, it is 

unclear to what extent this link had its intended impact. 

Other Partnerships 

During the third year of the grant, CPS began a partnership with Children’s Memorial Hospital in 

Chicago to determine how the program can be part of a larger effort to incorporate mental health 

services into the school system—e.g., by training the SESs on the hospital’s mental health 

framework. This partnership is currently in development. 

Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) 

Initiative Name: Futures First Initiative (FFI) 

Partnership Model: CBO-partner involvement 

Capsule Summary: Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) has implemented the Futures First 

Initiative, which includes funding for Transition High School, a new school for students 

transferring out of detention, as well as services in five traditional high schools for at-risk 

students. Both programs include case management, academic support, and employment 

services. The grant approach consists of the use of School-Based Teams (SBT) as well as 

contracted life skills and enrichment services. 

MPS’s partnership model for the Futures First Initiative is most distinguished by its strong 

relationship with CBOs as service providers, as well as a relationship with the local workforce 

investment system that has been substantial in nature, even from the initial design and proposal 

stage. 

Workforce Development Partnerships 

MPS’ partnership with the Milwaukee Area Workforce Investment Board (MAWIB) extended 

from design to implementation, and was formalized through a subcontract to provide co-located 

staff and services to students at the target schools. Respondents considered MPS’ partnership 

with MAWIB to be the strongest partnership for this grant. Some of the highlights from this 

partnership include the following: 

F-9 
 

 

 

	 The MAWIB worked closely with MPS during the School District Grant 

proposal-writing process. MAWIB wrote the employment and training section of 

the proposal and was initially slated to be a partner to MPS in the management of 

the overall grant. However, a required revision of the proposal led to MPS being 

the coordinator and MAWIB the provider of employment training and placement 

services—a revision that required some period of adjustment in terms of expected 

roles.
 

	 Due to a lengthy contractual process, MAWIB was not formally on board as 

MPS’ workforce partner until the time of the second site visit. As part of its 

contracted role, MAWIB is providing a Youth Career Development Supervisor 

and five Youth Career Development Specialists (YCDSs) to be a part of the 

School-Based Teams7 located at each of the five traditional schools.8 These 

specialists are responsible for providing employment readiness and training 

activities to in-school youth, as well as placing them in paid internships or jobs.
 

	 The YCDS team leader, who is funded full-time by the School District Grant and 

is part of the grant’s core leadership, acts as a liaison between MPS and MAWIB 

and attends all meetings of the Coordinating Committee, where members of 

partner agencies and others meet to provide guidance and problem-solving 

support related to the grant. 

The challenges of this partnership have been related to intake, confidentiality laws, and 

scheduling. YCDSs are not involved in the FFI student intake process and students may be 

passed on to them without accompanying paperwork. YCDSs may therefore unnecessarily 

repeat initial assessments of youth skills. Confidentiality laws have also presented an 

information hurdle, in that school staff are prevented from sharing youth data with the YCDSs 

that might help the latter to better serve the youth (e.g., needing to know a youth’s sexual offense 

history to avoid placing him in inappropriate employment). Finally, there have been challenges 

related to scheduling activities among students, schools, grant-funded staff, and partners. This 

has been partially addressed by a shared calendar in Microsoft Outlook and closer relationships 

between the YCDSs and teachers. 

Juvenile Justice Partnerships 

Although the Juvenile Justice System (JJS) was not involved in the design or planning for FFI, 

the Children’s Court Center of the Milwaukee County Department of Health and Human 

Services (DHHS) is considered a critical potential partner, given that 85 percent of the Center’s 

7	 The School-Based Teams coordinate and provide academic, employment and supportive services to targeted 

students at the five traditional schools. They are also responsible for identifying potential youth to be a part of 

FFI. 

8	 Two of the five YCDS were released during the grant extension period. 

 F-10 
 

youth are MPS students. For FFI, it was anticipated that the Children’s Court Center would have 

the primary responsibility of identifying and referring youth involved with the JJS to FFI (as well 

as to other, non-FFI programs and supports). For those referred to FFI, the Children’s Court 

Center was to share responsibility for case management/service planning as well as outcome 

information. However, the actual level of collaboration between MPS and the JJS for the 

purposes of this grant has been limited. 

