Veronica Parker with CAEP Technical Assistance project. And I also have Neil Kelly with the CAEP office. Everyone is now in the room.

If I could just have a couple of people let me know if you are able to hear me at this time. Additionally, please let me know if you're able to see my screen, you're able to see the PowerPoint presentation. OK. Thank you. I have a few people let me know that you can see both. So great.

For those of you who are just now joining us, if you did not receive the PowerPoint presentation via email, it is available to you to download in the chat. So if you just click on the file and click on download, it will download whatever file your computer downloads files to. And then definitely feel free to save that PowerPoint to your computer and follow along as we move forward with today's presentation.

Before we get started, I've already checked to make sure everyone can hear me. If any event you do fall into any technical issues, definitely be sure to let us know via the chat so that we can help you and fix whatever problems you are experiencing. We will communicate with you via a private chat. So definitely be on the lookout.

When it's a private chat, you'll have either my name or Holly Clark's name from the CAEP office, or CAEP TAP office. And it'll be in red. So that's our way of trying to communicate with you privately so we don't disrupt the rest of the webinar. So definitely feel free to let us know if you experience any difficulties.

Additionally, we will be taking attendance during today's webinar. So definitely be sure to let us know who you are, if you have signed in but did not use the same name via the registration. Also, if you use like any acronyms or your consortium name, whatever the case may be, definitely be sure to let us know who you are so that we can account for you in our attendance.

This webinar will be recorded and available on the California Adult Education website later on this afternoon. So if you have to leave for any reason, or if you would like to share this information with other colleagues, or even come back to view it again, maybe when you're working on your annual plan or you're doing some fiscal reporting, and you need a reference, definitely be sure to check the CAEP website for a copy of the webinar recording, as well as a copy of the PowerPoint presentation. Both will be available to you.

Please use the chat to communicate amongst one another to ask questions, share information, and anything of that nature. There will be intermittent pauses throughout today's webinar where you are able to ask questions. So if you do not-- if you pose a question but it is not answered right then and there, definitely know that there will be a sufficient amount of time to be able to address any questions that you may have.

That is all that I have at this time. I will turn it over to Neil, who will get us started with today's webinar. Neil?

All right. I'm just trying to get my screen sharing. OK. There we go. And then to-- I don't think I have the ability to advance slides, do I?

You-- hover over at the bottom, you should see the cursor or even click and--

Oh, there, yeah. OK.

All right.

All right. It's not responding to my cursor. Here we go.

All right. So welcome, everyone. In place of your Friday afternoon office hours, we're going to go over the annual plan process, plus I don't have any new information to share. We're waiting to see what the Governor does. So why not have a planning webinar, right?

OK. So we'll go over key planning. I'll talk a little bit about the annual plan. And then I'll turn it over to Veronica. She'll go through how you will process that in the NOVA, and then we'll have plenty of time for questions.

So it's pretty brief, but the NOVA stuff does get a little bit in depth, which is good, because you probably haven't done this since last year on the annual plan. So Veronica will walk you through those steps. And not too many changes, but we'll go over a couple of things that we have for this year.

OK. So next slide, please. OK. So just a reminder on CAEP planning, the current three year plans were submitted last year around this time. Those original plans to guide your consortia. The three year plans that you submitted last year drive your annual plans, which are due August 15.

And then that annual plan that's due August 15 drives your member work plans that are due September 30. So there's a alignment linkage correlation between all this planning Let's see, no questions about the three year plan. I'm going to go on to the next slide.

So here's-- we've been using this for a while, but it just kind of shows kind of the planning cycle, your preplanning assessment, looking at community needs, customer needs, identifying goals and strategies, as well as piloting and implementation. I mean, this is kind of the schematic we used for the three year plan, but you can still use that for your annual plan. You can go back and check how's your three year plan working.

We're not requiring you to go back and update it. This annual plan is kind of an update. You use it as an update because once those three year plans were submitted in June, a lot of things have changed. So-- and we'll go over that in a little bit. But your annual plan might have to pivot to respond to things that have been happening in the last three or four months. So keep that in mind.

