Sustaining us is made possible by Fire Heart Pictures and viewers like you.

Thank you.

Well, thanks for joining us for sustaining us here on KLCS PBS.

I'm David Nazar.

As most of us and the world was on lockdown during the height of the COVID pandemic, every sector of America struggled.

Not easy for anyone.

People, businesses, mom and pop shops, restaurants, the airline industry, the education system, in this case our schools, our students.

The future of our nation.

And kudos to the thousands of school districts all throughout the US that somehow found inventive and creative ways to educate kids during a pandemic.

Well, the Los Angeles Unified School District, LAUSD, the second largest school district in the nation with about 700,000 students, can be added to that innovation list of districts that helped kids.

And that's where we begin.

Our broadcasts here are sustaining us producer Ty Woodson with our story.

The year 2020 was like no other in modern history.

A life threatening pandemic sparked fear across the world with little warning businesses closed their doors.

Human contact of any kind would suddenly nonexistent.

When the crisis forced the closure of hundreds of schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District, leaders were suddenly faced with some major decisions.

Creating an effective learning environment for all students without the benefit of human interaction was a tough challenge.

But leaders were up to the task, and technology played a central role.

Lee Broad, one of some of the biggest companies in the country, to help us to essentially bring their logistical power to distribute this y devices, even take the door to door to the end of this student if it's needed.

Our techs were out there at the school sites, collecting devices, cleaning them up, getting them ready and giving them to the school so that we can give them to the highest needs students.

Every student needs a computing device to interact with teachers and peers, complete school assignments, conduct research and take tests.

Students and teachers need a way to connect to the Internet at home.

A broadband connection that supports everything from video conferencing to audio visual learning software.

Students, families and employees need a way to access a support center to connect with someone for technical assistance or any other kind of help they may need.

From 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Sunday, and the calls just kept coming.

And yet our people didn't complain.

Our people were happy to help.

All the volunteers that we had from other departments, they were eager to help on the weekends.

Everybody got a great degree of satisfaction from helping.

Building on nearly a decade of forward thinking and insight into the changing world of public education, leaders moved forward to provide the complex system students, families and schools needed for learning to continue.

They started supporting this type of activity.

There were people that at night they were sitting in the warehouses.

They were packing equipment for the kids.

There were people that they were working, cleaning off their devices, sanitizing them and make them ready to be deployed.

We would take those devices.

We would actually open up every single box, insert the battery, insert the SIM card, physically make sure that that device could get turned on and I could connect to it with my laptop because I wanted to make sure that when that device made it to a student, it worked.

Efforts were succeeding as student participation increased and the nation took notice.

Districts across California and the United States benefited from agreements with technology and telecommunications providers.

On our negotiation was able to get the school district for the first time in the country.

It was it didn't exist before.

Unlimited.

No throttle, no cap, none of those.

And we were able to get that service for our students.

The work has set the stage for a new era in public education in which virtual and hybrid classrooms, once merely part of a vision for the future, are now the everyday reality.

You know what?

When a parent or a teacher says, Oh, I was using my iPad to connect to class, I'm happy because I touch that iPad and it's now in the hands of the child.

So that child can actually use it and make that connection.

I mean, I was one of those students, right?

I went to L.A. Unified.

You know, I didn't have Internet and it was an earlier time.

But at one point, my neighbors had it and I did not.

And that did create an equity gap for me.

And, you know, I had to work through it.

So how do we bridge that now and how do we think of our most at risk youth and give them what they need so that they're on the same playing field as everybody else?

The innovative thinking of our I.T.

Leaders not only helped students continue learning during an unprecedented hit health crisis, they brought new visions for public education to life by giving students what they need.

Today we can only imagine what the next generation will accomplish when they become the leaders of tomorrow.

We cover the devices, we cover the connectivity, and ultimately we've covered the support for our community.

Mission is not finished.

The work is still is going and there are more and more needs are coming to our schools.

