Interview with Paul Monge, Coleman Advocates for Children & Youth
What do you do at Coleman Advocates?
Paul: Well, I’m the Education Justice Policy Associate at Coleman Advocates for Children & Youth. Coleman Advocates has been around for thirty years advocating for needs of children and youth in San Francisco. Recently, we developed a new approach to advocating alongside parents, teachers, and high school students to improve conditions in SFUSD schools and developed a city-wide campaign for access to jobs.
In the current class of 2014, 45% of current juniors and rising seniors are not on-track to graduate. Even though the new A-G requirements policy was to address the education needs of black, Latino, ESL, or special education students, when we looked at this data, we saw that off-track students are predominantly these very groups that have traditionally been behind. We decided to defend access to A-G requirement curriculum for all in order to ensure that all students in SFUSD graduate college and career ready, not college or career ready. The A-G education policy has not been implemented as well as it should have been.
Part of Coleman’s education equity campaign is to ensure that some of the high school’s credit recovery options (i.e. summer sessions, afternoon school programming, evening schools, or “cyber high” online) that do not have annual budgets remain funded and available for all. It is frustrating because when we institute higher expectations for our students, without the necessary supports the higher expectations become unrealistic. Thankfully last fall we worked along Supervisor Jane Kim to ensure credit recovery options, and won.
Personally, my role is to facilitate Coleman’s education equity campaign. Officially started working at Coleman this January, I meet and talk with school members, research strategies, and then execute the campaign.
What lead you to become involved in youth organizing and leadership?
Paul: My family lived in the Mission neighborhood, relocated in Central America in El Salvador since most of our family was still there, and mom didn’t have anyone else to support her in San Francisco. By middle school we came back to the Bay Area. I come from a big family, seven younger siblings. Since I’m the oldest, I feel that youth advocacy aligned with my responsibilities as the oldest brother. This natural role I have in my family is now my professional role. I’m committed to the development of young folks, and my background has allowed me to be effective in this capacity.
My work as a commissioner on the San Francisco Youth Commission led me to Coleman Advocates where I first worked on their advocacy campaign. I’ll still be a commissioner on the Youth Commission until this August. Recently, we won the Free Muni for Youth campaign which secured city funding for a Free Muni for youth pilot program for a year and a half. Already 25,000 young people have enrolled into the program. Free Muni for Youth is an incredible victory lead by youth and families who stand to benefit from it.
What’s your short term and long term goals? What can we expect from you in the future?
Paul: In the short term, I’ve committed to work at Coleman. But I just found out this month that I’ve been admitted to both the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley and the John F. Kennedy School of Government at HarvardUniversity. Both are two-year master’s degree programs. Long term, I am certain that I’m going to come back to San Francisco. I’m truly committed to use skills from graduate school in order to make my advocacy more effective.
Why do you continue?
Paul: I really do believe that we have a crisis in San Francisco in which our youth population has continued to decrease over decades; their families can’t afford to live here anymore. There’s less and less livable-wage jobs for our low-income families. At the very core, Coleman’s vision is of hope and opportunity for everyone, and I feel that is very important for effective youth advocacy. Many young folks in the city have not had the capacity to advocate on their own behalf, either because they work full-time or may not be familiar with political process. We need to advocate on their behalf and help them advocate themselves.
For more information about Coleman Advocates, visit colemanadvocates.org/.