I'm going to try to move to the next slide. OK. So the annual plan for 2021, it's already in NOVA. It's the same text boxes. Veronica will show you how those text boxes are set up. And it's pretty much the same process.

It aligns with your three year planning process, but you must type the responses into NOVA, or you can cut and paste them in from a Word document, I think. But you can't upload your annual plan. You have to type it directly into the text boxes.

And then all your members, whether they receive funding or not, if they're a member, they must certify the annual plan. And then we should have a memo out early next week. We can send that to you directly, and it will be in the newsletter. So look for that between either Monday, or no later than Wednesday.

OK. OK. Thank you. So I'm going to go briefly over kind of a snapshot or a highlight of the memo that's going to be released next week. And so the only big change from last year is in the executive summary we want you to respond to three major things that have been going on-- the COVID-19, the fact that we got our budget reduced, and the systematic racial injustices that are going on. You see the protests, things like that, how are you responding to that? Are you responding to racial injustices and things like that.

So I'll just give you a snapshot of what we're asking in the memo, and then you can prepare how you're going to respond to that. The executive summary and, hopefully, some of your annual plan objectives, activities, are going to focus on some of these things. And I know you've already pivoted to online education.

You're probably discussing about how you're going to deal with it if we get a reduced allocation, which is proposed. We'll see what happens next week with the Governor's budget, as well as the civil unrest and the protests. How are we dealing with systematic racial injustices? Are we looking at hiring practices? Are all students progressing and succeeding at an equal rate? Are they getting the sports they need? Are we looking at that from a demographic standpoint?

So let's go into that in a little bit more of a deep dive. I'll pause there to see if we have any questions. And so far, no questions. OK. Next slide, please.

So related to COVID, here's the language that's currently in the memo, might change by next week, could be the same. So it says, "the Executive Summary should address how consortia-- the consortia is serving students in a distance learning environment meeting their learning needs, along with meeting staff, teacher, and faculty needs. Also, the Executive Summary should address how the consortia is responding to student supports, things like food, employment, clothing, health, shelter, public assistance."

From the feedback, we've been getting many adult schools and non-credit programs have been involved in supporting supportive services related to our students, as well. So that would be the response for COVID-19. We'd want to see some kind of information on that in the Executive Summary.

And then the next one is on the budget reduction. And so we'll have to see if-- next slide, please. There we go. OK.

So regarding budget reductions, we stated, "the COVID-19 epidemic has drastically changed California's budget outlook since the release of the Governor's budget on January 10. The Executive Summary must demonstrate that consortia allocations are being strategic and responsive to changes in the economy, and the impacts on adult education programs and students."

So how are you dealing with the reductions? What's your strategies? How are those allocations being responsive to changes and the impacts on students? So we'd like a-- he sort of says when will the memo go out? So we're looking at hopefully either Monday at the earliest, Wednesday at the latest. So hopefully that helps.

And so we'd want some feedback on how you're dealing with that. Some people are looking at carryover, they're looking at consortia pots. Some are doing things with those fund sources as a way to be responsive to the changes in the allocation reductions, those kind of things. So I'm already seeing that. And so it'd be nice to put that in writing of how you're being responsive to that.

Next slide, please. And then the last specific area we want to cover in the Executive Summary is the systematic racial injustices. "Consortia in their Executive Summary should describe any plans to examine the issue of their role in addressing structural racism within your membership and partners. We would encourage consortia and their members to examine the adult ed student journeys by demographics. What strategies and student supports can your consortia and its members use to ensure equitable student progress and success?"

So it talks about students there, but we're also talking about hiring practices, those kind of things. I mean, I kind of dabbled around in this. I'm not going to share it because I kind of went into LaunchBoard and did some kind of fooling around.

So what I did is I looked at the number of students in California without a high school diploma. So I looked at African-American students. 170,000 students and adults in California don't have a high school diploma. And then I said, OK, so of that number of students, how many African-American students have enrolled in CAEP?

