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Mayor O’Neill Leads Jobs Committee in Setting Workforce and Education Policy to Address the Skills Gap By Josie Hathway At the Jobs, Education and Workforce Committee meeting during the 68th Annual Conference of Mayors in Seattle, Long Beach Mayor Beverly O’Neill, Chair of the Committee, focused on the skills gap crisis facing cities and businesses across the nation. Mayor O’Neill reviewed findings from the June 2000 report, Examining Skills Shortages in America’s Cities. She indicated "Ninety percent of mayors, in responding to a survey taken for the report, said that training the workforce to stay competitive in a changing economy was the greatest challenge they faced. Seventy-two percent of mayors said that the challenge was greater now than over the past 10 years." O’Neill, who is also a member of the U.S. Conference of Mayors Advisory Board, has taken a national leadership role on addressing the skills gap. She represented the Conference at the National Skills Summit in Washington, D.C. in April as one of five panelists that shared the stage with U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) Secretary Alexis Herman. O’Neill pledged to continue her leadership on this issue and said, "The need to bring together government, schools and industry must be uppermost as we move ahead in this new economy. Strong partnerships at the local level are crucial to dealing with workforce shortages." Skills Gap Mayors discussed that addressing the skills gap requires an approach that involves partnerships with education and the private sector to create an effective workforce development system that retains business and helps keep them competitive. Yet it also involves other issues including public education, early childhood education, after-school and out-of-school programs, addressing the needs of youth, including summer work experience and moving high concentrations of welfare recipients to self sufficiency, all policy areas under the jurisdiction of the Jobs Committee. Future workers – our nation’s young people - are a key priority for the conference and this committee. O’Neill introduced The Teen Yellow Pages created by and for Long Beach youth and printed by local Telephone Company – GTE. The Teen Yellow Pages were just released in Long Beach and have been extremely popular among teens, and with the mayors at the 68th Annual Conference. O’Neill said, "We created this guide for youth to provide information from hotlines and hobbies, to job training and volunteer opportunities. My hope is that youth will find it useful and exciting and help them discover all the opportunities awaiting them." Eugene Mayor James Torrey expressed grave concern about children in the early grades with poor reading ability. He said, "I’m concerned about the impact of poor reading on our children’s future. Studies show that most children who cannot read well by the end of the 3rd grade never catch up. Poor reading is a key indicator of school failure and future dropouts." Mayor Torrey incorporated his concerns into an amendment to the resolution on addressing America’s skills gap. Legislative Update Joan Crigger, Assistant Executive Director of the Conference, provided a legislative update on the Labor, Health and Human Services and Education Appropriations (Labor-HHS) for FY 2001, which provides the funding for the some key education and workforce development priorities. Crigger reported that both the House and the Senate have failed to provide adequate funding for year-round and summer youth training and youth opportunity grants. The House has failed to provide an extension of the Welfare-to-Work program. Mayor O’Neill distributed letters for mayors’ signatures which ask the House and Senate leadership to restore the cuts that were originally made in the Labor-HHS Appropriations Committees, and urge them to extend the Welfare-to-Work program for two years because the job of welfare to work is still not done. O’Neill also distributed a letter to the House and Senate Leadership urging them to pass H.R. 4094, "America’s Better Classroom Act" on school modernization and renovation. This bi-partisan bill sponsored by Representative Nancy Johnson (CT) and Representative Charles Rangel (NY) responds to the problem of crowded and unsafe school facilities in nearly 25,000 schools across the nation by providing a federal subsidy of $24.8 billion in zero-interest bonds and establishing a tax credit in lieu of interest to bond purchasers. Policy Resolutions Stamford Mayor Dannel Malloy, Vice Chair of the Committee, lead the mayors in adopting eight resolutions as follows: • Addressing America’s Skills Gap calls on Congress and the Administration to help build a competitive workforce for the 21st century by providing flexible block grant funding directly to local governments to be used jointly with the private sector to reduce the skills gap, especially the hardest to serve, to extend the Welfare-to Work program, provide direct funding to cities as part of the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) reauthorization, to provide greater investments in skills upgrade training for incumbent workers, and to increase funding under the Workforce Investment Act of 1998 (WIA). • Investing in America’s Youth urges Congress to continue its long term commitment to a strong summer jobs program, to continue to fund the Youth Opportunities program for its five year commitment, and to provide at least $2 billion under WIA for all youth activities. • Summer Youth Employment Funding urges Congress to include a $500 million Emergency Supplemental Appropriation in FY2000 for the WIA Youth Formula Program. • Supporting High Quality After-School and Out-of-School Time Programs encourages the federal government to increase its investment in community-based after-school programs and urges and increase of funding of the 21st Century Community Learning Center program to $1 billion. • Commemoration of ADA and IDEA commemorates the 10th Anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act and the 25th Anniversary of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act; supports the purposes and goals of ADA and IDEA; and seeks appropriate and continued funding for each of these landmark acts. • Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) Reauthorization urges the federal government to conduct a national study on the impact of welfare reform on families, children, and cities as a part of TANF reauthorization and calls upon Congress and the Administration to invest in addressing the skills gap by providing direct funding to cities as part of TANF reauthorization; calls upon the nations’ governors to invest in vitally needed services including effective education, training, and placement programs to enable parents to compete for jobs with adequate pay and benefits; wage subsidies, either provided to employers or directly to parents, so low-skilled workers can better support their children; child care; transportation; and housing and rent subsidies in areas where the existing supply of subsidized housing is inadequate. • Support for Arts and Music Education urges Congress to approve legislation that will ensure a place for arts education in all U.S. Department of Education elementary and secondary education programs and provide first-time funding to the "Cultural Partnership for At-Risk Youth" of Title X in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and continue to include the arts as a core learning subject; provide professional development for teachers in the arts; include funding for arts learning opportunities in after-school programs and support arts education partnerships between schools and community arts and cultural organizations. • Modernizing America’s Schools states that The U.S. Conference of Mayors believes that the federal government should contribute toward improving current unacceptable conditions of overcrowded, unsafe and deteriorating schools; supports a federal government role in addressing school modernization and renovation; believes that this can best be achieved through a partnership among the federal government and state and local governments; that this must be addressed during the 106th Congress; urges Congress and the President to consider the bipartisan agreement currently before the House.     
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