According to respondents, the main challenges to implementing the planned partnership are 

related to the logistics of targeting and serving youth enrolled in FFI. It is not necessarily clear 

which specific groups of youth the JJS should be targeting for FFI (e.g., youth with particular 

offense levels) nor what specific process should be used for determining those groups (e.g., by 

consulting with parole officers). JJS and MPS also did not specify which entity was responsible 

for providing which services to youth, and how information was to be shared between them. 

Thus far, partnership between MPS and JJS has consisted of informal communication and 

interaction: occasional JJS participation in monthly FFI meetings, as well as meetings with MPS 

on an as-needed basis; FFI’s project director includes JJS representatives on her weekly email 

updates; and JJS alerts the FFI project director when a youth is placed in an FFI school. When a 

JJS youth is placed in an FFI school, FFI staff will also coordinate with the youth’s probation 

officer to ensure that the youth is receiving case management and other necessary services. 

Law Enforcement Partnerships 

As a partner, the Milwaukee Police Department (MPD) brought considerable assets to the table: 

previous experience working with MPS (such as providing School Resource Officers to be 

located within the school district) and expertise in working with adjudicated youth. MPD also 

had experience working as part of another large-scale, local collaborative designed to reduce 

violence: the Safe Streets Common Ground Initiative.9 Schools within police districts two and 

five are a part of this Initiative, as well as a focus of the School District Grant. 

However, despite the fact that the FFI grant coordinator is a former MPD police chief, MPS’s 

relationship with MPD was limited for the purposes of the School District Grant. Originally, 

MPS’ partnership with the Milwaukee Police Department (MPD) was intended to achieve three 

goals: to locate two School Resource Officers (SROs) full-time within FFI schools in order to 

mentor students and build relationships with school staff; to develop a notification system that 

This local initiative was implemented in 2006 as part of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Project Safe 

Neighborhoods program to address gang violence in Milwaukee. Funding was targeted toward two police 

districts where gang crime and associated violence are most severe. 

F-11 

9 
would alert FFI staff when a FFI student has had contact with the MPD; and to provide gang and 

crime data, as well as expertise on the types of services needed by youth exiting detention. Thus 

far, only one of the FFI schools is served by SROs and the notification system has not been 

developed. It is unclear to what extent MPD has provided the expected gang/crime data and 

youth-serving advice, as part of the regular Coordinating Committee meetings or in any other 

way. 

Other Partnerships 

A more notable characteristic of MPS’s partnership structure is the strong role played by CBOs 

in the implementation (but not the design) of the School District Grant. MPS contracted with a 

number of CBOs to provide youth with a range of academic, life skills, supportive, and 

enrichment services—including conflict resolution, restorative justice, self-esteem building, 

adventure therapy, and gang/violence prevention activities. Key CBO partners include the 

following: 

	 New Leaf Coaching is responsible for providing an experiential learning 

component by identifying partners who can provide youth with personal growth, 

leadership development, educational, and therapeutic outdoor activities. 

	 Center for Neighborhood Enterprises provides youth who can serve as advisors 

and role models. They also provide referrals to educational and employment 

opportunities, seasonal recreation, court advocacy services, prison awareness 

trips, and laser tattoo removal.
 

	 Urban Underground is responsible for providing leadership and life skills 

training to youth enrolled at Transition High School. Workshop topics include 

sexual education, communication, and healthy decision-making. 

	 Ambassadors for Peace teaches youth peer mediation and non-violent conflict 

resolution at Transition High School. 

	 Flood the Hood with Dreams uses poetry, spoken word, and journaling to foster 

youth’s personal development. 

Respondents indicated that youth are extremely positive about the services provided by CBOs (in 

particular by Urban Underground and Flood the Hood with Dreams) and that the CBO providers 

are among the strongest components of the School District Grant. One youth in particular stated 

that Urban Underground and Flood the Hood with Dreams are the reasons he stayed at Transition 

High School, that they were more beneficial to him than the academic classes, and that they 

reduced his inclination to fight with his school peers since the CBO programs provided an 

opportunity to know them so well on a personal level. 

