City Council - Regular Meeting

Telling you everything's gonna be okay.

Believe in his reals, believe in his sorts. I sit

Good afternoon. The time is now 02:02PM on Wednesday, 04/15/2026, and the city of San Antonio b session is now called to order. Madam clerk, please call roll. Council member Core. Council member Mickey Rodriguez.

Present.

Council member Villagran. Council member Munguia.

Present.

Council member Castillo. Here. Council member Galvan.

Here.

Council member Aldrete Gavito. Council member Mesa Gonzales? Council member Spears? Here. Council member White? Mayor Jones? Here. Mayor, we have quorum. Great. Thank you. So this meeting will hear briefings on the FY twenty seven budgets for pre k, for SA, and ready to work. As a reminder, the reason we look at them now is because both of these budgets have to be finalized by January. So, obviously, these are some of the most investments, most important investments rather that we make for our community. So appreciate the hard work, that has gone into the briefings and look forward to them. Eric, over to you.

Thank you, mayor. Good afternoon, mayor and council. So as the mayor mentioned, just as a reminder, under state law, both the pre k for SA and the ready to work programs operate on a July 1 to June 30 fiscal year. So both Doctor. Bray and Mike will walk through the proposed budget programs and the timeline of actions between now and eventually bringing it back to the full council for your adoption.

And in both cases, we'll start off with Doctor. Bray. Doctor. Bray is going to obviously talk about where we're at in terms of pre K for SA, the program, where potential timelines are for future consideration by you all and the public on extending that. It's not too soon to start talking about some of that.

And then Mike will walk through the FY twenty seven proposed budget for ready to work. I am going to have Mike's going to cover a slide there towards the end that talks about the future. As he talks about his presentation and the proposed budget, we are, as you know, that sales tax has transitioned to via as of right now. And the funds that we have right now will run through, we're estimating fiscal '30, maybe early fiscal '30. And so part of today's conversation is really also to also initiate you all some of the conversation about what happens in the future and start that now a little bit.

We have a couple of years. But as we work to develop alternatives that you may want to see, that gives us plenty of time to consider it in light of all the other financial issues that we have. So we'll start off with Doctor. Bray.

Thank you. Good afternoon, Mayor T. Jones and members of City Council. Thank you for allowing me to present today. My name is Sarah Bray.

And on behalf of Pre K for SA, I am pleased to present our proposed FY twenty seven annual operating budget and give a brief update on the work that our amazing team at Pre K4SA has been doing on behalf of young children and families. I'll begin with a brief review of our program history what we've accomplished before sharing the results we're seeing on the ground. I'll end with our financial outlook and proposed budget briefing for FY '27. Pre K for SA was built on a simple but powerful belief that every child in San Antonio deserves a strong start. And for over for more than a decade, that belief has guided everything that we do.

Pre k for SA was first authorized in 2012. For nearly a decade, our work focused on one critical goal, expanding access to high quality full day pre kindergarten for four year olds across our city. The results of that first authorization speak for themselves. On access, we created 5,000 free full day pre k seats and drove access for four year olds across Bexar County to 70% by 2019. We made the case for expanded state funding for full day pre k in Texas.

On quality, our classrooms have consistently exceeded research thresholds for quality. We've received both state and national recognition. Our alumni performed better in math and reading on their third grade tests, and more of our partner programs now meet quality standards. And importantly, an external research study showed that Pre K for SA generated $57,000,000 return on investment in just eight years. On workforce, we credentialed over 300 new early learning teachers with the Child Development Associates, or CDA, and established that credential as the standard for assistant teachers and teacher aids in San Antonio.

A more skilled workforce means better outcomes for children. That first authorization laid a strong foundation, and the second authorization gave us a new challenge. In 2021, we began our second authorization and pivoted our focus to address the significant gaps in care for young children in San Antonio's birth through age three while continuing to support access for pre k for four year olds. The need in birth to three was and remains substantial. When we looked at the birth to three landscape in 2021, we found three major problems.

First, affordability. There was minimum public funding for infant and toddler care, wait list for childcare scholarships, and military families childcare seats were long, and private programs were just too costly for most San Antonio families. Second, there was uneven quality. Quality varied widely across programs with few resources available for improvement and limited community opportunity to understand why quality matters in those first critical years. And third, we found an underprepared and underpaid workforce.

Entry level qualifications were low, wages were chronically suppressed, benefits were minimal, and turnover was high, creating instability for children and programs alike. These were the challenges that Pre K for SA set out to address. Over the course of this authorization, we have moved the we have moved with urgency and intention. In 2022, we began enrolling three year olds while ensuring four four year olds continue to have access through to public pre k through the school districts. In 2023, we expanded the San Antonio Shared Service Alliance from 17 providers to 90 to support more chair child care providers with raising quality while also improving business sustainability.

In '24, we formalized a partnership with Joint Base San Antonio to better serve military affiliated families. In 2025, we opened our new South Education Center and launched our infant toddler pilot program, bringing our model to the birth to three age group for the first time. This summer we will launch a pilot summer program, and next year we will roll out a child care finder search tool to help parents navigate available child care options and help providers fill seats. Each of these steps has been deliberate, evidence based, and aimed at making a lasting difference for children and families. Now let's talk about the results.

In terms of increasing access, while PreQFSA is open to families throughout San Antonio, we prioritize enrollment for children with the greatest need. In particular, we've been focused on increasing access for three year olds, children with exceptional needs, and military affiliated children. Since 2021, enrollment of three year olds in public pre k across Bexar County has grown by 38%. This is almost entirely due to pre k for SA opening its doors to three year olds. Children with exceptional needs also face barriers in finding access to early learning.

And since 2021, pre k for a scene has pre k for SA has seen a steady increase in children needing additional instructional support services. In response, we have expanded the availability of early intervention services in our classrooms. This means that more children are getting the targeted support they need earlier when it is most impactful. And as has been reported, JBSA has one of the longest child care waitlist in the country. This should not be so in Military City USA.

So in 2023, PreK4SA entered into a formal partnership with JBSA to allow us to better understand how to address this gap in access to high quality early learning for military affiliated families. Since then, we have seen an increase in enrollment by active duty and veteran families at Pre K for SA. We want to ensure that there is an ample supply of high quality early learning for our families who serve. In an upcoming slide, you will see that we are joined in this effort by partners across the community. From the start, external evaluation has been a core part of how Pre K for SA measures program effectiveness.

And what that research shows is that while one year of Pre K is powerful, two years is even better. Pre k first a children are entering kindergarten more than ready. This isn't just good for families, it's good for our schools, our workforce pipeline, and our city's long term economic future. We know that children thrive best when families have the resources they need. In recent years, we've noticed an increase in families experiencing instability factors.

That's why we introduced our family success plan, which is a customized high touch support that goes beyond referrals. We walk alongside families to identify needs, navigate outcomes, and stay we stay connected with the families every step of the way. So far in FY '26, we have developed 173 family success plans. The top five instability factors we're helping families navigate are housing, food insecurity, family safety, transportation, and employment. We do not have expertise in these areas, so we help our families connect to services within the city, including ready to work, health and human services, metro health, and neighborhoods and housing.

We're also leveraging community partnerships with the San Antonio Food Bank, Opportunity Home, and the Family Violence Prevention Services. One of our most significant system building efforts is the San Antonio Shared Services Alliance. This network currently includes 90 providers, 92% of which are located in childcare deserts, the communities where access is hardest and need is greatest. Through the alliance, we have provided over eighteen thousand hours of professional learning, helped alliance members realize over $146,000 in additional revenue, resources that flow back into better care, including an $11,000 annual salary increase for the teachers. We've provided 246 educators with CDA credentialing, and we have identified and are supporting 4,700 military accredited seats across the community.

Altogether, 4,888 children and their families are benefiting from the alliance. This is how we move the whole system forward, which is really the secret sauce of pre k for SA. It has never been just about our four schools. It's about the entire ecosystem. As we look into the future, there's an important milestone on the horizon.

Sales tax collection for for pre k for SA is set to end on 03/31/2029. Program funding runs through 06/30/2029. For Pre K for SA to continue its work, will need to be reauthorized by 11/28/2028. Under the statute that governs our program, Pre K for SA may be reauthorized for up to twenty years. The decisions made in the next two to three years will shape the trajectory of early childhood education in San Antonio for the next generation.

We look forward to that conversation with counsel and with our community. Now let me turn to the financial picture for FY 2027. Pre KFRA is funded through an eight dedicated $08 sales tax. Revenue is projected to grow modestly over the life of the current authorization. In 2025, we collected $51,700,000 in sales tax.

We project $52,000,000 to close at FY 2026, dollars 53,400,000 in 2027 and $54,700,000 and $56,300,000 in 2028 and 2029, respectively. This steady predictable revenue stream allows us to plan responsibly and invest strategically. Looking at our financial forecast. In FY 2025, we ended with a beginning balance of $14,500,000 revenues of $55,400,000 and expenditures of $61,200,000 resulting in an ending balance of $8,800,000 We estimate that at the end of FY '26, we will have projected revenues of $57,000,000 against $58,700,000 in expenditures, closing with a $7,000,000 fund balance. In FY 'twenty seven, which we are proposing, we believe will have revenues of $58,900,000 with expenditures of $62,300,000 ending with a $3,600,000 fund balance.

Through FY 'twenty eight and 'twenty nine, we project a responsible downward draw of our fund balance to close out this authorization. This forecast reflects disciplined financial management, drawing down reserves intentionally through the end of the authorization while maintaining full operations. Our total proposed appropriations for FY 'twenty seven are $62,289,638 with a breakdown as follows: most of that is in personnel service, over $39,000,000 the largest investment, which reflects our commitment to a high quality, well compensated workforce. We also have contractual services in just over $17,000,000 which covers community partnerships and program operate operations including food service, transportation, curriculum, and other services. We have commodities of $13,000,000, self insurance, three and other expenditures at 3.2, capital outlay just over $120,000 in indirect cost at $1,400,000 And personnel are the majority of our budget, always are because there are people are at the heart of what we do.

Speaking of people, our proposed personnel complement for FY '27 remains unchanged from FY '26 with five zero two positions. We are maintaining our current staffing levels with no net new positions. This reflects our commitment to operational stability while continuing to deliver high quality program at in all program areas. In closing, Pre K for SA has served San Antonio's children and families for over a decade. We've expanded access, improved quality, built workforce capacity, and created systems that extend our impact far beyond our own four schools.

The FY 2027 proposed budget sustains that work responsibly, strategically, and in full alignment with the trust of the voters. We are proud of what this community has built together, and we are committed to ensuring that every dollar spent in the service of San Antonio's youngest and most important resource, its children. I'm happy to answer questions that you may have, and finally, I want to remind you that tomorrow is the Gracias Children Our Citizens exhibit that opens at the South Center, and the online auction will begin in case you want a new art piece. Thank you.

Thank you, Doctor. Bright. I think we'll go ahead and take a second presentation as well and then go around for questions. Thank you.

Good afternoon, mayor, council members. Thank you for the opportunity to be before you today. As we talk about the budget for fiscal year twenty seven for ready to work, we love to start by highlighting our participants. This is why we do this work every day, while our partners do this work every day. Melissa Klein Miles, she's being served by Hallmark University.

She has been employed by Methodist Healthcare. And as a single mother of three, Melicia said that going back to school felt overwhelming. While studying at Hallmark, she learned about the ready to work program and was able to gain access to case management support services support her on her journey. Her quote is, I needed to stay focused and keep pushing even when life got heavy, Melicia said. Now I've earned my degree and secured my dream as a role as a psych ICU registered nurse with Methodist Healthcare.

I'm proud to close my bartending chapter and step into the career I've worked so hard for. Melicia went from earning $2.13 per hour plus tips as a bartender to more than $30 an hour in her current role. So where are we now? So as of March 30, we had over 15,000 individuals enrolled in training, roughly another 917 to be exact were eligible in creating their education and training plans. Each Ready to Work participant is assessed at the beginning, and an education and training plan is created by our partners to help them on their journeys.

About 4,700 are still in training right now, 6,502 successfully completed their training, about 2,100 in job search, and 4,358 as of March 30 were in an approved job through ready to work. About a sixty two percent successful training completion rate, and a sixty percent rate of placement within six months, and seventy three percent within twelve months. The program is gaining momentum. It's increasing our training completion rate, has gone from 97 training completers or program graduates per month over roughly the first three years of the program. So over the last twelve months, about 258 training program completers per month, about a 166% increase.

The same goes for job placements. We're averaging about 56 approved job places per month over roughly the first three years. We're right at 200 job placements over the last twelve months, a 255% increase in that job placement volume. Intakes have gone up 11%, and enrollment and training numbers have increased by 20% over those same time comparisons. So our ROI study, Doctor.

Niven is here. Doctor. Niven conducted this ROI study and has some phenomenal key findings that an $11,800,000,000 total impact over the working careers of those individuals that have been impacted by ready to work through October 2025. At that time, we had about 11,592 participants, about 4,000 training completers, and just under 2,900 had approved jobs at that point in time. The bulk of that economic impact comes from the increased incomes directly into the participant households of 7,500,000,000.

For every dollar spent, there's a $125 return in total investment. So our FY twenty seven proposed budget assumptions, the on the job training program funding is not included in the pro budget for FY '27. We'll reevaluate that in local as local market conditions shift in future years. Workforce Solutions Alamo implementation transition their service levels are being reduced strategically by 50% for intake and case management. Employer led cohort training is the most efficient way to get individuals on track into an approved job quickly.

