Peter Simon: Hello, everybody. My name is Peter Simon. Myself and Jenny Mollica are partners in High Road Alliance. Very briefly, High Road Alliance is we've just been around for six months. We're, as our moniker says here, we're really about opening doors to equitable, inclusive employment opportunities for the broadest possible population. And that includes integrating teaching and learning, hands-on experience, helping build access to good jobs, preapprenticeship/apprenticeship programs.

We work with a range of programs. We've, clearly, with this-- you'll hear about this project. We're also working with a number of entities around building access to apprenticeship and preapprenticeship programs. We also do direct technical assistance to people, building programs, and are currently helping create pathways and apprenticeships in the building services and agricultural sectors.

Myself, very briefly, I'm a retired community college CTE dean, but I've also worked doing consulting work with a number of adult ed consortia, helping build career pathways, do planning, contextualized teaching and learning, integrated education and training, and most recently with the topic of today, which is immigrant integration. Jennie.

Jennie Mollica: Hi, everyone. I'm Jennie Mollica, also with High Road Alliance, really delighted to be here with all of you today. Thank you for joining us. Just briefly about my past, I was an ESL teacher for many years and worked in Immigrant and Refugee Services in Oakland before starting consulting, mainly around convening partnerships of education, workforce development, community-based organizations around career pathways and good educational opportunities.

I did some research starting last year on English learners' access to apprenticeship, and that got me especially interested in the role of adult education in supporting access to really strong training and career pathway programs. And with High Road Alliance, I've been very happy to be involved in this partnership with the California Adult Education Program to learn more about immigrant integration in adult education in California.

So we wanted to give you a brief overview of our objectives for the webinar today. A definite highlight of this webinar will be number four here. We have a fantastic panel who you'll meet a little later in the webinar. But before we get into that panel, we want to do a few things.

One is to talk a little bit about immigrant integration in the California context specifically, AB 2098, which will tell you a little bit about and California's commitment to immigrant integration. And then related to that is the state's adoption of this Immigrant Integration Framework, which we want to share with you, those of you who aren't familiar with it, or just introduce as kind of a framing for the way we're talking about this today.

And then Peter and I are going to tell you a little bit about our recent research on effective practices in immigrant integration across California's adult ed consortia. And following this fantastic panel, we're going to have some time at the end for questions and for you sharing ideas, sharing ideas among our panelists a little more freely on what we're doing around immigrant integration and future directions.

Just to note that the research presentation we're going to do today is really just a taste, and you can learn more by reading the brief that was just released by CAEP. And I believe you'll find a link to that in today's chat.

Peter Simon: Great. Next slide. So first, we're going to talk a little bit about just the Cal-- as Jennie said, the California context. And again, many on this call know well about this because this is what you deal with daily, but just a overview that 26.8% of California's population are immigrants. And currently, the CAEP consortia around the state are serving a little over 350,000 English learners. So it's a main part of adult education offering.

And we were going to be talking about the sort of broader framework, but just that CAEP, CAEP as a system, supports language acquisition but much more now being documented in the EL Civics Objectives and the COAAP metrics, and we'll have a little brief cameo by Jay Wright in a moment about this.

I also just want to say, in terms of workforce development that we're talking about, that immigrants, when you look at the demographics, that immigrants are not just a group that needs to be served. But when you look at the demographic data, immigrants are a significant portion of the workforce of the future in this state and in this country, really. Next slide, please.

Jennie Mollica: OK, so before we go any further, we wanted to pause here and just make sure it's made clear what we mean when we're talking about immigrant integration. And we thought the best way to share that with you was by referring to a definition that was put together by a work group that came together related to California's legislation AB 2098. And this work group gave a lot of thought to how to approach immigrant integration at the state level and came up with this definition.

I won't read it to you. You can read it here. But it's worth noting that it's really seen as a two-way process, immigrants integrating into the society that they're introducing themselves to and the society welcoming them. And there's an emphasis here as well on programs and services, because that is what many of us provide, and then also, at the same time, an emphasis on the individual and the community. So there are individual benefits to this when people can gain economic mobility, civic participation, but they're also the secure and inclusive communities that result.

Peter Simon: So just very briefly, again in terms of just the California context, that in 2015 they established a new position, which is the director of immigrant integration, which is part of the governor's office. And in 2018, CAEP included immigrant integration as something which is included in what's measured, which was mandated by AB 2098. And in 2019, the AB 2098 Work Group released a whole series of recommendations, and these you can read more about in the opening part of our brief. Next slide.

Jennie Mollica: So we also wanted to share with you a framework that's come to be adopted by California. This grew out of work that was done in the area of the South Bay Consortium for Adult Education. We're very, very lucky to have some of those leaders on our call today, on our panel. So you'll hear more from them shortly.

But the adoption of it by California is really significant. And what you see here in this graphic is a 10-element framework that shows how an individual can benefit from these whole 10 areas related to linguistic integration, social, and economic. And something I think you'll hear emphasized as we get into our panel is that there's an important role for adult education in this.

It's a dynamic process. Adult education has an important role to play-- and that this really isn't new to adult education. We talk about it. I've heard one of our panelists refer to it as "old wine in a new bottle" as we look at this framework in terms of what can go on, what roles adult education can play.

So there's most definitely here a message that this goes beyond career education or workforce development. This goes beyond more basic ESL, English as a Second Language, education to really look more holistically at a person who is interested, has some goals in integrating into their new community. And so you see as you look around the 10 elements here that this can be a more holistic approach to providing services but also to an individual thinking about their goals and the directions they want to focus on.

Another point that certainly, certainly came up in our interviews as we talk about the research we did is that when a adult education program or a consortium embraces this, it can provide a kind of a shared language around the work that we can do together as a consortium. It can help everyone to get on the same page across consortium members, across community partners. It can help us think about how to measure what we're doing and look at whether we're successful or not. It can really become more of a culture rather than an individual program.

I'll also say a few words here before we go on about how this framework can be used, and these little points here are really reflected in those AB 2098 recommendations that have come out. An important, important point here is that none of this is mandatory. There's nothing about this framework that's an obligation on the part of adult education providers or consortia.

It really serves as a guide, and it can help to make decisions about what's done together collaboratively, how resources are distributed, how metrics are defined. And it can most definitely support a kind of intentionality around partners, and that's something that we heard in our interviews with consortia is that they're using this framework to think harder about what it is they're trying to do related to immigrant integration and how they want to go about it.

So these points here, if you can just look at these on the screen, I think you can see that it's a whole range of ways that the framework can be useful to a consortium, to individual providers, to the kind of collaboration that can come together.

Right now, I think we're going to turn it over for just a few minutes to Jay Wright from CASAS who can talk to us a little bit about COAAPs. This is just a teaser because, fortunately, Jay will be providing an entire webinar on this topic one week from today on next Thursday. Jay, are you there? Can you unmute yourself?

Jay Wright: Yes, I am. Thank you. And yeah, I was going to borrow Peter's term. This is going to be a real quick movie trailer for next week.