Finally, MPS enjoyed a partnership with the City of Milwaukee, primarily during the design and 

planning phase. The City’s Health Department was responsible for writing a portion of the 

 F-12 
workforce section of the FFI proposal and helped MPS identify partners to address gang and 

crime issues. A representative of the Mayor’s Office serves on the Coordinating Committee and 

helps identify common goals between the School District Grant and the Safe Streets Common 

Ground Initiative. 

Orange County Public Schools (OCPS) 

Initiative Name: Youth Enrichment Services (YES) 

Partnership Model: Fast-track 

Capsule Summary: Orange County Public Schools’ (OCPS’) goals for the YES initiative are to 

reduce the number of juveniles engaged with the Juvenile Justice System; increase the 

percentage of students who complete high school; and provide extra support to youth struggling 

with academic achievement. In order to provide individualized attention and care to these 

youth, OCPS-funded staff—including the Intervention Specialists—provide counseling and 

supportive services at four middle schools and four high schools, the Positive Pathways 

Transition Center, the Juvenile Assessment Center, and at recreational centers within target 

communities. 

Relative to other grantees, Orange County Public Schools enjoyed a much quicker start-up of 

grant services. The district’s success in this area was due in part to strong, pre-existing 

relationships with a number of the key grant partners. This foundation allowed OCPS and its 

partners to fast-track from grant planning to grant implementation. 

Workforce Development Partnerships 

OCPS has MOUs with three key agencies in order to provide workforce development services to 

both in-school and out-of-school youth: Workforce Central Florida, the City of Orlando, and the 

Metropolitan Orlando Urban League. 

	 Two job recruiters from Workforce Central Florida (WCF), the local workforce 

investment agency, are serving youth ages 18–21 at the downtown Jackson 

Recreation Center in the troubled Parramore District of the city. Available 

services include career assessments, resume writing, interviewing skills, customer 

service certification, and job placement. This arrangement is a mobile One-Stop 

Center of sorts and represents a new tie between WCF and the City of Orlando. 

The recreation center is operated by the city, and the job recruiters are supposed 

to coordinate with the grant-funded outreach coordinator from Parramore Kidz 

Zone (a community-based, crime-reduction and revitalization project led by the 

Mayor’s Office). WCF and the city have built a strong partnership through this 

grant. WCF has become very integrated into the recreation center by participating 

in a range of center events and activities, and the city has provided WCF with inkind space to expand its program at the center. Challenges in the OCPS-WCF 

F-13 
 

 

partnership included different agency philosophies on the provision of student 

stipends. While such stipends are common in youth workforce programs, OCPS 

initially refused to allow them because of the potentially negative implications of 

paying youth to learn, as well as tax issues. Another challenge was the extent to 

which WCF (in partnership with the city outreach coordinator) was able to recruit 

and serve youth from the target Parramore District.10 

	 Although very few employment services are provided for in-school students as 

part of the School District Grant, WCF played a valuable role in providing the 

intervention specialists with well-received trainings on available workforce 

services and supports for youth, as well as a resource guide on how to connect 

youth to these programs. Some intervention specialists—as well as groups of 

their OCPS students—were also given tours of the local One-Stop Career Centers. 

WCF has also helped connect in-school youth (those served by the intervention 

specialists) with special opportunities, including a tour of Lockheed Martin. 

	 Metropolitan Orlando Urban League (MOUL) is another core workforce 

partner that provides job orientation training (and GED) services to out-of-school 

youth, with a specific focus on gang-involved youth and/or youth with arrest 

records. MOUL provides two job developers responsible for placing youth in 

subsidized internships and on-the-job-training at local CBOs or FBOs while they 

also work on educational goals. 

Juvenile Justice Partnerships 

OCPS enjoyed a strong, pre-existing relationship with the Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ). 

Both were core members of the Juvenile Justice Commission (JJC), which aims to increase 

collaborative planning and coordination among agencies that work with at-risk youth. OCPS 

maintains full-time staff at the Juvenile Courthouse who work with DJJ staff on truancy issues, 

coordinate with judges, and provide school-related information for adjudicated youth. The 

Juvenile Justice Liaison at OCPS interfaces with DJJ and alerts school staff when students are 

arrested or when offenders are transitioning back to their home schools. (A pre-existing interagency agreement allows data on juvenile offenders to be shared between OCPS and DJJ.) 