As the workforce development board serves as the hub for Texas FAME, one of the most effective workforce training programs that exist in the city of San Antonio, want them to take that model and replicate it in other industry sectors that it continues to grow in the advanced manufacturing sector. If we can get more aligned with what the employers are looking for in a shorter period of time, that will assist us as ready to work funding is exhausted and we shift into the new environment. Restore education contract amended increasing for better capacity for increased capacity to finish out their six year agreement with the city. The total value increased by 6,290,000 to 11,590,000 in order to serve more participants. So our proposed budget for FY '27, roughly half of it 50% is for tuition, 21% for wraparound support and case management for our participants, 10% for intake and initial assessments, 5% going to emergency assistance funding for our participants, and three 2%, I'm sorry, for childcare.

That's extremely important. We want to make sure that our participants have access to childcare funding if they're on that state wait list and they're in ready to work. We have funding available to help assist the cost of child care to ensure they can get across the training finish line. So projected participants served in FY twenty seven. We anticipate about 6,773 completing the intake and assessment process, 4,730 enrolling in training, and 3,800 plus training completers, and 2,410 approved job placements in fiscal year twenty seven.

That'll get us closer to our overall goals. We plan to hit that 39,000 goal of intake and assessments completed by November '27. By May '28, our 28,000 enrolled in training target. And by the 2030, our 15,600 approved job placements. Our proposed budget for FY '27 is 42,800,000.

It's the apex or the height of budget for ready to work. We have roughly around 126,000,000 to spend over the sunset of the program with 41,600,000 in '28 as we begin to scale back and 23,500,000 in FY '29 and we closed the program out in FY 2030 with an $18,200,000 budget. Today we're approving the FY proposing the FY '27 budget for 42,800,000. Future program and budget considerations in FY '27 again the pinnacle for service levels within the program. Program enrollment will cease in fiscal year twenty nine, and all trainings will be completed by January 2030.

Sales tax funding will be fully expensed by FY '30. Participants will be supported through job placement and completion of training programs, unplaced at that time will be assisted through community resources. Stakeholder input, such as through our advisory board, our chair Ben Peevey is here today. Thank you Ben for being here. They're providing us input, but we also need your input as our elected officials to determine the future of work for our offerings beyond fiscal year twenty thirty.

Let me let me just add one other piece. I talked a little bit about this at the beginning of the intro, and we wanna be able to just put a marker on the table here because, for context purposes, prior to Ready to Work, the city spent roughly about $2,000,000 a year in workforce, primarily through Project Quest. And so a lot has changed over time. And I know that there's obviously, we'll have some conversation today. There are a number of years left and ready to work.

But the strategic conversation that you all should have about what should exist after 2030 or begin in 2030 or 2031 can start now. Because some of the some of the feedback we hear from you now as we go through budget adoption with Ready to Work gives us an idea of things that we can start planning for as we do this a couple more times with the council in terms of the adoption of the budget. So it's really more just kind of a strategic point that that we're placing on the on the table and asking for some thought about, big picture, what what would be things that you would like to see, or how would you like us to to position ourselves to to have that conversation in the future? Our

Cox Metro leaders are here. We're extremely proud of their support for Ready to Work, and they have been since the beginning. They're gonna be assisting us ongoing through helping to ensure that our coaches and case managers are well trained. In May, they're gonna help us to make sure understand some of the principles that they've learned over thirty plus years in work development here in San Antonio. So our b session briefing today, and then we have our pre k for SA board approval as our next step on April 28, and in a session before full council on May 7. That concludes our presentation.

Thanks, Mike. I will I'll actually go ahead. We'll just start with you, Mike, with ready to work. Thanks. As I shared yesterday, I did a night tour with Toyota yesterday and really thought about both of these topics in the course of my conversation engaging with both Frank and the team, but also with the workers that I engaged with.

And they've got a couple of ready to work folks, not many to be frank as Frank shared. No pun intended. Of course, the child care piece came up as we look at, in particular, the needs of our second shift folks and how they have one facility over there that sounds like it opens at 05:30 a. M. But closes at six And so as they look to make sure they've got the widest pool of talent for that second shift, childcare is something that they are focused on.

But obviously we can be helpful in that regard. On the ready to work piece, and I certainly appreciate Doctor. Nevin's analysis. Doctor. Nevin, hope you're taking all your vitamins and getting all your sleep because you write sounds like 95% of our economic analysis reports for the city here. And so I appreciated those numbers. And I don't think there's any you're going to get any pushback here in terms of the good work that you have done. I think the question always that's top of mind for us is, are we doing this as best possible, as best able? Right? And so I've got a couple of questions in that regard, Mike.

And just to level set, so $235,000,000 was the total budget for this. This year we're talking about 42,800,000. And so then we'll have about 130,000,000 left overall. Okay. And I appreciate also, we've had a couple of conversations just again in the ten months I've been in the seat, even necking down this list.

But it sounds like we're still at 58 occupations that people can select from. Correct. What would be helpful for me is to to understand at the how we can how we explain again to missus Martinez, hey, at the end of this fiscal year for f y twenty seven, if you were to invest at the community invest 42,800,000, we anticipate getting x number of electricians, x number of plumbers, x number I mean, I'll be honest with you though. I'd be very interested to see how many of these occupations will have zero. Right?

I don't I'm I'm guessing you're not having just a ton of success growing financial managers. Right? And I would also question, you know, chefs and head cooks if that's something that actually needs to be on on this list. So would welcome your, again, follow-up and understanding of what we can explain to folks. Not just, you know, again, people, number of people going through the program having been placed, but what are actually the needs that we think we are going to fill in our community.

I think it's also important that we're being as judicious as we possibly can with these with these resources. As a military veteran, I certainly appreciate the way in which this program supports our veterans to include veterans that don't even live in the city. They live in the county. And it sounds like we don't actually take into account the wages that they make when accounting for whether they should participate in this program. So understanding that our military veterans, thankfully, have access to something like the GI bill, I really question whether San Antonio taxpayers should be funding their ability to participate in the Ready to Work program or if there's not some kind of reimbursement that we might want to explore as part of that.

As you as you mentioned, we have very limited dollars here for this program. And if others have another avenue, other set of resources to get this training that certainly they deserve, then I think they need to explore that so we can invest in our folks as best able. Do we I'll let you if you have any comments on that part, welcome.

Yeah. No. Absolutely. Thank you for pointing that out, mayor. We definitely wanna try to live up to our name as Military City USA, which is why we extended that option to our transitioning veterans, our transitioning active duty members into civilian life to be able to participate in ready to work without their current active duty income impacting their eligibility. Outside of covering tuition, it's the wraparound supports. We know that our veterans, as they make that transition into civilian life, need as much support as they can get in order to make sure that they can transition well and secure a good paying job. The wraparound supports provided by our coaches and case managers is what I believe the better benefit is for those participants. And we can look at shifting away from some of the tuition funding if their GI bill is covered now.

Well, I mean, you and I both know, right, it's our military veterans. They have that transition service even while they're in the service. So they'll have that transition service on their way out. They'll have it on the way out on the other side of that as well. And so again, I just don't want us to the city to be subsidizing something that again our veterans are able to access elsewhere.

And there's a different pot of money that they can tap into and is uniquely suited and takes into account the unique needs, as you point out, of veterans. So I'd appreciate understanding if we were to not provide these or look at some reimbursement model for our veterans, what that might look like and how much more money then we could keep in the in the SA in the ready to work program for other for our residents. My concern is as well when when I look at this and and I appreciated briefing that I had, the pre brief that I had with Alex. It looks like in FY twenty five we set aside $6,000,000 to pay companies to take our graduates. Is that right?

Do I have that number right?

Close. 3,000,000 for incumbent worker training and 3,000,000 for on the job training. On the job training is a new hires of Ready to Work participants.

Okay. So of the 6,000,000 though, we were only able to spend 1,000,000. Is that right?

That's correct for FY twenty six.

Okay. So my concern is if we have an opportunity to pay people to take our graduates 6,000,000 worth and we are only able to spend 1,000,000, that means, that means, I mean to put it bluntly, it's almost like we can't pay folks to take our graduates.

That's one way to look at it?

That's one way to look at it and that's unfortunately how I'm looking at it. So I really want to make sure that we're being as tight as we can be with what the community needs, what we are actually producing and being realistic with what these folks are going to enter into. Because for us, you know, number of participants, number of applicants, but then in an approved job, right, and we can't pay people to take these folks, we might need to look at a different approach other than the 58 that we've got on here. I would argue, and this is informed by not only your data, but frankly recent trip to Taiwan. Where in terms of let's be real focused on on the skills that we need and that we we we there's lots of reporting about unfortunately the the real delta that we have in in trade skills.

Right? Our plumbers, our electricians, our our welders. And I know they're on the list and that's great. I think maybe a more focused approach that allows us to communicate, hey, we're gonna focus on these dozen things. And if this is not something that you're interested in, understood, this might not be the program for you. But when we're talking about San Antonio tax dollars, right, and we've got real gaps in the workforce, how we can best aim to fill those is what I think we owe not only the the people that are entrusting us with their time and energies as they go through this program, but certainly with the taxpayer. On pre k for SA.

Mayor, can I

Yeah, please?

Before you change gears. So I I think it's important to share some context. We don't Sure. That program that you're describing was in this year's budget Sure. And is not in next year's proposed budget. I mean, and and I think it's probably worth some context here that each year we did that and this is all an experiment, because this is not a core city function. Each year we did that, we attached more requirements to companies that participated in those programs. And part of the requirement in 'twenty six, which was new, was that it couldn't be open ended. It had to be ready to work graduates. So a year ago, as we sat here, we were estimating what type of activity.

Obviously, we didn't spend as much as we budgeted or we we estimated. And that's one of the reasons why that's not included in the f y twenty seven budget. But but I'm not sure, and I loud and clear the message about too many or or or maybe too many occupations or the wrong occupations. But I don't I think that's a separate issue that is frankly a a pertinent one, but not really tied to the fact that we only spent 1,000,000 out of the I mean, we didn't know what what we didn't know last year. And and thankfully, we didn't spend it. We've got $5,000,000 left over that we're reprogramming in '27. So, I mean, I just I just wanted to provide a little bit of context there.

Yeah. And I think they're two separate issues. Yeah. I think the fact that we had money to help people take our folks and we couldn't spend it because they didn't want those folks. That's one thing. And on top of, are we training folks for the right things? You're right. Those are two separate issues.

The folks. I think the better way to describe it is they entered into an agreement with the city saying that they wanted to hire a certain number of people. Their high needs shifted. Many of the companies are reporting that their hiring was flat in FY twenty six. They didn't have as many anticipated vacancies as they thought they were gonna have. It wasn't primarily that they just didn't want a higher rated work participants. We had over 2,000 employers that are higher rated work participants.

And and, nevertheless, whether it is hiring stale or or how you're describing it, Mayor, it's not in the '27 budget. Correct. We're just we're shifting and we're putting money into those programs that we do know that work.

Yeah. And, no, and I'm thankful that we are adjusting accordingly. But I think that in looking at that what happened in that last budget, think it is important that we account for that to understand why it's not there. Correct. So thank you for the explanation.

You're welcome.

Of the 1,000,000 that was spent though, just for context, Mike, an additional follow on. It would be helpful to understand who took the million.

Absolutely.

Thank you. I appreciate that. Doctor. Bray, it sounds like this is a very exciting year. As Alex mentioned, this is the first graduating year for our pre K for SA folks, is that right?

They're juniors.

Juniors, yeah.

Alex is seniors. I know, I have to do the counting, but they're

juniors this year. Yeah. Well, all that to say, it sounds like we've got more time then to make sure we've got a fitting graduation for those folks. It's very exciting. And hope we are now putting in kind of structures in place to understand, you know, where these folks are going. Right? I know, obviously, the the systems we had in place when they entered are weren't as as robust to track it as as well as we are tracking kind of their trajectory now. But as best able, I think, be able to to share to explain the community this very not only generous, but I think, you know, folks want to see Yep. And and hear about how these folks are doing. So that'd be very helpful.

We do have a a long term outcome study coming out later. Our external evaluators are working on that right now. Yeah. So we should know how our children have done through the first years of high school.

Great, thank you. On slide nine, This is another area where I think we are all committed to meeting our responsibility as as militaries to The USA. When we look at when we don't have endless resources, however, and we want to make sure that we are as best able prioritizing the kids that are very likely to be here for their entire childhood. You know when I when I looked at when as Alex shared 17% it sounds like of the student population are are military youth. As as you know a high percentage of those folks may not remain in the community.

Right? They'll they'll travel, obviously, as their parent moves from station to station. I would welcome then understanding how we could better prioritize San Antonio kids. Yeah. I don't know what the answer is, but that is for me a priority. It sounds like on the wait list, there there aren't any military kids on the wait list. And this is and I'm glad that the conversation has started with the DOD because what what as a result of them not having sufficient CDC seats, that is now us taking on the burden.

Yeah. Well, sort of. So our definition of military affiliated families include not just active duty who have access, but also veterans. We have many veterans with young children or grandparent veterans that are raising young children who actually do live in San Antonio and likely will stay here. And so those numbers include that broader definition because those families don't have access to the DOD's CDC. CDC, and yet they many of them have very low incomes.

Yeah.

And so that's really that and that we could break down what what number are active duty and what number are what we would call extended military reservists who and and most of them actually are very low income, so they are meeting that that definition of who our primary Yep. Family focus is.

And you know, and that distinction is that I think is helpful because you're talking about a kid or a grandkid of a veteran that lives in the community, that's much different than somebody who may very well only be here two or three years. So understanding that distinction is important. Thank you. Because to your point, that family might not have all the other wraparound services that that active duty military kid most absolutely has.

Well,

and to that,

if I may. So part of our in working with our providers across the community who are now part of the Military Child Care in Your Neighborhood program, our focus is to get them the revenue that would come from enrolling active duty. So that's really part of the shifting more of them into the community providers, because that brings revenue to our partner providers as well. It is part of kind of how we're headed and trying to make sure that we're able to maximize those federal dollars that come into our community.