So I went to launch board and 23%. So 40,000 students of those 170-- I mean, it's not an exact science because we don't know if they enrolled to get their high school diploma. But it's kind of that needs thing. Then I looked at white students. And there's 625,000 students in California that don't have a high school diploma. And 26% of those students have enrolled in a CAEP program.

And I looked at Asian. And 405,000 students, no high school diploma. And then 111,000, or 22%, have enrolled in a CAEP program.

But then you could look at things like, what's the student journey between ABE into ASC? So in ABE enrollment for 18, 19, we had about 76,000 students. 7% were African-American, 13% white, 9% Asian, 62% Hispanic. So where do the educational functioning level gains in ABE for 18, 19? We had about a little under 29,000. 6% African-American, 10% white showed gains, 11% Asian, 64% Hispanic.

So you've got to look at that. So enrollment to student progress. Then looked at transitions from ABE to ASC, which is a natural progression. African-American 9% transition, 12% white, 9% Asian, 59% Hispanic. Then I looked at how many that were enrolled in ASC actually got their diploma or GED or HiSET. And so white 17.4% success rate, Hispanic 14.2% success rate, African-American 13.3% success rate, Asian 8% success rate.

So I mean, just looking at that, I would have questions. I would want to dive deeper. And that's at the state level. You could do that at the regional level. You could do that at the district level. It's all there in LaunchBoard. So those are the kind of things we want you to look at, start thinking about.

If there are things that just stand out that look really strange, then maybe dive a little deeper in that. But I'll pause there to see if we have any questions. Emma says, Neil, are you looking for individual member activity examples when we respond to the consortia activities for student support, for example?

So Emma, I would say that this Executive Summary, it's going to be really high level. But in the annual planning objectives, you could put various specific objectives. Now, the member's going to put-- they're going to check boxes based on an annual plan. And Veronica will show you how that works.

So the objective should pretty be high level, not specific down to the district, because in the annual plan, those are objectives for the whole region. And then each of the member districts will select which ones they're going to work on. And they'll probably have specific activities under each of those objectives.

So it might be better to have it more general, especially in the Executive Summary. Because you're limited on a text box how many characters you can put in there. So you can't go on and on. It'll cut you off.

Justin says, is there any kind of work limit on that? Yeah, so there-- I believe, Veronica, if you're able, do we have a text box limit on the Executive Summary? I thought we did have a character count. Maybe you can confirm that later in the presentation, or you might know right now.

Yes. And I also typed it in the chat. It's 5,000 characters.

OK. So if Justin and Emma were going to go on and on, you're really limited to just 5,000 characters. That includes spaces, anything-- any kind of character, as well. So Wendy had the same question. And Diana had the same question. And then there is Veronica's response.

All right. So Wendy said, Neil, these student equity differences, our system, and nationwide, they may be exaggerated by the COVID emergency. But all colleges have an equity plan. Do you want us to cite that?

Yeah. If that's something that non-credited is involved in, sometimes from what we've seen, sometimes non-credit doesn't get to the table on the credit side. It depends on how your college is set up. I know with City College it's a little different. And some of the bigger non-credit colleges are involved in a lot of the planning, as well as equity.

But that's not always the case at some of those smaller non-credit programs. And then how does that cascade down, or how does that align with what's happening over at the K12 adult schools? Which would be different with City College because they're the adult school provider for their region.

OK. So moving right along to the next slide. OK. So then the next section would be Regional Needs and Strategies, similar to what we've been doing the last few years. So just keep in mind the three areas we mentioned. It'll ask either COVID, budget reduction, systematic racism, and then list any strategies that will assist you in meeting the needs to address those areas, like I said.

So COVID, you talk about the use of distance learning, budget reductions, strategic use of funds, systematic racial injustice. You talk about ensuring equitable student progress and success, those kind of things. Keep in mind you have a 5,000 character limit that was just brought to our attention. So you've got to keep it brief. We're not going to grade you on this, but it does help the state understand. And then it can also help as you start planning, putting in objectives for your annual plan.

Next slide, please. OK. So we're going to-- this is where Veronica takes over. We're going to review the annual plan prompts. And she's going to walk us through. And then after Veronica walks us through this, she'll show us how the annual plan connects to the member plan, and how the member plan connects to the budget, so it all kind of connects. So I'll turn it over to Veronica.

