Solid Advice for Erik Walsh: Talk to the Nun
Back in 1992, she was an organizer for COPS/Metro Alliance when the powerful community organization designed and persuaded the City to financially back Project Quest, which early on and to this day has been recognized as one of the most successful job training programs in the country. In 2011, when Project Quest was plagued with controversy from failings due not to corruption but to incompetence, Sister Pearl was brought in to turn it around. She did and ran the organization for six years.
Now the City of San Antonio is embarking on SA: Ready to Work, a program approved by the voters last November that will spend $154 million over five or six years in an effort to train the city’s working poor for good-paying jobs that the city is now generating.
[Photo Credit: Nick Wagner/San Antonio Report]
Solid Advice For Erik Walsh: Talk To The Nun, San Antonio Report [pdf]
San Antonio Report Reframes COPS/Metro Ballot Initiative as Opportunity to Celebrate Labor Day in November
[Excerpt]
About five years ago, COPS/Metro sought and won “living wage” minimum pay for City workers, resulting in raises for about 20 percent of the civilian workforce. They won similar measures from Bexar County, and some school districts followed suit.
Now two measures on the Nov. 3 ballot offer San Antonians the opportunity to again help lower-rung workers. Both involve a one-eighth-cent sales tax that for 20 years has provided funding to buy development rights to protect sensitive lands over the Edwards Aquifer recharge zone.
The first ballot measure would transfer those funds to provide about $154 million over the next four years for a job training program projected to boost the incomes of up to 40,000 workers. That’s an aggressive goal, but what gives it credibility is that its approach is based on Project Quest, a jobs training program designed by COPS/Metro 28 years ago.
Interestingly, it was COPS/Metro and their sister organizations around the state that persuaded the Legislature back in 2001 to authorize local governments to spend money on job training and early childhood education. That same law, the Texas Better Jobs Act, permitted San Antonio voters to approve Pre-K 4 SA in November 2012. The highly successful preschool program is up for renewal on the ballot.
[Photo Credit: Scott Ball, San Antonio Report]
Election Day Ballot Will Let You Celebrate Labor Day on November 3rd, San Antonio Report [pdf]
Corridor Interfaith Expanded Capital IDEA into Hays County
Leveraging $25,000 for long-term job training, Corridor Interfaith leaders from Living Word Lutheran and San Marcos Unitarian Universalism, along with Capital IDEA alumni, succeeded in persuading Hays County Commissioners to invest local dollars into Capital IDEA. Once matched with state ACE funding, the investment will allow 7-10 Hays County students to train out of poverty and into middle-class careers.
Leaders met with their Hays County representatives over several months to educate them about Capital IDEA and to advocate for the inclusion of funding in the 2020 budget. At the final budget hearing at the commissioners' court, the request was quickly moved forward and approved!
Texas Innovative ACE Program: A Wise Investment
Texans invented a unique workforce model which was first developed in San Antonio in 1992 and has since replicated across the state in five other Texas regions: Greater Austin/Central Texas, Dallas, El Paso, Houston, and the Rio Grande Valley.
This rigorously-studied model has proven to be a fiscally responsible investment that: builds self-sufficient families; bolsters a skilled, thriving workforce attractive to businesses; and reduces the burden on state and local agencies. The Texas Innovative Adult Career Education (ACE) Grant Program supports these highly effective programs through matching dollars, meaning—your 'yes' vote incentivizes Texas communities to build and support programs locally for a state-wide impact that will help Texas remain the top economic force in the nation.
Texas IAF Community Leaders Strategize for the Legislative Session
At the Texas IAF Statewide Legislative Strategy meeting, held in Austin, 200 leaders from nine Texas IAF organizations convened to build relationships, report on 2018 progress and prepare for the 2019 legislative session. Ernesto Cortes Jr., IAF National Co-Director, delivered a 'state of the economy' training before leaders broke out into smaller groups for workshops around school finance and property taxes, workforce development, and healthcare affordability.
Workshops were led by panels of IAF organizers and local policy experts, including: Josh Sanderson and Dr. Ray Freeman, Deputy Directors of the Equity Center; Michelle Smith, Director of Governmental Relations, and Libby Cohen of Raise Your Hand Texas; Neil Vickers, Executive VP of Finance and Administration at Austin Community College; and Anne Dunkelberg, Associate Director of the Center for Public Policy Priorities (CPPP).
In April, leaders plan to call on state legislators to invest more state funding in public schools, long-term job training programs and into healthcare affordability, in addition addressing local reforms around immigration, criminal justice and payday lending reform.