OCPS also operates a school at the youth detention center. As part of the School District Grant 

specifically, OCPS partners with DJJ in the following ways: 

	 The grant funds an OCPS guidance counselor to be located at the Juvenile 

Assessment Center (where youth are first taken upon arrest). The guidance 

counselor informs DJJ staff about youth’s academic status and counsels 

youth/families about how to return to an educational pathway. 

	 Though only partially funded by the School District Grant, the launching of the 

Positive Pathways Transition Center (Transition Center) is considered a banner 

10	 The city outreach coordinator worked to develop relationships with local employers and did place 10 students 

with Publix Grocery Stores in on-the-job training with the hope of permanent hire. 

 F-14 
 

 

accomplishment and represents a heightened level of partnership with DJJ.11 The 

Transition Center provides a critical support for youth offenders who are leaving 

detention facilities after a period of six to twelve months. The Transition Center 

allows them to either earn their GED/degree or earn the credits needed to 

transition back to their home schools. There are a few remaining challenges, 

however: asking judges to stipulate Transition Center attendance as mandatory in 

youth’s court orders; clarifying the specific target population so that it is better 

suited to the resources and limitations of the Transition Center (e.g., the center is 

a low-security environment without behavioral specialists); and addressing high 

staff turnover. 

	 OCPS and DJJ have attended various trainings together. For example, OCPS held 

a training on various academic classifications and their implications for students 

(e.g., what it means for a youth to have an IEP, or which factors lead to a youth 

being classified as emotionally handicapped). OCPS has also benefited from DJJ 

trainings on such topics such as foster care youth and gang-involved youth that 

have helped school district staff understand the unique needs of at-risk/youth 

offender populations. Now whenever one of the agencies holds a training or 

professional development opportunity that involves a youth population of mutual 

interest, then staff from the other agency are invited as well, free of charge. 

Law Enforcement Partnerships 

Prior to the School District Grant, OCPS enjoyed a positive, long-standing relationship with both 

the Orange County Sheriff’s Department (OCSD) and the Orlando Police Department (OPD). 

The pre-existing relationship with OPD was due, in part, to the presence of SROs on all the 

OCPS campuses.12 OPD and OCSD were also core members on the Juvenile Justice 

Commission, along with OCPS. For the specific purpose of the School District Grant, OCPS had 

MOUs with the two law enforcement partners to serve the following functions: 

	 The grant funds three deputies from OCSD and one officer from OPD to meet 

with and provide support to youth transitioning back to the target schools from 

detention. In this role, officers were to serve as a link between youth/families, the 

Juvenile Justice System, and the schools—where the officers were to work closely 

with the target schools’ SROs and intervention specialists. 

11	 Creating the Transition Center was one of the core recommendations from the earlier work of the Juvenile 

Justice Commission, of which both DJJ and OCPS were lead members. 

12	 Though not funded by the School District Grant, SROs work with grant-funded intervention specialists at the 

target schools on bullying-prevention programs, mentoring programs, and de-escalating student conflicts. SROs 

also help intervention specialists learn how to speak to students about gangs. 

F-15 
 

 

	 While there was some initial lack of clarity on the officers’ roles under the grant,13
 

the OPD officer works full-time at two target schools—meeting with students and 

working closely with the intervention specialists and SROs. The OCSD deputies 

initially spent most of their time at the detention center and checked in weekly 

with SROs/target schools by phone. After the second site visit, the OCSD 

deputies began visiting target schools twice a week and filing weekly activity 

logs. They also occasionally are asked by intervention specialists to help make 

house calls at students’ homes, or to quietly arrest students who have violated 

probation or committed some offense. The OCSD deputies also are continuing 

broader-level work in the youth crime division of the Sheriff’s Department—e.g., 

addressing truancy issues and working to reduce gang violence and juvenile 

crime. At the time of the third site visit, only one of the three deputy positions 

was filled.
 

Other Partnerships 

OCPS’s most significant other partnership for this grant is with the City of Orlando. As 

previously described, as part of the School District Grant, OCPS has an MOU with the city to 

support an outreach worker based at the Jackson Recreation Center in the Parramore District. 

