Jennie Mollica: Thanks very much for that introduction, Veronica. We're delighted to be here. It's great to see some familiar faces in our adult education world, also some I don't know, welcome all. We're going to do a little bit of introduction here, and then make sure that as soon as possible, you're meeting our amazing panelists today. They're going to be highlighting some of their work. And we're going to also really be encouraging your participation today. So lots of questions coming on the chat, we hope, and lots of interaction with our presenters. Peter, do you want to start us off with a little intro to us? Peter? Or me?

Peter Simon: I was in a mass mute. So anyway. Peter Simon, Jennie Mollica and I are partners in High Road Alliance, which we formed a year ago. Many of you may have been on previous webinars of ours. I'll just say that we're as our branding goes is that we're really committed to equitable career pathways.

And what that really means in terms of who we work with, which we work with, clearly, the CAEP and Adult Ed Consortia. We work with apprenticeships and pre-apprenticeship programs, unions, employers, non-profits, workforce boards, all across the boards. We really are working to build partnerships and support pathways into good jobs, including apprenticeship and pre-apprenticeship. And we're very excited about how the presenters today are going to model that very well. Jennie, do you want to say anything more?

Jennie Mollica: Thanks, Peter. Yeah, and here are presenters. We want to give each of you a chance to introduce yourselves before we go into a little bit of background. So if you could each say a little bit about yourself, Angela, we'll start with you.

Angela Hatter: Hello, my name is Angela Hatter. And I am the Site Administrator for Charles A. Jones Career and Education Center in Sacramento, California. I've been working with this school for the last four-and-a-half years, doing a lot of program development. We have several career education programs as well as academic programs.

And I'm here to talk about the wonderful partnership that we recently formed with Sacramento Valley Manufacturing Alliance. And you'll hear more about us in a bit.

Jennie Mollica: Thank you, Angela. And we have two from the Manufacturing Alliance.

Tim Schaefer: Yes, my name is Tim Schaefer. I'm with the Sacramento Valley Manufacturing Alliance. I'm the Director of Training. Manufacturing Alliance consists of about 40 different manufacturing companies representing about 6,000 employees.

We partner with them to develop training programs, pre-apprenticeship. We're very excited that in March, we got the federal approval from Department of Labor for a first of its kind competency-based program. So if they've been in the trade for quite a while or if they're just entering the trade, they can test into at more advanced level if they have the skills.

So they're very excited about that. So certainly that's what we're about. That's what we're focused on. So we'll talk more about that later.

Jennie Mollica: Thank you, Tim. Nancy?

Nancy Miller: Hi, everyone. I'm Nancy Miller. I'm currently an educational consultant, but I am the Retired Director of the Sonoma County Adult Education Consortium. And I'll be discussing our response to the 2017 fires in Sonoma County, and unfortunately every single year since then, a fire, and how we're using adult education as a pre-apprenticeship opportunity for students to go into apprenticeship programs and get family sustaining jobs.

Jennie Mollica: Thanks, Nancy. And now we have Rasheedah and Ani, both here representing the Verdugo Jobs Center. Rasheedah, do you want introduce yourself?

Rasheedah Scott: Sure. Hi, my name is Rasheedah Scott. I work for the Verdugo Jobs Center as a case manager. I've been working in Workforce Development since I graduated from college, started working as an outreach worker in South LA, and believe in how assisting individuals find employment or find their career path is the only way to self-sufficiency. And I'm very excited to discuss more about the Workforce Innovation and Opportunities Act and how it can greatly benefit your students.

Jennie Mollica: Thank you, thank you. And Ani?

Ani Khachikyan: Hello, everyone. My name is Ani. I work at Verdugo Job Center as a case manager. I particularly work with the individuals who are in adult education. I enjoy working with this population group. And I'll be happy to share with a lot of great services that we are able to provide at our center under the WIOA Title I.

Jennie Mollica: Thank you very much. So a lot to look forward to from our presenters today. Before we jump into that, we wanted to just share our thinking about what the objectives are for the webinar. One is to very quickly just hear a few points about the urgency of adult education programs' role right now in preparing adults to participate in California's economic recovery.

