Event Recap and Next Steps for Policy, Funding and Research
On June 26th, 2025, the Research Alliance convened a diverse group of educators, scholars, City and district leaders and nonprofit partners to discuss strategies for collaborating more effectively on behalf of NYC youth. The event highlighted two initiatives, Every Child and Family is Known and CUNY CARES, which aim to meet an array of needs for K-12 and college students, respectively, in under-resourced areas of the Bronx. As Research Alliance Executive Director Cheri Fancsali said in her opening remarks, the purpose of the event was “to facilitate a rich exchange of ideas and insights about how we can strengthen New York City’s networks of support.” The conversation illuminated strategies that show promise for helping students succeed, while also surfacing important challenges, opportunities, and new directions for policy and research.
Research Alliance Executive Director Cheri Fancsali welcomes guests to Weaving Stronger Networks of Support.
Why Stronger Networks of Support Are Needed
A good deal of education research focuses on understanding what is happening inside of schools and classrooms. This includes studies of curriculum and pedagogy, school climate and leadership, and teacher professional development. Research on these topics provides valuable guidance to help strengthen education policies and practices and improve student outcomes.
But schools do not operate in a vacuum. Research has also identified a constellation of factors, outside the classroom, that influence students’ academic trajectories: inequities in healthcare and early childhood education, hunger, neighborhood crime and aggressive policing, and a lack of safe, affordable housing, to name just a few.
Homelessness, in particular, takes a heavy toll on students’ educational outcomes. In New York City, one out of every eight elementary students experiences homelessness at some point before the end of fourth grade. These students frequently have long, difficult commutes because they’ve ended up in a shelter far from where they go to school. They may bounce from one school to another, as their family struggles to find permanent housing. Many are exposed to high levels of stress and trauma. Not surprisingly, these children struggle academically. Those who spend substantial time in a shelter generally fare the worst (e.g., our study found that a full 80% of students who spent three or more years in shelter were chronically absent, and this was before the COVID pandemic, which exacerbated attendance issues).
The Every Child and Family is Known initiative is designed to support students living in shelters in the Bronx. CUNY CARES serves college students with a range of needs, including those who lack stable housing. The initiatives share a focus on creating robust, personalized networks of support that help students overcome obstacles to learning.
At the opening of the June 26th event, Fancsali noted that these obstacles have grown larger for many families. “And, yet,” she said, “these initiatives give me hope. They give me hope because they demonstrate what is possible when diverse stakeholders come together… to support our students from all angles. They give me hope because they have found innovative ways to collaborate across sectors and agencies. They give me hope because they are committed to evidence building and using data strategically to understand the needs of their communities, to learn what works and what doesn’t, and to inform decisions about how to improve the work. And they give me hope because they have found ways to foster meaningful, authentic participation from parents, community members, and young people themselves.”
Melissa Aviles-Ramos speaks at the event.
Weaving Stronger Networks for NYC Students
Following Fancsali, NYC Schools Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos provided an inspiring keynote that celebrated the efforts of students, parents, teachers, and other school staff and partners across the City. Drawing on her personal experience as a child in the Bronx, Aviles-Ramos talked not only about the challenges many NYC students face, but also the incredible assets they bring with them into the classroom. She emphasized that providing support to meet student needs and having high academic expectations for every student are not mutually exclusive—in fact, doing both is essential to delivering on the promise of a high-quality public education. “Caring is not just an emotion,” Aviles-Ramos said. “It’s an action.” She underscored the value of “listening while we work” to ensure that classroom practices, school strategies, and district policies are all rooted in people’s lived experiences.
Mark Dunetz, President of New Visions for Public Schools and chair of the Research Alliance Steering Committee, introduced the day’s panelists and the moderator, Kathryn Hill. He drew applause by acknowledging that, in many ways, “we are running up against the limits of what educators can do”—making cross-system collaboration an absolute necessity. Dunetz highlighted the importance of rigorous research for understanding the effectiveness of education policies and practices and in shaping the development of Every Child and Family is Known and CUNY CARES in particular.
Mark Dunetz introduces the panel.