Under the grant, the outreach worker is charged with working with out-of-school youth, though 

he works with in-school youth as well. Besides reaching out to youth, it is not clear what the 

formal strategy is in terms of the outreach worker formally connecting youth to particular 

services (e.g., to WCF’s workforce services). Nevertheless, the outreach worker is unanimously 

viewed as a critical, positive role model and has successfully attracted Parramore District youth 

to the recreation center, in large part because of a basketball league he started. The outreach 

worker has also engaged in other successful activities for youth, including holding a college fair 

at the recreation center and accompanying youth on college tours. With regard to in-school 

youth, the outreach worker has formed relationships with the intervention specialists at the target 

middle schools and has connected some youth with tutoring services offered by the Boys and 

Girls Club at the recreation center. While the OCPS-city partnership is viewed very positively, it 

has not significantly altered or strengthened the relationship between these two agencies in a 

structural way. 

Key Outcomes 

The key partner- and system-level outcomes are clustered around two critical partnerships: that 

between OCPS and WCF, and that between OCPS and DJJ. 

13 Turnover in Sheriff Department deputies, as well as a revision of original grant plans, contributed to this lack of 

clarity on roles. 

 F-16 
In addition to being very pleased with WCF’s services and youth outcomes under the School 

District Grant, OCPS administrators and line staff have gained critical knowledge of WCF 

programs and strategies for serving youth, and WCF employees have gained a broader 

perspective on youth issues by working with a broader youth population than they are 

accustomed to. As one local respondent noted, 

[WCF has] typically served an older youth population. This grant has 

provided them the opportunity to work with 18-year-olds and that has 

changed their perspective on youth. They have also provided support to 

in-school youth, because they have worked closely with the Intervention 

Specialists. 

The grant has also led the staff of the two agencies to form strong interpersonal ties, which 

appear to be critical to successful inter-agency partnerships in Orlando. In fact, stakeholders 

consider the strengthened relationship between OCPS and WCF to be one of the most significant 

outcomes of the School District Grant. OCPS now views WCF as more of a working partner in 

serving Orlando’s vulnerable in-school and out-of-school youth populations. However, despite 

the strengthened ties between the two agencies, the actual work of the partnership is not 

necessarily sustainable. Although all partners would like the work of WCF to continue at the 

Jackson Recreation Center, WCF has made it clear that this will not occur, due to a lack of 

resources after the end of the grant. 

The School District Grant allowed OCPS and DJJ to deepen a relationship that was already 

strong when the grant began. This occurred partly through mutual education; for example, joint 

trainings allowed for each agency to better understand the other. The Transition Center in 

particular allowed the two agencies to really come together over a common concern with youth 

coming out of detention and returning to school. While the two agencies might have previously 

shared data—such as sending over requested attendance information—now there are more sitdown conversations, joint planning, and coordination on how to best transition youth. OCPS is 

participating more consistently in commitment hearings, and OCPS and DJJ are more 

coordinated in working with parents. For example, probation officers are now participating more 

in parent-teacher conferences. The Transition Center is expected to continue as a primary 

mechanism for the OCPS-DJJ partnership, as the center will be sustained after the grant with 

Title I funds. However, the OCPS counselor position at the Juvenile Assessment Center will be 

discontinued due to lack of funding. 

F-17 
 

 

 

School District of Philadelphia (SDP) 

Initiative Name: Project U-Turn Expansion 

Partnership Model: Complex 

Capsule Summary: The School District of Philadelphia (SDP) is implementing multiple 

programs to expand Project U-Turn, an initiative to address the city’s high dropout rate. For inschool youth, the district created North Philadelphia Community High School (an accelerated 

school serving court-involved, dropout, overage and under-credit youth) and implemented a 

Learning to Work strategy at this school, Overbrook High School, and University High School. 

Implemented at six high schools is the OASIS program, which uses an accelerated school 

model to target overage, under-credit ninth graders at a “school within a school.” Out-of-school 

youth are being served by the Bridge Program housed at the E3

 Power Center (which helps 

skill- and credit-deficient youth attain the competencies needed to enter an educational 

pathway), the Occupational Skills Pathway Programs for older and formerly incarcerated youth, 

and the newly launched Student Re-engagement Center (which provides various services, 

including assessments, to connect out-of-school youth to an appropriate educational/Project UTurn pathway). 