All right. Thank you, Neil. And thank you, everyone. So I am in the annual plan section of NOVA. I am in a safe environment. So the information that I enter will not be saved for this particular consortium. So if anyone's on the line from Antelope Valley, just be warned that I will use your consortia as a demonstration. But none of the information will be saved.

So I will start here, but I will go to the live site once we get to the budget and work plan. Because of the way this is designed, I can only show you on the live site. However, I will not enter any information on live site because I don't want to mess with any consortia information.

So here is the annual plan, and I am on the first section. So when I log in to NOVA, I just want to consortia, and then typed in the member's ID, got to the member plan, and then clicked on annual plan. So here is the first section. Sometimes it doesn't always go to the first section so you may just want to click into the first section of plans and goals, if that's where you intend to start.

And here, you are just typing in an Executive Summary of your consortium's implementation plan for the 2020 to 2021 program here. And again, as Neil mentioned, you want to make sure that you address what the plan is for the entire year. But then also address the three areas if you're planning to do any activities in those three areas that he mentioned.

As everyone had already asked, it is a character limit of 5,000. So once you start typing in here, your character limit will begin to go down. And also, in order to go past any of the sections and them to be designated as completed, you have to type in at least five characters. However, in order to let us know what you were doing, you want to make sure that you are being as clear, concise, and complete as possible.

So here I'll just type in a simple sentence. Again, just a simple sentence to get me through. As you can see, my character limit went up to 3,000-- excuse me-- 38 of 5,000. And here, I'm just going to copy and paste going down. The second part is a regional planning overview.

So here, you're talking about the annual plan and the strategies that are based on your three year plan. So how your consortium will be implementing the new three year plan. So I'm just going to copy and paste here again just to get past this section.

And then I always want to go to next. You always want to use the next button. If you can, click into the next section here. But using the next button will actually let the system know that you have completed the section. So I'm going to go next here. And it should have onto complete. Oh, sorry. I have meeting regional needs. One more section. Sorry about that.

And here, you're going to be talking about your gaps in service or regional need. How did you know about those gaps in services for identifying? How did you identify these gaps? And then the third question is, how will you measure effectiveness or progress towards meeting the needs?

And so you'll use this to identify any local indicators planned for measuring student success. I'm just going to copy and paste in here.

Veronica, quick question. Ms asks, as you type, does the system save automatically?

That's a really good question. I know when you go from section to section, it saves. So I want to say yes, it does save. Because if I were to come out of this and go back in, my information will still be there.

Thank you.

So I'm going to scroll down. And if there is another regional need that you would like to add, you can click on this add regional-- another regional need and you can begin typing your additional regional need. You have to have at least one. However, if you added one that you feel like you no longer need it, you can hit the delete button and you will just have one regional need here.

So I'm going to go next here, and it should update. See-- OK. So sometimes you may have to click back, and then go back to your next section. Eventually, it'll catch up. The system is a little slower, at least on this side it's a little slower. But it will save your information.

So here you're going to start identifying your strategies. So the first one is gaps in service. So for this one, you're going to be talking about your plan to incrementally increase capacity and identify gap areas and/or help maintain established levels of service. And you must list at least one. And then it gives you a little bit more explanation here.

So you just briefly type in how you're going to do that. I'm just going to hit control P just to continue to move along. Again, if you need to add another gap in service, you're able to do so here. And if you were-- you decided you no longer needed to [audio out] want to go back down to one, you can delete your additional line.

So I'm going to go next here. And then I'm going to go seamless transition. So I'm going to identify my strategies here. So what new and/or existing strategies are plans to integrate existing programs and create seamless transitions into postsecondary education, or the workforce.

Again, you must list-- you must list at least one. I'm going to go control here, P here. And if I need to add another one, I am able to do so. And I'm going to go next. And so you just continue to do that as you identify all of your strategies.

And then professional development, same. And again, I mentioned my system is a little slower. But if I click on these boxes, all of them turn into complete because I have at least five characters, and I've answered at least one strategy. I've listed at least one strategy.

