The B.I.T.E.: Recent Episodes
The Five Keys Academic Committee
Patrick Bayona and Joe Durant at the Five Keys 21st Anniversary Celebration
In his almost 14 years with Five Keys, Joe Durant has seen thousands of lives transformed—but few encounters impacted him as deeply as the day he first met Patrick Bayona. At the time, Joe was serving as the College Transition Manager, providing one-on-one educational case management to help students pursue college while still incarcerated. That’s when he met Patrick in the Reentry Pod at San Francisco County Jail 2—one of just ten men classified as violent offenders in the unit. Patrick was surviving the only way he knew how: through art. His drawings weren’t just creative expression—they were his lifeline, a way to reclaim identity and hope behind bars.
Joe was struck not just by the raw talent in Patrick’s pencil sketches, but by the resilience behind them. “I saw someone who just needed a hand in the right direction,” Joe recalls. And that’s exactly what he offered. Alongside other Five Keys educators, Joe became a steady source of encouragement, helping Patrick take his first steps toward something better when he was released from jail in 2022, connecting him with the opportunity to pursue his artistic talent.
Fast forward to Spring 2025. Joe, 38, is now Assistant Director of Grants and Development. He happened to be visiting the Five Keys’Embarcadero SAFE Navigation Center, and much to his surprise was reunited with Patrick. Patrick boasted about his upcoming graduation from the Academy of Art University in San Francisco and his post as Activities Coordinator for the Navigation Center.
Thanks to the support of Joe and the broader Five Keys team, Patrick was awarded a full-ride scholarship to an art academy, made possible through a Five Keys partnership. The scholarship was contingent on Patrick’s success in completing a semester at Laney College in Oakland—a challenge he met with a 3.5 GPA.
“It was one of those moments where you realize—wow, what we’re doing really matters. It’s changing lives,” says Joe. “One of the most meaningful parts of my job is hearing our clients’ stories and helping them navigate systems that can feel impossible—financial hurdles, legal barriers, even the countless fees just to register for basic services. Parole paperwork, for example, has been shown to be more difficult to understand than a New York Times article, often leading to violations simply due to misunderstandings—violations that can send someone back to prison. My role is to walk alongside them, guide them through the process, and be their advocate.”
Navigating New PathwaysThe dictionary defines a navigator as “a person who directs the route or course of a ship, aircraft, or other form of transportation, especially by using instruments and maps.”
To say that Joe is a navigator extraordinaire for the incarcerated and prisoners dreaming and then transitioning to re-entry is to understate.
“I cannot imagine the odds stacked against them,” says Joe. “In my current role I’m not behind the scenes in the jails as I used to be, but when I was there, I felt it was so important to be real with the clients. My job was to stand by their side to walk them through all the barriers and obstacles.”
To that end, as a navigator for currently and formerly incarcerated individuals, Joe is a member of a network of change makers who are offering a promising approach to improving reentry outcomes. By providing personalized support and connecting prisoners with educational and vocational resources, Joe and other navigators play a critical role in reducing recidivism and helping ex-offenders successfully reintegrate into society.
Studies have shown that having a navigator can significantly improve the outcomes for ex-offenders. A study by the Urban Institute found that participants in a navigator-guided reentry program were more likely to be employed and less likely to be rearrested compared to those who did not receive such support.
Determined to Right WrongsJoe’s journey to becoming one of the most trusted figures in the fight for incarcerated individuals’ rights and opportunities didn’t start with a grand vision—it started with a deep curiosity and a fierce drive to right the wrongs he saw within the justice system.
His path to his current role in Development—where he works tirelessly to secure funding for Five Keys’ programs—began in his early collegiate years, shaped by both academic and personal experiences that ignited his passion for advocating for those impacted by incarceration. From college criminal justice studies to groundbreaking reentry programs, Joe's commitment to breaking the cycle of incarceration is a mission that has shaped his adult life.
While studying Criminal Justice at California State University, Chico, Joe dove headfirst into hands-on work through the Community Legal Information Clinic (CLIC)—one of the oldest undergraduate legal clinics in the country. It was here, as a paralegal intern in the Penal Law Project, that Joe began making visits to CDCR Solano, providing free legal information to incarcerated individuals. These early experiences opened his eyes to the systemic issues within the criminal justice system, particularly the racial inequities deeply embedded in California’s carceral policies.
“I saw how inefficient the system was and it just drove my passion to make change,” says Joe.
For Joe, the academic course Corrections acted as a critical turning point. It was in these classrooms and through his interactions with those on the inside that Joe solidified his commitment to becoming a voice and a resource for those impacted by the system. His experience with CLIC also fueled his desire to tackle the broader social issues of policy and systemic change. As he pursued his Master’s in Public Administration, Joe deepened his understanding of how political systems perpetuate cycles of injustice, culminating in a graduate thesis on corruption in California’s initiative process.
Joe’s path took a significant turn after graduate school when he joined the San Francisco Adult Probation Department, where he worked with clients in the Learning Center, helping them complete their high school diplomas and GEDs. It was here that Joe first connected with Five Keys, eventually beginning his work teaching independent study and digital literacy classes in San Francisco’s jails.
His role soon expanded into school administration, where he led efforts to overhaul Five Keys’ outdated transcript request system, improving access and efficiency for students and staff. He later served as the Transition Coordinator for Special Education, where he helped design and guide transition plans within students’ IEPs, ensuring connections to higher education, apprenticeship programs, and employment preparation services.
*Joe and Steve Good, President and CEO of Five Keys, holding a proclamation from the Mayor of San Francisco declaring Five Keys Day at the 20th Anniversary Celebration.*
Joe’s work within Five Keys expanded further when he became the College Transition Manager, leading efforts to build educational pathways for incarcerated students. His leadership in bringing college coursework into County Jail 5 and 2 helped numerous individuals earn up to 12 college credits per semester. His contributions extended beyond the jails when he played a pivotal role in connecting justice-impacted students to post-secondary retention programs, ensuring they had support networks that spanned the Bay Area. These efforts contributed to the creation of reentry pathways and opportunities, setting up incarcerated individuals for successful reintegration into society and success in higher education.
Despite these successes, Joe's work isn’t limited to just education—he has been a tireless advocate for reentry services. He was deeply involved in providing services for “A-Pod” (also known as the Reentry Pod), a reentry-designated housing unit at County Jail 2, aimed at providing wraparound services and close collaboration with probation officers to ensure successful reentry. Joe’s approach was holistic—offering job readiness training, digital literacy skills, and college enrollment and retention support, all geared toward helping individuals build a strong foundation for their future.
When the pandemic reshaped the world, Joe adapted quickly, transitioning into Development and Fundraising. In his current position as the Assistant Director of Government and Foundation Grants, he continues to channel his years of experience into securing funding for programs aimed at breaking the cycle of incarceration. His efforts have resulted in multi-million-dollar contracts that support Five Keys' expanding network of services, including educational programming, supportive housing, reentry services, and workforce development for justice-impacted individuals. Having worked directly with students and clients, Joe knows firsthand that the most powerful way to connect with funders is by sharing the real stories of transformation happening in the field—stories that illustrate not just need, but impact.
Believing in Second ChancesAt his core, Joe’s work is driven by the belief that everyone deserves a second chance—and sometimes a third, fourth, or more. In California, nearly 4 in 10 people released from prison or jail are reconvicted within three years, underscoring the urgent need for sustained support and multiple opportunities for success. He has seen firsthand how systemic inequities—such as racial discrimination, over policing of marginalized communities, underfunded education systems, and a lack of economic and educational opportunities—stack the odds against incarcerated individuals. This deep sense of injustice fuels his passion for systemic change and his commitment to the mission of Five Keys: education, employment, recovery, family, and community. Joe’s role has helped break down the barriers that many incarcerated individuals face, opening doors to new opportunities and new lives.
Now, as Assistant Director of Grants and Development, Joe is not just navigating the path of reentry for others—he’s paving the way for an entire community of justice-impacted individuals to thrive. His work stands as a testament to the transformative power of education and the belief that everyone, no matter their past, deserves a chance to succeed.
Away from work, Joe lives in Chico with his wife, Maggie, and their Chihuahua, Hazel. He and Maggie first met while attending California State University, Chico, where they both graduated and remain proud alumni. There, the trio spend days hiking, attending concerts, and traveling. Plans are already underway for Joe’s 40th birthday in December 2026, with Maggie organizing a destination celebration abroad.
*Maggie, Joe, and Haze*l
“I feel very blessed to be part of the solution—and to play a role in helping others transform their lives. They’re the ones doing the hard work to rewrite their stories; we just help set the stage for their success. I have a lot to be grateful for and celebrate,” says Joe.
Read The Original Story from the Times-Herald, Here
The Vallejo City Council Tuesday approved contracts for operators of two homeless facilities, the Navigation Center and the Broadway Project, and allocated funding to both, bringing the long-delayed projects to the brink of fruition.
The council approved a lease and operator agreement with Shelter, Inc. and Firm Foundation Community Housing for the Broadway Project, and allocated $642,861 of Opioid Litigation Fund monies to the project. The council also approved a lease and operator agreement to Five Keys Schools and Programs up to $7,041,049 and $6,390,070 in operational funding for the Vallejo Homeless Navigation Center.
Vallejo’s Broadway Project, a 47-unit Permanent Supportive Housing Program that is located at 2441 Broadway Street, is about 90 percent complete. (Chris Riley/Times-Herald)
After years of massive delays and a raft of problems with both facilities, the Broadway Project is 99 percent complete and the Navigation Center is slated to open in two weeks. The Broadway Project will offer 47 permanent supportive housing units, and the Navigation Center, with 125 beds, is expected to serve about 200 people experiencing homelessness annually.
Members of the public and the council expressed some optimism along with concerns about issues including accountability and, in the case of the Navigation Center, the “tight” budget’s effect on staffing ratios.
“I’m really concerned about this budget,” said Council Member Tonia Lediju. The council member is chief executive of the San Francisco Housing Authority. “If we say we have two care coordinators, the ratio is 1 to 25 case managers to beds,” the council member said. She was referring to the fact that the center will have 125 beds and two case managers.
“While I agree the budget is really tight … we really feel we can do a good job” with the proposed budget, Elyse Graham, chief operating officer of Five Keys, said in response. “There are two care coordinators and a care coordinator supervisor.”
Eight members of the public weighed in on the agenda item, with at least one speaker agreeing with the council members, noting, “(The center) has to be adequately staffed.”
After considerable discussion, the council decided to accept the budget proposed by city staff, keep an eye on the situation and revisit the staffing issue if necessary.
“They are going to open in two weeks and they can assess whether there’s more staff needed,” said Councilmember Alexander Matias. Councilmember Helen-Marie Gordon added, “Approve as is, and if they need more staff they can come back and do an amendment to the contract.”
The council voted unanimously to approve the Five Keys contract and allocate the funding, which covers the present until June 3, 2027, as proposed.
The council also voted to approve a lease and operator agreement with Shelter, Inc. and Firm Foundation for the Broadway Project. In the first of a two-step process, the council voted to allocate $642,861 of Opioid Litigation Fund monies to the project. The council must vote again at a future meeting to give final approval.
Before winning approval from the council, the Broadway Project came in for even more rigorous scrutiny than the Navigation Center.
The project is 99 percent complete, “very close to coming to fruition,” said Natalie Peterson, assistant to the city manager, in a presentation. “Full lease-up will be within 90 days of completion of construction. We are just waiting for elevator inspection and final emergency inspection” for completion of construction.
The presentation included a few bits of all-too-familiar background: Originally budgeted at $9 million, the project cost ballooned to $27 million, with $558,000 in overruns.
“In your last meeting, council requested that we bring all the gaps known so you can get the full picture,” Peterson said. The gaps: a $358,287 construction gap, a construction contingency of $200,000, 90-day operations until vouchers awarded $219,213, start-up operations gap for supplies including security cameras, $351,862, start-up contingency $17,593.
“The total gap is $1.45 million. The total without the contingencies is $929,000. We have a proposal to use opioid funds, but assuming those are awarded there is approximately $300,000 unfunded,” Peterson said.
“Firm Foundation through their partnerships in the community has secured $175,000” toward covering the gap, the assistant to the city manager added.
Referring to the $351,862 start-up operations gap for supplies including security cameras, Vice Mayor Peter Bregenzer asked, “How did we build a $27 million building and not plan on security cameras and furniture? I’m baffled that we’re at this point asking for more money.”
Bregenzer continued, “I remember previous presentations where you talked about developer fees, I think it was like $400,000 the developer gets as part of this project?”
Peterson responded, ”It’s about $250,000 or $300,000 remaining to pay. That will go to Firm foundation, that’s the developer.”
The vice mayor asked, “Why are we paying developer fees and giving them bonuses? Whenever we have issues with funding they all sit on their hands and do nothing to raise money while we have to come up with more taxpayer money to pay for these projects. Can we stop those developer fees from going to the developer and have them go toward the deficit?”
Assistant City Manager Gillian Haen pointed to the $175,000 raised by Firm Foundation, which did not satisfy Bregenzer.
“The $300,000 is that unfunded gap you’re mentioning,” the vice mayor said, referring to the fact that even after appropriating the $642,861 of opioid funding to the project, there was still a $300,000 funding gap.
Five community members spoke during the public comment period, with former Vice Mayor Mina Loera-Diaz saying, “I am familiar with the mechanic’s liens filed against the project and we, the council, were not notified until almost a year later. Loera-Diaz said that early on, “staff assured the council and the community that the project would be fully funded – and we went millions and millions over budget.”
Agreeing with an earlier suggestion by Councilmember J.R. Matulac, Mayor Andrea Sorce recommended having frequent regular updates on the projects “to make sure we don’t have anything like what the former vice mayor expressed, where there’s a lien and we find out a year later.”
The council passed a motion funding the lease and operator agreement with Shelter, Inc. and Firm Foundation for the Broadway Project, allocating opioid fund litigation monies to the project in the amount of $642,860.94 minus the fund balance of the developer’s fee, “with monthly updates to the California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD), commission quarterly updates in person to HCD as well as the City Council.”
Sorce was the lone “no” vote, with the council members all voting in favor.
Read The Original Story Here
Originally Published: June 4, 2025 at 2:14 PM PDT
Timothy presented at the Five Keys 2023 NorCal Graduation Ceremony
On a sunny April afternoon in Menlo Park, CA, Timothy Long was seated at his desk when a student unexpectedly stopped by.
“Hey dude, I’m glad you came by—I’ve been trying to get a hold of you all day,” Timothy said with a big smile. “We’re going to get you your high school diploma. There was a mix-up with some paperwork, but I got it taken care of. YOU ARE GRADUATING—and you’ll be at the ceremony. Congratulations!”
“Thank you. Thank you so much,” the student said, his face lighting up.
Timothy, now 54, knows that feeling all too well. The words “You are graduating” carry a weight that he understands deeply. At just 19 years old, Timothy was sentenced to four consecutive life terms in California for crimes he committed as a teenager. He would spend 26 years incarcerated. But even behind bars, he held onto one unshakable truth: education was his key to transformation.
“I knew I had to change,” he says. “Education became my path to mental freedom and personal success—even if I never saw freedom outside of prison.”
After earning his high school diploma while incarcerated, Timothy didn’t stop. He launched a GED program at San Quentin and began tutoring others. Over time, he earned three associate degrees—in general education, business, and science—and a Specialist I and II certification in Alcohol and Drug studies. He also helped co-found a college program inside Ironwood State Prison. His educational journey included Mt. Tamalpais College at San Quentin, Palo Verde College, and Coastline Community College.
Hard Work, Dedication, and the Drive to Change Eventually, the parole board took notice.
“I was lucky,” Timothy reflects. “The parole board saw that I was not the same kid who committed those crimes over a quarter century ago. They also recognized that I chose the education route to change myself and those around me. As a result, I was granted parole and sent to a halfway house, and that’s where I learned about Five Keys.”
He started as a volunteer tutor. Nine years later, he’s now the Assistant Director of Community Sites for the South Bay, overseeing nearly 270 students across three sites. His work focuses on education, employment, social justice, housing, and building stronger communities.
“I want to help people who feel lost, whether they’re unhoused, battling addiction, or still in custody,” says Timothy. “I know from experience that life can get better. Education is the great changemaker.”
Timothy lives by this quote. It’s the foundation of his life’s work—using education to turn hopes and dreams into tangible progress.
A Life Rebuilt—and Shared Since his release, Timothy has earned a Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics and is currently pursuing his MBA in Organizational Leadership online through Southern New Hampshire University.
He also gives back by volunteering at San Quentin, where he plays forward on a volunteer basketball team, Team Bitterman, competing against incarcerated teams like the San Quentin Kings.
Reflecting on his past, Timothy recalls the turning point:
“I was 19 when I was initially incarcerated and told I would never get out,” he says. “But when my grandmother passed away about ten years into my sentence, and I couldn’t say goodbye—that changed me. That’s when I decided I wanted to become a better son, brother, and person.”
During his incarceration, Timothy befriended Glenn, a man nearly 70 years old who had spent over four decades in prison. Glenn needed to earn his GED to be considered for parole.
“Glenn and I worked together on math every day. I assisted him in understanding the language of math and the associated questions.” Timothy recalls. After a month or so, Glenn took the math test and passed. He got his GED, and soon after, he was granted parole.”
To this day, Timothy remains in touch with Glenn.
Writing the Next Chapter Outside of work, Timothy enjoys long walks with his two dogs, Blu and Dino, and is currently writing a memoir.
When asked about his bucket list, he smiles. “I spent enough time ‘on vacation’ in a cell. Now I’m all about working, building a better community, and being a son my mom is proud of.”
His message to others is simple yet powerful:
“Whether you’re incarcerated or just stuck in a dark place in your life, this can be your new chapter. You can change. Things can get better.”
Speaking to students at a Mt. Tamalpais College alumni event, Timothy shared:
“Education helped me find my moral compass. Accountability and integrity is everything. How you think and act in custody will shape your decisions and actions when you are out of prison.”
Timothy Long’s story is proof that education doesn’t just open doors—it rebuilds lives.
Timothy at the Five Keys 21st Anniversary Celebration on April 24, 2025
We’re all just love and I think love is more important than anything. When the heavy steel door clanged shut, Ernest Douglas Brown found himself in a small, windowless 8 ft × 10 ft room with minimal furnishings — a concrete ledge for sleeping, a steel sink/toilet combination, and two concrete cubes serving as a desk and chair. He was kept in isolation for up to 23 hours a day and under constant surveillance — a crucible, raw, brutal, and dehumanizing.
For Ernest, solitary confinement in the “SHU,” (Solitary Confinement Housing Unit), at Corcoran State Prison, followed more than 25 years of being shuttled between a handful of maximum-security prisons throughout California. It is infamous for housing some of California’s most notorious gang members and criminals including Charles Manson. Ernest was convicted at 31 for the first-degree attempted murder, and three council assault battery.
“When I got locked up there, I was angry. I was lost. I was done,” Ernest, 61, recalls. “I had lost all hope. I kept asking myself, ‘how did I get here among the worst of the worst?”
But something happened.
He spotted a Bible, the only thing in his cell — but he ignored it for days. Until one day he picked it up “I had nothing left,” he says. “I kept hearing my mom’s words, ‘to listen to the word of God,’ but I never wanted to hear them when I was young and made so many bad choices. I noticed the pages were sticking together and realized I was crying, sobbing the whole time. I kept wiping away my tears and reading.”
Called to a New Mission: “We’re all just love and I think love is more important than anything.” That Bible became a lifeline. Page by page, he felt something stir — “I felt something moving, an unfamiliar warmth, a sense of being seen. I promised God that if I ever got out, I would change my life through hell and high water.”
Fast forward to today.
Ernest and Five Keys Supporter Roma Guy (renowned American LCBT- and women’s rights activist) at the Five Keys 21st Anniversary Celebration Fundraiser
Years of introspection, prayer, and personal transformation eventually led to Ernest’s release.
“For me freedom didn’t just mean walking out of prison, it meant becoming free inside,” says Ernest.
Today, Ernest works full-time jobs — Five Keys’ Mission Cabins dedicated to supporting those who are unhoused or transitioning from prison, people who much like him, had been discarded by society.
As a Five Keys’ Ambassador at Mission Cabins, 1979 Mission St., he works 6:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. helping individuals find shelter and stability, offering them not just a roof over their heads but also a sense of dignity and hope. Mission Cabins is a tiny-home village built for the unhoused and those transitioning out of incarceration. The program, a joint effort Five Keys and San Francisco’s Department of Homelessness, includes private cabins with support services and compassion for about 60 to 65 guests.
“Mission Cabins is a place where we care about each other, where people feel safe and someone will speak to you like your matter,” says Ernest, who lives in a studio apartment in downtown San Francisco and is saving to buy his first house. “It’s a place where people who were once hopeless like me can realize that anything is possible. We’re all just love and I think love is more important than anything.”
Living a PrayerMost days, he mans the front gate security, spends the day making wellness checks among the residents of the 60 tiny cabins and stationed at the cafeteria. The position alternates when thensupervisor needs rotation.
“Most times the people here just need someone to listen to them, to care,” says Ernest. “I love my job because I get to do that. It’s like I’m living a prayer. I get to truthfully say, ‘Hey man, I’ve been there. I’m just like you and see and feel your pain. But, I’m also proof that you can change your life around. Today I have a nice apartment, I’m building my credit and I’m clean and not selling drugs. They know I know what I’m talking about and they know I am there that I really do care.”
Ernest speaking at the Five Keys 21st Anniversary Celebration Fundraiser
From Isolation to InspirationHis transformation — from isolation to inspiration — isn’t unique, but it is rare and testimony to the work Five Keys does every day to support individuals striving to turn their lives around. He shares his story openly, not to glorify his past, but to point to the power of redemption.
Ermest grew up one of two sisters and eight brothers in Seaside, California, a city located in Monterey County on the Central Coast of California. the son of a minister. His parents divorced and he says his teenage life started spiraling down the wrong path.
“It all just started as a rebelling teenager who thought he had enough of God and went against his parents. It started with smoking, drinking and all led to the awful day when myself who was under the influence has a disagreement with other individual that led up to a crime.”
He adds: “I realize how immature I was and not the person I am today,” says Ernest. “Sometimes I ask, ‘why, why, why?” But now I have made it my manifesto to help others and have left that lifestyle behind.”
When he is not at work, Ernest spends time with his girlfriend, a restaurant owner he met while scouring the streets of San Franscisco for the unhoused who could use his help.
“I’m all about trying new things,” he says. From dirt biking to tasting new cuisines, he says he is determined to find the “wow” in every day. “I am keeping my promise to the higher power to live life straight, honestly and kindly. I see my role in life to love and spread that love to the people who need it most.”
Just three months after being released from prison, Trancita Ponce, 43, is pouring her heart into a new chapter of her life — giving back to those who need it most.
After spending more than half of her life behind bars, Trancita was released on Oct. 22, 2024 from the Central California Women’s Facility (CCWF) in Chowchilla, CA. She says that because of Five Keys’ Home Free, a Treasure Island-based trauma-informed reentry program for recently-released women, she quickly found a job.
Now, she’s working full-time as an ambassador for Five Keys’ Navigation Centers in the heart of San Francisco’s Tenderloin, where she’s dedicating herself to helping unhoused individuals rebuild their lives. Trancita also is an ambassador for Sister Warriors Freedom Coalition, a team of formerly and currently incarcerated women who advocate tirelessly for the rights of women behind California’s prison walls. She’s also got ambitious plans to continue volunteering in a role she held in prison, helping incarcerated youth adjust to prison life. The program the Central California Women’s Facility (CCWF) Youth Division Program, helps instill in the young inmates a respect for the law, themselves and their communities.
“I wrote a program for youth that I am going to introduce out there very soon,” says Trancita. “I’m determined to live out my life with purpose. I wasted so much time and now I am determined to give back every moment.”
To say Trancita has hit the ground running is to understate.
Employment as Catalyst: Economic mobility and Reduced Recidivism Her journey speaks volumes about the power of employment to create economic mobility for the vulnerable population of returning citizens. With the unemployment rate for the formerly incarcerated at over 27% — higher than the total U.S. unemployment rate during any historical period, including the Great Depression. Formerly incarcerated individuals are 24% less likely to return to prison if they acquired new skills and held a job during incarceration. Additionally, those who are unable to maintain employment experience a recidivism rate of 52% over three years, whereas their peers who maintain employment for one-year post-release experienced a recidivism rate of just 16%.
From Struggles to Strength: Overcoming Adversity and TransformationTrancita’s journey is one of profound transformation. Born in Riverside County, she grew up in a small town called Perris, CA, just 70 miles southeast of Los Angeles, she was one of eight children in a home where addiction and instability were constant. Her parents, both heroin addicts, were frequently in and out of prison, and by the age of seven, Trancita had already experimented with drugs. By 10, she was selling cocaine, and by thirteen, she joined a gang.
Her teenage years were marked by trauma — sexual abuse, violence, and ultimately, the loss of her freedom when she became a ward of the state. She spent her adolescence in juvenile hall, surrounded by crime and chaos. At 18, Trancita’s addiction to methamphetamine had consumed her life.
Her downward spiral led her to prison for a gang-related beating.
“Looking back,” she says, “I realize I was taking out my own trauma and doing to the victim what had once been done to me.”
Over the next 16 years, she was moved from facility to facility — Valley State Prison, the California Institution for Women (CIW), and eventually the Central California Women's Facility (CCWF) — but in every place, she remained trapped in addiction and destructive behavior.
“I was in such a dark place,” Trancita recalls. “I was a heroin addict, ‘dope sick.”
From Darkness to Light: “I believe in you.” Until one day when she says she experienced “my spiritual awakening.”
“I was lying on my cell floor crying, begging God to help me,” she says. “I sobbed for hours, pleading for something to change. I was considered a program failure by the system and there was no chance for me to qualify for any of the special prison programs to help turn my life around.”
It was in that darkest moment she discovered God and began to rebuild her life from the inside out.
Then, one of the prison correctional captains approached her and said, “I can help you. I am starting an alternative program in 30 days and I want you to be in it. I will keep my word. I believe in you.”
“Those four words changed my life,” says Trancita.
Through faith and perseverance, Trancita got sober and worked tirelessly to overcame her past, finding healing and purpose where once there was only pain.
Today, her story is a testament to the power of redemption and the unshakable strength of the human spirit.
Moving Forward: Finding New Hope at Home FreeToday, Trancita is brimming with plans for the future. As an ambassador for Five Keys, a groundbreaking nonprofit, supporting over 25,000 at-risk and in-risk individuals across California, she says, “I feel I’m really living out my purpose. Through the Sister Warriors Freedom Coalition I’m working with other women who are dedicated to demanding transformation, helping women in prison hold hope, and push forward toward a future where safety and justice belong to all of us.”
During the winter holidays, she also reunited with all of her brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles and nieces and nephews at a week-long of gatherings at her brother’s home in Riverside County.
The Amazon trucks that pull up with deliveries — an Apple Watch, a Ninja blender, clothing, toiletries, and everything she needs for her transition — at her Home Free apartment are testament to the compassion and caring her family is wrapping her in.
“It is the simple things, like standing on a lawn, holding a fork and napkin, (instead of plastic and paper), having a key… It is overwhelming… It just reminds me every day that God is good.”
These days she’s focused on her job and volunteer work. But she says she’s also looking forward to one day soon a shopping trek to a Dollar Tree store, going to Disneyland, and riding a ferris wheel.
Incarcerated during his early thirties, Patrick Bayona’s journey to self-discovery began in the harsh isolation of the “hole” at 850 Bryant Jail. It was there, confined to a cramped space with 10 violent offenders for six months, that he discovered the transformative power of art.
With nothing but a few #2 pencils and paper, Patrick began creating portrait art — lots of sketches of his wife, Sarah, landscapes, — hundreds of drawings. When a Five Keys teacher took notice of his artwork, she added colored pencils and pastels to his art supplies and assigned him to coordinate a team to create the posters, 40 of them, to decorate the living pod for a Pacific Islander event.
Soon, Patrick was drawing greeting cards for fellow jail mates to send to their families and friends, earning him a little cash for snacks. A Five Keys teacher and a Five Keys counselor, both named Jackie, also encouraged him, and he says it “pointed me in the right direction.”
“Art kept me going, kept me sane,” says Patrick, 39. “It’s as if creativity was the first positive thing I did for myself and gave me a place to process why I was always so angry.” Before long, he was finding solace and a new sense of purpose in every stroke.
A Story of Redemption and ResilienceFast forward to today. After his release from jail in May 2020, Patrick continued his transformative work with Five Keys and was hired as a wellness ambassador at Five Keys’ Embarcadero SAFE Navigation Center. In 2022 he was promoted to Activities Coordinator, where he works full-time running everything from daily yoga and meditation to art classes and peace circles.
Patrick also is completing his final semester of a four-and-a-half year, full-ride scholarship at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. The opportunity was awarded through a partnership with Five Keys on the agreement that Patrick could successfully complete a semester at Laney College in Oakland, which he mastered with a 3.5 GPA.
Overcoming Adversity: Life Before Five KeysPatrick’s story speaks volumes about the opportunity Five Keys, the San Francisco-based accredited charter school has offered to more than 30,000 at-risk and in-risk individuals across California. He’s a living tribute to the fact that creativity, education, community service and personal reflection and growth, along with the kindness and support of caring individuals and a second chance, can change lives in the most challenging environments.
Patrick is the first to say, “I’m not proud of my past and it’s still a work in progress. I remember being in a peacekeeping circle training at Five Keys and one of the women said how wealthy she feels in a social sense not in a money sense. But she said it was the first time in her life she felt supported and cared for. I realized that was the first time I realized that for myself. I too feel overjoyed with this kind of wealth that these relationships bring to my life.”
Good Job. Keep Going. Keep Going!Patrick says the pivotal moment that led him to seek change was when one of the professors at the university spotted him painting his art and said: “Good job, keep going, keep going.”
It’s become his personal mantra. “Whenever I am having a challenging time, I keep saying that to myself, ‘Keep going, keep going,” says Patrick.
Five Keys counselor, and one of “the Jackies,” Jackie Gordon* also was one of the carers who encouraged Patrick to turn his life around and to amplify his own voice and the voices of others who need to be seen and heard.
The Beat Within: Giving Back to the CommunityThese days, Patrick is committed to helping those others, especially homeless individuals, find meaning in their lives.
“The men and women here at the Navigation Center inspire me with their courage and authenticity every day,” says Patrick. “They face challenges most people could never imagine. I am inspired by Kevin, who reminds me to work on my martial arts, which has helped him with his addictions and on days he just wants to give up.
And, Maria, who was so courageous to leave her family and not stay trapped in alcoholism and domestic violence. She has no income, nothing, but she can be herself here and she is working on creating a new life. They help me to reflect on what I did and to know that I need to treat my partner with respect and kindness, to treat everyone that way. It is a daily struggle. I started drinking at age six and was an alcoholic by 12.
I was out of my mind. But I don’t want to dwell in that shame and am working very hard to be a good, productive person.”
Exciting news is that Patrick has donated his artwork (13 pieces) to help raise funds for Five Keys at the 21st Anniversary Celebration through the silent auction.
The Beat Goes On When he’s not at work, Patrick is a turntablist, performing as a DJ throughout northern California, focusing much of his musical work on fundraising, like at a recent San Jose event for rare diseases. Turntablism is the art of manipulating sounds and creating new music, sound effects, mixes and other creative sounds and beats, typically by using two or more turntables and a crossfader-equipped DJ mixer. He also shares his artwork and has mentored other aspiring artists through The Beat Within, “A publication of art and writing from inside.”
His most proud relationship is with his wife Sarah, “who is my best friend, and has taught me to understand what it is to live a good life.” says Patrick. Sarah is the person he admires the most. “Sarah helps me step out of the box, understanding what travel and taking a real break really means. We love to cook together and discuss politics.” Last January, the couple traveled to Hawaii. “We’ve got so many things we want to do together.”
**** Note:*** *Sadly, Jackie Gordon died in 2023. As a lead facilitator in the jails, Jackie left an indelible impact on Patrick and countless incarcerated students and clients. In a tribute at her memorial service, the 69-year-old was said to be known for her warmth, kindness, and genuine care for everyone she encountered. Her dedication to clients and guests was unparalleled, leaving an enduring mark on the community. Jackie’s journey with Five Keys began officially on July 1, 2011, and spanned over two decades as a servant to Five Keys’s underserved communities. She understood the power of providing support and resources to those who needed it most, often going above and beyond to ensure their well-being. Her presence was a source of inspiration, and her guidance helped many individuals navigate the challenges they faced. Jackie’s passion, dedication, and impact on all of us will always be remembered****. “She changed my life,” says Patrick. “It still brings me to tears when I think of the support, she gave me at a time when I needed her compassion most.”***
From Student to Principal Advocate: How Monique Kammer Turned Setbacks into Steppingstones
At 15, Monique Kammer became pregnant and was kicked out of high school.
“I was one of ‘those kids,” she says. “I was basically told, ‘We don’t do pregnancies, get out,” says Monique. She owes her future and is eternally grateful to a teacher, Mrs. Brown, who she says told her, “This is not the end of life for you. We will find another way.”
Against all odds, she did! She achieved her high school GED, then junior college, where at the same time she financed her education working as a bus driver in the Rialto school district, the same school district where she went to grade school.
Fast-forward almost 40 years, Monique holds a Doctor of Education and Social Justice, a master’s in educational administration, a Bachelor’s in English, is a certified biblical studies graduate, runs her own education consultancy and helped lead education reform in the United Arab Emirates.
Today she oversees the high school education of more than 500 male inmates as the Principal of Pitchess Detention Center for Five Keys. The school provides educational services to three different areas in the detention center, including a maximum-security facility in Castaic, CA.
“The fact that I was a teen who got kicked out of school because I was pregnant, and now am an EdD who is helping the people Five Keys serves who face very tough roads is so significant for me and is the way I can give back,” says Monique, biological mom of Raneisha, 36, and Mark, 29, stepmom to Sascha, 28 and grandmother of four.
On her LinkedIn Monique describes herself, as “Author | Social Justice Advocate | Education Consultant | Speaker | Ambassador for Christ.”
Becoming a Powerful Advocate Monique has carved out a path that not only led her to success but has also made her a powerful advocate for those who have been left behind. Her journey from a teenage mom to the helm of California’s oldest criminal detention facility has included serving eight years as a bus driver for her childhood school district in Rialto, California. She’s taught English in middle schools and high schools; been a high school cheerleading coach and worked her way up to vice principal and principal, working largely in school districts in underserved neighborhoods with African American and first-generation Hispanic students.
“I take a no child left behind approach,” she says. “I don’t focus on making students perfect, I ask them to move one step ahead at a time.
Unlocking FuturesHer story speaks volumes about the power of education to transform lives when individuals are empowered and supported. With social justice, inclusivity and leadership driving her every action, Monique brings her mantra, “You Can! They Will! Don’t Ever Give Up!” to Five Keys.
Last summer, just months into her principal’s position at Five Keys overseeing 11 teachers, Monique was especially proud of the 17 men who walked down the graduation aisle with their high school diplomas in hand.
Most of them wrote an essay on how they now have hope,” says Monique. “I told them, your diploma has no expiration date, it is the key to unlocking your futures. It will wait for you in five, or even 10 years; it has no expiration. No matter how bleak your circumstances can seem, there is always hope. I know that and the graduation ceremony of these men is all about giving people hope.”
The Power of Diversity and InclusivityAt the heart of Monique’s leadership philosophy is a deep belief in the power of diversity.
“I passionately believe that a team that is diverse is unstoppable,” says Monique. “With contributions of various perspectives, values, backgrounds, insights, abilities, and enthusiasms, the possibilities are endless.” She adds that true innovation stems from a culture of inclusivity, where everyone who contributes feels valued, appreciated, and empowered because of the attributes that make them unique.
**Defining Life Purpose**Monique chronicles her experiences in her book, *I Wish Someone Would Have Told Me That! Messages to Those Who Come After Me**.* The book is meant to bring that hope to people of all ages who are wondering if they have a life purpose*,* to help them identify their capabilities and gifts and to release the heavy weight of past decisions that haunt them and holds them back from claiming the life they deserve.
In the book she speaks to readers: “Let me tell you something I wish someone would have told me: I know how to beat those feelings. I will help you find healing and show you how to let go of the past and embrace your future! How do I know? Because I've been there. Discover the messages that I wish someone would have told me. I pray that my messages can help you become the strong, courageous, and confident person God intended you to be!”
Outside work, Monique and her husband hit the California highways in their RV, camping, exploring new places, and lifelong learning. Spring Break this year they are headed with the whole clan, grandkids and all, to Utah for skiing.
“There’s always a new adventure or opportunity to explore,” she says.
By LaMonica Peters Published October 17, 2024, 11:12pm PDTKTVU FOX 2 SAN FRANCISCO - October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month, and a newly released study from Stanford surveyed women incarcerated for killing their abusers. The head researcher says the findings help paint a picture of how domestic violence impacted their lives.
Researchers found that there is a pipeline from intimate partner violence to prison. The women at Five Keys Home Free in San Francisco say they’re working to help survivors of domestic violence have a second chance after prison.
Donate Today "Actually, in the first month, they kind of just let me get the feel of being free," said Katheryn Spiak, a former participant with Five Keys Home Free, a transitional program for survivors after prison.
Spiak says she served nearly 13 years in prison for killing her boyfriend. When she was released last year, Five Keys Home Free provided a shared apartment, helped her find a job and provided other services. Now she’s working for the agency, in graduate school and living on her own for the first time in her life.