And from education to transportation.

Not unheard of to put 25,000 miles on your car each year.

Many of us spend hours on the freeway each day.

Especially if you live in Los Angeles.

Well, imagine putting 25,000 miles on your car every day.

Unheard of, obviously.

Imagine the damage to your car, let alone the damage to the environment, the gasoline, the fumes, the exhaust.

To find out just exactly what we're talking about, we return to LAUSD to explore how the district is combining saving fuel and saving students with saving the environment or trying to anyway.

And it's all begins with a brand new electric bus program.

L.A. Unified is launching sustaining US producer Ty Woodson has that story.

What you are looking at is the brand new electric school bus purchased by the Los Angeles Unified School District.

This isn't part of the district's effort to transition to zero emissions and reduce its carbon footprint.

Now, I know firsthand the impact of outdated diesel school busses because as a product of the Los Angeles Unified School District, I remember my days in elementary school.

I was one of the students to have arrived one of these busses.

I can still smell that diesel exhaust.

That's how strong that memory is.

25 million American children continue to be exposed to that same diesel exhaust that I remember smelling as a child.

Now, this pollution that we harmed our children's health, but it also impacts student achievement.

These studies show that transitioning to cleaner busses can support not just the health of our students, but their academic performance as well.

As the senator said, if a child is affected by diesel exhaust or any other environmental impact, their ability to learn to fully appreciate their capacity to learn is negatively affected.

When we see electric busses rolling down the road, we should all be proud of the fact that we are giving our children a chance here on the bus.

Go round and round and round.

500000.

I'm Lillian Montoya, director of Transportation, Los Angeles Unified School District.

We currently have approximately 1300 busses, 10% that are diesel fuel.

Our goal is to replace those diesel busses by 2024.

Our investment in this technology is an investment in the future of our students and the health of a greener and cleaner Los Angeles.

In an effort to support our clean Air initiatives, we intend on replacing all 1300 busses with the electric fleet in the near future.

An electric school bus is safer because as they drive down the road, they're much quieter.

It allows the driver to be more attentive to his surroundings on the outside and his passengers.

And of course, there is no there's no chance for any kind of exhaust fumes to get inside of the bus because it's not creating any.

I'm Antonio Luna, the assistant fleet maintenance manager for L.A. Unified School District.

I think that this is the future of school busses for many reasons, mainly because it can be self-sustained.

We don't how it's going to be completely a renewable energy.

We wanted to lift this bus up to show you the difference between an electric school bus and a diesel school.

But the main difference of this is that no longer has an internal combustion engine or a transmission.

It's all been replaced by battery packs.

And in this case, on this bus, a single electric motor in this area is where you would normally have your engine and transmission instead, where this driveshaft will usually connect to the transmission.

It connects directly to the motor.

So we no longer have all the moving parts of a regular internal combustion engine.

We no longer have the fluids that internal combustion engine requires.

The entire length of the bus is the same as any other bus.

All of different is the motor, the battery pack, and all of these all the wiring.

LAUSD is the second largest school district in the country with more than 600,000 students enrolled.

The district serves an area that stretches 720 square miles.

A single electric bus will say more than $10,000 annually in lower maintenance costs, as compared to a traditional diesel fuel bus that produces £54,000 of greenhouse gases every year.

This zero emissions electric bus seats 72 passengers and could travel up to 155 miles on a single charge.

These students love this bus.

They their reaction is quite interesting when they get on this bus.

The first thing to tell me is your bus on what's going on with your bus.

They know it don't smell.

It's not a smelly bus.

They love it when this bus is not available, when it's going, when it goes into service or on the shop.

Mr.. Take it.

I have to get a spare.

Oh, you hear them?

Whatever.

Tour bus.

I don't want to get on the bus.

Also because they could hear themselves.

They don't have to scream over each other.

It's quiet.

So it's kind of peaceful.

It's like a quiet place.

