Contents

• Preface
• Summary
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Chapter One: Introduction
• Chapter Two: The Early Phases of the Initiative and Decisions Made: The Importance of Context
• The Start of the Initiativet
• City Context and the Planning Process
• Demographics
• Needs
• City Context and the Strategic Focus and Scope of the Initiative
• Changes in City Context and Changes in the Structure of the Initiative
• Coordinating Structures
• The Role of the Mayor
• Summary
• Chapter Three: How Sites Attempted to Improve Access, Quality, Information, and Sustainability and the Progress They Made
• Chapter Four: Enabling Coordinated System-Building Efforts
• Chapter Five: Lessons for Other Cities
• References

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 Hours of Opportunity

This chapter addresses research question 1 concerning what happened in the early phases of the initiative. We found that the sites showed significant variation even before the initiative, and these differences shaped their respective goals and plans. While they had common overarching goals that aligned with The Wallace Foundation’s intentions, they adapted those goals to suit their city’s needs. When city context changed, it affected how the effort proceeded. The findings of the crosscase analysis point to multiple ways in which other cities can approach improving OST provision, depending on their circumstances.

First, we present further background on the steps that The Wallace Foundation took to select sites and initiate planning. Next, we describe how various aspects of city context shaped the focus and scope of the sites’ initiatives. We then outline the coordinating structures developed and discuss what site respondents identified as the single most important enabler during their planning activities—the role of the mayor. We conclude by summarizing what we learned across the sites about the early planning period.

This chapter draws heavily on each grantee’s planning-year proposal, business plans submitted to The Wallace Foundation, market survey reports and evaluator documents, and interviews with those at the sites involved during this formative period.

The Start of the Initiative

After deciding that it would focus a major new initiative on improving OST systems, The Wallace Foundation conducted its own investigation to find promising sites in 2002. It identified three cities, and Providence stood out because its new mayor was a major supporter of OST improvement with the ability to provide the necessary political backing for the initiative. After many conversations with the mayor and a major nonprofit, Rhode Island Kids Count, in the spring of 2003, The Foundation gave Providence a one-year business planning grant to determine how to best use the funding. It encouraged Providence to use a consultant and a market research firm to understand the needs, interests, and concerns of students and parents. The Foundation approved the business plan and awarded Providence a five-year implementation grant in 2004 (see Table 2.1).

The Wallace Foundation soon began having conversations with representatives in New York City, having been impressed with the mayor’s commitment to OST expansion, dedication to data analysis, and willingness to restructure the city’s government. In the fall of 2003, The Foundation gave New York City a one-year planning grant to determine gaps in services and what parents wanted in terms of programming and to gather input from key stakeholders. New York City was awarded a five-year implementation grant in spring 2005. In the fall of that year, as both Providence and New York City moved into the implementation phase with some signs of success, The Foundation approached other cities and selected Boston, Chicago, and Washington, D.C., to begin planning grants. These grants were shortened to six months, and The Foundation awarded three-year, $8 million implementation grants to these cities in the spring of 2006.

Table 2.1
Planning Date, Implementation Date, and Funding Amount

City Context and the Planning Process

The sites varied in several obvious ways at the start of the initiative, including demographics, shape of the OST sector, and unmet needs. These variations worked in tandem to shape the scope and focus of The Wallace Foundation initiative in each site.

Demographics

Table 2.2 provides demographic information from the sites at the time they were selected for the grant. The size of the cities varied substantially: New York City is about twice the size of Chicago and more than 50 times the size of Providence, the smallest city involved. What did not differ among the cities was the significant percentage of lowachieving students being served and each city’s desire and need to improve OST provision.

Needs

During the planning year, the sites worked to identify strengths and weaknesses to guide the focus on the initiative.

Common Overarching Concerns. While interviewees in all the cities thought OST programs could benefit children and youth, they noted concerns about the quality of current OST programming and the potential lack of access to programming for many young people. Leaders of after-school programs in each city thought that highquality programming could help improve behavioral and academic outcomes for children and youth by providing them with a chance to engage in meaningful activities between the hours of 3:00 and 6:00 p.m. Interviewees at each site expressed concern about dropout rates, teenage crime and violence, poor school attendance, and high teenage pregnancy rates. Interviewees in police departments were particularly supportive of increasing access for older children to “keep them off the streets and productively occupied,” so that they were not victims of crimes and did not engage in criminal activity. Test scores appeared to be less of a concern than the more significant negative life impacts of dropping out or incarceration, with the exception of Boston, where leaders expressed concerns about the academic achievement of students in the city’s lowest-performing schools. In addition, OST programs were considered a support for working families.

