February 11, 2026
Good morning Chairperson Bonds and members of the Committee on Executive Administration and Labor. My name is Amy Dudas, and I am here on behalf of DC Action’s Youth Economic Justice Coalition to highlight the urgent need young people (ages 14 to 24) emphasize for paid, high-quality career readiness opportunities and early work experience. The Youth Economic Justice Coalition, comprising youth housing and workforce development providers, research and policy partners, youth and community leaders, works to advance policy priorities that will improve economic mobility outcomes for Black and brown youth in the District.
The Department of Employment Services (DOES) is a cornerstone agency for economic mobility in the District, offering at least 7 programs1 that connect youth between the ages 14-24 to the experiences, skills and networks needed to enter the workforce and generate income. Yet the DC Council, advocates, families and—most importantly—young people lack basic transparency into which programs youth and families can choose between, what these programs actually deliver and whether they help youth succeed in the workforce. My testimony will highlight 4 areas lacking data transparency where stronger oversight and swift Agency action are needed: clarifying the Agency’s catalogue of youth programs, strengthening budget transparency, sharing data on program participation, eligibility and inclusivity, and reporting on standardized program outcomes. My remarks also include recommendations from the Youth Economic Justice Coalition for program improvement including the need to standardize participant wages across programs, improving employer and participant matching in the Marion Barry Summer Youth Employment Program (MBSYEP) portal, and reversing the recent policy decision to prohibit hybrid and remote participation in the High School Internship Program (HSIP).
Withholding basic information about the District’s career readiness investments makes DOES programs challenging to navigate, assess, or improve. DC Action has identified 4 areas requiring the Agency’s attention:
- Program Participation, Eligibility and Inclusivity: After the Agency’s responses to our direct requests stalled this summer, DC Action submitted a FOIA request to DOES in October 2025 to obtain basic youth workforce data, including the specific workforce development models of each DOES-managed program, participant eligibility requirements, participant demographics (including ages served; ward of residence; participant race/ethnicity; and the numbers of youth served across subgroups including youth with disabilities, youth experiencing homelessness, student-participants that are one year older, or more, than the expected age for the grade in which the student is enrolled, participants who are CFSA involved, participants who are juvenile justice involved, and participants who are parenting). The Agency has been non-responsive for more than 3 months now, a flagrant violation of FOIA requirements to produce a response, and ideally data, within 15-business days. Many community-based youth service providers are primed to partner with DOES to ensure access to wraparound services like mentorship, housing programs, mental health services, and career navigation. But without clear information on the scope or intensity of the supports needed, cross-sector coordination and holistic support for young people cannot take shape. We appreciate this Committee’s efforts to escalate this data request and urge the Agency to provide this data via the FOIA portal or as part of their performance oversight responses in the coming weeks.
- Program Catalogue: Across reports and websites, DOES lacks clear and consistent information about the current catalogue of youth programs it provides, how these programs differ by model or eligibility requirements, and how young people and their families can enroll in them. DOES shares information on Youth Services on a departmental page of their general website, a summer jobs portal that highlights three year-round programs in addition to the Marion Barry Summer Youth Employment Program (MBSYEP), and an AI-integrated website called SkillsNation for youth seeking support with early career growth. On some of these sites, like the MBSYEP portal, detailed information about the program, application process and eligibility requirements is shared, while others, such as the Agency’s page for the Out-of-School program, includes vague eligibility requirements and directs interested participants to schedule an intake meeting to participate. Ideally, each website should consistently share program model descriptions, program intensity and duration, all available wraparound supports, the skills, credentials and compensation youth can expect to earn through them, and complete eligibility and participation requirements. DOES’s Youth Apprenticeship Program Handbook stands out as an example that could be replicated across programs to share more comprehensive information about program options. Additionally, these websites should mention any DOES adult programs that youth 18 and older may be eligible for. For a young person exploring their options online, encountering this frustrating maze of information can dampen the excitement of taking decisive steps toward their career goals and leave them feeling discouraged instead.
- Budget: In analyzing the city’s operating budget over the last three years, DC Action estimates the District manages over $40 million annually in local and federal funds to provide youth workforce development through DOES. This figure includes approximately $28 million for the District’s largest career readiness program, the Marion Barry Summer Youth Employment Program (MBSYEP), $5.3 million for the year-round High School Internship Program (HSIP), and $5.5 million in federal formula funding for year-round programs geared primarily to out-of-school youth facing barriers to education, training, and employment. Additionally, DOES also serves an unknown number of youth in adult programs like Project Empowerment, the DC Infrastructure Academy and through pre-apprenticeship and apprenticeship programs managed by the Agency. However, it is challenging to decipher the source of funding for some of these programs. For example, DOES has reported providing career exploration to 550 middle school students through their year-round Career Ready Early Scholars Program (CRESP). But there is no transparency about how much the District spends on this program as its related expenditures are nested within MBSYEP’s $28 million annual budget (pg. 5). As the District faces a challenging financial outlook, this lack of budget and data transparency for DOES leaves DC Council in the position to make budget decisions with a chainsaw rather than a scalpel.
