Partnership Newsletter (September 2026)

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Partnership Newsletter September 2026

Marin Promise partners at the 2026 Partnership Summit in Marin City

Here’s to a strong start to the school year!

We’re grateful to the families, educators and community partners across Marin working together to help every young person thrive from cradle to career.

CANAL PROMISE NEIGHBORHOOD

Turning Community Priorities Into a Plan for Investment

Canal families share their cradle to career experiences at a community fair event.

After more than a year and a half of community conversations, data review and collaborative planning, the Canal Promise Neighborhood’s Investable Plan is taking shape for release this fall.

The plan will turn priorities across early learning and college and career readiness into a roadmap for long-term change, with measurable 10-year goals, clear partner roles and the investments needed to bring promising solutions to scale.

This summer, action teams have been sharpening those solutions with support from Community Funding Accelerator (CFA), which has helped other communities develop Investable Plans to attract catalytic funding.

The Consejo, resident advisory council, reviewing progress towards the Canal Investable Plan.

The Investable Plan will also address the neighborhood conditions that shape educational outcomes. Resident leaders from Nuestro Canal, Nuestro Futuro (NCNF) recently published a Neighborhood Snapshot documenting the strengths and conditions that shape life in the Canal. Those resident perspectives and neighborhood vitality measures will be incorporated into the Investable Plan, creating a fuller picture of what children and families need to thrive.

Later this month, Canal partners, including resident leaders, will share this work on a national stage at the StriveTogether Cradle to Career Network Convening, highlighting how resident leadership is helping shape the Canal’s path toward long-term change.

MARIN CITY PROMISE NEIGHBORHOOD

Marin City Partners Build Toward a Shared Vision

Pictured from left to right: Rondell Gibson (Bridge the Gap), Phillip Logan (Sausalito Marin City School District), Dr. Dana Emerson (College of Marin), Stevie Lee (Horizon Community School)

The Marin City Promise Neighborhood began taking shape this spring as a community effort to align cross-sector partners around better outcomes for youth and families, recognizing that student success is shaped both in and beyond the classroom.

At the Partnership Summit in May, Marin City leaders took the stage to share why this work matters now and what could become possible through stronger collaboration.

Since then, a group of leaders from the community, schools, nonprofits and government have continued coming together as a Steering Committee to identify where collective action could make the biggest difference.

They aren’t starting from scratch. The Steering Committee has reviewed 12 existing plans relevant to Marin City to find common priorities and opportunities to better align existing efforts. Leaders are now narrowing the focus areas for the work ahead and designing how residents will help shape what comes next.

This fall, residents and local experts will dig deeper into these community priorities, bringing lived experience and local data together to understand barriers and develop solutions partners can pursue together. That work will build toward Marin City’s Investable Plan, a community roadmap for long-term change targeted for 2027.

POLICY

California Moves Promise Neighborhoods Forward

For years, Marin Promise Partnership has worked alongside cradle-to-career partnerships across California to build state support for Promise Neighborhoods. This month, that work reached two important milestones.

Pictured from left to right: Richard Raya (Marin Promise Partnership), Salvador Manriquez (LA's BEST), Jillian Spindle (Mission Economic Development Agency), Edgar Chávez (Hayward Promise Neighborhood)

DATA

New Milestone Connects Education to Economic Mobility

Marin Promise Partnership has long tracked six milestone outcomes along a young person’s educational journey. But our collective work is ultimately about ensuring stronger educational outcomes translate into pathways to economic mobility.

That’s why we’re adding Economic Mobility as a seventh cradle-to-career milestone.

Marin is one of the wealthiest counties in the nation, but significant economic disparities remain. Many families are working but still don’t earn enough to cover the cost of living here. Our new milestone helps make those disparities visible by tracking how many Marin families meet the Self-Sufficiency Standard, an estimate of the income needed to cover basic expenses like housing, food, child care, health care and transportation based on family size and local costs.

As partners work to strengthen cradle-to-career pathways through Promise Neighborhoods, this milestone helps us measure whether those pathways are ultimately leading to greater economic mobility. This countywide baseline also shows where inequities persist as we work toward a more local picture of economic mobility in each of our priority communities.