Table 2.2
Demographics of the Cities

NOTE : For a more detailed assessment and sources for the figures, see McCombs, Bodilly, et al., 2010.

Information-Gathering Efforts. The Wallace Foundation strongly encouraged the cities to undertake some type of market research or gap analysis with the planning grant funds to understand what issues were keeping children from enrolling and subsequently attending programs. It even offered the services of a company to help with the market research. Cities varied in their responses to this encouragement and in what they found when they undertook these exercises, especially as they defined gaps in coverage or weaknesses in existing programs.

Market analysis proved to be a key input to planning decisions in Providence, Washington, D.C., and New York City. These sites relied on formal surveys administered by outside consultants to parents and/ or children to clarify why children did or did not attend programs and what might attract more children to programs. New York City also used geographic information system mapping of existing programs overlaid on maps of at-risk youth populations to identify areas of unmet need. Boston and Chicago did not engage in market analysis until after the planning grant had concluded.

According to respondents and our own review of the market research documents, parents in Providence and Washington, D.C., were particularly concerned about their children’s safety at the program and in transit. In addition, when compared to elementary school children, middle school and high school youths had less interest in afterschool programs, often engaging instead in duties at home or work. The surveys allowed the cities to approximate the number of children who were not being served but who might attend and to understand the challenges they faced in increasing enrollment and participation.

Several cities also compared where programs were being offered to where in-need populations were concentrated. In particular, New York City’s data collection and analysis showed that programs were located in areas that once had significant populations of in-need children. However, as the populations in the city shifted, new or different areas lacked programming to meet demand. Mapping student populations against program locations showed that growth in high-need populations occurred in areas not well served by existing programs. This led policymakers in New York City to push strongly to relocate programs or encourage new providers to operate in these underserved parts of the city.

Some cities identified underserved age groups. In the cases of Washington, D.C., and Providence, this seemed to be especially the case for middle school children. Those cities’ market research and mapping exercises showed significant elementary school provision supported by federal funding streams that ended when children turned 12 but little provision for middle school children. In both places, schoolbased provision increased as the children reached high school, with more team sports, music programs, and other school-based activities.

In the three cities where this analysis took place as part of the planning process, leaders reported using the findings to shape the strategic focus of the initiative. In addition, they reported that the exercise helped fuel an appetite for more data collection, thereby contributing to support for the initiative goal of building and using better data in the OST sector.

In addition to the market research and early analysis, leaders in Providence and New York City solicited input from the public to identify needs and worked toward agreement on goals and strategies. In both cases, these processes were supported or led by the mayor’s office and kicked off by the mayor himself. Interviewees in both cities commented on the value of understanding the needs and desires of providers and key OST-sector participants. In addition, they noted that this process helped gain buy-in for the initiative that continued during the implementation phase. The three other sites did not undertake stakeholder engagement efforts that were as formal or as extensive during the planning phase, perhaps due to their shorter planning grant period.

City Context and the Strategic Focus and Scope of the Initiative

City context drove the agency selected as the lead for the initiative’s activities, and a combination of city context and identified need shaped the scope and focus of each city’s initiative (see Table 2.3). In cities in which an agency provided significant funding for OST, a city agency was designated as the lead. In cities with a low level of city funding for OST, an intermediary took on the lead role. Initiatives led by cities tended to adopt a broader scope, while those led by intermediaries were more likely to start with a demonstration that would later be scaled after proven success.

Providence. The city had no agencies that provided or funded OST, or even an agency dedicated to youth development, prior to this initiative. Furthermore, there was no external, intermediary organization that focused on OST programs for youth. There were, however, dozens of CBOs offering programs to small numbers of students across age groups, and CBOs operated several nationally recognized high school programs. Because there was no city agency or organization focused on OST, Rhode Island Kids Count, a statewide nonprofit, helped coordinate the planning process, which engaged all stakeholders in significant fact-based review of what existed and what was most needed.

