Transcripts For CSPAN3 National Governors Association Summer Meeting Day 1 - PART 3 20240714

At the time of really difficult transition and challenges for our country, we cant afford as a society or economy frankly to leave any of our young people behind. Estimates show that somewhere, as many as 5 million young people between the ages of 16 to 24 in the United States are currently not enrolled in an Educational Program or participating in the work force. I believe very strongly as governors that we have the responsibility to do everything we can to reach these youth and give them avenues of opportunity to reconnect and engage with them in continuing education. And on ramps to fulfilling careers. And a lot of cases of course there are many barriers to making that happen. For these young people. Including economic mobility, and providing them with the opportunity for their futures. Some of the barriers, these young people are facing include homelessness, poor health outcomes, violence, and of course the criminal Justice System. In oregon we are tackling these barriers one by one. And a great example is a bill that i signed literally just this week. Senate bill 1008. It changes the way that we try and sentence use. Shifting the focus to prevention and rehabilitation. As we all know, you can spend time in adult prisons and are much more likely to reoffend. Racial and ethnic disparities are more pervasive in our criminal Justice System. And young peoples brains hold enormous capacity for change and influence. Over the years we saw how this played out in oregon. And hundreds of cases, impacting hundreds of youth. And of course their families as well. What was key for us was the data. The data really informed our past moving forward. By changing sentencing guidelines for youth offenders, we know that our communities can be made safer and more young people have the opportunity to use their time in custody to make a turnaround in their lives. Our guest today will help us explore a number of these solutions. Help us learn a little bit more about these 5 million young people. And hopefully provide us with strategies as governors that we can replicate in our states. Thank you again for joining us. Im going to turn it over to governor hutchinson. Thank you, Governor Brown. And thank you for your leadership in oregon. Those are good illustrations of progress that can be made. And arkansas, just like many other states that are represented by the governors here, we have a low unemployment rate. It is 3. 5 . Which means that we dont want anyone disconnected. We need to move people into the workforce. We need to give them opportunity. There is probably more opportunity today than at any time in terms of employment if we make the right decisions and prepare our youth and make sure that everybody has the connection. I will be introducing our panelists soon. But im grateful for their leadership on this challenging issue that we face. When i became governor one of the areas of disconnect with use was the foster care children. In arkansas, we had so many children in foster care and yet we did not have foster homes for them. We had an extreme crisis and a shortage. We convened the faith based community, the Nonprofit Community and created an initiative called restore help. As a result of that we have been able to increase foster care parent participation by 15 . More parents saying, we will join and help with our foster children. Children in foster care have been reduced as well because of some initiatives that we have engaged. We put 24 million into our foster care system for more caseworkers. And we reduced the ratio of caseworkers from 28 to 1 down to 18. 7, children for each caseworker. These are areas we had to make progress in to help these children get more connected and have more opportunity. Like Governor Brown we looked at our Youth Services and we moved, we closed two institutions and moved some of the services to the community so that they could handle more access to Mental Health care and drug treatment counseling as well. One of the things that i believe is important, is you want a disconnected youth to have the opportunity for a ged. For also there is even greater opportunity to get a High School Diploma. So we passed a law in arkansas that allowed an adult nontraditional student to get a High School Diploma. So someone, it might be a single mom with children, can go back and get their High School Diploma. And that has a little more umph even. I applaud Goodwill Industries for making sure that someone can get their High School Diploma regardless of circumstances in life. Let me go into our panelists. With that background. Today we have the pleasure of the it being joined by the executive director of youth move national. Monique miles, director of the Opportunity Youth form and Deputy Director of the aspen form for community solutions. Then john, chief executive officer of youth build usa. Let me first go through a little bit of the background. Miss bergen is an advocate for use with experience in Mental Health system and is working in the field of Youth Engagement to promote and encourage inclusion of youth voice in policy change with 11 years of experience, advocating for changes in Mental Health to improve care options and treatment. For our youth vaults adults with mental challenges. Ms. Miles works with the Opportunity Youth form comprised of a network of over two dozen urban, rural and tribal communities, seeking to scale multiple connection pathways that achieve Better Outcomes in education and employment for youth who are disconnected from education and work. Thank you for joining us. Mr. John valverde is the chief executive officer of youth build usa nonprofit that provides unemployed young people who left School Without a High School Diploma a pathway to education, jobs, entrepreneurship and other opportunities, leading to productive livelihoods and community leadership. With that, ms. Berg and i will turn things over to you first to provide an overview of the challenges that this young population faces and learn your personal perspective. Wonderful. Thank you for leading this conversation. And for all of your interest in this population of young people are disconnected. At youth move we frame this as opportunity for young people. There is an opportunity to offer these youth and young adults we engage. Really one out of eight youth in america between the ages of 16 and 24 are classified in this population as disconnected youth. To be clear this means that they are not connected formally to an education opportunity or an employment opportunity. And that they require some increased capacity in skill building in order to be a successful adult. There are many advantages of focusing on this population. This is a healthcare concern. This is an employment issue. This