Síntesis y determinación estructural de las nuevas sustancias

fully participating in the region’s economic revitalization.

In order to maximize the impact of community redevelopment and establish an evidence-based proof of concept for future efforts, the Finger Lakes Regional Economic Development Council has expanded its Opportunity Area from its original focus on the El Camino neighborhood to include the entire City of Rochester. With several distressed communities in need of transformation, the City of Rochester faces a number of challenges: chronic urban poverty; a transitory population subjected to substandard housing; a significant and impactful lack of educational attainment; and high unemployment. The Council’s Opportunity Agenda proposal for Rochester directly addresses the link between education and employment, with a fundamental belief that creating access to jobs will help rebuild and revitalize this great City.

Statement of Opportunity

Rochester has long been the major center of the region’s economy and continues to nurture essential economic assets from major higher education and healthcare institutions to dozens of entrepreneurial business ventures. Yet Rochester is also a city of contrasts—growing and vital neighborhoods and business districts are juxtaposed with concentrations of poverty, decaying homes, and struggling families.

Over the last three plus decades, Rochester’s three traditional major employers (Kodak, Xerox, and Bausch and Lomb) have all cut back and shifted jobs outside of the city. In aggregate, 63,000 jobs – 85 percent of 1980 employment – were lost among the “big three” alone. Additionally, reductions at units of General Motors and Gleason Corporation have shed 11,200 jobs during this period.

Healthcare – namely the University of Rochester Medical Center and the Rochester Regional Health System – has emerged as the City’s largest employment sector. While healthcare does employ many high-pay, high-skill workers, average pay in this sector is much lower than City residents enjoyed at the traditional manufacturers.

Although employment growth outside the City has exceeded the losses within it, new and expanding firms have left the city and the loss of job opportunities has contributed to persistent poverty in many neighborhoods. The decline of retail is particularly acute for the poor and near poor as retail offers the entry-level jobs often used by low-skill workers to gain a toehold in the labor market.

Given the geographic dispersion of employment sites in the suburbs, public transportation is often not an option. Among City workers, 7.5 percent use public transportation to commute to work while less that 1 percent of workers in the surrounding suburbs employ the same means of transportation.

The statistics tell the story of Rochester’s opportunity challenge. In a 2011 study of poverty concentration, The Brookings Institution reported that:

Rochester’s “poverty concentration rate” was the 3rd worst in the nation’s 100 largest metros.

More than 55,000 city residents (a quarter of the total population)

lived in census tracts with poverty rates exceeding 40 percent, up 26 percent from 2000.

Poverty is concentrated among children.

Nearly half (47 percent) of Rochester’s children are in poverty, compared with 31 percent of the entire population.

40 percent of Rochester families with children are in poverty, as are 62 percent of female-headed households with children under age 5. The Rochester City School District (RCSD) has the highest share of students eligible for free or reduced price lunch in upstate New York and nearly the highest in the State of New York (including New York City).

These poverty levels have a significant impact on educational achievement. Only 43 percent of students entering RCSD in 2009 graduated on time in 2013.

Nor are those who graduate ready for college work. Monroe Community College’s (MCC) entrance assessments found barely more than a third of RCSD graduates were ready for college in both math and English language arts and, despite a heavy emphasis on remedial instruction, a large share of RCSD students drop out of MCC.

Without a solid educational foundation, the City’s youth will be unable to succeed in the new economy. Because these problems are long-standing, there exist generations of Rochester residents who face overwhelming obstacles in their efforts to secure living wage employment.

Opportunity Agenda Strategies

The Council proposes to design a roadmap to opportunity for the City of Rochester that leads directly through workforce training linked to entry level, living wage employment in high demand advanced manufacturing settings. In so doing, this agenda supports the Council’s strategy toAlign Workforce Development Efforts with Sector Needs.

The Hillside Work-Scholarship Connection (HW-SC) Job Creation in Middle Skills & Beyond program will serve as the central component for the region’s Opportunity Agenda initiative, a description of which has been included in the Transformative Priority Projects section of this report.

Complementing this program is a supportive set of strategies the Council has identified to address the other fundamental needs of the community:

Access to quality, affordable housing: New housing policies can begin to reverse poverty concentration by providing housing opportunities outside the 27 census tracts identified by the Brookings Institution as displaying “extreme poverty.” Rehabilitation of the existing housing stock is also a key priority. Rochester, for example, has one of the nation’s most effective lead hazard programs;

lead poisoning is a known contributor to learning disabilities. Access to healthy, nutritious food: Malnutrition and obesity are • • • • • • • • • P h o to b y : K e n H u th

71 Progress Report & Recommended Priority Projects 2014

the natural outcome of communities without access to healthy food and effective nutritional education.

Access to quality healthcare and health education: Despite Rochester’s vaunted health care system, access to primary care among the poor remains a significant challenge.