Appreciate that. Thank you, Doctor. Bray. Of the kids though that are of the from active duty military families, I would appreciate us understanding the, if we've got that cost structure about right. Because again, those kids, they've got insurance. Right? They don't have some of the other challenges that some of our San Antonio pre k for SA kids are going to have. So I I wanna make sure that we're best balancing that. So welcome follow-up information on that. Thank you. As I saw on the ready to work list, one of the the career fields is is childcare. So may I ask what percentage of of your workforce are ready to work graduates?

Well, that so that's a little hard to to say because we're actually enrolling our employees into ready to work so that they can earn advanced degrees and so they were pre k first a employees first and then they went to ready to work more and and being able to help them advance from that high school diploma into having an associates or actual teaching credential. But I don't know the exact number, but we have been working with Mike and his team to create a cohort of our assistant teacher and teacher aides to be able to go together into a program so that they can complete because we know that cohort models are more successful, particularly when you're working full time and doing those, having all those other challenges. It's, that's where, and Mike has been great having ready to work Wednesdays at our centers to help our families get in as well. And so we are working really closely together both for our families and for our own employees.

I appreciate that. Thank you for for that because I don't think most folks make the connection that some of the current employees may actually be utilizing this program. Appreciate additional information on how that's being utilized. Slide nine as well when we're talking about the children receiving intervention services as we are anticipating and continuing to see reductions in Head Start. Unfortunately, I'd welcome understanding how your planning is and the assumptions that you all are revisiting are taking into account those federal reductions.

And one of the growth in general in kids as as frankly folks are less able to say whether or not they want to have children. But also now kids having more special needs. So what does that look like for your plan?

Yeah. So we have never set out intentionally to serve children with exceptional needs. We're open to everybody, but what we have seen is this increase, especially since the pandemic, in children who have indications of early developmental delays. So we are that's why we've expanded the services. We don't know whether there's actually an increase in the population.

It's too early to tell or whether it's word-of-mouth that families know they can come to pre k for SA and get those early intervention services. Many of our families that come in and ultimately their children need those services have no idea because they have not had access to those kinds of testing and the medical information. So that's a huge part of what we do is help the families understand that early intervention matters. If they're going to need continue to need special education services in the future, that we will we partner with the school districts to make sure they're all set up. In terms of Head Start, Head Start children are also eligible for pre K for SA.

So as know, as we may see reductions in head start, then that would mean that we would need to look more carefully at what where those families are and they would, you know, prioritizing them because they have the greatest need because that's always the way we do enrollment, is looking at the lowest income families, children in the foster care system, children who are unhoused. Those are priority areas for us. Great.

I mean really, you know, dovetailing off of the comments that Eric made at the very beginning is how we think about the both of these programs, right, beyond the current duration. And a lot of that is shaped by things outside of our control. Right? These these changes in in federal expenditures, but also just laws that are frankly causing other things to happen in our community. I'll just I'll just leave it there. So understanding kind of what y'all's assumptions are about how the the program may grow in a way that you haven't in just these these decade and a half or so is really helpful to for us to understand. But thank you for for laying all of that out. Thank you. Councilman Viegerdan.

Thank you, Mayor. All right, we'll start with pre K for SA. I continue to support the educational investment for pre K for SA, and you all can go back to slide number nine. So when we talk about the exceptional needs and the early intervention, I do want to stress that from birth and I know we're moving because I've got the pre K for SA in mind from birth to three, is I think and big picture, Eric, that you asked, as we look at that, if we notice that the problem coming through that birth through three, maybe we move them over into a district school that has a pre k program because we we understand that if they're in a district school, whether it be Harlandale, SAISD, I'm I'm thinking of mine, Southside, East Central, they can follow them throughout their career

Right.

With that disability or or that special need that they have. So I really want us to I think as we look in the future, that's how we work with our school districts. That's how we work when we identify that. Because what we're going to see as you take birth to three is that some of those development challenges happen. We can for some, it's gonna manifest sooner than

Yep.

Three years old. So I'm I'm I'm excited about the early intervention where seen that. And then also, if we get them in pre k three, and we see them in three, and you know one of the school districts has a program that will follow them into helping meet those needs. Speech impediments, too, as a former educator. I remember it was like the sooner we get them into speech class, the better it is for them.

So I look forward to that. There was another slide that talked about the top instability factors. Do we have an idea of how many drop out of the program due to the instability factors? And do we identify what the instability factors are, whether it is housing, family safety, employment?

Yes. So our family team works very closely with the family. And what we what way this typically comes out is there is one issue. And as we sit down with a family to have a conversation, it might be the child has been absent and we find out there's lack of transportation or food insecurity. So we sit down with them and we have a very conversation, a deep conversation with them about what's what's going on, what are you trying you know, what are you struggling with, what are the things that we can help with. And we create an plan that is very high touch, individualized, intensive to help support them. And we help them think about what's first. Like, what do you need? What is the first step? And get them connected.

As I say, it's not just saying, oh, there's somebody over at the food bank that can get you food. We go with them. We connect them. We're helping with them. We follow-up with them, because we know it's hard to juggle all the pieces.

Yeah. And so with that, if we could get the data as that happens with the housing and in the employment in particular, so we can try and identify as we move to ready to work what

sort

of jobs we might need, I think that would be key. In terms of the family safety, there are programs and I'm hoping some of them will continue if they are victims of violent crime. And so I think that that is key as we move forward to make sure that we're working in conjunction with the especially if it's domestic violence that we're working with the police and their team, their crisis intervention team, to make sure that they're getting the resources that they need. Because that's the one where I could see, if it's public safety and it's domestic violence, and we have to move them, they have to move out of town, where we need to keep track of that also, as we start to continue to do studies on the status of women and the status of girls in San Antonio. So thank you for the presentation.

I think those were my big picture kind of looks, Eric, for pre k for SA. And Mike, I think you're up next. You don't have to stand right now. I'll bring you up when I need you, because I think I could give your speech, because I've heard it so many times. As chair of the Economic and Workforce Development committee, you know that I've been committed to this.

I've seen different iterations. We've had this come to EWDC. I've I've sat on this that committee since 2021, proud to chair it. And I think the one thing we've continued to communicate is partnership. Partnerships between those that are doing the job training, the employers, and our team here at the city.

And I think part of it is to continue to be fiscally responsible regarding the investments made on the individuals that are part of the Ready to Work program and then how we get the return on investment. The one thing I do want to stress when we talk about San Antonio and we talk about the communities in particular is that this return of investment truly is it's San Antonio unique. It truly is. There there is no model, I think, that is the San Antonio model. Whether you go from the South Side to the West Side to the East Side to the North Side, the different personalities.

And within the South Side alone, you can find, like, six different neighborhood styles and personalities. There I I guess the I don't wanna say you could compare it to Chicago, but I feel like you could compare it to Chicago. Because in history lesson, a lot of the migrant workers that came through Texas ended up in Chicago. So I feel like personality wise, we're a lot like that. And we need to make sure that we understand that selling them something, coming out into the community, this has been this has not been the easiest sell for us.

They know they know the military. They understand that. They understand what it is to work construction. But with ready to work, we're trying to give them all the options and see where they wanna head to. And so they do look a little suspiciously, but I'm very proud of what we've done so far and the pivots we've made, and I'm proud of my current committee and their dedication to make sure that we get the city of San Antonio residents employed.

I think one thing as we move forward is not only do you have the different personalities, but you see these different emerging generations and the patterns. And I was at Trinity for their presentation breakfast about the different personalities and how it is to manage them. So that's also now what we have. We have a generation that's hitting 16 that came out in the pandemic, and they wanna do group projects, and they wanna do things by the phone, I'm not by the phone text message. They don't wanna pick up the phone and talk to people.

So how do we how do we look at that and work with the employer on how we make sure we get them ready for the workforce and to be successful? So in terms of big picture, I think we need to look at those studies and how we include that as we move forward. I think we need to understand as we look at industries is, yes, I'm very proud of our title Military City USA and we haven't had a broad closure, but Army North and South are gone. And what do we do now? What do we have now?

And that is what we need to look at. And that is what I need the employers to understand is that we have a generation of employees coming up. We have personalities that we're used to the military job. That's not there anymore. And we could possibly face face closures or realignments. So what do we do? How do we diversify this economy? How do we make this a place that other businesses want to come to? And that only happens if we invest not only in our infrastructure, but if we invest in our people. And I said, I think that's what Ready to Work does.

I think in terms of big picture, Eric, is that what we need to look at is personality wise what we have to offer to employers where they know that their employees are they don't have to bring their employees from out of state, or they don't have to do the recruiting. They're willing to be flexible here and get the training that they need to do these jobs. So I look forward to the boards, all their hard work, and all of the providers that are here to train the employees. We've got a lot of work ahead of us, but I think these are these are lean times that we'll get through them and and we just need to continue to pivot and use our voices to make sure we do it. So thank you.

Councilman Alterta Gavito.

Thank you. I'll start with pre k for SA. Thank you, Sarah. Well, first off, I'm gonna just compliment, obviously, I I think the world of you, and then you have Brad on your team too. So y'all y'all have a phenomenal team. You know, pre k for SA has been a great initiative. I remember campaigning for it, you know, when we did. And so I'm definitely looking forward to seeing the long term results as the earliest users. So you said that they're juniors now. Right? Yes. So so then when can we expect that first report with all of of how they did?

So we have the first report in 2019, which was when cohort was third graders. And then later this year, we'll have the long term for what's happened since then.

Okay. So by the end of the year?

Yeah. By the yeah. They're working on it now.

Okay. Yeah. Because we're definitely ready to see Of course. And I couldn't remember. I I meant to go look back because I remember when then Mayor Castro was pushing this. I I believe it first, it was an initiative that was just supposed to start in the city and then be handed off somewhere else. Is that correct? I can't remember the campaign promise.

I've not seen that. No.

Oh, okay. From from what I am recalling, but, you know, don't don't take my word on this. I thought it was something that the city was going to start, which it needed to start. You know, I think it was a very noble mission, but that it was to be handed off to either nonprofit or someone else to to to do further. You know, I had some other questions. How do our pre K first aid numbers compare to children who do not Oh, sorry, I'm sorry, Referencing slide 10. How do these numbers compare to children who do not attend pre k for SA?

So our so in San Antonio slide 10. So in San Antonio, about at the highest, sixty percent of children were kinder ready. But more recent years, it's been fifty two percent. So our children tend to outperform on average. The city's average. Okay. But there are programs. Obviously, different schools have different outcomes. But by and large, the city's kindergarten readiness has been about 52% over the last couple of years.

Okay. Sounds good. On slide 12, the San Antonio Shared Service Alliance. Does PreQ4SA collaborate with Early Matters? And if so, what does that look like?

Yeah. So Early Matters is an advocacy organization, and they have helped to bring together a group of about 90 of us to create an early learning plan for San Antonio and so Pre K First A is heavily involved in that. For a while I was leading the access to quality subgroup, John Green Otero who's our chief of innovation is now leading that one. Larissa Wilkinson, who's our Deputy CEO is leading the career pathways. And then I serve on as one of the partners that is with the advisory board helping to determine what's next and kind of give guidance to that. But they're we're closely aligned.

Got it. Yeah. Sounds sounds like that. So on slide seven, I and you mentioned that there y'all are gonna create a family search tool that's being launched in 2027. We know because in our meeting with early matters San Antonio, they're also working on a search tool. And then the Texas Workforce Commission also has their own search tool. So how are these search tools going to be different? How are

they So actually, the Early Matters search tool is pre K search tool. So we started working on that. And then it became part of the plan. And so it is part of the overall plan. So certainly we're working on that. In terms of the one that's at the state level, it does not have the functionality that we need here. And in fact, we've asked for that, the state said, we don't have the capacity. We won't have it yet. So we're gonna start here, and we hope the state we're actually ended up awarding the contract to the state to the same vendor that the state is using.

Mhmm.

And so we hope that our tool will lead to the state adopting a more rigorous that's more beneficial for families and providers. Sounds

good. Thank you for that clarification. So are there any contingency planning happening in the instance voters do not approve the program in the future?

Yes. So at this point in an authorization just like last time, we're both preparing to continue on. And then what are the possibilities? What would happen if we were not reauthorized? Mhmm. And so we will and and that, obviously, without the funding, we could not continue in the same way that we are now. It would be a tremendous loss for the community but there are possibilities that some aspects of the program could continue but it would not be it would be less accessible to the greatest to the families with the greatest need because they don't have the money to pay for childcare.

Yeah, that makes sense. But what are we doing now though to diversify your funding sources or pre K for SA's funding sources?

So part of it we have been looking at, you know, we've looked at grant funding a little bit. We've been working some with foundations. But I think what has made Pre K First A so successful is that we have the local sales tax Because base, it's sustainable, it's reliable, it's what has made this possible. And so without that funding, we would cease to exist in in the form that we know it now. We couldn't replace that money with foundations or that just wouldn't and and again, if you this is part of what makes child childcare so challenging is the cost then gets shifted to families which they cannot afford.

So with that, and I want you to help me explain this, know, because it's been raised to me a couple of times. When people just do the simple math of it takes you you all, all's operating budget around 62,000,000 and you divide that by 2,328 students, that's around a 26, close to $27,000 education per student, which is higher than most of our private schools. What are, how do we explain that?

Because part of our schools is only part one part of what we do. So we provide professional learning. We have professional learning specialists and coaches and support for those 90 providers. We also work with families and have family specialists. So that's a common misconception that all of the money is going to support the children.