The major task for the city was to determine who would lead the improvement efforts. The planning year resulted in the creation of an intermediary agency called Providence After School Alliance (PASA), which was the recipient of the implementation grant. Heads of several city agencies, such as the police department and the Providence Public Schools, sat on its steering committee (and later its board), which was chaired by the mayor. Given the identified need for middle school programming, the grant was to be used to create neighborhood campuses, called AfterZones, to provide middle school youth with after-school activities at their schools as well as community locations. Each After- Zone was overseen by a coordinator and several site-based staff. The intermediary was to develop an MI system to track students during program hours, develop and implement quality standards and a selfassessment tool for providers, obtain sustained funding, and ensure access for all middle school children who wanted services.

New York City. New York City had a sprawling array of providers under a large number of city agencies that did little to coordinate with each other. Two very active intermediaries that received city funding: The After-School Corporation and Partnership for After School Education (PASE). The mayor, who was a strong advocate for better, more efficient government and a supporter of better youth programming, began an initiative to improve after-school services through better use of management systems and forced interagency coordination. The city’s interest was in improving the effectiveness and efficiency of the vast number of community-based providers with which it contracted for services.

In the year prior to and during the planning grant period, the city took several important steps. A city-led review of city-contracted provision for at-risk youth led to the consolidation of many programs and funds into the DYCD. Prior to this consolidation, the mayor had appointed a new commissioner of the department with a strong background in after-school services. To ensure further coordination across the many city agencies, he appointed a special adviser with fully delegated mayoral power to increase the coordination across agencies.

The mayor’s special adviser and leadership from DYCD led the planning process to efficiently increase access. As part of this process, they used market research to identify underserved locations; thus, they focused the implementation grant on getting better programs across all age levels in high-need areas of the city. They developed a new contract process for providers to encourage more programs in needy areas and to promote quality by providing free professional development to OST providers. They also adopted additional strategies to increase access, including improved coordination with the schools and providing additional information to the public to encourage enrollment. All interviewees familiar with this initial effort emphasized the important role played by the mayor’s special adviser in ensuring the cooperation of other agencies, regular and productive meetings, and the creation of specific memoranda of understanding (MOUs) to document agreements made among the agencies.

Boston. Several years before the Wallace grant, the mayor opened the schools until 6:00 p.m. for CBOs to provide programs to students in those schools. The mayor had backed major OST initiatives (as had major philanthropists in the city) and supported an intermediary, Build the Out-of-School Time Network (BOSTnet), which published an annual guide to OST programming. In 2004, two major, mayorled initiatives were combined into an intermediary public-private venture called Boston After School and Beyond (Boston Beyond). Its mission was to promote OST programs through communication, data collection, research and analysis, strategic initiatives, and resource development. At the time of the planning grant phase, the OST field in Boston included the two intermediary organizations, BOSTnet and Boston Beyond, and the city provided funding primarily through the community centers operated by the Boston Centers for Youth and Families (BCYF). Boston Beyond led the planning grant because of its potential for leadership in the sector and the participation of the mayor and other key city leaders on its board.

In the planning period, the actors focused on using the grant to implement an existing initiative of the Boston Public Schools called Partners for Student Success (PSS). This initiative focused on a group of low-performing elementary schools and was intended to offer a fullservice model of supports, including significantly increased after-school programming, to turn performance around. The Boston implementation proposal aligned the PSS school reforms and the after-school reforms into a single comprehensive model. The plan called for PSS to be piloted in five schools in the first year, then expanded to five additional schools in each subsequent year of the Wallace grant (15 schools total). The initiative included school-, program-, and system-level strategies. The school-level strategy included a manager of extended learning services, who would be located in each of the 15 schools to coordinate the school-level effort. The program-level strategy called for offering professional development to providers to strengthen services. At the system level, the goal was to institutionalize the PSS approach within the city and the school system. A coordinated information and evaluation system was to support the initiative. The implementation grant was given to the fledgling Boston Beyond, with the mayor’s support, to implement the model by helping coordinate the work of the manager of extended learning services, offering professional development for providers to improve their services, and building a coordinated information system.