- Program Outcomes: Understanding the long-term impact of DOES youth programs on career development requires standardized, systemized and disaggregated reporting on participant outcomes, including program completion rates, on-time grade promotion, graduation, employment rates, median earnings, postsecondary credential attainment, and skill gains. Collecting longitudinal outcomes data requires coordinated infrastructure and dedicated resources to follow up with program participants and share data across agencies. We do acknowledge the Agency’s efforts to improve outcomes-focused data collection and reporting over the last year with the release of the FY25 Office of Youth Programs Research Grant Request for Applications (RFA) released last spring. The Agency also published a much-improved FY24 MBSYEP annual evaluation report that included skill progress targets within the program, call-outs for improvements to program design and strategy, better job assignment match and fit, and continuous improvement. While it would require robust employer engagement and coordination, the Agency should consider including information on which employers participate in each program, the training these employers receive on youth employment best practices and workplace mentorship, and the quality of job placements associated with each of their programs to help youth navigate their options and advance their career ambitions, skills and experience.
We urge DOES to rectify these gaps in publicly available data and respond to our FOIA submission for information on the program models they offer and which young people are being served by them. The DC Council cannot effectively conduct oversight, and families and youth cannot make informed choices about workforce development opportunities, if the Agency withholds fundamental information about their programs and outcomes.
Additionally, the Agency should pursue specific improvements to facilitate greater access, inclusivity and completion in DOES youth workforce programming:
- Standardize participant wages across programs: Youth wages available through DOES’s workforce programs do not fairly compensate youth for their time, the expectations placed on them to perform like employees, or the positive contributions youth workers make to the District’s economy. Additionally, many youth count on pay from these programs to contribute within their families and afford the high cost of living in the District. By offering insufficient wages, DOES’s workforce programs may be contributing to their own high attrition rates as youth seek out higher-paid options through alternative career readiness opportunities or through non-subsidized employment options. Members of the Youth Economic Justice Coalition have highlighted challenges keeping youth engaged in early work opportunities paying subminimum wages, as youth cycle through opportunities looking for a prevailing wage. In fact, insufficient and inconsistent pay rates have been raised as stakeholder experience feedback within MBSYEP annual evaluations for the last three reportable program years. Both the 2023 and 2024 evaluations recommended conducting a study to evaluate the feasibility and impact of offering minimum wage to participants. We urge the Agency to move this work forward this year as the Council works to advance the Pay Our Youth a Fair Summer Wage Amendment Act of 2025. Wage consistency coupled with wraparound services across youth workforce programs will strengthen the District’s career readiness ecosystem, facilitating program inclusivity and outcomes.
- Improve employer and participant matching in the Marion Barry Summer Youth Employment Program (MBSYEP) portal to optimize fit and engagement: DOES’s youth workforce programs should be a bridge to economic stability rather than wobbly, isolated stepping stones of short-term, low-wage placements. One wide-reaching opportunity to help youth connect their summer employment experiences to longer-term skill-building and career pathways is to incorporate more employer and youth preferences into the summer job matching process in the MBSYEP portal. Currently, host employers can only select from a predetermined list of “job duties” when creating the listing for each position. These lists are neither comprehensive nor very specific. The Agency should modify the portal to allow more accurate, detailed job descriptions that may fall into particular skill or industry category. When students have a clearer understanding of what they are applying for, they are empowered to seek strong match and fit with their host employers. This would facilitate more stable and consistent experiences for youth and could improve program administration challenges, as well. Host site transfers consume significant DOES staff resources that could be otherwise focused on optimizing youth and employer experiences in the program, including facilitating referrals to wraparound supports for participants, ensuring efficient timekeeping and payment processes, and investigating safety or conflict concerns reported to the Agency. The 2024 MBSYEP evaluation found that 3,695 PY2024 participants transferred employers during the program – more than a third of all participants. Of particular concern, the transfer rate among the 1,106 22-24 year olds that participated in the program was 42% (page 33). It is especially critical that older youth in the program are empowered with timely information, networks and opportunities to connect their experience in the 6-week program to career-aligned skill-building and post-program education, training and employment next steps so they can meet the demands of increasing financial independence.
- Reversing the recent policy decision to prohibit hybrid and remote participation in the High School Internship Program (HSIP): Members of the Youth Economic Justice Coalition have raised concerns over the Agency’s decision in the last year to prohibit hybrid and remote participation in HSIP, further limiting the number of host employers and available job placements for a highly-demanded program. DOES reported that in the FY24 program year, over 2,500 youth applied to participate in HSIP, but slightly less than half were determined to be eligible (page 51). Prohibiting hybrid and remote participation means fewer host employers are able to take students, as some lack physical office space and rely on a remote workforce. Furthermore, this policy change makes achieving the program’s dosage requirements of 8 hours per week especially difficult. Students only have a few hours afterschool available for extracurricular activities, and adding cross-District travel time, especially while transportation options are congested with commuters, takes away from the time they could be learning, practicing new skills, exploring careers and getting paid during HSIP programming. This shift in program policy, taken together with last year’s decision to shift HSIP program length from a full school year to semester-long placement means that fewer youth have access to less program time, pay and opportunities to develop and practice valuable work skills. We urge the Agency to reconsider these programmatic shifts, and consider approaches that maximize access, program dosage and high-quality experiences.
We thank the Agency for their work to serve District youth and advance our shared vision for a “competitive DC workforce based on lifelong learning and economic stability”. The Youth Economic Justice Coalition looks forward to working collaboratively with this Committee and DOES to shape a bold policy agenda and citywide priorities around supportive workforce programming with, and in service to, young people. Thank you for the opportunity to testify and I welcome any questions.
Amy Dudas
Senior Advisor, Career Readiness
adudas@dckids.org