Peter Simon: [laughs]

Jay Wright: So if you can go to the next slide, please, I think we have a couple new ones that have some screenshots. So this is just an example. What we'll be talking about is how we've aligned our EL Civics COAAPs. That is our civic objectives and additional assessment plans to these areas of immigrant integration.

So you can see a couple examples here where we've got a couple of those immigrant integration areas, economics, and credentials, and residency, and we've worked for three or four years now on aligning those EL Civics COAAPs to those areas of immigrant integration.

So you can see an example here. We went through our almost 60-or-so EL Civics COAAPs, that many of you have been using for several years, and aligned them to these different areas. So in this example, this shows that COAAP numbers one through six in some way relate to that immigrant integration area of economic security. You can see some other COAAP numbers below that relate to the other area of immigrant integration of credentials and residency.

We align them to all the different areas. I don't think all EL Civics COAAPs align, but just about all of them do. So at the end of the day, I'll quote-- I quoted Peter, so now it's Jennie's turn, kind of back to that old wine in a new bottle. Everybody's been using COAAPs for 15 or 20 years now to measure these same EL learners in different areas. So we figured out that a lot of the priorities in immigrant integration are the exact same priorities we've had in EL Civics for many years.

So we've aligned the two together. And still, we'll show some new reports in TE as well as what a lot of you have noticed. In that TE CAEP summary, there's a new out-- there's a new column called "I3 outcomes." That's what this is about.

I3 stands for "immigrant integration indicators." On your report now, when students complete COAAPs, that now directly equates to an official CAEP outcome. And I think that's been a couple minutes now. I think that probably takes care of the trailer.

Peter Simon: [laughs]

Jay Wright: I'll pass it back to Peter and Jennie.

Peter Simon: Tune in next week.

Jennie Mollica: OK.

Jay Wright: And OK, sorry. The final slide is the same example I just explained. It's just another example to that immigrant integration area of health and well-being-- same process, just a different set of objectives that relate to that end.

Jennie Mollica: OK, thanks. Thanks, Jay. That was a good, quick overview. You've enticed us, and now we want to join your webinar next week.

Peter Simon: OK, now we want to just talk very briefly, and speaking of trailers or advertisements, we're just going to give you a very brief overview of what we cover in our brief. I'll just say that we've set out with the assumption that there's a lot of work going out there that has not really been fully highlighted. And our problem quickly became one of riches because we got so much information from all of you, many of you on this webinar, that the trick was how we can kind of whittle it down in a way that didn't become a huge magnum opus.

So we interviewed 20 different consortia around the state, trying to really pay attention to the geographic distribution with a particular emphasis on hearing from some of the rural and more geographically dispersed consortia because they have somewhat different issues than highly urbanized consortia. And you can see on the right the list of areas that we posed a number of questions around curriculum instruction, student support, partnerships, how they staff their various programs, how they handle management data, and a final question about funding. Next slide, please.

Jennie Mollica: So here's just a picture of the cover of the brief just to encourage people to look for the link to this that's in the chat, and you'll find a lot more detail. We're going to go over some of the highlights just in the next few, few minutes, but really want to save most of our time today for our panel.

Peter Simon: So in terms of curriculum instruction, and again, we have a tremendous amount of information, that, just quickly, one area that came up a great deal was integrating ESL with other content areas or immigrant integration topics. For example, it could be an ESL class that was part of a preapprenticeship program or another ESL program that was linked with a Spanish-language base, early childhood provider program. And there's many other examples in our brief.

A lot of you are familiar with integrated education and training where an ESL teacher and another subject matter, sometimes CTE, maybe credit community college class, teach together. Some of you in the community college world know that as I-BEST. Family literacy was another area that came up a great deal, particularly in the K-12 realm where children's education, there's a number of consortia that have what they call "parent resource centers" where fam-- parents are getting ESL instruction along with support around parenting and helping their children with their education.

Mirrored courses, we could do a whole webinar just on mirrored courses. But it's where community colleges can offer concurrent noncredit and credit sections. When I first heard about it, I said, that can't be legal. But it is, and it has many, many advantages.

It provides access for adult learners. And specifically, undocumented students can take community college classes. It also gives students an opportunity to explore and dabble in different areas without worrying about either the financial aid issues or getting a grade and the impact on their transcript. Next slide.

Oh, we have an example. OK, I forgot about the example. One example with the mirrored classes is the Madeira College State Center area. They took all of the six levels of the ESL they offered at the college, and made mirrored sections, and offered them, many of them, at the adult school so that adult learners and, notably again, undocumented students, of which a number of their students were, could take advantage of the entire ESL offering of the college.

It also gets them enrolled in the college, which really helps with the transition from adult school into college classes. And we found many examples like this. This is just one. Next.

Jennie Mollica: OK, we also certainly heard a lot about the importance of student support services. And this touched on many, many areas. There were a lot of fabulous examples, but I'll name a few here.

One interesting use of the Immigrant Integration Framework was actually using that to help students identify their goals, their interests, their needs and barriers, so actually using the framework as a tool in that sense. There was also a lot of emphasis on the importance of language access, really being very aware of access issues and barriers. And so many, many programs are investing in making sure that staff have language skills or bilingual materials, or multilingual tutoring is offered by bilingual tutors, so a real emphasis placed on that.

There was also a lot of attention being given to support services that were deeply integrated into educational programs, so embedded or somehow support service staff coming to the students rather than expecting them to come, and this being a way of kind of removing some of the barriers to accessing those and making them as welcoming and as accessible as possible.

Several programs name that they really tried to talk openly about residency status and had built some very intentional supports around helping students with DACA, with financial aid eligibility, reviewing out-of-countries' transcripts and dealing with those, so really making it very, very clear to the student that those shouldn't be barriers.

There was also a lot of attention given to supporting the bridge between adult and post-secondary education. And actually another area of the research that Peter and I have been doing is around transition between adult ed and post-secondary employment. And there's so much being done across our adult ed consortia right now in this area and many, many good, good examples that were really focused on immigrant students and the particular benefits that come to them when some-- either a bridge program or the bridge counseling, transition counseling is there available.

Just one example of this is at State Center Adult Ed Consortium where counselors put a specific emphasis on serving undocumented adult ed students. They work with them on financial aid. They make very sure that there's a warm handoff so that that transition to other partners in the consortium can be very smooth. And they're helping them with some of these particular forms and regulations that could really open doors for them. Oops. Hold on. There I go.

Peter Simon: Can you go back one slide, Jennie? There, OK.

Jennie Mollica: That was that. I think that one next to it.

Peter Simon: There we go, right. We could easily talk for a long time about this topic because part of the glue that makes all of these collaborative efforts work are the wide range of partnerships that we heard about in talking with consortia, and that's with community organizations, legal services.

And I think to highlight the public libraries. Often, they don't get mentioned. But the public libraries that we talked to really pointed out that they really are often a first landing place for both immigrants and also low-skilled adults. And we're thinking about in your community.