is an education issue. This is an adjuvant Economic Development issue. We have spent the morning talking about topics that touched specifically this population. Thank you for this time today. I represent at youth move, a National Youth driven Membership Organization dedicated to increasing leadership and advocacy skills within young people who are navigating the countrys social systems. That includes Mental Health, Child Welfare, juvenile justice. We believe by emboldening these young people to share their lived experiences, their stories of how services and systems either helped or didnt help them become successful and by sharing those with policymakers like you, we can create effective change. Our youth move members are passionate about creating Better Future for the next generation of young people. And they want to do that by being involved in decisions. That shape the policies and systems in front of us. Where working in an area where the country is interested in our themes. We are interested in patient centered healthcare to delivery. We are interested in measures that make us more effective with no additional resources. Our lands at youth move is, lets do that through youth voice. Lets put young people in the driver seat of their own care and also in the drivers seat of our system structure. As a young person who struggled with anxiety and depression in High School Years and i stepped out into the adult world, looking for continuing Educational Opportunities and i left my natural support behind. I found myself facing increasingly difficult Mental Health challenges and increased needs. And i didnt know how to have those needs met. Additionally i struggle to care for my physical health. I found myself pregnant at 19 and now i needed to not only for myself but for young daughter who would be joining me. I was blessed to be able to have services, wrapped around me. Services that met my Mental Health needs, skills practitioners to provide the medication and therapy in order to get back on my feet. I met faculty at an Educational Institute willing to work with me in my alternative education course. And i was provided prenatal and postnatal care, designed for teen parents to help empower me to become a successful parents. My story is not the story of every young person. There are youth across the country who are not allowed access to the supports and Services Like this. Whether it is my voice and hearing what was successful and effective in helping me meet my life goals or hearing from another young person who missed an opportunity or wasnt offered in support they needed at the moment. These stories can infuse and create systems that are more effective moving forward. Briefly, young people are so involved in creating opportunities and connections for this population. We have young people who are creating positive, prosocial peerbased programs in communities where they can invite disconnected young people in to create connection. Rather than isolation. To experience acceptance instead of stigmatization. We have young people who are working as youth advisors and youth experts to state agencies in each of your states to direct Mental Health and implement dollars effectively to the community and guide and serve as advisors to date agencies across the country. Young people are very interested in addressing the silo that exists between our system. A specific example, most of us live in a state where the childrens Mental Health system is responsible for care up to age 18 or 21 years of age. Then on one day, on a birthday no less, a young person is no longer eligible for those supports that were helping them be successful. And there is, what we call a cliff between those services in a childrens system and what is needed to access in the adult system. These are actively asking policymakers to think about how we intermix and create a bridge between those children and adult services. Letting a young person mix and match between the services, to stay with a caring case manager for a little bit longer to get them set up and be successful from childhood to adulthood. One more example of what are no only joining but creating an emerging youth peer workforce. The context is young people helping their peers and it is not new. It is now being invested in justice practices within the Mental Health system. The concept of a peer workforce is that a young person who has recently successfully navigated one of our social systems can turn around and assist another young person in navigating the stem. They serve as an advocate, a confidant, a mentor and a role model that there is hope for a successful future. We have a generation of young people who are committed to creating a stronger future and i think the strongest thing we can do is offer them a seat at the table as we design that successful future. That is a future where young people will not experience disconnection. Thank you. Thank you very much ms. Bergan. I appreciate you sharing your personal story and we appreciate your extraordinary leadership. Ms. Miles come over to you. Thank you. It is a real honor to be here. I want to start by thanking governors brown and hutchinson for this opportunity in addition to the leadership at nga. I want to tell you about our work and strategies that are working across the country to improve education and Career Outcomes. There are two key points that ms. Bergan noted that i want to underline. The first is how we have framed this challenge of disconnected youth matters. Our work renamed disconnected youth Opportunity Youth because the National Research found that number 1 it is systems that are disconnected, not the young people. When you talk to young people about the vision they hold for themselves, families and communities their optimism is palpable. The access frame matters, not only in our language the programming and policies. The second piece i want to talk about is Civic Engagement that young people hold in terms of the ways in which is a reconnect education and careers they are able to impact families and communities. The Civic Engagement frame is key to how we can be thinking about the programs and policies that improve outcomes for people. Really quickly, to give you a sense of the work we have been doing at the Aspen Institute for the past several years, two days we have invested in 28 communities across the country that includes world, urban, and tribal communities. We want to make sure that when we talk about advancing outcomes for our countrys most vulnerable and marginalized young people that we are documenting the way our Rural Communities and native and tribal communities are getting to Better Outcomes. We have support cross sector collaboratives in 28 places and that means that these collaborative are bringing together the post secondary system, justice, foster care system