Veronica Parker: Neil.

Neil Kelly: Thank you, Veronica. I'll wait for the slide to come up. But welcome everyone. As you know, dual enrollment is a big part of our state effort for transitioning students. SB-554 is intentional to work with K-12, adult students, and the community colleges. So we're really excited about that, and we're really excited about this webinar today.

So if you want to advance the slides, Veronica. So just quickly, when we looked at the priorities for this year, we looked at the Department of Education's, the state superintendent, Tony Thurmond's initiatives. We also looked at the Vision for Success and the Vision goals. And from there, we aligned kind of with those big visions are to our program. Next slide, please.

And the CDE superintendent's initiatives are closing the digital divide, promoting statewide literacy, reducing chronic absenteeism, closing achievement gaps, and, of course, employment, jobs for tomorrow. And then, conversely, if we go over to the community college system-- next slide, please-- we look at the Vision goals, which is to increase degrees, credential, certificates, or skill sets for in-demand jobs, increase the number of students transitioning to UCCSU, decreasing the average time or a number of units accumulated by the community college students as they go forward on earning their associate's degree.

And then there's just a few more. Next slide, please. And then increasing the percentage of CTE students who report being employed in field to study, reducing equity gaps among traditionally underrepresented student groups. And then, finally, reducing regional achievement gaps across all of the above measures through faster improvements among colleges located in the regions with the lowest educational attainment of adults.

So then we took these and aligned them with adult ed for some shared goals. So increasing credentials and a high school diploma, high school equivalency is a big thing in the adult ed world. Increasing transition or transfer to community college credit coursework, decreasing unit attainment, helping those students get to the 12 hour mark, increasing employment for CTE students. In fact, increasing employment for all CAEP students.

And then reducing the regional gap in the 71 regional consortia. And is there one more slide on this, Veronica? Well, and then overall in all of those would be the equity. How do we reduce the equity gap in all our programs? And so from that, we've got these seven state priorities-- equity, leadership, learner transition, marketing, program development, curriculum, classroom, program evaluation, and technology and distance learning.

Today, we're going to be focusing on learner transition. And if you haven't started your three year plan, one of the questions the legislature asks us for the three year plan is, what actions are you taking to increase the-- I think it's to increase the transition of students to employment and post-secondary? So learner transition is a big part of that three year plan, big part of what the legislature is asking us to do. And so with that, I'll turn it back to Veronica so you guys can start the webinar today.

Veronica Parker: Thank you, Neil. And we will turn it over to Matt who will get us started with their presentation on SB-554. So I'm going to stop sharing, Matt, and you can go ahead and share your slide deck.

Matthew Morin: Great. Thank you, Veronica, and thank you, Neil. I think a lot of what you laid out there for the Vision for Success and our adult ed goals will resonate with this presentation today. So the title of the presentation is utilizing SB-554 to enroll nonresident and resident HSE and HSD students in credit college courses which, of course, is one of the goals that Neil just laid out, that transition to college credit coursework.

Our presenters are Nora Hourani-Farraj, who's the assistant principal of Chaffey Adult School. Todd Haag, who's the principal of Chaffey Adult School. Laura Alvarado, who's the assistant director of adult ed pathways at Chaffey College. And myself, Matthew Morin, who's the director of intersegmental partnerships at Chaffey College.

The topics of our presentation will be broken out into four components. The first is why Sb-554 and special admit? The second component will be dual enrollment process workflow, where you'll learn a little bit about how we apply SB-554 at Chaffey College, the processes and even the electronic forms that go into that work. And then transition counseling support, so what kind of external student supports we create to facilitate the student enrollment through SB-554.

And then the perspective from our adult school partner, where you'll hear what kind of supports and, really, the development of their program in conjunction with Chaffey College and their journey to kind of coordinate with the funky institutional infrastructure that colleges present to adult schools.

So this kind of hearkens back to a lot of the originating motivation behind the goals that Neil stated just a moment ago, that are also connected to the Vision for Success. When we think about educational attainment in California, there really is a crisis of educational attainment, especially with adults who do not possess high school diplomas.