Here, and then go next. And then here this one is a little bit different. We're talking about fiscal management. So this is just asking you to basically justify how you're going to use your allocations to support your strategies based upon your three year plan.

So I'm just going to enter the same information. And then for this one, approach to incorporate any remaining carry over funds. So this we're asking you to identify how it is that you plan to spend any carry over funds that you may have.

Veronica, I just-- I just add that so when you're inputting these strategies, you can incorporate things you're doing with distance learning, if there's something related to the budget reductions, that you're cutting something back, you're not off-- you could add that in. If there's something you're doing with equity, you could put that in. So this really gives you that option as you go through the strategies to put in those things that we've been going through the last three or four months. It's really up to you of how you're going to approach that.

OK, great. And then-- so I've identified all of my strategies for the annual plans. I'm going to go next here. And then it's going to give me everything that I have inputted into the system. So this is a point where you can review what you have listed here.

And then once you've reviewed in it's final-- in its entirety, then you are able to submit here. And I'm just going to click here just to make sure my submit actually works. So I'm going to go submit here, and then this is prompting you to add any comments that you may have. So if there's anything that you would like to alert your other members to before they approve the annual plan, you're able to type in any comments you may have here.

I don't have any at this time so I'm going to just press OK. And then basically that submits my annual plan. And you know this because the status says submit.

So at this point in time, all of the members are now alerted that you have completed the annual plan, and they will go and review everything that you have documented. And then they will either approve it or reject it. And what-- if it's rejected, then you will have the opportunity to go back in, make any revisions that are necessary, and resubmit the annual plan.

One thing that I did want to mention, especially because the character limit did come up, we want you to use as much space as possible within this form. However, if you have a document that you-- the consortium has prepared, and let's say you are using different graphics, especially when you're talking about how you're going to measure things, or how you identify with the gaps in service design, if you have a document that you would like to upload that is related to your annual plan, you do have the opportunity to do so by uploading it into your supporting documents section.

So I'm scrolling down to the supporting documents section. If I wanted to add my complete annual plan with colors and graphics, special formatting, things of that nature, you could just go here and add your document here. So you'll select the document type. And I don't think there is one for annual plan, so you would just select supporting documentation, find the file on your computer, and put in a description of this document.

So you can say something like comprehensive annual plan for the 2020-2021 program year, or something like that. And again, it's another way for you to have this historic information appended to your consortium. And then people are able to see, as well.

And we do want you to be as clear and concise and complete as possible with your annual plan, because I know the CAEP office and leadership looks at the annual plans to see what everyone's working on. And CAEP TAP also looks at it as we're trying to identify the plans that you all have moving through the program year so that we're able to meet your needs via professional development. So we definitely want to make sure that we have a clear, concrete understanding of what it is that you all will be working on throughout the year.

So, Veronica, quick question. So people are wondering how easy is it if they're typing the strategies and other documentation in a Word document, how easy is it to copy and paste from the Word document into the NOVA text boxes?

Yes. So it's very easy. You just do your simple copy and paste. However, if there's any special formatting-- so let's say you use bold, italics, maybe even like number formatting or bullets, that type of formatting will not transfer over. So it's very simple text in NOVA. If you do have, let's say, a bulleted list that you want to make sure that it's identified as a bulleted list, I would use indentations to identify that this is kind of a subset of a larger list, or something like that. Any special formatting does not transfer over. However, it is a simple copy and paste.

OK. And then there's-- I think this is a question for me to answer from Mitch. What is the protocol if a member district refuses to approve an annual plan in NOVA, even if it was approved by a consortia board vote? So what I would do is share those-- post those board minutes into NOVA, then contact TAP showing that the consortia approved it. And then we'd work with the programmers to override that.

But on a parallel track, I would-- if that member is not going along with the bylaws and the votes, and not being an effective member by following up with certifications when they're supposed to, then I would start providing-- working with TAP to provide that member technical assistance. And if that doesn't work, then you have cause to reduce that member's funding later on in the year if the reasonable intervention hasn't been effective to turn that number around.