in addition to local philanthropy, and elected leadership. Together with young people at the center they are able to work on not just problem identification but solution design. When we heard the outcomes that Governor Brown and governor hutchinson have talked about, they are able to use the cross sector collaboratives to get Better Outcomes. Two days we have been able to track not only accelerated system change, now k12 partnering with post secondary, partnering with employers to get to Better Outcomes. At the same time we are seeing tremendous metric impact p. And most critically the Civic Engagement and capacity, the civic livelihood of our communities continuing to increase and benefit from these young people. With that in mind, the two last things i want to say that are tied to the values of how we have approached this work, we believe that the Aspen Institute when we talk about barriers young people face and the way systems are disconnected, we believe that is the result of historic policies. When we Start Talking about what works and what is most effective to improve outcomes for young people, it is critical we hold that historic perspective in our minds and we Center Strategies that embrace equity in this basically racial and gender equity at the center of solutions. The other piece we will always talk about continuously is why it is critical to have the people most impacted by these issues at the center problem identification and solution design. Young people are experts in what works for them and they are experts in designing solutions that can achieve impact. There are three points i want to make tied to how we may consider ways for states to improve outcomes for opportunities. The first is we must make the business case. We must continue to partner with employers and we have National Opportunities to do that at scale continue to improve not just education but Career Outcomes for young people. The second is there are so many policy barriers and policy opportunities that states can continuously move to generate Better Outcomes. The third piece i will touch on is thinking about the different ways that we frame the challenge. I want to offer up a couple of ways for states to consider framing not just the challenge but the opportunity that exists to improve outcomes. Starting with making a business case. We know from the bureau of labor statistics that nearly 6 million entrylevel jobs will be generated by 2020. We also know that when we look at the issue of retain meant in these jobs, and particularly retention strategies that employers are using, we know that annually, for example the retail sector, there is an annual cost of 10 million to address the retention challenges for entrylevel jobs in the retail sector. When we talk about what states can do there is an opportunity for governors to partner with National Employers that are working in real time on hiring and retention strategies to bring some of those solution sets to the National State level, and for employers to partner with the local workforce board or even local employers to bring some of the practices that we have been able to document at aspen that are getting to training, upscaling and retention for the countrys young people. That is not only connection to certifications that young people need that we have seen employers nationally that commit hiring opportunities, look at ways they can provide transportation, ways to provide healthcare, and some wraparound supports that we know young people need to be successful in the workplace. That is one example. The other thing is we know that right now while our economy is strong there is bipartisan support for these issues. This is an issue of political because local employers want to work with governors to expand education and Training Programs that can help meet their workforce needs. The last thing i want to say is that we know that there are lots of different policies that states can leverage to continue to advance outcomes, particularly Career Outcomes for employer opportunities and that brings me to my point of policies that we may be able to move together. Recently the workforce opportunity and innovation was reauthorized. This act was set for our countrys most vulnerable young adults to be able to Access Training and education that is necessary in the workplace. However, when we look at who is able to access these resources we know that while it is intended for marginalized populations, really only 3. 7 of young people even though 80 has been allocated for them, only 3. 7 are able to use these dollars. This is a real opportunity for states to look at how they disaggregate who their population is. In california we were able to identify that only 5 of english language learners were able to access these employment dollars even though one third of their workforce are foreignborn people. This is an opportunity for states to look at the data to figure who is our workforce and how do we tap into these state dollars to bring training and employment skills that are necessary for young people. The other piece of legislation i looked up is that over the past two years we have been able to allocate 195 million additional dollars, new revenue to support outcomes for opportunity use. Only 8 of these dollars are reaching young people where they live. Part of our work is to make sure we are partnering with states to support investments in Youth Programs that are bringing them to the table to help give them the education and skills training that is really important. Last thing on policy. We know that education matters. We know that young people need to as our governor has reminded us, they need secondary education but we also know to prepare for the future job, to prepare for automation of our jobs, young people need post secondary education. There are opportunities to expand funding streams like pal for example that not only provide access to college but with the expansion of pal and the Americans College promise act we can use this type of legislation at the state level to remove barriers because this legislation brings again transportation, healthcare and childcare. Some barriers our young people have when it comes to work. Finally what i want to look up his alternative ways to frame the challenge that our young people experience so we can collectively innovate on the solution. For those of you who may not know, there is a professor at the university of california, john powell, who leads Work Research noted as targeted universalism. His Research Tells Us that in order to get to outcomes that really improve benefits for our countrys most marginalized people, we must set universal goals. Whether that is thirdgrade education reading levels or healthcare for all, we have to set universal goals in how we want to address our countrys challenges. We must