The community room at the Crossroads Community Center was buzzing with excited voices. The second All-Partner Meeting of 2017 had gotten off to a great start as Tom Brewer, the MC, from Bellevue Presbyterian Church and a member of the Partner Leadership Committee had everyone pairing up with people they didn’t know and asking an all-important question: “Who are you?”
However, it was not just a standard introduction, but about digging deeper and deeper, asking the same question over and over again until you really got to know the person, their values, their beliefs. It tied in with this year’s “Digging In…” theme.
Continuing with the discussion that began at the meeting in January, this meeting focused on connecting data and aligning resources.
Referring to the Theory of Action from StriveTogether, Tom reiterated that Eastside Pathways is currently operating in the “sustaining gateway” and that the Partnership has multiple benchmarks to tackle to move towards the next level, “systems change” And to reach that, two benchmarks have been identified as focus areas for 2017:
- Connection and collection of data to enable continuous improvement
- Partners allocate and align resources to improve community-level outcomes
Stephanie Cherrington, Executive Director of Eastside Pathways, shared a Positive Pathways story – the success of the summer melt campaign that has been undertaken by the Career Pathways collaborative. ‘Summer melt’ refers to the phenomenon where kids who have graduated from high school and indicated that they will be going to college do not actually attend in the fall. The collaborative has started with a focus on Bellevue College (BC), which is the second most common college choice for Bellevue School District (BSD) students. Currently, 31 percent of BSD graduates who say they are going to Bellevue College—or 76 kids out of 242—are ‘melting’.
Stephanie asked Courtney Akinniyi and Emily Kolby from Bellevue College and Deb Kraft from the Bellevue School District, to share some of the work they’ve been doing and the challenges they faced. Read excerpts from the interview.
She summarized two key takeaways from this campaign. “The coming together and understanding that baseline data, which we didn’t know before, is a huge success. Also, BC came in with an open attitude – what can we do differently, but still staying in our lane of expertise, to create a better system for the kids in our community.”
As the room acknowledged and appreciated the Positive Pathway story, it was time to turn the spotlight onto data that drives the work of the Eastside Pathways Partnership. Kelly Jones, Eastside Pathways data officer, stepped up to talk about the community report. A former school teacher, Kelly had an unusual task for the executives gathered in the room: a quiz to reiterate how to look at data and understand it. Fortunately, it was an open book quiz, and it was good to see the energizing engagement between partners as they searched for the right answers. There were no merit badges awarded, just the satisfaction of knowing you knew your data!
Kelly also announced that the Data Council had started meeting and adopted a charter. The next step was to identify a first area of focus, such as having data flow between organizations to impact Eastside Pathways goals and outcomes, supporting collaboratives in using data and evidence, or linking collaborative work more directly to overall goals.
Ted Dezember, Senior Resident Services Manager for Educational Initiativesat King County Housing Authority and a member of the Partner Leadership Committee, spoke about aligning and leveraging resources. He raised questions such as: ‘Are we harnessing our resources most effectively?’ He also shared an example of how KCHA is aligning resources and engaging with Eastside Pathways. The table discussion that followed was on understanding how people are thinking and engaging in the partnership.
Next meetings
- Helena Stephens, family, youth & teen services manager at the City of Bellevue. and co-lead of Eastside Pathways Racial Equity Team (EPRET), shared details of the upcoming Pacific Educational Group summit and urged people to register for the Eastside Racial Equity Pre-Summit(June 27, 2 – 6 pm at Odle Middle School) and PEG Regional Summit for Courageous Conversation in Bellevue (June 28-29 at Odle Middle School)
- Our next Eastside Pathways 101 is on July 18 from 9:00–10:30 am at City Hall. Please share with your board and staff (current and new) whom you believe would benefit and/or with any new organization you think would be interested in joining the Partnership. Register here.
- Our next All-Partner Meeting is on October 24, 12 – 2 pm at WISC, Rainier Room. Register here.
Article written by Sujata Agrawal, communications manager at Eastside Pathways