"I was in a very toxic, abusive relationship. It’s something I didn’t know how to get out of. I didn’t know how to get out of it. Unfortunately, I grew up with abuse, so I didn’t know anything else," said Spiak.
Spiak says she continues on a healing journey though she regrets taking someone else’s life. Debbie Mukamal is the Executive Director of the Stanford Criminal Justice Center and lead researcher of "Fatal Peril", a study about women in prison for killing their abusers. It surveyed 650 women incarcerated in Chino and Chowchilla and found that intimate partner violence often led women to long prison sentences for acts of survival.
"Nearly ¾ of the women who are incarcerated for murder or manslaughter experienced intimate partner violence in the year before the offense took place. That means no matter who they killed or who they were held responsible for killing, ¾ of the women there were in toxic, abusive relationships," said Mukamal.
"This is one of the apartments here at Home Free where two of the ladies live. This is the living room, and this is their apartment for at least six months to a year," said Tammy Johnson, Five Keys Home Free Program Director.
Johnson manages six Home Free apartment units in San Francisco, and she was once a part of the program. She says in the early 90s she received a life sentence for being present during a murder while she was being sex-trafficked. Governor Jerry Brown commuted her sentence in 2018.
"My stepsister introduced me to her pimp, who eventually became my pimp, and I stayed. I stayed with him, and I was human trafficked for 32 years," said Johnson.
Today Johnson is married and her work with Home Free was featured in the New York Times.
"One thing about 5 Keys: 5 Keys is a place of 2nd chances. They gave me my 2nd chance in January 2020."
Mukamal says she wants the study to encourage the criminal justice system to screen more for domestic violence in murder cases. Five Keys is a non-profit organization and raises money to operate. If you’d like to donate, click here.
Read The Original Post Here
With 20 years of experience in education, Sucari Epps is the proud principal at Five Keys Boyle Heights youth site in Los Angeles. Hailing from a family of pioneering Black women — her grandmother was an employment specialist for the veteran’s administration and her mom a probation officer — her path to becoming a principal was not linear.
*Five Keys graduation night, June 2024*
“I had planned on a career as a lawyer or in politics,” the 44-year-old LA resident says. “But teaching seemed to choose me.”
And, making a difference in the lives of young people through education became her calling.
Today, in a neighborhood that has one of the highest rates of gang violence in America, Sucari may not hold the title of attorney or lawmaker, but her vision for making a difference goes far beyond legislative changes in the lives of predominantly Latino students in this underserved barrio. She’s helping them imagine the unimaginable. A stone’s throw from downtown Los Angeles, gang members are part of the scenery of Boyle Heights. But it’s not just the physical violence, it’s the violence of unemployment, segregation, isolation and an educational system that blatantly ignores and kicks the neighborhood’s teens to the curb.
“These students can barely go outside our building because we are surrounded by two gangs,” she says. “We’ve got bullet marks on the windows and gang members will pull up dressed all in black wearing black hoodies threatening our students. We’re confiscating drugs, knives and vape pens. But yet, somehow inside these doors, the students have learned to speak the academic language, to feel safe and to find new hope. Trust and respect for the students and each other are key.”
The school is made up of students ages 16 to 24 and currently has 56 students enrolled. In June of 2024, 10 students graduated with a high school diploma. Five Keys shares the building and partners with the Boyle Heights Youth Technology Center at 1600 E. 4th St. in Los Angeles.
That’s why she says it’s so exciting to be part of the Five Keys’ school system, which not only aligns with her social justice beliefs, but has the audacity to instill the values that will guide these young people to become responsible and compassionate contributors to the community.
“One of the students I was really proud of is a young lady who really struggled with mental health issues, living with an alcoholic and extremely verbally abusive mother,” says Sucari. I was astonished how she arrived day after day and found the tools and resources to stay focused from our counselors, to joining the student council. I’m so proud to say that today she is in college studying to become psychologist. She’s told me she wants to get her doctorate.
Sucari’s journey from her aspirations to join the legal or political system is an inspiring testament to the transformative potential of educators who are committed to making a difference in their communities.
“Sucari is so passionate, compassionate and really cares about our students and helping them each individually,” says Kelley Alley, SoCal Reginal Superintendent, who supervises Sucari and the principals. “She goes above and beyond by making sure each student is connected to the resources they need.”
In addition to Five Keys Boyle Heights, Sucari recently was appointed principal of Healthright360-Prototypes, which provides education to women who are rebuilding their lives and the lives of their children in a community impacted by substance use, mental illness and domestic violence, and the Pomona school.
From launching a student council to taking students on weekly field trips to Hollywood and bringing in CPR training so students can get certified in case they face life-threatening situations in the community they live, “Sucari is always innovating and looking at ways to improve what we offer to students,” said Kelley.
Sucari graduated with a degree in English Writing and a Master’s in Special Education from California State University in Northridge and a PhD in Education Leadership and Administration from California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks.
Her ultimate goal has always been to lead a school program or programs that foster positive learning experiences for at-promise youth and/or students with significant social/emotional/behavioral needs as a mentor, coach to instructors, and/or intensive intervention support provider.
“My goal is that these young men and women of color will never again feel limited in their opportunities,” says Sucari. “I’m looking forward to the years ahead, growing this program and watching as together we are transforming lives.”
When she’s not at work, Sucari is trailblazing new journeys traveling on her motorcycle to cities and the countryside near and far from Los Angeles. “I love to make new discoveries and create new adventures.”
Mission Localby Griffin Jones May 30, 2024, 11:08 amThe Freedom Project, a first-of-its-kind program, has helped 88 people, with 500 still waiting Left to right: Tammy Garvin, Belinda Anderson and Jamesetta Guy at Tuesday's Freedom Project luncheon. All were housed at Chowchilla for several decades.
On Tuesday afternoon, in a bright restaurant facing Aquatic Cove, a group of women in their 60s listened to each other, engrossed.
“I was afraid to start a stove — I hadn’t done it in so long,” said Sally Johnson. “I thought I was gonna blow the house up!”
“I hadn’t walked up stairs in 32 years,” said Belinda Anderson, nodding so her long, purple braids shook. “When I started walking up them, I thought, ‘Oh, Lord, I’m out of breath!’” They laughed.
For 32 years, Anderson, a Bayview native, was serving a life sentence without parole in Chowchilla, a women’s prison in the Central Valley that is entirely ground-level. Johnson, a transgender woman, got out of prison this past November after serving almost 40 years. The two were at a luncheon with around 25 other San Franciscans who had committed crimes in their youth and went on to serve decades behind bars.
Both were released in 2022, thanks to the Freedom Project, a program established in 2020 by the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office that reexamines the cases of prisoners booked in the county. If certain criteria are met, attorneys will recommend a reduction in someone’s sentence, returning the case to the courts.
As of today, 88 people have been able to return home since the Freedom Project launched. There are around 500 people to go, said Danielle Harris, the project’s managing attorney.
But now, their futures are in limbo: For the second year in a row, Governor Gavin Newsom’s proposed budget axes the Public Defense Pilot Program, the three-year state grant funding the Freedom Project.
Counties around the state welcomed this grant as a godsend. Notably, it’s the first of its kind for the state’s public defenders, many of whom have far lower budgets than their counterparts in the district attorney’s office.
Statewide, the Freedom Project is a slim .014 percent of the state’s budget, which is one reason Harris and her team are holding out hope that a last-minute outpouring of support could protect the Public Defense Pilot Program before the June 15 deadline.
This morning, California’s legislature returned their budget revision to the governor, which includes preserving, at least in part, some of the program’s funding. Newsom will now review it and either accept or reject their changes June 15.
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Before he graduated high school this May through Five Keys Charter Schools, Joseph Riddlesperger, 27, spent most of his teen years “catching cases.” Bounced from juvenile hall to foster homes, he was kicked out of high school. Eventually he ended up incarcerated for almost four years. The collateral consequences of a trauma-filled upbringing led him to multiple convictions for vehicle theft, DUI, drug possession, stealing cars, and evading the law.
Graduation day at the Southeast Community Center in San Francisco on June 7, 2024.
After being released from prison and moving in with an uncle, Joseph couldn’t break the cycle and found himself facing another five-year stint in prison.
But providence stepped in through an emotional prison visit from his mother and a surprise offer from a judge who told him “You are the worst possible candidate for a drug program.” At his sentencing hearing, the judge offered Joseph a second chance to turn his life around: The deal: wave prison time and attend a two-year bootcamp-style program, The Jericho Project in Brisbane, CA.
“My lifestyle was getting high and catching cases, not a very productive member of society,” says Joseph. “I was always self-sabotaging. But then my mother came to the prison to visit me and it got me. She was crying saying she couldn’t survive one more night waiting for a phone call and wondering if I was going to make it home. She told me how I had once been the role model for my nieces and nephews. But my13-year-old nephew said I wasn’t anymore. That is when I felt I lost everything. I didn’t want to be that guy. I want to be better than that.”
Enter the Jericho Project, a humane alternative to prison that provides treatment and training to chemically dependent former offenders who are committed to recovery rehabilitation. There, men like Joseph receive housing, treatment, education, physical training, social development and vocational training so they can become productive and successful members of society again. It’s a tough haul. Newbies are not allowed calls or any contact with family members for 90 days.
“Joseph’s one of the ‘lucky’ ones, he got two years here, when most of us just get one,” says Matt Jones, intake director for Jericho, who is a graduate of the program where 70 men including Joseph currently live. “I say that sarcastically because 60 percent of the men don’t make it through one year here. But Joseph is close to completing two years, a very strict sentence. The way Joseph has turned himself around has been a major pillar in my own recovery and growth. He has become a leader helping the new men who arrive here and they respect him because they know he gets where they have been.”
Months away from completing the Jericho program, Joseph works daily as a warehouse manager as a diesel mechanic. After hours, he is a personal trainer at Jericho.
Jericho Project’s educational curriculum is a key component of treatment, crucial to assisting clients like Joseph in developing into a functional, self-reliant individual. The partnership with Five Keys Charter Schools is key to that transformation.
Joseph says his high school graduation was a monumental event he never could have imagined. To support him, his supervisor from work attended the ceremony. “It meant the world to me to have him there,” says Joseph.
Joseph receives his diploma. It’s official.
Like it’s biblical metaphor, the Jericho Project invites and challenges former offenders like Joseph who often are considered society’s throw aways to get and be better, to achieve what seems impossible to others.
Joseph’s gratefulness for his Five Keys teacher, Tanya Kennedy, doesn’t even scratch the surface of what he says she has done to guide him through the challenging classroom.
“She is so full of life and spent so much time giving me extra help in class,” says Joseph. “I had such a hard time with economics, but she spent so much time breaking it down in details until I got it.”
The respect is mutual.
“Joseph is an inspiration for a lot of people,” says Five Keys’ teacher Kennedy, who works onsite at Jericho. “Like many of the men he didn’t have the greatest upbringing, yet he doesn’t hold grudges and is very grateful for his renewed relationship with his family. He is up for any challenge and is a shining example of someone who has persevered and pushed through tremendous hardship to do better every day. He has become like a third son to me.”
Tanya Kennedy and Joseph
Joseph is keenly aware of the tremendous opportunity The Jericho Project and Five Keys are giving him to break free of his past and work hard toward a new life where he will flourish and grow. The U.S. prison system is based on punishment. The problem is, it doesn’t work — more than half of people released from prison are back within three years, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.
What’s ahead? Joseph hopes to flip his high school diploma into a college degree, and wants to become an electrical mechanic.
“I want to set an example for my family and the other men here, become a role model and a productive citizen,” says Joseph.
Despite the barriers that society has in place, and continues to reinforce, Joseph says he and Matt are proof that you can lead a positive life after prison. He shares his experience with the young men entering the Jericho program.
About The Jericho ProjectJericho Project was established in 1995 as a structured, residential treatment program for recovery from substance abuse and criminal behavior. The primary objective is recovery through development of the mind, body, and spirit. The program facilities include several of our state-licensed private residential facilities and our outpatient treatment center. Jericho Project's first phase housing includes two residential houses. The houses are designed for newcomers who have been in the program less than three months. Our second phase housing consists of our 18-unit apartment complex. The apartment complex is designed to accommodate senior members. Our third phase housing consists of our 11-unit apartment complex designed for the alumni in our aftercare program. All residential housing is supervised by senior staff members. Our outpatient treatment center contains large open rooms for members to conduct treatment meetings, educational/ vocational classes, warehousing/forklift certification classes, corporate offices, and professional gym, which is designed to promote a healthy lifestyle. The center is central to the program's structure, training, and activities.
Spotlight on Dorick Scarpelli, VP of College, Career, and Reentry PathwaysTo write poetry is to be vulnerable, to feel free. To trust the people around you.
Teaching literature and lyric art in a jail, an underworld environment designed around confinement and censorship, was perhaps the least likely place Dorick Scarpelli envisioned his future.
But in 2003, that’s exactly what the transplanted Massachusetts-born-and-raised 20-something guy found himself doing when he met a “very passionate” woman named Sunny Schwartz (founder of Five Keys). “I remembered going into my interview at the Sherriff’s Office and was so moved by her powerful vision and passion around launching a restorative justice program.”
“Would he consider joining on,” she asked.
Armed with a Master’s in Fine Arts from Goddard College and an Ivy League fellow and undergrad from Brown University, within a month, Dorick found himself designing lesson plans. He’d done some work previously as a creative writing instructor for teens inside a juvenile detention facility. But after moving with his brother to San Francisco, he was ready to get serious about being a changemaker.
As Five Keys launched its first schools for the incarcerated, Dorick rolled in a chalk board, planted himself in the center of the dorm pod at San Francisco’s former County Jail #2 Annex on Bryant Street and went to work. There, in a place meant to contain them, he encouraged female inmates to channel their emotions into poetry. Later he taught at the men’s dorm in San Bruno.
**Maybe it was the culture code, the prevailing resistance to education among the deputies, or witnessing up-close what he calls “not exactly humane treatment.” Certainly, the wounds of the criminal justice system have played a major role in propelling and reinforcing Dorick’s lifelong calling to right social justice wrongs and his steadfast devotion to helping the wounded and traumatized find their voice.**
Fast-forward 20 years. Today, as VP of College, Career, and Reentry Pathways for Five Keys, Dorick walks with people from setback to comeback. Wearing many hats, he manages government and private contracts and partnerships throughout northern California and the Los Angeles area that support workforce development and college pathways for Five Keys students. He supervised Five Keys’ mobile classroom program and re-entry programs, along with Five Keys Home Free, a Treasure Island-based trauma-informed reentry program for criminalized survivors of domestic violence and human trafficking. He has also served as one of the executive sponsors of Five Keys’ Abide Council (Advancing Belonging, Inclusion, Diversity and Equity).
“Dorick is definitely one of the driven changemakers,” says Karen Levine, a social justice activist, and former program coordinator at the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department who joined forces and has served alongside Sunny and founders since the very beginning. Currently she runs WomanAlive, a violence prevention course for the women of Home Free, survivors of violence. “Dorick has his finger on the pulse of the program and does everything to support it and to help provide the resources for the women to re-educate and gain vital communication and intimacy skills to prevent violence in their lives again.”
Dorick Scarpelli (pictured left) at the Five Keys NorCal Class of ’24 graduation
Dorick’s most celebrated role is dad to Arlo, 11, and Teddy, 9, and husband to wife Lauren Dietz, who is currently studying geriatrics at UCSF to become a Nurse Practitioner. Both Lauren and Dorick are active managers for the boys’ soccer teams and during their “free time,” enjoy backpacking and getting out into nature with family time.
Growing up one of seven children, Dorick’s passion for racial justice and serving the underserved began in childhood. The strong faith of both his parents and Catholic social thought served as a guiding light. His father was a career educator and administrator in the public school system in Rockland, supporting students in a small working-class community and his mother was committed to helping others as a social worker.
“What I love about Five Keys is how innovative and tireless everyone is about changing intolerable social justice problems,” says Dorick. “Everyone is not afraid to experiment, to innovate and everyone really, really cares. What I love too is working with people who have turned their lives around, people who remind us that there is always hope, that we all deserve second chances.”
Dorick Scarpelli (pictured right) at the Five Keys 20th Anniversary Celebration on October 26, 2023
Dorick formerly was a Senior Advisor for the New York City Office of Mayor, Health & Human Services, and Center for Economic Opportunity, winner of the 2012 Harvard Kennedy School’s Innovations in Government Award, and the Young Men’s Initiative (YMI).
He was an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the NYU Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, teaching “Criminal Justice Systems and the Impact on Communities.” He also directed a re-entry program that serves young adults involved in the criminal justice system in the Bronx and Harlem.
These days, Dorick says he is inspired daily by the women who run and live at Home Free.
Tammy Johnson and Sunny Schwartz at Home Free
“I think of Tammy (Johnson, residential program director) and how inspiring her lived experience is,” says Dorick. “It is a privilege to work with colleagues who remind me every day to never give up. They show me the value of hard work and a commitment to doing the right thing. And, I think of Sunny (Schwartz), my mentor who reminds me that we are obligated to push back against the injustices in society and that it is our responsibility to work to change them.”
A new classical music composition program has changed the lives of a number of inmates serving time at a Bay Area jail. They recently gathered to listen to performances of pieces they composed themselves, after completing their classes at the Sonoma County Main Adult Detention Facility. KTVU's Heather Holmes speaks with retired Correctional Lieutenant Liana Whisler and Program Manager Sergeant Jennifer Aicega about how the class came about and what it aims to accomplish.
By James Salazar | Examiner staff writerSixty new tiny homes opened in the Mission district Monday as part of The City’s efforts to expand temporary shelter for unhoused individuals.
Located at 1979 Mission St., the cabins can accommodate up to 68 people, depending on the number of couples. Each home has a locking door, a bed, storage space, furniture, outlets and heating. Hygiene facilities, a dining area and a common area are also included, while residents will be provided access to meals, case management and health services through a partnership with the Department of Public Health.
“We want people indoors, where it’s safe and where they can get on the path to a more secure, long-term housed environment," Mayor London Breed said in a release. “That’s how we end homelessness for people who need help and it’s how we prevent long-term encampments in our neighborhoods.”
Five Keys Schools and Programs, founded by the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department in 2003 to provide diploma programs for adults in county jails, will operate the site and provide on-site social services. The project will cost an estimated $2 million a year to run, according to the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing.
Mission Cabins is the second cluster of tiny homes built for the unhoused in San Francisco; it comes after 70 cabins were set up at 33 Gough St. in March 2022. After two years, the homes at the Mission site will be taken down and a long-term affordable-housing project will be built in the neighborhood, creating up to roughly 350 new homes.
In a statement, District 9 Supervisor Hillary called the homelessness crisis the “biggest problem facing our city.”
Mission Cabins are the second such row of tiny homes in San Francisco, having been modeled after the 70 cabins set up at 33 Gough St. in March 2022.
Courtesy San Francisco Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing
“Now approximately 65 people who have been homeless and living on the streets in the Mission will have dignified shelter and around-the-clock social services,” she said. “I believe these cabins will improve many individual lives as well as street conditions in the Mission.”
Ronen threw her support behind the project in the fall after the proposal guaranteed that full-time staff would keep the space clean and safe.
Officials said that The City has expanded shelter capacity by more than 60% since 2018, with 3,900 beds already available and more expected to come online soon. San Francisco has helped more than 15,000 individuals permanently exit homelessness in the last five years, homelessness officials said.
City officials first proposed the Mission district’s tiny homes project in 2022 but faced pushback amid neighborhood concerns. The site’s proximity to the playground at Marshall Elementary School and the kinds of residents it could support were sources of contention.
To address safety concerns, two sets of fencing and storage lockers separate the site from Marshall Elementary’s playground, while there is also one check-in entrance on Mission Street that comes with security cameras.
“The Mission Cabins are a step towards creating more inclusive and compassionate shelter in areas of high need, where everyone has the opportunity to thrive with dignity,” said Shireen McSpadden, executive director of the San Francisco Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, in a statement.
Mission Cabins at 1979 Mission Street. Photo by Xueer Lu. April 10, 2024.
by XUEER LUAPRIL 15, 2024, 6:00 AMMission Cabins, a two-year homeless-shelter project offering 60 tiny homes to adults experiencing homelessness, will open its doors this morning to residents at 1979 Mission St., next to the northeastern 16th Street BART Plaza.
The project will house up to 68 adults. Sitting on a 24,000-square-foot parking lot surrounded by eight-foot-tall black wire fences, the cabin village features 52 65-square-foot single rooms and eight 78-square-foot double rooms for couples. The rooms for couples sit on the east side of the site.
Deborah Bouck, communications and community engagement lead at the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, said that the program is invitation-only, and will not accept walk-ins or applications. The site’s service provider, the nonprofit Five Keys Schools and Programs, and the department’s homeless outreach program aim to move in five people a day until the cabins are all occupied.
One of the three sitting areas in between rows of rooms. Photo by Xueer Lu. April 10, 2024.
Two wooden steps lead into each cabin. Each room has a lock on the door and a window. The inside is furnished with a single or double bed with pink or dark gray bedding, a bath towel and a three-drawer cabinet in the corner. A potted plant sits atop the cabinet, and along the wall is an air-conditioning unit with a light above it.
Guests are allowed to bring in their own possessions, and can put their belongings in one of five shared storage units if they require the extra space.
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60 new cabins are part of continued expansion of City’s shelter services, which have increased by over 60% over the last 5 yearsApril 15, 2024San Francisco, CA -- Today Mayor London N. Breed and Supervisor Hillary Ronen announced the city has opened its latest temporary shelter program, the Mission Cabins, which will provide 60 cabins for people experiencing homelessness at 1979 Mission Street. The project, modeled after the successful 33 Gough Cabins, will provide private cabins and onsite support services for individuals experiencing homelessness. The program is expected to run for at least two years until the long-term affordable housing development planned for the site breaks ground.
Mission Cabins is part of the city’s ongoing efforts to expand access to temporary shelter. Since 2018, San Francisco has expanded shelter capacity by over 60%, with over 3,900 shelter beds now online and more coming online soon. These temporary shelter beds are critical as part of the city’s efforts to move people from the street, to shelter, and back to housing stability. Over the last five years, San Francisco has helped over 15,000 people permanently exit homelessness.
Mission Cabins will offer individuals experiencing homelessness a safe, temporary living environment and the services they need to move beyond homelessness. Each cabin provides a private room with a locking door, a comfortable bed, storage space, a desk, a chair, outlets, and heating. The site includes hygiene facilities, a dining area, and community space. The program will also provide meals, case management, health services and activities for guests. Staff will be onsite 24/7 to ensure the safety and well-being of residents.
“The new Mission Cabins will provide a critical new space in our work to bring people off the streets and into a safe, stable environment,” said Mayor London Breed. “We want people indoors, where it’s safe and where they can get on the path to a more secure, long-term housed environment. That’s how we end homelessness for people who need help and it’s how we prevent long-term encampments in our neighborhoods.”
"The homelessness crisis is the biggest problem facing our city. Now, approximately 65 people who have been homeless and living on the streets in the Mission will have dignified shelter and around-the-clock social services. I am proud to have championed the Mission Cabins with city departments, community advocates, and many neighbors in District 9. I believe these cabins will improve many individual lives as well as street conditions in the Mission," said District 9 Supervisor Hillary Ronen.
“The launch of the Mission Cabins expands an innovative shelter model for people experiencing homelessness in the Mission,” said San Francisco Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing executive director, Shireen McSpadden. “The Mission Cabins are a step towards creating more inclusive and compassionate shelter in areas of high need, where everyone has the opportunity to thrive with dignity.”
Five Keys Schools and Programs was selected through a competitive process to operate the site and provide onsite social services. Through a partnership with the Department of Public Health, health services will be provided on site several days per week.
“Five Keys is once again proud to partner with HSH by supporting the operations of the Mission Cabins,” said Steve Good, executive director of Five Keys. “Five Keys prides itself on providing a safe and dignified home for the unsheltered. We look forward to working with the community to ensure this site is a success.”
“The Mission Cabins initiative offers people a safe and welcoming alternative to living on the streets,” said Public Works Director Carla Short, whose in-house teams provided design, project management and construction management services. “This is just the type of thoughtful and collaborative project we need to keep San Francisco moving in the right direction to provide shelter for unhoused residents and to improve neighborhood street conditions.”
"Providing healthcare onsite to the Mission Cabins residents is an example of our commitment to offering easily accessible and low-barrier treatment to address health disparities in our communities” said Director of Health Dr. Grant Colfax. “We are pleased to be a part of this partnership and collaboration to ensure people receive the support and care they need."
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MADISON SMALSTIG | THE PRESS DEMOCRAT | April 1, 2024, 3:15PM The Edith String Quartet, composed of four Juilliard students playing two violins, a cello and viola, prepares Monday, Jan. 29, 2024, to play for 11 men in the music composition course and about 60 Sonoma County residents in the Sonoma County Main Adult Detention Facility. (Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office)
The hums and harmonies from the string quartet flowed up and down, and the picks and plucks sharply exited the speakers into a classroom at the Sonoma County Main Adult Detention Facility.
Eight incarcerated men and a small crowd listened March 25 as a quartet — Juilliard School students on two violins, a cello and a viola — performed eight pieces, each composed by one of the inmates.
Fluttery movements and fluid melodies dissipated wanting, dissonant chords and bled into sharp and distinct dynamics. The composers had written some comments, including “cartoony” and “life is risky but never boring,” in their sheet music that dictated the vibe and emotions to be expressed in the music.
The performance in New York City was broadcast live to the Santa Rosa jail via Zoom.
Thestudents’ pieces were the culmination of about nine weeks of work through a program called Music for the Future, which teaches incarcerated individuals about live music, composition and the life and compositions of Ludwig van Beethoven. The underlying goal is to help them gain skills to better themselves so they don’t return to jail after being released.
The music was played in no particular order. The inmates were composers in this moment and looked down at their music to follow the movements. Some twiddled their thumbs, gripped their faces with their hands and bounced legs in anticipation. Some teared up. Some smiled when the crowd clapped.
Eleven students were selected for the class. Each was already enrolled in Five Keys, a nonprofit charter school that offers high school and some higher learning courses in the jail. Each actively participated in classes.
They learned the basics in week one. They had written a short piece of music by the end of week three.
Since then, they wrote nonstop and stayed committed to class. Only one had to leave because of an infraction.
That was an accomplishment. And on March 25, they celebrated.
Read The Original Artical on The Press Democrat
“She saw something I never saw in myself. For the first time in my life, someone believed in me.”
In the fall of 2024, Ezekel Ferguson, 34, is poised to graduate from college with a triple degree in psychology, sociology and English. His next stop: a new job he’s recently landed in human resources, and he’s gung-ho to continue his education and pursue a graduate degree in that field.
“I never, ever imagined this path for myself,” says Ezekel, a Long Beach, CA resident who is juggling full-time academia at Compton Collegeand job as a truck driver that pays the rent and undergrad tuition. “I didn’t think I was good enough.”
He supported himself working at McDonalds. But he says, “I woke up one day and knew I had to make more of myself.”
That’s when he tried to find employment at a higher level, only to be told time and time again that he needed a high school degree.
He remembers being “especially discouraged and worried about my future.”
That is where providence stepped in.
“I was sitting in a lobby of some building applying for a job, when I was told I couldn’t be a candidate because I didn’t have a high school diploma,” he says.
That’s where Five Keys Schools and Programs came into play. Five Keys “just happens” to operate one of its high schools in the same building where Ezekel was seeking to find employment — the Rancho Dominguez America’s Job Center. The San Francisco-based Five Keys is an accredited charter high school that is breaking down barriers for more than 30,000 at-risk and in-risk individuals across California.
“I was really upset and frustrated when this woman approached me, Miss Margot,” he says. “She turned out to be a teacher with Five Keys and told me about their high school diploma program. She was so kind and saw something I never saw in myself. For the first time in my life, someone believed in me.”
In 2014 Ezekel enrolled in the free Five Keys program that is missioned to help adults graduate from high school or receive their GED in order to strengthen career opportunities and future wages. Juggling full-time work as a trucker and his studies, it took Ezekel several years to earn his high school degree.
But in 2017, he walked across the stage at his Five Keys high school graduation to the cheers of a crowd, including “Miss Margot,” Margot deGrave, now principal for eight Five Keys high school sites in the Los Angeles area.
“He was such a cool kid,” Margot, who has taught and worked with hundreds of students remembers Ezekel as a standout. “He has such a positive attitude even though he had such a rough journey. Like so many of our students, he faced so many challenges and had to drop out and re-enroll eight or nine times. But he preserved and made it. Even though he struggled, he never gave up. It is such an honor to witness someone who has truly been so motivated to create a brighter future for himself.”
In 2019 Ezekel received his associate degree in business administration and behavioral sciences from Compton College. With a couple of English courses left, he is poised to transfer to Cal State Long Beach from Compton college and finish his bachelor’s degree next fall.
“Miss Margot and the Five Keys team were with me every step of the way,” says Ezekel. “They were always there and even still reach out to see how I am doing. My goal is to have a career in human resources and I would love to work for Five Keys to help others in the same way they helped me.”
Get to know Ezekel better in this video.
Ex-Offender Being Released by Police
Photo by: Perry Eastman
Written by Perry EastmanPublished on News BreakCalifornia has a recidivism rate of 46%, indicating that many individuals who have served time in prison return to jail or prison. However, numerous San Diego County charitable organizations are providing resources to help break free from this cycle and enter the workforce.
Nonprofit organizations offer various services to help individuals overcome work barriers and transition into society, such as job training and mentoring programs.
Tracy Holt, a former prisoner, emphasizes the importance of employment for success and reducing California's high recidivism rate.
Holt is responsible for maintaining highways, landscaping, and trash abatement, as well as serving as a backup driver.
Holt, a Navy veteran, has successfully reintegrated into society through San Diego's Five Keys Schools and Programs, which offer transitional jobs to ex-offenders.
Holt, who was released from jail after 20 years, faced significant challenges in finding work after being released. He emphasized the importance of a job, stating that his chances of returning to jail are higher without one.
The Five Keys Schools and Programs, in partnership with eighteen other nonprofit partners in San Diego County, provide temporary employment to individuals who have been out of the workforce for a long time or have a background in the education system, helping them find permanent employment or rejoin the education system.
The San Diego Workforce Partnership and other organizations are collaborating to offer comprehensive services to individuals who have served time behind bars, highlighting the importance of workforce partnerships in the community and economy.
The California Workforce Development Board has awarded a $5 million grant to the San Diego Workforce Program, aimed at providing job programs through reentry works services. Young stated that these individuals are capable of completing the task and deserve our support and assistance.
According to Young, the award will enable the nonprofit organization and its local partners to provide transformative services to people such as Tracy.
Tracy exemplifies our values, and we have the tools to support individuals like him in making significant changes in their own lives and others.
Young highlights Tracy's story as a testament to the transformative power of organizations like the San Diego Workforce Partnership and Back 2 Work, while Holt emphasizes the importance of available resources for success. Tracy is pursuing a commercial driver's license to secure a permanent, full-time position.
Rocio De La Fe contributed to this Article.
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Posted on: CBS8Author: Rocio De La FePublished: 9:17 AM PST February 24, 2024Updated: 9:17 AM PST February 24, 2024Through their partnership, the organizations combine their resources to provide wrap-around services tailored to the needs of formerly incarcerated people.
SAN DIEGO — The most recent state report shows California’s recidivism rate is at around 46%, that’s the rate that former incarcerated individuals find themselves back in jail.
Several nonprofits in San Diego County are helping many people break that cycle by equipping them with the tools they need to reenter the workforce.
From job training to mentorship programs, these nonprofit organizations offer a wide range of services to break down barriers to employment and help create a smooth transition back into society.
“A job is a key element in success and not becoming a statistic of the recidivism rate that California has," said Tracy Holt, who has rejoined the workforce after serving time in prison.
Holt now works as a backup driver and also spends his time performing litter abatement, highway maintenance, and landscaping.
Holt, a Navy veteran, has successfully reintegrated into society thanks to the support of San Diego’s Five Keys Schools and Programs, which offers transitional employment to formerly incarcerated individuals.
After serving two decades in prison, Holt says he faced significant barriers to employment after his release.
“There’s always the uncertainty of what’s going to be next. And a job is the most important. Without a job your odds and chances of going back are greater than if you have the stability," said Holt.
The Five Keys Schools and Programs works closely with a network of 18 other nonprofit partners in San Diego County, including Back 2 Work and the San Diego Workforce Partnership.
“It’s very difficult when you have been out of the workforce for x amount of years or even have a background," said Kimberly Castillo, with Back 2 Work. "We support in providing essentially a temporary employment while they look for permanent employment or rejoin the education system."
Through their partnership, the organizations combine their resources to provide comprehensive wrap-around services tailored to the needs of formerly incarcerated people.
“The workforce partnership is very important when it comes to the vitality of our economy and our community," said Tony Young, Interim President and CEO, San Diego Workforce Partnership.
Recently, the San Diego Workforce Program received a nearly $5 million grant from the California Workforce Development Board. The money aims to bolster employment services through its reentry works services.
“We want to support these individuals and they have all the ability to do the work. They just need our support," said Young.
Young says the grant will further help the nonprofit and its regional partners to provide life-changing services to individuals like Tracy.
“Tracy really embodies what we’re about. We have resources to help individuals like Tracy really make a different not only in his life but in the lives of others," he added.
Young says Tracy’s story serves as a testament to the transformative impact organizations like Back 2 Work and San Diego Workforce Partnership can have.
“It made all the difference in the world there’s no way that I could’ve made it without the resources that was made available to me," said Holt.
Tracy is currently working to obtain his commercial driver’s license which will help him take the next steps into a full-time, permanent career.
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Posted on Mission Local by XUEER LUFEBRUARY 23, 2024, 6:50 PM Construction site of Mission Cabins, also known as "tiny homes", on Feb. 23, 2024. Photo by Xueer Lu.
Mission Cabins, a village of 60 tiny homes serving up to 68 adults experiencing homelessness, hopes to open by the end of March at 1979 Mission Street next to the 16th St. BART plaza, and to begin services in early April.
The city recently awarded a two-year $2.9 million a year contract to manage the site to Five Keys Schools and Programs, a nonprofit. Five Keys also manages the Embarcadero SAFE Navigation Center, a site for shorter stays for people with substance use disorders.
Steve Good, president and chief executive officer of Five Keys, said that the nonprofit will be offering 24/7 services such as property management, case management, cleaning inside and outside of the site, room checks, and maintenance. “It’ll be pretty comprehensive services not just for the site,” Good added. “But also to be good neighbors with the community.”
On Friday, the former parking lot was busy with activity: trucks and workers were going in and out transporting construction materials, some white cabins and metallic bathrooms had been installed, and eight-foot poles for the fences had gone up.
Across from the site, at Capp and Adair streets, some 10 neighbors stood in a circle with city staff for a community meeting to go over a draft of an agreement with the Healthy Streets Operation Center and Departments of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, Public Works, and Police.
The draft proposed a list of policies to ease concerns previously raised by nearby residents, as well as some parents at Marshall Elementary School, a K-5 public school located adjacent to the site.The city agreed that the Capp Street entrance and exit to the cabins will only be used for emergencies, any tents on the sidewalk in front will be immediately reported to 311 by staff, and HSH will create an incident dashboard to track service requests and 311/911 calls.
“I’m happy to see them add in a lot of the things that we requested,” said Naomi Fox, PTA president at Marshall, listing more items such as a minimum of three perimeter inspections daily, and collecting litter around the site. “It’s happy to see a step in a positive direction.”
A man who gave his name as George, who has been living on Adair Street since 2002, asked about the program’s opening date.
“I’m going to say April 1 but it might shift,” said Emily Cohen, deputy director for communications and legislative affairs at HSH. It might shift depending on where we are with construction.”
The preparation for move-in, Cohen said, has been an ongoing process: Outreach workers from HSH have been quietly identifying a list of over 100 people who have been living for many months in nearby encampments. They plan to invite 10 to 20 people per week into the site until it reaches full capacity. Upon moving into the tiny homes, guests will have access to on-site bathrooms, showers, community space, case management, and up to two meals a day.
“We will literally walk people over with the outreach team if they’re in an encampment or if they’re just like an individual hanging out in the street,” Cohen said.
Cohen emphasized the role of Santiago Lerma, Supervisor Hilary Ronen’s former legislative aide and the director of Mission Streets Condition Response. Ronen promised Lerma’s participation last October in a community meeting where she was bashed by residents for quietly agreeing to the cabins. Cohen said Lerma would be out on the street on a “daily basis, leveraging city resources to address challenges.”
“I can’t stop somebody from smoking fentanyl on the street. But I can be out here,” Lerma said. “I can talk to people. I can communicate with Captain Harvey [of SFPD’s Mission Station] on a daily basis about things all around the Mission. I’ll be coming here every day.”
“I was worried but now I think it’s looking pretty good,” said Aaron Wojack, a resident who has been living on the block for two and a half years. “Better than the old parking lot.”
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“Hope.” This overworked noun can read like a blasé greeting card shorthand to those who have no need of it. For Tammy Johnson – who spent 28 years in prison for a murder her abuser committed – “hope” was the high-octane fuel powering her decades of determined self-work. “We help everybody,” she says today with cheery swagger. Johnson is Program Director for Home Free, transitional post-prison housing for unjustly incarcerated women; an initiative begun in 2020 by San Francisco nonprofit Five Keys. In their own words: Five Keys provides traditionally underserved communities the opportunity to improve their lives through a focus on the Five Keys: EDUCATION, EMPLOYMENT, RECOVERY, FAMILY, COMMUNITY.
Tammy, Five Keys Home Free Director.
