Mayor Bloomberg's "Young Men's Initiative:" How it Came To Be

Mayor Bloomberg’s policy initiative to aid the city’s minority youth and level the achievement gap between black and Latino males and their white counterparts is based on stark discrepancies found in employment, education, health and the justice system, his recommendations report found.

, referred to by the mayor as “the nation’s boldest and most comprehensive effort to tackle the broad disparities slowing the advancement of black and Latino young men,” is the culmination of a 1 1/2 years of research that started with a commitment he made to tackle the crisis at his 2010 State of the City address.

So he commissioned a team to pull together a recommendations report. The result? More than 315,000 black and Latino males in New York City, between the ages of 16 and 24, will be targeted through the program.

The recommendations report was constructed by Ana Oliveira, president of the New York Women’s Foundation, and David Banks, president of the Eagle Academy Foundation -- both longtime experts on youth development.

As education goes, their research found that there needs to be system-wide accountability in the city’s educational system in order to bridge the achievement gap. The key items they found and gave for recommendation includes:

• Enhancing college readiness
• Fostering a reduction of education disparities
• Removing socio-economic barriers
• Developing literacy programs for disconnected youth
• Creating mentoring programs as a strategy to promote education success
• Grading public schools on the academic progress of black and Hispanic male students, and
• Focusing on achievement levels by black and Latino males from elementary school to high school

The Department of Education will also make use of School Progress Reports that will feature metrics spotlight school performance with black and Latino youth in elementary, middle and high schools to ensure that each school is focused on bridging the achievement gap. 

“The disparities between the achievement of boys of color and their white peers remain stark and unsustainable,” said Banks. “If we fail to bridge this gap, we will once again be leaving another generation of young men of color on the sidelines of our economy. The answer lies in the quality of our schools and how they address the educational challenges our young men of color face each and every day.”

In the area of employment, the report found that the city has to transform the culture of public housing to support connections to employment, and recruit public-private partnerships to provide summer jobs for young people.

Additional initiatives to connect public housing residents to employment opportunities also will be funded, including citywide internships and job training and certification for such in demand positions as paramedics, commercial truck drivers, amongst others.

The report also calls for improving outcomes for black and Latino males in the justice system. The report recommends the City work with the Department of Corrections and Department of Probation to reform the entire juvenile system and reduce the recidivism cycle.

In addition, efforts to create models of civic engagement for youth, restructure jails for youth, expand on effective models to promote re-entry into communities and “clean up” the rap sheets of ex-cons will also be made by the City.

As a start, during his speech to announce the initiative, the mayor announced that he was going order city agencies not to ask about a job applicant's criminal record until after they make it through the interview process.

"I believe that as long as you have served your time and stayed clean, and the crime you committed isn't related to the job you're seeking or a threat to public safety, you deserve a second chance just like everyone else," the mayor told the New York Post. 

As for improving the health of black and Latino youth and their families, the report calls for promoting fatherhood within the two communities, strengthening city mentoring programs, training health practitioners to work with teens, establishing criteria for teen-friendly clinics to encourage participation and preventing violence through proven models.

“We know how important family support is to the health of our children,” said Oliveira.

“Children who grow up with active fathers in their lives are less likely to live in poverty, do better in school, have less involvement with the criminal justice system, and a smaller chance to become teenage parents.”

The mayor, a self-made billionaire and longtime philanthropist, is donating $30 million of his money to the $127 million initiative, a public-private partnership that will introduce broad policy changes and agency reforms over the next three years.

What do you feel about the report's findings and subsequent recommendations? Do you agree with the recommendations? If not, why? And if so, what would you do as a Bed-Stuy resident to play a part?

The is is the first in a series of three articles that will take a closer examination of the mayor's new "Young Men's Initiative." The next installment will explore in greater detail the mayor's first two steps of closing the education achievement gap and reforming the juvenile justice system.