So 17% or over 5 million adults in California possess less than a high school diploma, which is a larger percentage than the average percentage across all states in the United States. And that is especially a problem because California has the biggest population. So when you combine the large population with also the largest percentage of adults who do not have high school diplomas, that really constitutes a crisis of educational attainment, not just for California, but for the United States.

And when we put this into context within the perspective of how our CAEP programming functions, of that 5 million, plus any students who could benefit from English language learning or a short-term CTE or older adult programming or adults with disabilities, there's only a total of around a half a million Adult Ed students who are enrolled in the California Adult Ed programs, at least that are picked up by the launch board, who have attained more than 12 hours in Adult Ed. And so this particular snapshot is of the 17-18 year. And of that 17-18 year student cohort, only 1.6% went on to complete six-plus college units. So if one of our vision for success goals is really to transition students into college credit and make that a priority for Adult Ed, we're a long way from that goal.

And that's where dual enrollment kind of enters and I'm sure many of us who are working in Adult Ed know that there's not going to be any silver bullet to college credit transition for Adult Ed students. We have a long way to go to climb that mountain. But there is a toolkit that we can use to help accelerate our ability to meet that challenge. And dual enrollment has been proven to be an excellent tool for facilitating transition for traditionally aged high school students.

And because the research behind dual enrollment showing that traditional age high school students are more likely to graduate from high school, enroll in college full time, maintain higher GPAs in college, persist and complete baccalaureate degrees in four to six years is so robust, especially for students who are low SES or first generation, which means that it can be a real equity gap closer, states across the country have invested and doubled down and made dual enrollment a major priority for their states. And California is one of them that have really put their money where their mouth is to support dual enrollment, but primarily, in fact, only for traditionally aged high school students.

Adults without high school diplomas are sort of left out of the equation in the discussion when it comes to the power of this tool, which is sad because the reality about the students who actually enroll in dual enrollment courses who benefit from this transition acceleration tool is actually the opposite and shows it to be the opposite of an equity initiative.

The demographic trends of dual enrollment students tend to be white, high socioeconomic status, non-first generation, high GPA, in AP and IB programs, which means that the students who are in dual enrollment programs across the country are actually students who are already kind of set up for success in college transition. Which forces kind of us to contemplate, well, what can we do to make sure that this tool is being used as an equity gap closer instead of an equity gap increaser?

And I think that's where adult ed is such a useful community of practice because we, as adult ed leaders and practitioners, and our students really stand to be the force that could make dual enrollment only be used for good instead of to accelerate achievement gaps that already exist because, as you know, all of the students who we serve in Adult Education are students who are disproportionately impacted, who are on the side of the equity gap where they face more barriers than the categories that you see here. So dual enrollment for Adult ASE students can really help not just benefit adult ed, but also benefit the entire cause of dual enrollment across the nation.

And that's where SB-554 came in. So SB-554 basically expands the dual enrollment funding formula as well as the streamlined enrollment processes that are available for high school students that eliminate financial aid, for example, from their process and expands that legislation, which is called special admit, which is an enrollment status that exists in Title V as well as Title III and Title II, to Adult Ed programs, as well, specifically to adults who are pursuing a high school diploma or a high school equivalency certificate.

So the exact language is that SB-554 authorizes a student pursuing a high school diploma or a high school equivalency certificate to enroll as a special part-time student at a community college. And I'll talk a little bit now about what that designation of special part-time admit actually is, and specifically what the difference is between California Promise and special part-time admit.

The reason why I juxtapose those two categories against each other is because throughout the process of walking out this legislation, we were frequently asked, well, why wouldn't colleges just enroll adult ed ASE students using the Cal Promise or the BOG waiver because California Community Colleges don't block students who are pursuing a high school diploma from entry. And that is absolutely true. But I think what I'll show you here will help make the case for why the special admit designation that exists for traditionally aged high school students is especially beneficial for adult ASE students and can cut through a lot of the red tape that California Promise requires.

And so the first dimension of special part-time admin is that students are limited to 11 units if they're concurrently enrolled in a high school and now in an Adult Ed program. That colleges also received enhanced apportionment that's approximately one third higher FTES for each FTE that a student enrolls through a special part-time admit enrollment status. And this is significant, not just for colleges, but also for adult schools.