Again, seamless ESL pathways, I think, compared to the old days, now a lot of consortia have aligned their curriculum. So it's more like now when you drive from Belgium to France, you just wave, and it says "Welcome to France." You don't have to get out your passport and do all that. Just it's a seamless transition. Make it really welcoming and easy.

We've heard a lot about people remodeling their admissions and records and training people so that-- eliminating barriers in the enrollment process, particularly when undocumented students are entering the community college. Colocation, there's a whole, in the transition set-- brief, we talk a lot about the workforce system, the career one-stops where a number of adult schools now are offering-- either offering classes at the one-stop or, in other cases, the workforce staff are at the adult school at the college in sort of a mini-one-stop where the students are.

Transition specialist staff often are not just at the college or the adult school but are out in the community. And there's any range of examples of working with community-based organizations. I'm not going to say that much because our panelists are going to also talk about that in just a minute.

I will note, our example here has to do with-- we're highlighting Coast Adult Education Consortium, but this is a practice that's kind of gaining traction out there, which is called an "interagency service agreement" where you actually work it out in an agreement, a legal agreement, between the community college district and the partnering adult schools where the college can offer noncredit classes at the adult school or in the community, thereby freeing up the adult schools, which have a limited, finite amount of funding, to offer more classes.

And also, they can count legally the students who are in these noncredit classes. There's an outcome under CAEP as an adult school as well. And it's quite an amazing practice that we think is going to become widespread. Next slide.

Jennie Mollica: It feels like we've just barely touched on all of the things we've heard--

Peter Simon: It's like way top, yeah.

Jennie Mollica: --from everyone we talk to. And to those of you on the call who are part of our interviews, thank you for your time. It was really fascinating hearing from everyone. And there's so much going on, we can't do it all justice.

But that's why we're excited to move now into a panel because we did invite a few who we feel were really strong to speak today, and to just answer a few questions, and share some things with you that I think will really be illustrative of some of the strong work that's going on, touching on these themes that Peter and I have just gone over. So I'm going to ask our panelists to introduce our-- introduce themselves before we get into a few questions. Usha, could you just start?

Usha Narayanan: Sure. I'm Usha Narayanan, and I am from the South Bay Consortium for Adult Education, which is in the Silicon Valley, San Jose region. And I'm the co-chair of the consortium, and I'm also the director of Campbell Adult and Community Education.

Jennie Mollica: Thanks, Usha. Ilse.

Ilse Pollet: Hi, everyone. My name is Ilse Pollet. I'm with the South Bay Consortium for Adult Education with Usha, and so we're in the San Jose area in Silicon Valley. And prior to my role with the South Bay Consortium, I was with ALLIES, which is a nonprofit where the Immigrant Integration Framework originated. So I was part of a team helping to develop that.

Jennie Mollica: Glad you're here, Ilse. Thanks. Naomi.

Naomi Sato: Hi, everyone. My name is Naomi Sato, and I am an ESL instructor in the noncredit program for Glendale Community College, and I also am the vocational ESL program coordinator for our college as well.

Jennie Mollica: Thanks, Naomi. Jan.

Peter Simon: Where is Jan?

Jennie Mollica: Do we have you here, Jan?

Peter Simon: Are you on mute?

Jennie Mollica: Jan, your microphone is muted.

Jan Young: Ugh.

Jennie Mollica: There you are, Jan.

Jan Young: Sorry about that. I'm having a great conversation with myself.

Peter Simon: [laughs]

Jennie Mollica: [laughs]

Jan Young: [laughs]

I'm a division chair at Glendale Community College. And I guess the best way to describe my job is I'm everything but ESL in noncredit, so I have the short-term vocational, the adult basic and secondary ed, the parent ed, and the lifelong learning. I'm also the statewide president of the Association of Community and Continuing Ed for Community Colleges.

Jennie Mollica: Glad to have you with us, Jan. Thanks. And Nancy Miller.

Nancy Miller: Hi. I'm Nancy Miller. I recently retired, yay--

Peter Simon: [laughs]

Nancy Miller: --after five years as the director of Regional Adult Education Programs for Sonoma County Adult Education Consortium and Santa Rosa Junior College.

Jennie Mollica: Thanks, Nancy.

Peter Simon: Great. So we're just going to jump right in. What we'll do is we'll just go through some questions, and we'll kind of mix it up in terms of the order people answer. But the first question is, what does immigrant integration mean to you? How about Glendale folks start?

Jan Young: Sure. Well, you picked the person with the least amount experience of ESL to begin the discussion. But with that, I want to say, it's not unlike any noncredit student in the sense that self-efficacy, I see, is kind of the hub of what we do in noncredit and adult ed.

Oftentimes, we get students that are very bright, but they just don't have the self-confidence to move forward. So I really like this initiative in the sense that it's looking at-- and I know you used the word, but the word that came to my mind was of "holistically" looking at the student. And particularly, from my vantage point, I'm looking at ways that I can migrate them into the world of work and help them along their journey in that way. Naomi, do you want to add to that since you are ESL?

Naomi Sato: Yeah, I guess so, since I'm a part of the ESL program. I think that-- well, we get a lot of immigrant students, and our immigrants are coming from many different countries. We have a large population of Armenians as well as Spanish speakers and others. But our biggest population is Armenian and Persians as well, Armenian, Iranians, and Spanish speakers coming to us.

And I think from the consortium point of view, I think our consortium does a really good job of integrating the services that are available to immigrants, whether it be coming into our community college, getting services at the local library, the Glendale Public Library, getting career services at the Verdugo Job Center, as well as we have partnerships with disability organizations and other homeless prevention organizations.

All of that is really nice to have as part of integrating those services for our students, that are quite available to the students, and that we can refer them very easily to our partners. So part of our job as a college is really helping to provide that education, and that education then leads into the other services with our partners as well as through the college to getting degrees and certificates in both the credit program and in Jan's program, the noncredit program.

Peter Simon: Great.

Jan Young: I just want to add one thing because our consortium is quite unique. We had an MOU with our high schools for adult ed services over 20 years ago. So we literally are a very small group, and we do not have adult ed programs in our district. So we really put the major thrust of our energies looking at our job center and our supporting ESL services in the community to compensate for that, in a way.

Peter Simon: Thank you. How about South Bay? I think it is-- Usha, are you opening up this question or Ilse?

Jennie Mollica: Ilse.

Peter Simon: Ilse, OK. Sorry. Go ahead, Ilse.

Ilse Pollet: Thank you. Jan used the word "holistic," so I actually wanted to build off on that because that's how we think about immigrant integration in the South Bay as well. And when you look back to that Immigrant Integration Framework that Jennie and Peter just shared, in the center of that is kind of like the Venn diagram of economic integration, linguistic integration, and social integration. And those three together really make for a holistic integration experience.