So hopefully, that helps. You would work with TAP on that. And if need be, you get the state office involved, as well. So, Veronica, Christian says, it's easy to copy and paste, but it doesn't indent or separate paragraphs. It all ends up running together.

OK. Well, I'll check on that. But thank you for the clarification, Christine. I also saw Crystal said the same thing. We'll check with the programers on that, as well.

OK. And then Christy said, it worked fine. She highly recommends that you save it in Word to assist you in future years. Wendy said, this is why it's great to upload your PDF of your formatted plan. But you can't do that for the annual plan, right, Veronica? You can't do a upload of a PDF, right?

Yeah, you can upload it in supporting documents.

Oh, I see. I see, OK. So-- but you would still have to type that in the text boxes. But if you wanted to upload a nicer-- with charts and graphs, you could do that in the supporting documents, right?

Yes.

OK. Maybe I missed that, sorry.

No worries.

And then Uleane says, if you click share, not submit yet, are you sharing with the consortium members before you submit? Can they edit?

If they are a primary contact, I believe they are able to edit in NOVA. But when you share, yes, you are sharing without submitting. They will have to log in if they are primary contacts and make edits to the annual plan.

OK. That's it on the questions. You want to move on to the next part?

Yes. I believe there are some fiscal related things you had in the PowerPoint.

OK.

You want to go back to the PowerPoint?

No, I think since you're on a roll, let's show them how the annual plans connect with the member plans. Would that be the next step, I would assume, after you certify your annual plan? Then the members would go in and start creating their plans?

Yes, that is correct. So as soon as your annual plan is submitted and all consortia members have approved the annual plan, your budget and work plan will open up. Right now, everyone's budget and work plan is visible, or at least the link is visible. However, when you click on it, nothing happens. And that's because the annual plan has not been submitted for most consortias. Some consortia have actually submitted their budget and work plan.

So here, I had picked desert regional consortium. They were the first in the list to have submitted their-- and approve their consortium annual plan. So now their budget and work plan is open.

So you just-- so I'll go back out to show you exactly how I got here, and how I was able to identify if their annual plan had been submitted, and to see their budget and work plan. So I went on their consortium page and saw that the annual plan is consortium approved for the 2020 to 2021 program year.

We have had questions from members with access about this completed and N/A. So the way the programming is set at, it doesn't have your actual completed date and time on the outward facing interface of NOVA. Once the program year expires, then you'll populate the date and time here.

But it is consortium approved at this time. So immediately after it became consortium approved, their 2020 to 2021 budget and work plan opened up, so they were able to make changes to it. So that's how I was able to access it.

So here's their 2020 to 2021 budget and work plan. And all of their budgets at this time are in draft status. So I'm going to click on Coachella Valley Unified. However, I'm not going to be able to enter in any information. I am on the live site now. And I don't want to mess with any of their information on the live site.

But I'm just going to show you guys a few areas that we definitely want everyone to pay attention to moving into this next program year. So I'm going to click on Coachella Valley Unified. And when I click on Coachella Valley Unified, since I was already in the member budget, it automatically populated there. So I want to go back to their work plan and click on their work plan. Because I want to look at their strategies-- the strategies for the consortium and identify which strategies if I was the member representative for this agency to identify the strategies that our agency will work on.

So here all of the gaps-- excuse me-- here are all of the strategies that they have identified. So here is one for their gaps in service and they have identified their strategy. And then this checkbox, which Neil have referred to previously, that's where you will check if this is an actual strategy that your agency will work on. Because remember, these are the consortium level strategies.

Again, here is their seamless transitions strategy, their student acceleration strategy, their shared professional development strategy, leveraging resources strategy, and those are all of the strategies that they have identified. So of these, I can either pick one or pick all, or anything in between that our agency will work on.

So then next, I'm going to go to the budget. Remember, I haven't selected anything because I don't want to change any of their information. I'm going to go to-- hit next and go to the budget. So the budget-- the total available funds for the budget are the 2020 to 2021 consortium allocation after the May revise. And additionally, it's any of their carryover funds, either from 2018 to '19, or 2019 to '20. So that's their lump sum of total available funds here, and then their total budget.