So for the adult school practitioners, administrators in the room, I really want to encourage you not to look at that statement as something that doesn't pertain to you and only relates to colleges because, actually, if you find that your college is having a hard time connecting with you on SB-554, these are statements that can kind of help build the bridge because they might not even know or understand that this SB-554 dual enrollment pathway will provide an extra funding revenue stream for them and help them with their enrollments.

And so this can really help you get buy in from your college partners. Colleges also can waive the fees and the tuition for non-resident students. And this is a really key component for special admit that's very different from California Promise. Of course, with Cal Promise, nonresident fees are not allowed to be waived unless they're AB-540 students and there's a bar for that, of course. And so the ability to really not even check residency and to waive fees and tuition as if they were noncredit students-- and I think that's, like, a good way to structure this in your minds if you sort of wondering, well, what's the difference between this and a traditional credit enrollment?

In some ways, what this does is it clears the deck of a lot of the credit regulations and restrictions and kind of puts it on an equal playing field with noncredit when it comes to its openness to nonresident students participating. And then you get extra bonus points for the student-centered funding formula when these students transition over into first-time college students. So the idea is not that ASE students remain in the special part-time admit space for that long. Ideally, just a year or less, that's a period of time when they are completing their adult secondary ed credential. And then they transition over to first-time college student.

And let's say during that year they completed a college English course, that also accounted for their high school diploma English because that college English course can be transcripted on their adult school as an English course. And then they transition over into the college and they've completed a college English course, that actually will count as part of their student-centered funding formula first year completion metric of completing college English within the first year. And for colleges, for every student that completes their English and math within the first year, that's an extra $1,000 for every single one of those students. So there's extra completion points that can be tacked on as kind of multiplying bonuses in addition to the enhanced apportionment.

Also, students don't begin the clock on their Cal Promise until they transition into first-time college student. So the special part-time admit is kind of like a holding pen that doesn't enter into the Cal Promise clock that they would have if they're going to enroll full time. And then this is my favorite part of the special part-time admit ed code is that it requires the authorization of a secondary ed provider, which means your adult school or your noncredit adult education program administrator/counselor/career tech, for example, whoever has been the designee-- labeled as the designee, authorizes their ASE student to be able to enroll in the college this way, which kind of forces a relationship between the college and the adult ed providers, where colleges and adult ed providers can start to be really intentional about how they build those pipelines.

And what I especially like about the authorization of the adult ed secondary ed provider is that it also clears financial aid out of the way. So if you think about a traditional enrollment in a college for a traditional college student, the college charges the student tuition and fees and then the student is able to apply for financial aid in order to get those fees waived, whether or not they're going through Cal Promise or through FAFSA. And in this case, we kind of cut out that step for the students so that they don't even need to go through that financial aid process. And for many of us in adult ed, we know that can be a really interrogating experience for adult ed students. And so this kind of softens the blow by taking the financial aid office out of the equation for their college experience and, instead, replacing it just with that signature from the adult ed provider.

And in case you get asked by your partner college or if you're working in an adult ed office in a college, well, show us that we can collect apportionment for non-resident FTES, here is the Assembly Bill in 2016 that clarified that colleges can waive non-resident fees for special part-time admits and collect FTES apportionment on those enrollments. The reason why I bring this up is because it's a huge sticking point for many colleges.

Many colleges, their admissions and records office and registrar's office are super skittish, for good reason, about waiving nonresident fees and also about collecting apportionment for it. And so while adult schools enjoy a much more open door, open entry, open exit kind of approach that's very inviting to all students, no matter who they are and where they come from, colleges, of course, exist in a different space where that isn't the case. So this is just one tool that you can use this slide and this Assembly Bill to help make your case, in case you encounter any resistance on that question about collecting apportionment or even waiving fees for nonresident students.