But Five Keys’ inaugural mission began in 2003 with education as its theme, the nonprofit launching the first accredited charter high school in the U.S. to provide diploma programs for adults in California county jails. Lack of a high school diploma has long had a statistical correlation with incarceration and repeat offending.
“Recidivism drops by over 50% when a high school diploma is earned,” says Lisa Pitters, Chief Education Officer. Five Keys made high school graduation available to the imprisoned, in 2008 adding to their program of educational determinism by providing a path to both a high school diploma and vocational skills outside the jail system in underserved neighborhoods all around California. Today, more than 100 such community learning centers serve aspiring students of any age, background, or circumstance. “The education is self-paced,” says Pitters. “There are lots of single moms and people working several jobs. The teachers are really what make it so wonderful.”
Five Keys’ vital Home Free initiative was launched in 2020. “Home Free is a home for abused women, and women who have been human trafficked,” says Johnson. She adds plainly, “These are women who have defended themselves against their abusers.”
Thousands of women, nationwide, have spent decades in prison convicted of homicide in trials that didn’t allow them to present evidence of the horrific abuse they’d suffered. There were other unjust evidentiary problems. “Some of these women were at the scene of a crime under the coercive control of their abuser,” says Sunny Schwartz, co-founder of Home Free, describing Johnson’s own lockdown detour of 28 irretrievable years.
A belated change in California law led to commutations, and after decades in prison, women found themselves eligible for release. Incarceration follows a grand ceremony of gavels, bailiffs, sonorous speeches, and rules of order. No such decorum attends one’s release after being shut away for 30 years. A door opens and you walk through it clutching whatever you can carry. The prospect of beginning anew is Everest-like.
To these women, Home Free is not just four walls and a ceiling, but an instructive re-launch pad. There are workshops in financial and tech literacy, computer and job training classes, and a long-awaited embrace where counseling, healing – and an underpraised energy source called love – help women rebuild brutally interrupted lives; and self-regard.
“My abuser used to get other young girls,” Johnson says, “and I would take them and put them on the bus home. I would get beat up afterwards, but I never stopped. I always cared for other people, but I didn’t care for myself.” Johnson’s gorgeous smile is right around 1000 watts, and here it comes. “Now I do.”
Read the Original Article on The Giving List
SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- San Francisco's first navigation center opened in 2015. Since then, the city has built several others in an effort to move some of the homeless into permanent housing. They have always been controversial.
In August 2019, a surveillance camera caught a resident of a building near San Francisco's Embarcadero being attacked by a homeless man with mental health issues.
The timing could not have been worse as the city had announced just several months before that a navigation center for the unhoused would be built just a few paces from where the attack happened.
A battle ensued between residents of the South Beach and Rincon Hill neighborhoods and City Hall, arguing that the navigation center would bring in more homeless, attract crime, and more drug use.
It turns out, it never did any of those things.
Let's compare crime incident reports in that area before the navigation center opened with the most recent incident reports provided by SFPD. Turns out, the neighborhoods with a navigation center, like the rest of San Francisco, have seen a decrease in crime.
Some of the residents overlooking both the Bay and the courtyard of the navigation center have also argued they've been financially affected.
"The people that own here in this condominium probably lost about 15% of the value of their home," says resident Dirk Etienne.
According to the data, residents have lost 13-15% of their value, but they can't blame the navigation center because every neighborhood in San Francisco has seen a similar or higher decline.
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Press Release | Release No. 0236.23 WASHINGTON, Nov. 15, 2023 – The U.S. Department of Agriculture Deputy Secretary Xochitl Torres Small today announced an investment of $27.9 million across 45 organizations that teach and train beginning farmers and ranchers, including programs for U.S. veterans who are entering into agricultural careers and starting new farming businesses.
“The next generation of farmers and ranchers hold the promise for future American agriculture and rural prosperity,” said USDA Deputy Secretary Xochitl Torres Small. “Under the Biden-Harris Administration, USDA is providing our newest producers with the support they need to succeed and the educational resources to guide their operations on the path toward long-term sustainability and profitability.”
This investment is part of the National Institute of Food and Agriculture’s (NIFA) Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program (BFRDP), which supports a wide range of professional development activities and topics, such as managing capital, acquiring and managing land, and learning effective business and farming practices.
“This investment reflects USDA’s commitment to helping new farmers and ranchers realize their dreams,” said USDA Chief Scientist and Under Secretary for Research, Education an Economics Dr. Chavonda Jacobs-Young. “As the average age of our U.S. producers continues to increase, USDA is accelerating efforts to provide meaningful support to a rising cadre of farmers and ranchers—including military veterans interested in starting new careers after their service—so they can cultivate the skills needed to be productive, profitable and resilient.”
According to USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service’s Ag Census data, one-third of the United States’ 3.4 million farmers are over the age of 65.
“Ensuring there will be a new generation of beginning farmers and ranchers – regardless of age or production choice – is essential to the continuation of agricultural production in the United States,” said USDA NIFA Director Dr. Manjit Misra. “Beginning farmers and ranchers have unique educational, training, technical assistance and outreach needs. Access to capital, land and knowledge that assists in ensuring profitability and sustainability are vital to farmers and ranchers in their first 10 years of operation.”
NIFA’s BFRDP funds three types of projects:
- Standard Projects to new and established local and regional training, education outreach and technical assistance initiatives that address the unique local and regional needs of beginning farmers and ranchers.
- Educational Team Projects to develop seamless beginning farmer and rancher education programs by conducting evaluation, coordination and enhancement activities for standard projects and other non-funded beginning farmer programs.
- Curriculum and Training Clearinghouse to make educational curricula and training materials available to beginning farmers and ranchers and organizations who directly serve them.
Examples of the 45 newly funded projects for FY2023 include:
- Calypso Farm and Ecology Center: This project, Growing Alaskan Farmers: An Agricultural Training Program for Alaska Native People and Their Communities, aims to train a growing population of beginning Indigenous farmers in rural Alaska. This supports the broader vision to foster food sovereignty across Alaska by providing the training and support necessary for Alaskan villages to grow their own food. The project is an Indigenous-led, hands-on, farmer training program.
- Farm Boot Camp: This project will provide in-depth training, technical assistance, and hands-on internship opportunities to transitioning active duty and veteran beginning farmers obtaining the knowledge, skills and tools needed to make informed decisions for their farming operations. The training and materials will be based on the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework aimed at addressing the needs of service-related disabilities.
- In Her Shoes, Inc.: This two-state project aims will provide education and support to 90 new and beginner women and Black farmers each year in West Georgia and the Mississippi Delta. The goal of the project is to increase women and Black operated farm businesses through farm business expansion and new market access. The project also will lead to increased fresh food in local communities.
- La Semilla Food Center: This project will advance a regional practice of climate smart agriculture solutions while removing individual and systemic obstacles for socially disadvantaged and colonia farmers of the Chihuahuan Desert Ecoregion and providing them with opportunities to prosper.
USDA touches the lives of all Americans each day in so many positive ways. In the Biden-Harris Administration, USDA is transforming America’s food system with a greater focus on more resilient local and regional food production, fairer markets for all producers, ensuring access to safe, healthy and nutritious food in all communities, building new markets and streams of income for farmers and producers using climate-smart food and forestry practices, making historic investments in infrastructure and clean-energy capabilities in rural America, and committing to equity across the Department by removing systemic barriers and building a workforce more representative of America. To learn more, visit www.usda.gov.
READ THE ORIGINAL RELEASE ON THE USDA WEBSITE
Kelsey Goeres | Alameda Post | November 16, 2023City officials and police officers shared updates and answered questions at a community meeting about the Dignity Village supportive housing complex on Monday, November 13, at Bayport Park on the West End. Dignity Village, which provides interim housing for individuals experiencing homelessness, is located at 2350 Fifth St., adjacent to the College of Alameda.
The common areas of Dignity Village will be available for guests to socialize and access support services. Photo Adam Gillitt.
Assistant City Manager Amy Woolridge, Housing and Human Services Manager Lisa Fitts, and Five Keys President and CEO Steve Good ran the meeting. Five Keys is a nonprofit that manages onsite operations at Dignity Village as well as case management and resident services. Two officers from the Alameda Police Department (APD) were also present to speak on current crime initiatives as they related—or, more accurately, didn’t relate—to Dignity Village. Mayor Marilyn Ezzy Ashcraft also stopped by for 30 minutes prior to heading out to a Boy Scouts event.
The agenda included introductions, Housing and Human Services report, APD update, Dignity Village/Five Keys Schools & Program overview, and questions. While all of these areas were touched on during the meeting, several vocal community members interrupted the flow of the agenda to ask questions that, as Woolridge said, may have been better suited for an APD Community Beat Meeting. As such, the meeting took on more of a question-and-answer format.
READ THE ORIGINAL POST ON ALAMEDA POST HERE
Homekey funds, which have allowed the City to expand permanent supportive housing by nearly 900 units in the last three years, will cover the purchase and operating costs of 685 Ellis Street
San Francisco, CA - This week, the California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) announced that San Francisco was awarded $18.2 million in capital and operating funds from the state’s Project Homekey to purchase the 74-room property at 685 Ellis Street to operate as Interim Housing, and eventually convert to Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH) for adults exiting homelessness.
Governor Gavin Newsom launched Project Homekey in 2020 as an innovative strategy for addressing homelessness by providing local public jurisdictions with critical federal and state funding to develop a broad range of housing types, including hotels, motels, and hostels into permanent housing for those experiencing, or at risk of, homelessness.
This most recent Project Homekey award is the seventh given to San Francisco since the program started three years ago. In total, San Francisco has been awarded $230 million in Homekey Grants to expand permanent supportive housing by 873 units for adults, families, and young adults across seven properties.
San Francisco provides shelter and housing to nearly 16,000 homeless and formerly homeless individuals every night; 13,000 of these people are in City-supported housing programs. The new homes at 685 Ellis Street will add to the City’s permanent supportive housing portfolio, which is larger than any county in the Bay Area, and the second highest per capita among any city in the country.
Read The Full Story on SF.GOV Here
By Shirleen Guerra | The Center Square
The Center Square) – San Francisco is spending $19 million on expanding an agreement with a non-profit to run a homeless hotel for four years through 2026.
The total cost of the operation is $27.3 million.
The city and county of San Francisco had a resolution on Tuesday approving the first amendment to the contract between Five Keys Schools and Programs and the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing.
The city purchased 685 Ellis Street, which is a 74-unit building, in May 2022 so it can be used as housing for homeless people. The units would come with supportive services, and tenants would have their own units and leases.
The building has a lobby, community lounge, a commercial kitchen, office space, and a laundry room. Each unit has a private bathroom and kitchenette.
The 2022 point-in-time survey conducted on Feb. 23, 2022, shows the number of people experiencing homelessness in San Francisco was 7,754.
Read The Original Article on The Center Square Here
Patrick Mitchell and Chris Faucher join us to talk about EAT, an Ecological Agriculture Training Cultural Center in Norco. They host unique workshops including a “Small Farm Apprenticeship Program” that teaches participants how to grow and sell produce.
“I’m here to do whatever I can to help these women get back on their feet.”Chalia Broudes is a big believer in second chances.
Growing up in Oakland, she was the eldest of six, and the go-to sibling helping her single mom and brothers and sisters navigate “difficult” circumstances.
Not one to dwell on her past, she briefly fills in her background with words like abuse, crystal meth, homelessness and living in squalor, burglary and jail. She says she is still healing from the blurry nine years she moved to Atlanta, then Texas and back to northern California.
It is a past Chalia, 34, wants to lock in a closet behind her. Today she is dedicated to focusing her energy and 24/7 work life on reaching out to help other women struggling with addiction, and who also are experiencing their second chances. She is committed to raising the voices of women who may have unwittingly gotten themselves mired in crime and other horrible situations, but who now are re-starting their lives.
In September Chalia will be two years sober.
Today, she is an ambassador for Home Free, San Francisco-based trauma-informed reentry program for criminalized survivors of domestic violence and human trafficking. She’s also enrolled in Five Keys charter schools program, studying for her GED. College is next on her bucket list. Prior to Home Free, Chalia worked for Five Keys’ Navigation Centers for the unhoused.
At Home Free, Chalia helps women recently released from prison. For some, she will be helping them apply for social security IDs. For others, she’s the tech advisor for setting up an iPhone or new laptop. For others, she is the companion for women who have been imprisoned for decades on their first trek to a happy place they’ve only dreamed about for years: the grocery store.
Driven by her missionChalia is passionate about her mission: “I’m here to do whatever I can to help these women get back on their feet.”
She can empathize with their suffering and knows firsthand what it feels like to be trapped. She calls it “being free from our narrow place.”
“My narrow place was when I was on drugs,” says Chalia. “I did not ever think I was going to stop until I went to jail for five months then God had something different planned. He gave me a second chance then, and the narrow place started to open wide doors to a new life. Then the doors started to open like a domino effect.”
Bring hope and faith to the women of Home FreeFor the women of Home Free, she is a godsend.
Karen Souder, a resident, says: “Chalia has been my rock here! The one I can totally trust and talk to no matter what the situation is. Her moral values and beliefs bring a feeling of home and love to me. She inspires me and lifts me up when I am feeling alone and discouraged. She enlightens Home Free with hope and faith and empowers us to keep going and improving ourselves. She is fair and honest and truly has a
good heart.”
These days, the simple things are what give her great pleasure.
“I love cooking, even cleaning and going to movies is my favorite,” Chalia says. “I’m very tapped into my spiritual side and know God has plans for me to help others. I love helping others and know that no matter what anyone has been through, they always deserve a second chance.”
Sometimes, she admits: I still struggle with believing in myself, having the courage to start something that is not finished and being good enough. Working with Five Keys helped and still helps me a lot. I have a great support team so I take it day by day.”
About Five KeysFive Keys was founded in 2003 by the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department as the first
accredited charter high school in the nation to provide diploma programs for adults in county jails. Today Five Keys serves 30,000-plus Californians annually, spanning 14 counties in 25 county jails and over 120 teaching sites. In addition to schools,
Five Keys operates multiple homeless shelters, permanent supportive housing programs, transitional employment programs, reentry programs and housing for women suffering from immense injustice. Five Keys is a second chance employer. Our goal is to restore communities through education and other programs that respond to the students’ and community needs — which in turn creates safer communities. To visit or donate: www.fivekeyshomefree.org.
Steve Good, the President and CEO of Five Keys Schools and Programs. From its start as a charter high school within a county jail, Steve has elevated Five Keys to a groundbreaking nonprofit, supporting over 25,000 at-risk and in-risk individuals across California. We delve into his journey of transforming Five Keys into a beacon of hope for those impacted by racism, poverty, trauma, and incarceration.
With Steve at the helm, Five Keys' growth has been unprecedented, culminating in numerous accolades, including the Hart Vision Charter School of the Year and the Innovations in American Government Award from Harvard University's Kennedy School of Governance.
Today, we explore the secrets behind this growth and Steve's unique approach to leadership. We also address a pressing issue - the lack of funding for correctional education programs, despite the astronomical amounts spent on incarceration. Steve shares his insights on this topic, as well as how Five Keys creates a successful learning environment for those who have struggled in traditional settings.
Watch the Interview on The Avenue of the Strongest by ArgoPrep Channel here
It was a busy morning for Tammy Johnson (formerly Cooper Garvin). Since 5:30 a.m., she was hunkered down at her computer, racing the clock to schedule clinic appointments, navigate government websites to secure I.D.’s for several residents and wading through blocks of email requests from women seeking her support from behind bars. That afternoon, Tammy promised to drive Deborah, a 73-year-old woman and new Five Keys Home Free resident to Target and the DMV.
For Deborah, the trip to Target was a thrilling possibility, one of her first outings after being released from 43 years behind bars. Tammy was determined Deborah would fulfill a decades-delayed dream to push a shopping cart down the aisles of the mega store and buy Jean Nate’ perfume and plastic ice cube trays.
As the residential Program Director of Five Keys Home Free, a Treasure Island-based trauma-informed reentry program for criminalized survivors of domestic violence and human trafficking, Tammy is on a mission every day. She says she’s determined “to let the women let themselves be free in the world.”
Nothing was going to stop her from fulfilling Deborah’s Target trek.
“I told her ‘hey girl, I don’t even know if they still sell Jean Nate’ and plastic ice cube trays are pretty old school,” said Tammy. “It’s all about bringing a little happiness to bring these women up. It can be a trip to the grocery store or for some it’s eating a favorite food. But at a deeper level it’s all about coaching them through re-entry.”
Tammy is more than just a shot in the arm for the women of Home Free. She has walked in their shoes.
Survivors and Friends: Susan Bustamante (31 years inside), now Home Free Re-entry Coach, Tammy Johnson, and Brandi Taliano, (28 years inside), now Five Keys Housing Services Site Director
Like Deborah and the other women, Tammy spent decades (28 years) in prison unjustly sentenced as an LWOP (Life Without the Possibility of Parole). Tammy was sex trafficked at age 14 and was imprisoned for 28 years for being in the car while her pimp murdered a client. Her sentence was commuted in 2018 and she was hired by Home Free as its reentry coach in February of 2021.
Her embodied experience and fierce determination to move forward with her life is combined with a commitment to reach backward to accompany other women on their journey. Her dedication speaks volumes about the second chance mission of Home Free. The six two-bedroom unit apartment complex is California’s first transitional residential facility for criminalized survivors of domestic violence, and human trafficking.
“As soon as I met Tammy, I was blown away by her quiet strength and self-determination, her prideful spirit, her hopefulness and how she owned her humanity, which is such a paradox to the horrific injustice she has experienced,” says Sunny Schwartz, founder of Five Keys. She met Tammy for the first time during a visit to the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla, CA. “Her leadership is instrumental to Home Free. She can talk about not giving up and her determination to keep growing as a person and leader are amazing.”
Steve Good, Five Keys President and CEO, Susan Bustamante, Tammy Johnson, and Sunny Schwartz, Five Keys Founder and Home Free Co-Founder
“She is the personification of hope, possibility, and triumph against all odds. Her personal struggle and determination to thrive every day comes to life through her commitment to the women of Home Free,” said Sunny.
In her role, Tammy helps Deborah and the other women residents of Home Free transition back into their new lives. She also counsels other women as they prepare for their upcoming release from the prison system after years or even decades of incarceration.
When they get out, Tammy is there to wipe away their tears. Her heart swells when she expresses gratitude for Home Free and the opportunity to help guide and walk alongside women whose lives have been locked up.
“The greatest gift I can give them is telling them to just let themselves be free, to let their freedom soak in,” said Tammy. She’s at Home Free daily from 5:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. and on call 24/7. At Home Free, we really strive to make the women feel like they are at home.”
“Tammy was a person who did everything she could to educate herself and prepare for her release from prison,” said Sara Malone, who is mentoring Tammy in her role at Home Free. Sara is the former Chief of the Office of the Ombudsman, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation who worked with Tammy when she was incarcerated. “But more significantly she was committed to helping other women. She was and still is always there for others, never putting herself first. It would have been so easy to give up, but she never did, and she inspires others to always have hope. She is committed to helping others make their lives better.”
These days, Tammy also is enjoying life as a new wife to her husband, Demian, who she met working at one of Five Keys SAFE Navigation centers for unhoused persons (prior to joining Home Free). Her goal is to “laugh, to always laugh.”
Mrs. and Mr. Demien Johnson at their wedding at Home Free
“We go to a lot of comedy clubs because we both just love laughing together,” says Tammy. “Our dream is to go to Paris. And my dream for Five Keys Home Free is that we keep getting bigger so we can offer the promise of freedom to other women who are in prison and longing to be in the world.”
Tammy Johnson
The City of Alameda is hosting a grand opening celebration at Dignity Village on Wednesday, May 3 at 10 a.m. – and the public is invited. Dignity Village, a two-story, 47-unit Interim Supportive Housing project at 2350 Fifth St., will provide shelter for individuals experiencing homelessness or chronic homelessness. The grand opening celebration will be at the site; please RSVP online.
Dignity Village groundbreaking ceremony, Oct 25, 2022. Photo Maurice Ramirez.
Dignity Village will be capable of serving up to 61 individuals, with five units specifically set aside for homeless youth aged between 18 to 24. Each unit measures 138 square feet and is equipped with a private, ensuite bathroom. Dignity Village will also contain additional community buildings, including a dining space, meeting rooms, private offices for support services staff, and storage for resident belongings.
People in need of housing will be referred by the Homeless Management Information System, managed by Alameda County Health Care Services Agency’s Office of Homeless Care and Coordination Coordinated Entry Program. During the initial housing placement, Alameda’s unhoused residents will be given priority.
Bird’s-eye view of the plan for Dignity Village. Image Dignity Moves.
The City led the effort to develop Dignity Village, partnering with nonprofit developer DignityMoves and onsite service provider and property manager Five Keys Schools and Programs. The City was awarded a $12.3 million grant from the State’s Homekey Program to build Dignity Village, and $2.35 million from Alameda County to cover five years of operating services.
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SAN FRANCISCO, CA, April 11, 2023 – Twenty-five women residents, staff and supporters of the Five Keys Home Free community recently gathered to share a Passover Seder and dinner, affirming they are strong and resilient people and to share their reality — their own tyranny and freedom — as women unjustly sentenced to long term prison sentences including Life Without the Possibility of Parole, life in prison. Now free and living in California’s first transitional residential facility for criminalized survivors of domestic violence, they celebrate freedom and their second chance at life.
*Sunny Schwartz, Debby Hamolsky, Kathryn Spiak, Karen Levine, Ellen Friedman, and Laura Troiani*
The meal was inspired by the Passover’s spiritual message that there is the potential to break out of the enslavements of the past and to evolve with redemption, compassion and triumph.
*Tiffany Holmes, Delia Ginorio, Delia Mendoza, Jennifer Trayers, Kathryn Spiak, Chalia Broudes, Debby Hamolsky, Ellen Friedman, Tammy Johnson, Demien Johnson, Susan Bustamante, Laura Troiani*
“Like the Jews who were freed from slavery, tonight we celebrate your liberation from tyranny and patriarchy and are so honored and happy to be here with you,” said Karen Levine, a social justice activist, long time staff of the SF Sheriff’s Department and the Veteran’s Administration. “Mitzrayim which means the narrow place is the story of Passover — the leaving of the narrow place of slavery in Egypt, and of suffering. It is understood both literally and through the personal stories of coming to freedom, kind of like a 10 by 8 cell.” For the women of Home Free, Karen now facilitates WomanAlive, a 52-week violence prevention course for women survivors of violence — a re-education program which helps with intimacy, communicatio skills and violence prevention.
Susan Bustamante, who spent 31 years in prison as an LWOP (lifer) before her sentence was commuted, and other women shared a rich snapshot of honesty about where they have been and where they are now. Like the Israelites liberation from slavery in ancient Egypt, the womens’ lived experiences are tales of faith and community and triumph over adversity.
“Through all the horrific abuse, I found myself hating, which I hated. It was a horrible place to be and a narrow space I didn’t belong … and this led to prison,”said Bustamante. “My healing came gradually and with my sheer will I grew enough to then get commuted, paroled, and become the advocate I am today.” Bustamante was hired by Home Free last year and is now a re-entry coach who also picks up the women
(many in Los Angeles) when they are released from prison and drives them to Home Free.
Home Free was created by Five Keys, a statewide nonprofit that provides education, vocational training, therapeutic programs, and housing for incarcerated people and the newly released. The majority of people at Home Free were originally sentenced to Life in Prison Without Parole as a result of defending their lives against domestic violence abusers. Because of a loophole in the law that has since been corrected through pioneering legislation, the survivors could not have evidence of past abuse included in their trials. The first of its kind in California, the complex of five two-bedroom apartments is the result of years of advocacy by survivors of intimate-partner violence, and organizations working with them.
The seder is just one of the many events, celebrations and gatherings that the Home Free community creates for the survivors living there and their extended community. The evening was filled with abundant homemade, traditional seder foods – from Karpas (parsley) and Baytzah (roasted egg), both symbolizing spring and rebirth to Charoset, to symbolize the mortar that the Israelite slaves used to make bricks. There was also poignant sharing and singing the ancient Hebrew song, Dayenu, a seder tradition that means “it would have been enough for us,” along with laughter and tears.
“It was a sacred evening,” said Sunny Schwartz, founder of Five Keys Home Free, a transitional housing complex on Treasure Island, which creates a vibrant, dignified, and safe home, a place that says “you are worthy.” Sunny invited longtime friends, Debby Hamolsky, Karen Levine, and Ellen Friedman to envision and revise the Haggadah and to help her cook up the meal and brought the seder home to Home Free, creating a parallel celebration of freedom. All the foods bring the story alive including traditional brisket, matzo ball soup with egg noodles, roasted carrots, mashed potatoes with not just a dash but a main ingredient of love.
*Gilda Serrano, Ella, Sunny and Lauren Schwartz*
From the blue plates and yellow flowers to an orange symbolizing the Jewish LGBTQ community, the table settings also told a powerful story. Dr. Susannah Hershel, the Eli M. Black Distinguished Professor of Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College, initiated the idea of the orange in the 1980s. She shared the custom with her own guests, and it quickly spread to other homes, and so the orange was said to represent the inclusion of women in the Jewish ritual life.
Since 2020, 17 women have lived at Home Free. Four more women are expected this year in the coming months and 100 more women are waiting inside to come Home Free.
About Five Keys
Five Keys was founded in 2003 by the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department as the first
accredited charter high school in the nation to provide diploma programs for adults in county jails. Today Five Keys serves 30,000-plus Californians annually, spanning 14 counties in 25 county jails and over 120 teaching sites. In addition to schools,
Five Keys operates multiple homeless shelters, permanent supportive housing programs, transitional employment programs, reentry programs and housing for women suffering from immense injustice. Five Keys is a second chance employer. Our goal is to restore communities through education and other programs that respond to the students’ and community needs — which in turn creates safer communities. To visit or donate: www.fivekeyshomefree.org.
Media Contact: Sunny Schwartz (415) 819-7070
Wednesday, March 22, 2023Alameda Sun | Staff Reports Courtesy Swinerton -- The Dignity Village supportive housing development will be ready for residents to move in after more than a year of planning and construction.
Dignity Village, the 47-unit interim supportive housing program, will host a Grand Opening event on Wednesday, May 3, at 10 am at the site, located at 2350 5th St. DignityMoves will be the project developer, the project developer, will begin moving people into the housing development sometime in April.
The plan to build a development for unhoused residents began more than a year ago. The Dignity Village concept were introduced at the Nov.16, 2021 City Council meeting, according to Alameda Mayor Marilyn Ezzy Ashcraft. The City of Alameda reported on Feb. 10, 2022, it had applied for a Project Homekey Round 2 grant to receive funding to build an interim housing development for the city’s unhoused community (“https://alamedasun.com/news/city-submits-grant-application-build-develop...,” Feb. 15, 2022).
In August 2021, when there was inclination a second round of Project Homekey would be offered, the city sent out a request for proposal to local entities seeking a developer, property manager and service provider for the development. After receiving several responses, the city opted to hire DignityMoves and Five Keys Schools and Programs as partners in the project. DignityMoves is the project developer and Five Keys handles operational services.
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“It’s the everyday things, like being able to open a door, that bring me such joy.”
Like many people who are incarcerated, Travis Rapp struggled with anger, pain, and hopelessness during the 16 years he spent in a maximum security California prison, almost a decade in isolation.
Travis was 21 when he was charged with first-degree burglary and sentenced to 15 years at Kern Valley State Prison in Delano, CA, “designed to house the worst-behaved, most problematic,” of all the state’s inmates. For nine years, he was confined to a 6.5-foot-by-11-foot room with just a bed, sink, and toilet. Meals were served through a slot. The exercise consisted of four hours a week in a gated dog-run-like cage in the outside yard.
Fast forward to today. Travis, 37, is just two years out of prison. He’s a lead supervisor for five of Five Keys’ employment and reentry crews, (about 50 employees) rising through the ranks from his first job on the CAL Crew, which works to repair, remove litter, control vegetation, repair storm damage and erosion and other highway beautification projects in Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Joaquin counties. He clocks in at 6:45 a.m. and out at 3:15 overseeing worker safety, the vans, hiring, data sheets, payroll and recruiting.
“Travis is a natural leader, a standup guy who is also humble and was not afraid to start at the bottom and work his way up,” said Jalonn Harrison, Assistant Director/Transitional Work Programs for Five Keys. “He’s stepped up to every opportunity and given his best. He’s an amazing role model for all that a person can make it through anything. He’s all about the power of hard work and determination.”
In February he was released from parole.
Travis is married to Lenna, a hairstylist, who shares his passion for trekking through California highways on weekends on their motorcycles. They live in an apartment in West Los Angeles with their two cats, Brodie, and Bob Cat, and have a bucket list of travel plans from Greece to Japan, to France and around the globe.
The first place he and his wife went upon his release from prison: The Claim Jumper restaurant “for a big old juicy steak.” He’s proud to say he’s taken up cooking, “mostly steaks,” he admits.
“But it’s the everyday things, like being able to open a door, that bring me such joy.”
His new adventure is all about taking risks and creating a dream life. But he doesn’t forget the suffering and longing that defined his years in prison.
As the years rolled by in prison, Travis was visited by the prison chaplain three times, each to tell him about the death of one of his grandparents.
Travis studied and earned hisGeneral Educational Development (GED) degree, classes in Excel and Microsoft, trade school auto mechanics certificate, soaked up as much history as possible, books about Napoléon, the Saxons and jotted down motivational quotes that became his lifeline and guiding light: “You gain strength through struggle,” and “In prosperity, our friends know us; in adversity, we know our friends.”
“I was a lifelong troublemaker who knew I had to turn my life around and that moving forward, the key would be who I surround myself with, he said.
Travis says he just kept telling himself: “Push forward, you can’t let it break you. Work, just work.”
Never underestimate the power of community. In 2022, Travis was transferred into Los Angeles’ Male Community Reentry Program (MCRP), a reentry multi-tenant apartment complex that provides programs and tools necessary to transition from custody to community. Monitored with an ankle bracelet, Travis discovered Five Keys and its innovative transitional employment program.
His break was being hired by Five Keys on the Cal Crew. Through theFive Keys Transitional Employment and Reentry programs, people like Travis receive robust support to help them find permanent employment, progress along educational pathways, or enroll in progressive job training. Job readiness workshops, reentry support, access to high school completion, and hosted resource groups are provided.
“Travis is an extraordinary leader in that he takes the initiative to do things he sees need to be done instead of waiting for someone to suggest it,” said Dave Bates, VP of Transitional Employment & Reentry. “Travis forecasts what needs to be done and he gets it done. That is what you want in a leader.”
These days Travis is also passionate about giving back, reaching out to help others “get the second chance I did.”
There is a sorrow that continues to burrow in his heart. His best buddy in prison, a forty-something guy named Christophe, is sentenced to life without parole. “We were in solitary together and could only talk between the walls,” says Travis. “These days I can call and write him, but it’s hard because I am out and there is a guilt there and sadness. He got me through so much and is my best friend. Isn’t it weird, I have a best friend I never got to even shake hands with and probably never will. It’s rough. I feel very remorseful.”
Donovan Gomez | February 28, 2023 | sfpuc.org
As a Commissioner of the Southeast Community Facility, Amerika Sanchez helps make critical decisions on behalf of her community. Commissioner Sanchez is a proud resident of the Bayview and loves giving back to her community. She also serves as the Principal for Five Keys Charter Schools and Programs, an anchor tenant in the Southeast Community Center.
Commissioner Sanchez advocates for her students and their families to learn more about the career options available in the utilities industry. “Even as an adult, you can go back to school or receive specialized training to start a new career path. Many careers in the utilities industry allow for transferable skills; in addition, there are also local organizations that target workforce development in the utilities industry,” she said. “It is never too late to learn and reinvent yourself!”
She goes on to explain the importance of exposing her students to career paths in the utilities industry. “The utilities industry addresses many societal issues and needs. As an educator, I find that young students naturally ask a lot of utilities-related questions, such as: ‘How does electricity get into my home?’ or ‘How much rain is needed to end a drought?’ Behind these kinds of questions, are experts who can provide answers.”
Her quest for authentic learning experiences for her students has led her to various educational experiences outside of the classroom. She has participated in teacher study tours outside of the United States, served on Western Association of Schools and Colleges visiting committees, and has held membership with multiple professional organizations for educators. “The more I travel and interact with Black people from different countries, I realize that we have a lot in common and can collectively contribute to the greater Black community, here in the United States, and abroad. There are so many opportunities for social, political and economic advancement, if we can continue to embrace a collective ‘WE’ mentality.”
When asked what Black History Month means to her, she said that it serves as a reminder of how Black Americans carved a space in every aspect of American society. “This month celebrates the milestones of exceptional individuals who were founders, creators and trailblazers of every field possible,” she said. “Black History also honors the experiences of everyday Black Americans, who navigated through many challenges, and still managed to find community, success and joy, despite those obstacles.”
Donovan Gomez
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Timm QuinnStockton Chamber of CommerceDecember 3, 2022For almost 20 years, Five Keys across California have been helping people build or repair their lives. From prisoners and the formerly incarcerated, to the unhoused and others striving to gain the education they missed out on because of significant life challenges, Five Keys helps redesign and redefine people’s live with hope and new opportunities.
Now, Five Keys is excited to announce the opening of its Furniture Annex, a luxury home furnishing store, with furnishings and decorative items donated from a high-end retailer. 100% of the sales will underwrite Five Keys’ programs.
Read More on Stockton Chamber of Commerce
Five Keys Cal Crew Stockton partnered with Senator Susan Talamantes Eggman, Volunteering at the San Joaquin Community Food Drive
Five Keys Holiday Drive Gift Guide* For Ages 3-6 * For Ages 7-12 * For Ages 13-17 * For Transitional-Aged Youth
Maurice Ramirez, Alamedapost.com
Posted Nov 7, 2022, at 7:50 am PT
On October 25, 2022, the City of Alameda held a ceremony to celebrate breaking ground for construction of Dignity Village on Fifth Street. City Council authorized the project in a 4-1 vote on April 5, with Councilmember Trish Herrera Spencer voting against. The City of Alameda is sponsoring the project. $2,555,844 in operational funding and $9,225,536 for the development of the project is coming from the State of California (State) through the Housing and Community Development Department (HCD), and another $2,654,622 in capitalized operational reserves sourced from the Alameda County Housing and Community Development Department. The City is also contributing $10,855,995 towards the development and operations of this project.
Dignity Village will be administered by two organizations. DignityMoves, is serving as the project development manager. Five Keys Schools and Programs will serve as the onsite social service provider and property manager. The complex consists of a two-story shelter, a three-story shelter, an administration building, a community building, community gardens, a pet area, and 27 parking spaces. When it is completed, the center will house up to 61 individuals and couples in 47 units. Dignity Village will serve the homeless, chronically homeless, and homeless youth.
Read the Full Article on Alameda Post
Dignity Village, an Interim Supportive Housing project in Alameda, will serve the homeless, chronically homeless, and homeless youth.Kim Harris, Patch Staff, Patch.com
Posted Mon, Oct 24, 2022 at 2:38 pm PT|
ALAMEDA, CA — Construction on Dignity Village, a two story, 47 room Interim Supportive Housing project located at 2350 Fifth Street, will begin Tuesday, Oct. 25 at 10 a.m. with a kick-off celebration, the city of Alameda announced in a news release.
When completed, Dignity Village will serve the homeless, chronically homeless and homeless youth, the city said.
Pictured (left to right): Assemblymember Mia Bonta, Mayor Marilyn Ezzy Ashcroft, Senator Nancy Skinner, City Staffmember Lisa Maxwell, Elizabeth Funk, CEO DignityMoves, and Steve Good, CEO Five Keys
Each of Dignity Village's 168 square foot rooms will include a private bathroom. The project also boasts community programming spaces, including a dining space, community garden and courtyard, as well as meeting rooms, private offices for support services staff, and storage, the city said.
Speakers at the kick-off celebration include Alameda Mayor Marilyn Ezzy Ashcraft, Alameda Community Development Director Lisa Maxwell, Assemblymember Mia Bonta, Senator Nancy Skinner, Elizabeth Funk of DignityMoves and Steve Good, President and CEO of Five Keys Schools and Programs.
According to the news release, Dignity Village has received $2,555,844 in operational funding and $9,225,536 for the development of the project from the State of California through the Housing and Community Development Department, and $2,654,622 in capitalized operational reserves from Alameda County Housing and Community Development Department with the support of Alameda County Supervisor Dave Brown. The city of Alameda is also contributing $10,855,995 towards the development and operations of the project.
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On Never Losing HopeMeet Nilda Sarayda Palacios, 39
Today: Health worker, the San Francisco Department of Public Health
Life behind bars: Nilda was 17 when she was convicted and sentenced. For 17 years, Nilda served time behind bars, ending up in prison and sentenced to 27-years-to-life for killing a man who was abusing her physically and very cruelly and emotionally during the time she was homeless. She wasn’t allowed to bring into court evidence of abuse.
Beginning again: Nilda was released in 2017 from the California Institution for Women in Chino, CA. Her sentence was reduced to involuntary manslaughter, and she was given credit for time served. For 16 years prior to that, she spent 16 years in Central California’s Women’s Facility in Chowchilla, the largest women’s prison in the state.
First thing she did when she was released: “I went to the beach and wrote ‘freedom’ in the sand.”
In a name: Nilda’s name comes from the Greek word that stands for “Warrior
Woman.” It’s a name her Guatemalan mother picked for her after a niece who died early, and her mother says, is meant to conjure up the image of a woman always having to face challenges all on her own. As she grew older, Nilda changed her name for a while to “Emily,” her brother’s middle name. In prison she had to abandon both names and was referred to as an identification number.