And thank you, LAUSD and our Sustaining US producer Ty Woodson for those reports.

Now, talk about helping out.

A few months ago, we first brought you the story of an amazing nonprofit doing anything and everything possible to get folks who've been homeless or incarcerated back into the workforce.

The boss of the organization was unable to be with us for that original broadcast.

However, there is so much more to talk about with the effort.

So now joining us is Mark Loranger.

Mark is president and CEO of Chrysalis.

Mark has been a leader in what's known as the nonprofit and employment social enterprise space, which he's going to explain in a moment.

And for some 30 years, he's been a Southern California leader as an entrepreneur and with a nonprofit world.

Thank you, Mark, so much for being here.

Is absolutely my pleasure.

Any time I'm introduced that way, I mean, how could I not say thank you?

Well, that's a pretty good resume.

Let's be honest.

Now, Mark, for our audience, you did not catch our recent broadcasts about your nonprofit Chrysalis.

Just take about a minute or so to explain exactly what your organization does.

Sure.

What we do is help prepare people for help them find and retain a job.

Sounds simple, right?

But the folks that we work with, they've experienced homelessness or they've had experience with the criminal justice system or faced other systemic barriers to employment.

They're ready, willing and able to get back to work, but they just need some help getting that boost.

And that's exactly what we do at Christmas through our five centers in Southern California.

Now, what exactly is the nonprofit and employment social enterprise space I've read about?

That is still a bit confusing to me.

And I did mention that in your introduction.

So talk all about that.

Sure.

So employment, social enterprises are it's kind of a buzz word.

So let me break it down in terms of what we really do.

What a social enterprise is designed to do is use business principles to solve or really difficult social problems.

And so in our case at Chrysalis, we're trying to help people get jobs and we have deep case management and classes and other things that do that.

But what we found is for some of our clients who maybe they've never worked before ever, or they haven't worked in a long time going into Starbucks or a warehouse to get a job on their own, it's going to be a little bit difficult.

So we hire them ourselves into one of four different social enterprises for different businesses that we own and operate.

Our clients make above minimum wage, working for us doing real work, but they're also picking up that experience of what it means to show up every day and wear a uniform, respond to supervision, things that many of us probably have done most of our life.

But for a lot of our clients, perhaps they've not been in that structured environment.

So the four businesses that we have, one is a professional street cleaning and maintenance business.

One is a staffing agency that works primarily with affordable housing providers.

One is a partnership with the California Department of Transportation, where we're doing a clean up of Caltrans right away.

And the fourth is called Safe Keeping.

It's a janitor role and a personal property storage business.

With all of these business combined, we have over 600 clients that get a paycheck from us every single week.

And they're earning good wages, but they're also learning a lot about themselves as well as about what it means to work.

Perfect segue way to get to the issues in the next question mark.

One of the reasons I am having you on this program, despite the fact we did a report on your organization a few months ago, is what we did not talk about back then and in the field report just how difficult things are these days to find good people for the workforce.

What you're talking about, Mark, listen, given all that's happening during COVID and has happened and the fact that, as you know all too well, employers throughout Southern California, really the entire U.S., they're having this same dilemma.

Many moms, they've decided not to return to the workplace.

Many folks, millions, in fact, have retired during and post-COVID.

Some have decided they're just not going back to work.

Some are still collecting unemployment.

That's another story for another program.

This is obviously been a massive challenge for employers.

Can you sort of delve into this, Mark?

Yeah, it's I've been doing this work for 15 years at Chrysalis, and it's the strangest time I've ever been doing this work because we're all about helping people get work.

And all of what you said is true.

Employers throughout our community are looking for talent.

They're looking for workers.

And so our phones are ringing off the hook from employers saying, hey, I've got a great job opportunity.

Send me some candidates.

That's our business.

That's what we do.

So you would think it would be easy, but it's not.

We're finding that there is still a lot of reluctance on the part of community members to get back into the workforce.