The other thing I want to add, real quickly, is that Ability-to-Benefit could be bundled with SB-554. If any of you are familiar, Ability-to-Benefit allows adults who are pursuing a high school diploma to receive Pell funding if they complete six units in a career pathway. Of course, Accuplacer used to be one of the tools or hurdles, I would say, that was used for colleges in order to allow students to test to see whether or not they could access ATB funding, but that also is a very restrictive tool, and so it's a good thing that AB-705 has kind of wiped the slate clean in California Community Colleges of Accuplacer, largely, and replaced it with placement programs.

But it has also sort of closed the door to a lot of ATB, but what a lot of colleges don't realize is that it's still eligible for adults who are pursuing a high school diploma to complete six units in what the Title IV regulations call a career pathway in order to receive funding. And so you can actually, in this case, braid SB-554 by waiving student tuition and fees and then the students can get a little extra bump through Pell for cost of living if they participate in Ability-to-Benefit at your college. And that SB-554 dual enrollment can get them over that six unit hump without having to pay anything. So there's a nice little pathway there.

So correcting common misconceptions about special part-time admit. So one is that high school transcripts from dual enrollment students are required by auditors. So this is something many colleges, their admissions and records or registrars offices are nervous about, that if they don't have the transcripts of high school students, traditionally aged high school students, then they won't be allowed to enroll as a special part-time admit. This is not accurate.

High school transcripts are not required and, therefore, they are not also required for adult school students. So if you are partnering with a college that requires transcripts of its high school special part-time admit students, you can tell them, actually, you don't need to do that and, also, you definitely don't and shouldn't do it for adult ed students because transcripts for adult school students and for adult ed program students is always a challenge.

And then, also, GPA is not a requirement for admission. A lot of colleges have a GPA threshold for which they will create as like a wall for special part-time high school students. If they have an internal policy like that, know that that is not a statewide policy, and it would be in the best interest, considering the equity and goals, that they remove GPA as a requirement for entering as a special part-time admit student.

So here's a nice diagram created actually by my partner, Laura Alvarado, and colleague. And so this shows how an SB-554 student would transition over into a first time college student pathway. So you start in the middle there, with that big red circle that says SB-554, tuition and fees waived for all ASE students, pretty much no questions asked. And then they move into a variety of three different pathways. Maybe they're utilizing Ability-to-Benefit after they complete six units and that's giving them some extra Pell funding as they transition into first time college student. In that case, if they are Pell eligible, they would be residents and they would be able to transition over into the first time college students and utilize FAFSA after that.

But for our students who are non-AB-540 eligible, meaning maybe undocumented students who did not spend any time in the traditional K-12 system and for whom, if anyone is familiar with SB-68, have not completed three years at 420 hours a year of time in an adult school, which is really not-- that's not a bar that any adult school student would be able to reach reasonably-- then they end up being kind of out of luck.

And that is why it's really important for all of us, I think, to be pursuing either legislation that reforms SB-68 or expands AB-540 so that as these SB-554 students who are not AB-540 eligible transition over into first time college student, they don't hit a wall when they try to transition over. And then, of course, if a student is a resident or AB-540 eligible, then they can transition over into first time college status as a full-time community college student using the California Promise grant as well as Pell if they are Pell eligible and they have resident status.

So I think that the barrier that I mentioned earlier about how non-AB-540 students cannot move over into first time college students is part of a bigger challenge that SB-554 kind of picks at. And I said earlier that one of the great things about SB-554 is that it levels the playing field between noncredit and credit when it comes to access for students who are nonresidents and residents alike.

And I think what it highlights is that the Carnegie unit is kind of an oppressive regime. It's a tool that has been used to keep students out. It's been used to certify the privileged in their educational pathways. And largely because of all of the residency requirements attached to it, including the trail and the records that it leaves behind, needs to kind of be broken down if we ever really are going to achieve true equity.

So SB-554 helps us kind of break through that credit barrier and puts us into a new sort of space where the credit is no longer as much of a domain of restriction for students who are pursuing an education if they're adults who don't possess high school diplomas or if they are adults who are nonresidents. And with that, I will turn it over to my colleague, Laura Alvarado, who will talk a little bit about our partnership and the processes that allow us to enroll students in SB-554.

Laura Alvarado: Thank you, Matt, and good afternoon, everyone. Matt, would you mind dropping in the link for the slides into the chat?