target our strategies so they really do meet our most vulnerable populations where they are. When we think about what that means for opportunity use, when he to look at justice of populations, foster care populations so we can target our strategy to meet the unique needs of those populations while also thinking about how young people in our communities can continue to be supported to thrive. The other piece i noted earlier is Holding Equity at the center. Being able to look at different racial identities, gender identity of young people we serve so once again we can target our strategy and approach. The last frame i will offer that is the center of the conversation we are having here today is continue to support cross system and cross sector collaboration. Heres the thing. Our challenges are complex. Our solutions not only need to be comprehensive but they must have the complexity of the issues we are all working together to solve. Part of what states can do is continue to support flexibility and waivers that allow partners to come together to address these issues. Most recently we have seen his success this success that have offered states flexibility without justice dollars can be brought to Child Welfare dollars. These are the ways policies can be on the Ground Solutions to meet young people where they live, to continue to promote Better Outcomes. Thank you. Thank you very much ms. Miles. I present you highlighting the fact that we need to put racial and gender and i will add lgtbq equity at the center of Program Design if we are really going to meet the needs of all of our youth. Thank you. With that i will turn it over. Thank you Governor Brown and hutchinson in the leadership at nga. It is hard to follow my colleagues here. Im grateful to have colleagues like this who stand with our young people across the country for opportunities for them. I would like to share a little bit about youth held in an effort to build and add to the remarks that have already been made. Youth build was founded 41 years ago. When we asked young people in east harlem if you had adult support, what would you do to improve the community . And young people said we would take back the abandoned buildings, we would rehab them and create affordable housing. Therefore the youthbuild name comes from an effort that young people saw as a way to improve their communities and make a difference. I love that element to youthbuild. As it has been said there are 5 million disconnected or opportunity use in this country. Young people age 16a24 out of school and out of work. Youthbuild tries to prioritize forecasting on the 2. 3 million of those 5 million who live in poverty. Not all Opportunity Youth fall into the same category. Perhaps you might describe some of the youthbuild students as the most vulnerable or most disadvantaged. I have had as has been said we try not to label them in that way and we love the Opportunity Youth branding, not just as has been said but they offer an opportunity to the world if there skills and brilliance and intelligence can be unleashed. If we give them an opportunity it improves us as a society. So it is amazing to experience this on the ground at youthbuild programs from that one program in east harlem in 1978, a time when the disconnected youth crisis was formally named. We have worked 40 years trying to address the issue without the success we know we can have together. We have grown to 252 sites in 44 states across the country. Another 60 or so around the world. Youthbuild has become this Global Movement to address this issue. And we are learning from our work on the International Side and we are doing some sharing of information from what we are doing here domestically to what is happening around the world to really improve outcomes for young people. Our model is unapologetically comprehensive. And as all of you know and as you have heard already here today, young people actually do need these Wraparound Services in order to succeed. Our model has five core components. We focus on education, as governor hutchinson said the ged, the diploma is becoming more and more common throughout the youthbuild network. That is critically important. The second component is career and vocational and Workforce Development training. Now in multiple careers beyond construction, we started with construction but we have expanded. We also focus on Leadership Development, believing our young people as has been said, are the leaders, have the boys, have the solutions to make a difference and impact their communities. We offer life skills components , that includes everything from mentoring to Financial Capabilities to Substance Abuse treatment and more. And then finally we focus on service. Service to the community. We are extremely grateful for the support that americorps funding through cm cf and the ceo who may be in the audience today that allows us to provide an opportunity for young people to serve. This is a critically important point in our work and in our model. Our young people for generations, again focusing on these families and communities that are most impoverished, for generations have been the recipients or beneficiaries of public assistance or service. Through americorps and cm cf funding, the young people are able to become the providers of service to their community. And at the end receive an Education Award without which they could not even imagine the possibility of going to college. That core model, these five elements are adaptable all over the world. We focus on the opioid epidemic, living on that model as the foundation. We focused on Human Trafficking which was discussed this morning as well. Some of our youthbuild programs are 100 homeless students. We are addressing all the social challenges that all of you are addressing across the country. And this is very personal for me. When i was 20 years old i made a terrible decision that resulted in my incarceration. I served 16 years in prison for my crime. While i was incarcerated i was able to access education, career training, Leadership Development skills, life skills support and the opportunity to serve and get back to the Community Inside the prison. I just described the youthbuild model as you know. And although im not a graduate of youthbuild i am an example of the power of youthbuild. Youthbuild is a Second Chance program. A Second Chance for homeless young people, young people who had substance misuse challenges, young people who dropped out of school, young people who have suffered in poverty and trauma and experience violence of all kinds. Youthbuild is faith based safe space for young people to create the next great version of themselves with this comprehensive model and supportive adults. As an amazing experience that that can be for young people, i am humbled to say i am the first formally