You name some of the the reasons that might be out there.

Some folks are still concerned about health concerns.

Others maybe have stocked up some savings and decided I can take some time out to decide what I really want to do.

But we are working every single day as hard as we can to outreach to all the different pockets in our communities where we know there's poverty, where we know there is deep need, and trying to make those connections between our services and employers that that we know are really looking for good talent because we know our folks are ready, willing and able to work.

We just got to get them motivated and get them in the right direction.

Mark, you mentioned homelessness earlier in your opinion and I try to ask this question to everyone we have on this program, whether it's political leaders, city county leaders, whomever.

You're in the nonprofit world, so to speak.

Now you're also an entrepreneur.

Why is homelessness such a crisis in Los Angeles, in Southern California, in your opinion?

And is it really ever going to just be a solution?

I mean, this is crazy.

It's madness what's happening in Los Angeles.

And so, Cal.

Sure.

It's you know, we're all feeling it in different ways.

You see it in your neighborhood, in your commute.

I've got an encampment there just popped up right behind my home.

So I feel it personally as well.

This is a very complicated long term issue that didn't.

Pop up.

Overnight, although it may seem like it did, but it's been brewing for years.

From my perspective, knew it.

And one of the highest cost of living communities in our country.

Housing is incredibly expensive and it's only getting more expensive.

And while wages are growing, they are not keeping pace with the cost of rents.

When you look at a average apartment being 20 $500 a month, just to do the math for what you got to make in a narrowly basis to be able to make that work and minimum wage jobs aren't going to do it.

So I don't think it's a surprise that we find that when interviewed folks that first become homeless say that the number one reason they became homeless is usually economic disruption or loss of a job.

And if jobs aren't keeping pace, if wages aren't keeping pace, folks are always on that edge.

It doesn't take a lot of a disruption in somebody's life to unfortunately become homeless.

So when I think about how we get ourselves out of that, out of this situation, clearly building more housing, building more affordable housing, here's a key to it.

All of us know that, and everyone's talking about doing that and doing it as fast as we can.

But we also are going to look for economic pathways that make sense, that allow people to not just earn a wage in a place like L.A., but to thrive, which means having the right supports and training programs in place through to folks like us a chrysalis to help somebody get on that pathway to be able to really afford their own way and this wonderful Southern California home.

Q A related question, Mark.

So many folks, particularly in our industry, the news media industry, you know, the reporters, they focus on sustainability with things simply as it relates to, let's say, clean air, water, fossil fuel, climate change, the environment, all that stuff.

Why, in your opinion, is homelessness a sustainability issue?

I know we hear believe homelessness is a sustainability issue, as is transportation, as are so many other things.

We take a broad swath of an approach to sustainability.

Why do you believe homelessness is a sustainability issue?

You know, I think we're privileged to live in this great region of our country.

I love Southern California.

I've been here for 30 years, and I appreciate clean air and clean water, of course, but I also feel I have a moral obligation to help my neighbors.

You know, when we talk about the homeless.

These are people.

These are our cousins or brothers or sisters or neighbors.

And it could be us, quite frankly, if a few things had gone right in my own life.

So we all have an obligation to be able to sustain this lifestyle in Southern California.

No one likes seeing folks on the street.

No one likes seeing the mental health issues.

And so when we think about sustainable communities, sustainable behavioral health and just being able to enjoy parks and all the rest of it, that's a big part of it.

And unless we address this, this issue of homelessness, it's going to be very difficult to truly have a sustainable community.

To a different issue.

Crime rates in Los Angeles, in California, throughout the nation soaring, particularly violent crime, no matter what anyone wants to say or how they want to spend or skew it, these crime rates are soaring.

With that said, you mentioned something interesting earlier.

You do work with folks who have been incarcerated in prison and you might have a different perspective on all this.

And you also talk to these people.

You'll deal with these good folks.

Why are they saying crime is soaring?

And what's your take on all that?