And the three of them are equally valuable, but they're not mutually exclusive. So when you achieve a balance between those three areas, that's when you are coming closer to full integration. And one of them-- one supports the other, like learning the language, speaking English will contribute to economic integration and to become-- to immigrants becoming more engaged in their community life, so they're really supportive of each other. And that's how we wanted to think about immigrant integration.

And all the work that happens with the development of the Immigrant Integration Framework really came as a response in the early days with AB 86 and AB 104 when we noticed in our community and network of ESL providers some concern about the perhaps narrowing definition of success in that reform to economic and post-secondary success, which is no doubt this is very important for our students because many of our students are coming to our schools and colleges and in search for economic advancement, workforce development, and career pathways.

But we felt like we've also wanted to tell the complete story of adult education, and we had to bring focus back to that social and civic engagement piece of immigrant integration that happens in adult ed. So the nice thing about that is that those areas are valid in and of themselves, and they're also supporting that economic and educational advancement that we're all seeking for our students. So it's really the word "holistic," whole person, and the unique space of adult education where that naturally takes place in many of our ESL programs and adult ed programs is what we wanted to look at.

And I can add to that maybe a little bit from my own experience as an immigrant who's been here, who's been in the US for 15 years. It's a work in progress. Whenever you think you have it all figured out, there's something new to learn.

Peter Simon: [chuckles] That's exactly what I'm talking about.

Ilse Pollet: So there's always something to work on.

Peter Simon: Mhm, thank you. Nancy.

Nancy Miller: Ilse was wonderful in her description of immigrant integration. As a community that really is still agrarian and service-based economics, for us, we need to understand, and respect, and celebrate the contribution that immigrants have in our community, particularly economically and socially. And it's supporting students in their foray into the American academic system and, again, finding out what they want, or need, or have an interest in, and being able to direct them to services if we don't directly provide them or engage them with services within the college and adult education community.

Peter Simon: Great. Why don't we go on to the next question?

Jennie Mollica: Yeah, let's move on to this one. Now, this is a very large question, but you'll choose how to answer it in a few minutes. I want to pause before we get into this and just say that, for all of you listening today, if you have any questions, encourage you to write those into the chat box. We do hope to have a little time at the end.

We're going to just move through the panel without taking questions, but we hope to take some. I'm sure you're going to have some as we get closer to the end. So feel free to put those in the chat. And here we go. So the question here is, what are you doing to support immigrant integration? And I'm going to start with South Bay. I think Usha was going to speak to this one.

Usha Narayanan: Thanks, Jennie. So in South Bay, of course, all of the things that the panel has said, so which means addressing the needs of the whole student, is what we are focusing on. And of course, a very basic thing that we can do in our ESL classes is the EL Civics Assessment that Jay spoke to and is going to speak to, the trailer that you got from him, and then what you're going to get in the future next week.

So that's the very basic that we try to do, that our EL Civics Assessment kind of speaks to the needs of the students. As most schools do, we survey our students. We find out what their needs are, and then we offer those COAAPs that meet the needs of students. So that's the very first thing.

And just to give you an example of what's happening in our school right now is on cultural competency, cultural awareness, and cultural understanding of other cultures. And I was assessing students this week, and I was just blown away, blown away by what was happening in the classes, which is it's not just about speaking to each other and understanding what other cultures do for holidays. It went way beyond understanding the countries of other students in the classroom.

And it's almost our teachers are building, taking our students from cultural competency into the cultural intelligence realm. So imagine these people being part of our communities. When these students have the ability to be in the community to talk about and engage with people, they're going to do with some acceptance, with so much more of an understanding that people come from different cultures, and there is an understanding that goes into it. So it was just amazing.

And then the other element that I think was spoken to was the IET part of it, which is we have offered classes. Our ESL teacher teaches a class with a community college which is providing accounting language, contextualized language for students taking noncredit accounting classes through community college so that they are successful in the accounting class and get a bookkeeping certificate at the end of it. So again, this speaks to the economic independence that students receive. So we've had a lot of IET classes that address that part of it.

Now, speaking to that whole student, what we did, this was a major endeavor in our school last year-- and I'll to keep it really, really short-- is we surveyed our students to understand what their needs were. And the most needs that became from our students was health care, not having access to health care and child care. At the moment, in our school, we didn't have the ability to provide child care.

So what we did was we partnered with community partners, our community partners, and sought to provide health care to the students who needed it. More than 100 participants or 150 students said they needed health care. Not everybody wanted to provide their information to get the health care.

However, our community partner, which is Gardner Health Care, Health Network, was able to sign up students, about 79 to 80 students00 for health care, health insurance. So that gave them that access that so many of them were denied until that moment. So these are like ways in which addressing their linguistic needs, addressing their economic needs, and addressing their social and other welfare needs that they have, so that's how we are addressing it. And of course, addressing the needs of the whole student means you're scaffolding them so that they get to the economic independence.

Jennie Mollica: Thanks, Usha. I'm glad you pointed out. Those are good examples of what can go on at that intersection of the linguistic, social, everything at the center of the framework there. Thanks for that. Why don't we turn now to Nancy?

Nancy Miller: Well, I think, over the past five years as we've developed in the California adult ed programs, we've gotten more sophisticated about how we're providing immigrant integration and support. Initially, it was really finding out, when could our students take classes, what times, what locations?

And now what we really do, I think, the most and the best is to partner in multiple agency framework so that we can address all of the needs of the student, not specifically the college or the adult school. But as a consortium, we really work together with our community partners, and that's government agencies, community-based organizations, our one-stop, to provide holistically.

And I'll give a quick example. We partnered with a community-based organization in Healdsburg. It involves the city of Healdsburg who provides the location for our classes, and that's ESL, short-term career education, parenting classes, and high school equivalency preparation. The school district is also involved, and then our community-based organization partner is Corazon Healdsburg.

And they are the ones that really provide food distribution. They help us with outreach to students about the classes that we're providing. And we provide the academic supplies and the curriculum to students free of charge, obviously, to any of those partner agencies.

We were really instrumental, our organization, in helping when they had to transition to online learning for the K-12 school district, in training parents how to use the Google platform so that they could provide assistance to their students and help maintain their students' education.

Jennie Mollica: Great. Thanks for that specific example. Interesting. Jan or Naomi.

Jan Young: I'll start. What we did-- I kind of feel like the universe all came into-- all the planets came in alignment a couple years back with the IET programs blossoming. And also, we were able to secure not only that-- not only using our CAEP funds but using a strong workforce grant to develop opportunities for short-term vocational programs. And after working with the Verdugo Job Center and also for our Center for Excellence, we developed a kind of a stacked allied health program that was desperately needed in our area.

So we started with actually probably one of the most difficult to implement, which is the medical assistant program. But we had been doing the front office course for quite some time, so we integrated it with the clinical and used our funds to buy the equipment and lease a building with our CAEP funds to set this whole kind of center up.

And obviously, there was a lot of work to integrate the curriculum. And it's the I-BEST model as well. And then Naomi really created a program to help. Because it's a rigorous course for ESL students.