Access to quality primary and secondary school education: Economic opportunity goes hand in hand with educational opportunity and reversing Rochester’s poor educational outcomes is one of the community’s highest priorities.

Access to affordable transportation: Although the community’s public transit system is one of the most efficient and most affordable in the nation, the connection between city workers and employment centers must be improved.

Access to immediate and sustained employment: Employment opportunities are needed at all skill levels. A comprehensive economic development strategy must address not only high-tech jobs, but entry-level positions as well.

Access to a safe home and work environment: The victims of crime are disproportionately poor. Efforts to ensure safe schools, streets, and workplaces will improve both economic and social wellbeing. Access to arts, culture and leisure: Quality of life is as much of a priority for the poor as for the middle class and Rochester’s abundant cultural resources should be accessible to all.

A unique aspect of the Council’s Opportunity Agenda is its focus on building and strengthening access to career pathways at the secondary education level. This approach promotes greater linkages betweenlearning and earningwithin the City of Rochester. The Council proposes a three pronged approach: 1) recruit youth living in distressed communities in Rochester for the newly created Rochester NYS P-TECH high school; 2) leverage the MCC Multiple Pathways to Middle Skills project funded by the state in 2012; and 3) seek state support for the PathStone E3 Initiative. MCC, RCSD, Xerox, and several other local business partners are serving as co-leaders for theP-TECH High School.Planning for this school is under way with initial enrollment expected in fall 2014. Students will complete their studies with a high school diploma, an Associate of Applied Science in Information Technology (at no cost), and a strong connection to local employers. Focusing on the Business Services sector, the Rochester P-TECH will provide a concrete, regional career pathway. A priority will be placed on recruiting students from El Camino and other neighborhoods in the City of Rochester.

TheMultiple Pathways to Middle Skills Jobsproject creates three mobile learning labs devoted to closing significant regional skills gap” in the healthcare, advanced manufacturing, and skilled trades fields. MCC will partner with the Ibero-American Action League to host these labs in the El Camino neighborhood, where they will function as recruitment, initial intake, and early training centers. From this initial engagement, El Camino residents will be provided with a pathway to the appropriate educational and

personal resources needed to improve their employability. ThePathStone E3 (Education, Entrepreneurship, Employment) Initiativeleverages existing resources and partnerships across public and private sectors to revitalize El Camino and other high poverty Rochester neighborhoods.

Performance Measures

The Council will base the quantified performance measures directly on the lead and lag outcomes associated with the central 2014 Opportunity Agenda program:Hillside Work-Scholarship Connection(see below). Metrics include:

Successful completion of the Hillside Work-Scholarship Connection program by 60 youths from the El Camino neighborhood of northeastern Rochester.

Lead Outcomes:mentoring, academic support, attendance rates, grade promotion rates, core subject achievement, youth

employment training academy certification, AAA employment standard certification, job placement, and job retention. Lag Outcomes:graduation rates, employment rates, economic impact of youth employment on household income, post-secondary school enrollment rate, post-secondary school retention rates. The Council will also closely track the supportive, wrap-around programs identified in the implementation chart below to ensure they are serving City of Rochester residents.

The Council will also establish baseline educational attainment data on the City of Rochester with a goal of increasing high school/GED attainment and access to post-secondary education or training through the Rochester P-TECH, Multiple Pathways to Middle Skills Jobs, and PathStone E3 programs.

Implementation Plan: 2014–15

The central 2014 Opportunity Agenda program,Hillside Work- Scholarship Connection Program, is based on a nationally recognized, evidence-based youth development model and existing services and partnerships. This foundation enables the program to be implemented in a rapid manner as soon as funding is received, ideally within the 2014–2015 cycle.

The wrap-around programs were submitted by a number of different organizations and recommended by the Finger Lakes Opportunity Agenda Task Force, which is comprised of 15 key community stakeholders and headed by leaders of MCC, the City of Rochester, and the Ibero-American Action League. This group will continue to meet bi-monthly to ensure the Opportunity Agenda’s projects are meeting appropriate implementation milestones.

In addition, the Task Force will create a dashboard that will enable it to track key metrics related to the region’s efforts to close the economic and social mobility gaps in the City of Rochester. These include unemployment and poverty rates and educational attainment, among others.

• • • • • • • • • • • •

Poverty Index School Proficiency Index

91–100 81–90 71–80 61–70 51–60 41–50 31–40 21–30 11–20 1–10 “ 91–100 81–90 71–80 61–70 51–60 41–50 31–40 21–30 11–20 1–10

72 Finger Lakes Regional Economic Development Council

Opportunity Agenda Strategies

Strategy

Support and promote an increase in the aggregation, storage, processing,

and distribution of healthy, affordable, and locally produced food products to individuals living in distressed communities in Rochester.