The linkages formed under the School District Grant by the School District of Philadelphia 

represent a highly complex model of partnership. This is due to a number of factors, including 

the fact that SDP contracts out the majority of grant services to a significant number of CBOs,14 

which, in turn, often provide services for more than one major service component and/or to more 

than one of the grant’s service sites. The contracted partners have also developed various 

relationships amongst themselves, rather than manifesting the more typical partnership 

arrangement in which the school district is at the center, or hub, of otherwise unconnected 

partners. Philadelphia’s effort also represents an expansion, as well as an extension, of previous, 

large-scale efforts—namely Project U-Turn and the Re-Entry Transition Initiative–Welcome 

Return Assessment Process (RETI-WRAP).15 The district’s previous involvement with these 

initiatives introduces additional layers and players to the partnership model. 

14 The Philadelphia School District has such strong unions, that it is easier to contract out to CBOs for services 

rather than try to get district staff to perform functions outside of union contracts. 

15	 Project U-Turn is a dropout prevention collaborative made up of district officials, the Department of Human 

Services, the Juvenile Justice System and other key organizations. RETI-WRAP is a collaborative that provides 

transitional support and education and workforce development activities for youth returning to the public school 

system from residential delinquent placement. By bringing together representatives from the SDP, Juvenile 

Probation, Department of Human Services, Behavioral Health Services and the Defender Association, the 

program works to ensure youth receive a full range of supports (including academic, health, mental health, life 

skills, and social services). 

 F-18 
 

Workforce Development Partnerships 

SDP’s workforce development partnerships in particular embody the type of complexity 

described above in terms of the number of organizations involved and the types of 

interrelationships between them. The workforce development partnerships are also the most 

developed of SDP’s partnerships for the School District Grant. 

	 Philadelphia Youth Network (PYN) is a major workforce player in Philadelphia 

and a major partner of the School District Grant. PYN manages WIA and TANF 

youth funds in the city, leads the city’s workforce development system, and 

oversees the Project U-Turn collaborative. For the School District Grant in 

particular, PYN convenes stakeholders, oversees grant implementation, and 

navigates the various levels of partnerships involved with the School District 

Grant. PYN also manages the subcontractors for the Learning to Work and 

Bridge Programs, manages the Occupational Skills Pathways Programs (OSPP), 

and manages the grant data collection and outcomes tracking system, which it 

also designed (this task involves monitoring partners’ performance outcomes and 

training them in the data system). PYN also played a significant role in the grantwriting and initial design process; for example, PYN visited a LTW program in 

New York that served as a model for the School District Grant’s LTW program 

component. 

	 Three CBOs are responsible for implementing the LTW program at three school 

sites: Philadelphia Academies Inc. (at Overbrook HS); Education Works (at 

University City HS); and Congresso (at North Philadelphia Community High 

School). 16 The LTW strategy partners a CBO with an educational provider to 

enhance core academic learning with employment, internships, career and college 

planning, as well as additional support services, for under-credit and at-risk 

students. The CBOs provide staff and career/job readiness skills to the youth in 

the LTW program, identify local businesses that meet students’ career interests, 

and collaborate with other organizations, universities and companies to provide 

additional resources and services to youth. 

	 SDP also partnered with Communities in Schools to implement the OASIS 

program at six selected high schools throughout the district. The OASIS program 

uses an accelerated school model to target overage, under-credit ninth graders at a 

“school within a school.” (At two OASIS sites—Overbrook HS and University 

City HS—the LTW program has been merged with OASIS). 

	 For the Bridge Program, SDP is partnering with the E3 Power Center (West 

Branch)17 to provide education and workforce services to 16- to 21-year-old outof-school youth reading below the sixth grade level and in need of skill 

16	 Congresso staff reported that they have strong relationships with employers in many different sectors—arts, 

small businesses, non-profits—so they can cater the internships to student interest. 