We don't want to take much time on that, because we want to turn it over to some amazing presenters. But we want to fly through a few slides just to give that framing and make sure we're all on the same page. And I'm really thinking about what we know about the situation in the state right now.

And then we're going to hear about several of these really promising programs that have been emerging in California, some of the partnerships, some of the exciting work going on that really is responding to the economic situation in ways that could be key to turning things around the future and creating opportunities. And then, like we said, we're going to make sure there's some time for question and answer. Veronica, you want to say a few words here.

Veronica Parker: Thank you, Jennie. So part of the reason why we are here this afternoon is because this particular webinar is an extension of the CAEP statewide priorities. And so this particular webinar falls under the program development state priority.

And so just to give you a little bit of context of how we have arrived at the statewide priorities, the CAEP office took the California Department of Education Superintendent's Initiatives as well as the California Community College System Vision Goals, and derive the adult education shared goals. So it's based on these state-level goals and initiatives.

And so part of the statewide priorities, the goals here are to increase credential and high school diplomas/high school equivalency obtainment as well as increased transfer to community college credit coursework and decrease unit obtainment and help students achieve 12 hours of instruction milestone. Increase employment for CTE students and also CAEP students and reduce regional gaps in the 71 regional consortia. And so how the CAEP office sees this being obtained these goals, the adult education shared goals, is through the statewide priorities.

And so the statewide priorities include equity, leadership, learner transition, program development, program evaluation, marketing, and technology, and distance learning. And as I mentioned before, this particular webinar aligns with the Program Development Statewide Priority. And so here on your screen is the definition of the Program Development Statewide Priority, and programs in this area could focus on any of the approved CAEP program areas, annual plan and 3-year planning, building partnerships, leveraging funding, and more to align with this particular Statewide Program Statewide Priority.

And so the CAEP and the CAEP Technical Assistance Project we have been hosting, what we're calling Deeper Dive Webinars and Statewide Priority Webinars that align with these statewide priorities because this is what's going to carry us forward into the next program year in terms of our professional development as well as, as we enter into the 3-year plan's cycle. So thank you, Jennie, Peter, and all of the panelists for answering the call to present on this particular topic and align it to our Program Development Statewide Priority. Thank you.

Jennie Mollica: Thanks for that--

Peter Simon: Thank you, Veronica.

Jennie Mollica: --context, Veronica. So let's move into just this quick overview. And, Peter, you can start this one off.

Peter Simon: Yeah. Can you go to the next slide, Jennie?

Jennie Mollica: Yeah.

Peter Simon: Good, OK. And I'm almost certain that most of you are very up to speed on what we're talking about here, but clearly just in terms of context, that clearly the economic impact on low-wage frontline workers has been really disproportionate in terms of the people who are served by adult education. There have been probably some permanent shifts in the labor market that are going to require a retraining and upskilling and reskilling on a level that probably has not happened since the Great Depression in the United States.

But what's also interesting in this moment is that every time you open up the newspaper, you see an article about how there's a huge shortage of skilled labor in the United States as well. So this really is a classic example of how within crisis is also opportunity. And I think what we're going to hear about today from the presenters is a really good example of how these opportunities are being developed.

And again, Jennie and I have had the chance to do research on a different-- talk into a bunch of consortia, and across the state. There's a great deal of innovation going on particularly around the partnerships that we're going to hear about today. Next slide.

Jennie Mollica: So the other thing we wanted to just share on this slide, just to have it in front of us as we're thinking about all this work that's going on, it's just what's the profile of California's workers. And we know that so many of the low-wage workers and of the workers who have been impacted seriously by the changes going on during the pandemic are either have limited English proficiency, have low numeracy in digital skills. Many lack a high school diploma.

And so here is the opportunity for adult education to play a role in shaping the kind of career pathways that can help any number of people who've been affected, who've lost their jobs, who have reduced hours, who've had to look into different industries and occupations, help them to get on a path towards something that will be able to create a career, support their families. And here's just-- the data that tells us the role of adult education is important right now.

Peter Simon: This is just a completely unreadable slide, but I think the point is pretty clear that as we just talked about a number of the folks that we, who adult education served are in the hardest hit sectors. And you can see that the recovery has started for some of the less affected, but for the folks who are in the hardest hit sectors, things continue to be very challenging. Next slide.