But one thing I'm particularly proud of is that we worked with our Verdugo Job Center to get-- they're using their WIOA I fund money, and also we're using some of our CAEP funds because we cannot do internships yet-- I say "yet." I'm working on the state level-- for noncredit students. So what we're doing is we're doing externships with them, and we have openings now for all our students to take an externship that is paid in the medical assistant field.

And to me, that is really taking the knowledge they learned and applying it. And now, I see this as equity issue, that they have the same opportunities that our credit students have of being able to have that experience to go out and get the job.

Jennie Mollica: Great. Naomi, did you want to add anything to that?

Naomi Sato: Yeah, I guess I could. So from the noncredit division, the way we try to help support immigrants is by offering a variety of classes that really fulfill students' needs. So we have a six-level ESL program. And the kinds of classes that we have for the students include general ESL.

We have citizenship classes. We also have college English for college readiness that give them extra writing support. We have English for work classes. We also have English for older adults, and we have English with support in Spanish and Armenian that really helps the students.

In addition, we try to have-- before COVID, we had classes pretty much all over the city, not only at our two college campuses, but we also had classes at churches. We had an English for work class at a hotel where we trained their housekeeping staff. We had a class at the Verdugo Job Center where our students could get ESL instruction but also be co-enrolled in their services and participate in job fairs, and attend job fairs, and get career counseling through the Verdugo Job Center.

I'm trying to think where else we had classes. We had classes at community centers. And then we had classes at all different times of the day. We had morning classes, afternoon classes, and evening classes. And, oh, we had conversation classes as well. So we tried to provide a variety of classes that really support students' needs.

And then we also do surveys with our students to find out what their interests are, and so that also helped us work together with Jan's division. Because one of the surveys I did with our students was what career interests were they interested, what kind of ESL classes would they be interested in taking. And I think, in one of our surveys, like over 50% of the students said that they would be interested in taking an office ESL class, or they were interested in health care.

And when Jan approached our division saying that they're interested in doing an IET with us for administrative medical assisting, I thought it was-- what a great way, what a great opportunity to work together, and especially in a content area that's really rigorous. I mean, this program is very, very rigorous.

So I'm now working with her two AMA instructors, Administrative Medical Assisting instructors. Students go to their classes four days a week, and then they come to my ESL class one day a week. And I do a lot of support and scaffolding in our ESL sup-- we're currently calling it the ESL Success-- the Administrative Medical Assisting Success and Support class to really help those students who are-- need the extra vocabulary instruction, the scaffolding, a little bit of grammar, a little bit of pronunciation to help them be successful in that course.

Jan Young: But Naomi's so good. She's getting also people that aren't ELL learners. I mean, it's just a good reinforcement regardless.

Naomi Sato: Yeah, it's interesting. We've had generation 1.5 learners coming to our classes as well as some native speakers who want to come to the class that really appreciate the extra scaffolding. They like being part of a cohort. And they're also great role models for some of our other students, our ESL students as well.

Jennie Mollica: How great. Well, it's an interesting point. It's something we heard a number of times in our interviews, that many of these really creative approaches that we take on with immigrant integration in mind are really beneficial to all of our students, so it's worth sort of stepping back and seeing, what are we learning from this intentionality around immigrant integration to inform our broader efforts? Thanks to all of you. I'm going to go on to the next question.

Peter Simon: OK, next question is, how are you capturing data to show success? And I think this is really an important question in terms of supporting what we're accomplishing to really be able to refine and improve practice, continuous improvement.

And importantly, it's very important in terms of securing future funding. This is to show the positive outcomes from all of this work. So who should start? How about Nancy? You start this time.

Nancy Miller: The Sonoma County Adult Education has three bilingual outreach specialists, as well as a data and accountability manager. And the three of these people work togeth-- or the four, one manager and three outreach specialists really work together to capture both the student intake data. They actually go into the class, do the forms with the students, or they'll go into the Zoom now that we're not face to face.

At the end, on the last night of class, we do the student update record with the students. The forms are in English and in Spanish. They're all electronic, so students can fill them out electronically through their phone. And then we also have a certificate tracking program that we do. And all of our short-term career education courses are developed into certificate programs, non-credit certificates.

So we, on the first day of class, give students a certificate tracking form so that they can follow up on how they're doing in terms of passing their classes and what they have left to do at the end of class. We give them an update on their certificate tracker. The students that have completed all of the courses for their certificate, we actually make virtual appointments with them to help them fill out the form to get their certificate so that they can celebrate their accomplishments.

And then if there is a second certificate in their career pathway or on their transition plan to credit, then we'll enroll them in the next pathway program, or we transition them over to a credit counselor at the college. So we track all of these in spreadsheets, and then in TOPSpro Enterprise, and then share that data with the management information system for the college.

Peter Simon: Great. Thank you. How about South Bay?

Ilse Pollet: Thanks, Peter. How are you capturing data to show success? I think that may literally be the million-dollar question that you're asking here.

Peter Simon: [laughs] Literally.

Ilse Pollet: And I just want to point out the significance of AB 2098 and the opportunity that consortia now have to report data on immigrant integration. That's how we tell our story to the legislature, and that's how we get funding, for better or worse.

So when the Immigrant Integration Framework was developed, it was very important for us to think about metrics for each of the goal areas, for each of those three domains that we were talking about, linguistic, economic, and social. And immigrant integration can be something that's hard to measure. We all have expertise in how to measure linguistic achievement and linguistic proficiency. We have CASAS. We have pre- and post-testing. But that's what we do in the ESL world.

Economic integration is another one that can be maybe less daunting to measure. We're aligning ourselves with WIOA metrics. We are looking at who got a job, who got a better job, wage information. Sure, it can be hard to track down that information, but it's a pretty hard metric to come up with. Where it gets tricky is, how do you measure something like social integration or civic engagement?

Peter Simon: That's right.

Ilse Pollet: So that's where we really have to get creative, and call on the experts, and see how we can-- which metrics and which indicators we can use for that. So our first question was like, where are those kinds of elements are already captured within our systems? And Jay shared about EL Civics and COAAPs, and that was the first thought that came up.

And the first response we got from adult educators is, well, we do EL Civics. We do COAAPs. And we report that so. So that was an obvious place to go look. And it's no surprise that the elements of the Immigrant Integration Framework align so well with the EL civics, COAAPs. Both EL Civics and the Immigrant Integration Framework were created through a robust kind of community engagement process, so it's no surprise that there's a great alignment between the two.

And when Usha mentioned the health insurance campaign, that was an opportunity to tie that in with classroom instruction and EL Civics and include lessons around health insurance and the health care system in the United States in the ESL classes before students receive that presentation from our community partners on health insurance. So it could work really well if you look for opportunities to bring speakers, to bring presentations in combination with a COAAP that is being taught in your classes at that time.

Another place where elements of immigrant integration are already captured in our system is in our intake and update records. We collect demographic information. We collect barriers information. It gets updated. So through a process of identifying which ones, which elements in those records align with the framework and/or which can be aggregated, that's another place to look for immigrant integration data collection.