Chicago. The city had sprawling OST provision and a very highly regarded, nationally recognized, high school OST organization, After School Matters. In 2003, the mayor consolidated 50 city social service programs into the Department of Children and Youth Services, making it a major city funder of CBOs providing OST programs. This still left very large portions of OST provision under the purview of several other agencies, including the Chicago Public Schools, the Chicago Park District, and Chicago Public Library. All these agencies funded or provided OST programming to youth; however, none of these agencies had OST provision as its sole or primary mission. The mayor’s wife, chair of After School Matters, along with that organization’s director, led the planning grant process, which used a steering committee structure that included the major OST organizations as well as the Chapin Hall Center for Children at the University of Chicago.

In Chicago, the grant was awarded to the city to improve coordination across the various city agencies and, especially, to fund projects that the agencies would not otherwise fund. The city’s plan outlined five strategies: build and implement MI systems to track OST programs and participation that would be provided to all OST partners and providers, develop and implement a communication plan to target teens, disseminate best practices across providers, pilot a consistent way to measure and ensure OST quality, and develop strategies for longterm sustainment. While After School Matters received the grant, the effort was housed in the Department of Children and Youth Services (which later became Family and Support Services), with a multiagency coordinating committee established to coordinate the grant activities. Early activities focused on developing an MI system for each major OST funding agency. The hope was that, by working together on this endeavor, they would begin to find ways to cooperate on the other significant improvements, particularly programming for teens, who appeared to be underserved compared to elementary-level children.

Washington, D.C. In Washington, D.C., the DC Children and Youth Investment Trust Corporation (the Trust), a public-private venture founded in 1999, acted as an intermediary between city agencies and CBO providers and advocated for improved funding and programming. In addition, many city agencies provided services to youth, including the Family Court, the Department of Human Services, the Department of Corrections, the Department of Health, the Department of Parks and Recreation, the D.C. Public Library, and the Metropolitan Police Department. The Trust led the planning process in Washington, D.C.

The lack of programming for and participation among middle school youth, which was identified through market research, led the Trust to propose the creation of high-quality OST programming in five middle schools with on-site coordinators to demonstrate what better coordination and alignment might accomplish. The model would be scaled to other middle schools after the demonstration period. The supporting infrastructure for the citywide system would have three prongs: an MI system to track enrollment and attendance, a system for using and improving standards through training, and a communication strategy. In the long term, the plan called for sustainment through absorption into the city budget.

Changes in City Context and Changes in the Structure of the Initiative

In two of the cities, the context shifted, which led to a shift in the structure and focus of the initiative.

Boston. Boston After School and Beyond received the Wallace grant and ran the program for the first two years. During this period, the organization faced a number of staffing changes, including the resignation of its executive director. Further, there were many leadership changes in various city agencies—the superintendent, the head of the Department of Health and Human Services, and the police commissioner, all of whom were ex-officio members of the Boston Beyond board. All of these aspects delayed implementation progress. In fact, the PSS demonstration occurred in only ten schools rather than the 15 planned demonstration schools. We were told by many interviewees that the relationship between Boston Beyond leadership and the mayor became strained, leading many observers we interviewed to believe that the mayor lacked confidence in the effort. In addition, there was a lack of coordination and outreach to other players in the city, perhaps in part due to the organization’s staff turnover during this period. Interviewees outside of the PSS initiative did not understand how it was propelling progress toward system-building goals.

In spring 2008, The Wallace Foundation asked Boston to resubmit an implementation plan. In response to The Foundation’s concerns, which were apparently shared by some of the leadership throughout the city, Boston developed a new business plan that included the active participation of the mayor’s office, the superintendent’s office, the Department of Extended Learning Time, Afterschool, and Services (DELTAS, a small agency within the Boston Public Schools), Boston Beyond, and other key city agencies. Interviewees described all stakeholders as engaged, active participants in the development of the new plan. Respondents thought that the process would help reinvigorate the grant and set it up for success. The new business plan placed the PSS sites into the DELTAS Triumph Collaborative, a group of Boston public schools that shared an OST model that was similar to the PSS model, including a full-time on-site coordinator supported by DELTAS. Thus, during the 2008–2009 school year, the work under the grant expanded to include all Triumph Collaborative schools (42 schools in total, including the PSS schools). The DELTAS office assumed operational responsibility for implementing the initiative. The goal of the initiative was to create lessons learned across all the sites that could then be exported to other Boston public schools to bridge the divide between school and after-school programs.

At the time of our final visit, Boston Beyond was under new leadership and in the process of reshaping its strategic focus and place within the OST community. Interviewees were hopeful about the organization’s future role in the city, and the mayor’s office was supportive and enthusiastic about the new leader.