So if I were to complete this budget and I were to start entering numbers for actual budget amounts here, then this number would go from zero and increase to whatever the-- up until their remaining amount. Before this can be submitted, this remaining amount must equal zero.

Here, we have the direct costs, which are ready. They will be calculated based on what's entered into the budget. The indirect costs will also be calculated based on what's entered into the budget. Also, the percentage of direct costs will be calculated automatically. And remember that the indirect costs is for a USD. It's the CDE indirect rate for the year up to 5%.

And then consortium fiscal admin expenses. Now, this is automatically calculated, as well, but only if the member has checked that this budget item is related to the consortium fiscal/admin expenses. If there are no consortium fiscal admin expenses, so this particular agency does not provide oversight for the consortium, then there shouldn't be any expenses listed here.

I'm going to scroll down to the actual budget to begin-- if I were to begin entering budget items by object code. So here, you're just entering the budget item title. Most people really just enter this-- use this title as the actual object code name. But it's whatever you would like to put. And then the expenditure type.

So here is where you're going to list the actual object-- excuse me-- the actual budget object code that this budget item is related to. So you have your 1,000, 2,000 3,000, 4,000, 5,000, 6,000, 7,000, other, outgo, and then indirect costs. And remember, your indirect costs will be automatically calculated up top. Everything else will go into your direct cost.

Then you're going to do a brief description of the expenditure. So we do want you to provide some type of description of the expenditure that this object is-- this budget item is related to. You are limited to 2,500 characters here. So definitely just let us know something. It's not a required field. So hypothetically speaking, you do not have to fill this out. However, it's the practice just to identify what these budget items are for.

Then you will enter in the actual amount for 2020 to 2021. And then you will, like I said, check if it's a consortium fiscal/admin expense. Again, this is only if this particular agency is providing oversight as it relates to consortium fiscal/admin for the consortium. If this budget or this agency does not provide that oversight, please do not check this box right here.

Then another area that we definitely want to bring to everyone's attention is the quarterly expenditure forecast. And we do notice that there are still some agencies within some consortia who are not completing the section. And so we definitely want to make sure that it's practice of everyone to complete the section. And then also be mindful of the manner that you are completing it.

So we give you an example for the percentages. And these percentages basically says from quarter 1 through quarter 4, this is the percentage of my budget that I plan to expense. So we give you examples that you can use. You're not mandated to use these percentages. They are just examples. Because some people don't really understand what this is for or how to use it.

So 15%, what you're saying when you enter 15% in quarter 1, you're saying, for this budget line item, you're going to expense at least 15% of the total for this object code. So let's say the object code is $1,000. And you enter 15% here. So by the end of quarter 1, you would have expensed 15% of that $1,000.

In quarter 2, if you were to enter 30%, by quarter 2, you would have expensed 30% of this object code. It's cumulative, so it keeps building upon each other. So by quarter 3, if you were to put 45%, same thing. 45% of that $1,000 should be expensed by quarter 3. And in quarter 4, if you were to put 60%, that means at the end of quarter 4, you would have expensed 60%, or $600, of that $1,000. And then you're planning to carry over 40% into the next program year.

You can make budget revisions. You can change these percentages throughout the program year up until this certification of Q4. Once you submit and certify Q4 of a program year, you no longer have access to the budget, and you no longer have access to the fiscal reports. But definitely use this to keep yourself in alignment. But then also to identify if there-- for us to identify if you have to complete a corrective action plan.

So a corrective action plan will be populated if you hadn't-- if by the end of the quarter you have not met at least 90% of what you have said that you will expense by the end of the quarter. Then a corrective action plan will populate and it's asking you to let us know what steps you will take to get back on target pretty much. So definitely be mindful of this.

We do see from time to time that because it's not-- it is a required field now. It wasn't at first, so people weren't filling it out. But then also not really knowing and not filling it out properly. So definitely just be mindful of that.