But then after looking at where those elements are already captured in our systems, we have to think about, what else is it that we want to measure? What else is it that we want to capture, that we want to report, that we want to tell the story of our students?

And so one of the things we did to help us answer that question around, how do you measure immigrant integration, and specifically that social integration, civic integration component, we partnered with researchers from the Stanford's Immigration Policy Lab and used their integration index to do some baseline data capturing and data analysis of our students. So we were able to administer that survey and in many of our ESL classes. And all our members, all ESL classes and all classes at the Campbell Adult School participated in that survey.

So that gave us a really good baseline information about what is self-reported integration score [inaudible] integration was. And we saw some really interesting points in that data, one of which that was what Usha shared, that many of our students kind of lacked information on health insurance, on the health care system or lacked health insurance, which then led to that project with our-- with Gardner, our partner.

Another thing that we'd like to track a little bit more is referrals to supportive services. So when we're able to send the refer-- send one of our students over to an immigration legal service provider, or to a health care provider, or to somebody who can help them with their taxes, we'd like to capture that referral. And so our consortium has been using CommunityPro to help out with that. So we're getting closer to being able to track those referrals to outside organizations and track not just the referral but also the outcome of that referral.

Peter Simon: That's great.

Ilse Pollet: Sending out a referral is one thing, but then how do you get to the act-- to the student actually receiving that service?

Peter Simon: Perfect.

Ilse Pollet: And so I think there's more work to be done to kind of thinking about indicators that we want to measure around immigrant integration and figuring out how we capture that.

Peter Simon: Well, thank you. That--

Usha Narayanan: Ilse? I'm sorry, Peter.

Peter Simon: Go ahead. Sure.

Usha Narayanan: If I may just add to what Ilse said. So we took that EL Civics, COAAP, and curriculum. And from that, we also gave-- we got students health care. Now, the 79 students who actually benefited from that is an internal data. It is not shared in the sense that there is no way for us to capture that someplace else.

So we are capturing it internally. We know it. We can do whatever we can to share that information. But it doesn't capture the attention of the legislators or somebody else unless we actually raise that and say, this is the effect of what we did. So it doesn't get captured in the systems that are reported to the state. So EL Civics does, but not the fact that students got something out of the campaign that we did.

Peter Simon: That's a really important point, and that needs to change. Right? Yeah. OK, how about Glendale on this question?

Jan Young: I just want to say, prior to answering the data, I want to take that health insurance course.

Peter Simon: [laughs]

Jan Young: But I'm just saying, again, so we don't get siloed, think about all students would benefit from that. We just designed a course on pathways to health careers. Because when we polled our students, not just the ESL students but all our students, they say they wanted to be a nurse because that's all they knew. They didn't realize all the different careers you could have along the way-- so again, working with your other colleagues to come up with courses that would benefit everyone.

As I said, I'm first to sign up on the health insurance. But anyway, I digress. The capturing data, one thing for us on the community college level is MIS tracking is, unfortunately, not robust for noncredit, and that's being kind.

Peter Simon: [laughs]

Jan Young: [laughs]

But the one factor-- and we have similar to what Nancy mentioned. We have certificates, and we grant those certificates for completing programs. And that's rolled up to the state level.

But the one metric that everybody seems to want is, what is the wage? Are they getting jobs? And what are they making? And in order to get that, you have to have the student's social security number, which, of course, students aren't really keen on sharing.

But one thing that came into-- it was just kind of a side bennie, and I didn't even realize it at the time-- with our internship program is-- or I shouldn't say "internship," externship program, is that students, to be part of that, to go work at a particular site, had to share their social security number so that we now can track where they go, and it's a much cleaner way to follow them than trying to follow their graduation with a certificate. And it's a small pool now, but it's encouraging. And at least we'll have some data points to connect, which in the past we haven't. So--

Naomi Sato: And I'll also say that we-- because of our partnership with Verdugo Job Center, many of their counselors come on campus. And then, since we have classes at the Verdugo Job Center as well, we co-enroll our students into CalJOBS, and so they can track the students who are getting jobs.

And there are students who don't have social security numbers or don't want to provide them. So they've created, I think, alternate numbers that they can assign to those students so that they can still track the students who are getting jobs as well.

Peter Simon: And just to echo one thing that Jan said, which is something we heard from a lot of people we spoke with in both research pieces, is really the immigrant-- what's addressed in the Immigrant Integration Framework really can be applied to all students, that the more you think about it, it's like, well, sure, of course. But anyway, I just want to echo that. And we heard that a great deal from a number of people.

Jennie Mollica: Well, and just to follow up on a point that Ilse made, those COAAPs really align with the Immigrant Integration Framework, actually in interesting ways. Jay just shared a quick snapshot today. But definitely, if you're interested in that, there's more to explore on his webinar last-- next week at this same time.

OK, so the next question we have for each of you is, what have been the most significant challenges with immigrant integration, and how have you addressed them? Nancy, we'll start with you on this one.

Nancy Miller: Thank you, Jennie. I think for us, initially, it was really being able to address the needs of our immigrant population within the college administrative framework at the time. Adult education didn't exist at Santa Rosa Junior College until 2017. So having a 100-year-old institution and a brand new department was definitely trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.

So it was having our institution understand the needs and that it was different than what a credit student population was. So I think the biggest challenge was, institutionally, it wasn't necessarily the student, or having the student engagement, or student interest, or student support. It really was how our institution was set up to support an immigrant population.

An example of this was, when COVID happened, the college immediately, let's get laptops out into the population. They were for credit students only. And noncredit students were the ones that were much more likely not to have internet access, not to have computers, not have support systems, or multigenerational family households where three different sets of people may be using a single computer.

They're less likely to have printers or to have a system to scan and send back documents. And they're also less likely to have training they can immediately turn around and use. A lot of our immigrant participants did not use computers in their job, so they weren't familiar with how they worked.

So the challenge was, how do we do mini-training to actually get them onto a computer so they could be trained? So what do you do when you're transitioning a population that doesn't use computers to be able to have computer-delivered instruction? So that was a big challenge.

Again, staff rose to the occasion. The consortium partners worked really well together, including our nonservice provider school districts who were really good about getting the word out to their parents through their student information tech system that we were providing the computer support for parents to engage in their children's education.

And so I know we've been having a conversation about how much participation had dropped off in our career education program because we were supporting parents, and all of our career education is done bilingually. And we actually write our own textbooks, so we have all bilingual textbooks for 12 levels of computer instruction.

It was getting that word out, making sure that we did that through Facebook, through-- we did Zoom trainings on Facebook for teachers and for our students. And then we did some practice orientation for classes with our students so that they could continue their education. And we actually increased our enrollment in our computer courses and in all of our career education post-COVID because of the support systems we provided for our students.

Jennie Mollica: OK, thanks. I think our lists of challenges have grown over the past year. It's interesting to hear what's come up and new. I'm going to go next to Naomi and Jan, and I'm just going to note on a time check.