Matthew Morin: Yes, for sure. Thank you for reminding me.

Laura Alvarado: Thank you. OK. So I'm going to go ahead and start talking about the practitioner practices of this. So we've got a good grasp now of the policy, especially the why, the why this is so important and why this benefits our schools and our adult students, particularly our non-AB-540 students. As you see here, this is a village. It takes a whole village to make this work, anywhere from our consortia director all the way to the bookstore to assistant principals and staff at the adult schools. What the take away from this is really is that it's a shared partnership. This is a shared program. It's not viewed just as a college program. The investment from this comes from multiple sources. Next slide, Matt.

So at Chaffey College, the way we offer our courses to students is through a marketplace. So let's see, I think this semester, or Spring semester, we had over 30 classes available with multiple sections in each of the different courses. These courses are all online. Our program is a non-CCAT program. For each of these classes, we cap at five and then the remaining seats are dedicated to adult school dual enrollment as well as high school enrollment.

So the reason we piggyback this is, our adult schools, they're smaller than our 18 to 20 high schools in our district. It would be more difficult for us to fill complete courses and have a wide selection of courses. So with this marketplace style, we can really piggyback and expand the number of courses and the different types of courses to our adult school. The courses are selected, they're A through G to meet the high school or adult school requirements.

We have many CTE-based courses and there is definitely a guided pathways perspective to this in the sense of making sure that we're offering intro classes and starting to identify the bundling of courses to ensure students, if they're interested in a particular area, it still falls within those guided pathway practices.

In addition to this, the adult school side, we're even looking at other ways to approach guided pathways. So one practice we're doing now with our counseling department is we have a work group that's starting to see if we can create a career or academic community based career explorer classes. So for instance, at Chaffey College for one of our medi majors or our academic career communities, which would be, let's say, health and wellness, we'll have a guidance three, a career exploration and life planning course dedicated to students who are particularly interested in a particular academic and career community. Next slide, Matt.

So as Matt said earlier, we use a digital workflow. For this, we use Formstack. The flow of this Formstack is it goes to the student. The next step, it goes to the adult school designee and comes back to the college, which leads to batch enrollment. So I'm going to go ahead and give you a quick view of what our Formstack looks like and then I'll talk a little more about it.

So this is our electronic form. So this is what we use for enrollment. A student would still need to apply to the college using CCC Apply. Once they have their student ID number, they would use this particular form. This form is provided to all the adult schools and our adult school counselor on the Chaffey College site has it, as well. So as you see, it's a fairly simple form. Basic demographics-- we ask to identify what adult school you attend. There's a drop down so you can see our different schools.

We ask the student to choose their classes. So as Matt said earlier, the max a student can take as a special part-time admit is three units. We're aware that not all of our students understand the process of what's units or what's not. So we estimate approximately three classes for students to give them a guideline. From there, we have the list of courses. A student can self-select a course. How many would they like? Let's say I'm going to take some gerontology and a communications course. That's it. I go on here. There's some basic understanding of our program. Does the student understand? Yes. And then they sign. When the student submits, it goes directly to our adult school designee.

One of the benefits of this here is, as I said before, the student selects their adult school. With Formstack, we can customize what classes are offered based on which adult school the students select. We have some adult skills which you'll hear from in a little while, our Chaffey Adult School, that we offer additional business courses to that school or a cohort that they have. So I'm able to add those classes on and they'll only be open access to students within that particular adult school. If at any time I need to expand that to other adult schools, any of those courses, I can in just a few steps. Matt, can you bring us back to the presentation?

So with this digital workflow, something that we've realized is really important is the communication with the students. So the whole college process is probably new to these students. I think we all could admit that our processes can be a little bit cumbersome, at best, particularly if you're first gen or you don't have anybody there to guide you through this process. So we work really hard at student communications. One of the benefits of Formstack is that as soon as a student submits that form, they receive an immediate message. Welcome to Chaffey, this is what you've done, these are next steps, and this is who you can contact if you have any questions. Next slide.

So this is an example, as I showed you before, of where the adult school designate needs to verify. The good piece about here is, as soon as the student submits that form, the adult school designee is notified. So there's been many times that it's less than two or three minutes from the point of student's submission to the adult school designee verification. This also meets the ed code requirement to have the adult school supply that verification. Next line, Matt.