It's really what makes pre k for SA stand out from so many of the other models that other cities are doing is it is a complete comprehensive program that is not just about creating additional seats. It's about completely transforming the ecosystem through other providers we work with. And our and our goal is that every family in San Antonio has access to a high quality provider, whatever meets their needs, whether it's a faith based provider in home, childcare at one of our centers in the public schools, that's the goal. And so the money goes to help support the ecosystem.

Okay. So then the quick answer to that is it's not just for education. You all are providing family services and what else did you say?

And professional learning is a big part of it. So supporting those providers who are educating another 4,800 children. That's a and I think when we did and we haven't updated the study recently, but actually when we because I got when I first came to pre K for us, I got this study or this question. And so we showed that we're actually spend we were spending less per child in our schools than some of the school districts were. And when you broke it down by hour because we run a program from 07:15 till 6PM it was per hour, it was less expensive than most of what the schools were spending.

And that was not to suggest the schools were spending too much. It was just to show that high quality education costs money. And so that's and we're very mindful of that to make sure that we are making use of every dollar in the most efficient way. But quality does cost money. And so that's an important piece. We want to pay our employees well. We want to make sure that the children get the outcomes they deserve.

We'll So update that analysis and send it as a follow-up to you and the rest of the council to see that apples to apples.

Yes. Yes. I'm curious to see how much you all are spending services, on on professional learning and and the education piece. Thank you for that. Thank you, sir. Of course. Really quick on Ready to Work. You know, I've I've said it before, you know, the mission of Ready to Work is a noble one. We I know that mayor Nirenberg and and the councils in the past were trying to solve a very hard problem of of of reducing generational poverty. So even though the outcomes are still not quite as expected, I'm I'm I'm happy to see at least some progress and and forward momentum.

A a couple of quick questions. When we're looking at the progress that we've made in reducing some of the barriers for or or what kind of progress have we made in reducing some of the barriers for people getting into jobs quicker? So

our partners are doing yeoman's work trying to make those connections before they exit their training programs, which has seen phenomenal results. As I look at over the last twelve months, while we've seen that increase in job placements, in no small part is due to them being able to make those connections so that they can have that on ramp in a much shorter time span.

Okay. Sorry, didn't I can you tell me the Twitter version of that answer?

Twitter version, our partners are connecting them to employment opportunities before they finish their training.

Okay. Okay. So you all are kind of making the on ramp quicker.

Correct.

Alright.

Know that and one of y'all's great, great partners who me and my team have tremendous respect for is Francisco and Project Quest team. I know that they do a phenomenal job of placing, connecting people with their employers. One of the things that we had talked about on our in our last meeting was that there was a flooding in the market with entry level IT jobs and it so it kind of created a longer lag for people trying to find those jobs. What have we done to correct that and have we seen that with other industries?

Yeah, IT has been the one that we struggle the most in and what has happened is our advisory board has reduced the number of occupations that we train for within ready to work, but we still have a groundswell of people that have already gone through those training programs. So we're continuing to refine which occupations in the IT sector are producing results for ready to work participants. So our board is doing yeoman's work in doing that.

Okay. Okay, sounds good. How have our target industry needs and enrollment shifted with today's current economy?

Health care is still number one, by far. You know, that sector is going to continue to have needs now and into the future. CDL drivers have been a huge demand and they're finding good employment opportunities to be ready to work. As we just talked about with IT, we're seeing a decrease in hiring from that sector, but again we're trying to find the right niches for our population. Majority of our participants don't have four year degrees, A lot of employers are looking for that, so we're trying to find the right occupations within IT that don't require it. Education is an area that's been growing for us in Ready to Work, where individuals who do have degrees that are looking to become teachers are finding great opportunities through Ready to Work. We have a very high job placement rate in that sector.

Okay. I'll go on the next round. Thank you.

Okay.

Councilman McKee Rodriguez.

Thank you. Thank you both for the presentations, and thank you for all the work that you do in our community and with residents. I know it's very difficult subject matter at time, and it's the work of of of people and human relations and the like. I guess I'll start with pre k for SA, and I'm gonna try to transition naturally and gracefully between the two. I'll start off with the reauthorization. The deadline is November 2028. And this may not be your question necessarily, but might be Eric. Do we have to wait until November 2028 or 2028 generally? Or we realistically put on the ballot this year?

No. You could you could do it sooner. Mhmm. You could do it sooner. It's just that that's up to the council for sure.

I I think it would make sense to, as quickly as possible, know that the money was authorized so that we can work it into the fight the projections for the next several years. And so that would be what I would certainly like to see, and I think the need is demonstrated time and time again. I don't know how many subject matter how many different items we talk about where child care comes up and the need for early childhood education. And my team, when when you were when you were briefing the team, asked about the need. And so the A and M study on early childhood said that we need another 30,000 seats in San Antonio. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

So right now, A and M, we commissioned a study with them. It was actually ready to work economic development and health and human services. Not health and human services. Sorry, I get them confused between the state one and our city department. But at any rate, we commissioned a study with A and M that looked at the child care landscape in Bexar County.

And what it showed was that we have about a 35,000 seat gap between the number of children with families that would like to be to work and the number of seats that are actually available. But also that the quality of that is not what it could or should be for our children. And so that's where it's like figuring out how do we expand access in the right places and in a way that families can make it affordable that is affordable for families, because we have an affordability issue as well.

For sure. And so definitely outside of just the four Pre K for SA sites, there's all the different providers that you work with to try to improve the quality and care. And I guess this is not the point where I aim to transition. Let me just I guess I will I will close out on this part of the the presentations by saying I guess I'll ask this. If we were to with the reauthorization, would we be able to expand pre K for SA such as the right now, we have the zero to three program.

Would we be able to expand that? Because that's such a great need? Would we be able to do would we be able to pilot something like night care?

Yeah, we actually have so we're working in partnership right now with Texas A and M San Antonio to open Educare to see and part of the goal of that particular site is to offer after hours or later hours care. And we will start by having regular hours, but then understanding going to a second shift and what that means. Really need to understand what the families want and need because not every family necessarily would want their young child overnight in a child care facility. But that is the intention of that program. And as with everything at Pre KivRSA, we start with a pilot to understand how to do it, study it, figure it out, and then take it to scale.

For sure. So I guess the root of the question was, can we do that with the reauthorization? Like that's something we can do, or will we have to find outside?

No, we could because the authorization is to provide services to families with young children, right, and early education services. And what that looks like is dependent on what the needs are in the community, and that's why it's shifted a little bit over time. But that's all permitted as long as we're focused on early learning that is ultimately focused on helping children do better in schools and better in the workforce.

Thank you. And I imagine you've had these conversations already with the different school districts. But as you're aware, there are a number of campuses that have closed and I've are recently had some conversations with SAICD about some locations in my district and some buildings that don't require very much repair or anything right now that could be utilized for childcare. And so if that's an opportunity, I'd like to be able to navigate because the need is deep and it's everywhere. But I guess I I really wanna convey we should put put this on the ballot as soon as we possibly can.

And I would like to make sure that Pre K for SA is able to operate and serve kids for as long as possible because we know that the need is so astounding. I'll transition to and this is the question I was going to ask. There were I'm looking at the ready to work site right now. And on the target occupations PDF, there are three that are highlighted, teaching assistants, child care workers, and veterinary technicians, and those are all indicated to be pilots. All of my years are blending together at this point. Was that a pilot for this year? And so can you tell us anything about how those three are going, and how are you testing them?

This year they're in the very early stages to see if we're gonna have some good outcomes. The vet tech program is a two year degree program through Alamo Colleges, so we haven't had any graduates from that program yet. They've just started enrolling individuals, for our childcare pilot, working with family service. And we haven't gotten our first group results yet. You don't have them out yet? No, they haven't come out yet. But the challenge in childcare, we know we need workers, but the wages. So what we're trying to do is to figure out if there's a sweet spot where getting more individuals into the childcare profession where they can still make a living wage. So we want to see what those results look like to see if can connect them to employers that pay well.

I guess drawing a connection before I forget, I think we should probably beyond this conversation have a conversation about how we make the child care industry more affordable and more accessible and how do we make it easier for operators to operate more affordable. I don't know what that looks like, but the wages have got to improve. And I don't know how we get to that point because we can train all these people. And if they decide that they're not gonna go into this field to make $11.12 dollars an hour as they shouldn't, then, you know, I I don't know what else we do. Beyond that, I see also elementary, middle school, high school.

What does that look like? Are you having are folk doing alternative certification programs primarily?

That's correct. Primarily, Region 20 alternative certification programs, people with degrees that are looking to go into the classroom.

And what does the and are we paying the fee with I guess, does that look like?

The education and training costs of that certificate program. We cover that. They get the wraparound supports that Ready to Work provides as well.

Okay. And I think to the point, I I didn't wanna forget this, but, the mayor mentioned GI Bill and mentioned, you know, folk who have access to other resources that could pay for their continued education. I used the GI Bill for my undergrad degree, and I felt like it was pretty, like, it was smooth for me. It's not the VA has a number of problems, and there's issues with for veterans receiving services. I don't know that the GI Bill was one of the was one of the biggest challenges.

What I wonder is, is there I don't know logistically how this might work out, but is there a way for ready to work to accept payment from the GI Bill? Like, can we if people want the wraparound services and that's the real benefit because, you know, you can enter in a another education program and not have any of those things and they can use the GI Bill and that's fine. But if the real benefit to veterans is going to be the wraparound services and the rest, is there a way that we can accept tuition to cover some of the cost and provide the wraparound services, but they get but the GI bill cover we accept the GI bill.

So the way that Ready to Work is set up, we reimburse tuition back to our partners who are paying that tuition upfront on behalf of the participant. So it's a reimbursement model. So the city doesn't pay any tuition upfront. We don't pay any training providers directly. We reimburse Project Quest and Workforce Loses Alamo and all those providers who are paying that on behalf of the participant. So what we could do and explore the possibility of not having tuition as a part of the package for individuals who are receiving the GI Bill and have that support. Many of our veterans have exhausted their GI Bill but still find themselves in a position of needing education and training, so we wanna make sure that we account for that as we go through those scenarios.

For sure. Think in order to be effective, I think most of the time we're good. There's always gotta be room for case by case and exceptions and the like. And so I think that's it. I did not hear I I understand the mayor asked that question. I did not hear you say it in that way the first time. Did you do you feel like you said that twice just now and I asked you over time?

No. I we didn't go that deep the first time.

Okay. Gotcha. Just wanted to be sure. I think that's it. I really appreciate both of y'all and keep it up. Thank you.

I think the spirit and intent of the question is the same though is how can we get reimbursed when others have other ways of paying for these services? Thank you.

Yes, ma'am.

Councilman Govan.

Thank you, mayor. Thank you for the presentations, both Mike and doctor Barre. So I'd prequefer SA. First of all, doctor Barre, thank you for the very long conversation we had. That was on me for making it long. Of course, you know this something I'm very passionate about. I'm very interested in finding ways to continue to expand these services. On slide 11, this is something that I asked you when we were there. Don't know if you were able to get any data on what are the for the moderate ones, the 159 that we have there, do we know what the two major disability factors of the five are that families are experiencing the most of?

Yes. I was talking with Larissa Wilkinson, our deputy CEO, this morning about this because she heads this team. And family violence is actually probably the most prevalent instability factor, but then also transportation has been an issue. And so there in fact, our CEO Paul Chapman and Larissa are going to meet with Via later in the month to kind of talk about because we bypasses, but is there a possibility that we can understand better how the system works to help families get connected to it?

Yeah, that's great. Okay, that's helpful just to know. And I think in our last community health committee meeting, we talked a lot about ACEs and how those scores are impacting our families and what that looks like here overall. And the way that MetroHealth and other programs that we have at the city are intervening in those cases oftentimes or in some form or fashion. And so I think it'd just be interesting to understand too.

I think it's something I also asked in that conversation was understanding how many of our programs are intervening in those ones, particularly domestic violence. Of course, we have a lot of good partners here in our community, but wondering too about how many of our COSA programs are assisting not only with those major two, but the other ones as well, to then kind of be able to showcase how much we're investing in our pre K students overall and our families. But also understanding, right, when our budget process later on this year and every year, frankly, how important those programs are to literally keeping our kids and our families engaged in preschool.

Absolutely. Those yeah. So we work very closely with our other departments in the city of San Antonio that are providing human services, ready to work, the health metro health as well as the community partners that we mentioned. But yeah, our because these are we know our lane is early childhood and that's what we do best. And so but we know the city has great resources and so we connect with people that have expertise in those areas. Neighborhood and housing is another big one that we work with.

Thank you. And then I know we're touching a little bit here and there about the infant and toddler pilot. Can you talk a little bit about or any updates on that one, what it's at right now, or how many folks

are So we started it with four classrooms at the South Center. We started in October. It has been even more successful than we imagined. So we have 40 children enrolled in there. We've started to collect data on them and on the teachers, the program, how it's doing so that we can understand over time.

But in one of the data pieces that we've collected is around instructional quality which we thought might be a little lower than in our preschool programs to start because it's a new program, but actually the baseline scores are very high. So we're very excited about that. And we're also doing some screenings with the children. Again, those developmental screenings to be able to find out are there any things we should be looking for and be able to provide those supports to make sure children get the interventions early. It's going great, and we're super excited about it.

That's great. Glad to hear. I think something that we hear a lot, and we always talk about it, of course, you and I, but also overall, I think this council has been very focused on finding ways to expand PRECAP opportunities, and particularly the early child education from birth to three. We kind of do this conversation a little bit at the Education Opportunities Committee, and we've been getting, I think, closer to it. But I be interested to see, as we're looking at the reauthorization for another eight years or twenty years or whatever it may be, something similar to SHIP in terms of what our long term plans are for not only pre K but education overall related to our programming here, Looking at some of the framework that was used then, timelines, targets, partners, all the specific action steps that I think you've already articulated.

