The Breakfast (With the Superintendent) Club: City partnerships and the future of work

Welcome to Educast three thousand. It's the most transformative time in the history of education. So join us as we break down the fourth wall and reflect on what's happening, the good, the bad, and even the chaotic. Here's your hosts, Melissa Lobel and Ryan Lufkin.

Hey there. Welcome to Educast3000.

I'm your host, Melissa Lobel, and I have a special cohost with me, Tracy Weeks.

Tracy, say hello. Hello, Melissa. On today's podcast, we are joined by Mike Bartlett, program director for education and workforce success at the National League of Cities, where he helps leaders expand post secondary access, strengthen career pathways, and prepare communities for the future of work. Mike has published numerous articles and reports on these topics and regularly presents to local and state officials, as well as national organizations on post secondary success strategies, aligning education and workforce development systems, work based learning, and apprenticeship and sector based industry engagement strategies. Mike's writing has been published by the US Department of Labor and the Federal Reserve, the Council of State Governments, and others. Welcome, Mike.

Thanks so much for having me, Tracy and Melissa.

Alright. Before we jump in today's topic, Mike, would you please share a little bit about yourself so our audience can get to know you?

I'd be delighted to do so. So, again, Mike Bartlett. For the last five years, I've been at the National League of Cities where I serve as the program director for education and workforce success. What that means is essentially we serve as advisors and consultants and supports to all of our members across country.

There are more than nineteen thousand cities, towns, and villages across America. And our team is really focused on helping expand the capacity of municipalities to create high quality, inclusive, cradle to career ecosystems so that their residents can achieve shared and sustained prosperity. In terms of my background, before coming to League of Cities, I was actually at the National Governors Association. I love associations.

Well, you know, what can I say? Doing very similar work, but from a state policy level. Previous to that, I worked the office of governor Steve Bashir in Kentucky, which is where I'm from. And fun fact, I was in a previous life a music major, played trombone, and kinda have an arts background, but now found myself in public policy.

That's too funny because I played trumpet and I'm now in policy. So must be something about music and policy.

Halfway, you know, my face.

Absolutely. I was gonna say, you two are peas in a pod.

Yeah, for It's really impressive. I love it. Well, Mike, one of the other things that we love to do with our guests when we get to know them is ask for a favorite learning moment. So this could be when you were a student. It could be if you taught, or you even with your own children. Like, where's a moment in your life that you remember that's a favorite moment when you've seen learning in action?

Absolutely. I mean, certainly in my personal life with a four year old, just seeing how she learns and grows. Our house is consumed by k pop demon hunters right now. I don't know if it's anybody But professionally, the best part of my job, honestly, is that I get to go to so many different places around the country, and you get to see cities of all shapes and sizes. And, you know, you always have these ideas in your head of what places will be like before you go there, but to actually visit them, you will always learn so much. And something I always say is that cities often share the same challenges, but how they solve them, it's always just a little bit different.

That's super interesting. Alright. Well, let's dig in a little bit. So Mike, you spend your time helping cities think about education and the future of work. From your perspective, why are cities so central to this conversation? And when you look across the country, what's the biggest shift you're seeing in how schools and local governments work together on workforce development?

Absolutely. I think for us, one of the reasons this is so important is because it's important to our members. When we survey our members, which we do every year, our most recent, we call it our state of the cities report, we found that economic development and workforce development were the top issue for elected leaders, more so than infrastructure, more so than housing. They know it really impacts their communities. And, you know, I think you all are familiar with the data that shows this, the impact of opportunity gaps on the economy, the impact of the changing future of work on the labor market and communities. It really matters to mayors and city councils and city staff to address education and workforce success.

There's a lot of kind of national trends that feed into that. We know we have a shrinking labor force. We know we can't leave anybody on the sidelines. We have to figure out how we pull more people into the equation. And another interesting fact that comes out from our surveys, it's true that very few cities actually have a formal control over their schools. Certainly, they don't have any formal authority over postsecondary institutions.

But we actually we did a a look at how citizens interact with their local government social media. And when mayors when cities post about education issues, those are the number one thing their residents interact with. So, you know, mayors say this to me all the time. Even though we can't do anything about the schools, the voters are still gonna talk to us about the schools constantly.

So there's just a huge need and opportunity. And when I talk to cities, I think of it in three ways. Cities serve as planners. They can be that convener that brings people together from across systems and across sectors and make sure that, hey.