Moving on: Life after being behind bars: “I do self-nurturing and self-care by focusing my energy and time on things that are interesting to me. I’m also mindful of my five year parole plan and not allowing myself to bedeterred from completing the plan objectives.”
Mantra and mission: “Do not lose hope, engage in persistent prayer, and rely on your unwavering faith. My overall message is to be kind to others as you may never know when you’re entertaining angels, remain consistent in reaching for your dreams and don’t give up no matter how difficult things may seem.”
How she’s redefining herself: “I’m reconnecting with the community, working
on being more spiritually grounded and more open to learning things I didn’t know about myself.
Favorite book: The Notebook, by Nicholas Sparks an intensely romantic book—a novel about the everlasting power of “true love.”
Her Good News: In the five years Nilda has been working tirelessly to have her dream come true — to own her own home. She set a goal and worked every day toward it. In August, she purchased a three-bed, three-bath home in Pittsburgh, CA, where she lives with her new partner, and dog, Milo. Over the Labor Day weekend, she hosted a weekend-long celebration inviting her whole family over.
Five Keys Celebrates “Happy Back to School!” for Students in Huntington Park, CA
Five Keys staff gathered more than 3,000 backpacks and school supplies for students of all ages heading back to school in Huntington Park, CA, a mostly Hispanic, working-class community in the inner Southeastern Los Angeles area.
On August 13, members of Five Keys’ ELO and Student Services teams joined the “Happy Back to School” event, which drew more than 5,000 people, and sponsored by Be Social Productions, according to Carol Guillen, Learning Recovery Manager.
“Our goal was to engage with the community and give back,” says Guillen. “One of the Five Keys stands for ‘Community’ and this event gave us the opportunity to immerse with one of the communities we service. We were able to give back to school age students and share the great services Five Keys provides with those interested in enrolling.”
The event, held at Salt Lake Park in Huntington Park included surprise guest, J.R. Villanueva, from the Disney Channel series Ultra Violet & Black Scorpion and included free backpacks, school supplies, COVID-19 vaccines, health screenings, free kids’ haircuts, arts and crafts, raffles and much more.
A shoutout goes to Baby2Baby, a nonprofit which provides diapers, formula and the basic needs for children living in poverty, and Big Sunday, an LA-area organization which organizes more than 2,000 ways for volunteers to help the community each year.
Big Sunday donated 175 pre-filled back packs and Baby2Baby donated over 6,000 writing utensils (pens/pencils/markers/color pencils) along with some binders. Five Keys provided "swag" items such as pencil pouches, hand sanitizers, portable chargers, lip balms, coasters, notebooks, and pens with the Five Keys logo. The Five Keys booth drew much attention to Five Keys’ ESL classes, adds Guillen.
Five Keys staff who helped organize the event included: Carol Guillen, Andrea Casillas, Learning Recovery Paraprofessional, Claudia Tinajero, Administrative Assistant, Karla Muñoz, Administrative Assistant, Dorothy Velasco, Assistant Director of Operations and Vanessa Martinez, Regional Administrative Manager.
SAN FRANCISCO, CA, August 16, 2022 – Five Keys Schools & Programs’ Ecological Agriculture Training/NORCO (EAT!) program received a $300,000 innovation grant from The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to fund its innovative urban agriculture program in Southern California.
“This grant will help local farmers through our EAT program create new, more affordable, and better local market options and help our urban community produce fresh and healthy food locally and reduce food waste,” said Steve Good, President & CEO Five Keys. “Supporting agriculture in our urban communities helps grow our economy and provides food to people, while creating a new generation of farmers.”
Through its Urban Agriculture and Innovative Practices (UAIP) Grant program and cooperative services agreements, the USDA is investing $43.1 million in urban agriculture programs across the country to help deliver key USDA programs to urban producers. These actions support USDA’s efforts to strengthen the food supply chain and transform the food system to be fairer, more competitive, and more resilient.
Five Key’s EAT Center is a community-based program, partnered with the city of Norco, CA that is part of a growing trend of community farms that are cropping up across the country. EAT stands for Ecological Agriculture Training. Its mission is three-fold: to build community, empower small businesses and strengthen the City of Norco and Riverside County’s rural economy. One of the goals is creating a new generation of farmers while reducing food insecurity and inspiring hands-on farming among community members in Norco, and inspiring other towns to do the same.
Five Keys farming programs originally were founded to serve in-custody (county jail) populations, through its correctional education programs. When the funding ended for these programs, Five Keys pivoted to community-based farming and found a willing partner in the City of Norco.
“We’re building a community that aims to educate, inspire, advocate, and create change,” says Chris Faucher, Assistant Director of Career Technical Education. Patrick Mitchell, EAT! Program Instructor and Mentor, added: “Food is the great connector. It is something that is embraced by the community and gives people a chance to support each other and be involved in a life-giving project together.”
During the first few months of the pandemic, the Five Keys EAT! Center pivoted to create social distancing safety protocols and launched the Small Farm Apprenticeship Program to train new farmers in regenerative and sustainable practices. In 2021 Five Keys and the EAT! Center launched the Norco Rural Farmers and Artisans Market. This weekly event is designed to support local farmers and small businesses. It features more than 20 arts and craft vendors, eight farms, three community organizations and seven cottage food businesses. Recently the EAT! Cultural Center launched the Family Agriculture Revival Movement. The FARM! Program is designed to engage farm families in the culture and community of farming. The program offers seminars and workshops that are open to everyone from the community. Many of our workshops will focus on topics ranging from canning, financial literacy, entrepreneurship, branding and more. Seasonal events and celebrations also are planned to support the local small farm effort.
Long-term plans for EAT! include community education programs and special events. In the short term, Five Keys is building the Ecological Agriculture Training Farm on land bordering the Cultural Center in Norco, CA. The training farm will provide hands on experience in various small scale, intensive agricultural practices. This USDA funding will support all of these programs, though it only covers approximately half the total required budget.
About Five Keys Schools & Programs
Five Keys was founded in 2003 by the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department as the first accredited charter high school in the nation to provide diploma programs for adults in county jails. Today Five Keys is a social justice non-profit agency that has expanded its schools into 9 counties, in 24 jail locations and over 80 community learning centers. In addition to schools, Five Keys operates multiple homeless shelters, permanent supportive housing programs, transitional employment programs, reentry programs and housing for women suffering from immense injustice. Five Keys is a second chance employer. Our goal is to restore communities through education and other programs that respond to the students’ and community needs — which in turn creates safer communities. Visit: www.fivekeys.org.
About the Urban Agriculture and Innovation Production (UAIP) Grant. The UAIP competitive grants initiate or expand efforts of farmers, gardeners, citizens, government officials, schools, and other stakeholders in urban areas and suburbs. Projects may target areas of food access; education; business and start-up costs for new farmers; and development of policies related to zoning and other needs of urban production. To learn more visit: usda.gov.
BY SHARON CHINUPDATED ON: AUGUST 11, 2022 / 6:00 PM / CBS SAN FRANCISCO
TREASURE ISLAND - Domestic violence survivors are unlocking hope in their new homes, in what's believed to be a first-of-its-kind housing program in California.
Cooking in her own kitchen was a taste of freedom Belinda Anderson had not known for more than half her life.
"I'm starting my life at the age most people retire," she said.
Anderson was once a dental assistant, living with her boyfriend and their daughter.
She recalled, "The hitting started, the beating started, then the cheating came."
She says back then, people didn't consider the behavior domestic violence as we do today.
"I felt like such a failure. I couldn't tell [people] what I was going through, because they would've been like, 'Girl, shake it off!'" Anderson said.
So she looked for coping mechanisms.
"I grasped at anything. I grasped at other people's lifestyles. I grasped at using drugs, and then that became my life," she said.
And one day, the San Francisco native killed a cab driver during a robbery. She spent the last 31 years in state prison in Chowchilla.
Abuse survivors like Anderson have served decades-long prison terms; some for killing their violent partners. But legislative reforms in the last decade have allowed women to challenge their convictions by showing they were abuse victims.
Anderson was released in March. Governor Jerry Brown commuted her life sentence.
"It was like a dream," she said, to hear of her release.
Anderson is one of up to a dozen formerly incarcerated women who live in furnished 2-bedroom apartments on Treasure Island rent-free.
The Five Keys Home Free Project started the innovative transitional housing program two years ago, to help abuse survivors unlock a second chance at life.
"When I walked through that door, I was like - I got an apartment. You know, I held the keys, I rattled the keys. I just kept jiggling the keys in my hand," Anderson smiled.
She is getting the wide-ranging support she needs to re-enter society: a second family at five keys, a job, technology and financial literacy classes, and help enrolling in college this fall.
"I wake up with a smile on my face every morning because it's like, 'God, thank you, I made it,"" Anderson declared.
Every day is new experience. From the high cost of eating out, to sleeping in a room alone.
"At first it was kind of spooky to me, because you could hear every little sound," she said.
Simple pleasures bring her joy: her comfortable bed, bubble baths as long as or as many times as she wants, and breathtaking views of the bay bridge from her back window.
"It';; be all lit up at night. Sometimes I just stand here and it'd be like, 'I'm really home, there it is !'" she reflected.
Thanks to Five Keys, Anderson is hope-filled, and home free.
The nonprofit's second annual fundraiser, Home for Dinner, will be held September 22nd at Delancey street. Five Keys is also planning to open another Home Free in the Los Angeles area.
For more information, you can go to www.fivekeyshomefree.org.
Read the original post on CBS News
By Ken Miguel and Phil MatierThursday, July 28, 2022SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- When COVID first emerged San Francisco sprang into action replacing tourists in hotels with homeless from the streets.
ABC7 Insider Phil Matier was among the first reporters to go inside one of these "Shelter-In-Place" facilities.
Nearly a year-and-a-half later, many of those facilities are preparing to shut down. He went back recently to get a look at how things were going.
Sometimes the way we build a better Bay Area happens by accident. When the pandemic struck - tourism was decimated. Small hotels jumped at the chance at filling rooms to keep from going under. It was a social experiment that was born out of necessity but appears to have paved the road to building some real solutions to the city's homeless crisis.
We went back to one of those hotels turned homeless shelters and found things still running smoothly, the lessons learned forcing the city to re-evaluate many of the ways it tried to get people off the streets.
Phil Matier: What have you learned in the last 18 months? What's worked and what hasn't?
Steve Good: I truly believe the shelter-in-place hotels are working, and you can look at the streets and see that the streets are much cleaner right now. We don't want to go backward to a time when the streets are filled with tents. Yeah. But we've also learned that you know, mental illness and drug addiction is something that the city, in fact, California is not addressing adequately.
Steve Good is CEO of Five Keys, the nonprofit that runs this tourist hotel turned homeless shelter. Before the pandemic, rooms in this hotel would go for $200 to $300 a night. But when the pandemic hit - tourism dried up. Seeing the need to house people who were filling the streets of the Tenderloin District, 25 small hotel operators jumped at the chance to rent rooms.
Phil Matier: Have the hotels helped? They've gotten the people off the streets. But what about that second part, the mental health and the addiction?
Steve Good: Yeah, it's a huge problem that still needs to be addressed. I mean, the hotels are hoping to help in five hey ways. In the last couple of years have rehoused 290 people to permanent housing, San Francisco alone has rehoused almost 1,200 individuals to permanent housing. I mean, these are people that were on the streets, they actually now have a permanent place to live.
Phil Phil Matier: Yeah, but we're talking about 1000s of people still on the streets. Let's go on upstairs.
It is just like any other hotel.
Steve Good: And this is one of our rooms.
Phil Matier: There, we're still getting three meals a day?
Steve Good: So again, three meals a day and you get your own TV.
Phil Matier: So you get your own TV and get your own bathroom.
Steve Good: Own bathroom.
Phil Matier: I understand one of the problems we're having with the hotels is that the rooms get trashed. Is that true?
Steve Good: Unfortunately, that's a reality. I mean, you take somebody that potentially has a pet suffering from a dual diagnosis of mental illness and substance abuse, who has been living on the streets for years and has not taken care of themselves. Put them in a room and it can be quite challenging. What you and I might perceive as garbage. Those are their belongings.
Phil Matier: Okay, so we put them in a room like this. We give them meals, do they get any services? Do they get help? Or is this just a place to get them off the street?
Steve Good: Now everybody's assigned to a case manager and one of the main focuses of case management is trying to stabilize them and get them to a place where we could rehouse them in a permanent situation.
For the residents of these shelter-in-place hotels, this is home for the time being.
Steve Good: The typical profile of one of our guests is, you know, we operate at about 60% male and 30% female. I'd say the average range is a middle-aged person somewhere in their 40s. Really middle-aged. Yeah, but on the streets for you know, many years.
Phil Matier: James, it's nice to meet you. How long have you been living here?
James: Two months.
For people like James, these hotels provide a temporary home.
Phil Matier: How do you spend your days?
James: Most of the time I go out looking for jobs, or I visit my granddaughter.... she's doing what do you call it, talent, she's going to summer camp now.
Phil Matier: Thanks for your time, thanks for showing me your home.
Daniel: You want to actually go inside?
Phil Matier: Yeah - if we could.
For others, the shelter provides stability. Daniel has been here since the beginning of June.
Phil Matier: Tell me, what do you like it or not like here?
Daniel: I love it here, nah - it's a great place. I mean off the streets - anything off the streets is great.
Phil Matier: And what brought you to the streets?
Daniel: It was money. I was just, I was in financial debt, and I couldn't pay and then I lost my car. I totaled it in Nashville. And then I ended up coming over here by bus. And I was on the street since.
Phil Matier: So you're from that Tennessee belt from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to Nashville? And then you came to San Francisco and what brought you here the idea that they would be able to help you?
Daniel: No, no, I was just, I was looking. I was just, I was trying to get away from I guess, my past. And I was just looking for a safe city.
Phil Matier: Where do you hope to go from here, or do?
Daniel: Yeah - a job, I am reconnecting with my family, you know, I am hoping to be a functioning member of society and contribute in the best way that I can.
This program doesn't come cheap, by the time you add in the services and the room costs, and you're looking at about $250 a night per person.
Phil Matier: Do you think this is going to be a permanent solution?
Steve Good: Well, part of it is so at the height of the pandemic, the city had 25 hotels, approximately 2,500 rooms and they were sheltering almost 4,000 individuals. So that's 2,500 folks out off the streets. Right now, seven CIP hotels and Shelter in Place hotels remain. And the city's purchasing or has purchased eight hotel properties which are going to be permanent supportive housing. You have 1,000 rooms, and you've placed 1,200 people into other housing solutions. That's 2,000 folks that are housed that wouldn't have been housed, had it been not for a pandemic.
Steve Good tells us, the pandemic reminded us that homelessness isn't going anywhere - pandemic or not - people will always need help. Some of the people who call this hotel home will always need public assistance. Letting people deal with the alternative - the streets - are not the solution.
Steve Good: people have to come to realize that this is going to be a long-term problem, this is going to be a lifelong commitment for many individuals here, the city, the state is going to have to, you know...
Phil Matier: Adopt them.
Steve Good: ...going to have to have to adopt and until we get some sort of mandated treatment, some sort of better approach for mental illness and drug abuse. This is what we're going to have. And these folks are going to be with us forever. That's just the way it is.
Phil Matier: Just one walk down the block shows there are more people in need of something like this. But what is the future? The program has been questioned about how long the federal funding is going to last.
Steve Good: Yeah, it's not cheap.
Phil Matier: What do you see?
Steve Good: Well, the hotels are definitely winding down. Most of the SIP hotels will be closed, come next fall, but with bringing on, you know, eight new properties for permanent supportive housing, which will be a long-term commitment, because it's subsidized housing. That's part of the solution. Folks that are here our priority is to get them rehoused through problem-solving, Rapid Rehousing, or permanent supportive housing, a lot of them will end up just back in another shelter, you know, quite frankly, because there just isn't enough housing for the folks living on the streets. And there are not enough services.
This hotel is scheduled to be turned back over to the owners next June. It will get a deep cleaning before it once again becomes a tourist hotel. So where will these people go? The answer? The next generation of these hotels turned into shelters...permanent supportive housing.
Phil Matier: Well this is certainly a step up.
Steve Good: It's nice, right?
Phil Matier: Yeah!
Steve Good: The truth is if you are going to rehouse someone you have to rehouse them in a nice place. Nobody wants to move into a dump. If we want to get people off the streets, it has to be someplace that is appealing and pleasing.
This is one of the former tourist hotels that the city purchased for housing. It is simple. There's a community kitchen and dining room. Even a place to hang out. Everyone gets their own room and bathroom.
Phil Matier: How are you doing?
David: I am doing fine.
Phil Matier: I'm Phil.
David: I am still unpacking.
David has bounced around the shelter system for years. At 66 - he says he's done with drugs and the streets.
Phil Matier: Do you think you are going to stay here?
David: I am going to stay here as long as I can.
David is exactly the kind of person who will likely succeed here. A case manager will check in on him periodically to make sure he stays stable.
Steve Good: We don't want to see folks returning to the streets that would be the exact opposite of what we're trying to accomplish.
Phil Matier: Where do you go from here? Or do we? What is it this it?
Steve Good: This is it and the goal is to keep providing the support that they need to be able, to remain here and be successful.
Original article on ABC7 News
SAN MATEO COUNTY, CA — The San Mateo County Sheriff's Office honored the first woman to graduate from Five Keys High School while incarcerated. Monet Pierson will be presented with her diploma during a graduation ceremony at the Maple Street Correctional Center on April 28. San Mateo County Sheriff Carlos Bolanos will preside over the ceremony.
Read Original Article on Patch →
Thursday, March 31, 2022
Marilyn Ezzy Ashcraft
We got the money! Last month I reported that Alameda applied for a $12.3 million Homekey grant from California’s Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD). Good news: Our application was successful!
Residents often ask, “What is Alameda doing about homelessness?” These grant funds help answer that question. Alameda will use this money to construct Dignity Village, which includes 46 modular units of transitional supportive housing, and an additional unit for an onsite manager. Up to 61 homeless adults — individuals and couples — will have their own rooms with private bathrooms, and access to on-site “wraparound services.” These services include being connected to medical care, mental health services, and substance abuse treatment, help finding employment, and assistance securing and maintaining permanent housing.
Dignity Village, and similar projects, will also help to significantly reduce homelessness in the Bay Area. That’s because this transitional, or interim, housing is an important element of the All Home Regional Action Plan (RAP) to reduce unsheltered homelessness in the Bay Area by 75 percent by 2024, through creating permanent solutions, not temporary fixes.
Launched in April 2021 by All Home, a non-profit focused on reducing poverty and homelessness, RAP is based on a “1-2-4 framework.” Specifically, for every unit of interim housing, there should be simultaneous investment in two units of permanent housing, and four units of homelessness prevention programs. This formula is designed to provide permanent housing solutions for unsheltered individuals, while preventing others from becoming homeless. Visit allhomeca.org for more information.
Read The Original Article in Alameda Sun
“Three years. Twelve arrests. One shot at redemption.” That’s how Tijanna O. Eaton sums up the loss and longing she experienced during the years she spent homeless, struggling with addiction, and/or behind bars.
An honor student in high school, college attendee, and mother, she was on a trajectory for success before the world crashed around her.
But today, released and recovered from that dark period in her life, the 57-year-old Tijanna has transformed the longing and loss into determination to keep fighting for others who have lost freedoms because of addiction, poverty, racism, and other social justice inequities upheld by white supremacy that have beaten them down and thrust them onto the margins of society.
For almost a year, Tijanna has served as the Board President of Five Keys, following 16 years as a board member. She’s also recently wrapped up a successful 20-plus year career as a Senior Information Specialist in Regulatory at Genentech. In October, Tijanna finished UC Berkeley Extension's project management certificate program.
She is grateful to be drug and alcohol free for 28 years. She believes the scars she’s accumulated on the inside have made her more compassionate on the outside. As a former recidivist, Tijanna is committed to carrying out Five Keys’ mission.
“I feel electrical impulses of empathy and impatience whenever I listen to Steve Good’s (Five Keys President and CEO) report during our board meetings,” she writes. “Empathy, because every single program we have in place, every single study packet assembled, and every single interaction with students puts them one, two, or twelve steps closer to graduating. Impatience because I want everyone to get free and educated, now!”
Since she’s been at the helm of the board, Tijanna has made it her mission to witness and support the hard work and dedication of Five Keys’ staff on the front lines of the navigation centers and schools in the San Francisco Bay Area and to explore the innovative agriculture and restoration programs in Southern California.
“I’m trying to get my arms around all the amazing programs Five Keys offers to people who need a place to come for support, and to relax, breathe, and rebuild their lives,” she says. “I want to sit down, have fireside chats, and let all the people that work for Five Keys know they have the loyalty and support the need. I’ve been those people they are serving. I know how significant and life-changing their work can be.”
A Life InterruptedTijanna’s nightmare began in January 1990, when she shot her first fix of heroin. Three months later, she was hooked and had developed a daily habit. Less than a year after that, she had starting mixing coke with heroin, and by January 1991 she had lost her job and would lose custody of her daughter soon afterward.
Suddenly homeless, she describes descending into full-on addiction—then becoming addicted to crack—and beginning three years of constant drug use, sleeping in alleys and doorways, using sex work to support her habit, and having frighteningly regular police contact. From April 1991 to March 1994, she was arrested 12 times and made 13 trips to jail on charges including possession of drugs and paraphernalia, prostitution, theft, trespassing, and weapons.
Starting OverTijanna credits the SISTER Program (Sisters in Sober Treatment Empowered in Recovery) for kick-starting her transformation. SISTERs is a collaboration between Walden House and the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department and was the country’s first in-jail treatment program, which helps women recover from drug and alcohol abuse. Arrested for the 11th time in November of 1993, she spotted a poster that asked: “Tired of going to jail? Want your kids back?” She remembers thinking: “YES! Yes, I did.” At the time, the program hadn’t even started, and neither the deputies nor other inmates knew what it was. But Tijanna hoped it would be the bridge back to motherhood and the life that ended abruptly after her first arrest.
She volunteered to enter the program on March 2, 1994. Two months later she was transferred to long-term in-patient treatment at Walden House, where she spent two years completing every phase of the program without relapse. Early in her recovery, Tijanna also worked for two years at SISTERs, where she provided group and individual counseling to inmates through this unique women’s recovery program.
Upon graduation from Walden House in 1996, Tijanna began a new life. Over the next few years, she regained custody of her then eight-year-old daughter, got a job, an apartment, started a relationship, and began attending—and still attends—12-step meetings.
Tijanna says it is her hope that people who hear about Five Keys, “will feel the same way I felt and will experience the same miracle I experienced when I went to jail for the last time.”
These days, Tijanna is also at work on a memoir, BOLT Cutters, and is a proud recipient of the Unicorn Authors Club's first Alumni Award, which will help her finish her book. Her memoir chronicles the story of those twelve arrests over the course of three years during her descent into heroin addiction, jail, prostitution, and homelessness and her journey back to a brighter future.
In her book she describes how “before addiction, I had been a ‘responsible member of society,’ having graduated high school with honors, attended four years of college, become an anxious but devoted mother, and was a budding hard rock musician. I drank socially, never exceeding my two-beer limit. Until one day, I did. But how did I make the jump from simple alcoholism to homeless junkie crackhead prostitute?”
Getting clean and sober “opened my eyes to the daily onslaught of discrimination faced by Black people, women, and queers.”
She adds: “My unique experience at this intersection gives hope both to people who have been handled roughly by law enforcement as well as the people who love—or hate—them.”
Today, the words that best describe her are: Advocate. Change maker. And tireless freedom fighter.
The 2022 SEERS Fellows (left to right): Anthony Chang, Steve Good, and Joi Jackson-Morgan.
We are thrilled to welcome Anthony Chang, Steve Good, and Joi Jackson-Morgan as the 2022 Social Entrepreneurs in Residence at Stanford (SEERS). Each of the fellows is leading groundbreaking work in their sector, looking for innovative ways to address social inequities to help individuals and our community.
Starting the first week of spring quarter, each fellow will spend Thursdays on campus:
- engaging with Stanford students, faculty, and staff
- taking time to reflect and generate new ideas
- diving deep into research
- building new partnerships, and
- co-teaching a Cardinal Course—URBANST 135: Challenging the Status Quo: Social Entrepreneurs Advancing Democracy, Development, and Justice alongside Kathleen Kelly Janus, senior advisor on social innovation to California Governor Gavin Newsom.
With a core focus on work happening here in California, we are eager to connect you with the fellows. Please reach out toPaitra Houtsto learn more about how you can share your work, learn from their work, and build partnerships.
Read More on Standford Haas Center for Public Service
Published on Mother Jones, written by MARISA ENDICOTT October 21, 2021
Nilda Palacios with her dog, Milo. Lizzy Myers
The first thing you notice when you walk into Nilda Palacios’ apartment is that it’s spotless—a blanket is carefully folded on the back of the couch, the floors shine, and cereals and supplements are meticulously arranged on top of the fridge and microwave.
Cleaning is therapeutic, the 38-year-old tells me. A warm and welcoming host in a light blue sweatsuit that accentuates her dark hair and dark eyes, and a shiny cross around her neck that matches her glossy nails, she shows me around while her Pomeranian-Chihuahua mix, Milo, follows. Despite the view of the San Francisco Bay Bridge from her back window, her favorite spot, she says, is really her bedroom—with its peach accent wall and purple curtains, a mirrored vanity that’s orderly but crowded with what she calls her “girly stuff.” “It’s homey,” she tells me.
It’s a room of her own—really the first one she’s had in at least two decades. “When I first got the keys to this apartment, I couldn’t believe it,” she says. “We haven’t had keys in forever. I had to learn how to open the door and then how to get in the house.”
Nilda Palacios in her living room. “It gives me a way of feeling comfortable, to be here all the time,” she says. Lizzy Myers
The “we” in this case is Palacios and the three other women who recently become her neighbors. They have all spent much of their lives in prison. But now they live at Home Free, a six-plex on Treasure Island, in the San Francisco Bay, that is a novel transitional housing program for women who share a complicated history: survivors of domestic abuse or trafficking who’ve served long sentences for serious crimes committed against or at the behest of their abusers. These experiences have created a complex web of shared trauma—the abuse, the crimes, the prison system, the reentry—that Home Free aims to untangle.
“I can’t believe that programs like this exist for people like us. I feel safe,” says Palacios, who is the youngest of Home Free’s residents; the oldest is 86. Despite their many differences, she explains, “this is a community here that we all have something in common.”
[Listen to Palacios talk about the personal touches she added to make it feel like home 🔈]
It’s a population that has long been overlooked or ignored—in part because the entire criminal justice system has always been designed with men in mind, even as the number of women in prison has soared in recent decades. Now, this specific community of women is seeing increasing, though still limited, opportunities for release, due to trickling criminal justice reforms and commutations, and an evolution in how we understand the links between trauma and crime. But with few resources at their disposal and little systemic support after long sentences, they are largely unsupported as they return to a completely changed world.
“Somebody might not think grass or trees is important, or it’s not that significant. To us, it’s the world.”
“We owe them service and dignity and second chances, whether it’s a small population or not,” says Sunny Schwartz, co-founder of Home Free and a prominent advocate for criminal justice reform in California. “They can still have impact. They can still effectuate change in their own right. As a society we need to do much, much better.”
All of this is why every aspect of Home Free, from the greenery out front to the bright paint in the bedrooms to the two-ply toilet paper (a luxury unheard of in prison), is deliberate and intentional—and a drastic departure from typical reentry environments. “Somebody might not think grass or trees is important, or it’s not that significant,” Palacios says. “To us, it’s the world.”
But beyond the careful aesthetic choices, the program’s true differentiator is the central focus on restoring autonomy—something denied to many of these women long before prison. “This environment is so conducive to creating a sense of normalcy that they’ve not had for a long time,” says Velda Dobson-Davis, a retired chief deputy warden of a women’s prison in California. “It’s just a wonderful thing to see that someone realizes that these women need the opportunity to live this way—to have a home that is not just clean and sterile, but is homely, inviting, comfortable.”
Prison was incredibly difficult for Palacios; she attempted suicide three times. “I lost who I was,” she says. Lizzy Myers
Palacios has been at Home Free since last fall. It was a long journey to get here. As a kid, she was sexually abused at home and at school. She tried to escape into a relationship, which turned abusive. Then, at 17, she was sentenced to 27 years to life after killing her partner during an altercation. Prison was incredibly difficult for Palacios; she attempted suicide three times. “I lost who I was,” she says. “Every day I had nightmares. I couldn’t sleep. I was restless. I was dealing with depression. I wanted it to end.” Eventually, she decided she wanted to make it through, pursued a degree, and started working as a peer counselor in health education. Finally, in 2017, after 17 years—half her life—she was released.
[Listen to Palacios describe the challenges of her life in prison 🔈]
But the challenges continued on the outside. The first housing facility she went to shut down abruptly, and she was left to fend for herself. She didn’t have enough money for rent, and she didn’t want to get into another relationship just to put a roof over her head. “I struggled a lot, and I stayed in my car,” Palacios says.
Home Free became a lifeline. It’s where she’s finally found a stable space and a home and a community. “To come home to quiet, not have to fear,” Palacios says, “that has established a lot of peace. Even the TV or having music or cleaning…I know that in some essence that has helped me. It gives me a way of feeling comfortable, to be here all the time.”
If she feels sad or lonely, she hangs out with the other residents or the program coordinator; she often helps her neighbors with chores, like cleaning their windows or grocery shopping. “I feel a connection because we all know the challenges we’ve been through inside and the limitations we had,” Palacios says. “Being around them, it cracks me up. It makes me feel like we all understand and enjoy what freedom is about.”
Before Rosemary Dyer, now 69 years old, became the first resident to move into Home Free last November, she spent 34 years in prison for killing her abusive husband.
When Rosemary Dyer first came to Home Free, she couldn’t believe it. “It’s really, really happening. Confirming it is amazing.” Lizzy Myers
For years, she had endured psychological and physical torture at his hands. He had threatened to put her in the “hole,” a grave dug on their property that he forced her to clean out every week. During one vicious attack in 1985, he sodomized her with a gun. “I begged him to pull the trigger,” she tells me recently. “I knew he wouldn’t. That would put me out of my misery. That would take all his fun away.” That night, when she was able to get the gun, she killed him.
But Dyer’s trial did not include expert testimony on her abuse and its effects. Evidence and consideration of “battered woman syndrome”—a pattern of signs or symptoms displayed by someone who is suffering persistent abuse—was not deemed scientifically legitimate or relevant in court at the time. So, in 1988, when she was just in her 30s, she was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.
Starting around that time and in the following years, researchers, doctors, and lawyers began to pay more and more attention to the connection between abuse and criminality. Research increasingly showed that abuse and trauma, especially when they’re prolonged or starting at a young age, have links to PTSD, depression, heightened fight-or-flight impulses, and greater odds of interaction with the criminal justice system (systemic racism and classism compound the latter).
Expert testimony on battered woman syndrome became expressly admissible in court under California law in 1992; by 2000, it was admissible in 39 states. Battered woman syndrome put expert testimony “in a framework that seemed more palatable to some judges who were used to dealing with quote unquote hard science,” says Cindene Pezzell, legal director for the National Clearinghouse for the Defense of Battered Women.
“The criminal legal system is set up to measure harm in a way that’s asking whether or not something happened and not necessarily why it happened or is it going to happen again or how can we put things into place to prevent it from happening in the future.”
Today, battered woman syndrome—first developed in the 1970s on the heels of the 1960s feminist movement—is often viewed as an outdated and limiting concept. For one, on top of being gender exclusionary, experts point out that the framing as a “syndrome” is pathologizing and can be unnecessarily stigmatizing. Moreover, people respond to intimate partner violence in a wide variety of ways dependent on their individual circumstances and life experiences that don’t fit neatly into a prescribed set of symptoms or reactions. It “has always been a bit of an inaccurate and problematic framework, but it did open doors,” Pezzell says. That open door has enabled the overlap between intimate partner violence and the carceral system to become increasingly clear over the past couple decades. Though data is limited, research suggests that when women are condemned to long sentences for violent offenses, abuse is a frequent motive for their crime. One California state prison study from the early 2000s found that 93 percent of the women who had killed their significant others had been abused by them, and 67 percent of these women indicated the homicide occurred in an attempt to protect themselves or their children. The Stanford Criminal Justice Center is currently undertaking a three-year national research project to quantify how many women are in prison for killing their abusers; they believe the number will be in the thousands out of the roughly 12,000 women serving sentences for homicide in state prisons.
Dyer developed a close relationship with former California Assembly member Fiona Ma, who picked her up from prison when she was released. Lizzy Myers
Yet even as our understanding of the connection between trauma and criminality has evolved, the system has not yet caught up. “The criminal legal system,” Pezzell argues, “is set up to measure harm in a way that’s asking whether or not something happened and not necessarily why it happened or is it going to happen again or how can we put things into place to prevent it from happening in the future.” In fact, courts continue to hold onto outdated views on domestic violence and the cycle of abuse, and juries rarely find abuse justifies violent retaliation. An analysis conducted by the New Yorker of justifiable homicides between 1976 and 2018 found that men who killed other men were 10 percent more likely to receive that ruling than women who killed men. These types of misconceptions have contributed, at least in part, to the explosion of the national incarceration rate for women—who are disproportionately Black and Latinx—in recent decades. And one in 15 of them are serving a life or virtual life sentence.
Still, the country’s prison systems overwhelmingly ignore the needs of women. “The system is set up for and by men,” says Amy Fettig, executive director of the Sentencing Project, a national research and advocacy organization working toward reducing criminalization and extreme punishment. “Women are an afterthought in our criminal justice system, and they suffer for it.” For instance, a majority of women in state prisons have children under 18, but everything about how the prison system is structured—from remote locations to inhospitable and limited visitations—makes it incredibly hard for mothers to stay connected with their children. Moreover, gender-specific medical care, mental health treatment, and trauma support, as well as vocational and educational programming, fail to meet demand. Dyer, for one, had trouble getting treatment for her breast cancer behind bars, and it eventually spread to her lymph nodes. Last December, Palacios found out she was at high risk for breast cancer and chose to get a double mastectomy—a condition she feels could easily have been missed or inadequately treated if she were still in prison. “I feel so joyful because I got the option to make that decision,” says Palacios, who as a peer educator in prison was always counseling women to do regular self–breast exams. “Inside prison, I watched so many of my peers die because of cancer.”
For women who have survived abuse, the prison setting can be especially damaging. The violent and controlling environment and standard correctional practices like shackling—not to mention well-documented harassment and sexual assault by staff—have the dangerous power to retraumatize. “Pretty much everything about incarceration mimics an abusive relationship,” Pezzell says. “You don’t even own your body when you’re incarcerated, and for a lot of victims of intimate partner violence, they don’t feel like they own their body either.”
Over time, California has taken sporadic steps to right outdated thinking about abuse and criminality in the legal system. Some of these changes are a direct result of advocacy by women who themselves were serving long sentences for crimes committed against or at the behest of an abuser. In the late 1980s, Brenda Clubine—who was serving a 15-years-to-life sentence in the state for killing her abusive husband—spearheaded the first abuse support group from behind bars where women could gather to help each other process their trauma and learn to break cycles of violence, advise one another on legal strategies, and even launch legislative reform campaigns. When Clubine got to prison she was shocked to find out how many women shared her experience, and she fought for three years to get the prison bureaucracy to finally approve her group, Convicted Women Against Abuse. The group would come to play a key role in statewide clemency campaigns for abused women and the legal reforms to come.
“Here were all these women that were stuck in jail. It could have been my mother, my grandmother that grew up in abusive situations, households, but would never say anything.”
After Clubine’s release in 2008, she continued her advocacy efforts, working with then–California Assembly member Fiona Ma, who was serving on the Public Safety Committee and as chair of the state legislature’s Select Committee on Domestic Violence. Ma, who is now California’s state treasurer, first got involved in intimate partner violence advocacy years earlier when a San Francisco woman who’d repeatedly reported her abuse was brutally murdered by an ex-boyfriend. Clubine connected Ma with others from her support group inside—including Rosemary Dyer. When Ma heard their stories, she felt compelled to act. “Here were all these women that were stuck in jail. It could have been my mother, my grandmother that grew up in abusive situations, households, but would never say anything,” Ma remembers thinking.
She soon introduced two bills: The first expanded the ability of people convicted before consideration of abuse was permitted at trial to petition the court to consider such evidence; the second allowed for abuse that survivors suffered to be given more weight at parole board hearings. Given opposition from law enforcement and district attorneys, Ma’s legislation, known as the “Sin by Silence” bills, failed at first, but were passed into law in 2012. This built upon landmark legislation passed several years earlier that first opened the door for survivors to challenge their original convictions. At last count, these bills together have helped nearly 90 women win their freedom.
This novel collection of laws was an important step forward—but they failed to address another huge problem. Reentry housing is required after people serve long sentences, yet space and options are limited, and programs mostly cater to substance abuse and people who’ve served shorter stints. People who don’t fit that mold often end up without a lifeline, and it can be particularly hard on formerly incarcerated women, who are even more likely to face unemployment and homelessness than formerly incarcerated men. “Although we spend billions on our correctional system, we spend a relatively small amount of both time and money on reentry, which is arguably where our priority should be,” Fettig says. “Too many of the resources have been used to not support people to succeed, but to catch people when they fail.”