But being able to put it together in one formalized document that we're able to say that this is our North Star, that no matter what funding sources we're going look for, which is the key part, right, that we're looking to fund the educator program, which will do this, and all the different things like that. I think that would help not only us continue to of look at our own budgetary conversations here, but also, I think, for the community to understand where these programs that they're investing in, frankly, are going to. Understanding what the full landscape looks like as well and being able to really articulate that when it comes to, if it is, a ten, fifteen, twenty year authorization of, where are we going to be in twenty years? And this is the road map that we would like that I believe would be helpful to them to see. I'll leave that there.

That was a good point. Yeah. And Pre Givers A is such a complex program that from a communications standpoint with people that aren't directly involved, it is a challenge to talk about all the things that we do. And we often have other communities who come visit us and want to learn from us. And they're always amazed by all the different things that San Antonio is doing in this area. And so yeah, we'll work with our comms folks to help get the word out and put it into understandable language, even though it's complex.

Yeah. Well, you for that. I think those are my questions for Pre K for SA. For Ready to Work, Mike, do you have a well, first of thank you for the conversation we also had. I know we were just walking by the other day. We had a long conversation about AI as well and how it impacts our community. Can you break down, whether it's today or later on, the participant data for those who are enrolled in sorry, our ReadyWork participants who are already enrolled in our prime partners, whether it's Alamo Colleges, Hallmark, etcetera, already plugged in there, or employed by a ReadyWork employer versus those who are not enrolled or employed by either?

Can you give me that one more time? So those who are enrolled?

Yeah. So could you give us the data between participants who are not enrolled in any program at all, not in college, not in a ready to work employer, versus those who are either in a pledged employer or already in Project Quest or Got colleges, etcetera.

Yeah. We'll have to follow-up with that one.

Okay. Thank you. And then I think a similar conversation I think we had this conversation a little bit, at the Education Opportunities Committee. And we talked about Alamo Promise, right, and the kind of overlap with Alamo Promise and other Promise programs as it relates to Ready to Work and other kinds of programs we have in terms of Workforce Development and Education. I just want to understand a bit more. In terms of Alamo Promise itself, I know a lot of our folks a lot of our participants are eighteen twenty four, are enrolled in Alamo Promise already. But with the tuition costs, are we covering primarily that tuition? Or are we looking at those who are nontraditional students, those who are outside the right after high school range?

So for Alamo Promise, that's funded through Ready to Work is $4,600,000 in FY twenty seven budget. Those individuals are not connected to traditional Ready to Work. We're funding those scholarships through the Ready to Work pot, but they're not captured with the case manager supports or any of the other elements of ready to work. They don't show up on our dashboard. Got it. For individuals who are enrolled at Alamo Colleges that are within ready to work, believe it's about 18% of our participants are pursuing two year degrees, and the majority of them are at Alamo Colleges. We track those on our dashboard.

Okay. Think it's a similar point to what the conversation around Hazelwood and GI Bills and veterans, right, but finding a way to make sure that the tuition resources that we're providing are going as far as they can versus subsidizing something that's already available somewhere. And I understand that point, right? For Alamo Promise, there's a specific eligibility. And so this one's helping those who usually aren't eligible to be able to still get that resource. And I think it bleeds into a little bit about Pell Grants and the changing ecosystem there. I believe Council Member Mesquenthal asked this the other day. Workforce pay? Yes. Yes. What is that going look like in terms of our tuition costs, savings? Do we anticipate anything different there?

Supposed to think the answer is it's too early to tell. They're still making the rules for workforce Pail. Those are still being formulated. I've had conversations with our colleagues over at Alamo Colleges. And as soon as that information is available, they'll let us know. In theory, over the long run, it should create some savings with intuition. We just can't pinpoint what those are as of yet.

Got it. And I ask all those questions just because I think when I think about the larger question, what's next for Ready to Work as we look at the wind down, I just want to be clear about I know we had the end date 2030. That's the goal to have our funds extended by then. But if there is, for some reason, savings in tuition or anything else that we don't anticipate currently in our assumptions, do we anticipate being able to continue this program in some form, even smaller scale, beyond 2030, if, for instance, we have $20,000,000 left over, we do half the programming for 2031. Does that make Yeah.

If there's funding remaining at the end of FY 'thirty, we'll continue to invest that in workforce development efforts within the ecosystem. Okay. Yes.

Okay. I And think that's helpful just because I would like to see that in some form, or at least the conversation a bit more detailed with that versus trying to find ways to spend it in more creative ways. Although I think it's the conversation if it's looking at maybe specific fields that we can look at. I just wanna be able to continue to do this work because I think it's the need's still there. Right?

We know that there's still a lot in our city with related to this, and being able to have a central hub for this is really helpful. And I'm gonna brag for my last thirty seconds on counselor Mesta Gonzalez one more time in my comments just because of her recent CCR related to the Center of Education Partnership. Finding ways to continue these efforts beyond ready to work, I think, is still crucial. And I think there's a lot of resources out there that we can still tap into. And if there's any leftover dollars there that we can continue to push that along, I'd be interested to see what that looks like. And, anyway, those are just my initial thoughts at the moment around what this next phase of ready to work looks like, work for sale in our city looks like. Thank you, mayor.

Thank you.

Eric, do you have something?

Yeah. Thanks, mayor. Councilman, you're you're exactly right. I mean, we we talked a little bit about this that during budget adoption, we've got great programs here. And I was also gonna reference the CCR that councilwoman Mesa Gonzalez submitted that that still needs to go through governance. But the notion is is that we have have Alamo Promise, which is funded to the tune of $4,600,000 by the city. Started out under the general fund. It's under ready to work. Hugely important to the community. We have both UTSA and Texas A and M San Antonio that have created tuition free programs.

We have the San Antonio Education Partnership, which was created when I was in junior high, and still exists, right? No. I'm not that old, Mayor. It's just the eighties. Right? But but it still exists. Right? And then we have ready to work. And and all those components are all great. Right?

But things have changed. Times have changed. And so how do we how should we look at this in terms of an entire horizon in order to make sure that we're spending the the money, our money, or the public's money in the best possible way. If we don't, right now, we we we run the risk of additional siloed programs. And I think we we take advantage of the fact that we we need to be efficient, period. And number two, we need to start planning for the end of ready to work and what that looks like. And how do we start to move those things slowly over time and and not in the course of the 2030.

Councilman White.

Thanks, mayor. I'll start with pre k for SA. Thank you for the presentation and all of the good work. Just for clarification purposes, can you explain what Texas the state's pre K funding covers versus what our pre K for SA covers?

So the state funding covers half day pre K and it varies depending on the school district. There's a very complicated formula of school funding. So it depends on the different districts. And so when children are eligible for dual enrollment, which is a smaller subset than even are eligible for childcare scholarships, then we can dually enroll them with a partner school district. The school district pulls down the state funding, and we ask for the majority of that in exchange for providing the full day pre K.

Okay. And then I had the same question as my colleague over there regarding the cost per student. And so I guess we'll be able to get

that breakdown

of else is going into this cost. It looks like expenditures continue to outpace revenues every year. What's driving some of those the growth and the costs there?

So a lot of it is personnel and the increasing cost of personnel. But the program is designed, because it's an eight year authorization, there's a planned use of fund balance in the design. Because if we were to not be reauthorized, we'd want to be just at almost zero at the end of our authorization. But at the same time, we're also potentially planning for reauthorization. So what if we do get reauthorized? And so that's in the eight year design is on the front end less and then you're spending down that fund balance.

Okay. Have you guys done sort of any internal or had any independent folks look at you guys for operational audits and things and efficiencies and how we can

We get audited a lot. So we have to have and both internally from the city, but also we have an external audit. And we ourselves are very intentional about how the money is spent and where it gets spent. But the majority of our costs are associated with operating the schools, right, because you have to have a certain number of teachers and staff in there, but also in supporting our 90 childcare providers to provide the coaching, the business supports, the materials, all those sorts of things.

And when you look at bridging the gap between the sales tax revenue and the operating budget, what are some of the funding sources that you're using?

So right now we're relying primarily on the sales tax and the program brings in additional funding. When we have specific programs that we want to try or pilot, we look for external funding if it's not available in the revenue from sales tax.

What big a percentage, how big a percentage is the dual enrollment?

It's almost half, not quite, I think. And I don't have the do you have the numbers exactly? Let's see if I've got it here.

And are there any issues with the reimbursements on this?

I mean, working with our school districts, they get the funding. The challenge for school districts is they get funding in arrears, right? So it's just making sure that we keep up. They don't get it in real time, and so we just have to keep up with them. But they're good partners in being able to do that. Okay.

All right. Well, appreciate that. If we can just get the percentage of the dual enrollments, that'd be great. On ready to work, I guess I'm pleased that there's been some improvement, right? Job placements are up a bit.

The cost per placement is trending down slightly. Looks like sixty two percent of folks enrolled in the training successfully completed, which is more than it was. I've got questions maybe we can talk offline. Some of these ROI figures I think that you guys have put in the presentation I think perhaps need some context. It does look like there's still about 2,100 folks who have completed the training that we still need to find some jobs for.

And one of the other things that concerns me is I think the city of San Antonio is still one of the top two or three employers of our ready to work folks, right?

Yeah. Methodist Health Care is number one, and I believe the city is number three at this point in time.

Yeah. So I mean, a lot of this a lot of this money that we're spending on on training, we're just training training our people to fill jobs to jobs here, which I think is an interesting model, I guess. A couple of questions. Average time from training completion to job placement is what right now?

About sixty nine days.

It's about sixty nine days. And that's a little bit down where it was last year. Is there any point where we stop tracking or supporting a participant in a job search?

No. As long as they're in job search and they stay connected to their agency

Yeah.

We're to continue to help them. What typically happens is at some point, if that connectivity is severed and they're unable to get ahold of them, that's the only reason why they will stop.

So those 2,100 people I just mentioned, about how many of those are we still helping?

Well, many

of them may have just finished within the last month or so. But the majority of them are still in case management with their partners. They're still being assisted.

Okay.

The on the job training, I guess we're sort of moving away from that.

Yeah. We're shifting away from the OJT. Again, had employers who signed agreements with the city to hire x number of individuals that they knew were going to be ready to work participants at $20 an hour as the floor wage. Those hiring projections did not come into fruition, which is why we had decreased spending in that space.

Yeah. And I remember it was two years ago when you stood up there and I asked you, you know, what could we be doing better? And we talked then about how we needed to look at things more from the employer perspective and fulfilling those needs. So two years down the road, I guess we're doing a little bit better than that. But as you stand here today, what can we do better to make this program more effective?

It's a continual process. We have to keep doing what we've been doing, continue to talk to employers, find out what those needs more needs are and creating that alignment. The participants are hungry for jobs. They want to work. We've got to do a better job at equipping them with the skills that the employers are paying for.

And so what are the biggest impediments you see right now today in terms of placing people in jobs?

Yeah, it remains the same, but I believe that the economy is going be a big factor in that, us finding out exactly which occupation is going to be experiencing growth over the next two years, over the next three years until the sunset of the program to make sure that we're aligned. And the programs that we're advising participants to go into or the jobs are going to be here locally. Okay.

Well, I agree with a lot of the questions that the mayor and the comments that the mayor had earlier on this. I'm glad to see things things are improving certainly. But I think there's you know as you said there's there's a lot of work work to be done. So thanks mayor.

Mayor. Mayor, you have something?

Yeah, just real quick. So councilman, are one of the largest employers in the city with 13 and a half thousand employees. We are in direct competition with a lot of other businesses. And you can also say that as a city organization, we're a corporation of corporations because we do so many different things. We've got a multitude of professions that start from straight blue collar to nurses and doctors and lawyers.

So we are one of the largest users because I'm in direct competition to fill spots, to do things that a lot of folks don't want to do, whether that's animal care services or solid waste or some of the other difficult jobs that we have. Much for the same reason why you have Methodist Healthcare, one of the top providers, they're using Ready to Work because they're in direct competition with Baptist and Christus and UHS. So I think it's to our benefit as an organization. If I can hire someone who has gone through the necessary training or skills or certification, and they get employed with the city, which we try to maintain an employer of choice, then they're in a better position and we're in a better position as an organization. So we're chasing that for sure because on a daily basis, we're in competition to keep our positions filled.

And so I don't want it to be seen as a negative context, but but I mean, pure and simple, we're we're one of the largest work employers in the city.

Yes, I don't know that I meant it negatively, I mean, but certainly, you know, we could also directly hire folks and train them here, right, as opposed to them going through the program. So I don't mean it negatively, I just think that stood out to me that the city is the third largest employer of of the ready to work participants. And I guess my follow-up to you would be then, so what what do you know where we're hiring them for for what kind of jobs?

Everything from CDLs, it's solid waste through a Lindy, in the follow-up memo, we'll kind of list out. But I know probably the lowest level are CDLs, because we're in constant churn whether it's public works or solid waste. Frankly, and you all probably know this, the solid waste employee work group is probably one of the most tenured. They come to the city, they work for the city and they will stay with us for thirty five years. And so those are good positions, good paying positions. But we'll get you a breakdown

on the list.

We're going to continue to chase that because we got to keep positions filled.

I'm not saying not to, Eric. I'm not saying not to.

Councilwoman Messa Gonzalez.

Thank you. Thank you for the presentations. I'll go ahead and this is a nice B session because this is kind of a B session of first, right? We were the first in really the country back in 2012 to invest in pre K, and we were the first city in the country really in 2020 to invest in workforce development. So I feel like this is an important meeting to showcase this and what we do as a city.