incarcerated ceo of a nonprofit with a global mission. Thank you. However, i think that means little if the young people of youthbuild dont believe that anything is possible for them with adult support and with programs like youthbuild. And if society doesnt believe in genuine Second Chances. I am grateful for the opportunity to be part of the youthbuild Movement Across the world that is impacting young people and im excited to share more about the ways that we are working with governors and dates to build coalitions and collaboratives throughout the country to create this network and web of powerful experiences for young people to transform their lives. Thank you very much. Thank you. I know that governor hutchinson and i are dying to ask you all millions of questions but we have a group of governors here that we want to have participate as well. Im going to turn it over to governor evers from wisconsin, thank you for joining us today. Thanks a lot. What a great panel. Thank both governors for your leadership and nga for doing this. I am a 42 year veteran of education in the state of wisconsin. And actually disconnected youth , i hate to put it in this fashion but when i was a High School Principal the people who hung out at smokers corner where the disconnected youth and i spent as much time learning from them as possible because i believe that what is best for kids is what is best for our state and for our country. Im going to talk about two things. One that has been very successful at anyone that is troubling beyond belief. The successes on the prevention side. Our state has invested on a bipartisan basis significant resources for fouryearold kindergarten. We have an almost universally in our state. Just a handful of holdouts. We believe those are wise investments. It continues to grow every single year. In turn, we also know and all of us in this room know that when children, especially our littlest kids are exposed to extreme poverty the trauma that is connected with that is significant. So birth to three programming is obviously important. We are working hard to make sure that every little kid has that opportunity and we are getting there. Additionally, one of the Success Stories is we have been able to double the Mental Health funding for behavioral Health Funding for our elementary and secondary kids and our littlest kids, too. It is not that every kid that has Mental Health issues is going to become disconnected but it certainly is a precursor for a lot of children moving forward. In addition the issue of special education which we have been able to fund at a higher level than ever before in this last budget on a bipartisan basis. So prevention is important, connecting the dots is important as i think everyone of the speakers talked about. The area that keeps me awake at night more than probably anything else is the issue of juvenile Justice Reform. Just as any Justice Reform is important, i have the opportunity my first week in office in visiting our juvenile prison and that is what it is. It was a controversial piece for many years. Young people there and the adults that ran it were at war with each other. I came away with lots of ideas, but the most important thing is i came away with these young people who many of them have done significantly bad things, they are still kids. They are still kids. So, our state is purging ourselves of this notion that we need to punish and move these young people back into their home towns and into neighborhoods and getting the Mental Health treatment that they deserve. Getting that Second Chance that you talked about. I think even though it is a small and, but it is an important small end. Retribution has little place in our world. And these young people, especially those that are caught up into our Justice System need a way out and need to make sure they have Rehabilitation Services and Mental Health services that they need. Im looking forward to having an so far having bipartisan support in that effort. Thank you very much. Thank you so much for so eloquently walking through what keeps you up at night. These are also the things that keep me up at night as well. I wanted to start with your lifting up universal prek as part of the prevention strategy. Part of what i want to offer up is what we see nationally and i think many people call it a two generation approach. The reason why universal prek so important is because what we know is that young adults on the margins of trying to reconnect education and trying to get on a Second Chance to Career Outcomes not only do they need adequate childcare they also need their child to receive the highest quality education because what we know from research is that Early Childhood education put them on the path to being able to disrupt multi generational poverty. I would argue it is the coupling of not only making prek universally available but how programs are able to marry that with the type of ged programming that states have for older adults and High School Completion diploma programs that they have as well and Even Community colleges have a role to play in trying to couple both access to universal prek for young people while helping the parents also get back on a path to obtaining a secondary credential and making connections to the post secondary peace because when you are looking at moving more than one generation out of poverty it has the greatest opportunity to be successful and impactful. The other thing i wanted to pick up on that you talked about was the role that trauma plays and i think limiting outcomes for young adults especially. One of the things we have seen nationally work and be very effective and again this dates back to how we frame the challenges young people face, it is thinking about how we move from trauma to Healing Center practices. What do i mean . When you talk to young people who have experienced significant trauma, who have more than one or two aces in their life what young people say is the truth is i am bigger than the trauma i experienced. When i have this opportunity to get back on a meaningful path and opportunity for a Second Chance opportunity which both of my panelists spoke to, the impact i am able to have is so much greater. That feeling centered frame is about the healing and health that young people need and the civic activation and participation that young people are able to tap into and enact as they are able to move forward on their healing journey. I really want to speak to this juvenile justice piece. I started my career teaching in the Justice System for the state of massachusetts specifically in boston. What i want to tell you and maybe everyone knows this, if you are an africanamerican male without a high school credential, you are 68 more likely to end up in the Justice System. This is not jail, im talking about prison, that