Jennie Mollica: Here's another representation of that, just the huge numbers laid off in positions like food service and drinking places. The health care services, or like home care aides, dental assistants, and then any number of other roles that we often see our adult education students and to earn a living. So just another representation of that.

Peter Simon: And this data we're showing, these are live links. So you can actually-- if you want to read more, you can. This is a slide from Manuel Pastor from USC. I think the importance of looking at this data, and we're not going to go into it in length, is just sometimes when we talk about immigrants and people of color, the language goes like we're going to help out these poor people. But the reality is if you look at the data, is that immigrants and people of color are the workforce in California and will be increasingly so going forward.

Jennie Mollica: And have been most impacted by the endemic in a number of areas. And here is just showing that unemployment remains really high.

Peter Simon: Exactly.

Jennie Mollica: So just to wrap up this overview, we wanted to highlight here on this slide just some of the ways in which adult education has the tools to support an inclusive economic recovery. And I think you'll see examples of this in the presentations, but adult education can be offered in short modules that can be customized to employers' needs, that can help move people quickly toward jobs, toward earning income. It can be offered flexibly, and on what online or hybrid formats. And as we look at things like pre-apprenticeship moving into apprenticeship, or some of these other models, it can offer on the job instruction that quickly, quickly moves people into jobs, work experience, and income.

Peter Simon: So we're going to pivot now and hear from our wonderful presenters. I'll just say that these are going to be by necessity only 10 minute presentations followed by about 5 minutes of question and answer. Each one of these programs could easily have a dedicated webinar, just for the work they do.

But this is, again, to give you an idea of what's possible out there and some great work going on. So our first presenters are going to be from Sacramento and the Manufacturing Training Center. And they've already introduced themselves, but I'll just hand it over to Angela and Tim. Thank you very much, both of you.

Angela Hatter: Thank you. So I will just start by saying I'm really happy to be here, focusing on program development because that is why this partnership that CAJ, Charles A. Jones Career & Education Center, that's why we actually came together with Sacramento Valley Manufacturing Alliance. In the years that I have been with CAJ, we have this wonderful site, which you'll see a picture of in just a moment, and as many of you know adult education. When the funding model changed, we lost a lot of funding for the programs that we had in place.

And we had this huge amount of space, over 12,000 square feet. And I wanted to do something with it. And I did some research and manufacturing kept coming up as something that this region needed. And I noticed there were no adult schools that offered a manufacturing program with many different components.

So as I started looking around-- and actually we can go to the next slide. Next one. Yes, there's our building. So as I started looking around and asking around, an opportunity came up where our Regional Consortium Director, Bronco Marchetta, introduced me to Dean Peckham and Michael Bell at Sacramento Valley Manufacturing Initiative.

And it just so happened that SVMI sent Bronco an email saying that they were interested in connecting with adult schools that might be interested in manufacturing. And she put together this meeting invited a bunch of people. And it ended up just being me, Michael, and Dean, in a room with Bronco.

And from then on, we just started brainstorming. And I said, I have over 12,000 square feet to do this, to do something with. And they said, great. Can you accept donations? Are you open to accepting donations that aren't new, because that comes up manufacturing is an expensive program to develop.

And many times k-12 programs have grants. And community colleges have money. And they really want to buy new machines. And so I said, well, we're fine with donations, because we don't have a lot of money.

From then on, we started looking for grant-funding. And I wanted to show you the progression of our partnership because it's not something that happened overnight. We met in April 2019, and here we are in May of 2021. And we're just recently launching the program. So this has been something that we have developed over years and time and sweat writing for grants and getting denied. And we've been fortunate to have several funding sources now that we're leveraging.

But I want Tim, who's also on the line, to talk about the beginning of this, because Tim has been there from the very beginning. And we had this space that used to be an auto body program that still had cars and equipment in it. And I don't have staff. I have some staff to clean, but I said, OK, we're going to need help to get this ready.

And, Tim, what did you--

[interposing voices]

Tim Schaefer: All right. I'm going to start out really quickly with how Sacramento Valley Manufacturing Alliance started. And this is one of our member companies. The biggest challenge they have is getting warm bodies in the door. And then skilled labor on top of that is another-- is even a bigger challenge.