Cleaning is therapeutic, Palacios explains in her hyper-organized kitchen. Lizzy Myers
Transitional housing programs are typically strict—often banning cell phones, limiting visitors, setting early curfews, and using the looming threat of reincarceration to enforce rules. The environment can be chaotic, with multiple people to a room. Like prison, this too can recreate or reinforce cycles of abuse. “To get out to someplace who makes you program from 6:30 in the morning to 9 o’clock at night, that’s torture,” says Susan Bustamante, who was released in 2018 at 63 years old after serving over 31 years in prison for the murder of her abusive husband. “You’re supposed to be in freedom. But to have the same structure that you just came out of, it messes with your mind.”
When we first spoke in 2019, Bustamante was stuck in a reentry facility she called her “nightmare house.” The director of the program was verbally abusive, which was triggering for Bustamante. She had mandatory all-day programming—much of which centered around sobriety and addiction recovery, despite the fact that she didn’t have a history of substance abuse. Residents couldn’t have cell phones or leave the property outside of attending prescribed support groups unless they had a job. Visits were limited to Sunday afternoons, which made it hard for Bustamante to see her daughters. “From 12 to 64, it’s been control by somebody else,” Bustamante told me then. “Being in this program, you don’t have a chance to use your own judgment to make a decision.”
“If you’re expecting to help somebody heal and get the foundation and the resources to build up a life for themselves again, and the way that you’re trying to do that is by taking away self-determination, it’s almost like a bad joke.”
“It’s just so ironic that that lack of control for so many people, the lack of options, are the very reasons that they intersected with criminality in the first place,” Pezzell says. “If you’re expecting to help somebody heal and get the foundation and the resources to build up a life for themselves again, and the way that you’re trying to do that is by taking away self-determination, it’s almost like a bad joke.”
This bleak reality pushed Ma in 2018 to connect with Sunny Schwartz, a seminal figure in criminal justice reform circles who founded Five Keys, an organization that provides educational and vocational classes and reentry services in jails and underserved communities throughout California. (Home Free is a project of Five Keys.) Despite spending decades developing reentry services throughout the state, mostly geared toward men, Schwartz was struck by the lack of consideration for abuse in the legal system and the dearth of services for women getting released after long-term incarceration. After talking to Ma, Schwartz quickly agreed to work on the problem and found partners in community advocates and formerly incarcerated women who were dedicated to creating a safe place for other women—and, crucially, a place tailored top-to-bottom to the specific needs of criminalized survivors, one intentionally designed to help them thrive in a radically different world.
Fundraising and finding a location proved to be a long and complicated process. Some sites were too expensive, while others weren’t accessible for people with physical disabilities (which was a must for residents like Dyer, who uses a wheelchair). Complicating matters further, some California counties don’t allow for multiple formerly incarcerated people to live together in the same place. After more than a year of searching, Schwartz finally secured the complex on Treasure Island, not long before the pandemic hit. Throughout the long and winding process, Schwartz relied on help and advice from formerly incarcerated survivors, including Clubine, Bustamante, and Dyer. “They’ve been my advisers from day one,” Schwartz says. “I may have great ideas, but they may backfire. I want to talk to the people who it really matters to.”
In March of last year, Dyer’s sentence was commuted by the governor because of her “demonstrated commitment to rehabilitation and self-improvement.” Ma picked her up from prison on the day of her release. A few months later, on a windy July day, Dyer got to see her future home for the first time as masked volunteers joined the construction team to kick off work on the about-to-be-gutted apartment complex. “I didn’t want to miss this for the world,” Dyer told me, sitting in her wheelchair and sunhat on the sidewalk, watching everyone at work. “It’s happening. It’s really, really happening. Confirming it is amazing.” She picked out a room on the bottom floor she liked. “I’m just thrilled to death that it has a window. Got to have a window,” she said. “I think it’s part of the freedom thing.”
[Listen to Dyer reflect on her journey since leaving prison 🔈]
Almost every aspect of the physical space at Home Free was designed with the women in mind. A team of professionals from a local design firm, students from a nearby art school, and workers from a city-sponsored construction program donated their time, working to completely redesign and rehabilitate the apartment complex. They met with formerly incarcerated survivors to find out what would be important to them, like greenery and avoiding colors and modern design schemes that reminded them of prison. That’s how the apartments ended up with colorful accent walls in warm yellows and soft peaches. At the building’s entrance, pink, blue, and orange planter boxes each have different trees growing to represent the
Pink, blue, and orange planter boxes at the building’s entrance each have different trees growing to represent the diverse and unique women who will come through Home Free’s doors. Lizzy Myers
Everything from the greenery to the furniture and cutlery to the bright colors throughout the Home Free space are the result of deliberate and intentional choices. Lizzy Myers
They converted one of the ground-floor apartments into a common room. It’s snug, simply furnished with a couple chairs, a bench, and a comfy navy couch—an easy set up for a Zoom meeting one Thursday afternoon this spring. As eight women gathered, Beatriz Vazquez, community programs manager for La Casa De Las Madres, an organization that works with domestic violence victims, appeared on a big screen. She started the session—“Healthy Relationships 101”—by asking the attendees a series of “myth or fact” questions about abusive relationships. She went over different forms of control, like when an abuser tries to undermine a partner’s academic or professional success with tactics like “deliberately starting an argument before an exam, work, project deadline, or presentation.”
“My husband literally burned my books one time because he said I was caring more about my classes than I was him,” one woman responded. “One of the things he said was, ‘When you go to school, all you’re trying to do is find somebody better than me’…I wanted to tell him if I ever get out of this relationship, I don’t want another one.”
At the end of the hour, Vazquez asked what they’d like to cover in future sessions. Women suggested “healthy friendships” and “relationships over 50.” All Home Free’s programming is based on what the women want to learn and what they want to do. Understandably, a lot of it centers on unpacking trauma. In addition to the options of group and individual counseling, residents can reach staff at any time for emotional support or accompaniment for things that might be overwhelming at first, like learning to catch the bus.
Programming, though, is expansive. Classes focus on the practical and financial skills which are too often lacking for these women, often in their 60s or older. Dyer, for instance, had never had a cellphone and had no idea what an internet search engine was. She had no credit, and she discovered that the Social Security Administration didn’t think she existed. Others, like Palacios, are further along, though she still needs help in reaching her next goal: saving up for a permanent home for her and her mom. She recently purchased a car and has been researching cryptocurrency investment. At a class on personal finance, Palacios beamed as the financial coach gave her a nod for progress on her credit score and reassured Dyer that they’ll work to build hers up. “We have issues that nobody else has. We’ve been told for so many years by our abusers how stupid we are and how worthless we are. And sometimes, you get told that enough, you believe it,” says Dyer.
When Dyer first got out of prison, she’d never had a cellphone, and the Social Security Administration didn’t think she existed. Lizzy Myers
Autonomy is a central tenet of Home Free’s structure. Every woman has their own room in one of the five two-bedroom apartments, and there is also a lot of free time. The women can have cellphones and decorate their apartments and have visitors. “Especially as a survivor, they need the ability to know that they can make decisions on their own and make good decisions,” says Kelly Savage-Rodriguez, a program coordinator with the California Coalition of Women Prisoners, a grassroots prison abolition organization, who is also a formerly incarcerated survivor of abuse. “A lot of survivors second guess themselves and don’t know that they can do it because they’re beat down so much emotionally, as well as physically.”
This, in fact, was something the women advising Schwartz emphasized again and again. “These are women who have been programmed. They have been locked up and been told what to do their entire life both by their abuser, as well as by the system, and the last thing we want to do is replicate any policy procedure of an institution,” Schwartz says. “It’s a balance. Of course, we have rules, of course we have boundaries, of course we’re creating safety, but it’s not a dictatorial thing.”
This immense amount of work and care built into Home Free’s small program is unusual and hard to replicate at scale, but Schwartz sees the investment as indispensable to the project’s success. “The problem with institutions, among other things, is that they treat everybody as if they’re the same,” says Schwartz. “They’re dealing with thousands and thousands of people. We’re not. We have and should deal with people on a case-by-case basis of what their needs and struggles and wants are.”
“It’s so rewarding to be able to look at yourself in the mirror and say, ‘I like you.”
Fettig, who is not associated with Home Free, echoes this sentiment. “I think you have to do it small in order to be effective, especially when you’re dealing with people with a lot of need,” she says. “When you’ve got so many women who are subject to such long sentences, by and large a lot of them are coming home after being gone for a while. Our prison population is getting older and older. This presents challenges that we have never faced in our history because of our extreme sentencing. This is going to be a new challenge that we have to face, and we have to do it effectively.”
“Quite frankly, every jurisdiction needs something like this,” she adds.
And that’s the idea: to make Home Free a model. Schwartz is currently fundraising and looking at residences in the Los Angeles area for a second Home Free location.
When Home Free opened its doors last November, a few others moved in along with Dyer, including Palacios—though the pandemic, along with the difficult pathway to release from prison more broadly, have slowed the process of filling the house with residents. At my last visit in April, six of the 10 rooms remained empty. But Tammy Garvin, who works as a residential coordinator and reentry coach for Home Free, had identified 66 incarcerated women who may be eligible for the program when they’re released. As of mid-October, two more women were expected to be moving in in the next couple of weeks.
Garvin is also a survivor. She was serving life without parole before her sentence was commuted in 2018. She was sex-trafficked at a young age, and after her trafficker killed one of her clients, she was charged with the crime under the felony murder rule, which allows for a person who is only indirectly involved to be charged even if they didn’t commit the act. Garvin was a domestic violence group facilitator in prison, so she’s well equipped for her role now. “It means a lot to me to be able to help,” Garvin says. “If you have someone who’s been there to be able to help the ladies, it makes a big difference.”
And that’s the key. Home Free is the culmination of a decades-long struggle by women to be seen and supported by a system that has condemned and ignored them. Women like the residents in Home Free spent years inside prison processing their crimes and trauma through support groups that didn’t exist until incarcerated survivors—including some of the women now supporting and living in Home Free—created them. On the outside, they’ve continued that work, growing into their power individually and as a community. Palacios is a case worker at a mental health clinic and wants to get a degree in sociology. Bustamante, who now lives with her daughter in Southern California, recently got her driver’s license and drove up in May to celebrate her 66th birthday with the Home Free team; she hopes to work with the battered woman’s group she helped Brenda Clubine build inside prison, once COVID protocols are adjusted, and has also been part of the reform movement to drop life-without-parole sentencing and a campaign pushing a bill to further amend the felony murder rule that recently passed the state senate. Dyer regularly does talks over Zoom with domestic violence awareness organizations, and she’s working on a memoir that she started writing in prison.
Local designers helped create spaces that feel nothing like an institution, with colorful accent walls in warm yellows and soft peaches. Lizzy Myers
“I get so much out of being of service to others,” Palacios says. “And helping them has helped me.”
Dyer, too, marvels at how far she’s come and what’s she’s accomplished since she first joined Clubine’s support group all those years ago. “When I got arrested, I would not have been talking to you like this. You would not have been able to hear me…I barely whispered. And that’s because I was never allowed to talk. I was never allowed to laugh, I was never allowed to sing, I was never allowed to whistle,” she told me in a conversation shortly after her release from prison. “It’s so rewarding to be able to look at yourself in the mirror and say, ‘I like you.’”
“When he was alive, I never looked in the mirror because I never knew who that person was.” The first time she did, she stood there staring. “I’m just getting to know me.”
More recently, about a year after she’d started her life on the outside, we talked on the lawn of her new home on a sunny afternoon. Dyer, in a bright floral muumuu, was assured and laughed easily. “I’ve had my own personal challenges after coming here, but I’ve gotten over them, gotten past them. There is nothing that I can’t accomplish.”
Read the Original Article on Mother Jones
Rosemary Dyer on her patio at the transitional housing complex Home Free, where she has lived since her sentence for killing her abusive husband was commuted. Credit: Talia Herman for The New York Times
By Patricia Leigh Brown
Published Oct. 8, 2021Updated Oct. 11, 2021
Nestled on her Chesterfield sofa, her electric wheelchair close at hand, Rosemary Dyer surveyed the glittering peacock figurines she had snapped up on her first solo trip to San Francisco’s Chinatown after leaving prison, and admired the bright tablecloth with silk flowers in her new living room.
Dyer, an effervescent woman with a mischievous sense of humor, brought these and other prized possessions to Home Free, a new complex of transitional apartments in San Francisco. It was designed for women who have been imprisoned for killing her abusive partner or being at the scene of a crime under the coercion of an abusive spouse or boyfriend. Dyer was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole in 1988 for the 1985 shooting death of her husband of eight years, who had abused and tortured her, in an era when expert testimony related to domestic violence and its effects was not permissible in court in most states.
The insidious viciousness that defined her life included being repeatedly beaten, and sodomized with a loaded handgun. Her husband had dug a grave in the backyard, saying he intended to bury her alive.
The interior design for the apartments on Treasure Island, the former home of a naval base, was the work of students at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco and other volunteers. Retailers donated furniture and linens to the renovated units. Credit: Talia Herman for The New York Times
In an apartment ready for re-entry, paintings were donated by students of the Academy of Art University. Credit: Talia Herman for The New York Times
Home Free — where Dyer’s 2020 commutation from Gov. Gavin Newsom hangs proudly on the wall — was created by Five Keys Schools and Programs, a statewide nonprofit that provides education, vocational training, therapeutic programs and housing for incarcerated people and the newly released. The complex of five two-bedroom apartments is the result of years of advocacy by survivors of intimate-partner violence, and organizations working with them. Their efforts allowed women like Dyer to achieve release through clemency or by retroactively introducing evidence of their abuse to the state parole board or the courts.
“That women who had unspeakable violence committed against them were not allowed to bring in evidence of the abuse is the quintessential injustice,” said Sunny Schwartz, the founder of Five Keys. “We were committed to making a vibrant, dignified and safe home, a place that says ‘you’re worthy.’ ”
Previous transitional housing options for women were largely limited to those treating addiction. Home Free, on Treasure Island, a former Naval base in San Francisco Bay, was forged during the pandemic last year on a tight start-up budget of $750,000, including staff. The formerly grimy apartments were renovated with the help of nearly 100 volunteers — architects and landscape architects, flooring and cabinetry installers, plumbers, haulers, electricians and city construction apprentices. They all gathered on this somewhat bizarre island originally built for the 1939 Golden Gate International Exhibition.
The landscaping is largely in the form of container gardens of flowers and trees because the land is tainted by chemicals. Mithun, a design firm, help get the trees donated. Credit: Talia Herman for The New York Times
Interior design students from the Academy of Art University in San Francisco devoted a semester to the project, joining mini-charettes on Zoom with Irving A. Gonzales of G7 Architects. They also brainstormed with the women, whose desires included full-length mirrors (they had been deprived in prison of eyeballing their shape for years).
“We wanted color!” said Dyer, who visited the construction site while she was still in temporary housing. She and others had a particular aversion to gray, a shade associated with metal prison bunks and lockers.
A 69-year-old cancer survivor with congestive heart failure, Dyer has used a wheelchair since she injured her hip in prison. A huge pirate flag — a nod to the Treasure Island theme — greets visitors upon arrival. Her accessible apartment adjoins a patio where she grows pots of tomatoes and radishes.
The landscape itself was designed by Hyunch Sung, of the firm Mithun, who chose 10 different tree species. (Because Treasure Island’s soil is tainted by industrial chemicals, the trees are planted in brightly-painted containers.) Sung said she approached her work there as if she were designing for high-end clients. “The idea of beauty is underplayed for disadvantaged communities,” she said.
Nilda Palacios, 38, who lives upstairs, said it was “emotionally moving” to join the complex. She grew up with a history of abuse: She was molested as a child by an uncle and stepfather and then raped as a 15-year-old by a high school teacher. The stressful trial of the teacher led her to rely on drugs and alcohol (“I was trying to sleep my life away,” she said). Palacios became distraught and suicidal. When a panhandler cornered her one day, she said, she thought he intended to attack her and “lashed out,” strangling him. She was convicted of second-degree murder. Incarcerated for 17 years, she benefited from therapists in prison who helped her understand “how the depth of my crime was related to my history,” she said. “I confused someone who wasn’t a threat with someone who was.”
Nilda Palacios, 38, with her dog, Milo, in their Home Free apartment. Therapists helped her understand the relationship between her own traumas and the violent act that led to her imprisonment for 17 years. Credit: Talia Herman for The New York Times
Palacios was released on parole. She has benefited from a more expansive vision for Home Free, which now welcome women like her, whose crimes were linked directly to their abuse.
Moving in, she was “shocked” at the prospect of a private bedroom after years of sharing an 8-x-10-foot cell and cramming all her belongings into a six-cubic-foot box, with, as a current inmate puts it, “your panties right against the noodles and peanut butter.”
“No way, this is my room?” Palacios recalled. “It felt to me like a real home.”
A Path to Humane HousingThe idea for Home Free was born during a conversation between Schwartz, its founder, and the California State Treasurer Fiona Ma, then a state assemblywoman. Ma’s legislation, signed by Gov. Jerry Brown in 2012, allowed women who had suffered domestic abuse and been convicted of violent felonies related to their abuse the opportunity to have their cases reheard using Battered Women’s Syndrome (as it was then called) as a defense. The legislation also gave them the right to present evidence of abuse by intimate partners during the parole process. It applied to those convicted before August 1996.
From left, Tammy Cooper Garvin, residential coordinator of Home Free, and Sunny Schwartz, the founder of Five Keys Home Free, the group behind the project. Credit: Talia Herman for The New York Times
The number of Rosemary Dyers still behind bars is unknown. About 12,000 women are currently incarcerated for homicide offenses nationally, said Debbie Mukamal, the executive director of the Stanford Criminal Justice Center at Stanford Law School and the director of the Regilla Project, a three-year effort to study the frequency with which women in the United States are imprisoned for killing their abusers. Small studies, including one in Canada, suggest that 65% of women serving a life sentence for murdering their intimate partners had been abused by them before the offense. The link between abuse and violent crime was underscored by grim statistics in a 1999 U.S. Department of Justice report showing that a quarter to a third of incarcerated women had been abused as juveniles and a quarter to almost half as adults.
Despite increased public awareness, “there are still a vast number of criminal attorneys who don’t understand how intimate-partner violence creates the context for a crime,” said Leigh Goodmark, director of the gender violence clinic at the University of Maryland School of Law.
In New York State, the Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act, enacted in 2019, was put to the test in the much-publicized case of Nicole Addimando, a young mother of two in Poughkeepsie who fatally shot her live-in boyfriend and father of her children in 2017 after years of harrowing abuse (the case is dramatically captured in the documentary film “And So I Stayed.”)
Cooper Garvin (left) and Schwartz (right), outside the apartment building on Treasure Island, renovated naval housing. Credit: Talia Herman for The New York Times
Sentenced to 19 years to life for second-degree murder, Addimando was entitled to a subsequent hearing under the Act, where her claims of abuse might be factored into a reduced sentence. The county court judge rejected those claims, believing she “had the opportunity to safely leave her abuser.” In July, the state Supreme Court’s Appellate Division reversed that decision, reducing Ms. Addimando’s time behind bars to 7 ½ years.
To Kate Mogulescu, an associate professor at Brooklyn Law School and director of its Survivors Justice Project, the case illustrates “the impossible burdens we put on survivors to prove their victimization.” Women are scrutinized in court in ways that are very different from men, she added. “With women, they’re a bad mother, or promiscuous. Tropes get trotted out on women and the punishments reflect that.” Nevertheless, so far, 16 women have been resentenced in New York.
By far the most common reason women who have been abused by intimate partners wind up in prison is the so-called accomplice laws, in which a victim is coerced into being at the scene of an abuser’s violence, such as driving the getaway car, said Colby Lenz, a co-founder of Survived and Punished, a national advocacy organization.
That was the case with Tammy Cooper Garvin, who was sex trafficked at age 14 and was imprisoned for 28 years for being in the car while her pimp murdered a client. Her sentence was commuted and she was hired by Home Free as its residential coordinator.
Rosemary Dyer, 69, outside her apartment in the garden she calls “Freedom Forest” provided by Five Keys Home Free. Credit: Talia Herman for The New York Times
Another advocate — and a guiding force behind the founding of Home Free — is a fellow survivor named Brenda Clubine, who started a weekly support group at the California Institution for Women. Some 72 women soon joined. Dyer was one of the original members, though until Clubine encouraged her, she was so terrified of life that she could hardly speak.
Clubine herself had sustained years of abuse, including fractures and stab wounds, by her husband, a former police detective. She hit his head with a wine bottle and he died of blunt force trauma. She served 26 years of a 16-to-life sentence. Her fierce retelling of the stories of the women in the prison group — which she sent to state legislators and governors — led to public hearings and the 2009 documentary “Sin by Silence,” which in turn inspired the California laws.
Clubine’s close friendship with Dyer has continued and is pivotal to Dyer’s rebounding confidence. At Home Free, Dyer now revels in making homemade noodles with chicken from her grandmother’s recipe. Clubine, her BFF, observed that a safe and fortifying place for her “sisters” has been a long time coming. “I can’t say how full my heart feels that it’s available to them now,” she said.
Original New York Times Post
““I never thought at the time that this would be the man, my main man, who would be responsible for changing my whole life.””
— Rosemary “Rosie” Dyer
Recently released after spending 34 years in prison on a wrongful life sentence, Rosemary “Rosie” Dyer powered up her electric wheelchair shortly after 8 a.m. Tuesday to make a beeline four blocks to the Ship Shape Community Center. First in line, she cast her ballot in favor of Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom in his recall election.
Rosie Dyer joined the millions and millions of Californians that exercised their fundamental right to vote. The governor's victory serves to vindicate his leadership of the state.
But just a year-and-a-half ago, Newsom vindicated Dyer, offering her freedom from behind bars for the first time in three decades. Newsom commuted the 68-year-old abuse survivor’s life without parole sentence for shooting her husband with the same gun he was using to threaten, rape and brutally abuse her physically and emotionally for years. Laws prevented her and about 100 abused women in California serving similar sentences from offering evidence of their abuse at their trials. When the laws were changed, Newsom granted her the freedom she had only dreamed about. Since then, Dyer has lived at Home Free, a transition shelter on Treasure Island.
“I just wanted to say thank you in a big way to a man who never even knew me, but took a chance on me and set me free,” says Dyer, who has not voted since she cast a ballot in the 1984 presidential election, shortly before she was sentenced to life behind bars. “Even though we could only hold mock elections in prison, I campaigned heavily for Gavin in his run for governor. He was the candidate we wanted hands-down. I never thought at the time that this would be the man, my main man, who would be responsible for changing my whole life.”
She will never forget the day and time, about 4 p.m., March 27, 2020, during count, when her housing officer and warden at the California Institute for Women in Corona tapped on the wicket of her cell, keyed the door open and said, “Rosemary, you’re going home. Gov. Newsom has given you your freedom.”
But getting her vote to the ballot box was no easy feat. A cancer survivor who suffers from congestive heart failure and recently had heart surgery in August, Dyer cannot lift her left arm (which harbors a blood clot) and therefore cannot hoist herself up and into the Home Free van.
“I was determined to put the ballot in the box myself and ripped up my mail-in ballot because I wasn’t going to take any chances with that,” she says. “I just revved up my buggy (electric wheelchair) and was going to head over. But Home Free leadership, Dorick Scarpelli, insisted he would drive me, so in the end I took him up on the offer.”
“I felt so empowered and filled with joy to be able to exercise my right to vote for Gavin,” she says. I hope someday I can meet him in person and express how tremendously grateful I am to him.”
About Home Free
San Francisco’s nationally recognized restorative justice organization, Five Keys Schools and Programs, is leading Home Free, a new program that created a residential community in San Francisco and plans to open a second transitional housing site in Los Angeles offering access to life skills and survivor empowerment programs, as well as training and job placement, to criminalized survivors of domestic violence. The women of Home Free are formerly incarcerated domestic violence survivors who spent decades behind bars for simply defending their lives, or being at the scene of a crime under the coercion of their batterer. However, the unfair treatment continues as too many of these women are placed in inappropriate halfway homes, most often residential drug treatment programs, where their unique struggles and untreated trauma continue to go unaddressed.
www.fivekeyshomefree.org
For the last four years, Nilda Palacios and her mom, Lidia, have had to get creative about finding ways to be together. Then, the COVID-19 pandemic hit, separating the geographically distant mom and daughter duo even further.
Thanks to strong internet and smartphones, FaceTime is serving up comfort and a closer familial connection. Several times a week, the San Francisco-based Nilda, 38, and her mom who lives in LA, prepare home-cooked meals together remotely. Decked out in aprons and oven mitts, Lidia is teaching her daughter how to cook culinary classics like shrimp fettuccini alfredo with basil and fresh fish.
But the cooking classes are serving up more than yummy meals; they’re reconnecting and healing the mother and daughter duo after almost two decades of estrangement.
For the first time since she was in high school, Nilda, who spent almost two decades in prison and years before that on the streets, has found a place to call home. She is one of the first group of women who are receiving transitional housing at Home Free, an apartment complex on San Francisco’s Treasure Island. Opened in 2020, this safe sanctuary is a place for domestic violence survivors who served unfair prison terms for killing their abusers to rebuild their lives. It is believed to be the first of its kind in California.
“I had given up hope,” says Nilda. “Now, my life is starting again.”
Nilda and the others are women who have “endured unspeakable violence and painfully and unjustly ended up in prison because they weren’t allowed to bring in evidence of their abuse,” said Five Keys co-founder Sunny Schwartz.
Now, Nilda and her mother, who are only allowed by the parole board to see each other in person once a year, are embracing the chance to heal their once-severed relationship. Nilda works a full-time job and is looking forward to completing her college degree. She graduated high school and earned an associates degree while behind bars.
Like many women who killed their abusers decades ago, Nilda ended up in prison with a decades-long to life sentence. Many receive life without parole. That changed in 2012 when a new California law allowed the women to go back to the parole board or court and show evidence that they were defending themselves from abuse. Now, one-by-one, in a very slow trickle, these women are queueing up — hoping for their own shot at freedom.
For 17 years, Nilda served time behind bars, ending up in prison and sentenced to 27-years-to-life for killing a man who was abusing her physically and very cruelly emotionally during the time she was homeless and spending some nights at his motor home. She wasn’t allowed to bring into court evidence of abuse. Nilda was released in 2017 from the California Institution for Women in Chino, CA. Her sentence was reduced to involuntary manslaughter and she was given credit for time served. For 16 years prior to that, she spent 16 years in Central California’s Women’s Facility in Chowchilla, the largest women’s prison in the state.
Life hiding in the shadows and suffering, of domestic violence
The road to prison for Nilda at just 17-years-old is pockmarked with years of domestic violence, alcohol and drug abuse and homelessness.
Born on Nov. 27, 1982, she was raised by her single mother in Los Angeles. But after being sexually abused repeatedly by her stepfather and then a high school teacher, Nilda ran away from home, dropped out of school and “abused drugs and alcohol to numb myself,” struggling to survive as a squatter in homeless shelters, the streets and eventually a motor home.
The trauma of those agonizing years has lasted for life, she says. She’s the first to admit, that without the leaders at Home Free and advocates who have fought for change, it’s hard to heal in a culture that stays silent or looks away from people who have experienced sexual violence. Sometimes, rather than acknowledge their pain, others, often the legal system, side with the perpetrator. During her trial, lawyers tried unsuccessfully to introduce Nilda’s childhood and teenage years of violence and the resulting PTSD as a defense.
When the laws changed and she was released, Nilda found temporary housing at a program for substance abusers, which didn’t fit her circumstances. After almost two and a half years, her parole officer discovered Home Free and she found “my first home,” she says. At Home Free, she lives in a two-bedroom apartment with her dog, Milo.
These days, she’s excited about her relationship with her mom and her work as a certified community health worker (lay health advocate) at Omi Family Outpatient Center in San Francisco.
“It’s hard to describe how wonderful it feels to take my dog on walks to the park,” she says. “To ride my bike is heaven. And I’m loving cooking with real pots and pans. I’ve only used plastic bags (microwave) before.”
At Home Free, Nilda is exploring all opportunities for the next phase of her life.
“I want to be accountable and to invest my finances in long-term housing,” she says. “I hope to help clients who are struggling with depression and other mental health issues. I don’t want anyone else to go through what I did.”
ABOUT HOME FREESan Francisco’s nationally recognized restorative justice organization, Five Keys Schools and Programs, is leading Home Free, a new program that created a residential community in San Francisco and plans to open a second transitional housing site in Los Angeles offering access to life skills and survivor empowerment programs, as well as training and job placement, to criminalized survivors of domestic violence. The women of Home Free are formerly incarcerated domestic violence survivors who spent decades behind bars for simply defending their lives, or being at the scene of a crime under the coercion of their batterer. However, the unfair treatment continues as too many of these women are placed in inappropriate halfway homes, most often residential drug treatment programs, where their unique struggles and untreated trauma continue to go unaddressed.
www.fivekeyshomefree.org
Please support us at our Virtual Fundraiser on September 30, 2021.
https://www.fivekeyshomefree.org/new-home-for-dinner
California Prison Industry Authority offers nationally recognized certificate program that promises to get former inmates back to work
LOS ANGELES, CA- In partnership withThe California Prison Industry Authority (CALPIA), Five Keys is launching a custodian training program that will provide opportunities for formerly incarcerated men and women to join the statewide organization’s team of 300-plus custodians and get immediately back to work. Through this training, five people in Five Keys’ re-entry program will train for the next five weeks in this nationally recognized accredited certification program and are slated to begin work in September at three hotels in Redondo Beach.
“This is an exciting opportunity for those in our re-entry population to start a career with the State of California with permanent jobs that offer great benefits and even a retirement plan,” says Sindy Pardo, transitional coordinator for the Five Keys, who pioneered the partnership with the California Prison Industry Authority’s Custodian Certificate Training Program (CCTP) for Five Keys. The goal is to keep rolling out the program to Five Keys re-entry members in the months and years ahead.
The Five Keys training is being held at Los Angeles Mission and the Asian-American Drug Abuse Program (AADAP, Inc. - Youth & Family Programs) in Los Angeles is contributing the supplies and janitor car with brooms and mops. The hotel jobs are in partnership with 70 Million Jobs program, a database of jobs for people with criminal records.
Students in the five-week training will be trained in all the necessary job skills they need as housekeepers and building custodians including safety about cleaning chemicals, floors, and floor care equipment, maintaining floors and other surfaces, restroom care and carpeting and upholstery care. At the completion of the courses, they will be tested for their certifications.
About Five Keys Schools and Programs
Dedicated to getting people’s lives back on track, Five Keys Schools and Programs currently serves 24 million people or 60% of the California population of 40 million in The San Francisco and Los Angeles areas. Five Keys was founded in 2003 by the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department as the first accredited charter high school in the nation to provide diploma programs for adults in county jails. Today its efforts have grown exponentially. The organization interrupts the cycles of homelessness, substance abuse, violence, literacy and incarceration through our 80 community learning centers, transitional housing shelters, career centers, and community-based workforce networks by investing in their humanity so that they can be self-determined to change their lives. Five Keys also hires people directly into our transitional employment positions for formerly incarcerated individuals and people currently or formerly experiencing homelessness, while also employing over 300 formerly incarcerated individuals in full-time, benefited positions. www.fivekeys.org.
About The California Prison Industry (CALPIA)
The California Prison Industry (CALPIA) is a self-supporting, customer-focused business that provides productive work assignments for approximately 7,000 incarcerated individuals within the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) institutions. CALPIA manages over 100 manufacturing, service, and consumable operations in all 35 CDCR institutions throughout California. The goods and services produced by CALPIA are sold predominately to departments of the State of California, as well as other government entities. CALPIA’s goal is to train incarcerated individuals with job skills, good work habits, and basic education and job support in the community, so when they parole, they never return to prison.www.calpia.ca.gov.
From her living room in a sunny, safe and quiet neighborhood surrounded by scenic desert landscapes and views of the Sandia Mountains, Brenda Clubine spends most of her days on ZOOM or her cellphone connecting with and advocating for women unjustly locked away in prison for defending themselves against their abusers.
For 26 years behind bars, and now free, Brenda has been the advocate and voice and ears of women who ended up in prison for life and many without the hope of parole because they weren’t allowed to bring into court evidence of their abuse. Brenda was sentenced to 16 years-to-life was, but released in 2008 when her sentence was reduced to involuntary manslaughter and she was given credit for her time served. She has been instrumental in recent California laws that allow these women to present that evidence and potentially be released from prison.
Following her own release from the California Institution for Women in Chino, CA in2008, Brenda spent several years returning to the prison to attend the support group she started while behind bars more than two decades ago. Convicted Women Against Abuse, (CWAA), helps victims of domestic abuse like herself. She also runs Every 9 Seconds, a non-profit devoted to the prevention of domestic violence and is one of the key champions for Five Keys’ Home Free, a transitional housing program for newly-released convicted abuse survivors housed on Treasure Island, San Francisco.
“These are women who have endured unspeakable violence and painfully and unjustly ended up in prison because they weren’t allowed to bring in evidence of their abuse,” said Five Keys co-founder Sunny Schwartz.
Their ranks are on the rise.Homicides by intimate partners are increasing, driven primarily by gun violence after almost four decades of decline, according to a recent study looking at gender and homicide.
The number of victims rose to 2,237 in 2017, a 19 percent increase from the 1,875 killed in 2014, said James Alan Fox, a criminologist and professor of criminal justice at Northeastern University and an author of the research. The majority of the victims in 2017 were women, a total of 1,527.
In California alone there are 5,900 women in state prisons. Many internal survivors have disclosed that 90% of women incarcerated are survivors of child and/or adult abuse.
A not-yet-published preliminary study suggests that 75% of women who are serving a life sentence is directly related to intimate partner violence.
Brenda, almost 60, knows firsthand that a little bit of compassion and structured support — and lots of zealous advocating — can go a very long way. She also knows the struggle of getting back on her feet after years in prison.
Facing life in prison without paroleBrenda spent 26 years in prison for killing her husband. For years, Brenda endured broken bones, skull fractures, and nights in hospitals. Her husband, a cop, had 11 restraining orders against him. But, after enduring never-ending beatings and emergency room visits, she says, it finally ended in a locked motel room where he told her to give him her wedding ring so that authorities wouldn’t be able to identify her body after he beat her to death. While he came after her, Brenda hit him on the head with a wine bottle where he died of his injuries as unbeknownst to anyone, he had an unusual thin skull, but nonetheless she was sentenced to 16 years to life, because volumes of evidence of his abuse were not allowed into evidence.
She knows the pain hundreds of women across the country still behind bars continue to endure as they hope that one day, too, they will get a fair day in court and be released to find a new lease on life at a place like Home Free.
“I will never forget,” she says. "I knew that because of what I went through, if I could save one person from going through what I went through it was worth it," she said.
Championing for changeBrenda, who today lives on a street ironically called Playful Meadows Drive in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, is passionate about supporting and lobbying for the release of women who have survived horrific abuse from their husbands and the court system that silenced their voices. With a no-nonsense demeanor, and despite chronic health challenges including a debilitating case of MS, Brenda advocates tirelessly.
She strongly believes the heartbreaking, complicated, tragic stories like hers and theirs need to be heard during parole hearings. States need to give women a fair chance to convey their innermost thoughts and feelings about the events that altered the course of their lives.
Brenda’s plight, along with the stories of other women in her CWAA support group, are featured in a documentary about incarcerated battered women called Sin by Silence.
The film's director/producer, Olivia Klaus, sent a copy of the documentary to California Assemblywoman Fiona Ma, chairwoman of the Select Committee on Domestic Violence. After seeing the film, Ma wrote legislation she called the Sin-by-Sin Silence Bills. One of the statutes allowed incarcerated victims of domestic violence to refile for a writ of habeas corpus.
Clubine's devotion to helping victims of domestic abuse is unwavering. After years of advocacy and exhaustive lobbying, she works with the leadership of Five Keys Home Free to free women from “death by prison” and create a place for them to call home when and if they are released and experiencing freedom for the first time in decades.
Currently, there are hundreds of these women awaiting the hope that their sentences will be commuted and slowly, some of them are getting out.
“Helping build Home Free and getting women safely there is a passion of my heart,” says Brenda. “I try to offer support because there is a guilt no one understands and a heartache in taking the life of someone you loved so much but who did not love you in return. You grow up thinking you would have this perfect June Cleaver life and never imagined for a moment anything like this. I know my personal experience and knew there had to be something I could do. There has to be some way we can eventually break the cycle of domestic violence. I certainly will never stop trying. “
About Home FreeSan Francisco’s nationally recognized restorative justice organization, Five Keys Schools and Programs, is leading Home Free, a new program that created a residential community in San Francisco and plans to open a second transitional housing site in Los Angeles offering access to life skills and survivor empowerment programs, as well as training and job placement, to criminalized survivors of domestic violence. The women of Home Free are formerly incarcerated domestic violence survivors who spent decades behind bars for simply defending their lives, or being at the scene of a crime under the coercion of their batterer. However, the unfair treatment continues as too many of these women are placed in inappropriate halfway homes, most often residential drug treatment programs, where their unique struggles and untreated trauma continue to go unaddressed.
www.fivekeyshomefree.org
Please support us at our Virtual Fundraiser on September 30, 2021.
https://www.fivekeyshomefree.org/new-home-for-dinner
It’s both traumatic and tragic that the number of deaths of black and brown people at the hands of the police continues to climb with what we could mark as almost daily anniversaries. It is just one month shy of a year since George Floyd was killed by police, 13 months since Breonna Taylor’s death at the hands of police, and mere days since Daunte Wright was killed. Even after the spark of anti-racism movements and protests, the list of names is prolific. We have heard about the deaths of Rayshard Brooks, Daniel Prude, Atatiana Jefferson, Tony McDade, Stephon Clark, Philando Castile, Alton Sterling, Tansiha Fonville, Freddie Gray, Eric Garner, and countless others.