means 70 more likely without a High School Education to end up in our countrys prison system. What does that mean . That means that we have opportunities to expand things like Health Funding but it also means that the Restorative Justice practices are so critical. You talked about retribution, Restorative Practices say not only do i want to be able to amend what has happened for this person who may have experienced harms but the Restorative Justice practices are for that person and for that persons family as well. The last thing we work on a lot are alternatives to incarceration. We heard some of this from governors as well but looking at how instead of young people for daily offenses, everything from unpaid bills, citations for missing school, etc. How do we actually organize to do the advocacy that says that we are no longer going to allow these types of penalties to create pipelines into prison for young people while we are meaningfully designing programs that are alternatives to incarceration for our countrys young adults. Go ahead. If i could add some on the ground work. Thank you very much for your support of youthbuild in your state. You have a powerful network there that really believes in young people and Second Chances and i have had a chance to visit them of the programs and it is amazing to see what is possible when there is this level of commitment. In addition to what has already been said and you know this, i am encouraged but also want to keep an eye and focus on neuroscience and really recognizing that the young brain is not fully developed until 25. I will be 50 this year and it is probably not fully developed in me yet either. And really recognizing that they are children. And in youthbuild throughout our networks here in this country about one third of the young people have criminal justice involvement. This Second Chance frame is a powerful frame. I totally agree Trauma Informed Care is not enough. Critically important, not enough. We are beginning to do Restorative Justice initiatives throughout our network making that part of the culture of youth held. I want to add the elements of love which isnt often said because it is mushy and what is love . While we recognize love is not enough if a young person feels that someone cares about them, believes in them the young person starts to trust that person. If the young person trust that person they start to share their pain, their trauma, their challenges. If they begin to let those things go they can actually heal. If there is a restorative healing frame within the program that can be accelerated that really supports the Young Persons development and transformation. And lastly i will say today in Southern California we have a resource there with our southern los angeles collaborative for the juvenile Justice System there. Youthbuild operates some of our programs within the juvenile Justice System and many of our programs obviously support the reentry of young people returning to their communities but we are also serving as a Diversion Program , an alternative to incarceration and would like to do more of that. We believe there are work and People Like Us who support young people in this way that could be transformed if communities and systems. The is mild, go ahead. Theres one thing i want to add. Love is a core value. It anchors our hope and help to direct our vision for what we can collectively accomplish together. But i would also argue that empathy is just as important as love. To the point about Brain Science research i think there are lots of people that are given Second Chances. I think that when we talk about solutions that work it is really important to hold and equity lens. I think not all of us young people get a Second Chance. It is not only that we need to love all of our young people but we need to have deep empathy for all of our young people so we can make sure the solutions we design meet the needs of all of our young people. Thank you. I will add on our work in terms of juvenile Justice Reform in addition to having the data around neuroscience and pervasive racial inequity, we were able to bring a broad array of Political Partners from the aclu to the Coke Industries to Work Together and it produced phenomenal results. The proof is in the pudding. Governor herbert . Thank you. I think this is a very important subject and thank you for your testimony and your counsel to us today as governors. I think we all recognize that youth are the rising generation of leaders and our future is tied to our youth and we need to make sure they have every opportunity to build upon us and make things better. So thank you. My first thoughts are why . Why do we have young people who are disconnected . There are probably a variety of reasons for that. And rather than dwell on the white the question is how can we prevent it from happening . You talked about bringing love, education, some of this is about treatment and fixing the problem. You say we dont talk about love, do we talk about parenting . Do we talk about the importance of nurturing young people . I know my wife who has an initiative on parenting. Families come in all different kinds of sizes and shapes and makeups. Are we in fact having our parents taught how to parent . None of my kids came with any instruction manual. They are all different personalities. They are not all treated the same. The things we want to teach them about honesty, integrity, civic involvement, support your country, be involved so what are we talking . Are you talking anything about the prevention side when it comes to parenting, is that something government should be involved with . Would like to tackle that question . I can start. What was coming up as we were talking today is the question of what is prevention . If we do the five why activity and we keep asking why is this happening, at each level i feel like theres another opportunity to define something that is prevention. Initially as you started speaking i started thinking about the role of addressing Mental Health support in our education system. A very important place for young people to show up and be safe and brave is if they are provided the support they need. They may be able to be safe and brave in the school day when they arent able to be safe and brave in their home communities. And bringing Mental Health language and support to schools would end up being a form of prevention for young people becoming disconnected in their teen years. You are challenging us to go even deeper into the inter section of intergenerational trauma. This is a multi generational problem. And if you spoke very eloquently to that idea of meeting the need of a child and the need of a parent at the same time. We have many young people who say that part of their growing up responsibility was caring for their parents Mental Health