You know, the average client that we work at, work with at Christmas is in their forties.

So they've they've been through a lot in their life and they most likely made some decisions maybe back when they were younger that they're not particularly proud of.

But they're very different individuals today and they look back on that and they'll talk to me about some of the young, young folks in the neighborhood and some of the decisions they're making, and they look back and reflect on it through the lens of their life.

And they want nothing more than to be able to be mentors and coaches to those folks and say, hey, there's another way.

There's no direction you can head, because that one is not going to lead to good outcomes.

I our folks end up being the hardest working, most reliable employees anyone could could ask for.

And we put our money where our mouth is.

Fully a third of our staff have lived experience.

They've been clients, and we've hired them onto our staff to do this work because they're the best possible people to do that.

So I know that this community has a lot of talent and oftentimes it gets overlooked and fortunately there are new regulations.

Bam the box and other things that help ensure that employers are treating prospective employees fairly.

I would just ask employers to focus on the potential that somebody brings to their organization, not something that they might have done 20 years ago.

That is maybe the the worst day they ever had.

Let's focus on the best days that they could have ahead.

How are nonprofits able to provide services to people these days?

It's almost amazing, particularly during these tough post-COVID days.

Obviously, you've had success with Chrysalis, so what is your advice for other profits throughout nonprofits throughout the nation?

They're also dealing with similar challenges as folks are in Los Angeles or really any other major urban metropolitan area.

Homelessness, crime, poverty.

How do you get this thing done?

One of the phrases that we have kept repeating during this the last two years is we have to meet our clients where they're at.

Traditionally, Christmas has been a place based service.

We have five offices in Southern California come in into our office for services.

Yeah, after March of 2020, we couldn't do that anymore.

What are we going to do?

So we flipped to a primarily virtual program model.

And to be honest, I have my doubts on how well that would work given our heritage.

But it worked great because we have a lot of smart people that are very passionate about our work at Christmas and a lot of clients that were very, really looking for that outreach, that contact, that connection with us, even if it was over text or video or phone, not in-person.

And so what we've done over it since that time and what we're moving forward with is how can we take the best of what we learned during those virtual periods and integrate it into a new hybrid program where for those clients that find it easier to access our services coming in in-person for those conversations that are really difficult to have, perhaps are those coaching conversations that you really need to be in-person for great, let's do that.

But there are other services that we can provide and do it virtually that are more effective and efficient for the client and frankly, more efficient for our staff as well.

None of our staff want to come back to the office five days a week.

I've heard that loud and clear.

So we need to make sure that we're as flexible as we can, both for our community to meet our goals there, but also to support the great workforce that we have.

A Christmas and Mark, in just our remaining minute.

What's the final message you want to have our audience know about, whether it's about Chrysalis, the homeless population, the crime rates, or just what you folks in the nonprofit world are doing these days.

We're deeply involved in making Southern California realize the potential that it has, and a big part of doing that is making sure that every member of our community has the opportunity to pursue the life that they deserve.

Right.

And employment is such a big piece of our identity.

It helps define us.

It helps get dignity.

And so we're all about making sure that we can lower whatever barriers or get around whatever barriers, standing people in the way to help them get employed.

And we need to help of employers to do that.

We need community members to serve as their advocates.

And of course, we're a so we can always appreciate the financial support from the people in L.A. as well.

Marco Granger with a great nonprofit.

Chrysalis, thank you so much for being here.

Oh, thank you.

My pleasure.

Appreciate the opportunity.

Now for more information about our program, just click on KLCS.org and then click Contact us to send us your questions or your comments or even your story ideas so we can hear from you.

Or contact me directly at @DavidNazarNews on Twitter.

That's @DavidNazarNews on Twitter.

I'll be sure to get back with you and be sure to catch our program here on PBS or catch us on the PBS app for All Things Sustainable.

Thank you so much for joining us for this edition of Sustaining US here on KLCS PBS.

I'm David Nazar.