SEED - Case Studies Education Task Force

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Case Studies - Education Task Force

What We Mean to Achieve

The Education Task Force (ETF) is an alliance of organizations and civic leaders, including students, people receiving public assistance and low-income organizers, educators, advocates, service providers, elected officials and other individuals working positively to realize an education agenda that is meaningful to all New Yorkers. SEED-NY provides meeting facilitation and process design to support the ETF in its strategic expansion, cross-jurisdictional dialogue, and creative collaboration.

The mission of our multi-sector alliance is to create systems of access to education and training through which all New Yorkers are empowered to determine and pursue their own educational destiny.

Why

Education is at the bedrock of the American value system and an important feature of income production for middle, low-income and people moving out of poverty. Yet, current education policies frustrate access, locally and nationally, often because there is a lack cross-jurisdictional synchronicity of law with implementation. For example, had the work-study and internship law existed five years earlier (read below), many of the 23,000 City University of New York (CUNY) students receiving public assistance who were forced to drop out of college, would have been able to continue matriculation, obtain a college degree, and achieve economic security.

Further, with improved local implementation processes, thousands more students could already have been encouraged to re-enroll, in accordance with new state mandates. Based on their recent experiences, the ETF leaders know that deep dialogue with an ever-expanding range of diverse stakeholders can advance a common language and fertile ground for co-creating life-giving programs and policies that get implemented. The ETF is cultivating new allies to make this difference together.

HOW WE CAME TO BE

A few years ago, a core group of students and organizers became interested in a modest piece of local welfare education legislation.

New York State Senators and Assembly Members, community organizers, religious leaders and business groups were mobilized by students and others with first hand experience of poverty to recognize shared values and shared interests. The students who spearheaded this relationship-based strategy were graduates of the Community Leadership Program that Melinda Lackey developed for Welfare Rights Initiative over eight years of teaching at Hunter College, prior to founding SEED. These community leaders had firsthand experience of the structural obstacles that impede advancement out of poverty. As participants in the Welfare Rights Initiative leadership program, they also appreciated the enormous benefit of safe public spaces where diverse individuals and groups can share experiences and hopes, recognize common visions, and learn to collaborate effectively to realize common goals.

Over four years, the student-led group cultivated a relationship with Senator Ray Meier, an upstate moderate Republican who was then Chair of the Senate Social Services Committee. In regular telephone conversations and brief meetings with the Senator in his Albany office, the students and the Senator discussed the value of education, and the ways in which internships and work-study enriched their education and prepared them for work.

The opportunity for the students to deepen their relationship with Senator Meier emerged when he accepted the invitation of NYS Senator Tom Duane to join the group for a day to tour City University of New York (CUNY) and meet with students at three campuses.

Deep Dialogue Makes a Difference

The focal point of the CUNY tour was a dialogue over lunch with Senator Meier and college students supported by public assistance. The opportunity to forge a human connection and develop shared understanding at a personal level in that dialogue accomplished two things:

1) Senator Meier introduced the 'work-study and internship law' that expanded the definition of work activity by including work-study and internships to satisfy welfare participation rates.

2) An idea was sparked to build on the process these students had initiated, as a relational model for social change. Over time, they conceived the Education Task Force as a powerful, multi-sector coalition that would bring together people who don’t typically work together to connect at a personal level, explore shared values and visions, and build skills, strategies and momentum for effective and creative collaboration to promote universal access to education and training.

Given that SEED was established for just this purpose—to help form and fortify unusually diverse alliances like the Education Task Force—the ETF founders requested that SEED co-design strategies and facilitate a “safe public space” within which the task force would realize the fullness of its creative potential.

Who We Are

When the ETF held its first meeting, in July 2004, participants included representatives from public and private institutions including Senators Tom Duane and Liz Krueger, Welfare Rights Initiative, the Welfare Reform Network of the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies, Hunger Action Network of New York State (HANNYS), Families United for Racial and Economic Equality (FUREE), Grassroots Literacy Coalition, New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG), and CUNY School of Law.

One year later, the group has expanded to also include (in addition to those above) representatives from: Black Alliance for Educational Options, Community Service Society, International Center for Creative Conflict Resolution (at Columbia Teacher’s College), Literacy Assistance Center, New York City Employment and Training Coalition, New York City Food Bank, Partnership for the Homeless, Professional Staff Congress of CUNY, and Welfare Law Center, in addition to individual civic leaders and elected officials.

Senators Tom Duane and Liz Krueger have been particularly active in the coalition and instrumental in attracting bi-partisan participation. They have also served as co-hosts for important ETF dialogues with Senator Hillary Clinton, Senator Charles Schumer, and Bishop Sullivan, whose staff members have subsequently been invited to engage in ongoing ETF work. Senator Ray Meier remains in frequent and supportive contact, as well.

Results

In the first year of working closely with the Education Task Force, SEED has assisted formation of a high performance core team that is working in synch to design and implement short term action projects aimed to:

a) expand a well-resourced multi-sector public/private partnership,
b) clarify shared values, visions and strategies to formulate its agenda; and
c) promote universal access to education and training in New York State.

Deliverables so far include:

Stakeholder analysis and development of an enrollment strategy;
An ever-expanding task force that is increasingly engaged and sharing ownership;
Enhanced skills to collaborate across cultural, political and economic differences;
New allies assuming leadership roles and leveraging resources for sustained impact;
A number of short term campaigns defined as elements in long term mission success;

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