The panel discussion painted a rich picture of how these two initiatives depart from business as usual in the K-12 and college settings. As Joshua Laub, Director of Youth Development at the Office of Safety and Youth Development, and project leader of the Every Child and Family Is Known initiative, explained: “We don’t wait until children need our help… the status quo is to wait for behavioral disruption, or lower grades.” Instead, the program proactively reaches out to families and begins to build trusting relationships, starting with weekly texts that include positive feedback about the student. “Every child has a caring adult in the school, a cheerleader…” said Laub. “We’re not telling on the student anymore, we are partnering with Mom.” These relationships provide a foundation for learning about a family’s needs and connecting them with resources, which run the gamut from food assistance and Metro cards to help with laundry, bed bug control, counseling, tutoring, etc.
Ryanna Blackburn, Student Services Manager for CSD 9, has forged strategic partnerships with Children’s Services and the Department of Homeless Services as a part of the Every Child and Family is Known initiative. She talked about the reasons why her district in the South Bronx was selected for the initiative, citing an extraordinarily high concentration of poverty and homelessness—and the problems created by these conditions. “Our job as educators is to eliminate barriers facing our students…. To help them thrive in every aspect of their lives.” Darma Diaz, the Deputy Associate Commissioner of the NYC Department of Homeless Services, described collaboration across schools, service providers and agencies, which has allowed for much more streamlined responses when families are in crisis. She provided vivid examples of DHS staff going above and beyond to respond to urgent needs for new housing placements.
From left to right: Kathryn Hill (Research Alliance for New York City Schools), Joshua Laub (NYCPS Office of Safety and Youth Development), Ryanna Blackburn (NYCPS Community School District 9), Darma Diaz (NYC Department of Homeless Services), Cristina Onea (CUNY CARES), and Hamilton Esteban (CUNY CARES).
The CUNY CARES initiative operates on three community college campuses in the Bronx. Like Every Child and Family is Known, the program seeks to address a wide range of issues. As CUNY CARES Project Director Hamilton Esteban noted, “There’s a misconception that if you get to college, your basic needs are met. It’s not true.” CUNY CARES leverages peer “navigators” to connect students to health care, mental health, food, and housing services. “The people working with students to help them navigate resources are actually other students,” said Estaban. “They are available on nights and weekends. They help with SNAP applications, navigating housing court, getting cash assistance.”
Both programs have generated promising early evidence. Every Child and Family Is Known has seen a sharp decrease in school transfers among participating students and stronger growth in ELA and math proficiency, versus a comparison group. Research on the CUNY CARES pilot highlighted students’ positive perceptions of the program: After meeting with a navigator, 9 out of 10 reported feeling respected and understood, and 72 percent said they felt more confident in their ability to accomplish their goals as a CUNY student.
Not surprisingly, panelists described challenges in addition to successes. This included growing mistrust of institutions, particularly as fear of Immigration and Customs Enforcement has proliferated in communities. They also stressed a need for stable, adequate funding streams to support their work. Cristina Onea, Director of Evaluation for CUNY CARES, said this was especially true in terms of affordable housing, where there are simply not enough resources to meet students’ needs. “We’re talking about decades-long disinvestment in the Bronx…” said Onea. “Support can only survive if it is a web, with all of the networks connected to it, so it cannot be taken away. We’ve gotten closer to other organizations because we’ve had to.”
Chris Caruso highlights key take-aways from the panel discussion.
New Directions for Policy, Funding and Research
Chris Caruso, Managing Director for School-Age Children at the Robin Hood Foundation, offered a rousing response to the panel discussion. “When I look at the initiatives we’ve heard about today, I don’t just see promising programs—I see the kind of cross-sector collaboration that’s essential to real, lasting change.” Caruso highlighted three important takeaways that prompted enthusiastic reactions from the audience:
- “Relationships Are Infrastructure” - At the core of both CUNY CARES and Every Child and Family is Known is a recognition that “authentic connection can sometimes be more effective than bureaucratic expertise… and that proximity, trust, and lived experience can drive impact.”
- “Support Systems Must Be Coherent, Not Just Compassionate” - Caruso pointed out that new chancellors and mayoral administrations often propose their own version of service coordination. The result is a “a system that struggles to sustain what works because we’re constantly starting from scratch.” When considering new initiatives, it is crucial to ask: “What’s the relationship to the systems, programs, and frameworks that came before? Are we building on top of something that’s already working? Or, are we creating a parallel track that risks confusion and duplication? Coherence matters. Not just for systems—but for school leaders and for frontline staff. And for the families and students trying to navigate all of it.”