In addition, interviewees described a new effort by the mayor, the Community Learning Initiative (CLI), which was led by the city agency that ran the community centers (BCYF) and was intended to bring together community centers, schools, and libraries to coordinate and expand OST learning opportunities for youth. Thus, as of spring 2009, three organizations were coordinating OST efforts in Boston (Boston Beyond, DELTAS, and BCYF); it was unclear which organization was leading system-building efforts, and all were involved in the CLI’s work.

Washington, D.C. The plan for implementation was for the DC Children and Youth Investment Trust Corporation to help build local CBO capacity and to develop programming in middle schools, which would be managed by a coordinator at each middle school site. Implementation began but was soon thrown into uncertainty with a change of administration in the city.

At the beginning of the implementation grant, in the early days of the new administration, the city council passed legislation that brought the schools under mayoral control and established the Interagency Collaboration and Services Integration Commission (ICSIC). The Trust and other government agencies were asked to sit on this commission and to collaboratively plan and coordinate OST provision and other youth services for the city. This legislation moved the focus of coordinated activity away from the intermediary and toward more centralized governmental planning through ICSIC.

Finally, in the last year of the grant, and as a result of ICSIC’s decisions, the District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) undertook a concerted and unprecedented effort to improve OST provision in the city’s public schools. Taking the model developed by the Trust under the grant, DCPS moved to open the schools to CBOs during afterschool hours, began the process of vetting the CBOs, and placed coordinators in each school building to work with the CBOs, principals, teachers, and parents to improve services. The school-based coordinator model developed by the Trust was implemented across the district.

Coordinating Structures

The sites took different approaches to coordinating their efforts, based on their local context. One approach concentrated on intra-agency coordination within the city, and the other relied on an intermediary organization for such coordination (see Table 2.4). In two cases, the site lead for the initiative shifted over the implementation grant period due to changes in local context.

Because the funding for OST in Chicago and New York City was concentrated in city agencies, it is logical that a city agency would assume the lead for the initiative. However, in Chicago, multiple city agencies were involved in OST, leading them toward an interagency collaborative approach. In the other cities, a key city funder of OST programs did not exist, and an intermediary agency that had the mayor’s support was selected to lead the initiative.

Both Washington, D.C., and Boston began a model that had an intermediary acting as the coordinator. In Washington, D.C., the Trust was the lead coordinator prior to the new administration; however, as the new mayor and the city’s public schools (which were under mayoral control) became more engaged in the work of the initiative, the locus of control for the system-building activities shifted to the city.

In Boston, the approach in place at the end of spring 2009 makes it difficult to place it in either category. As a result of the second business plan, submitted to The Wallace Foundation in the spring of 2008, PPS was incorporated in DELTAS during the 2008–2009 school year. The plan was to broaden the impact of PSS beyond the ten pilot sites to the Triumph Collaborative, coordinated by DELTAS. Boston Beyond retained overall responsibility for the PSS grant and continued to focus its attention on systemic efforts, including resource development, supporting the creation of common outcomes for OST, systemic data collection and analysis, and advocacy. In addition, by 2009, the CLI had been established and was being led by a city agency (BCYF). In spring 2009, many organizations were involved in leading efforts to improve OST program provision in Boston.

In general, partners were engaged due to interest in providing OST opportunities to youth. The grantees involved multiple partners in the work of coordinating through existing structures (e.g., New York City’s Interagency Coordinating Council of Youth) or newly developed ones (e.g., Washington’s Interagency Collaboration and Services Integration Commission, formed by the mayor’s office to ensure coordination of services for youth). Boston’s initial effort was largely confined to the demonstration schools; however, in later years, OST issues were being addressed by the mayor’s Education, Health, and Human Services Sub-Cabinet, which coordinates various city agencies.

Second, no matter the organizational structure, if the partners did not meet, it would be difficult to achieve any coordination. These meetings differed based on site context. In Washington, D.C., ICSIC meetings were monthly, formal, and top-down; they were held by the mayor, and all agencies attended and presented information to him. In contrast, Chicago’s partnership was driven by the goodwill of various agencies that collaborated with each other, and it established many committees that reported meeting with varying frequency, including a high-level committee led by the mayor’s wife and a committee of midlevel agency leaders who were charged with implementation.