needs. So how do we as leaders feel about that . That should not at the end of the day the Young Persons responsibility. I think there are some very unique opportunities for us to ask children and youth what their families need and to ask parents what they need and really have it by parallel approach in that. That is a really good point. I would add that on the prevention side, our work is, part of what we support and particularly as it rates to the k12 system to do is to design an Early Warning system so we are able to mediate when we can see young people are getting off track. That is everything from tracking credit obtainment for young people so they are not over age and under credited. Figuring out in realtime as soon as the School System is not working what is the alternative path look like. When i talk about supporting cross system cross sector collaboratives, i would say that probably 75 of our work is on the intervention side 25 is on the prevention side. What we recognize as we will continue to lose these young people so we have to go back and turn off the valve so most of our work is 100 prevention , that is where we aim to get in terms of supporting communities across the country. We are working with School Systems all across the United States to help build Early Warning systems with the k12 school so they are able to really be proactive and help young people that are demonstrating signs of getting off track. The other thing i would say is that in supporting the Community Collaborative with the cross sector partnerships i talked about earlier, there are some communities, i was just in a Rural Community in texas where the community wasnt willing to come to the table to talk about strategies to support disconnected young people unless the parents were in the room. The conversation, the parents and the young people together talking about how the strategies would need to employ this two generation focus in order to effectively move young people. There was nothing we could do for those students if we werent doing something for the parents. Context matters. Every place is different. For us to be able to effectively support cross system cross sector collaboratives, in some communities it is a nonstarter to talk about reconnecting young people without holding a vision for what it means to bring parents to the table as part of the strategy. Im going to go to governor pritzker, alas quick question before we close out the session. I want to make a comment and then ask for reaction by the panel. It is in reaction also to governor herbert and the comment in question about prevention. First i want to commend you here in the state of utah. Before i was governor, when i was in the private sector i was also involved for a couple of decades in Early Childhood education, expanding opportunities for providing services to children 05 particularly the disadvantaged. Here in utah under your leadership Early Childhood has really grown significantly. I want to commend you. I know your wife does a lot of work in this area, too with parents. Early childhood to me on the prevention side is a hugely important aspect. The parents and providing them education while we are also providing the resources that children need in those very earliest years, visitation, Early Intervention programs and preschool, but i find as governor looking up the biggest, most challenging issues here are in my department of Children Family services, the children who are most in need who have the biggest challenges, their parents have the biggest challenges. There is a desire to keep parents and Children Together even when you have situations of neglect and so on. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health treatment are a huge percentage of the issues of intact families. And i guess i am throwing to the panel this question of when you think about prevention you talk about Mental Health services for children who are at the very tail end of being served by the state but i also think it is a parent issue, to. Mental Health Treatments and Substance Abuse treatment needs. I am throwing it back to you to get your reaction to what should we be doing to make sure those services are available to both children and the adults . What have you seen that works well recognizing that we all have limited resources but now that we need to address these challenges in our state. Go ahead. Thank you for the question governor. I think there is something to the two generational approach as you noted, just continue with the on the ground lens from youthbuild, we have young people who are part of families that have generational gang involvement for example. You are expected to join at whatever age in your life and as i mentioned we focus on this half of the 5 million that are most impoverished. Many of the young people cant even imagine going to college or cant even imagine a career. How we break that has to include the two generation approach. Youthbuild as an adaptable model can have Parenting Classes, many of our young people at 17 our parents, course you know this. We have Parenting Classes for them and separate Parenting Classes for the parents. Evidence shows you dont want to mix them but you have moments where the parents and child actually discussed what it means to be a parent. That to generational approach starts to break that cycle. It is an example of the ways that on the ground you can support Substance Abuse treatment, Mental Health support, getting the parents connected when you can. It is a major challenge. But the two generational model has shown to be effective in many situations and i think it is something worth exploring further. I will just quickly add two things. I think first and foremost what we have seen states to effectively is figure out how do you go to where people live. When we Start Talking about challenges around Substance Abuse or Mental Health, it is so critical that our strategies in communities really are applied specifically and the Nurse Practitioner partnership that allows nurses to go into peoples homes to deliver the services with that two generation approach. I would say estates are thinking about strategy as key to what works effectively, i have also seen this in tribal communities as well and in urban places. It is figuring out how to implement strategies and solutions. Your states most effective programs, how do you bring them to where the people most impacted live. The second thing i want to talk about is it is very much true that especially for young people in the Child Welfare system that there is a point for support ends and young people fall off a proverbial cliff in terms of the services they need. We have seen states that have been able to pass legislation that provides ongoing support for young people to continue to reap services from the foster care system up