So back to student communications, we really want to let our students know what's happening in this process. It's brand new. It's a little scary. And communication is really the best way that we find to ease some of the fears of our students. So once the adult school approves that, they receive another notification, this time in their email. So with this, they're notified that they have the course. They're congratulated, so we can customize these.

We also provide information here on next steps with tutorials, how to connect to our student portal, how to access the student portal if you've never logged in before, how to access Canvas, which leads them to moving into the online courses. And lastly here, Chaffey has an Omnitrans GoSmart bus pass. So for $8, a student can, if they're enrolled in a class, they can get a bus pass that takes them all throughout anywhere that our Omnitrans, our local bus, travels. So we allow students to know this here because if they'd like to enroll in that, they can at this point. Next slide.

So let me share with you some of the benefits of using Formstack. It's user friendly, both on the user side and on the building site. I, myself, am not a tech person on any level, yet I'm able to go in and build these forms. They provide analytics. So this is a snapshot here. On the lower right-hand corner, you see a list. And this is where we receive information about what adult school it came from, the students Chaffey ID number, their names. So it allows us to track those students.

I know it might be hard to see, but there's different tabs. There are some for completed workflows or in-progress workflows. Those in progress represent those that the adult school designate has not yet approved. Everything's timestamped, so we're able to look at this and say, well, OK, Nora hasn't approved this in the last three hours, which is very unlike her because she's on top of this. So I might want to either resend it or if I have to wait a day, I can just contact her and say, did you know this? Because we see that our adult school partners tend to approve these immediately. So it gives us an idea of where our student's at. Or if a student contacts us, we can tell them, hey, this is the status.

On the upper left-hand corner, you see some charts. These analytics provide us with information on how many students have enrolled, how many students have enrolled in a particular course. We can see this in a line bar or in a pie chart. We have ways that we can manipulate these analytics. Another benefit to Formstack is that it does accelerate enrollment. As I said, from student to authorized designee and back to the college can be anywhere from five minutes to five days, but we really find that it's pretty quick. Two more points. As I said earlier, this forms allows us to use logic to customize the list of students. And this form is also 508 compliant. Next slide, Matt.

So let me share a little bit about our internal processes at Chaffey. So any time we do this, as you see with these Formstacks and enrollment, we rely very heavily on our admissions and records team. And I know in previous presentations Matt and I have addressed this. But this also applies to our IT department and how much we really rely on them and work with them to create these backend processes. So when a student applies and they use CCC Apply, they now have an admin status code, which is assigned to students who select adult school student eligible to enroll in college.

So this is significant when we came on the application back last December, it really legitimized and validated our adult schools enrolling into our colleges. And there's also a few other places within CCC Apply that our students are now recognized. I'll give you one area to this that we're actually trying to work on now is one downfall we see with this is we have adult school students who are not part of our dual enrollment program who are enrolling into the college that are selecting this designation.

So these are adult school students that maybe are moving into some noncredit ESL courses and are not eligible for SB-554. So this is something that Matt and I are now starting to work on with the CC tech and Neil Kelly, we'll be talking to you soon about this, as well, to see how we could make this terminology much more specific to adult school diploma and adult school equivalent students.

The next piece is that when students do select this status, a admit status code, which is assigned to the adult school student eligible to enroll college enrollment, it triggers the fee removal in our billing tables. So this is automatic, and this code is also linked to the MIS element.

At this point, the student is blocked from self registration and they receive a message that says they need to petition in order to enroll. On the enrollment side, a student will complete the Formstack and receive the approval but they also usually have guidance from either the adult school or college counselor. Once the student completes this enrollment and they're approved, we batch enroll the students through our ANR and this overrides that petition block. The next step is the students are able to see the courses that they've enrolled in, in their portal. Next slide.