We grieve, for their loss and all others who have been wounded or killed by police, including Dijon Kizzee, shot by LASD and Mario Woods, shot by SFSD; who both received their diploma as part of Five Keys class of 2015. We recognize and support the communities who show strength and courage in the struggle to reform and reimagine our criminal legal system (Impact Justice) and the very meaning of public safety; we also acknowledge our relationships with the systems we critique.
As we watched the Derek Chauvin guilty verdict being read yesterday for the murder of George Floyd, Minnesota Attorney General-elect, Keith Ellison verbalized a profound truth, the outcome is “not justice, but accountability.” So, the verdict stands for more than just the holding of one jury, but the urgent desire and push to see even the smallest degree of continued accountability for the police taking lives, where historically violence perpetrated at their hands has been exercised with complete impunity.
Before we could even get this email distributed, we were notified of the killing of yet another child at the hands of the police. Weeks ago, we saw the news of Adam Toledo, and just yesterday, we were notified of the killing of 16-year-old Ma’Khia Bryant who was killed by the police in Columbus, OH mere minutes before Chauvin’s guilty verdict was read. While I don’t have all the details there is absolutely no justification. While writing this response, CNN just announced that another unarmed black man, Andrew Brown, Jr. who was shot 4 times and killed by police this morning in Ohio.
The Five Keys DEIB Council has shared our feedback on the verdict which is being incorporated into this email. We must respect our individuality as each of us takes in what happened yesterday and more importantly what we have experienced over the last year in the midst of a pandemic. Ma’Khia Bryant and Andrew Brown, Jr’s deaths have already launched protests and outrage in communities across America. In that vein, our Council thought it useful to share our perspective and resources that we hope will be helpful in your work.
As we embark on another day of senseless murders against BIPOC communities, I want us to fuel ourselves with the importance of supporting our students and clients on being safe, being aware, and being advocates for their own civil rights, while also identifying ways to stay safe. The goal of education is to prepare students for the world they navigate each day. In reaching this charge, we must equip them with strategies that will successfully impart knowledge about race and justice while providing them a safe space to process the everyday injustices we face.
Feedback from your DEIB CouncilOur call to action is next in our fight for social justice. An article posted online stated, “America occasionally extends justice to black people who are victims of police brutality because extending that justice in a few instances keeps intact the racially oppressive nature of the system” (The Undefeated).
Five Keys has been founded on principles of restorative justice. This verdict, though providing some much-needed accountability, cannot take the place of all the restorative work that must be done to heal our communities and all of the families that have been and continue to be harmed by racial injustice. We are grateful for some accountability and believe it is the foundation of repair and change. We are also deeply saddened thinking about all of the Black families who have lost loved ones at the hands of police, where no accountability has been served. May we both celebrate accountability, stay committed to our fight for true justice, and honor those whose killers were not held accountable.
This article explains that change derives from a commitment to accountability. Simply put, accountability is essential for change to occur so we must strive for it consistently. Another good resource on the topic of a culture of accountability and change is: Inclusion, Diversity, The New Workplace, and The Will to Change by Jennifer Brown. Without this commitment to accountability, organizations and systems will continue to suffer making change extremely difficult and prolonged.
Here are some additional resources shared by the Council that you can use with your students and your teams. This website is a valuable tool and also includes resources for our AAPI community experiencing racial hate.
As you may already see, the road ahead is long and winding. We have so much to do as a society but yesterday, someone was held accountable for his actions and that is a step forward. Still, the nation is in need of healing and so while we can take this moment as respite, still the fight goes on until police are truly here to protect and serve ALL.
We must continue to work as a public institution to exercise our power to change society for the better, to transform the institutions we frequent that sometimes promote systemic racism and to advance the values of justice and peace. You have all chosen to be members of the Five Keys community and have embraced this work and we are so grateful.
It is our hope that everyone in our community asks themselves, “Where is my influence in creating a more just society?” We cannot be bystanders on such crucial issues of racial justice and live up to our mission to ensure the transformation in society as leaders, staff, students, clients and partners. It must be a collective approach.
In Solidarity,
DEIB Council
“I will hold your hand the first time for new appointments. When you start to walk on your own, I will be right behind you and when you become like a rebel teen, I’m here if you ever need me.”
— Gilda Serrano, Home Free program services coordinator.
For Rosemary “Rosie” Dyer, it is the simple things. The sunsets. The smell of the ocean and hearing the waves. And she enthuses, “shopping.”
Last spring, Dyer, 67, was released from prison after serving 34 years of a life sentence without the possibility of parole for the fatal shooting of her abusive husband.Her sentence was commuted by Gov. Gavin Newsom. Thanks to San Francisco’s nationally recognized restorative justice organization, Five Keys Schools and Programs, she moved into new home on Treasure Island — Five Keys Home Free. “I finally had a home,” she says.
When she got out, she had a lot to catch up on — like, the digital age.
That is where Gilda Serrano stepped in. As the Program Services Coordinator for Home Free, Serrano facilitates programs for the five women who live at the Home Free transitional apartments, encouraging them on the journey from decades in prison to a new path into the 21st Century. Like Dyer, the other Home Free women were unjustly serving anywhere between 15 to 40 years in prison for either defending themselves against their abuser or were at the scene of the crime under the coercion of their abusive spouse or boyfriend. As part of the Home Free team, Serrano ensures that yoga classes, healthy eating habits and treks to Muir Woods and the beach play an important role in the physical, emotional, and spiritual rebirth for Home Free women.
Gilda provides technological resources so the Home Free women can catch up with current knowledge. Serrano spends much of her time supporting women as they navigate the system — registering for address changes, applying for social security cards, birth certificates and other needed entitlements. She also focuses on finding permanent housing, creating realistic budgets and provides support to apply for jobs online. In many cases, that means escorting women to government offices, health clinic/doctors’ appointments and ensuring needed support.
“We take for granted that everyone has these documents,” says Serrano, a single mother of three grown children and three grandchildren who was born in El Salvador, Centro America and came to the United States when she was 16 years old. Her first challenge: She got a job cleaning houses and learned to speak English so she too, could support herself. “But try finding a job when you have been in prison and are in your sixties, and are expected to upload it on an employment web site. One of the first questions the women ask me is ‘what can I do?’ One of my biggest roles is listening.”
For Serrano it is a mission. A survivor and “thrives” she is passionate that Dyer and other women at Home Free are treated with safety and respect and with great dignity.
“I joke that I have a PhD in domestic violence, meaning I can relate very personally to what they are going through,” she says. “One thing I can also relate to is what it is like not having much, then suddenly you can have things. One of our challenges here is helping women understand not to buy everything they see and stocking up on everything they like. I try to help them understand that they are free now and things are not going to go away. It is important to understand the relationship of wants and needs.”
Teaching the lesson of independence is at the core of everything Serrano does.
“I’m a strong believer that these women need to learn to do these things themselves,” she says. “I tell them, ‘I will hold your hand the first time for new appointments. When you start to walk on your own, I will be right behind you and when you become like a rebel teen, I’m here if you ever need me.”
Serrano also has tremendous respect for Dyer and other survivors. “People have weird misconceptions about what people who are leaving prison are like. But I respect them so much. Even though they were told they never would be able to be free again, they still educated themselves and kept jobs and cared for each other.”
When she’s not working long days at Home Free, Serrano runs her own foundation, the Ribbon Dream Project, which closely parallels the work of Home Free. Its mission is to offer dignity, empowerment, and hope for victims of domestic violence so they can lead healthy lives for themselves and their children. The organizationprovides dignity bags with basic personal necessities, community resources, and a handwritten card with a quote to bring hope to a survivor of domestic violence. These dignity bags are given to first time incarcerated survivors due to domestic violence upon release from the San Francisco county jail.
“Often when police are called to a home for domestic violence, the women are scared to speak out when the police come because their abuser is right there … so they are then the ones arrested because they’ve done something else to defend themselves,” she says. “I know desperate, scared and lonely. So when they are released, we give them a folder with community resources and other things like toiletries and a handwritten note to say we care.”
Helping others is an avocation for Serrano who joined Five Keys five years ago as a data entry specialist and became a restorative justice community services coordinator. Prior to that, she was a crisis manager for a couple of San Francisco organizations.
“I understand what it is like and I know I could have never survived if others didn’t help me,” she says. “Now, it is my passion to help them.”
On a recent Wednesday afternoon, Nelly Vasquez was volunteering to help undocumented families register so they could participate in a grocery distribution program at The Mission Food Hub, a Latino task force resource hub, in San Francisco. For people with extenuating circumstances who are unable to make it to the hub, like seniors, people in recovery from COVID-19, disabled and others who are sick or have health challenges, the food pantry offers limited delivery services.
But on this day, while helping to register an elderly gentleman who was in line for a box of nutritious and comforting staples like oatmeal, beans, milk, fresh produce and frozen chicken or protein cuts, she observed that the man seemed especially confused and his arms and legs were jerking. But with a mask and sunglasses covering his eyes, it took Vasquez a second or two to realize what was unfolding.
“Are you okay?,” she asked, her first instinct thinking he was having a stroke. When he fell to the floor, Vasquez jumped into action, pushing him on his side and calling 911. She stayed at the man’s side until the paramedics arrived, assuring him it would all be okay.
“At first I thought he was upset because he had told me he wasn’t working and was undocumented and was afraid to register,” she says. “Then I realized he was having a seizure. When the paramedics arrived, he refused service because he was afraid because he is undocumented,” says Vasquez, 36, who was volunteering at the food distribution center on her day off from her full-time post as a TAY In Custody Case Manager/Facilitator. “He told me he had epilepsy but couldn’t afford to take his meds. He was incredibly grateful and thankful and kept saying he was so sorry.”
Though her colleagues at Five Keys are calling her efforts heroic, Vasquez says caring is all in her line of duty. The Mission Food Hub is an organization whose mission is closely aligned with Five Keys and the shared mission to care for the vulnerable in the greatest need.
“Nelly was there to support him to make sure he was OK until the paramedics showed up,” says Joanna Hernandez, Alameda County Director of Re-entry, Northern California. “The Latino Task Force Executive Team wanted me to send an email thanking her for her help, support, and patience during an incredibly stressful time. Thank you Nelly!”
For Vasquez, a mother of a five-year-old, supporting 18-to-24-year-olds who are enrolled in case management and resilience programming who are in custody in jail is work she says she feels very passionately about. For the last four years, she has been a TAY In Custody Manager/Facilitator for Five Keys, working at the San Francisco County Jail in the downtown area, and most recently at the San Francisco County Jail #3 in San Bruno, which houses up to 768 people and is the largest facility under the jurisdiction of the City and County of San Francisco’s Sheriff’s Department.
Growing up in San Francisco, she says she stumbled off her path for a while as a teen, got into trouble, and owes her second chance to those who reached out to help her.
Now, she’s committed to other young adult offenders offering care, and not punishment, emphasizing emotional support and helping them to address the issues that will prevent them from a cycle of committing more crimes and instead of helping them become citizens making a difference.
These days, thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, she says it is a little more challenging to meet with the young adults she wants to help. Most of her clients are young men who have been involved in gang activity and their offenses range from drug use and theft to assault and murder.
Through a window in the lobby of the jail, (she used to be able to work with the young people in person in their units), Vasquez works with a caseload of 25 to 30 people, checking in on them, asking how they are doing, when they are going to court, and advocating for them through the process.
“It’s hard because our jails are filled with Black and Latino men who sometimes just made terrible mistakes,” she says. “I hope to be part of a system that gives them a second chance, rehabilitates them so that they can turn their lives around.”
The lesson she is learned in her role: “Never give up on people. Everyone just wants to be treated like a human being and they deserve to be given a chance to start over.”
What is most rewarding for her are the people she has worked with who she bumps into on the streets of San Francisco.
“I encounter a ton of people in my job, and it is super rewarding to be walking through the city and have someone stop me to say ‘thank you,’ that I made a difference in their life,” says Vasquez.
Hello Everyone:
This year has proven to be as unpredictable and challenging as years come. The COVID-19 crisis has affected all nonprofits and has presented unique challenges and opportunities for Five Keys. As we move forward, we will continue to be affected by the ramifications of the pandemic and health and safety precautions in the weeks and months ahead.
But the good news is that there is healing on the horizon.
The promise of multiple vaccines, our renewed faith in a democracy, and hopefully a successful, peaceful transition of our nation’s leadership have great potential to take us forward with a bold, progressive vision that inspires change that will address the needs of all people — left, right and center — struggling to survive and thrive during these challenging times.
At the same time, we must remember that no matter what side you were on during the election, this is not the time for Americans to live in a house divided. Our work is not done and to move forward, we must heal those divides and hold close our loved ones, friends, and colleagues through these trying times so we can bring our dreams of a brighter future into being.
I continue to be overwhelmingly grateful for the hard work, perseverance and nimbleness of our Five Keys staff and the communities we serve. We have stayed committed to our mission of improving and leading forward the lives of those hardest impacted by the critical issues of health, justice, employment, and housing. Through our work to prevent and end homelessness, to educate the incarcerated and at-risk community members, and build a workforce, we seek to address the systemic issues of racial inequality that we all see around us and hopefully inspire change across the nation.
As we pause, reflect and recharge following the 2020 election results, several valuable lessons emerge: a silver lining is that we now have new insights on how to improve our systems and public health. When we return from the lockdown, we will have a more informed framework to create realistic plans for serving our community in the most at-risk, high-poverty and crime-ridden neighborhoods of the San Francisco and Los Angeles areas.
As we move forward, we will continue to invest in the humanity of people on the margins so that they can be self-determined to change their lives. I’m excited about some of our new programs which will add to our efforts to create a footprint of change. They include the Migrant Education farm program in Riverside County, the Weber Welding program, and the likelihood of new school programs in San Luis Obispo and Sacramento.
I am especially proud of our Home Free program which is our small token to try to repair the damage done to women who were incarcerated for 20, 30, and 40 years for crimes that aren’t even crimes, defending themselves against brutal violence. We hope through the next 10, 20, and 30 years we can offer them a beautiful place to live where we can start to repair the damage done to them and restore their dignity. We are grateful for all the people who volunteered weekend after weekend to help create this beautiful HOME including the Academy of Art University, CityBuild, G7A Architects, Gelfand Architects, McGuire and Hester, Mithun, Rebuilding Together/SHE BUILD, the San Francisco Office of Economic Workforce and Development (OEWD), Swinerton construction, author and motivational guru Tony Robbins, Alex Tourk/Ground Floor Public Affairs and so many more (see complete list).
I am very grateful for all of you who help us serve people in 25 jails, seven homeless centers, and provide employment for more than 350 ex-offenders who are our returning citizens. Know that the work you are doing is having a tremendous impact on the lives of many, many people, bringing them to hope in these challenging times.
Gratefully,
Steve Good
President & CEO
For “Miss B,” a San Jose single mother of two young adults, teaching English literature and other subjects to about 70 men in a maximum-security California jail remains the single most moving and humbling experience in her more than 21 years in education.
“It’s so rewarding to witness students reading their own prose or smiling when they master an algebra equation, how proud they are of themselves,” says the 44-year-old former middle school language arts teacher. She adds that teaching at the jail in some ways is more rewarding than teaching in public schools.
“Sure, there are some resistant students, but most are curious and excited to show up in class,” says Miss B.
During the last two years, she has taught general high school courses and led a drug and alcohol program at the Santa Clara County Jail in San Jose where she says she’s learned a most important life lesson — “You are not your crime and your past does not define you.”
“Many of the students have been convicted of violent crimes, but they still have a soul,” says Miss B. “They are still funny, smart people who have potential. I get the honor of being able to enter their home daily and form an open, respectful relationship with them. Meaning, the students are in classes to learn from me and show me respect, just as I show them respect. I also learn from them about their life experiences and have come to view things with a more empathetic lens. I’m here to educate my students as best I can during the time they are with me.”
In addition to teaching the core curriculum, Miss B. brings her life experience and own recovery to the jail, sharing her own story and helping inmates turn their narrative around. Miss B. knows that paying it forward also helps in her recovery as well.
As part of Five Keys Schools & Programs’ novel initiative to teach inmates at a higher level, she is passionate about the mission to turn lives around, forge opportunities and ultimately reduce recidivism and the financial and social costs to society.
During “normal” times, there are challenges working inside a jail,— from lack of classroom space to technological limitations — but the COVID-19 pandemic has magnified the obstacles. In order to keep on teaching these men and helping them to earn their diploma, and the possibility of a life that does not involve going back to being incarcerated, these days she drops off her lessons at the jail. Jail staff deliver the curriculum to the inmates to complete, and then the completed work to Miss B. to review.
Miss B. jests: “Some people asked me if I was hesitant to teach people who have murdered people. My response is that teaching middle school students, and how tough that can sometimes be, prepared me for this, and offenders are still deserving of an education.”
She says she was drawn to the opportunity to teach incarcerated students a couple of years ago when she stumbled on Five Keys during some Google research and discovered a news story clip featuring the organization. She says she was immediately intrigued and was drawn to the mission.
“I have gained such an understanding of the odds some people face and the fact that we are all responsible for doing something to help.”
In addition to her teaching, Miss B. is also interested in training for and working with Five Keys’ restorative justice program, helping with counseling for and exploring how the programs can be brought to life at Five Keys navigation centers to help with the homeless population.
In an effort that should inspire anyone seeking a second chance to turn his or her life around, 39-year-old Oscar Abrons III spends his days leading a crew of men who are rebuilding the breathtaking canyon trails and prized beaches of Malibu following the largest wildfire in Malibu’s history, which consumed nearly 97,000 acres in both Los Angeles and Ventura counties.
As manager of the Woolsey Park Project for Five Keys Schools and Programs, Abrons leads two crews who have been working almost daily to restore the hiking trails, access roads and campsites that were ravaged during the 2018 Woolsey Fire, leaving the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, the largest urban park in the country, looking like a war zone.
During these uncertain times, his hard work and that of his team are a reason for hope, an inspiration that communities can band together to pull themselves and each other out of despair and build
new life.
For Abrons, who grew up about an hour away from the hills of Malibu in San Pedro, CA, laboring with his crew to transform the devastation into new life speaks volumes about his own and the community of support and second chances he found at Five Keys, following his own journey in and out of jail from ages 23 to 34.
“We have a great sense of pride knowing that we’ve faced some bad times in our lives, but that we can work hard together to create a better way,” says Abrons about the eight men he works with on the two crews he oversees, all of whom at one point in their lives have been incarcerated. “Five Keys changed my life dramatically with all the support they gave me.”
It was about five years ago when Abrons said he was taking a painting class behind bars and met Dave Bates, director of transitional employment and re-entry for Five Keys.
“Coming out of jail and prison, I must have gone on 10 to 15 job interviews that were going nowhere,” says Abrons. “No one wanted someone who has been in jail and prison. But the support I found through Dave and everyone at Five Keys, it turned me around and showed me I can do something positive with my life.”
His first job: A crew member for Five Key’s Cal Fire Crew. Recently, he was promoted as manager of the crews. Prior to COVID-19, he oversaw two crews of eight members each. They were cut in half during the pandemic.
“Oscar aka (OB) , has been a tremendous addition to our Transitional re-entry team,” says Bates. “His attention to detail, punctuality and people skills has elevated him above the rest of his crew. I am confident knowing that when a task is given to him or research that is required, I can rest assured that it will be handled. I have had the pleasure to watch OB grow from unemployment to a line staff and into a leadership role. “
Now Abrons says his favorite part of the work is mentoring other crew members.
“All of us have been in transition from incarceration, some of the crew are ex-lifers,” says Abrons. “I like to help them know that they are not alone. Help is out there. None of us can do it alone. Everybody needs help and that is what our work together is. I tell them I want to see all of them succeed. I want to see all of them shine.”
In the meantime, when there are now red flag warnings of other fires in the Los Angeles area, Abrons and his crew head to the trails, beaches and dunes to clear the ashes and prove that everyone can recover, no matter what fires have ravaged their lives and tried to blacken and destroy the beauty. For Abrons and his crew, that means returning to the charred hiss, removing the debris, and planting the seeds of new life.
Recently released after spending 34 years in prison on a wrongful lifetime sentence, Rosie Dyer powered up her new electric wheelchair and set off through the streets of San Francisco to meet friends in Union Square and celebrate her new freedom. That Sunday afternoon, after tooling around the city she remembered fondly from her childhood, the brand-new wheelchair broke down, leaving the 68-year-old stranded. She was just one block from the transition home on Bush Street where she has found safe shelter since Gov. Gavin Newsom granted the freedom she had only dreamed about.
“I was terrified,” says Dyer, 68, who is a cancer survivor and suffers from congestive heart failure. “I didn’t know what I was going to do.”
That’s when Dyer, who is just learning to navigate daily life much less modern technology, remembered her cell phone and dialed one of her advocates she had just celebrated with. She’d promised to be there as quickly as possible to push Dyer home. But Dyer warned her: “That’s not going to work. This thing weighs more than 200 pounds so there is no way you can push me up this hill.”
Fast-forward … while the advocate, Sheila Von Driska was sprinting back across the city, she saw a couple of police officers, explained the complicated situation, and asked them for help. Underscoring their motto to protect and serve, the officers sprang into action to help Dyer. Sergeant James O’Malley and Officer Chris Quiocho from the Northern Station were the first to arrive. But they also quickly realized the steep hill and heavy wheelchair called for a backup team. Officers Simon Hoang and Anthony Quimbo from the Tenderloin Station raced to their aid.
During these times when police officers are rarely told they are valued, Dyer and her advocates, along with city leadership, did not want their compassionate response to care to go unnoticed.
After hearing of the good deed by the lawmen, Damali Taylor, Vice President of the Police Commission for the City and County of San Francisco Police Department, gave the officers a shoutout at a recent commissioner’s meeting to ensure their exemplary actions did not go unnoticed.
“This woman is incredible, in a wheelchair and using it for first time, after experiencing so much time in prison, she just wanted to spend some time to see the city,” says Taylor. “It’s an incredible story and shows how we do not do enough to thank the heroes who serve us every day. I want to thank them and shout them out. I want to take my time to thank those officers who helped this woman who has experienced incredible horrible things. They dropped everything they were doing to make her feel special. Thank you.”
At the commission hearing, Taylor read a letter written by Von Driska thanking the police officers:
“I’m so happy to hear these officers will be commended. Rosie has been through enough in her life — it was poetic. But, I understand these amazing peace officers are also going through quite a bit of injustice, too, due to the ripple effect of what happened in Minneapolis. O’Malley and Quiocho were telling me about the horrible experiences and name-calling they have been enduring because of it … based on the color of the uniforms they wear … not at all who they are, as people, evidenced by yesterday.
“Well, for whatever it is worth … they are my heroes. They stepped up in the absolute most kindest way possible to help me and Rosie with the most unusual request … a broken down brand new electric wheelchair on Jones Street for a woman who had spent 34 years in prison (unjustly) and on one of the very first days she ventured out on her own with her new “wheels” to celebrate six months of freedom with me and you for lunch in Union Square … one block from home … she got stuck. And of all the people in the world … San Francisco’s finest responded with such grace and gentle care. What an escort home!
“Last week Rosie said she was looking forward to an adventure. And what an adventure it was … with superheroes in blue coming to the rescue and the happiest day and ending possible. Thank you to our heroes.”
Using her voice for changeDyer was one of about 100 abused women serving life or life without parole for killing their abusive husbands or partners.
In 1985, Dyer shot her husband with the same gun he had used to threaten and rape her. When she testified about the abuse, prosecutors used her words as evidence that she had a motive for the killing. After decades, and new laws, Gov. Gavin Newsom commuted Dyer’s sentence. She was released in April.
In addition to binge-watching her favorite book series, Outlander, now available to her on Netflix
(she read the series seven times during her imprisonment), Dyer has been opening up about her experience and about domestic violence to lawmakers, college students and others on ZOOM meetings dedicated to helping others gain a greater understanding of the intricacies of domestic violence. She also meets regularly and pens letters and emails to dozens of victims looking for help and survivors trying to do as she is, navigate their new worlds of freedom.
In November, Dyer will be among the 12 women who will move into one of a set of two-bedroom apartments on Treasure Island, thanks to a new transitional housing program started by the Five Keys Home Free program dedicated to helping survivors of wrongful convictions transition back in the San Francisco and Los Angeles communities.
“Rosie is one of the women who has endured unspeakable violence and painfully and unjustly ended up in prison because they were not able to introduce the evidence of the horrific abuse they suffered at the hands of their husbands or partners,” said Sunny Schwartz, founder and board member of Five Keys and Home Free. “We are trying to right a terrible wrong committed against these women.” Schwartz was with Von Driska and Dyer at the Little Skillet Fried Chicken lunch celebration just before the wheelchair breakdown.
Like Dyer, these are women who killed their abusive partners decades ago and ended up with prison terms for life. That changed in 2012 when a new California law allowed the women to go back to the parole board or court and show evidence they were defending themselves from abuse.
As a result, women like Dyer are receiving commuted sentences or early parole. Many need a place to call home.
“This is righting a terrible wrong that was committed against these women,” Schwartz said.
Besides rent-free housing, subsidized in part by the City of San Francisco, Five Keys partners with other agencies to help the newly freed women navigate daily life, from using a cell phone to finding
a job.
“God has blessed me, bringing heroes like this into my life,” says Dyer. “Now it is my turn to help others understand the horrors of domestic violence and to reach back to help women who are experiencing it and tell them they can get out. They don’t deserve to live like that.”
About Five Keys Schools and Programs Five Keys Schools and Programs is leading Five Keys Home Free, a program seeking to create residential communities in San Francisco and Los Angeles providing life skills and survivor empowerment programs, as well as training and job placement for convicted survivors of domestic violence whose prison sentences have been commuted. Learn more: https://www.fivekeyshomefree.org/
SAN FRANCISCO, CA, Oct.14, 2020: Dozens of newly registered voters in Alameda County and San Francisco will be able to cast their ballots in the upcoming presidential election, and many of them likely did not know they could.
Through a new “make your voice heard”- themed initiative, the leaders of Five Keys Schools and Programs are placing a high priority on making sure that the approximately 300 incarcerated students they teach in the Santa Rita Jail in Dublin, CA and the approximately 1,035 unsheltered guests who are living in the seven navigation centers and hotel sites they currently run in San Francisco and Oakland know their rights, including their right to vote. They’re helping them register and participate in the upcoming Nov. 3, election. They are also helping them drop off or mail ballots.
“It’s important for our students to know their voting rights,” says Lillian Santos-Stables, principal at the Santa Rita Jail high school education program, which is run by Five Keys Schools and Programs.
The goal: to get the word out and enroll as many people as possible who are interested and excited to vote, adds Meg O’Neill, director of San Francisco Housing Services for Five Keys. The program is crucial, as many of the inmates and guests at the navigation and hotel shelters were not aware of their right to vote, how to access voting, where to vote and how the process works.
Providing this information is key to removing barriers and empowering individuals to exercise their right to vote.
“We want to make sure our guests are given agency, a voice and an opportunity to participate in this year's very important election,” O’Neill adds. “People of color, people who are poor and unhoused, people who are perceived as ‘less than,’ are often intentionally blocked from participating in the political process. Through this work, we can ensure that our guests feel welcomed and encouraged to share their voices in a political climate which threatens their rights, representation, and well-being. We hope Five Keys will lift the voices of our guests in a way that allows them to be a powerful force in the political landscape, both locally and nationally.”
At the Santa Rita Jail, Five Keys teamed up with the Alameda District Attorney’s Office to create an educational video for inmates that gives an overview of voting rights and the history of voting in the United States. Santos and teacher produced a video depicting their own “Why I Vote” stories. Principal Santos-Stables and a handful of teachers provided personal and emotional glimpses of how voting can give people a canvas for hope, unity, and justice. Their hope is to inspire inmates to keep striving for change through the power of their vote. Inmates also can meet via live video chats with teachers who can help answer their questions about history and voting.
With the Oct. 19, 2020 voter’s registration deadline looming, Five Keys leadership at the two navigation centers — Embarcadero SAFE Navigation Center and Bayshore Navigation — along with the six hotels and an eighth site, are also working to make the process of voting in the U.S. presidential election as easy and stress-free as possible for the hundreds of men and women who are currently unsheltered and have a California I.D., which makes them eligible to vote. At least one of the hotel sites worked closely with the Department of Elections to make the information accessible to guests. Many of the staff at the centers, who have transformed their own lives and have past criminal justice system involvement, were not aware until this educational campaign that they can vote on probation in California, and also were able to register.
“We kicked off efforts at all of our individual sites to get all our guests registered,” says Patricia Richard, Director of the Navigation Centers. “We want our guests to know that everybody’s vote counts and to make sure we do everything we can to help them register and vote.”
On a recent day, Raymond, who in June was released from prison when his sentence was struck down after serving 21 years of a life sentence and now is employed as an ambassador for Five Keys, was busily marching up and down the corridors of the Moscone Center posting posters proclaiming, “Your Vote Matters: Register Today and Vote on November 3rd,” and “It’s Your World. Shape it or Someone Else Will. Vote.”
“I’m trying to do positive things to help others and save their lives,” says Raymond.
At Santa Rita, inmates can view the video with the powerful emotional tales of Santos and the teaching staff on why it is so crucial for them to exercise their right to vote.
“Whenever I vote, I’m honoring the legacy of my grandfather, who was one of 250,000 men from the Philippines who fought alongside Americans in World War II,” says Santos-Stables. “Because he did that, he could vote in the U.S. when he moved here. He helped pave the way for me to know I have a voice and it will be heard.”
“Not voting is not a protest, it is a surrender,” Miss F. says in the video.
Teacher Mr. Tim offered these words of wisdom: “If you have time to whine and complain about something then you have the time to do something about it.” He was quoting Anthony J. D'Angelo – American author, founder of Collegiate Empowerment and creator of The Inspiration Book Series.
About Five Keys Schools & ProgramsDedicated to getting people’s lives back on track, Five Keys Schools and Programs and its more than 950 dedicated employees serve more than 25,000 individuals each year throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles and nine counties throughut the state of California. Five Keys was founded in 2003 by the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department as the first accredited charter high school in the nation to provide diploma programs for adults in county jails. Today, its efforts have grown exponentially. The organization interrupts the cycles of homelessness, substance abuse, violence, illiteracy and incarceration through our 80 community learning centers, transitional housing shelters, career centers, and community-based workforce networks by investing in their humanity so that they can be self-determined to change their lives. Five Keys also hires people directly into our transitional employment positions for formerly incarcerated individuals and people currently or formerly experiencing homelessness, while also employing over 300 formerly incarcerated individuals in full-time, benefited positions. www.fivekeys.org.
About the Santa Rita JailLocated in Dublin, CA, the jail holds about 4,000 inmates housed in one of eighteen modern housing units. It is considered a "mega-jail" and ranks as the third largest facility in California and the fifth largest in the nation. Santa Rita is accredited by the American Correctional Association, thus making it the only facility in California holding this prestigious award. It is recognized as one of the most technologically innovative jails in the world. A robotic system speeds delivery of laundry supplies and food to all areas of the 113-acre campus. State-of-the-art criminal justice systems serve the internal operation, while the largest rooftop solar power system converts enough electricity to power nearly one-half of the facility's electrical needs during daylight hours. Sheriff Ahern's philosophy of cost-effective delivery of services is reflected in the private sector partnerships that support the jail's operation. A modem cook-chill food service operation produces 12,000 economical meals per day. On site medical and mental health services save money while reducing the patient load at county medical facilities. Throughout its history, the Santa Rita Jail Facility has served the criminal justice system and contributed to the safety of the citizens of the County of Alameda by providing a safe, secure, and humane environment for inmates and staff.
When ordinary life came to a halt, Sherwin Karunungan joined the brave Five Keys front line team members who continued to move forward at homeless shelters and navigation centers on the streets of San Francisco.
As part of the IT Support services for northern California, Karunungan is one of numerous Five Key’s essential workers who have been reporting to their jobs every day to serve the community. In a time in history when nothing is more crucial than ZOOM, the Internet and technology connectivity, he’s one of a four-person IT team helmed with keeping the organization’s almost 800 employees and the more than 25,000 individuals served, online and connected to their work via their computers, smartphones, Chromebooks, and MiFi’s.
Five Keys’ own geek squad on call, Karunungan is one of a team of two in Northern California (there also are two on the IT team in SoCal), who spends his days supporting teachers and school staff remotely then driving from Five Keys offices, navigation centers and hotel homeless shelters setting up new computers, digital equipment and trouble-shooting Internet connection emergencies and computer meltdowns on the frontlines since the start of the pandemic.
“Shelter in place isn’t a reality for all the Five Keys essential workers at the homeless shelters,” says Karunungan. “There, staffs are working around the clock and that means they need to have computer equipment for themselves and Wi-Fi for guests to keep operations functioning. For Five Keys teachers and others who are trying to stay connected with their students virtually, computers and Internet access also are vital.”
To serve those needs, Karunungan is responsible for equipping the five hotels Five Keys was tasked to run as homeless shelters with computers, printers, scanners and Wi-Fi. That’s in addition to the two navigation centers in San Francisco, assisting with onboarding some new employees on using technology. In addition, he makes sure the tech equipment is functioning on the education side for teachers who are doing distance learning.
One of his significant roles with the quarantine in place was making sure Five Keys students had access to technology by helping configure Chromebooks in NorCal. His colleagues did the same in SoCal. The other task he had to work on was getting the Five Keys GED test center up and running and ready for in person testing. With shelter in place in effect, a new Online Proctored GED Test was offered by GED back in June. The pilot program was offered in select areas of the U.S. With the Online Proctored GED Test, students can take the GED test from home while securely monitored by an online proctor. Five Keys had over 20 students participate in this new online GED test and took the test from their home. Now that the Five Keys testing facility is open, students have the option to either test at home or come into the testing site.
“A lot of my job is driving site to site to make sure that technology like printing and Internet connectivity are working,” says Karunungan. “As a tech person, I get to see all the great work these amazing Five Keys employees are doing at the homeless shelters and navigation centers as well as incredible teachers providing distance learning. I used to not really get that I was doing anything all that important. But early on, when I had set up computers for inmates inside the county jails, showing them how to use computers and even administer GED exams, I realized that I was helping them, and it made me feel really good.”
“Now, I know that it’s really important for me to make sure all the technology is working because it is so necessary to keep all the operations running.”
Growing up in the Los Angeles area, Karunungan graduated from California State University, Northridge with a degree in History. But he was always drawn to technology. Having worked at for-profit companies, he was intrigued when he saw an advertisement for technology support for Five Keys in 2013. Among his initial projects: setup one of Five Keys location as an authorized GED test center and provide computer training inside one of San Francisco’s county jails. A few years later he was tasked with implementing and administering Five Keys first GED testing center inside a correctional facility at Santa Rita.
These days, he is passionate about keeping Five Keys’ technology helping to drive all its services and says he loves driving around all day long checking in on staff and guests to assist with any technology needs. His other love is his daughter, Krystal Karunungan, who recently completed her white coat ceremony at the UCLA School of Medicine and worked with Alzheimer’s disease researchers at UCSF where she coordinated a study on the early onset of atypical Alzheimer’s.
“I’m really, really proud of her and know she is going to do great things for people in the world,” he says. “I’m just an essential worker, but I think during these last few months, I’ve realized that in my small way, I hope I’m helping people too.”
During the time she was in and out of Santa Rita Jail in Dublin, CA for stolen property and drugs, Roshanda “Shanda” Howard would reflect on her teenage years in which she dropped out of high school in the 11th grade and fled her family to head for Michigan.
“I always wanted to make something out of my life, but some stupid decisions I made would always stop me,” says the Oakland, CA resident.
Fast-forward to this August, when Howard, 42, decked out in a cap and gown holding a bouquet of balloons, stood on her driveway with her four kids and her mother at her side, as a parade of teachers from Five Keys Schools and Programs drove cheering, honking their horns and playing the Pomp and Circumstance graduation walking march, to celebrate her major milestone: graduating from high school.
View Drive-By Graduation“I had my mindset on this, this time,” says Howard, who just a week after her graduation was hired by a San Francisco private security firm to patrol building sites on the overnight shift. “It feels so good to finally finish. It’s been a long journey and I wanted to quit many times.”
Howard says she was especially motivated in 2018 when her daughter, Armani Nicole, now 20, graduated from high school. At the same time, one of her friends graduated from the Five Keys program. “What other motivation did I need,” she says.
“I’m so grateful to my teacher, Miss Michelle, because so many times I wanted to quit,” says Howard. “But she would call and say, ‘Are you coming in today?’ She always just kept telling me she knew I could do it.”
A single mom, recently out of jail and struggling to make a living, Howard says there were many times “I just thought, I can’t do this.”
Following her jail time, Howard regained custody of her four children through the Maximizing Opportunities for Mothers to Succeed (M.O.M.S.) program at the Santa Rita jail, whose mission is to promote family reunification and the healthy development of children by increasing the capacity of their mothers for self-sufficiency and parent-child bonding. After enrolling in Five Keys in 2018, she persevered through distance learning, taking rigorous courses including Algebra I.
For Howard and others who were formerly incarcerated, the Five Keys program cuts the recidivism rate by 30 percent, compared to statewide averages of 65 percent. Unfortunately, without programs like Five Keys, many people in jails rarely get the chance to make up for the educational opportunities from which they have been excluded — opportunities that impact their chances of reentry success.
Today, Howard proudly displays her diploma next to her daughters on a table in their front living room. She feels it sends a strong signal to her other three children, Desjon, 23, Ojeda, 16, and Kendall Reye, 5, to get their high school degree. In addition to the drive by graduation her family has thrown her two parties to celebrate this summer. And, especially meaningful to her was a phone call from her sister with whom she has been estranged from for a long time. “My sister called to say, ‘it’s about time.’ That meant a lot to me.”