Of course, we came up with too many great questions for this group. We have too many great examples to share, so we're running a little bit behind. I think we're not going to be able to go deep with the last two questions, but I do want to move through this one on challenges. This is an important one.

Peter Simon: Right. And then we can move on to the questions. Yeah, I agree.

Jennie Mollica: Yeah.

Peter Simon: Yeah, yeah.

Jennie Mollica: But let's hear from each of us on this one.

Peter Simon: Yeah.

Jan Young: Well, again, I-- yeah. Naomi, go-- you want to talk about our--

Naomi Sato: Challenges? I can, yeah.

Jan Young: Yes.

Naomi Sato: I can talk about that. So--

[laughter]

COVID, COVID.

Jan Young: But remember, we have limited time.

Naomi Sato: OK, well, I saw Ed Schmaltz's question, but when he was in counsel in the chat was saying that he's had some decrease in enrollments, and we were also really affected, particularly with our ESL learners. I'll say that starting around 2016 when the immigration policy changed, we were starting to lose students because a lot of our Armenian students and our Iranian students were coming through Austria, and that got closed off completely.

And then when COVID happened, that semester, spring 2020, we lost about 42% of our ESL students right away. And then we had a week to convert everybody from face-to-face to online instruction because we weren't doing online prior to that. So in that week, I mean, we didn't even have any time to tell some of our students that we were-- to train them before we went on there.

So in that week, luckily, we had a lot of faculty and our staff who were pretty good with technology, some that were not as good with technology. But we rallied together, got them trained. We sourced out electronic resources and curriculum that we could implement. And in that week, we heavily trained every single day to prepare to come back to online instruction.

In addition, we had our staff calling our students. The faculty were calling the students. Many of our instructors used the Remind app to text the students. So we were texting our students, telling them what was happening and that we were going to come back in a week online.

Again, the staff called our students, and our college also rallied together to really create a stronger Welcome Center on our campus to train the staff in the Welcome Center. We converted our face-to-face lab technicians into online tech support technicians and trained them on the curriculum that we were going to be using.

Jan Young: And thankfully, they were multilingual, which really helped.

Naomi Sato: Yes, we had someone--

Jan Young: We had four breakout rooms by languages.

Naomi Sato: Yeah, and they did it on Zoom. The biggest challenge was really trying to get students onto Zoom because some students didn't know how to get onto Zoom so that we could help them navigate the enrollments and using the technology. So that was something that we also did.

And then I know that our college also-- our library staff came together, and they helped us loan computers out to students, Chromebooks, loan out hotspots, loan out headpieces, loan out mice to students, which also helped with students who didn't have access to the internet and students who didn't have access to that technology.

And then I think this year, we're now only down 29% compared to the 42%. So over the summer and each semester, we've had our-- we've had phone trees with our staff calling our former students. They reached out to over 1,000 students and were able to bring back, I think, 400 students one semester because of the outreach and because of the phone calling.

So that was one of our biggest hurdles to get through. We feel like we're coming back. Students are more comfortable using technology. But there's still a portion of students, particularly at a level 0 ESL level, who it's really difficult to get them to just onto the technology. But it does help the fact that our college does have bilingual support staff as well. I tried to keep it short.

Jennie Mollica: Amazing. No, I feel like you could talk for a while on that one. It feels like a moment just to say thank you, thank you to all the teachers and support staff out there who have made all this happen. The fact that we have as many students coming to class right now as we do is-- it speaks to all that hard work. So thanks for talking about that a bit.

How about, yeah, South Bay, say a few words on this topic. Maybe you don't have any challenges, so this will be a short answer. But I imagine you could probably talk about this for a while. What would you say to this one?

Usha Narayanan: I think I'll save--

Jennie Mollica: Usha.

Usha Narayanan: I think I'll save this for the closing remark maybe just kind of because I think we are running out of time.

Jennie Mollica: OK, OK.

Usha Narayanan: So yeah, I'm good. Thank you.

Jennie Mollica: Sure, OK. Yeah, we do want to leave a little time for questions, but we're going to make some closing remarks. We're going to hear some closing remarks from the panelists. And I'd encourage anyone listening, if you have some questions, take a moment now to write those in the chat because we really would like to hear from you.

It's been great to see everyone sharing resources and little tips and things in the chat. It's great for that as well, and keep doing that. But think for just a moment about what your questions are of the panelists or anything Peter and I might be able to answer. We have a question here about how groups are using CAEP funds and other resources. I think we've actually touched on that.

Peter Simon: Yes.

Jennie Mollica: We've heard some good examples of use of strong workforce and WIOA funds. So I'm going to jump right into this last question here. Any closing thoughts or final takeaways to share? Who-- maybe, Usha, you can start since we bumped you out of the last one. What would you like to say on this? I know Usha and Ilse might both have something on this question.

Usha Narayanan: So I just wanted to start out by saying, all of you here on this call right now, if you've ever taught ESL and/or if you're right now teaching ESL, think about the time that you are closing up, finishing your class and ready to leave, whether it's Zoom or a physical classroom, when a student has stopped you with an issue, with something that's happening in their life, and it is so stressful to them that they needed someone to confide in.

And you listen to everything, but you have no resources, and you have nowhere to turn. And I'm talking about any student, ESL because maybe navigational skills are fewer for them than our ASC student, not that I'm discounting what our ASC students need.

So when that happens to you, you pause, and you run to your administrator, or you talk to somebody else. And you're now in this world of internet. You're googling information, and you're trying to help this person.

So if you look at immigrant integration, it is that. That is what you did not have as a teacher or don't have as a teacher. So immigrant integration, the framework allows you to build a culture where you have resources aligned to students' needs. It is about what we have done always as a teacher, giving up half an hour, one hour, two hours of your time trying to help a student-- or a weekend, taking them to an office where-- that they needed support with.

So what I'm trying to say is there is a lot of need, the navigational skills and resource need that our students have, and the Immigrant Integration Framework gives you a way in which to address this. So building that culture of providing resources that our students need, that's what Immigrant Integration Framework means to us in the South Bay and it has meant in our school.

Peter Simon: Great.

Jennie Mollica: Thanks, Usha. Ilse, did you want to add to that?

Ilse Pollet: I do. I think one of the takeaways from this webinar and something you said early on, Jennie, is immigrant integration is something that you already do, that we already do. The framework invites intentionality in doing that, and AB 2098 invites you to report data. It gives you the opportunity to report data on immigrant integration.

So I would want to call on our fellow consortia in the states to respond to that invitation and accept that invitation so that we can tell the story of our whole students and that we can tell the story of our whole education system.

Jennie Mollica: Thanks. Thanks for that statement, Ilse. Jan.

Jan Young: Again, because I'm not ESL, one of the great takeaways that I have when I started reading all this, in order to achieve that immigrant integration, you have to integrate on your own with your colleagues and work with them. In the past, we all get very siloed in our disciplines.