So just wanted to start with pre K. And I also think before we start too, I know there's a lot happening at the state level in regards to early childhood. So I want to make a note that we prioritize this as part of our legislative priorities at our next whenever we have a discussion about what those priorities are. And I hope my colleagues would chime in and agree with that. And I know you're working too at the state level. If you can share some of that work that you're doing before we start the questions.

Sure. Thank you. So out of the last legislative session, there was a bill that convene a tri agency task force, which is looking at the four agencies that have some kind of governance over child care providers. And those four agencies often have conflicting regulations. It makes it very burdensome for providers.

And so this that the heads of those agencies are coming together to look at where there are discrepancies and try and create a more streamlined system. I'm participating in a statewide work group that's looking at quality and what are some of the issues around quality that are affected by some of these disconnected systems. The other piece that came out of that was the Governor's Task Force on Early Learning, which is actually being chaired by Peter Holt, and that is looking at what can the state do to improve early childhood. And again, I'm on a task force that's giving expert advice, if you will, or guidance for that task force around issues of quality and affordability.

Thank you for that. On slide four, when we talk about, and

this

goes to kind of what all that pre K does. It's that ecosystem that you mentioned, and we've talked about this as well. But can you just expand a little bit on those CDAs and those 300 learning teachers? Where are they in the city?

So they are all over the city because we they are out in child care providers. Some of them are also in school districts. When we started this work, many of our school districts had teacher assistance, but they did not have that credential. That was not the standard. We worked closely with our school districts to provide that coursework and to train their people to be able to offer those courses in their own schools so that we now have kind of set that as the standard of as a city that a CDA is kind of the entry level that our teacher aides and assistant teachers should have and then we've been expanding that to what's happening in our local child care providers as well.

Okay and what's the starting salary for those folks with that credential?

So the average salary in San Antonio for a child care worker is still around $11 an hour, however. Thank you. In our shared services, this is one of the issues that we're addressing and one of the agreements we have with our providers that as they see increased revenues, they will invest in their people. And so on average, our providers are paying around $15 an hour. And we are pushing toward getting that to $18 an hour, trying to help increase their diversify their revenues, bring in revenues so that they can pay their teachers more, which they are very supportive of. It's just a matter of, do you have the dollars to do it?

Okay. I appreciate that. You know, when I was campaigning, I knocked on doors, and I literally knocked on three in home providers during pickup time, and it was full blown daycare.

Yes.

I know I would give my right arm for my early childhood teachers, for the ones that took care of my kids. Would do anything for those folks to this day. So I know how important that is for families. And so can you talk about what we're doing to help those in home providers? I'm going to take a tour of the in home providers in District 8. I hope my colleagues do the same, to just highlight the work that they're doing. And not always in those traditional work hours, too. So some of those are open late. But can you talk a little bit more about what you're doing to help them?

Yeah. So our shared service model includes family home providers. And it's a different kind of business than the child care centers. It's related, but has distinct challenges. And so we're helping them with coaching, with curriculum, helping them to even automate their businesses, helping them do some business planning about if they can accept more children, what should they be charging in tuition, how do they market to families.

But mostly it's that helping them because they're often alone. Right? They are just one teacher or one owner in their home. And so helping them to feel connected to a network, but also we've been really focused on expanding hours for nontraditional hours because in home care, family home care is the easiest place to expand those hours. So weekend and later nights that make it more available for our workers, whether it's in the health care field or the manufacturing field, have those available to them.

Great. I mean, I know last I think the last council adopted the property tax abatement for the early childhood centers. Have those been beneficial? Have They

have been beneficial.

Expand on those?

Yeah. I don't have the exact numbers of how many are taking advantage of them. That was a huge win because it's just one more expense that the providers don't have to incur. But I think also it was a win because it helped the providers understand city council cares. Right? And that's really important that people understand that the work they're doing is critical to our community and to our work force. And so I think as much as the money, it was being seen and recognized that they are business owners and they need the support.

Ms. Great. And I remember when was this last couple of B sessions ago, had Opportunity Home here, and they talked about kind of their fundraising arm that they're going to start with an Opportunity Home. Has pre K talked about that at all? About maybe

a fundraising? We actually started a division called Pre K for SA Venture Solutions a couple years ago because we had so many communities outside of San Antonio who were coming to visit us. And they often wanted our help in doing things in their own community. We said, well, our resources stay in San Antonio. So if you want our assistance, you will need to pay for that.

And so we've had a few communities that are taking us up on that offer. But interestingly, what's happened also is that we've had employers in San Antonio come to us and say, can you help us solve our child care for our employees? And we said, we can certainly talk about that under the condition that we don't just solve child care for employees, we solve child care for the community. So yes, we can help your employees who are part of the community, but you have to help us figure out how do we serve more children and what does that look like. And so that is we're in the beginning stages of that working with it.

But we've talked to Toyota. We've talked with USAA. We've talked with a number of employers to say, are the possibilities of how that could help, which doesn't mean necessarily building a pre k for SA on their site or near their site. It's more likely to be connecting with one of our partner providers who is ready to expand that might be able to offer that or to think about unique solutions that meet the needs of employers and across our community.

And how do we add that number to the, you know, 2,000 then, right? We For will, the folks that you are helping literally in the centers, but there's so many other providers that you're helping. So how do we what's that number look like?

Well, the 90 providers that we have in shared services, we don't yet have a formal partnership on the employer side. These are very beginning conversations about understanding what that could look like. So more to come as some of those come to fruition. But our goal really is, again, to have every family have a high quality option that makes sense for them and that is affordable for them. And that's going to take a really mixed delivery system of both in home providers, childcare, faith based schools, all of those are important for the system.

Okay, great. Thank you so much. Again, I appreciate this long term investment that we're making as a city and look forward to seeing this last over the next twenty years and how we do that. I think that zero to three age group is so necessary that we figure out how to expand services there. And so in keeping if we expand this, those twenty years, are you able to provide more early childhood centers? Or is it really working with employers that goes a longer way? I guess I'm trying to better understand

It's all of it, actually. It's working with more providers, because right now we work with 90. We'd love to work with 300 that helps them expand, be able to fill their seats. But it's also working with employers to figure out, are there places where we would want to create more seats for community that also could benefit the employers. Again, that's a diversified revenue source, right? Because if employers are helping pay for child care, then that makes it a more stable child care center. So those are all the pieces that we're looking deciding with the next authorization. And we always talk with the community about what are the needs. We look at the data and say, what's next? Where should

we be headed? Okay. Thank you. Ready to work. Not really we have gone through this presentation in economic workforce development. So thank you for all the work you're doing. This long term investment I think goes a long way. It had a rough start, but it's okay and we push through and make sure we're hitting the goal. So I see a lot of our partners here. I see some of the board members here.

So thank you for all the work that you're doing to make this program successful. I just want to really make the same point that I made in EWDC, is just in the future, any participants that are eligible for those workforce Pell Grants that we can see the cost savings when the time comes. I know it's still going through the steps on the federal government side. And maybe if our IGR department can keep tabs on what's happening with those that would be helpful and give us an update through our federal lobbyists or something. I think that would be helpful to all of us so we know where they are in the process there. I don't really have any questions just thanks again for all your work there. That's it.

Thank you.

Councilwoman Spears.

Thank you, mayor. I think I wanna first say, you know, workforce is top of mind because the mayor mentioned it, but in Taiwan, that's all they wanted to talk about. And I think workforce is inextricably tied to child care in these days because it's usually dual income families or single parent families. And child care is so expensive no matter who you are. What amount of money you make, it's expensive.

So I think I'm going to start, though, with ready to work. Ready to work. I think this sounds funny when I say it out loud now. Ready to work needs to look at what's working, I think, and what's not working. I do agree we probably need to look at how we narrow our focus with the time we have.

Trades are are really good point there that we do trades because that's all I hear we need. I hear we need that really a lot across our community. But equally important, I think, because you mentioned Methodist is our top employer, is how do we integrate these new technologies coming our way, like AI, which I talk about a lot, into more of like a scaffolding approach for people who are already working but need these skills to train up quickly. And I think we can do those things and meet those needs. I don't want us to move away from it because we need to lean into it because those are the kinds of high paying jobs we want to see in our community and the kinds of employers we're trying to attract.

So to that point, being employer led is extremely important and the employer experience is important. How they're integrating with our systems and finding the right candidates for their jobs is is very important. So I had a few questions here as well. Let's see. How do they enroll? How are the employers enrolling and setting up their job categories?

So employers don't particularly enroll in ready to work. Our contracted partners establish relationships with employers directly. That was the reason why they were selected to do this work because of those relationships and their expertise in that space. And through those employer relationships, through our prime partners, they make those connections for our participants to employment with those who are seeking work.

But they don't use they don't have to submit, like, job codes or anything, like, into the application that we use?

No. They don't have to submit any job codes or anything like that. We have employers that have taken a pledge to support Ready to Work and hire from the pipeline. And those employers are pledged employers within Ready to Work, but you don't have to be a pledged employer

I just have received feedback that it's hard to navigate that pipeline.

Gotcha. Yeah. Yeah. We we are constantly working with employers and listening to their feedback to try to find ways to have them access the talent better. Some of those iterations that we've done, we have a ready to work job board that employers can register for and they can list job postings within that job board and our participants can have their resumes uploaded to those employers that are seeking work. If they have a specific job that they want posted for only ready to work participants, they can upload it there. Or they can use our Work in Texas system, the system supported by the Texas, the state workforce commission, Texas workforce commission, and they can find our candidates there as well.

I think that's what I'm hearing is that they're having trouble navigating our dashboard.

Gotcha. The job board. Understood.

And tracking people that they're interested in if they get placed or not. What so you mentioned okay. Here. Let me find this. Slide five, I think. How did we go from I'm sorry. It's slide three. You've got the 4,358 placed and approved jobs as of March 30. But here on five, it says two thousand eight eighty nine in an approved job as of October '25. What did we do to increase so much in six months?

Yeah. I think, again, our partners, they're experts in this space, and connecting their participants to employment is what we brought them on board to do, and they got better at doing that. Ready to Work is a program that's operating at scale. Many of our partners hadn't seen the volume of participants, and it took some time for them to perfect what it looks like serving that number of participants with the resources that they had.

So have we, like, done an assessment or an analysis to see what industries these were in or or, you know, analyze that? Because that's pretty significant to me.

Absolutely. The primary industries have been trucking, CDL, health care with all those allied health professions Yeah. Have been the bulk of

those hires.

Okay. So I was seeing so on that 100 back on slide five. The $125 return for every dollar spent, do do you know what represent what wage increases that represents?

$79 for every dollar invested in wage increases alone, and that's directly into families here in San Antonio.

Okay. So it's a little bit it's an inverse there. Okay. I I just I just wanna reiterate. I I really think the employer led model is gonna be most important.

And and with the time left, we really should just focus on the things we know we do really well and get as many people into that as possible. And trades are, again, what I'm hearing a lot about. And using that time to quickly scale up our workforce in those areas like AI that they need to scale up in. And I wanna also double triple down with what my colleagues said about other resources, especially for our veterans. Obviously, I am most concerned about what happens with our veterans, our active duty, and their families Yes.

And their kids. Because we've got to support them well and how we can efficiently use all the resources that everyone has available to them. That's just one example of a group. But any group that has other resources available to them, how we can be really efficient with what we do with our tax dollars and then those other resources, and how we can get additional resources as well, if there's any other funding we can go after, I think we should be doing that. So but thank you, Mike.

Thank you.

Pre k for SA. The benefit of going later is your colleagues have asked a lot of the questions already. So I wanted to ask what councilwoman Ms. Gonzales and councilwoman Eldredge Guevito, you know, we were talking about the breakout. And I too find that a little bit hard to explain because I hear what you're saying.

It's almost like we're doing two things. We're trying to scale up our, child care workers and what their abilities are, but also provide spot seats. And I am really interested well, first, I'm glad we're gonna get the breakdown from you, Eric, that shows, like, how we're how it really blaze out per kid because that, on its face, is very expensive, like you mentioned. But I just want to serve more kids, period. Especially because there's this sort of idea I'm in this mall I'm in a bunch of groups in my in my district that are online.

So we have these moms around Stone Oak, and they're real active, and they talk a lot about they need jobs where they can drop their kid in. They need jobs that are just sort of supplementing what they're doing. They can't afford child care. Period. End of story.

They maybe have too many children or their job isn't paying enough. A lot of single parent families, to your point about family violence, when they get put in these situations and they're not skilled up enough to and they're and they're learning. Like, I I just think that whatever we can do to really look at how we we do more about offering more receipts. I mean, if we're training these people up, you mentioned there's 4,800 kids getting served by this this the the child care workers being trained up more, receiving more training. But it to me, that has to translate to seats

Mhmm.

Because you can only really do one of these. Well, I mean, you should be training at the the providers we're working with. Yeah.

Yes.

But if we're not receiving more seats from everyone that we're training up, while I know that does level set maybe the the quality that we're doing, but it's not providing more opportunities for those who need help with their child care. So to that, also, I would say, I I hadn't we were talking in the office about if there's an opportunity to maybe do a drop in child care pilot that we can look at. We have one of those out in District 9 that we think is working really well that has a structured learning curriculum and maybe even, you know, like to your point, partnering with large employers on this. Because a lot of the jobs that people are trying to obtain are hybrid jobs, and they're not traditional. So how we serve that subset of our workers.

And then also if they have the the training I mean, shift work, that's hard. That's really, really hard.

Very hard. Yes.

So that basically covers everything I was trying to hit. But I again, I just think that we're trying to do a lot of things and maybe, again, narrow that scope to really get to more kids.

But

thank you very much.

Councilwoman Castillo.