to the age of 26. That is really important because the state of maine essentially said so long as you are enrolled in education you will continue to receive all of these wraparound Transitional Support Services and so will your parents. So long as you are on track to obtaining a secondary credential. Texas is an example of another state that passed legislation to say that education dollars will follow a young person to the age of 26 so they can do the important work that governor hutchinson reminded us of earlier which is complete a secondary credential which we know is predictive for young people and adults being able to participate in our local economy. Some of the work states can do is looking at ways they are able to increase some of these supports so young people dont fall off of these proverbial cliff and they are able to leverage these supports because again it is not that magically at the age of 18 and the young person is necessarily ready to Enter Society so how do we figure out a way to sequence supports and scaffold support through our systems so that young adults can get onto these past while also helping their children as well. Unfortunately we are out of time. I would love to continue this conversation forever. Governor hutchinson, one last take away. It very briefly to me the overarching take away from all of these excellent presentations is the responsibility that we have as governors. These are youth, young people that have challenges that in most circumstances are not any responsibility of their own. We have a responsibility to address that. The other thing that each of you mentioned, Youth Engagement, Civic Engagement and service. We as governors have to figure out ways that we can listen to our young people, make sure we are meeting their needs and that we are making sure they have the greatest opportunities. Thank you for your inspiration and the emphasis upon the responsibility that we have. Thank you. I think for me i could again respond with many things, but really important to maintain a cross system, cross sector collaborative and collective approach if we are going to make this happen. These children are all of our responsibilities and we need to Work Together. Thank you to the panel members. Thank you for your extraordinary leadership in addressing the needs of our Opportunity Youth across the United States. We look forward to partnering with you and thank you for taking time out of your busy schedules to join us today. And the answer is no. Watch book tv every weekend on cspan two. Activists and leaders recently gathered for the National Cannabis policy summit in washington dc. In this panel we will hear about how journalists cover Marijuana Policy, how the Legal Cannabis industry is developing and how social Media Companies monitor stories and features about cannabis. This is just over three hours. Morning everybody. I would like to welcome all of you here today to the Second Annual National Cannabis policy summit here at the new dm and i would like to start the day by thinking our nonprofit Advocacy Partners without whom this wouldnt exist and many businesses in this industry would not exist. I would like to thank americans for state access, the aclu of dc, baltimore Harm Reduction coalition, bridges coalition, and bear with me, the long list, the cannabis cultural association, cannabis voter project, dance safe dc chapter, dc vote, dc mj, dc normal, delaware normal, doctors for cannabis regulation, drug policy alliance, headcount, hip, Law Enforcement action partnership, Marijuana Policy project, maryland normal, mission zero, the minority cannabis is and is association, the National Cannabis bar association, National Cannabis industry association, normal, pittsburgh normal, students for sensible drug policy, students for liberty, supernova women, virginia normal, and veterans. Many of our partners are here today. I encourage all of you to stop by and meet some of these groups while you are here today. I would also like to pause to thank our sponsors this morning, doctor bronner, hoban law group, weed map, and ease. I applaud these companies for recognizing the need for more free programming in cannabis. To have a strong industry we need to have an educated and informed industry and these Companies Understand that so thank you all for helping us create this program today. When we started the summit we had a vision to create a platform to convene unlikely allies to Exchange Ideas on cannabis policy reform. We may not all agree on everything, but something is important to highlight our Common Ground on issues we do agree on. And with cannabis we have ample opportunity to do that. I hope you enjoyed the discussions today and i hope you leave here armed with more knowledge and a broader network. Now lets get started. Hi, i am congresswoman barbara lee and i am proud to represent californias beautiful 13th congressional district, i am pleased to welcome you all to the Second Annual National Cannabis policy summit. This summit brings together activists and leaders from across government, healthcare, veterans groups and civil organizations to address the most pressing cannabis policy changes. The 2018 midterm elections really showed that there is momentum to legalize marijuana. Many states and the district of columbia have now enacted various forms of marijuana decriminalization or legalization. And i am working as hard as i can as the cochair of the bipartisan cannabis caucus to build support in congress for legalizing cannabis at the federal level and addressing the Racial Justice issues that must go handinhand with these efforts. That is why i am so proud to have worked with senator cory booker and representative to introduce the marijuana justice act. Ground breaking legislation that would d schedule marijuana at the federal level and repair some of the harm from the failed war on drugs. We know that it is communities of caller and low income communities that have been harmed the most by these discriminatory policies. Although marijuana use is roughly equal among African Americans and white americans, africanamericans are nearly four times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession. Drug sentences for black men are 13. 1 longer than for white men. And latinos are nearly 6 1 2 times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession. The marijuana justice act would expunge federal marijuana use and possession crimes. Incentivize states through federal funds to change their cannabis laws if they disproportionately arrested and incarcerated minorities and low income people for marijuana related offenses and create a Community Investment fund to invest in the communities most impacted by the failed war on drugs to fund things like job trainings and reentry programs. Let me just close by saying that i think we ar