The Role of the Mayor

The previous section described how city context shaped the plans and organization of the initiative. But what our interviewees emphasized above all was the importance of mayoral actions in these early efforts. Besides the normal bully pulpit that all the mayors in these cities used, several interviewees pointed to very specific actions that influenced the outcomes of early and later efforts.

For example, the mayor of New York City made after-school provision part of his reelection platform, mentioning it in speeches and appearances. He launched the effort in a citywide summit. He restructured agencies and funding streams to ensure that it was given priority. He appointed a special adviser, who reported to him directly, to coordinate efforts among the relevant agencies and create a strategy to improve OST provision. The mayor granted the special adviser powers to work with the agencies to develop and implement a series of MOUs. For example, MOUs were used to allow the schools to stay open for CBOs, to ensure that the CBOs did not have to pay for facilities or utilities at the schools, and to ensure the health department provided proper (but not overzealous) oversight. Since the beginning of the grant, this position of mayoral adviser with the power to ensure cooperation has been funded through The Wallace Foundation grant, and interviewees regarded it as essential to the development of the effort.

Similar supportive steps were taken by the mayor of Providence, who led the effort to place the early planning effort with a well known child-advocacy group, helped create the intermediary and sat on its board, actively recruited the intermediary’s executive director, reviewed progress as head of the board, and actively sought funding for programs.

As discussed earlier, the mayor of Washington, D.C., supported a restructuring of the government to enable more integrated planning for youth services across agencies. As head of the ICSIC, he also demanded information on progress and required agencies and the Trust to report regularly how services were being improved.

In Chicago, while the mayor was verbally supportive, he did not act as assertively as the mayor of New York City to push the city agencies toward more serious collaboration. In Chicago, the mayor’s wife led the effort to bring in The Wallace Foundation grant. While her involvement was enough to bring the different parties to the table, it was not enough to ensure the pooling of funds, joint programming, or program consolidation across the agencies involved. Chicago instead opted to achieve coordination among agencies through the indirect process of building MI systems, which was seen as a “win-win” for all involved. Respondents could not recall being asked by the mayor for progress reports or hard data on outcomes.

According to respondents in Boston, the lack of alignment between the intermediary leader and the mayor led the fledgling program to the struggle and impeded its ability to lead system-building activities. Thus, there was little coordination in the first two years.

We take from these examples that, when dealing with multiple city agencies, the mayor can and sometimes does play a strong role in ensuring greater interagency coordination. This role also appeared to apply to the creation and support of intermediaries and the demand for reports on progress. The sites’ histories illustrate effective and less effective actions that can be taken to ensure coordination and show that the bully pulpit might not be enough. In this case, actions might speak louder than words.

Summary

It is clear that the sites started in very different places but had in common The Wallace Foundation’s goals and a concern about the effectiveness of their after-school programs. As they proceeded through the early phases of the effort, they began to show some distinctive differences as they adapted The Foundation’s goals to their particular interests and needs, but they also experienced shifts in local governance that affected how they proceeded. From this review of the early years, we can make the following observations:

• Sites noted common problems that they thought better OST programming could help alleviate, including high dropout rates, high youth crime involvement, high teen pregnancy rates, and generally poor youth development trajectories. Improving achievement scores was not a major goal for OST programs, except in Boston, even though all the sites had low-performing students.
• Early planning, which often included significant data gathering and analysis, helped leaders identify specific targets for the efforts; these targets varied across sites and were driven by context and constraints. Engaging stakeholders in discussions of the issues facing them and the city proved to be highly valued as a means of gaining future buy-in. Providence and New York City received a full year for planning and did more extensive community engagement than the three sites, which had a shorter planning period.
• Local context determined which organization would lead the initiative. Where city agencies provided significant funding for OST programming, a city agency led the initiative. In cities without this major city funding through an agency, an intermediary led the efforts.
• When the city led the initiative, the scope tended to be broader, while intermediaries were more likely to start with a demonstration that would be scaled after proven success.
• When city context changed—for example, when mayoral control shifted—the initiative changed in response.
• Mayors and their representatives were crucial to ensuring progress in the early stages of the initiative in each city. Strong mayoral actions ensured that OST improvements rose to the top of the city’s agenda and that coordination, consolidation, and restructuring across agencies occurred.

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