And I think to build this culture and to provide those resources that you want to provide to your students means that you also have to be intentional about building relationships outside of ESL and also within your community about job centers and what services might help your students in a way that you never thought of before. But I would just say, open your scope a bit, and see how you can help your ESL students holistically by making those connections yourself.

Jennie Mollica: Mhm, nice.

Peter Simon: Great.

Jennie Mollica: Naomi, you want to add to that?

Naomi Sato: Yeah, just a couple of things. There's one thing else I want to add that might help, that might be interesting for some other instruc-- programs like Ed's school. Prior to COVID, we were administering CASAS tests on paper, and the instructors were administering the tests. We had never done it on computer.

And as a result of COVID, we had to start doing that. And it helped really by talking to a few other school-- a few other programs that had done it before because we had never done it on computer. And we had to do a real shift in our mindset to not have instructors administer them, but to have our computer lab technicians and trained and ready to administer it online. And from this semes-- I think this semester or last semester we started doing the online CASAS tests with just small groups of students who had access to Windows 10 computers or iPads.

And that was a major accomplishment, I feel like, for us as a program to move from paper to digital CASAS tests online. So and I don't know if your program does that or if other programs do that. You might want to talk to one of our colleagues, Debbie Robiglio, who's been really implementing that at our college. And then I think--

Jan Young: And just to take it a step further, our adult ed students are part of the pilot to do it on their mobile phones.

Naomi Sato: Oh, I didn't know that.

Jan Young: Yeah, see? We've got to make more connections.

Naomi Sato: Yes, yes. And I'll say also, like Jan said, with the consortium, I think we're really, really lucky that CAEP has provided these funds. Because if not for that, I would not have known about the IRC. I wouldn't have known about the Verdugo Job Center, the Verdugo Workforce Development Board. I wouldn't have known people at the Verdugo-- at the Garfield library. I mean, there's so many organizations and resources that I wouldn't have known about if it weren't for this consortium. So I feel very grateful to that as well.

Peter Simon: Cool.

Jennie Mollica: Great. Thanks. Nancy, you'll be the final closing thought.

Nancy Miller: I think, similar to the group from Glendale, I think it's-- while COVID is really horrible, it gave all of us in adult education the chance to be really creative and to connect in very different ways with our students. I'm sure prior to COVID, a lot of us said, oh, they can't do it. They don't have computers. They don't have-- it's amazing how resourceful our students have become.

For CASAS testing, when we had students who didn't have access to Windows 10, we did drive-in testing in our parking lot, which I know a lot of other agencies have done too. And that was something that we probably would have never done, but it actually worked, and it may have worked better than trying to get them to do an online test or do it in another way.

And so don't limit yourself to what you've been doing. Really open up avenues and bring in new ideas about how you can serve your students now during COVID but after we go back face to face. Some of those communication avenues will still be very, very useful to connect, engage, and keep engaged students.

Peter Simon: Mhm.

Jennie Mollica: Hm, great insights on this year's experiences. Thank you all for those closing thoughts. We really only have about five more minutes left--

Peter Simon: I know.

Jennie Mollica: --for our time together. And we're going to have a few quick wrap-up things on the next slide. But there is one good question here with Kim. I wonder if we might have one volunteer on our panel to speak to this.

Kim would like to know more about how K-12 adult ed schools are assessing student needs using this framework and planning for COAAPs using-- including 243 COAAPs for open enrollment-- 243, OK, for open enrollment programs where students assess as they enter. Are surveys given once a year in the spring to plan for next fall?

With just a minute to share, I wonder if any of you on the panel have good experience with this. You might just want to share your contact information. Or actually, it'll be on the last slide, but sort of speak up and let Kim know, or if anyone else in the-- who's participating today has some experience in this and would like to share with Kim, that might be helpful. I don't think we have a lot of time to go into the details. Anyone on our panel have expertise in this area? Or--

Jan Young: Not me.

Naomi Sato: I know we do the surveys. I just can't remember if we do them every semester or once a year.

Jennie Mollica: Mm, OK. All right, we--

Naomi Sato: Because we have another-- I'm more part of English-for-work classes, but we have another faculty member who handles-- or who is our EL Civics coordinator.

Jennie Mollica: OK. Kim, that may be a question for next week's webinar with Jay from CASAS who's going to go deep, deep with COAAPs, and the opportunities that are there--

Peter Simon: Yep.

Jennie Mollica: --and hopefully spark some more dialogue with some more time to talk about that in more detail. So, sorry not to do more with that question. And with that, I think we need to go into our closing slide here.

Peter Simon: Yep.

Jennie Mollica: Peter, did you have any other thoughts on the panel? Should we just jump into these, this final--

Peter Simon: No, I think we need to-- but in terms of our closing slide that we-- Mandalee has shared an evaluation link. Please reach out to today's presenters and panelists. Their contacts are on the next slide.

We obviously want you to read the briefs because there's a lot more detail in there. And they're very much living documents, and we're all going to get smarter as we go forward. And we'd like to hear from you.

And I think especially since we did not have a chance to have a real interaction with all of you on this call, you're going to have an opportunity. There's going to be a link in the chat for a peer learning circle where folks who would like to talk more about what you're doing, how you're addressing some of these challenges, some effective practices, to talk with peers, that we're having a meeting on April 15 at 10:00 for an hour and a half. And please sign up for that.

And there's also going to be a lot more activity in the CAEP world around all this kind of peer exchange in a community of practice, so stand by on of that because there'll be a lot more coming up, I think particularly with the rollout of the new CAEP website, SCOE CAEP website, around having more of a capacity to share these kinds of ideas in a more robust way.

Here are all the contact information, including Jennie and I. We'd love to hear from you, and we really believe that every single person on this webinar probably has some really great things to share with all of us, so let's stay in touch.

Jennie Mollica: And with that, I think we'd like to turn it back over to Mandalee, if you have any closing points you wanted to make, Mandalee.

Speaker: I just wanted to thank everybody for joining us this afternoon on this webinar. The conversation was rich, and I hope that everyone was able to walk away with some great information. I have posted in the chat pod the links for the PLC on the 15th for immigrant integration. There is also one, another PLC on transition on April 8.

So give me one second. I'm putting everything again in a chat pod. We hope that you guys are all able to come, and enjoy some additional information, and share with peers around the state. So I think I'll hold tight for a couple more minutes so everyone can grab those links. And again, please remember to find some time today or even tomorrow to fill out the evaluation for today's webinar. And thank you so much.

Peter Simon: [inaudible]

Jennie Mollica: Thanks, everyone, for coming. And a special thanks to our panelists--

Peter Simon: Yes.

Jennie Mollica: --for giving your time and sharing your wisdom today.

Peter Simon: Great job. Yeah, excellent. Thank you so much.

Jennie Mollica: Thank you to everyone.

Speaker: Thank you, everybody. I'll go ahead and end our webinar now. Have a great rest of your afternoon.

Peter Simon: Thank you, Mandalee.