Are our high schools talking to our colleges? Are they engaging our local workforce development board? They can play that kind of planning and convening role. Cities also have a strong policy making lever they can play when it comes to thinking about just tax levies and actually making investments in education.

Cities make a lot of investments in education. So there's kind of a lot of policy making levers. How do we incentivize certain practices? How do we incentivize quality?

How do we incentivize job quality even? There's also a lot that cities do directly that's programmatic. Cities fund and operate everything from out of school time programs that are doing career preparation, after school programs. They're also doing a lot to support work based learning, whether it's city run apprenticeship programs, a mayor's youth academies, or apprenticeship programs.

They don't do it alone. They're always working in tandem with their schools or their colleges or the whole universe of other education and training providers and other nonprofits. But they can oftentimes play a really important kind of glue that brings all these disparate systems together.

Yeah. And I want to just hit on one little thing that you said because it was so important, and I don't know that everybody thinks about this. There's a lot of conversation right now about the role of federal dollars going into education. Give it back to the states, although we know that states by far are the largest sort of budget inflow for schools, but cities and counties also do play a pivotal role when it comes to funding local school systems and can make a huge difference in terms of attracting educator talent, offering a variety of programs, and so on and so forth. So those cities really do kind of they put what I call the icing on the cake when it comes to those sort of last mile funds into school systems.

And state school funding formulas, they're just concerned about what's happening in the bounds of the school. But we know the importance of wraparound supports. We know how much residents and parents and educators value before school and after school time programs.

Cities are really integral in the success and operation of programs like that. But if you think of everything from the roads that lead to the school, the physical infrastructure, but also the social infrastructure. And in fact, when we talk to city leaders about, like, jobs and training, the issues are very rarely actually the education part. It's we don't have access to affordable childcare. We don't have access to transportation to get to work. We don't have affordable housing where our jobs are. And cities have ways they influence all of those areas, and those are areas where schools can't do that work alone either.

One of the things too that resonated when you were talking about your work, Mike, was that the elected officials care about this. Right? Even though they may not have that direct control. And right now in the city that I live in, we're have a mayoral election, and absolutely our candidates are talking about education.

And it's it's interesting. I can see that happening, just in our own experience, and it is one of the most common or probably I would say most popular topics that the citizens are talking about around this election, which is just fascinating. I'm curious, you know, as you think about k twelve schools specifically, and you've given some examples already, what are some of the things that they do work with the cities on? So after school programs, I know that's one of them that you mentioned.

What are some of the other ways that this shows up, this partnership between k twelve school districts and the cities show up?

I'll give you a couple of specific city examples and some general odds too. Because a lot of times, it doesn't have to be anything super complex. There's a lot of mayors who just, like, once a month, they go read to students in schools. They just have that physical presence and engagement with with their community.

So sometimes for mayors, there's an opportunity to say, hey. Mayors, are you meeting with your superintendent? You could be doing that on a regular basis. And so we hear a lot of success stories from cities that say, hey.

We actually built a strong relationship with our local superintendent, and we have breakfast once a week, and we hammer out issues.

We see a lot of coordination on school safety issues. Obviously, cities have a major role to play there. A lot of coordination that has to happen. But as I mentioned previously, a lot of support for those kind of wraparounds before and after the school day, out of school time programs, youth employment programs. I'll actually highlight the city of, Madison, Wisconsin, mayor Rhodes Conway. She's great. I'll talk about two things they do.

One, the city invests and they call it most the Madison area out of school time program, which is a partnership between the city, some surrounding counties actually, the Metropolitan School District, and about a hundred youth serving programs in the community to help families access high quality out of school time program. So the city's helping to play both a kind of supporting quality and professional development among the whole youth serving ecosystem in the community and blend and braid funding with both the school district, private philanthropy, and others. The city also funds and supports youth apprenticeship programs, which they coordinate with local high school.

So I was able to go to Madison and actually sit down and talk to some of the youth apprentices they have that are working in health care and are on nursing pathways. And to hear young people say, I never thought I could do this. I never saw myself in these career opportunities. They got that opportunity through that city school partnership.

Wow. All right. So if we shift from K-twelve for a moment and we think about community colleges and universities that are located in cities and such, how are they partnering with city governments to respond to, like, the evolving labor market needs?

Yeah. I'll share a few examples here as well. I think it's important to to recognize that cities have been at the front lines of these conversations for many years. Many states have now adopted college promise programs whereby they held the, you know, last dollar scholarships that support entry.