So as I said before, that admit status code that's assigned to the enrollment, it triggers the MIS element, as well. So SB-554 has the code of 21,000 specific to speak to our students part-time special admit. So this is significant because if your school has an active high school dual enrollment program, traditionally, if we did not have this particular MIS element, our adult school student, special part-time admit students would be lumped in with that high school. So this code, this MIS code, now allows for a separation. So at Chaffey College, we are now on our third term of running SB-554 and we're excited to look on the dashboard when Spring and then Summer completes so we can see the number of students be represented in the number of SB-554 adults school students that we have now enrolled. Next slide.

So marketing-- so we have all these processes in place. We were building this and COVID hit. So we've really had to learn to adjust. Fortunately, though, these adjustments that we made have really opened up the accessibility. We did find, on the onset, some of the digital literacy issues with our adult school students, but we also see that quickly changing. Our adult school students are adapting, such as the rest of the world has.

So I'll give you an idea here. On the left-hand side, you'll see a list of the courses that we offer our adult school students. At the very bottom there, there's information on how students can contact us and what they need to do. This is provided to the adult schools. I have adult schools that have sent this out by text, they email it, if there's any type of in-person contact, they can disseminate it that way.

On the right-hand side, again, it's just another example of how we have advertised this to our adult school students. And if I can show you, the flyer on the left has four classes. That's the first semester that we've offered this. The flyer on the left has 20-some maybe 30 classes. That's what we're at now. So in a matter of Fall to Spring, we were able to expand from these four classes on.

On these flyers, you'll see at the bottom right-hand corner in black, these flyers are hyperlinked to how to apply to the college, how to receive assistance with the application process, and how to access the actual dormant Formstack form. Now you can change, Matt. And I'll share with you one other thing we do. You don't need to go back to the slide, but the dates of the courses-- Chaffey College is traditionally an 18-week semester. We offer our courses on a 14-week semester, so we do a late start. We give a month between the start time of the 18-week to our adult school courses, and this is a benefit.

It's very difficult to be starting your college courses at the same time maybe your kids are returning back to school. And maybe, at the same time, your adult school classes are starting, as well. So by delaying it a month, a few things happen. It allows our adult school students to somewhat adjust of returning back to school, whether it's for themselves or family members. It also gives us a month to go into the adult schools and do a little bit more marketing and recruitment and helping those students enroll. If you're enrolling in-- like right now, we're enrolling for fall. It might be difficult for our students here in late April or early May to commit to courses that start in September. So that extra four weeks allows us that time to go back in and work with our students.

We also focus on a little bit more than just getting students in classes. We want this to be a long-term goal and long-term transition. So on the left, you'll see a flyer, it says, what's your plan? Here, we start advertising about how to make an ed plan, how to meet with one of our dedicated adult school counselors who can work with you to build out your future. With our counseling staff, they've really gotten to know their students well. So some of our adult school students can go straight to the counselor. They know who they are. They feel really, really comfortable in building out these future goals.

On the right-hand hand side, this is something we're doing for summer. We are having a virtual summer workshop series. So this is designed specifically for our adult school students in mind that we have but also their community, their family members, anybody else they know that might want to go into either an adult school or into the college. So we're going to be offering topics like let Chaffey College introduce themselves, so many choices, so little time. How do you figure out what classes to take or what an academic career community is?

We have one, how to pay or not for college. What are your options, either through our program or other ways? If you already possess your GED or your high school diploma, how else can we help you? This is where we can share information about Cal Works. This is where we can share formation about EOPS. Then, we have a day dedicated to resources. How do I access our Social Justice Center? Our food pantry? What if I want to do a transfer agreement to go to a university? What if I want to join the honors programs?

So we make sure that all of this is moving forward for that adult school student. In addition to an application workshop, which will be available in English and Spanish, a day dedicated of, how do I navigate Chaffey College online? So if these students are taking online courses or they just want to go into our website and see what we have, we're going to guide them through that. And the last day is a counselor chat. You have free access to a counselor or we can help you make an appointment if that chat needs to be in private. Next slide.

And this here is a poster that now that our adult schools are back in person, this is a poster that's being created, actually has been created, that will be going out to our adult schools so they can start posting around in their classrooms, in any area where students and staff might convene. So they have an idea of what's available. And if you see, we've highlighted on here that US citizenship is not required. So again, we're really using this SB-554 as an equity piece and making sure that all of our adult school students can be served. Next slide, Matt.

