San Francisco - a “Promise City” in the making

On Monday, July 29, the Mission Economic Development Agency (MEDA) hosted a multi-neighborhood retreat aimed at co-creating a vision for a Promise City? – a city where multiple Promise Neighborhoods improve academic and economic outcomes for children and families. The retreat was held at the historic Women's Building in the Mission District.

The area is a national model for its ability to organize cross-sector partnerships to improve outcomes for children and their families; and it's now working with San Francisco Unified School District , the City and County of San Francisco , and community leaders to scale this work to other neighborhoods.

More than ten years ago, MEDA joined forces with SFUSD, the City, and other nonprofits to successfully apply for and receive a coveted Promise Neighborhood grant from the U.S. Department of Education. This $30 million, five-year grant gave the neighborhood the capacity to build an infrastructure for SFUSD, the city, and non-profits to collaborate around the common goals of improving academic results and economic success for students and their families.

This collaborative infrastructure, called Mission Promise Neighborhood (MPN), included direct services at school sites and early learning centers, rigorous data collection, and ongoing strategic planning based on the data. The initiative saw kindergarten-readiness and high school graduation rates increase dramatically, while also spurring a community-owned real estate effort that netted over 2,000 units of permanently affordable housing – with more in the pipeline. It also prepared the neighborhood to be able to respond at scale to emergency needs caused by the pandemic.

Experts from Harvard The EdRedesign Lab , Harlem Children's Zone , StriveTogether , and more have analyzed and shared this success story with the rest of the nation. In 2022, with support from Blue Meridian Partners , MEDA launched a process to scale up the Promise Neighborhoods approach.

Locally, the Mayor and Superintendent agreed with community leaders that this model should not be limited to one neighborhood in San Francisco, but that it should be implemented in at least three other previously redlined communities – Chinatown, District 11, and Bayview Hunters Point, to create the nation’s first Promise City.??

Over the past two years, these three communities have begun to sketch out Promise Neighborhood plans of their own. More than 40 members of these communities came together last week with Mission District providers to share these plans with each other, and agree on a process for combining their plans into one Promise City plan. The meeting was held at the historic The Women's Building in the Mission District, and welcoming remarks were provided by Maria Su, Executive Director of the Department of Children, Youth, and Their Families, and Chris Tsukida, Partnerships Director at San Francisco Unified School District. Also in attendance were School Board commissioners Alida Fisher and Jenny Lam.

The MEDA team, along with leaders from community partners like Good Samaritan Family Resource Center and Jamestown Community Center , shared the history of Mission Promise Neighborhood and its transformative results for students and families. They emphasized the concepts of a two-generation approach, prenatal-to-career strategy, and collective impact as foundational for MPN's success, and shared highlights from their District 11 Promise Neighborhood plan submitted to the federal Department of Education in 2022. Community Youth Center of San Francisco (CYC) shared an update on the progress of the Chinatown Promise Neighborhood Planning process, and HOPE SF gave an update on their early stage progress in developing a Promise Neighborhood plan that would serve Bayview Hunters Point and other HOPE SF sites.

The collective vision of the group was that this Promise City initiative will help San Francisco further develop prenatal-to-career systems that are community-driven, collaborative, and accountable to results, leading to more students succeeding in school and families who are better off. We already have proof of concept with Mission Promise Neighborhood. Now, San Francisco leaders are coming together in a spirit of innovation, centering the needs of children & families, and building on what’s already working in our neighborhoods for a San Francisco “Promise City”.?