by Rebecca Makar

Municipal leaders from cities across the country shared strategies for developing collaborative plans for young people at a recent meeting in Long Beach, Calif.

As a mid-point gathering for the MetLife City-Schools Youth Planning technical assistance project, sponsored by NLC?s Institute for Youth, Education, and Families (YEF Institute), city teams of municipal officials, school leaders and youth attended the meeting.

Among the cities selected to participate in the project, city teams from Diamond Bar, Calif.; Des Moines, Iowa; Minneapolis, Minn.; Lakewood, Ohio; and Charleston, S.C., were present in Long Beach. City officials from Edmond, Okla., were unable to participate in person, but did share some of their ideas with the group via e-mail.

Beverly O?Neill, mayor of Long Beach, who is also president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, gave an opening address.

Representatives from the Long Beach City Manager?s Office and the Parks, Recreation and Marine Department also joined the group.

From April 2-4, participants exchanged ideas, discussed challenges and learned best practices for developing a ?city-schools youth plan,? also known as a ?youth master plan.? 

All of the cities in attendance are involved in developing such a plan, a cutting-edge process in which a broad range of community stakeholders come together to establish long-term, community-wide plans and priorities for youth.

The cross-site meeting, supported by the MetLife Foundation, featured both peer-led discussions and presentations from outside experts.

Collaboration: The Essential Ingredient
Again and again, speakers and participants cited collaboration ? between the city and school district(s), different city departments, community and faith based organizations, hospitals, universities and businesses ? as a vital component for any youth master planning effort.

In her opening remarks, O?Neill acknowledged that while it is sometimes hard work to coordinate school, city and youth leaders, she urged the participants to persevere.

?This work is about building relationships, and if we all work together, it will be so worthwhile? for the different groups involved, she said.

Three Cities? Experiences
The city, school and youth representatives from the City of Claremont, Calif., an established leader in the youth master planning process, spoke to the group about the benefits and challenges of undertaking such a youth master plan.

Collaboration was key for the success of the youth master plan in Claremont.

The school district and city instituted a ?six pack? meeting, in which the mayor, mayor pro tem, school board president and vice president, city manager and school superintendent meet on a regular basis to discuss the youth master plan and the young people in the city.

?The Teen Council [which was set up to offer youth a direct voice to Claremont?s adult leaders] is the jewel in the crown of the youth master plan,? said Sandy Baldonado, councilmember of Claremont.

Speakers from Indio and Santa Clarita, Calif., shared ideas on how they were able to work with partners to do assessments of the city?s youth and adults that then guided the recommendations of their respective youth master plans.

For example, a city?s information technology department can be a resource for designing online questionnaires for youth and adults, as well as tabulating results from surveys.

Another strategy discussed involved asking school partners to distribute youth surveys during school time, enabling a collaborative to reach a large number of young people quickly and easily.

Participants worked as teams to identify challenges they are facing in their home city, as well as brainstormed solutions for those challenges.

Some of the challenges ranged from building relationships across broad systems to turf issues, while suggested solutions for these challenges were brokering new relationships through mutually trusted contacts and setting agreed upon standards.

While large and smaller cities face different challenges in creating a youth master plan, some universal considerations emerged:

? Distinguishing political considerations from programmatic ones and approaching each differently;

? Building the essential infrastructure for city-school collaboration is critical.  This may take time and require changing the cultures of ?the way things have always been done;?

? Focusing on common goals and interests so that everyone can buy into the vision of the plan based on meeting their own objectives as well as those of the overall collaborative;

? Remembering that this is an evolving process (Claremont calls its youth master plan a ?living document?) and that this process offers important results and progress as well as the end product; and

? Garnering political support for this process with city leaders, school district officials and other community-based leaders to ?champion? this effort for youth will strengthen the effort and others? commitment to it.

Details: For more information on city-schools youth planning ? including some examples of city plans ? visit http://www.nlc.org/iyef or contact Rebecca Makar at (202) 626-3046 or makar@nlc.org.