If you have to add-- if you want to duplicate this budget item, you're able to do so here. If you want to add a new budget item, you are able to do so here. If you wanted to delete, you're able to do so, as well. But this is the budget and work plan-- excuse me-- the budget area. I just covered the work plan.

I'm not going to go any further because I don't want to mess anything up. But I'm open for questions.

OK. There was-- I think there's a question for me. If we get an additional cut to our allocations or restoration of the May cut, will we need to uncertify and then rebudget? So the way we'll handle that, currently we're working with the $484 million budget that was in the May revise. I don't foresee us getting additional cuts right away. If I don't-- I haven't heard about that happening.

We know the Senate and Assembly put forth the budget to the Governor that restored about $54 million worth of cuts, which brought us up to last year's or prior year funding levels, which is like what, $538 million or something like that. So what we would do if the Governor signed that and we did get some of our cuts restored, we'd do another allocation amendment. Veronica, do you want to tell them how that new allocation amendment would work, and how they would have to first certify the original allocation amendment that was in for the reductions? So if we did that, how would that work?

OK. So I'm going to come out of the budget and work plan and go back to this consortium's details page. And I will go to the allocation amendment. Well, first, let's check into the CFAD. So if there is-- if the budget is restored by whatever amount, this negative-- so right now it says negative $408,579.

If they were to receive an increase, but the increase didn't cover their total original allocation here, whatever the increase is, it will decrease this negative number. But if it didn't go back to this $3 million, you will still have a negative number here. But definitely just-- you just want to check to make sure that on your CFAD, although, you aren't able to make any changes to it, that the system has updated to reflect whatever the increase may be.

Then once you do that, you will go back out to the consortium details page. You will scroll down to your allocation amendment. Now here, your allocation will increase. So right now, this consortium has $2,966,564. If they were to receive, let's say, another million increase, then-- or no, less than $400,000 increase, then this number will be increased. Their total remaining, they will now have a positive number. But it'll still be in red.

So was that-- what that is saying is that you have to complete an allocation amendment again by starting an amendment. I'm not going to press it because I'm on the live site. But you will start an amendment here to now account for the increase. So your proposed allocations for your members, however you decide that you want to designate that increase, your proposed allocations will now be increased in each member's allocation.

You'll go through the allocation amendment process so everyone will either approve or reject that allocation amendment. Let's say everyone approves it. Once the allocation amendment has been approved by the entire consortium, your budget and work plan will now open back up.

So it'll go back into draft status, like it is here. All members' budgets will go into draft status. And then each member will now have to go in and account for that increase. So again, your total available funds will increase the total budget. Let's saying that you have already allocated this entire $3,500,000. This will remain the same. However, the total remaining will be a positive red number.

And so what that's saying is the system now wants you to allocate, or budget out, that increase in your allocation. So you would go through them and you will update your-- however you want to budget that increase. Let's say you want to put it all into instructional salaries. And this is your first budgeted item here.

Then you would just increase the dollar amount. And then you will see, OK, do I want to adjust my quarterly forecast? You can adjust that at this time. Once you've made all of your adjustments, you will go through the process of checking next and then preview, submit. The consortium lead will be notified that you have submitted a revised budget, and they will either certify it, or they will reject it.

And if they reject it, then you'll go back into draft status. But that's the process that you will go through if there was to be an increase in the total CEP allocation.

OK. Great. Thank you. And I think this is a policy question. But the next one might be a specific NOVA question. So Crystal says, is 60% supposed to be the minimum expenditure in order to spend funds on time? So Crystal, the reason we picked 60%-- and that's 60% of all active funds that we figured with 60% it would actually spend down any carryover.

So within that two year cycle, if you get to 60% of all funding, you would probably liquidate your prior year funding and prior, prior year funding. And so you might only have carryover of current year funding. And so that's kind of how we came up with that 60%.

But you might have bylaws in your consortia that are a little stricter than that. The spending forecast is not a policy thing set up by CAEP. It's just a guidelines as far as liquidating that carryover. But a lot of consortias have bylaws that govern those carryovers, and spending, and things like that. But we put that in there in the forecasting. And NOVA is just a tool that you can use.