Thank you, mayor. Thank you all both for the presentations. Doctor Bray, appreciate you briefing my team and, of course, the work that you and your team members do, the support personnel, teachers, and providing high quality education, particularly with the scope curriculum. So just thank you so much. Many of my questions have been answered throughout council discussion. Looking forward to the study to demonstrate what we know, right, the impact of pre k four SA, and I'm supportive of exploring what it could look with the reauthorization. Right? The trend is, right, we know child care is a priority, and the need to expand and support is very much needed. So I'm eager to support that as well as council member Mesa Gonzalez's request that we have a robust legislative agenda that includes early childhood education. Those are my my comments.

Thank you for briefing my team as well. Moving over to ready to work. Again, Mike Ramsey, thank you for the work that you and your team do. Again, I always highlight the work that y'all do and how y'all highlight district specific stories. And for example, y'all gave us, the district five team, a highlight of a district five resident.

It's Jason's ready to work story who's been, had rather a challenging journey to him, throughout his way to success, and it highlights that as a former inmate and fresh off of a six month program to address his addiction, he was able to use ready to work funds to help pay for his tuition in Goodwill's San Antonio's manufacturing boot camp. In that program at Goodwill, Jason began to show his leadership and mentorship qualities that help him earn the respect of his peers and instructors, and he highlights how Ready to Work even assisted with the purchase of a suit for his job interview, and he gives credit to Ready to Work, the team at Goodwill, and his church family for helping him reach his dream of reintegrating into society. And looking at the district five specific stats, right, we're seeing District 5 residents go from earning 10,000 to up to $42,000. And I highlight that story in particular because it reminds me of miss Pena, a constituent that we connected to the Ready to Work program. She was eager, came by our Collins Garden office, showed me a picture of her in front of the Saint Philip's Community College sign.

And she's an older adult and was just eager to get back and gain new skills. And with her case, it was very unique because she earned her GED while incarcerated, so getting her transcripts were a paper copy versus the digital copy that most universities or programs require. But I highlight that in terms of the case by case nature. Oftentimes, as I shared during economic and workforce development is when we look at the metrics for ready to work, oftentimes we analyze them like we're talking about the installation of streetlights or filling sidewalk gaps, but these are individuals with very unique and diverse needs, and it's a case by case basis in terms of how are we connecting them to opportunity. I would be remiss if I didn't highlight Joel who presented over at Bexar County in front of employers to talk about the importance of hiring individuals, high barrier individuals that have gone through the ready to work program, right?

Because it's not just about the completion of the program, it's highlighting the quality of work of folks that participate in the program. So just appreciate Mike and your team for continuing to meet with employers, but also tapping into those high barrier groups that we see that there are challenges, and working with employers to highlight the impact. This morning, I was in Somerset with Joel as well and a couple of ready to work folks highlighting the twenty years of Toyota, right? Toyota Tutsu or TTTX. And it was 20 individuals who have been part of the program, but grateful for Alex and Mike for introducing me to Leslie Cantu, who has really shaped a model in terms of tapping into the talent of folks who have, been released from, the the prison system and in connecting them with workforce training.

And what I learned from commissioner Tommy Calvert is they're one of the highest employers. Right? So today, there's a second chance job fair at the Frost Bank Center, and they're tapping into this talent pool. So just really grateful for the work, and I think part of that has to do with why we've seen it increase. Right?

Because these are unique case by case needs, and it's working with employers to demonstrate that there are potential federal incentives as well as you if you hire individuals with felonies on their records. So just wanted to highlight that great work that you are doing, and there's a lot of opportunity, of course, for us to continue to engage with employers to highlight the impact that ready to work is having. I my question to you, Mike, is how can we as council continue to support, you all with having conversations with employers about, the value, of tapping into ready to work, graduates? And I think with the city of San Antonio being the third highest employer, it demonstrates the quality of graduates that are going through the ready to work program as well.

Yeah. Thank thank you for that council member. I think the best way that we can you can help us in the community is by letting the employers know that Ready Work is a resource for them. Our partners have been working hard to get talent ready so they can shorten their time to hire and reduce their turnover by getting people who are really gonna be committed to their to their jobs. And if we can continue to get the word out that Ready to Work is working for people, and it can work for them as well.

Wonderful. Thank you so much, Mike. Just wanted to also thank Alex because there's been questions that we have. The entire team, you all really dig into the weeds. If I have a question, Alex will have a full brief in terms of helping me understand why something may or may not be. So just really appreciate the work of you and your team. As councilwoman Mesha Gonzalez mentioned, right, this demonstrates the the importance and the value that the city council and City Of San Antonio residents have put in terms of supporting work force development in early childhood education. So would be supportive of of, of course, continuing to support this work as well as, as the councilman proposed in terms of the reauthorization for, pre k four s a. Thank you. Thank you, mayor.

Councilman Moguia.

Thank you. I'll try to beat the clock, since a lot of stuff has been said already. I think it's really important that we had these two topics today because I I do believe that the cure to poverty is at the intersection of workforce education and housing. So these are three items that really move people into a better life. So real quick, wanna advocate for, yeah, reauthorization of pre K for SA sooner than the '28 mark.

And also, I would also advocate for the twenty year renewal because I think these challenges will not go away in twenty years, and they can benefit from that long runway of opportunity of of funding. And I also think, you know, working to improve other locations is important, which I appreciate that pre K for SA does. And, you know, we I pulled up a map here of childcare desert. Inner West Side, East Side, predominantly South Side. Right?

Lot three, four of my ZIP codes in my district are the deep red where there are zero seats for folks. So I do welcome touring any places that you might be working with, like, to counsel mister Gonzalez's point. So maybe we can talk offline about folks that are there that are doing some good work or how we can tour and let just know what's happening in my district.

Fantastic. I'd be happy to do that.

Yes. Thank you very much. Appreciate that. And, Mike, real quick. I know it was kind of touched upon earlier. But how much of the success of rate of work is determined upon the status of the economy at the federal level, micro, all the way to micro level?

It's all impactful. I think as we continue to shift to the new dynamic that employers are seeing, first it was tariffs. You know, now you're trying to figure out, you know, how your workforce is gonna look and project into the unknown as far as how many people you're gonna need on staff. And you have artificial intelligence that's gonna be impacting the workforce tremendously. I know councilwoman Spears is extremely passionate about that. There's a lot of unknowns in that landscape as it relates to employers and hiring. So it's gonna be prudent upon us to make sure that we're connecting with employers to hear directly from them exactly what they're thinking and what they're seeing around that corner so we can prepare people to train in those areas where we believe there's a higher probability of there being jobs.

That's a really good point. So you said tariffs were detrimental to employers here in town?

Well, anecdotally

Kind of.

And what we've heard from conversations from employers, their growth was stifled during that time period of uncertainty.

Okay. That's good to know. Also, tied to this other point I'm gonna make about what comes after ready to work, because to the same Anders point, we shouldn't wait till 2030 to start that process. And I see some folks here, right, there's goodwill, Project Quest, which is a lot of great work in D4, WSA. What the next phase of this looks like to carry this momentum forward as you're showing us that more and more folks are getting through the program. As the program nears completion, so we have to make sure we continue those investments. But also, I would say, how do we drive and invest in sectors that we know we need? Right? So the general economy not providing a lot of doctors for us. Right?

And that's especially so on the South Side. So I've talked about this. Right? We have a huge focus on manufacturing, which is great. We can we can do more than one thing. But you've got high schools aligned with manufacturing pathways. You have colleges aligned with manufacturing pathways. You have the manufacturers go in reverse and connecting the dots there. How do we do that for industries that we know we will need, like health care, but are also recession proof, that are also technology proof? Right?

Councilor McKee Rogers made this point the other day. How do we know we're not and putting all these incentives towards jobs that may go away in in the next twenty, thirty years. So I would say as we talk about the future of Ready to Work and what that looks like with our partners, how do we really try to drive our own economy that we know we need, especially on areas of town like the South Side, the East Side, the West Side where we have gaps that the general economy is not really providing for us. So that's just my last point. Thank you, Mike. Thank you, sir.

Councilman Kour.

Thank you, mayor. Thank you all so much for these presentations. You know, I'll start with where council council member Munguia started with around really trying to address poverty. I truly don't think that we're actually going to be able to address the inequities in our system until we continue to double down on investments for education and workforce development, which is truly just another form of education for adults. Right, Mike?

And so I think that it's really important that we have these conversations around our unhoused population and how what we really want them to do is be in the workforce, and we can't say that we want that if we're not actually doing anything to provide workforce development and training. We can't say that we we should not have a city funded or a public funded city supported workforce development program because it is true we are the third biggest employer. I think it's important that we, like any other large company, would be having their own pipelines, that we build a pipeline too because it's important for us to have folks in so many positions that are essential essential workers to our community. So all that to say, this work today is very important, and I think it is incumbent upon us not to figure out how to nix these programs, but how to figure out how to actually support them and make sure that they are thriving so that we can be one of a kind, top notch in the country which I believe we are already very close to being in both of these areas. So pre k for SA I feel like we've talked about a lot and there's a lot of support for.

I just had a couple of quick questions Doctor. Bray, can you tell me what just out of curiosity, what is your staff turnover rate?

I don't know what it is off the it's low and I don't know what

it currently is. Give me like an estimate single digits right?

Yeah single digits yes.

Yeah in urban school districts around the state the staff turnover rate for teachers is around 30%. So it is it's I just wanted to share if you knew what the low rate was is that the staff at Pre K4SA is happy and well taken care of which is why quite frankly we don't hear from them, And and that is also a part of what contributes to the cost that goes into pre k for SA. When you go by and visit the school, you see these educators that are early childcare educators that don't get paid very much in the ecosystem being paid justly and working just as hard to educate the kids. And the second component to it I think is innovation. When you talk to an educator, every educator wants to be in a space where they are treated like a professional.

Unfortunately, the community that we have created is educators are seen as executors and here is a curriculum and go teach it. But when we actually allow teachers and educators to be innovators, they can thrive. And even and it comes down to even in the facility that we are creating. So simple things. When we get scared because of threats to our buildings, we board up. And we say all of our urban city buildings have to be boarded up. You can't see through them. You can't have dangerous items for play anywhere. Why did we not think of cutting doors in half so that kids can't get out through the bottom, but adults can see through the top? I mean, we've just it was more expensive, so we value engineered that out of schools.

But when you go to the pre k for essay set, you see that actually this is possible. Why do we not think of nature play as an opportunity for kids to throw around with rocks and fall on the ground and get hurt and realize it's okay to fall? We said no, let's make everything rubberized so that when you fall, we won't get liable, rather than teaching kids how to safely play in nature. So those are the things that I feel like throughout the years we have gotten removed from with education that pre k for SA is showing us a little bit of a light on how you can do that with our littlest kiddos. So I actually support the council member point where we were actually talking recently with some of the other housing folks that want pre k for SA to be in their housing sites, and we think that would be great.

We have some projects that we submitted for LITEC funding, but it's scary because what if they don't get funded? How do we then continue the program going? So I agree that if we can put that on the ballot sooner, so that our housing projects, that all the other growth opportunities you're thinking about can have some surety in the fact that it will go on, because a 74 approval rate from the last voters is very high. There's very few of us that got 74% approval rate. I know for the few of you that, right?

So I think that is a lot to say about what the program success has already been, and the last thing I just want to highlight is, I'm sorry I'm a little bit on a rant right now, but the last thing I wanted to highlight was when you look at the data for outcomes for third grade reading for pre k for SA, the biggest differentiator is with our economically disadvantaged students, and those are the students that are hardest to reach. So if you look at our students that are not economically disadvantaged, they perform pretty similarly, but the ones that are getting the main impact are our students coming from our low income underserved neighborhoods, which is just I think the most remarkable point about why we need more diverse by design schools, why we need more workforce based schools that incorporate all of the folks in our community so that you're actually getting that social and cultural capital to be able to lift up, go to school every day, and and get the the outcomes that I'm sure this report that we get at the end of the year will see. So I just wanted to say thank you for that.

The only thing I also wanted to highlight the center database that the database coming up that we're going to be able to find schools because that's super important. But the last question, just one question I had for you is why are so no new net positions means operations are staying the exact same as is. That I'm not going to lie, I was kind of disheartened that because every year we're used to having folks come and say, this is it makes me feel like we're not growing, we're not investing into the program. So if you wanna just say a little bit about that.

Yeah. And this really has to do with because sales tax is our primary funding source and it's pretty modest growth. And so we budget conservatively. We don't overpromise. We don't overcommit. And so we're going to we call this our keep steady budget, but we are prepared. If we get additional money, we will be able to expand and do some additional exciting things that we kind of have in our back pocket. But we have to wait to see how things shape up. It's kind of an uncertain time in the financial forecast Eric right might have a thing or two to say about that. So we're just gonna stay steady and keep doing the good work.

Well, I'd love to see if that does change for you guys to be able to do different things with that. Thank you.

Thanks.

Mike, just a really quick question. I know you've explained this to me before. But looking at the slide with all of the data of how many people are going through and what the 62% completion rate remind me it's slide three remind me what how we get the 62% calculated because 6,500 divided by 15,000 is not sixty two percent 6,500 plus 4,700 divided by 15,000 is not sixty two percent.

Yeah, so the sixty percent of individuals who start training and then they have an actual completion date. So they finish either successfully, and that's a plus, they go on the top of that numerator.

So it's portion of the 4,700 that have a completion date?

The 4,700 haven't finished yet. None of them are in that equation

Okay.

So So the 6,502 successful completers are in the numerator of that equation.

There are

some I can't do the math in my head, but the denominator includes those 6,502 plus all of those who were unsuccessful in completing their training, which is about thirty eight percent.

Got it.

Okay. If you would give me that denominator because I just want to see how that math works out. Figure it out on the dashboard.