- “Cross-Agency Collaboration Is the Work” - Acknowledging that “we’ve inherited systems that define roles too narrowly, reward isolation, and make turf protection the default,” Caruso argued that “we have to stop treating collaboration like a soft skill…. It requires political will. It requires mindset shifts. And it requires shared accountability for outcomes that cross bureaucratic lines.”
Building on these insights, Caruso called on policymakers to “remove the bureaucratic barriers” and to “make it easier for data to be shared, dollars to flow, and programs to partner across silos.” To philanthropists, he suggested: “Don’t wait for perfect proof. Trust the people doing the work—and partner with them to understand impact.” Finally, to researchers, he advocated for studies that “help us answer the big questions—how do we sustain trust? How do we replicate not just the models, but the mindsets behind them?”
The Research Alliance team and community members celebrate at the end of Weaving Stronger Networks of Support.
Research Alliance staff, partners, and affiliates have work underway that is beginning to address these questions. This includes studies of the experiences and needs of doubled-up homeless students; community-level factors affecting high school completion; the building blocks of educator-student trust; career-connected learning in the context of the NYCPS Pathways initiatives as well as a Robin Hood-supported pilot in NYC’s transfer schools; and culturally responsive educational approaches.
Much more work is needed if we hope to produce reliably better outcomes for students and their families. Looking ahead, we see several notable areas that would benefit from additional research:
- To what extent are programs like Every Child and Family Is Known and CUNY CARES reaching students with the highest levels of need? Are students and families successfully accessing resources through these types of initiatives? What are the long-term impacts of Every Child and Family Is Known and CUNY CARES, including effects on academic engagement, performance, and completion?
- How do recently enacted federal funding cuts affect the availability of services—and service coordination—at the local level? How do these changes impact NYC students’ educational experiences and outcomes? How do different states, cities, communities and schools respond to these changes? What local strategies work best to build resiliency in the face of limited resources and depleted trust in institutions?
- What are the specific mechanisms by which trust is built between agencies, and between agencies and families? How can districts facilitate the building and maintenance of “relationships as infrastructure”?
- How do cross-sector collaborations develop sustainable shared accountability structures? What data-sharing practices most effectively support coordinated care and government transparency and accountability?
- How do funding structures enable or constrain collaborative approaches?
- In line with Chris Caruso’s insight about the system’s tendency to reinvent the wheel, what lessons from prior eras can inform current and future initiatives? (Our ongoing retrospective study of Children First provides one model for learning from past efforts.) Where are there opportunities to streamline service provision, to build on existing structures and practices, and to improve coherence and effectiveness across agencies?
Research has a vital role to play in weaving stronger networks of support. Richard Arum, Professor of Sociology and Education at UC Irvine, made this case persuasively in his closing remarks at the event, noting that “social science research can provide an anchor to ground public policy and discourse in unsettled times.”
If you would like more information about our event or are interested in collaborating with the Research Alliance for New York City Schools, please contact research.alliance@nyu.edu.
(Article by Chelsea Farley. Photos for this article were taken by Ben Ouriel.)
Cheri Fancsali delivers remarks at the Weaving Stronger Networks event.
New York City Schools Have Improved Dramatically in the Last 30 Years, But Deep Inequities Remain. This Demands a Closer Look At Root Causes.
“When I started my career as a special education teacher… outcomes for NYC students were dismal, and they had been that way for decades. The City was graduating less than half of its students, with huge numbers of dropouts. Today, close to 90 percent of the City’s students graduate. College enrollment, persistence, and completion rates have also improved over this period… But despite this progress, large disparities in outcomes remain—especially along lines of race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status—and this demands our urgent attention. Research has consistently shown that some disparities in opportunity exist at the school level: Not all students attend high-quality schools with safe, supportive cultures and strong adult-student relationships, access to advanced coursework and effective teaching, and the enriching experiences we know are essential for healthy development. Yet, our work (and that of other researchers and practitioners) has also illuminated the profound impact of factors beyond school walls… While recognizing that there is a complex constellation of influences on student success isn't a new idea, figuring out exactly how to address them through coordinated, collaborative action remains an ongoing challenge.”
— Cheri Fancsali, Executive Director, Research Alliance for New York City Schools