Texas IAF Targets Hottest State, Federal Races in Suburban Texas
In a move to boost voter turnout in neglected communities, Texas IAF organizations reached into suburbs surrounding Texas’ largest cities to assemble by the thousands in political, nonpartisan assemblies to help leaders wrest commitments from candidates for state and federal office. Having witnessed candidate responses to locally-developed agendas, which span from local control to Texas school finance and federal immigration reform, leaders are now mobilizing their neighbors to Get Out The Vote.
In North Dallas, for example, two thousand DAI leaders -- many from Carrollton and Farmers Branch -- invited candidates for House Districts 114, 115, 105 and 107, and Congressional District 32, to commit to investing public funds in local labor market intermediaries, crafting immigration reform that would end the separation of children from their parents at the border (and include protections for DACA youth), cracking down on predatory lending, and repealing Senate Bill 4. Hundreds more from Austin and Hayes County challenged candidates for US Congressional Districts 25 and 21, and State House Districts 47, 45 and 136 to publicly pledge support for similar priorities, including the defense of local control over municipal housing and labor policy. In Helotes, just outside of San Antonio, COPS / Metro leaders carted out boxes with thousands of postcard pledges by voters to participate in the election of US Representative for Congressional District 23, which extends to the outskirts of El Paso, and State Representative for House Districts 117 and 118. In Houston, TMO organized assemblies with candidates for US Congressional District 7 and 29; House Districts 144, 133, and 135; and Senate District 17.
Already, unpaid armies of organizational leaders have knocked on thousands of doors and called thousands more to remind supporters and voters to participate in the midterm elections. Last weekend, for example, Austin Interfaith leaders knocked on doors in three counties, four legislative districts and 2 congressional districts. This weekend, all Texas IAF organizations are making a final push -- from the pews, inside health clinics and in long-neglected neighborhoods -- to ensure the highest turnout possible in support of their agenda.
Leaders understand that targeted voter engagement efforts following accountability assemblies help advance their agenda. This year alone, local Texas IAF organizations succeeded in raising municipal wage floors in San Antonio and Austin to $15 per hour; leveraging the support of Chief of Police Art Acevedo to make Houston the first city in Texas to support a gun safety strategy; and preventing unnecessary deportations through widespread adoption of identification cards generated by parishes within the Catholic Diocese of Dallas.
Texas’ Minority GOP Voters: Republican Allies Have Vanished, McClatchy
Activist Groups COPS and Metro Alliance Spreading Message to the Suburbs, WOAI
Austin Interfaith Hosts Large Gathering of 2018 Midterms Election Candidates, KVUE
Candidates Share Platform at Assembly, Austin American Statesman
Why Dallas Republicans Skipped an Interfaith Forum, Rewire.News
To Help Immigrants Feel Safer Around Police, Some Churches Start Issuing IDs, NPR
DAI Accountability Forum [Video]
Texas IAF Fights to Protect ACE Fund from Senate Special Item Cuts
[Excerpts below]
Since 2014, Texas has paid nonprofits across the state to help nearly 800 poor, older students navigate their way through community college….
The programs face uncertain futures because they are funded using a budgeting tactic known as a special item. Those items are used to pay for specific programs at universities by sending the schools that host them money outside the normal higher education funding formulas…..
Next year, that kind of help could end, though not because lawmakers are unhappy with the program. If the Senate gets its way in ongoing state budget negotiations, the Legislature would overhaul the way it pays for higher education in Texas — and funding for the Texas Innovative Adult Career Education Grant Program could disappear.
“It has nothing to do with our program or the effectiveness of it,” said Elizabeth Valdez, lead organizer for The Metropolitan Organization in Houston, which is advocating for lawmakers to continue funding the grant….
[Photo Credit: Gabe Hernandez, Texas Tribune]
Commentary: Funds Help Adult Career Program Boost Workforce, Families, Austin American Statesman
State Should Continue Funding ACE Job Training, San Antonio Express-News [pdf]
Proposed Higher Education Funding Overhaul Could Come With Collateral Damage, Texas Tribune
Senate Resolution, Senate of the State of Texas
Texas Job Program Shows Unusually Strong, Lasting Gains, Study Finds, Austin American Statesman [pdf]
Study Affirms Project QUEST Achievements, San Antonio Express-News
Escalating Gains: Project QUEST’S Sectoral Strategy Pays Off, Economic Mobility