So these companies all pulled together and had an initial meeting. That was in October of 2017. And then the Alliance was born. And we've had done some regression through the years. At this point, we still have a long way to go.

There's no question about it. But one of the challenges we face with is we were faced with this-- it's very expensive for a manufacturer to do on the job training. It takes a lot of shop time. They don't have time to cover the fundamentals of this. And there are several high schools around that have CNC equipment.

But the focus that the high schools are in is they actually want to buy the least expensive equipment that they can find. And, unfortunately, a lot of the equipment turns out to be not real-world. It's more hobby equipment. When a student were to graduate from there, they go into a commercial facility and are lost.

And so this is our vision for Charles A. Jones, is we want commercial equipment on the floor so when a student trains on that, he is immediately hireable for. And a lot of our vendor or our member companies don't even want to wait until they go through the program. They're starting to hire them right off the bat, right off the shop floor at Charles A. Jones.

SVMI, there's several different facets of it. One of them is we do work with education. We were community colleges. That's in high schools. And what we did learn pretty quickly is, in no offense, to present company but schools have their own culture. And oftentimes there's a lot of bureaucracy. And business has struggles with the patients it takes to work through the bureaucracy.

So I sit on lots of advisory boards. And quite honestly and frankly, I go to the advisory board meetings. And honestly, the school district is not interested in nothing more than checking a box. Yeah, we got somebody here from the industry. And that's the end of the discussion with them, because they got what they needed and yet manufacturers are left wanting to aid.

Tim Schaefer: I really want to communicate with our school system and give the school system a real outline of what the employers are looking for. This is where Angela and Charles A. Jones have stepped up in a huge way. They are truly a partner.

We're not there to check a box. We have a facility. We have industry partners that are excited. For those of you don't know, so this machine that's over my shoulder is a very sophisticated measuring tool. That's used in aerospace and SpaceX, Tesla. All the high-tech companies have this type of equipment.

This machine was donated by one of our members. If you had to go and purchase this machine, it would cost you about $150,000. And lots of people ask me, well, why don't you just use a tape measure to measure this?

Well, this machine is quite sophisticated in that if you want something to fit correctly and you're trying to capture gases for launching a rocket, it has to be very, very close tolerance. That means that everything has to fit perfect. And that's what this machine will let you do.

So this is a CNC/CMM. So we have CNC, that's computer numerically controlled machining centers that do the same thing, except for they're making a component. And a lot of these, like I said, Tesla and SpaceX and Siemens, we have a big Siemens. They make locomotives and rail cars locally here.

And it's a big, big operation. They make full scale locomotives, just like you would see a freight locomotive only, what's different for them-- I'm sorry about my phone. I can't turn it off.

Peter Simon: It's OK.

Tim Schaefer: But what they do is they make only passenger rail. And they serve that plant services all of North America and South America. So you go through that plant, you'll see cars from Brazil, you'll see cars from Santa Fe, from San Francisco, all over the place. So anyhow getting back to the-- I don't want to go too long.

What Angela and Charles A. Jones are doing is they're following the essence of the rule where they do want industry involvement and we have direct feedback. And it is really evident, from this machine you see over my shoulder, we're-- yesterday, I was procuring another sensing machine for her shop floor. We have another partner who-- I think Nancy mentioned HAAS, so there are two major to the biggest machine tool builders in the world. And one of them is right here in Davis. It's called DMG Mori.

They build about 18,000 machines a year. Same thing with hospitals, also built about 18,000 machines a year. But they are two different ends to the market. DMG Mori is very expensive. They're building machine last 20 years and HAAS is building machine last five years. So anyhow, long story short, I can't say enough about the partnership that we've developed with CAJ.

I think the folks that we're bringing in there, the folks that are getting the training, they're excited about doing this. What's interesting, really interesting, about this is that most of the folks that have enrolled in the program have been women. It's about 75%. I was just talking to Mike Bell last night, about 75% of women.

In modern day manufacturing, you don't have to be big and strong, because most of the work is done right here. We're very excited about bringing more women into manufacturing. We're getting tremendous around the feedback from our former member companies, about women are really excelling in the welding field. And so was there anything I didn't cover, Angela?