Now employed, Howard has her eye on continuing her education and becoming a probation officer for young people.
“Every time I walk in my living room and see my diploma, I look at it and ask myself what’s next,” she says. “But now I know I can accomplish what that will be. I have learned to stay calm and work hard and that I can succeed.”
For Jennifer Clark, school this fall feels like the 19th mile in a marathon. She is so close to the 26-mile finish line, but algebra, physical science and her own fears are threatening to trip her.
“This is really, really hard,” says the Novato resident. “But I’ve got to do it, I’ve got to show my kids that I can be more than just someone who had a lot of babies.”
There is no doubt that training/studying for her high school diploma has been beyond challenging at times.
Now 45, Clark dropped out high school her freshman year when she became pregnant with her first of eight children. The next few decades were not that kind. She’s struggled with debilitating depression and fought to survive through abusive relationships with one of her two husbands, and several of her children’s fathers. Clark was sent to jail for a week for fighting back during a domestic violence dispute — an incident that cost her her job as a certified nursing assistant at a home for the elderly and marred her record, making finding employment difficult.
But on June 10, 2019 exactly, a Five Keys Schools and Programs graduate told Clark about the program and she enrolled right away. Now, just 36.75 credits from achieving her high school graduation, she is determined to “hold my head high and skip across the stage,” to receive her high school diploma.
She attributes that feat to the compassion and coaching of her teacher, Mrs. Carla, at the Vallejo Five Keys location and the school’s principal, Ms. Rachel.
“My speech is going to be about one true teacher that has held it down and helped me and never ever given up on me,” says Clark. “And believe me, I’m a pain in the butt.”
She also is grateful for the patience and flexibility Mrs. Carla gave her in the classroom.
“Many times, I was so depressed and just wanted to give up, but she stood by my side and kept saying, ‘you can do this. You can’t let your dreams die.”
During her Five Keys schooling, Jennifer was given a certificate of graduation in 2017 by the Novato police department as a peer support substance abuse counselor, a role she says falls near and dear to her heart because her sister struggled with substance abuse and she is eager to help others.
These days, Clark says she hunkers down all day long every day studying for her degree online.
Throughout it all, she says she always kept her eye on the prize, her eight children — Anna Maria, 29, Rafael, 27, Rolando, 25, Miguel, 22, Rudy, 20, Samuel, 12, Hannah, 11, Jennifer, 9, and grandson, Gordo. Two of her youngest children are special needs, so she says she is a full-time mom and student. Any time she feels like quitting, she thinks of her family.
Clark says she knows how happy she will feel when she finishes. “I’m already thinking ahead to taking some college classes,” she says. “I want to do something in law enforcement. I really like helping people, especially when they are in trouble and need help. I still can’t believe I’ll be 45 when I finish high school. But hey, I finally am going to do it.”
““Tutors at your fingertips”: ZOOM and hand-delivered lesson plans result in record number of inmates graduating from high school during
global pandemic”
SAN FRANCISCO, CA, August 26, 2020. As schools across the country begin a new academic year under the shadow of a global pandemic, ugly discourse, and high anxiety, educators at the Alameda County Santa Rita Jail in Dublin, CA are confronting many challenges to continue access to education behind bars for more than 300 adult students.
“We realized that there was a greater need than ever for us to keep connecting with students during COVID,” says Lillian Santos-Stables, principal at the Santa Rita Jail high school education program, which is run by Five Keys Schools and Programs.
Calling it “tutors at your fingertips,” a new service launched earlier this week, a school hotline for inmates who were distributed tablets allows them to schedule and phone in for tutoring from the Five Keys teachers who are on-site at the jail, but remotely tutoring from their offices. The jail also expanded their inmate ZOOM visitation program so that teachers can “visit” with students in supervised online sessions and is continuing a program instituted in March, where books, lesson plans and other learning materials are prepared by the teachers, distributed to the students and then returned and graded.
Due to the creativity and exceptional adjustments of Five Keys and the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office working in tandem, 15 incarcerated students at the Santa Rita jail graduated high school this summer — more than any year before, according to Sergeant Daniel Molleson, Director of Inmate Services.“COVID actually opened up a new opportunity for us. Our inmates became hypervigilant about focusing on their own self-development and really focused on their education this summer. We are creating a new way of learning and moving away from the way it used to be. We are creating the new normal.”
Throughout the summer, small groups of socially distanced students also met for targeted courses on health and hygiene (especially significant during the pandemic). This fall, there will be podcasts and learning sessions on voter registration and information on the importance of voting and how inmates can vote.
The creative pivot to continue to provide education to the jail’s inmates was jump-started last March immediately after COVID shuttered schools across the nation.
The mission is urgent for Five Keys‘ schools to continue imparting lessons in civics, history, math, and ethics, has always been urgent, but now especially so, says Santos-Stables.
Continuing inmate’s access to education reduces crime and increases the likelihood of successful reentry to society. Research shows that higher education in prison is a proven tool for changing lives. One study found that participants in correctional education were 48% less likely to return to crime. Another showed that education in prison can improve employment among returning citizens.
Education behind bars transforms lives.
“School gives our inmates a sense of drive and accomplishment and it occupies their time,” says Sgt. Molleson. “Our students feel productive and that they are making positive changes in their lives. Without it, we would have more fights, depression; it just changes their overall well-being. It changes their thinking to not look at time in custody as wasted time in their lives.”
Santos-Stables and Sgt. Molleson are a dedicated team on a mission to educate inmates. Moments
like celebrating the graduations of the 15 students including Tiara Arnold, 27, are life-changing. Arnold was arrested at age 17, and has lived at Santa Rita, and then prison, but is back awaiting an appeal of her conviction.
Says Arnold: “When I got arrested, my life was really going in the wrong direction. I was really distracted and made a lot of poor decisions. But while life was progressing for everyone else, I didn’t go to prom, I didn’t graduate from high school and I didn’t get to do the one thing my mom asked me to do, which was to get my high school diploma. I was in the worst place my life could be. But now, since people invested so much in me and helped me believe in myself, I am determined to lead a life that is meaningful and helpful to others. I plan to go to college and hope to help my mom with her business and help other at-risk kids who are struggling.”
About Five Keys Schools & Programs
Dedicated to getting people’s lives back on track, Five Keys Schools and Programs and its more than 790 dedicated employees serve more than 25,000 individuals each year throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles and nine counties throughout the state of California. Five Keys was founded in 2003 by the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department as the first accredited charter high school in the nation to provide diploma programs for adults in county jails. Today, its efforts have grown exponentially. The organization interrupts the cycles of homelessness, substance abuse, violence, illiteracy and incarceration through our 80 community learning centers, transitional housing shelters, career centers, and community-based workforce networks by investing in their humanity so that they can be self-determined to change their lives. Five Keys also hires people directly into our transitional employment positions for formerly incarcerated individuals and people currently or formerly experiencing homelessness, while also employing over 300 formerly incarcerated individuals in full-time, benefited positions. www.fivekeys.org.
About the Santa Rita Jail
Located in Dublin, CA, the jail holds about 4,000 inmates housed in one of eighteen modern housing units. It is considered a "mega-jail" and ranks as the third largest facility in California and the fifth largest in the nation. Santa Rita is accredited by the American Correctional Association, thus making it the only facility in California holding this prestigious award. It is recognized as one of the most technologically innovative jails in the world. A robotic system speeds delivery of laundry supplies and food to all areas of the 113-acre campus. State-of-the-art criminal justice systems serve the internal operation, while the largest rooftop solar power system converts enough electricity to power nearly one-half of the facility's electrical needs during daylight hours. Sheriff Ahern's philosophy of cost-effective delivery of services is reflected in the private sector partnerships that support the jail's operation. A modem cook-chill food service operation produces 12,000 economical meals per day. On site medical and mental health services save money while reducing the patient load at county medical facilities. Throughout its history, the Santa Rita Jail Facility has served the criminal justice system and contributed to the safety of the citizens of the County of Alameda by providing a safe, secure, and humane environment for inmates and staff.
“My journey to get where I am now couldn’t have been possible without having Five Keys support. I thought I was never going to experience what it was like to walk the stage, to be able to tell my family and friends that I graduated from high school.
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— Destiny Mcghee, high school graduate
Destiny Mcghee, a 2019 Five Keys graduate, works on the front line of an emergency response firm dispatching help to the elderly in crisis.
In many ways, Five Keys Schools and Programs was the lifeline that saved her from becoming a statistic. In high school, she repeatedly was told by teachers and administrators to forget about graduating. They told her she did not have the smarts to make it, so she might as well just drop out.
That is what she did.
“I was told from previous schools that I wouldn’t make it, that I was just going to be a high school dropout,” said the Sylmar, CA resident. “Or they’d say that with my grades, I probably won’t get far in life.”
Over the course of the next decade, she internalized their prophesy and lived up to her teacher’s expectations.
“Of course, that made me feel so discouraged, so I gave up,” says Mcghee. When I was 18, I gave up on everything and got so tired of trying that I just moved to Vegas and got away from my problems.”
The oldest of eight, Mcghee started high school in Lancaster, California with great promise.
“When I first started ninth grade I did amazing and I was so excited to be in high school around my friends and learning so much,” she remembers.
But after her freshman year, her mother sent her to live with a relative across the country to Missouri. When she returned to California, Mcghee’s mom told her daughter she would need to home school.
As the oldest, the responsibility of childcare for her siblings, and educating them fell into her lap because her mother was working 24/7.
“I had no help,” says Mcghee. “I was depressed because I didn’t understand anything and finally convinced my mom to let me go to the public high school in 12th grade.”
That is where any hope for high school graduation spiraled out of control. After one semester she was told her home school transcripts did not meet their requirements and she would have to start high school all over.
“I was so broken,” she says. “That’s when I failed.”
Finding Destiny: “You just can’t give up on yourself.”Fast forward and after living in Vegas for more than five years, Mcghee returned to California to live with her aunt, who just happened to work at Five Keys.
That was the start of her journey.
Before long, Mcghee was enrolled in Five Keys and graduated at 24 with her high school diploma.
She attributes that success to her teacher, LaQuette Milner, or “Mrs. LaQuette” as she calls her.
“She was the most patient teacher I had ever come across, helpful, and wanted everyone in her class to do well,” says Mcghee. “I will never forget Five Keys.”
“I really wish I had something like this when I was younger but very happy I was able to go back and do better for myself,” says Mcghee. “I’m so grateful for the experience. “
Last year, she graduated surrounded by her friends and family.
“I was so proud to finally graduate because I was the only kid out of all of my mom’s children that didn’t graduate from high school yet and the oldest,” she says. “I tell everyone about my story and how this school really makes sure their students succeed. You just cannot give up on yourself, you must keep striving and working hard for a better future for yourself. No one can do it for you.”
“Through the small successes, our students began to feel what it’s like to achieve and embrace their personal strengths, gifts and abilities”
— Kris Davison, Five Keys teacher
For years, Kris Davison served as Director of Academic support for a private school in Santa Rosa, CA. Seeking something new — and a little more socially responsive to racial disparities and opportunities for all people — she switched to prison education, becoming a high school teacher with Five Keys Schools and Programs at the Sonoma County jails.
“I was dissatisfied with what I considered a lack of equity and social justice for struggling and atypical students schoolwide,” says Davison, who launched a search for an educational organization that shared her core values. “I found Five Keys!”
"It’s been over a year since she resigned from her previous position and navigated thetransition, and the prison hallways, determined to find a unique way to help educatepeople in the prison system and put into action her belief that education is a gateway tosocial and economic mobility.
“I get to go to work every day and make a positive difference,” she says. “I get to help each individual I meet, see their personal gifts and areas of needed growth with no judgement. We celebrate successes and work together for improvement.”
What she has found at Five Keys are a group of students highly motivated to surmount obstacles to further their education. During the last year, she has worked with more than 200 incarcerated students who have gaps in their schooling and who may one day be back out in the world.
“I have noticed that most (of the students) in no way lack ability,” she says. “They lack academic confidence, self-efficacy and self-esteem. Like most of us, they have experienced personal failure and disappointment — but in the extreme.
“Part of our responsibility as Five Keys teachers, is to help students create a better future for themselves and their families. We facilitate both hope and the knowledge that as they learn, they can do ‘better,” she says.
Davison says she has witnessed many of her students who have been released from custody make a beeline to continue their education with Five Keys through the community sites. Many have landed jobs.
“They have discovered that they are capable and deserving of a better life,” she says. “To me, that is success!”
Installing hope and a new future“Through the small successes, our students began to feel what it's like to achieve and embrace their personal strengths, gifts and abilities,” says Davison. “Through this growth, most students begin to have greater self-esteem. As self-esteem increases, they make better choices, they can achieve more, and life is better. Isn't that what we want for each other as human beings?”
To Davison, her life experience as wife, mom of five and grandma of nine is surprisinglyrelevant, teaching in prison. A first-generation college graduate, Davison was also thefirst female in her family to graduate high school. She has a bachelor’s degree in specialeducation and a master’s in education, with a special certification in autism."
During the last five months, the COVID-19 pandemic has made teaching at the jails very challenging because of the quarantine. For one thing, the jails do not offer access to Internet and so unlike traditional high schools, they could not shift their curriculums online.
“We met with the teachers and coordinators at the facilities — everyone we could — to try to brainstorm how are we going to do this when both the teachers are sheltering in place and the students are on lockdown?” she says.
“Covid has changed many things in our world,” she says. “What hasn't changed is our desire at Five Keys to facilitate learning and growth.”
At the jail in Sonoma County, Davison and the teaching team have continued to work with students (albeit with distance). With no access to the Internet, Zoom face-to-face meetings are not an option, but they still communicate “via good old-fashioned letters.”
“We write and send work into the jail for each student regularly,” she says. “Although this type of correspondence takes more time, we are all developing additional life skills. We are learning to communicate more clearly. We are learning patience; we are better understanding the value of human connection. These are unintended consequences of the current challenges and I am so grateful for this opportunity! As we move forward, our hope is to safely begin meeting with students (through visiting glass) until we are again able to meet in person.”
Davison is passionately committed to the crucial role education can play in changing lives for people in jail.
“What has become even more obvious to me while working at Five Keys is that human beings cannot DO better until they KNOW better,” she says. “If a person (through whatever background and circumstances they have come from) has not learned empathy, compassion or strategies and soft skills for life success, they are absolutely not able to fit into societal ‘norms.’’
“We expect that everyone around us has had the rights and privileges that we were afforded; things like a high school education, three meals a day, a supportive home, loving parents, etc.). The numbers do not lie. Many incarcerated students have not completed high school. They lack the basic knowledge or the diploma that will allow them to have meaningful employment. It is no wonder that the loss of hope has pushed them to a different path, one of self-destruction,” she adds.
At Five Keys, she says she and other teachers and staff are committed to helping each student they serve see their own greatness.
“We work to help them become reflective practitioners and scholars,” she says.
Statistics underscore the importance of what Davison and Five Keys are doing. Getting a high school degree reduces a person’s likelihood of re-incarceration by 43 percent, according to a report by the RAND Corporation
Davison says she has been humbled and is extremely grateful to have the opportunity to teach her students.
“Being a teacher and a member of the Five Keys community has changed me and helped me to grow,” she says. “I, like many, was a bit apprehensive about teaching at an in-custody facility. Worries of safety were forcibly expressed by family members and friends.
“What has happened though, is that I have learned so much through this opportunity. I have developed even more empathy for my students. My passion for social justice has only increased. Yes, I work with accused ‘criminals.’ I teach murderers, rapists, thieves, etc., and they know me by name and ask me for help. They allow me to see them and be a part of their lives at their lowest and perhaps most vulnerable. I don't live in fear, I live in gratitude for this opportunity,” she says.
Lessons learned on the frontlines: “My vocation is to facilitate learning; I am no longer burdened to judge.”
“Enrolling in school gives our students the opportunity to focus on something productive and positive, to keep their minds and hearts occupied with something that gives them a sense of hope and personal accomplishment. Over and over I’ve seen these incredible shifts in attitude.”
Growing up in Santa Rosa, CA, Rose Kleiner had a challenging time in high school and for numerous reasons, wasn’t on track to graduate. At 17, she moved to San Francisco and completed her high school education through an independent study program and then through attending an alternative school.
Grateful for the people and opportunities that shepherded her through that time in her life, Kleiner said her hope was that in some way she could reach back and help others dealing with similar struggles to push others to challenge their boundaries and struggles and pursue their own educational success.
That’s exactly what she has been doing for the last almost five years as a teacher for Five Keys Schools and Programs at the San Francisco County Jail #4 and the Learning Center in the Adult Probation Department, both located at 850 Bryant, San Francisco. Since 2016 she has taught hundreds of inmates and community members seeking to earn their high school degree.
“One thing I really enjoy about teaching at Five Keys is you get to see all kinds of successes,” says Kleiner, 34. “Watching my literacy students making huge strides in their reading skills or my ESL students improve their English is so awesome, and you can see how it immediately changes their lives for the better. High fiving a student when they pass their final GED test, handing a student their diploma, or helping a graduate enroll in CCSF literally never gets old.”
She says one of her most gratifying moments as a Five Keys teacher has been when the students she worked with in custody show up at the community site where she teaches. Carrying the plastic bag with their belongings after being released from incarceration, they have told her they wanted to continue their education.
“Being able to provide that sense of continuity and support during the incredibly challenging period of reentry is such an honor and a joy,” she says.
After earning her Bachelor’s Degree in Comparative Literature at San Francisco State University and a Master’s in the same subject from the University of Colorado Boulder, she became an English teacher and worked for two years at Lisa Kampner Hebrew Academy in San Francisco.
“I had gone to graduate school with the intention of completing a PhD in literature and I ended up getting a funding package that included a teaching assignment,” she says. “It turned out that academia wasn’t for me and I left with a Master’s degree, but I realized I loved teaching adults. A friend of mine was working for Five Keys and suggested that I apply, and here we are.”
Thanks to the creativity of Kleiner and the teachers and staff at Five Keys Schools and Programs and local Sherriff’s departments, they have not let the COVID-19 pandemic stop them from educating and serving up their mission.
There is no stopping Five Keys Now “The pandemic has been so tough on everyone — students and teachers, incarcerated and in the community,” she says. “People are really struggling to fulfill their basic needs, which means education can move to the back burner. Many of our students are still working on their technology skills, which can make distance learning an extra challenge. And it is just hard for everyone not to have that face-to-face interaction and relationship building component, especially in custody where communication options are very limited.”
But, they have been able to continue serving students both in the community and in custody during shelter-in-place with online learning, mailing/dropping off work, phone calls, and just generally getting creative.
“I know that it’s meant a lot to our students to have this tie to normalcy and something positive to focus their energy on,” she says. “For my incarcerated students especially, just knowing that Five Keys is still there, still caring for them and still working for them, has helped them stay grounded and positive during an extraordinarily difficult time.”
Education is critical for the incarcerated“Being in jail is just such a difficult time — the worst combination of boring and stressful,” says Kleiner. ‘People are separated from their families and unsure of what their futures hold. Enrolling in school gives our students the opportunity to focus on something productive and positive, to keep their minds and hearts occupied with something that gives them a sense of hope and personal accomplishment. Over and over I have seen these incredible shifts in attitude. Watching our students move from a sometimes really negative place to a mindset of goal setting, feeding their intellectual curiosity, and really building their practical skills never stops amazing me.”As a Five Keys teacher, Kleiner has learned that the human spirit is stronger than anything that can happen to us. “I think teaching at Five Keys has made me more patient and empathetic,” she says. “It’s also just brought so much joy into my life. It’s such a privilege to get to form these relationships with my students, to really get to know them as people and to feel like a positive force in their lives.”Along the way, Kleiner, who lives with her husband and cats, says she’s learned a lot of lessons from her teaching experience at Five Keys. “I think I’ve learned how to meet people where they are with warmth and non-judgment,” she says. “I’ve learned that it’s essential to really take time to listen and form a relationship with every single individual student, no matter what. And I’ve learned that it’s my job as a teacher to never stop learning how to be better!”
Shonta Montgomery is now 36, and she has spent much of her life living in Watts where gun shots, police sirens and fireworks ring out and senseless killings and gangs reign. Since she was released after serving six-and-a-half years in prison with no money and no place to live, she’s fought her way on the streets, trying to stay out of the way of gangs and drug peddlers who mark their turf along the streets and parking lots of the South Los Angeles neighborhood.
Fighting addiction, unemployment and homelessness, Montgomery, who grew up one of 12 kids, says she was ill-equipped to embrace life after prison. Though she resolved to get her life back, incarceration stripped her of her identity and a lack of a high school education daunted her attempts to get a job and get back on track.
Until, she says, a social worker connected her with SHIELDS for Families, a non-profit in South Central Los Angeles, that offers people like Montgomery a family-centered approach to addiction treatment and recovery….a model that has success rates over three times the national average for substance use disorder treatment. Through SHIELDS, she was introduced to Five Keys Schools and Programs, where she has been studying for her high school diploma.
“I didn’t want to live on the streets, and I didn’t want to die,” says Montgomery, who also has recently been reunited with her 15-year-old son. “I begged them to help me to get off the streets and go to school.”
Montgomery’s experience speaks volumes about the thousands of students who have been served by Five Keys, since it was founded in 2003 by the San Francisco Sheriff's Department as the first accredited charter high school in the nation to provide diploma programs for adults in county jails. Teachers, staff, and supporters are committed to the belief that pursuing higher education is an excellent way for ex-offenders to re-enter their communities and live productive, fulfilling lives.
Montgomery traces her journey from prison to recovery to SHEILDS and Five Keys.
Today she lives in a one-bedroom apartment and is working hard on her schoolwork and rebuilding her relationship with her family, and especially her teenage son. She is also taking socially distanced Salsa dancing in her backyard.
She knows that education is especially critical for her efforts to seek employment, beat her prison rap and leave Valley State Prison, in Chowchilla far behind her. She wants to become a physical therapist.
“I’m really working on rebuilding all my relationships and my life,” she says. “I don’t want to ever go back to the life of popping pills and addiction. I want to be somebody special. You know I started studying art history. My teacher asked me to do an essay project on it and I love it. It’s been hard, but I’ve learned not to give up, no matter what you lose, no matter how dark a place you’ve been, don’t give up!”
““He shared with the class that it was the greatest accomplishment of his life.””
Pictured left to right: Gayle, Woody, Judy, and Oprah
Over the years, Judy Square has been blessed to spend time teaching in the Santa Rita Jail in Dublin, Alameda County, CA. Some of her most inspiring conversations have occurred in those rooms. In her conversations with incarcerated individuals, a common thread is that access to adult education offers them a chance to process their past and envision a new future.
“Many students have told me that no one ever believed in them before, or thought they were smart,” says the San Leandro resident. But working with Five Keys, they feel someone finally believes in them and is rooting for them.”
During the last 17 years she has taught at the now-closed North County Jail in Oakland and Santa Rita jail, one of the largest jails in the United States. Square says her favorite students to teach are inmates. For 13 years she worked at the jail through the Tri-Valley Regional Occupational Program and the last four through Five Keys.
“I've had a few students who have worked 8-10 hours a day on their schoolwork in their cramped cells, no desk, with stubs of pencils, sometimes with no erasers, pushing through all the obstacles and discomforts to earn their diploma,” she says.
Of the about 200 students she has taught through Five Keys, one student, Nathan, especially stands out.
“When I informed him that he earned his High School Equivalency Diploma, he jumped out of his seat and pounded the wall in celebration,” she says. “A deputy rushed in to see what was happening and I had to explain that everything was OK, and that Nathan was simply happy. Then the deputy left, and Nathan shed some tears in full view of his classmates even though that is usually avoided at all costs in jail culture. He shared with the class that it was the greatest accomplishment of his life.”
For Square, teaching through Five Keys seems to be a natural extension of the ministry she shares with her husband Woody, who is pastor and children, youth, and family minister at San Leandro Church of Christ. The couple, who are parents of two young adults, spent six years in Papua New Guinea helping run a church leader training school.
When the pandemic hit the nation in March, Square and her teacher peers and principal were forced to rethink how they would provide service. The team quickly pivoted to salvage education for their students.
Before the summer break, Square and other teachers typed letters every week, personalizing them for each student and sending them packets of educational materials to work on. An Inmate Services Deputy acted as a courier. He would deliver the letters and packets and bring back completed ones for Square and her fellow teachers to grade and record on the student's record. They also included feedback forms with their letters so the students could write back with questions or updates.
“However, once things shut down, many students fell off the wagon and stopped completing schoolwork,” she says. “Because all of our students are high school dropouts and have struggled with their educational journey in the past, they really need the structure of classes and face-to-face interaction with teachers to keep them progressing.”
Teaching in COVID-19 has taught Square and other teachers how important the Five Keys mission is and vital to the future of inmates.
Armed with a “yes-we-can-do-this,” they are planning to be back better than ever in August. They will continue to deliver the packets of educational materials and keep the education going.
“I can't wait until I can go back and work with my students in person,” says Square.
Sidebar
A Walk in the Woods with OprahIt’s not every day that campers at the Yosemite National Park run into talk show queen Oprah Winfrey on the trail.
But that’s what happened to Five Keys teacher, Judy Square, and her husband Woody, a minister, about 10 years ago, when they were on a visit to Yosemite.
The seasoned campers bumped into Oprah and her best friend Gayle King when the duo had hitched a pop-up camper to a Chevrolet Tahoe hybrid and hit the road to do a story about Shelton Johnson, a black park ranger who complained that few African-Americans were campers.
Not so, Oprah discovered. Oprah and Gayle ran into the Squares at their first stop in Yosemite and thought it would be fun to fly them out two weeks later to be in the audience when Oprah taped the Yosemite episode. At the end of the show, Oprah called them up on stage and surprised them with the keys to both her camper and the SUV that was used to pull it! Both vehicles were shipped from Chicago to San Leandro, and Judy and Woody still use the camper about three times a year and enjoy riding around town in their "Oprahmobile."
Leticia Ramirez knows firsthand the meaning behind the expression, “when one door closes, a window opens.”
About three years ago, Ramirez had just lost her more than decades-long job when her employer retired. She was feeling afraid and discouraged when she waited in line at the unemployment office.
But that is when the North Hollywood, CA mom was introduced to Five Keys Schools and Programs and the idea that she could transform the loss into an opportunity to return to school and get her long-delayed high school diploma.
“Five Keys has helped me and my family so much,” says Ramirez. “If it weren’t for them I would not be planning to go beyond my high school diploma.”
This summer, the 50-year-old received her high school diploma (albeit in the mail and is looking for the COVID-postponed ceremony later this summer). Working full-time at a podiatrist’s office, it took her three years of part-time study.
Two years ago, her son earned his GED through Five Keys and her nephew and his wife are currently enrolled in the Five Keys distance learning program.
Now, she is poised to enroll in college this fall.
“It took about three years to finish, because I only went once a week and math was very hard for me,” she says. “But my teachers, Karen Henderson, and Nicole Sanfilippo, were extremely supportive. I would have not been able to accomplish my goal if it had not been for the two them. They were very patient and gave me all the resources available to complete each course.”
She also has become a champion of Five Keys and is encouraging family and friends to take the opportunity during these times of social distancing to make time for education.
“I am the first of my siblings to get a high school diploma and I am going to do all I can to encourage all my family and friends to pursue their education,” she says. “We are in very uncertain times now. Education plays a big part in helping our country to continue being the greatest country in the world. “
Her advice for those considering attending Five Keys: “Really value and appreciate the opportunity it gives you and give it your best,” says Ramirez. “Attend class as often as possible. Do not give up when things get rough. Communicate with your teachers. They are great and they will do all they can to help you.”
Rosemary Gallegos Martinez was 14 when she had her first son, Luis. Two years later, her second son, Daniel, was born. At the time, the Mission Hills, Los Angeles-area resident struggled to juggle high school with two jobs. She and her then boyfriend, now husband, Juan, were determined to be self-sufficient, to support themselves independently, not relying on welfare or their family members to care for their young family. Her husband also worked as many jobs as he could to support themselves and their two sons.
Times were tough and unfortunately, juggling two part-time jobs, — at a clothing store and a warehouse — and a new baby, Rosemary had to let something go: She ended up dropping out of high school.
Fast forward 27 years. This June, Rosemary, and her husband who have been together for almost three decades, celebrated the high school graduation of their youngest child, Alexander, 17, from John F. Kennedy High School in Granada Hills, Los Angeles.
At the same time, Rosemary, 41, is working her own way through high school at Five Keys Pacoima, located in the northern San Fernando Valley region of Los Angeles. A full-time student, currently in the unusual year of the COVID pandemic, Rosemary attends classes remotely through the independent study program and Zoom. She is also taking care of her mother who is undergoing cancer treatment.
Rosemary’s goal: to become a registered nurse. She plans to keep up the educational momentum and is exploring nursing school options for when she graduates high school.
“It was hard raising a child and also still being a child,” says Rosemary. “I tried to go to school at first, but it just didn’t work out for me. I went to work part-time at a clothing store and a few warehouses to support my son.
“We didn’t want to have to raise our children in our families’ homes, it just felt like it was more complicated so we both worked and cared for our kids. So, going to school was not really an option even though I did try to go back a couple times, but it just became too much,” she adds.
Thanks to Five Keys and her own determination and hard work, the dream Rosemary has longed for since was a young teenager is coming to fruition. She is especially grateful to teachers like “Ms. Nicole,” who are walking the journey at her side cheering her along.
“Ms. Nicole has shown me that I can do it,” says Rosemary. “Five Keys has made education and learning fun for me. If you do not understand something, all the teachers are there to help you.”
Most significantly, she says the teachers at Five Keys and her determination to graduate from high school, even if she had to wait until her three sons got their diplomas and have set their own course, have bolstered her confidence.
Ten years from now she hopes to have graduated from the College of the Canyons in Santa Clarita, CA with a nursing degree and working for the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, Los Angeles.
“Going back to high school has given me the ability to dream and see that I will soon be able to live out my wish to be a nurse,” says Rosemary.
As a young child, Romina Bonilla, along with her parents and four sisters immigrated from Oaxaca, Mexico to South Central, Los Angeles in 1989.
It did not go unnoticed to Romina’s parents that education was a lifeline in underserved communities of color. Her parents took advantage of the ESL courses offered locally. They were both able to obtain their GEDs that essentially forged a new path for her parents and launched the five sisters on their own successful career paths.
Education had a domino effect on Romina’s family. Once their parents made the first move, there was a chain reaction with her sisters.Today, inspired by her parents’ resilience and grit — and the educational opportunities that turned their American Dream into a reality, Romina is an ESL teacher for Five Keys. Her oldest sister attended UCLA’s medical school and is an anesthesiologist. Another sister is an electrical engineer, another a social worker, and her youngest sister just graduated high school with a 3.8 GPA.
“Programs like Five Keys give people a second chance at reaching hopes and dreams they might not have been able to reach at a younger age due to life circumstances,” says the 34-year-old mother of two young children. She is married to Jose Sanchez, who is also an employee at Five Keys. They live in Downey, CA. Romina currently teaches at Five Keys’ Weber Community Center in South Los Angeles, while her husband works as an Assessment and Technology Specialist out of Five Keys’ main office in Boyle Heights.
After obtaining his GED, Romina’s father, Vincente Bonilla, opened a TV repair business. After hard times, he closed his business but still remains employed full time as a technician. Her mother, Araceli Gorostieta, chose to stay at home to raise her five daughters but also became an active volunteer at the Hope Street Margolis Family Center, a health, education and recreation program of Dignity Health California Hospital Medical Center. It has been recognized as a national model for integrating healthcare within its community of downtown Los Angeles. At Hope Street, her mom immersed herself with parenting courses, eventually becoming a parent leader and mentor.
Romina paid close attention to her mother’s role modeling. The organization also caught a young Romina’s attention because she realized she wanted to give back to her community as she saw Hope Street’s mission guided her mom to do.This drew her closer to Five Keys and how it partners with the Homeless Outreach Program Integrated Care System, El Nido Family Centers, and the WorkSource Centers, all in Los Angeles County, to help students with their goals.
“Five Keys looks at students in a more holistic manner than your traditional school setting. We see people as wholes and understand that you cannot instill true intrinsic change by simply giving students packets of homework to complete and get graded on. You have to provide them with meaningful educational experiences that spark them with moments of reflection and eventually personal growth,” said Romina.
What she especially loves about teaching at Five Keys is the strong relationships teachers build with students and connecting them to opportunities they might not otherwise know exist during school and even after graduation. From helping students apply to college, to connecting them with scholarship opportunities, to offering the welding training program at Weber Community Center which serves as a great start to a potential new career path for students, she says.
Romina, who graduated from California State University LA, worked for the adult division of education for the Los Angeles Unified School District as an ESL teacher in 2009. She joined Five Keys in 2012 and taught ESL at Pitchess Detention Center.
“My experiences teaching in-custody molded me into a better teacher,” she says. “Learning about restorative justice taught me about empathy. I really think that before I began working here, I only knew what sympathizing is. But after engaging and continuously learning at Five Keys and having other interactions with the diverse student and teacher population I work with, I truly began to understand and appreciate other people's feelings and experiences.”
She adds: “I love what I do because I see the effect we have on students who are used to people merely sympathizing with them and walking away instead of empathizing and actually lending them a hand up,” she says. “This is what Five Keys does and this is what Hope Street did for my family. Without this support I have no idea where my family and I would be. We will carry our experiences with us in our hearts with lots of gratitude for the rest of our lives.”
Her advice for people considering becoming students at Five Keys?“Just do it! Five Keys is a door. All we need from students is to open it and our teachers will guide you with the rest! Who knows, maybe making this move will be the domino effect to a better future for their family and future generations to come.”
Five Keys first stop on lifetime dream to be a nurseFor Ileah Ruffinelli-Tatum of Lancaster, CA, Five Keys is a family affair.
Growing up in South Central Los Angeles as one of 10 kids, she and her siblings didn’t have the opportunity to finish high school. But now, at 30, she’s a semester away from getting her diploma in December 2020, right behind her sister who graduated in March, and two of her brothers who are working and attending Five Keys.
Her study buddies: daughters AJ’Sha, 12, and La’Ryah, 10, who are super excited about their mom’s plans to transition from working in a nail salon and her dad’s construction company to her dream since she was 10 to become a nurse.
“My girls are very supportful of me and we all do our homework/classwork together at the table,” she says. “Some days I do get discouraged, or overwhelmed and my daughters along with my husband, parents, and siblings, quickly remind me to stop over thinking, stop being lazy and finish. They tell me I have greatness in me and they believe in me. My daughters say the very same encouragement that I give them daily and it always bring tears to my eyes and my heart starts to flutter.”
Since she was a child helping to care for her grandmother who had Alzheimer’s, Ileah has wanted to become a nurse.
But an abusive marriage, and the pursuit of many gigs to support her children – stylist in a nail and hair salon, massage therapist, car mechanic, seamstress, painter and construction work for her father’s business — showcased her myriad talents and made her a jack of all trades, but never fulfilled her yearning to pursue a nursing career.
Remarried and hoping to be a strong role model for her daughters, just as her parents and grandmother were for her, she says she feels blessed that her daughters and new husband are championing her full-time enrollment in Five Keys.
“I started caring for people at the very young age of 11 when I helped my mother take care of my grandmother, feeding her, cleaning and changing her, anything you can think of we did it,” she says. “We had help from my great aunt and siblings — even my dad. Also, I helped my ex father-in-law before he passed away. He was on dialysis — both legs from the knees down amputated and had many other medical conditions.”
At one point she worked in an assisted living facility for the elderly, but had to leave due to some of her own medical issues at the time.
“Five keys helped my siblings and myself gain our confidence back that we can have a second chance in life,” she says. “We can gain our diplomas and still be able to pursue a career, and not just get a low paying job just to get by. We all have children and it helps us to tell our stories and they can watch us firsthand, how we all detoured but still found our way back to the starting point but is now able and have crossed the finish line.”
She says an acquaintance told her about the program.
“I'm so grateful because I struggled for years trying to work and go to school,” she says. “I never found the right school for me but Five Keys is. I would recommend Five Keys to anyone who wants to make a step to bettering their life or just to have that closure that you finished something they started. It’s crazy that a piece of paper validates a person's life. But it is all worth it in the end. It's never how you start but it's all about how you finish.”
Graduating the Class of 2020 Incarcerated StudentsFive Keys continues educating incarcerated adult high school seniors amidst COVID-19
As high school seniors across the country hold drive-through, ZOOM and other socially distanced graduation ceremonies, Tiara Arnold, 27, celebrated her own graduation milestone, albeit alone in her cell at Alameda County Santa Rita Jail, in Dublin, CA. She’s been quarantined since March to reduce the risk of a coronavirus outbreak.
“I’m super excited and I keep saying to myself, ‘I did it. I did it,’’’ said Arnold, who was arrested at age 17, placed in maximum security at Santa Rita, moved to a prison and is back on appeal. “When I got arrested, my life was really going in the wrong direction. I was really distracted and made a lot of poor decisions. But while life was progressing for everyone else, I didn’t go to prom, I didn’t graduate from high school and I didn’t get to do the one thing my mom asked me to do which was to get my high school diploma. I was in the worst place my life could be. But now, since people invested so much in me and helped me believe in myself, I am determined to lead a life that is meaningful and helpful to others. I plan to go to college and hope to help my mom with her business and help other at-risk kids who are struggling.”
