Click the link above to view Vincent Gray speaking about the Summer Youth Employment Program at his Ward 1 Town Hall.
I started my time at CentroNia with the PMC during the middle of the Summer Youth Employment Program, or SYEP. Passions run high around this program because kids who worked in it didn’t get paid last summer, in spite of the Fenty administration’s use of funds from other departments (which hadn’t been approved by the council). The program is also notorious for not providing the kids with real work or job skills, though that didn’t seem to be the case at all with the kids I was working with.
The only place where I have a strong disagreement with Vince Gray on this particular topic myself is regarding the length of the program. If he’s really trying to own the topic of school reform, and views the SYEP as a logical extension of it, then why not fully fund it, hire the best kids who are willing to put in real work or get fired, and have it last the entire summer?
What are your thoughts?
Ward 1 Youth Speak Out: Part 3 of 3
December 10, 2010