Those started in cities, actually. And in fact, cities have large I think there's a few hundred, actually that have college promise programs where they're actually putting money where their mouth is to make sure college is affordable and accessible to all of their residents. City of Philadelphia is one that launched one a few years back, the Caddo Octavius Scholarship. So there's kind of this there's this part around access to college that cities play a real direct role in.

We've actually done some work here at NLC on what we call student basic needs. So we know one of the reasons many students do not either go to college or persist at college are things like housing insecurity, food insecurity. About three in five college students today are either homeless, food insecure, housing insecure.

And we've done work with cities to say, hey. If you have a city food bank, are college students accessing it? Are you making housing assistance available to students and working with landlords to make sure housing is safe and affordable for students?

I'll lift up the city of Raleigh in North Carolina, which actually worked with all of their regional all their postsecondary institutions, I think all five of them. And some they use some federal funds through the American Rescue Plan Act as well as some philanthropic funds to create what they call their host home program. What they do is they take young people going to college who are coming out of the foster system, who otherwise might not have access to housing, and they match them with local residents who have extra rooms, empty nesters, people who can house those students. So the city plays a facilitating role. Colleges obviously are providing a lot of support as well, and that's just one kind of example of a really practical way cities can work with colleges.

One other directly on the career training side, and we have lots of examples of this. We saw a lot of this with the American Rescue Plan Act investments cities that cities got. Seattle, Washington invested nearly two million dollars in partnership with the Port of Seattle and their local transit authority and colleges to connect incarcerated individuals to apprenticeship and training institutions. So any kind of program you can think of, some cities probably piloted it somewhere.

Wow. Shout out to Raleigh. I'm coming to you from just outside of Raleigh today.

So Hello, Raleigh.

Thank you. Yay. You know, I've been in education my entire career, and I don't think I connected all of those dots in really the impact that cities have. And actually, it's making me think.

I mean, right now, we're facing a bit of an education crisis in our country. And how are we funding it? How are we supporting at such a changing time, the needs for learners for a future, you know, for kids that we don't even know what those futures may look like. So I'm wondering maybe if you have an example of a city that's brought k twelve, higher education, or community colleges, and workforce altogether to start to tackle some of these challenges.

And I would say that's the right approach for a city to take. And, you know, as I said in our intro, we think of things as a lifelong learning continuum. And the city needs to think about everything from early childhood education, k twelve, workforce development, economic development, and they're all different sides of the same coin. And they need to think about, like, what is our comprehensive plan?

And I think the challenge is, like, who's in charge of that? Whose job at the to do that? Cities can play that role, and they often do, but it doesn't have to be a city. There are other partners that can sometimes step in to play that kind of intermediary role.

But that's that's like the question I think communities have to solve. I'll give you maybe two examples. Tampa, Florida, mayor Jane Castor, who's great, they put together a citywide they had about sixty five organizations, including k twelve schools, their higher ed partners, training providers, other organizations, nonprofits come together to create I'm gonna not remember the name exactly, but the Tampa Good Jobs plan. And they laid out several key strategic pillars that they were going to prioritize.

They built specific action steps, and they made it clear, like, this is the grouping of partners that are gonna help make progress on this priority. Here's the timeline. Here's the deliverables. Just really putting pen to paper on, this is where we want to go because we know the future of work is a challenge.

We know we're growing. We have these challenges we want to address. Here's the partners and steps we need to do to do it. So that's one example.

Cool. Also highlight, Tempe, Arizona. They have a particular focus on workforce development and youth career readiness. They launched Career Ready Tempe.

It offers everything from paid summer internships, mentorships, workplace skills training.

The city helps facilitate that with local employers, their k twelve and higher education partners. And the city itself steps up as an employer. Cities are large employers themselves, and they've been working specifically with Arizona State University, unsurprisingly. We've done a lot of work with them over the last couple of years on manufacturing that is both in and growing in their community and thinking how do we link up where our economy is going with what's happening in our schools.

Those are such great examples. And for all of our listeners, we'll make sure to link in the show notes to some of these examples, especially if you're thinking about how do I bring some of this collaboration into my own either district or institution or even workforce. Workforce.

Take it to your town council and go Absolutely.

At a local town council meeting, anybody can sign up for public speaking time.

Absolutely.