Thanks to the creativity and exceptional adjustments of our teachers and principals at Five Keys and local sheriff’s departments, Arnold’s experience underscores that of other incarcerated students who are graduating from high school at the Alameda County jail and custody facilities in San Francisco and Sonoma County. This is despite COVID-19 challenges to education and roadblocks exacerbating the disruption: prisoners do not have access to the Internet, so unlike traditional high schools, they could not immediately shift their curriculums online.
When the coronavirus started to spread, teachers, principals and corrections officers faced a dilemma – how to continue educating incarcerated students as jails shut down and education for most students in traditional schools moved online. It was a significant pivot, as getting a high school degree reduces a person’s likelihood of re-incarceration by 43 percent, according to a report by the RAND Corporation.
“It’s an amazing accomplishment for the students who really took on the extra challenges, like being locked down in their cells and not being able to meet with their teachers on-site, to push through and get across the graduation finish line,” said Lillian Stables, principal at Five Keys for the Alameda County jail site.
For nearly two months now, our teachers have engaged students through self-paced programs and alternative learning, by delivering packets of the curriculum to the jails and pushing incarcerated students to study independently. “We just had to get creative and sent in letters of support and homework and in my case, I just told my students that they can call me when they needed extra help so we can get them into this home stretch,” said Rose Kleiner, a teacher at San Francisco County Jail #4, at 850 Bryant Street in San Francisco. “Even in the best of times, it can be daunting for them, but now the teachers can’t come in and they can’t see their families and are confined to their cells. That makes it pretty tough.”
But the inmates who are defying the odds and graduating this month “are a tenacious and resourceful bunch,” said Lisa Paoloni, a teacher at Sonoma County’s two jail facilities, which typically hold 1,050 to 1,100 inmates.
Five Keys teachers sprang into action to figure out how to provide remote learning for students and most teachers scrambled (and continue to) to create a detailed COVID-19 overhaul of their curricula.
“We met with the teachers and coordinators at the facilities – everyone we could – to try to brainstorm how are we going to do this when both the teachers are sheltering in place and the students are on lockdown,” said Kris Davison, also a teacher at Sonoma County’s jails.
At the Alameda County jail, principal Stables and an administrative assistant are admitted into the jail to bring the educational packets to students who are in the high school program. In some cases, like in the San Francisco jails, the custody facility staff arranged for phone calls where individual students could meet with their teachers and for course materials to be dropped off for students, then picked up to be graded by teachers — an elaborately staged system to meet COVID-19 safety standards. The packets undergo a thorough content screening process and are given to the representative at the jail where they sit for three days (for safety issues) and are then handed over to the inmates. Each student receives a personal packet tailored to his or her educational curriculum.
The response from the inmates has been powerful. “One of my students sent me a letter in return that said, ‘You have no idea how much it meant to me to get your letter and to know someone cares,’” said Davison.
Five Keys offers secondary education at jails across California, in “normal times,” sending faculty to teach in-person classes. Unlike traditional high schools, classes are held year-round, because the life of inmates/students is so transitional. To accommodate short sentences, classes are offered year-round in intensive, one-month semesters, allowing students to earn credits more quickly.
On a Saturday afternoon in the time abyss known as COVID-19, one of the homeless guests at the Embarcadero SAFE Navigation Center went into labor and was transported to a San Francisco hospital to give birth to her new baby. The next day, a long-time couple stepped out in the courtyard between the two gray bunker dormitories at the waterfront center to say: “I do now.” They tied the knot to the cheers of a handful of (socially distanced) guests. In the two weeks that have followed, the staff at Bayshore Navigation center and at the city’s temporary hotel quarters for the homeless have raced to the rescue of two different guests who were overdosing outside on the street. Administering CPR and Narcan, they reversed the overdoses, giving both patients more time for paramedics to get them to the hospital. They saved their lives.
At a time when a terrorist called COVID-19 has stopped the world in its tracks, the staff at The Embarcadero and Bayshore Navigation centers and other SF CBO city partners are answering the call to care for the community of unsheltered homeless.
Currently, Five Keys Navigation Center staff have been deployed to four additional shelters across San Francisco. As of June 8, 50 more employees will be added to man shelters at three hotels and the Moscone Center, in addition to the Bayshore and Embarcadero shelters. Of Five Keys’ 600-plus employees, 200 of them now serve people experiencing homelessness.
The silver lining: the glimpses of light that shine through in moments big and small — a new life in the birth of a baby, love in a time of coronavirus, and the saving of two lives. “Our navigation team and our fellow CBOs are not just staffing these emergency shelters, they are literally saving lives,” said Steve Good, executive director of Five Keys, which has became a SWAT team tapped to work alongside San Francisco’s public health supervisors and homeless advocates to dramatically reduce density in crowded shelters.
Call them homeless first responders. “When we talk about heroes, our navigation team and the city’s workers helping the homeless are full of them.”
Good called Five Keys‘ navigation center employees and others manning the homeless shelters in San Francisco “the unsung heroes of the pandemic.”
In the best of times, providing food, shelter, and safety to San Francisco’s homeless population is a challenge. But as the COVID-19 outbreak continues, efforts have become more extreme.
But through San Francisco’s safety efforts, more than 900 homeless people have been moved into hotel rooms and a pop-up shelter at Moscone West, as the city struggles to keep the pandemic from racing through its 8,000-strong unhoused population. Specifically, Five Keys was named by San Francisco city leaders to supervise operations at Site 10, a 450-room hotel in the city’s center that is housing 360 guests that were formerly in shelters but are most vulnerable to COVID-19 because of age or preexisting medical conditions.
“Unlike many of us, our residents experiencing homelessness cannot simply close their doors to this disease, and that’s why San Francisco has ramped up efforts to de-escalate transmission of this disease within shelters, and ultimately save lives,” said Good. “Though no one is immune to COVID-19, this pandemic has all too clearly revealed the voids in our society and serves as a wake-up call on the life-and-death urgency of taking care of the most vulnerable in our population.”
Like nurses and doctors, the individuals on the front lines of San Francisco’s homeless centers and now the hotel shelters, are risking their lives, said Good. He says from the start, the can-do attitude among Five Keys employees has been: "Whatever it takes. Sign me up."
It is no surprise that Five Keys and other service providers were called in by city public health leaders to aid in the massive efforts to marshal safety and shelter for the homeless in the face of this deadly terrorist, COVID-19.
Since 2003, we have been committed to getting the lives of people on the margins of society back on track — behind the walls of 23 county jails, in economically isolated communities, at two navigation centers for the unsheltered homeless, and more than 100 sites throughout San Francisco and Southern California.
Five Keys’ navigation center directors like Meg O’Neill, who has been deployed to head operations at Site 10 hotel and the more than 100 other Five Keys employees who directly serve the homeless are true COVID-19 first responders. At the hotel and the navigation centers, they supervise teams that not only feed, shelter and provide education for guests, but respond to fights, seizures, overdoses, and episodes tied to addiction and mental illness. They de-escalate each situation and stabilize people until medical personnel arrives, when necessary.
In many ways, the Five Keys’ team’s nimbleness and ability to race toward the chaos of COVID-19 is because of the staff’s firsthand experiences in confronting trauma and the resilience and grit they have gained in their personal lives, said Good. “Many of our staff in our navigation centers have spent serious time in prison and bring a very unique calm and ability to get through during a time of crisis like this,” said Good. “At the same time, they are putting their own lives at great risk. But they do it because they have a tremendous passion and determination to give back and serve.”
Wired with Compassion: Protecting and Transitioning the Formerly IncarceratedA 27-year veteran of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s department, Dave Bates saw an egregious number of cases in which suspects were booked, charged in drug, burglary or family violence cases, then released years later and sent back to jails and prisons charged with the same or new crimes.
“It was a revolving door,” says Bates.
Shortly after he retired from his almost three-decade public service career, the opportunity popped up to launch Five Keys’ already successful San Francisco inmate reentry program in Los Angeles, Bates jumped at the opportunity. That was six years ago. “Retirement, what is that?” the 50-something husband and father of two young adult sons asked himself at the time.
For Bates, who served as a senior deputy in the jail, patrolman, and an educator in public and private schools, it is a calling to support this vulnerable population.
“I’ve got a heart for women and men coming out of prison and how difficult it is for them on their release,” says Bates, who grew up in Northern California. “When I learned that Five Keys was helping these people transition back into society for hopefully the last time, I fell in love with the program. I had to be part of it.”
As Director of Transitional Employment and Reentry for Five Keys in Los Angeles, he’s been leading the team who are the people former inmates can trust, and who prepare them for jobs and provide resources for them in the real world.
Bates’ devotion to changing lives is stalwart. He is the chair and co-founder of the Community Action Partnership (CAP) alliance, a group of organizations across Southern California that have an interest in reentry efforts.They focus is on education, housing, drug treatment, expungement, job development and any resource that helps a returning citizen as they adjust back into the community. Bates also serves as a board member for the Los Angeles Mission Foundation, which provides three meals every day,emergency and overnight services and is dedicated to the business of restoring individual lives.
He says, now, more than ever, the coronavirus pandemic has left formerly incarcerated people at particular risk, navigating increased exposure with scant resources for protection and lacking the necessities to navigate the difficulties of day-to-day life. As California releases thousands of prisoners early in the hopes of slowing the spread of coronavirus within the inmate population, Bates, an advocate for the homeless asks: What happens to those individuals as they attempt to transition back into their communities?
The one silver lining: “There are a lot of people getting out of jail who didn’t deserve to be there in the first place.”With an internal moral compass that points him in the direction to care, Bates and his Five Keys peers have helped more than 600 men and women transition back into society and find some sort of work. Jobs range from clerking at a dozen Rouses supermarkets throughout the Los Angeles area, and staffing the innovative Pit Stop, Shower Stop and the Cal Crew road crew programs run by Five Keys.
The mobile Pit Stop facilities are popular attractions in Skid Row, where now with COVID-19, the need for sanitary conditions has become paramount. Not only does the program bring employment for the formerly incarcerated individuals who staff the facilities, the service brings some measure of dignity and privacy to the lives of the unhoused population.
Another more recent and exciting Five Keys project he is leading and is passionate about is the Cal Crew that is dedicated to cleaning the parks, beaches and campsites that were ravaged by the fires outside of LA.
As a police officer, Bates was in the field of helping people out. But now, at Five Keys, he has experienced an even deeper empathy for humankind.
“I used to maybe look at someone acting out and my quick reaction would be ‘what the hell is wrong with this guy,” says Bates. “But now I know that we never quite know what someone is dealing with. They could be living check to check and were just evicted. I am just reminded not to jump to assumptions. I like the fact that now I am in a role to help people get to where they need to go.”
Recently he helped a young woman who came from a broken relationship, gained her sobriety and was just out of jail. She had been sleeping in her car at a store parking lot. Employing her through Five Keys, Bates and his team helped her find one of the tiny homes that are rented for $300 a month by area churches.“ This was her 4th, 5th or 6th chance, but she was determined she was not going back,” says Bates. “Our hope is that we’ve helped move her toward a new future.”
Though he is passionate about and committed to the long hours he invests in, Bates is finding that COVID and some of the self-distancing he and his family are experiencing has re-ignited his love of oil painting, golf, and cooking.
“But mostly I just love this job. Helping is the way I’m wired,” he says.
Five Keys employees worked nimbly — and outside of their expertise — to answer the global call for personal protective equipment
Did Karla Munoz expect to spend spring in the shield-making business? Not a chance. An administrative assistant at Five Keys’ Los Angeles office, she stepped up to the task when Five Keys put out the call to all staff in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic about a critical need for masks for all staff and guests at the San Francisco Navigation Centers. Working with her stepdaughter into the wee hours of the mornings, the duo produced 800 masks, and over the following weekend, they whipped up another 1,000.
Like a lot of Five Keys staff sheltering-in-place, she found herself wanting to do something to help. Plus, she was inspired because this is "hitting close to home." Her husband's brother in Oregon and his wife and two little girls all had COVID-19.
"We're lucky because we can stay at home, but I really wanted to find a way to help during this,” says Munoz. “My husband went to the store to get six-packs of the towels and we've just focused on making as many as we can."
Five Keys community members are opening their hearts with little hesitation“The response and love for our communities is unbelievable and truly inspiring,” says Steve Good, Executive Director.
In pockets across the state of California, more than 550 quarantined Five Keys employees are busily cutting rectangles of cotton fabric and sewing them into face masks.
Volunteers like Munoz, and “Ms. Nan,” a math teacher at San Francisco County Jail #5, in San Bruno, are working nimbly — and outside of their expertise — to answer the global call for personal protective equipment (PPE). The ranks of these entrepreneurial seamstresses include the sheltered at home staffers from teachers at Five Keys Charter who work in partnership with the City College of San Francisco and San Francisco State University to career technical and vocational trainers who work with the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department and the jail teachers.
A teacher at Five Keys for four years, Ms. Nan jumped into action when the call for masks came to Five Keys staff. Immediately, she sent her husband Chris, a contractor also sheltering at home, to the hardware store for the heavy towels to create the staple version of the masks together. The duo hunkered down at their kitchen table and in less than 24 hours had produced 270 masks, which they delivered to the Bayshore Navigation Center by 3 p.m. the next day.
“It felt so good during this weird time to be able to do something positive to help,” she says. “I was feeling stunned and worried about our colleagues and guests at the navigation centers and wanted to do something positive.”
By mid-April, Five Key staffers had created more than 6,000 masks and counting. The majority of the masks were delivered for the 260 guests and 80 staff members at the Bayshore Navigation Center and Embarcadero SAFE Navigation Center in San Francisco. Another 1,500 were delivered to the LA Dream Center.
“The show must go on, but we were urgently in need of face masks to keep our staff and guests healthy,” says Tony Chase, director of the Bayshore Navigation Center. “We’re racing around trying to do all we can do, but the masks are coming in and helping us with the safety issues. It is in times like this that we see the amazing dedication of our staff that is keeping these centers open and the others that are working incredibly quickly to get these masks to us.”
Meantime, at the Embarcadero SAFE Navigation Center, the 126 guests there also pitched in to make hand sanitizer from a homemade recipe the staff scouted on YouTube, says Patricia Richard, Director of Navigation Centers.
“We are committed that these centers will not shut down during these desperate times, and we are grateful for the overwhelming dedication of our staff who are at home learning how to sew and making these masks,” Richard says.
Five Keys and Insight Prison Project Are Partnering to Expand Trauma-Informed Learning for Inmates Having spent nearly 40 years pioneering ways to change lives through trauma-informed education in correctional facilities across California, Five Keys recently partnered with the Insight Prison Project to leverage both organizations’ experience and enhance ways to help inmates come out of prison better than when they entered.
“Now more than ever we need to form partnerships to pool resources in this pandemic,” said Steve Good, executive director for Five Keys.“We are excited to merge with the Insight Prison Project to expand our reach and resources that help transform the lives of inmates in California and beyond. Both of our organizations have great experience providing educational programs that build trust, acknowledge each person’s dignity and empower individuals to take advantage of opportunities that can change the trajectory of their lives — and help them to engage differently with their worlds.”
Through the partnership, the Insight Prison Project will run under the umbrella of Five Keys, which began in 2003 in the San Francisco County Jail as the first charter school for incarcerated adults in the country. Its pioneering programs serve more than 4,000 people a day and have awarded more than 2,800 high school diplomas or GED equivalents. It is touted for shutting the revolving door of inmates going in and out of jail.
Insight Prison Project, based in San Rafael, offers an innovative restorative justice program, the Victim Offender Education Group, which focuses on transformational re-education. It serves 300 incarcerated persons in California, Oregon, Colorado, and Washington. It will continue to operate and grow its transformational programs for prisoners and parolees, which are supported by crime victims and community volunteers.
“This is a perfect fit for both organizations who work to prepare people to come home and contribute to society by leading productive lives that cause no harm to others or themselves,”said Leonard Rubio, executive director of the Insight Prison Project.
Since 1997, the Insight Prison Project has been dedicated to reducing recidivism rates and improving public safety by conducting highly effective in-prison rehabilitation programs that provide prisoners with the tools and life skills necessary to create durable change. www.InsightPrisonProject.org.
To the Five Keys Community:
As people across the nation are hurting from a trio of concurring tragedies — social unrest, the pandemic and the economic crisis, we’ve all had a lot to process.
Sadly, the tragic deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and far too many others, as well as the justified anger and fury and ensuing protests, speak to the racism that has plagued this country in the same way it has perpetually defined the everyday realities of individuals who face intolerance, discrimination and marginalization.
Our work at Five Keys is based on our commitment to the concept that every individual is entitled to participate in and have access to the benefits of our society. We focus on education, and the larger protections of social justice.
As the nation pivots from mourning to celebrating the life of George Floyd, our community of Five Keys staff must take a critical look inward to make sure we, as an agency for social justice change, are reflective in our actions and personnel of the societal change we want to see.
In the face of this adversity, we’ve amped up our efforts to be on the front lines of this pain. During this chaos, Five Keys is committed to staying on course and continues to stay connected to and serve society’s most vulnerable. All of these heartbreaking circumstances are a reminder that we are not in complete control. But it must remind us how important what we do is, and to continue taking action.
In the words of Clarece Weinraub, Ed.D., Area Superintendent SoCal, “There has been a lot of conversation on the national stage about equity, bias, and systematic racism and it’s a perfect time to learn more about how education plays into the system and hopefully challenge ourselves to be the change. I would encourage everyone to spend this time thinking about how your daily interactions are influenced by your background and exploring what biases you might have, naming them and making a plan with yourself on how you are going to address them. No matter what work you have done to make sure you are not part of the problem, you have to continue working and checking yourself and the work is never done. I think that is true for all of us, no matter our race or background.”
Our collective vulnerability is asking us, “What is truly important?”With Five Keys committed to getting people’s lives back on track – behind the walls of 23 county jails, in neighborhood social justice mission centers in economically isolated communities, navigation centers for the unsheltered homeless, and more than 100 sites, we are dedicated to staying the course of our mission. Since 2003, we have been blazing a trail of transformation for more than 20,000 Californians without a day of interruption — and we are not about to stop in the face of a pandemic, or anything else.
In the midst of this uncertainty, we have good news and some major challenges. Our work with the homeless is growing rapidly. With the opening of our sixth Navigation Center on June 8, we will be hiring another 50 people working at the Bayshore and Embarcadero SAFE centers, three hotels, and the Moscone Center. Five Keys now has 700+ employees.
We are also faced with the challenges of budget cuts. The Legislature is considering a State Budget proposal that would prevent 1,000 students from earning a high school diploma. Please sign our petition and stand with us to keep students in County Jails from losing their diploma programs at www.fivekeys.org.
Despite the challenges, we are committed to staying the course and finding creative ways to provide opportunities that will change the trajectory of lives. If you are reading this, you are part of the Five Keys community. Whether a donor, or partner, student, staff member, teacher, navigation center worker, volunteer, or friend, please know that you matter – you are important to us. We are thinking about you. Stay safe, take care of yourself mentally, physically and spiritually. We are not just a face on a computer or a voice on the phone, we are people who care and are with you even when we are not. We will be back together again soon. Until then, we are united and preparing for a better, brighter future together.
Thank you for all you do,
Steve Good
Executive Director
P.S. With all the craziness in the world right now, Britt Creech, activities coordinator at Embarcadero SAFE Navigation Center shared how guests and staff there have turned a garden into a getaway for the mind in chaotic times. Here we invite you to pause as we share the beautiful photos that show what gardeners know, that working with the soil is a way to connect with nature and help take away worries, at least temporarily.
On Saturday of Easter weekend, one of the homeless guests at the Embarcadero SAFE Navigation Center went into labor and was transported to a San Francisco hospital to give birth to her new baby. The next day, a long-time couple stepped out in the courtyard between the two gray bunker dormitories at the waterfront center to say: “I do now.” They tied the knot to the cheers of a handful of (socially distanced) guests. In the two weeks that have followed, the staff at Bayshore Navigation center and at the city’s temporary hotel quarters for the homeless have raced to the rescue of two different guests who were overdosing outside on the street. Administering CPR and Narcan, they reversed the overdoses, giving both patients more time for paramedics to get them to the hospital. They saved their lives.
At a time when a terrorist called COVID-19 has stopped the world in its tracks, the staff at The Embarcadero and Bayshore Navigation centers and other SF CBO city partners, are answering the call to care for the community of unsheltered homeless. The silver lining: the glimpses of light that shine through in moments big and small — a new life in the birth of a baby, love in a time of coronavirus, and the saving of two lives.
“They are the unsung heroes of the pandemic,” said Steve Good, Executive Director of Five Keys Schools and Programs, which has been tapped by city leaders to became a homeless shelter first responders’ SWAT team to work alongside San Francisco’s public health supervisors and homeless advocates to dramatically reduce density in crowded shelters.
“Our navigation team and our fellow CBOs are not just staffing these emergency shelters, they are literally saving lives,” said Good.
Good called Five Keys navigation center employees and others manning the homeless shelters in San Francisco, “the unsung heroes of the pandemic.”
In the best of times, providing food, shelter, and safety to San Francisco’s homeless population is a challenge. But as the COVID-19 outbreak continues, efforts have become more extreme.
But through San Francisco’s safety efforts, more than 900 homeless people have been moved into hotel rooms and a pop-up shelter at Moscone West, as the city struggles to keep the pandemic from racing through its 8,000-strong unhoused population.
Specifically, Five Keys was named by San Francisco city leaders to supervise operations at Site 10, a 450-room hotel in the city’s center that is housing 360 guests that were formerly in shelters but are most vulnerable to COVID-19 because of age or preexisting medical conditions.
“Unlike many of us, our residents experiencing homelessness cannot simply close their doors to this disease, and that’s why San Francisco has ramped up efforts to de-escalate transmission of this disease within shelters, and ultimately save lives,” said Good. Five Keys runs the Embarcadero SAFE Navigation Center and the Bayshore Navigation Center. “Though no one is immune to COVID-19, this pandemic has all too clearly revealed the voids in our society and serves as a wake-up call on the life-and-death urgency of taking care of the most vulnerable in our population.”
Like nurses and doctors, the individuals on the front lines of San Francisco’s homeless centers and now the hotel shelters, are risking their lives, said Good. He says from the start, the can-do attitude among Five Keys employees has been: "Whatever it takes. Sign me up."
Since 2003, Five Keys has been committed to getting the lives of people on the margins of society back on track — behind the walls of 20 county jails, in economically isolated communities, at two navigation centers for the unsheltered homeless, and more than 100 sites throughout San Francisco and southern California.
Five Keys’ navigation center directors like Meg O’Neill, who has been deployed to head operations at Site 10 hotel and almost 200 other Five Key employees who directly serve the homeless are true COVID-19 first responders. At the hotel and the navigation centers, they supervise teams that not only feed, shelter and provide education for guests, but respond to fights, seizures, overdoses, and episodes tied to addiction and mental illness. They de-escalate each situation and stabilize people until medical personnel arrives when necessary.
They are literally saving lives. Already twice the staff at the centers have raced to rescue guests who are overdosing outside on the street. Administering CPR and Narcan, they reversed the overdoses, giving the patients more time for paramedics to get them to the hospital. They saved two lives.
In many ways, the Five Keys’ team’s nimbleness, and ability to race toward the chaos of COVID-19 is because of the staff’s firsthand experiences in confronting trauma and the resilience and grit they have gained in their personal lives, said Good.
“Many of our staff in our navigation centers have spent serious time in prison and bring a very unique calm and ability to get through during a time of crisis like this,” said Good. “At the same time, they are putting their own lives at great risk. But they do it, because they have a tremendous passion and determination to give back and serve.”
Five Keys Schools and Programs, which has spent nearly 18 years pioneering ways to change lives through trauma-informed education and programs in correctional facilities across California, has announced a partnership with the Insight Prison Project to leverage both organization’s experience to enhance ways to increase outcomes for returning citizens.
“Now more than ever we need to form partnerships to pool resources in this pandemic,” said Steve Good, executive director for Five Keys Schools and Programs based in San Francisco. “We are excited to merge with the Insight Prison Project to expand our reach and resources that help transform the lives of the incarcerated and prepare them for successful reentry. Both of our organizations have great experience providing education and programs that build trust, acknowledge personal accountability and each person’s dignity and empower individuals to take advantage of opportunities that can change the trajectory of their lives — and help them to engage differently with their worlds.”
Through the partnership, the Insight Prison Project will run under the umbrella of Five Keys Schools and Programs, which was founded by The San Francisco Sheriff's Department in 2003 as the first charter school for incarcerated adults in the country. Its pioneering programs serve more than 4,000 people a day and have awarded more than 2,800 high school diplomas or GED equivalents. It is touted for shutting the revolving door of inmates going in and out of jail.
Insight Prison Project, based in San Rafael, offers an innovative restorative justice program, the Victim Offender Education Group, which focuses on transformational re-education. It serves 300 incarcerated persons in California, Oregon, Colorado, and Washington. It will continue to operate and grow its transformational programs for prisoners and parolees, which are supported by crime victims and community volunteers.
“This is a perfect fit for both organizations who work to prepare people to come home and contribute to society by leading productive and restorative lives that cause no harm to others or themselves,” said Leonard Rubio, executive director of the Insight Prison Project.
About Five Keys Schools and Programs
Dedicated to getting people’s lives back on track, Five Keys Schools and Programs and its more than 550 dedicated employees serve more than 25,000 individuals each year throughout the San Francisco Bay area, Los Angeles and nine counties through the state of California. Five Keys was founded in 2003 by the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department as the first accredited charter high school in the nation to provide diploma programs for adults in county jails. Today its efforts have grown exponentially. The organization interrupts the cycles of homelessness, substance abuse, violence, literacy and incarceration through our 80 community learning centers, transitional housing shelters, career centers, and community-based workforce networks by investing in their humanity so that they can be self-determined to change their lives. Five Keys also hires people directly into our transitional employment positions for formerly incarcerated individuals and people currently or formerly experiencing homelessness. Five Keys has been the recipient of many awards including Harvard University’s Innovations in Government Award, and California Charter School of the Year.
About Insight Prison Project
Since 1997, the Insight Prison Project has been dedicated to reducing recidivism rates and improving public safety by conducting highly effective in-prison rehabilitation programs that provide returning citizens with the tools and life skills necessary to create durable change through trauma-informed transformational programs. www.InsightPrisonProject.org.
Education-Based Incarceration Program Graduates 500th Student At Pitchess Detention Center - KHTS News - Santa Clarita Over two dozen graduates from the Education-Based Incarceration program received their high school diplomas during a ceremony at Pitchess Detention Center Wednesday, including the 500th student to graduate since the introduction of the program in 2012.
Posted by: Michael Brown, KHTS Hometownstation.comAugust 8, 2019.Officials at Pitchess Detention Center held a graduation ceremony for students who had earned their high school diplomas through Five Keys Charter Schools as part of the Education-Based Incarceration program.
“We know it was not always easy,” said Kimberly Mendendorp, who serves as a principal for Five Keys Charter School, during the ceremony. “We are so proud of your accomplishments.”
During the ceremony, graduates had the opportunity to hear from Joshua Baker, who graduated from the Five Keys program in 2014.
“Finally finishing high school was the breakthrough I needed in my life,” Baker said.
Baker, who had been addicted to methamphetamine for 15 years, now works as a certified welder while taking classes to get his Associate’s degree in communication, as well as reconnecting with his son, who he had not seen for five years.
“You all deserve a life outside of these walls,” Baker told the graduates. “But that life will require hard work and sacrifice.
Students can earn their diplomas in a timespan ranging from a few months to three years, depending on how many high school credits they have going into the program.
“This is a great way to achieve all the goals you want out of life,” said Robert J. Olmsted, assistant sheriff with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. “This is a good basis to help get you started.”
“Over two dozen graduates from the Education-Based Incarceration program received their high school diplomas during a ceremony at Pitchess Detention Center Wednesday, including the 500th student to graduate since the introduction of the program in 2012.”
Many officials echoed the sentiment of Olmsted, stating that the moment served not as an ending, but a beginning.
“It’s what you do with this diploma that is going to define the next era of your life,” said Shanley Rhodes, chief of in-custody programs in Los Angeles for Five Keys.
Many of the graduates said they were planning on seeking to further their education now that they have their high school diplomas.
“I want to further my education and go to college,” said David Enriquez, one of the 26 graduates who received their diploma Wednesday. “I don’t know what I want to take yet, but I for sure want to further my education and make this worthwhile and not just let it go to waste.”
Other graduates said they are planning to take their diplomas and start learning a trade that they can turn into a career.
“Now that I have this diploma, I’d like to further my education and go to a technical school and learn a mechanics trade,” said William Poole, a graduate who hopes to gain a career in the automotive mechanics industry.
One graduate, Oscar Lopez, got the opportunity to speak at the ceremony about how much this milestone meant not only to himself, but to his mother.
“This program has been the training wheel I needed beside my mom,” Lopez said. “Thank you for being here and helping us give my mom a present: my high school diploma.”
Lopez’s mother told those in attendance that she had stayed up until 4 a.m. because she was so excited, even clearing a space on a wall in her home for Lopez’s diploma.
“See Mom?” Lopez said. “It’s never too late for your son to improve himself.”
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KPIX CBS SF BAY AREA. July 31, 2019by Sharon Chin“Traditional incarceration was about playing cards and dominoes, watching really bad TV and never taking the time to look at yourself in the mirror and say, ‘My God, what have you done?'” said Schwartz.
She came across a disturbing case in the 1980s: a child molester who was set to get out of jail in two weeks, who was promising to re-offend, and he did. After that, she set out to find new ways to help inmates come out of jail better than when they entered.
As Program Director under former San Francisco Sheriff Mike Hennessey in the 1980s, Schwartz and he co-founded several programs to change lives.
“Restorative justice is about making it right and including everyone impacted by violence and other crime,” Schwartz said.
One program, Resolve to Stop the Violence Project, or R.S.V.P., in 1997, did something radical each week. It put inmates face-to-face with violent crime survivors.
“It’s an opportunity for the men and women in our program to stand in the shoes of those who’ve been violated for the first time hearing the horrible impact of their crime,” she said.
Schwartz also founded Five Keys Schools and Programs in 2003, the first high school within a jail that’s since expanded into dozens of jails and communities California.
Five Keys serves 4,000 people a day. It’s awarded more than 2,800 high school diplomas or GED equivalents. The comprehensive programs are models for the nation, according to Five Keys executive director Steve Good.
“We could cite the facts–reduction in violent crime by 80%–recidivism rates for our graduates around 30%, compared to statewide averages of 65% or so,” said Good.
The opportunities to learn give hope to the inmate who calls himself Sleepy Hollow.
“Learning is a personal achievement that makes you feel worthwhile of being alive in the first place,” he said.
Current sheriff Vicki Hennessy credits Schwartz’s determination.
“She’s a force of nature. She’s a visionary. She has a lot to say, she has a lot of ideas,” Hennessy said. “She doesn’t give up.”
So for pioneering programs that transform the lives of inmates in San Francisco County and beyond, this week’s Jefferson Award in the Bay Area goes to Sunny Schwartz.
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Shared by his teacher Cherie McNaulty at Glenn Dyer in Alameda County
"Hi, everybody. You know I failed third grade when I was a kid. The teacher told me that I was dyslexic. That carried with me for a long time growing up. I always thought I wasn’t smart or not smart enough. My thinking like this caused me to miss a lot of opportunities in life. I dropped out of high school in the 9th grade. I was getting D’s and F’s, so I just quit. I’ve been in and out of jail ever since.
I never really tried to do something different because I was scared people would see how stupid I was. Then I got involved in this federal case and “Wow!” I’m looking at some time. I made a choice: It’s time to do something different and uses this time to do some good for myself.
I didn’t know where to start, so I started working out. I figured I got to start somewhere. Then this new Five Keys company took over the jails offering substance abuse, anger management, parenting classes, and even a chance at a high school diploma. I thought to myself, “Man, it’s good; I got time! I will give it my best shot anyway.”
Then we started out with this little test. I knew a little bit, but I was lost on a lot of it, so I just didn’t answer what I didn’t know. After that, the teacher started me pretty low. I didn’t let that bother me; I just kept pushin’.
After I finished a packet, I was like, “Wow! That wasn’t so bad.” I asked the teacher, “How much credit was that?” She was like, “One credit.” “One credit, and how many do I need?” She says, “Well, that depends on your transcripts, but it takes 180 altogether.”
I kind of got discouraged. Then my transcripts came back and I needed a whole lot of credits. Man, I really got discouraged then! I thought, “Man, forget this!” I was ready to quit again. I went back to the cell and thought about it. I thought and said to myself, “Man, if you don’t do this, you will keep failing in life and never have a chance at a good one.” I got up the next morning and said, “I ain’t no punk; I can do this!”
It’s funny, too, ‘cause my teacher really laid it out for me with those packets. She built me up from the bottom through them. As I started to get through them, my understanding of what I had to do in the next one became a lot easier. I was doing it all, too; learning math, how to write a paragraph and then an essay. It came really quick.
I started to get juiced ‘cause I wasn’t that dyslexic, stupid person anymore. I could do this stuff! "
- Introduction (00:00-1:16)
- Eight Things Principals Want to See in Your Classrooms (1:17-12:12)
- How to Help Students Keep Jobs, Have Healthy Relationships, and Stay Out of Jail (12:12-15:17)
Off the Page: Standout ESL Curriculum with Kara Valle (12:12-22:10) - Feature Teachers: Meet Haydee Burrola, Ally De Natale, Ashlen Fierros, & the ACSO Staff (22:10-25:36)
- Ten Things to Know About CAASPP Testing (25:36-29:38) and OASIS Teacher Updates (29:43-32:57)
- December/January PD Opportunities (32:57-34:30)
- Turn Your Inbox Into a Powerful To-do List (34:31-41:04)Five Keys Schools and Programs
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Introduction (00:00-00:30)
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Ten Things You Didn't Know About Steve Good (00:30-19:20)
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How to Increase Student Achievement (19:20-27:50)
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October Curriculum Updates (27:50-29:08)
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Meet Your Academic Committee Teacher Reps! (29:08-33:17)
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State Mandated Testing Coming to Five Keys (33:17-37:30)
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October PD Opportunities(37:30-39:55)
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Use Mindfulness to Increase Student Engagement (39:55-41:04)
Last Spring, the School of Graphic Design at the Academy of Art University (AAU) in San Francisco offered to dedicate the "ID2 Strategies for Branding" class to rebrand Five Keys. I was blown away by their presentations and their level of professionalism. The students really captured our essence. I had a visceral reaction to some of them—my eyes were almost tearing up at the powerful images they came up with. Their background knowledge, research and ability to transfer that to designs that communicate the work we do was pretty spectacular.
Team 24/7 design students: Celina Oh, Mia Jiang, Gloria Sukamto, Pat Opattarakui, Jerry Chiang,
Terry Hsu, and Xin Du
Team Eight Bees design students: Pauline Capote, Yvonne Anaya, Yijun Lin, Katarina Gentry, Apirat Norapong,
Jiaxin Xie, Dan He, and Louise Yang
Ultimately, we could only choose one. It was a difficult decision because we loved many. The original concept for our new logo began with Mia Jiang, and was finessed by team leader Celina Oh and the entire Team 24/7, especially by Pat Opattarakui and Jerry Chiang — a true collaborative effort. Today, I have versions of all the students’ design directions framed right outside my office to remind me of the incredible gift they gave to us and to all of our current and future students. Bold, hopeful, inspired, courageous, strong, powerful, driven, unique, innovative, renewed, fresh, imaginative, hard-working, smart and revitalized are just a few words to describe our new brand and reflect some of the attributes of our students and graduates.
Please let us know what you think of our new look and join me in thanking all the third-year AAU students who brought this new brand to fruition.
Team 24/7 leader Celina Oh at the final presentation
Five Keys’ team of teachers, programs staff, administrators and managers partner with dozens of community organizations to help our students become contributing members of their communities and continue their path of self-development beyond Five Keys.
The positive influence of our work extends beyond our students into their families and communities. Our students and clients include transitional aged youth (ages 16 and up) and adults, many of whom were failed by the traditional educational system. Some have involvement with the criminal justice system, but many others do not. It is incumbent upon us to reengage our students by delivering curriculum relevant to their experiences and providing comprehensive supports that address the challenges that previously hindered their ability to complete their education.
Since our inception as a charter high school in San Francisco’s jails in 2003, we have graduated
more than 2,000 students, and have shown that the state’s recidivism rate of 65 percent can be greatly improved upon with access to high-quality academic, vocational and therapeutic programs (a study found our graduates recidivated at 26 percent).
Our staff of 420 − delivering services in more than 80 locations in six California counties −
is reinventing the way adult education is delivered. Among our exciting innovations is a
state-of-the-art mobile classroom on a retired MUNI bus that travels into disenfranchised neighborhoods where students need educational access most; dual-immersion college
programs; and a first-in-the-nation college dormitory in a city jail.
With the support of our vast network of community and government partners we are redefining
the role of education in restoring communities.
We invite you to explore our new web site to learn more about Five Keys’ mission: to use Social and Restorative Justice principles to provide traditionally underserved communities the opportunity to restart their education with a focus on “Five Keys” to healthy lives: EDUCATION, EMPLOYMENT, RECOVERY, FAMILY AND COMMUNITY.
Your contribution to the Five Keys vision and mission is truly transformational.
On behalf of our staff and board of directors, welcome to the new Five Keys website.
Sincerely,
Steve Good
Executive Director
Dr. Elisa Stephens, President of AAU and Steve Good, Executive Director of Five Keys
And the winner is...it's a tie. The tie-breaker came a week later and Team 24/7's logo was selected, combined with many elements of the brand from Team Eight Bees.
Team Eight Bees ad campaign "#learningtolive" with Apirat Norapong
Apirat Norapong
Ovations...bravo!