17 E3 Power Centers are vocational training centers for youth ages 16–21 years. 

F-19 
 

 

remediation, credit attainment, and supportive services. Although the School 

District Grant does not fund employment services for youth enrolled in the Bridge 

Program, workforce services are organized around a 12-week Job Readiness 

Program that the E3

 Center already has in place. The E3 Power Center also offers 

youth a wide range of education and workforce services. The implementation of 

the Bridge Program builds off these services while also offering additional 

workforce services, such as internships. The goals of the Bridge Program and the 

E3

 Power Center are closely aligned as they both have a specific focus on 

educating and providing workforce skills to out-of-school youth. 

	 PYN is responsible for managing the OSPP for older, formerly incarcerated youth 

currently enrolled in Philadelphia’s E3 Power Centers. Since fall 2009, PYN has 

contracted with the Community College of Philadelphia and NPower18 on a 

pay-per-slot basis to provide youth with automotive, hospitality industry, and 

information technology training. Participating youth who do not already have 

their GEDs must simultaneously attend GED classes at the E3

 Power Center. 

	 Lehigh Center and Technical Institute is a workforce partner that helped 

develop the Occupational Skills Pathways Program. The Institute provided 

technical assistance to the teachers and schools where the OSPP’s credentialbased programs would be housed (e.g., it helped implement a system that teachers 

could use to determine student achievement and mastery of skills). 

Juvenile Justice Partnerships 

SDP’s partnerships with the Juvenile Justice System (JJS) have revolved around discussing best 

practices in serving court-involved youth and referring youth to appropriate programs of the 

School District Grant. 

	 SDP worked closely with representatives from the Philadelphia Reintegration 

Initiative19 and Philadelphia Juvenile Probation to capitalize on their expertise in 

working with court-involved youth and to draft portions of the original grant 

proposal. Both are represented on the partner steering committee.
 

	 SDP also works closely with representatives from the Philadelphia Reintegration 

Initiative and Philadelphia Juvenile Probation to identify youth eligible for grant 

services and to transition them from the Juvenile Justice System to target schools 

and programs, such as the Bridge Program and North Philadelphia Community 

High School. 

	 After a scaling-back of services by the Philadelphia Re-Integration Initiative 

eliminated services for incarcerated youth after their release, SDP was only able 

to identify juvenile offenders for grant programs/services following their release 

18	 NPower PA is an affiliate of the NPower Network, a national network of local nonprofits that help other 

nonprofits use technology to better serve their communities. 

19	 Philadelphia’s Reintegration Initiative is a program launched by the Philadelphia Family Court and the 

Department of Human Services to support youth as they transition out of residential placement. 

 F-20 
through the 10-day RETI-WRAP program. Out-of-school youth who have been 

involved with the JJS are most likely to be connected to one of the grant programs 

by visiting the Re-Engagement Center. 

	 With regard to data sharing, SDP partners with Philadelphia Juvenile Probation to 

obtain recidivism data through a shared spreadsheet of grant program enrollees 

and with Division of Juvenile Justice Services (DJJS) to secure incarceration 

information for youth enrolled in grant services. SDP also worked with JJS 

representatives from residential treatment facilities to develop a common 

assessment tool that would help ensure that youth exiting detention and entering 

one of the grant-funded programs would not have to repeat courses taken while in 

detention. Finally, SDP is also working to sign a critical memorandum of 

understanding with DJJS’ Court and Community Services and the Department of 

Human Services regarding the sharing youth case management data. 

	 Through steering committee meetings and regular phone calls, SDP partners with 

JJS representatives—namely Philadelphia Juvenile Probation and Philadelphia 

Re-Integration Initiative—to design effective ways to serve youth exiting juvenile 

detention and to discuss which grant-funded program would be appropriate for 

particular youth in the RETI-WRAP program. 

Law Enforcement Partnerships 

Law enforcement has not had a major role in the School District Grant. While SDP originally 

planned to work closely with the Philadelphia Police Department to obtain necessary information 

on gang-involved youth, bureaucratic obstacles with regard to data-sharing led SDP to look 

internally—to the Office of School Climate and Safety—to provide gang identification training 

to program staff and to serve as the grant’s link to law enforcement, given the Office’s preexisting relationship with the police department. 