All right. So I'm like the federal policy wonk on the team, and we know that many students and families are starting to question the return on investment for a four year degree. We know that the president and the secretary of education have now said that they will be evaluating the employability of students coming out of four year degree programs, and that may determine how much federal monies that the university gets and such. How are cities and schools adapting to this shift in expectations and kind of what role do you see with alternative credentialing models, short term certificates, those kinds of things, you know, just to prepare a more agile workforce?

Yeah. I mean, and, you know, it's interesting. I've been in this field for a little while, and sometimes I'll go through old reports that we put out from, you know, even sometimes before I was born many years ago. And they all start out with this same thing that, well, the future of work is changing.

Workers are going to have many, many jobs and not a career anymore, and we need a more agile training and education system. So, you know, in some part of my brain, like, is the labor market is always changing, and that's constant. Technology is always disrupting jobs. It never disrupts as quickly as we think it will.

And so I think it's always important to kind of start in that place. I think it's also important to recognize, you know, this tug of war between, let's say, college for all versus alternative pathways is also not new. This is conversations that have been playing out in all of our communities in so many different ways. Certainly, that's not to discount that we are in a time of change, and there's a lot of uncertainty at the local levels because of the impact of changes in federal funding.

And nobody has a lot of those answers right now, unless you all do, in which case, please let me know. Nope. Do not.

But truly, I think, you know, and there's a lot of research that paints kind of a complex picture. Right? If you look at the research on registered apprenticeship programs, they have really good labor market outcomes. Short term Pell is now the law of the land.

If you look at IES, an Institute for Educational Science Research on short term Pell pilots, the outcomes are pretty mixed, but we have to implement it regardless. And so my advice to practitioners, to elected officials, is to really think about quality and think about what problems are we trying to solve. Not all training is created equal, and the data is the important part. And that's where the challenge, I think, and the importance of federalism comes in.

A local government can't solve labor market data and having access to high quality actual labor market data. States have an very important role to play there. There have been a lot of investments in state longitudinal data systems. I'm from Kentucky, which is one of the best.

But there's also a need for federal support to really understand. You know? There are a million certificates and credentials in the labor market right now. How many of those actually influence a hiring decision?

And how do we get that information to educators and to people seeking these different career opportunities? So right now, we're kind of in the Wild West. There's a need for a lot more clarity and rules of the road.

The Wild West is a really great way to describe that. I think it's not even just in a from a city perspective. I think we're all trying to understand the world of alternative credentials and the potential impact and the shifting of where people how they're choosing education and how they're pathing their own journeys. Journeys. I'm curious from a lifelong learning perspective to continue on this thread. Is there some promising work being done by local officials to start to make some investments here separate from this need for data and where they can influence? Do you see some exciting things happening, particularly as, you know, cities are trying best to prepare everyone for the workplace and to make them successful in that workplace?

Yeah. And there are certainly cities that are really understanding the idea that lifelong means lifelong. So everything from prenatal care to support for elderly workers and integration of them, particularly for many places with aging workforces. So there's certainly those communities that get that.

One concept that I think is, like, very hot right now and is always, like, a really easy sell is is work based learning, broadly defined. But, you know, it can be as simple as career awareness and career exposure and how are cities helping to bridge that gap between awareness and exposure for for young people in particular, but also older workers. And, of course, internships, we know apprenticeships have grown a lot. We know the administration's very focused on apprenticeships, and we know it's a proven model.

So there's a lot of work to do there, particularly to support employers. And that's another area where cities can sometimes play a role. They're talking to employers all the time. They pick up the phone if the mayor calls, etcetera, etcetera.

So the couple thoughts.

I like that. I like those, like, very practical things. And, these are things that the k twelve system and the higher education system in those communities can support as well. I love that.

Mike, you've had such good, like, specific resources. I'm gonna tack your brain for just a couple more. Can you give us a highlight of of a few cities that have taken, like, a particularly innovative or effective approach to lifelong learning programs?

I give you two, and this flows from the previous question too. But I'll high highlight the city of Kokomo, Indiana. Essentially, the city received a major EV battery plant coming community. So we're talking billions of dollars, international company coming in.

The mayor says, you know, we're the we're the dog that caught the car. And so they had to create a pretty multifaceted approach to making sure they were ready and going to be successful with that and bring those career opportunities to their residents. And that manifested in a few different ways. I was actually able to to go to Kokomo and participate in an educational pathways convening where they brought Ivy Tech in Indiana University Kokomo and high school or school superintendents from a multi county region in a room to pretty much have a conversation to say, hey.