Angela Hatter: No, no. That was great. And I just wanted to highlight that Tim has spent many, many hours, many, many months actually, helping us get our machines, the ones that were donated, getting them inspected and connected along with several other partners. And I do want to highlight-- I know we're getting close to the end of our time, but I want to highlight that when we did our launch this fall, so it took a year for us to get funding to upgrade our facilities and then get our donations.

And we finally have several funding sources which were listed on one of the previous screens. And we launched our first 90-hour Manufacturing Pre-apprenticeship Program in October of 2020, in the middle of a pandemic. Of course, when the funding sources came through, those were awarded pre-pandemic and we received some City CARES funding.

That supplemented and allowed us to do a launch, but we couldn't bring students on campus, because we are an adult school connected to a k-12 programming and our schools were closed. So we had this dilemma. We had to completely change our curriculum around and figure out how to deliver this program under these new circumstances.

Our teacher was able to get training for OSHA-10, delivered that virtually. We were able to get an Online Tooling U Curriculum through our partnership with Los Rios. We got free licenses for that. So that was wonderful.

We were able to get six hours of forklift training. So we brought the students on campus for a short forklift training to get them certified. We had those components going. And then we were trying to figure out how are we going to do the hands-on piece, the hands-on component of this training.

You can't teach manufacturing without having the students actually use their hands. So our partners kicked into gear and they said, OK, well, let's recruit some of our SVMI employers and have our students do their internships or externships at their facilities. So this was really a true collective effort in getting this launch going, and our students were able to get their hands on training when the school was closed through our partners.

Cenveo is one of our SVMI partners who provided that hands-on at his facility when they couldn't come on campus. So we're very excited about this opportunity to have this partnership and to grow. We're now looking at other phases of our programming.

With the City CARES partnership, or the City CARES funding, we were able to form other partnerships through SVMI. One is with the California Mobility Center which connected us to some of the CBOs in the area. So this is really just ballooned into this wonderful network of partners who are working together to provide valuable services to the community.

And one of the things that we realized is that our program requires a high school diploma. It's one of our accredited programs that we offer here at CAJ. But through the CBOs, there were so many interested candidates who didn't have that high school diploma, or who had language skills that were not quite at the level that Tooling U required, because Tooling U is completely online.

They have to have a fairly high level of reading in order to get through it. So now we're looking at developing an integrated education training program that focuses on manufacturing, for those students who have limited language skills. So it's just at every corner, we have these opportunities, which you mentioned early on, in the face of barriers and situations like COVID, opportunities have definitely presented themselves. So we're very excited and looking forward to the future.

Tim Schaefer: So if I could offer a quick clarifying note, so as you read this, you'll see SVMI and SVMA. It's actually the same organization. Under SVMA, that was our fledgeling name, because we were not incorporated as a 501(c)(3). And SVMA, this year, incorporated as a 501(c)(3).

So it's the same organization. We just changed the name to a Manufacturing Alliance because the initiative was just the beginning. And now that we've matured and we're on our own 501(c)(3), that's why you see SVMA.

Jennie Mollica: Wonderful, thank you for that. We were encouraging anyone to put questions in the chat box. We are open to taking questions midway into the webinar. We also have some time at the end. But please feel free to type them as they come to you.

Haven't seen any so far for this presentation. So I think we're going to move on to the next, see what questions might come up there. Peter?

Peter Simon: I have one quick question, which is now that you have mentioned that you have an approved apprenticeship, is there a mechanism for students finishing a pre-apprenticeship to move directly into the apprenticeship? Could you just say a smidgen about that?

Tim Schaefer: Absolutely. Do you want me to speak to that, Angela?

Peter Simon: Yes, please.

Tim Schaefer: In order to have a pre-apprenticeship, according to the Department of Labor, you have to have an apprenticeship program first. So we did establish a pre-apprenticeship that gives folks some skills, but there wasn't anything to matriculate. Now we can go back and have a pre-apprenticeship program that they can now--

So this, we're really excited about it. Again this is a competency-based program. No matter where you are, if you happen to be really mechanically inclined-- so there are actually 12 levels, but there's 8 basic levels to our program. And each one of them has a wage attached to it.