So as I said, I'm going to jump back to my very first slide and I said about this is a collaboration-- so are these support services. So on our adult school side, we have our adult school career techs, counselors, even front office staff who are heavily engaged with us, helping choose or at least providing information about what's available, as far as the Chaffey College classes, counseling support, educational planning as far as how do these students use these courses and how are they counted towards not only their career goals but their high school diploma goals.

Career planning-- and again, I'm going to jump back to that linking to resources. On the Chaffey College side, we offer our counseling support, again, long-term ed planning, career and major exploration. We provide access to technology. So our students have access to free computers and hotspots, if necessary.

Tutoring support-- we can arrange online tutoring based on a class. If we have a coldhearted adult school class, we can bring in tutoring once or twice a week, depending on those students' needs. So again, this is just an idea of how we build this partnership together. I think one of the greatest compliments we had one time on a presentation is they asked, is this an adult school program or a Chaffey College program? And it just, again, showed the dedication of both the adult school and the college on how we work together with the common goal of moving our collective students into post-secondary. With that next slide, I'm going to hand it off to Todd Haag and Nora Hourani-Farraj from Chaffey Adult School.

Nora Hourani-farraj: Todd, you need to unmute yourself.

Todd Haag: I failed the very first test in webinar presentation. Nora knows that. So anyway, thank you, Laura. Thank you, Matt. And I'll be introducing Nora in just a couple of moments, as well. But I just wanted to mention, we are part of our consortium, the West End Corridor Consortium. Chaffey College is our community college partner. And we work very closely with Fontana, Chino, and Upland, as well. And these programs in different forms exist in those programs, as well.

So I really wanted to thank Matt and Laura. Matt, first of all, was so instrumental in Neil Kelly being supportive of the legislation. It was kind of born out of Matt getting it and understanding it and Chaffey College's willingness to kind of take that torch and run with it, resulting in this legislation. I also want to thank them both for being so understanding. I mean, it took a lot of time and energy for them to hear our adult school message, as far as what we are about, what our students are about, and what our students come to our programs with.

And it's the barriers piece, in many cases. So their willingness to listen and adjust and take a look at how what we deal with relates to the college and what they have to deal with, their parameters, their barriers, with regards to enrollment and paperwork and policy, was really a big, big step that has got us to where we are now. So I really want to commend them for that because that communication piece and that openness and understanding was huge, was huge. Nothing would move forward without that.

Just a quick little story for me. I'm a little embarrassed to say when I first got into adult ed and just learning the ropes, what we were about, what I thought we were about, I didn't necessarily understand the transition piece that was just starting to be discussed maybe 10, eight years ago. And I really felt that's not what they're coming here for. Our adults are coming here for language and they're coming here for those basic academic pieces of high school diploma and GED. And they're moving on to work and family. And I kind of dismissed the transition piece-- and again, I'm a little embarrassed to say that-- back early in my career.

Where the light bulb really went on for me was, one year, we changed our approach to graduation. We were graduating at the end of the year, and we changed how we distributed the diplomas at the end. And we did it in a little more organized fashion with allowing students in, in a very orderly fashion with their name, get their diploma. And I was kind of managing the line as we were letting a limited number of students pick up their diploma at the end of the ceremony. And I was hearing conversations about Chaffey College. What are you doing next year? When do classes start? And I heard it from student after student that was coming into the auditorium to get their diploma.

And I realized I was clueless in that respect and that we weren't doing enough to address and inform that next steps for many of our students. And they were kind of finding out on their own and taking those steps and gaining those avenues on their own. So that that was really a big light bulb for me, as to what students were actually wanting and needing assistance with. So I'll never forget that day when it comes to talking about what we're talking about today. So Matt, if you'd go to the next slide.

I'm going to just start a little bit with our vision and our logo. We redesigned our school logo a couple of years ago. All the schools in our district, they wanted kind of a uniform look. And that resulting logo kind of reminds us of what we're here for, and it's somebody helping somebody else. The rest is kind of the Leland Valley here and the mountains and water and in the history of the Chaffey district.