A, there's a new state law requiring you to have work based learning experiences as a part of high school graduation.

We had state superintendent education there. And we have these new career opportunities. We had the employers in the room from across the automotive spectrum. And we sat down and actually, like, had kind of community by community conversations on how do you get ready for this?

How do you get ready for the new jobs and these opportunities and build those pathways for young people? So that's one part of that, but there's also two other really kind of important components here. What they also heard was they don't have enough housing. They don't have enough housing for the workers they need and where where they wanna be as a community.

So they were actually able to kind of as a result of these big workforce investments and education conversations, sign new letters of intent with developers to add about twenty three hundred new housing units. And at the same time, they heard about childcare as a barrier for workers. And so they actually the city helped support the creation and ongoing development of a new childcare development center that's gonna be able to support those facilities. So it's not just one thing.

It's not just one partner. You really have to take kind of a whole full of government approach. And, I'll share one more from a smaller community, Glen Heights, Texas, which actually built a comprehensive plan aimed at advancing high quality education from cradle to career. Everything from what they call a baby college for early childhood development, robust educational supports all the way through college, high quality summer learning opportunities for young people, and new resources for adult learners.

We've and I'll see we've been doing a lot to support adult learners who are you look at surveys, a lot of adults want to reengage with school, but they don't know how, and they don't do it. So there's a lot of untapped potential to reengage them in education.

I love the entire community coming together. And as you were describing sort of the role of education and maybe the role of housing or the there's still opportunities for education to play in that. So to me, like, the summary from all of your incredible examples are work together because there's more opportunity there than you can think. So speaking of working together, I think this will be our last question.

Okay. So we haven't asked you much about the NLC. How do you all work with cities? Like, how do you facilitate knowledge sharing?

How do you ensure there are resources around these kinds of things? And do you do you encourage cross city collaboration? Like, how do you all support all those cool things that you've shared so far?

Yeah. That's my entire job. That is my raison d'etre. So, you know, we do a lot of different things.

Right? There's some of what we do is broad based information sharing. So actually, out this month, we have a new mayor's guide for K twelve education. That's in many of the city examples I shared are included in that document, but it has it lays out a few pillars for which in which mayors can act.

It's also really good for community members as they think to engage their local governments. It gives them some clear examples because cities are always, well, what's our neighbor doing? What's the next town over doing? Going to them with that is always really good.

We also have a brand new workforce development hub on our website, which has all of NLCs, various and sundry resources on workforce development, chock full of city examples. I'll make sure to share links with you all. So Great. That's one part of what we do is broad based information sharing at our convenings and meetings.

We also provide a lot of direct technical assistance. So I'll just give one example. Some of the examples I mentioned, Tempe, Kokomo. These were cities that participated in an initiative we had called good jobs, great cities.

We worked with a cohort of sixteen cities to think about what are these future infrastructure and energy investments coming to your communities, and how are you preparing your workforce for them? So over the course of a year, we sat down in each of those cities and asked them, hey, mayors, bring together your colleges, your k twelve schools, your other your workforce development boards, and your other partners to come up with some plans or launch some new programs.

And that's a lot of what our work looks like. So working with deeply on the ground with Citi is in addition to kind of playing our national information sharing role.

Well, Mike, I mean, this has been truly, I mean, just inspiring. I love hearing all of these sort of very specific examples of really positive ways that teamwork is coming together from local governments, the most local of governments with education systems, K-twelve, higher ed, the communities all coming together. I really thank you for celebrating each of those cities with us and sharing with us. And I think I know I learned a lot of really cool things that are going on, Melissa. Thank you so much for joining us today and sharing these stories with us.

I love doing it, and they're all my favorite city.

Know, I'm just kinda Every single one.

They're all your favorite.

Oh, love it. I love it. And again, listeners, we'll make sure to link all of those great resources so that whether you're from an education institution, you're an informed community member, you're in the workforce, you can have these great examples and all of these great resources that the NLC does so that you can go take action in your local communities. Thank you again, Mike.

Thanks for having me.

Thanks for listening to this episode of Educast three thousand. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and drop us a review on your favorite podcast player so you don't miss an episode. If you have a topic you'd like us to explore more, please email us at InstructureCast at Instructure dot com, or you can drop us a line on any of the socials. You can find more contact info in the show notes. Thanks for listening, and we'll catch you on the next episode of Educast three thousand.