Yes. But I was just trying to

do some comparison numbers for other workforce providers. And Mike knows I'd push back a lot on some of the programming in the beginning, but one of the things when I was a college advisor in one of my previous jobs and we had a big push for college for all, that every single one of my seniors was gonna go to college. And the reason we did that was because at one point high school counselors were telling kids what they should do and where they should go and what they should be. If we start telling people you only should go to this job because we know you're gonna be able to get placed in a job and in thirty days or sixty days so we can meet our metric, We are now creating systems in our community that says because you come from this background, this is where you need to go. And that's why what was happening in schools, and so we reversed it saying no, every kid is going to go to college so you have the exact opportunity to someone else.

That also wasn't the right solution because every kid shouldn't go to college if they don't want to and I was pushing kids to college that didn't need to go. But at the same time we have to figure out a way to keep individual autonomy in how we direct folks to where they need to go. It is our job as the Project Quest people, as the folks that are doing the individual case management to give them all of the data. Hey, if you pick this pathway, you're going to graduate in sixty days and we'll get you into a job at a high paying job right after that within thirty days and that's going to be your run. If you don't pick this job, you can take a two year training program and it might take you a year to get a job that's at the level or two years and that's your option here, but we should present that information and we have to figure out a way to track that we are doing that.

I feel like if we can show on the front end we are actually giving folks this information and that is what they are selecting, we should not be saying up here, oh you didn't pick the right pathway and you're messing up our data. Because at the end of the day we're investing in individuals that have somewhere they want to go and have goals. It's not a job to give us their goals, it's just to show them what opportunities they could have, and I just want to make sure that we just don't mix all these long term programs because they're longer term, because then we're just forcing our underserved communities into segments of our society, which is going to create more inequity in the long term. Just give two really quick statistics to end with. The graduation rate for Alamo Colleges, we all love Alamo Colleges, everyone knows how great they are, 30% graduation rate.

This is sixty two percent. Their promise rate is seventy percent, but this is sixty two percent. Austin College's graduation rate is 30%. On average, the salaries for folks graduating from PAC, dollars 30,000 after one year, $40,000 after five years for kids graduating from PAC. So I just want us to say that we're thinking about people that have never been invested in, and I'm glad to see the progress that's being made.

Councilman Galvan. Did you have something?

Oh, I had she's a homerun.

Oh, count oh, okay. It's not on my list. Wait, councilwoman Alda De Gobito.

Thank you. I just had one follow-up question for ready to work. I can't remember where I heard this, but I just wanted to get clarification. Somebody had mentioned that if if a ready to work trainee is graduating with, let's just say, IT, you know, in the IT course, but they get a job with an employer in another department, like, let's just say, I'm using hypotheticals here, they get hired by H E B, maybe it's in the marketing department, that that's not counted necessarily as I I don't know how how y'all

Is it approved job? Success. If it's in one of the occupation areas that's on our list of approved jobs, it will count as a job placement and go on a dashboard.

Even though it's not necessarily one that they train for?

That is correct.

Okay. Well, no, that's good to know because, you know, I was thinking that's interesting, because you know, I mean people might graduate with a marketing degree and then go to USAA and start off at call center. Doesn't mean they won't go into marketing later.

Correct.

They could. So I just wanted to make sure that we were accurately tracking those because I mean anybody who's been in the business world, you know, your path can be like this. Yep. You know, and so you can go from one department to another. But the point is getting your foot in the door, getting a good paid job and getting those benefits. So you're saying that even if they don't graduate with the training program that they were training for, they're still marked as a success?

If it's in one of our approved occupations on the target occupation

I'm curious now how many are not in that approved occupation list.

Got it. Yeah, we can get you that data of how many jobs. We collected all of every job they get. There's roughly about 500 individuals that are not in approved job that do have a job. So we have about 5,166 that are in total job placements compared to the four thousand five and ninety three of approved job placements. So the Delta is about 500 jobs.

Yeah, and that's interesting because you know I feel that if they do go through the training program and they're placed in a job whether it's on our list or not, know and they're getting a good salary and benefits, that's a win. Know, I look forward to seeing those numbers. Thank Thank you.

Has everyone that would like to speak on this issue spoken on the second round? Okay, great. Thanks again to our presenters, Mike and Doctor. Bray for your very thoughtful presentations. Doctor.

Bray, have just a couple more questions for you. I think tell the the point was made. I I wanna make sure that we are able to fully explain this to to the to our folks though, which is the work that you do not only in the classroom, but the very like, almost as important, if not more important work that you do to increase the supply in our community. I know this is a not only the supply, but the quality of the supply that you all are are working to do. And I think helping us understand what level of investment gets you to that is is important.

So thank you in advance for that. I think this discussion also highlighted, you know, we have talked about how we're going to update our economic development agreements later this year. And one of the things I would encourage my colleagues to consider as we think about that conversation is how we are thinking about this issue in particular as part of those. Coming into the community, we want to make sure there's no do no harm. Don't contribute to the challenge.

And frankly, you could look at the issue with emissions, what's happening at the federal level, but also the very real need that we already have here in ensuring that those employers coming into our community, particularly those that we're incentivizing, are not contributing to the additional challenge. I can I think certainly what you've heard today is I think a difference in philosophical approach, right? And this goes for Mike as well. Difference in philosophical approach in terms of how we are, I think, best stewarding the resources that our neighbors are so generously agreeing to invest in both of these programs and understanding. So I think what's incumbent on us then is how we certainly balance the anecdotes with what the data is telling us at scale.

And what really is going to move the needle in terms of long term poverty, I think, is the scale piece of this. Right? Which is which is why I think you've heard a couple of my colleagues also talk about how are we much more focused in terms of meeting the needs in our community. And so a thought exercise for you, Doctor. Bray. I'd welcome understanding. And you just lay flat for us. My working assumption in this based on what I've read is that the highest ROI in human development is always early, and as early as possible. Is that correct? That's absolutely correct.

And so it's kind of, it's lower. I'm not saying it's zero. I'm saying it's lower though when it comes to the upscaling part. And so what I want to make sure I understand is and Eric I'd welcome how understanding how we might be able to do this. How do we if I had $1, right, should I give that $1 to pre k for SA or should I give that to ready to work?

Understanding where do we have the highest ROI for our community because at times it's not just that child care seat, it's that worker that is now going to be able to provide not only care for those whatever the ratio is seven or eight kids, right, that then allows those parents or those providers, those guardians rather to also go to work and do what they need to do. So I would welcome us having a more strategic conversation about ROI. I get things make us feel good. Yep. But we need to have a conversation about ROI.

So if we had, you know, Doctor. Brave, if you had 50,000,000 more dollars, I'd welcome understanding how you'd spend that, but I'd also welcome understanding, and I see Doctor. Niven there, helping us understand investments. You know, if we had an additional $50,000,000, would that have the highest ROI for our community in ready to work? Or would that be highest in pre K for SA?

I think that's how we have to understand the the what we're actually doing with these investments. So so please help us understand that. Mike, I think one of the things that you made a a good point of, and I I completely agree, which is that we've gotta meet the need in in the community. When I have conversations with folks at at REXA for example or I've I've conversations with the Greater San Antonio Builders Association and they talk about these gaps in the trades as was alluded to also by Councilwoman Spears, I I am surprised then when I hear folks like Rexha saying, yeah, we're gonna stand up our own trades academy to like it doesn't in my mind, it doesn't make sense that they feel like they would need to do that when we have this program, right, that ideally is working to fill that gap. So help us understand how you engage those folks that are telling us they have a demand and yet we are not meeting it with a program that says we can meet that demand.

Yeah, it's a balancing act. We're employers

I don't know what start

that means. What is about like?

It's a balancing act between what they need and what's in the supply chain. So you're trying to balance those two things. Supply coming out and ready to work in those specific pathways. So construction of course is a pathway that I believe is one of the quickest ways into the middle class and we have lots of people who would benefit from pursuing those options. However, comma, they do have options and we need to get more people pursuing those skilled trade options. So, if we can convince them that employers have the jobs, they're going to be there for them so they can take care of themselves and their families and they want to hire that population and they identify either their own internal training program or training programs that are available throughout the community. We want to funnel Redwood participants into those so we can create that balance and meet that demand.

Yeah I think we might be talking past each other a little bit. So when when Rexha says, hey, you know, we're not getting what we need out of the community or for programs like Ready to Work, we need more of trades x y and z and yet we say we've got a program that produces that, Help help me understand how we can better meet an organization like Rex's needs. Like however they to your point, right, let's go talk to the employers. Okay. Well Rex is saying they need this and yet we're producing something that we think meets that and yet they're saying no no it's not. We've got to do our own thing. Guess help us understand why that is the case and how we can actually better funnel our pipeline into what they say they need.

I'll give you a great example of Pacific credential that wasn't really available within our ecosystem. So we talked with our training provider, Alamo Colleges, who also happens to also be a prime partner within Ready to Work and they adjusted the training curriculum to what that employer was looking for and now we're producing exactly what they need. So if you take that example, you convert it over to construction. Whichever the industry is, it works the same way. What are you looking for? Is there a training program that exists currently that you get people from that needs a small adjustment to get you exactly what you need? Then how do we recruit more people into that pathway you get more volume of individuals exiting with those credentials so that you can then hire on the back end?

Mayor, I think, and maybe more to the question you're asking, I have yet to hear from an organization, and and and you generally, it's it their general statements, and and Councilwoman Spears talked about it a second ago. If somebody says it's too hard, then asking them what's what's hard about it, what's confusing about it. And forget about the city for a second. The health care industry is a perfect example. Growing sector in our economy.

We have four major hospital systems. One of them is utilizing Ready to Work to ensure that folks that are graduating on Friday are working on Monday because they're in direct competition. And so what I have found on this journey for the last couple of years is that, and I don't know if you're using a real example, is Rex are really standing up some sort of program?

Yes.

Did anybody ask them, what is it that you're doing that Ready to Work can't do? Because that's something well, I'll follow-up with. I mean, I I think that probably if you guys come across that, then please let me know because I really haven't heard a good answer other than maybe it's organizational and they're trying to build some sort of momentum within their organization. I mean, frankly, before we went into workforce development through Ready to Work, the notion of workforce development and the fragmented system that existed here through agencies, and we were just $2,000,000 of a much larger ecosystem, the lack of coordination was there. So at the end of the day, whatever happens to ready to work in 2030, whatever you guys decide, at a minimum, it's got to be better coordinated.

And you're hitting the nail on the head, Mary. I mean, that stuff is happening right now. Ben, Mike, and I went and spoke to a greater chamber breakfast that had 50 people here a couple months ago. And it was constant about, tell us what your needs are. May have, as an employer, you may have direct needs, or as an industry, but tell us, because there are certainly employers in sectors that are utilizing it because they see ready to work as an opportunity to get folks that wouldn't normally be applying for those jobs.

So that's how you all can be helpful. If you catch wind of that, shoot the flare off, call me, I'll call them, and let's find out how we can bridge the gap. But I think that if we chase that constantly without any real substance, then it's almost like my neighborhood telling me we have a bunch of crime. And I'm like, where? Like, who who called 911? And nobody's raising their hand, and I can't get an answer from the neighborhood who says that we had a bunch of crime. So is it anecdotal, or is it real? And how do we bridge that gap?

Sure. And I think, to that point, I think there's national reporting, though, that speaks to the gap that we have in the trades. And so what that looks like then here locally. Hence my question of how do you understand not just what the individual employer needs, but like big picture, how are we understanding what those those gaps are? And it's hard for me to imagine. And I've and frankly, I've heard it as well from not only groups like REXA, but also from the unions. Right? That talk about the gap that we have in these in these skill sets. So understanding even what is the gap number of plumbers that we need between now and next five years? What is the number of electricians?

What is the number of HVAC technicians? Right? And then if we understand that those are major gaps, but also areas where folks are initially and over time going to make a great wage, why would we not try to focus our efforts in those areas you know, versus the list of 58. Because then we're putting folks on a path. And it's not to say and it's not to dictate to somebody what they're going to do. But it's a little bit of like, this is the real world. If you want us to invest in these kinds of things and pay and then at the end of the day this is a scholarship. View this as a scholarship. I think Mike, you and I have had that conversation. And so some folks will take the scholarship and some will not and that's okay.

But I think given we're using tax dollars, we have to be cognizant of the ROI and see how that skill that we're training folks for helps to fill a gap in our community. Do you want to say

something, Eric? It's it's I'd offer mayor that it's not just a scholarship. It is an employment opportunity for the employers. Right? So the employers that that wanna use ready to work as their HR recruitment, that'll make it a little bit easier for them. If they wanna go do HR recruitment the way they want to do it or the way they've done it, then they're kind of swimming upstream. But it's a competitive edge that whether you're regardless of industry, small, big, or medium employer, it is who can I get to fill these positions that's trained and ready to go?

Thanks.

Know you get a couple of do outs from us in terms of information that helps us better tell the story. And then no kidding, understanding which of these programs has the highest ROI for our community. I'd certainly welcome understanding that. Thank you. And to the extent that, Mike, if you could, I mean, out to REXA and say, or reach out to San Antonio, Greater San Antonio Builders Association, American Subcontractors Association.

What is our understanding of our community need? I know there was a group housing builder conference earlier this year that kind of talked about the trends in the association. So I know they're tracking closely then the skills that would be needed to meet that supply and where we are relative to the gap in the trades to accomplish just that. Eric, Okay. Do you have any final things you'd like to add?

No, ma'am. Thank you.

Okay. Great.

We'll do the follow-up memo.

Please. Thank you. I appreciate that. And a reminder to my colleagues, we have public comment. Thank you. Okay. 31 folks signed up. Thanks, Aurora. The time is now 04:37. This meeting is adjourned.