The weak role of law enforcement appears to be a missed opportunity, particularly given the 

potential overlap between the School District Grant and the Youth Violence Reduction 

Partnership (YVRP)—an effort by an array of criminal justice, city, and non-profit groups to 

lower homicide rates in the most violent sections of Philadelphia by focusing on youth under age 

25 who are at the highest risk of killing or being killed. The YVRP was initiated in 1999 in one 

of Philadelphia’s police districts and is now active in approximately five districts. Because 

YVRP had a difficult time focusing on academic and career opportunities for youth, it could 

have benefited from partnering with SDP. SDP, in turn, could have benefited from YVRP/police 

district referrals. 

Other Partnerships 

Philadelphia benefits from a range of other partnerships with city agencies and CBOs. 

	 SDP partners with the City of Philadelphia to supplement district staff at the ReEngagement Center. The Department of Human Services has two full-time case 

F-21 
managers located at the Re-Engagement Center and the Mayor’s Office of Mental 

Health has two behavioral health specialists co-located at the Center one day a 

week. 

	 The CBO International Education and Community Initiatives (IECI) helps 

SDP manage and implement the accelerated high school model at North 

Philadelphia Community High School to serve out-of-school youth. IECI 

provides a principal and subject-matter teachers. This CBO also participates in 

partner-level meetings and provides best practices for serving out-of-school youth 

and youth exiting the JJS. 

	 The primary role of Center for Literacy (CFL) is to provide literacy and
 

numeracy services to in-school and out-of-school youth at North Philadelphia 

Community High School and at the E3

 Power Center (West Branch). CFL has 

hired teachers at each site who are, in turn, responsible for developing course 

curricula. CFL works closely with school/organization staff at both sites to 

determine how services should be structured. 

	 The Center for Social Organization of Schools provided the model and 

technical assistance for developing the Bridge Program and accelerated school 

model at North Philadelphia Community High School. 

Key Outcomes 

SDP realized a number of key partner- and system-level outcomes in the areas of referral 

mechanisms, changes in district practices, and data sharing. 

One of the most significant outcomes of the grant was the creation and institutionalization of the 

Re-Engagement Center, which allowed for a more streamlined referral process for out-of-school 

youth and youth transitioning from detention. Although SDP had begun this work before the 

expansion of Project U-Turn, the School District Grant provided the seed funding for the ReEngagement Center that really allowed for a more coordinated referral process to the Bridge 

Program, North Philadelphia Community High School, and other district schools and programs. 

The coordination is facilitated, in part, by co-located city staff: two Department of Human 

Services case managers and two behavioral health specialists from the Office of Mental Health. 

Sustainability of the Re-Engagement Center is assured, as its funding has been assumed by the 

district. 

The School District Grant also led to the creation of a sustainable accelerated high school model 

that, in turn, has led to an expansion of efforts in this area. North Philadelphia Community High 

School was launched with School District Grant funds and its success, as well as the success of 

earlier efforts at the Fairhill Community High School, led the district to realize the strength of 

the accelerated school model—identifying youth in greatest need, placing them in a smaller 

cohort, and providing needed services. From the successes at these two schools, the idea for 

OASIS—an accelerated “school within a school”—was born and implemented. Sustainability 

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for North Philadelphia Community High School is assured as the district has assumed funding 

responsibilities; the school will continue to offer 180 slots for youth and is applying for 

additional grants, including a 21st Century Skills grant, to continue its Learning to Work 

component and Center for Literacy work. 

A third major system-level outcome was simply that the School District of Philadelphia agreed to 

give credit to youth for work completed as part of the Bridge Program, which operates outside 

the district school setting in the E3 Power Center. This development furthers the aim of the 

Bridge Program—to assist out-of-school youth in transitioning back to an educational pathway. 

Finally, on both the system and partner levels, there were also breakthroughs with regard to data 

sharing and usage. As of December 2009, SDP, the Department of Human Services, and DJJS’ 

Court and Community Services were poised to sign a memorandum of understanding that would 

allow these three parties to share youth case management data on a sustained basis. Although 

not completely attributable to the School District Grant, this agreement is considered 

groundbreaking. The School District Grant administrator also developed informal mechanisms 

for sharing data with DJJS, though it is not clear to what extent these mechanisms will be 

formalized and sustained. Also, staff at partner North Philadelphia Community High School 

reported that the School District Grant led to an increased proficiency with and reliance on 

quantitative data that helped it better document and illustrate their success with students. 

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