by Dan Goodman

For the millions of youth in the U.S., September means one thing ? back-to-school time. In preparation for the school year and beyond, NLC?s National City Network (NCN) is taking this month to focus on what cities are doing to improve opportunities for their young people.

In different ways, many cities find that public policy that impacts youth carries a particular challenge. For instance, most city governments do not directly oversee the administration of their public schools. That job usually falls to local school boards, which, while not accountable to city government, are nevertheless comprised of other locally elected officials.

School board members and their appointed superintendents look to state boards of education for guidance, while the role and focus of the federal government seems to change with each administration.

According to some opinion polls, Americans see education as an issue of national importance, but since children are educated locally, some believe local policy makers need to find a role to play to help improve educational opportunities for young people.

This leaves some people to ask questions such as: Should there be national standards, or should local governments and school boards be free to experiment with curriculums? Do school vouchers engender competition and provide opportunity for children from low-income families to attend private schools? Do programs like No Child Left Behind create incentives for excellence locally?

The educational landscape can seem complicated with the varying governance bodies involved in decision-making, but perhaps the most important question is, what can municipal leaders do to improve education in their cities, even if they don?t run the schools?

The national trend seen in communities that have successfully navigated these systems is that collaboration and partnership between city and school leaders is key to supporting and improving outcomes for young people.

NLC?s Institute for Youth, Education, and Families? action kits, ?Improving Public Schools? and ?Expanding Afterschool Opportunities,? list the following steps municipal leaders can take:

? Gather data from multiple sources to determine local needs

? Use public forums, surveys and focus groups to elicit resident input and begin to build a citywide vision for school improvement

? Highlight the importance of education and make it part of a local message

? Use public forums and the media to focus attention on education

? Join community leaders in establishing a local education fund

? Enlist the support of the business community

? Promote partnerships between the city, schools, community-based organizations and other civic groups

? Conduct a mapping process to determine where the assets and needs are across the community

The importance of education and the abundance of ideas yield a rich array of programs being tried in communities across the country, but many municipalities have determined that the creativity shouldn?t stop when the bell rings at the end of the school day.

Many afterschool programs, sometimes referred to as ?Out-of-School Time? programs, seek to provide enriching opportunities and academic support for youth from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. or later, when school is out, but parents are still working.

NCN?s City Practices database contains examples and analysis of many of these programs, including the Partners in Out-of-School-Time program in Charlotte, N.C.

NCN is broadening its youth-specific programming in September along three dimensions.

Dozens of new documents addressing local youth policy have been added from national partners, such as American Youth Policy Forum (AYPF), The Finance Project and NLC?s Institute for Youth, Education and Families (YEF Institute), which serves as a national resource for municipal leaders to help them advance their local agenda to support young people and improve learning opportunities in school and afterschool.

Video content will be augmented by NCN-TV?s coverage of a panel discussing local approaches for providing opportunities for high school dropouts, co-hosted by AYPF and YEF Institute.

And a Web seminar on Sept. 21 will focus on the role of citizen engagement in building good public schools.

Details: NCN is a free service of NLC and can be found at www.nationalcitynetwork.org. Video programming is available at the NCN-TV website, www.ncntv.org.