If you're starting at level 1, then you're going to start at minimum wage. But if you have mechanical aptitude, you've been a mechanic and you can test into level 2 or 3, that's about $2 or $3 more an hour. So the wage starts at minimum wage. And level 8 is currently $33 an hour.

Peter Simon: Thank you for proving that.

Tim Schaefer: There's a real incentive for people to look at that and say, yes, I can really achieve that. Really quickly how we do that is we look at the schools to provide the skills. So if a student wants to learn computer-aided design or computer-aided manufacturing, they would actually go to a local community college and take those courses. We don't offer those courses.

This is completely to support education, completely to support-- We will sponsor if there's certain levels that they need to achieve and there's either a long time period, they can't get the classes, then SVMA will come in and hold a workshop to cover the basics of that level. So that the student can progress through the program at a real, a fairly rapid pace. We don't want somebody waiting four years for a class to get to the next level. So we will step in and will rent the facility and hold a workshop in advance that cohort to the next level.

Peter Simon: Thank you. That's great.

Jennie Mollica: Yeah, and can you just clarify, Angela, the courses that you offer currently, are those with credit or non-credit courses?

Angela Hatter: Yeah, I see that question in there. So we are clock-hours program. So we don't offer credit, but our career education programs are nationally accredited through Council on Occupational Education. So they are eligible for those. More than 900 hours are eligible for federal financial aid.

This program in particular is only five weeks. So it's not eligible for financial aid, but it doesn't carry any credits. It's clock hours. And there were a couple of other questions. One was about donations.

Those donations have been coming directly from the partners in Sacramento Valley Manufacturing Alliance. So we haven't done any, we meaning CAJ hasn't gone out to request donations. They've actually just come to us because the partners in SVMA know what we're doing. They know what we need. Tim and several other others who work closely, they look around for us and help us identify those pieces of equipment that we need.

Peter Simon: Excellent. Thank you so much. That was fantastic.

Jennie Mollica: I see a few other questions, but I think we want to move on with our next presentation, just to make sure we don't shortchange anyone. There's a lot of great stories to share here. But we'll come back to some of the questions. I encourage you to keep sticking them in the chat there.

The next program we want to highlight is a pre-apprenticeship program. So it was amazing to hear from the Sacramento group, how you've brought in the internships, the students really connecting to industry, and you've also built a pre-apprenticeship leading to an apprenticeship program. This is something we're starting to see more and more in adult education programs across the state, but they're still relatively small numbers.

If you look at the CAEP data, pre-apprenticeship is one of the CAEP allowable program areas, but we're still reporting small numbers. The exciting thing about apprenticeships is that they can integrate things like the basic language and math skills. They often use the integrated education and training model.

Like Angela referred to, they can support English learners. They can support workplace readiness skills along with an introduction to the technical skills and really contextualizing in terms of preparation for an apprenticeship program. Also a registered apprenticeship program in particular will directly facilitate entrance into our apprenticeship program.

And so it's very, very focused on getting students ready for that. And we're seeing more examples of this. Definitely more examples that are housed at adult schools or adult education programs and that really bring the best of adult education expertise to these programs. . They often work in partnership. Most definitely they work in partnership with employers, often unions, and often a community college.

Often they lead to two more advanced training and a certificate or degree. So I want to introduce our next presenter, which is Nancy, who's going to tell us about Santa Rosa Junior Colleges Program.

Nancy Miller: Hey, Jenni.

Jennie Mollica: Can you hear me, Nanci? Hi.

Nancy Miller: Yes, I am. Can you hear me?

Peter Simon: Yes.

Jennie Mollica: Yes.

Nancy Miller: Perfect. So for our program, this has evolved over time. This program actually started in partnership with our Graton Day Labor Center. We put in a landscaping program that had contextualized math and English language development, because their employees were getting-- or their members were getting injured on the job.

And so we wanted to have a training program for them to increase their skill set, and obviously their English language abilities, to give them more job opportunities. And at the time that it was developed in 2015, Sonoma County was in the second year of a drought-- 2016, when it actually launched, was our third year of extreme drought. And so the focus really in our county was removing traditional landscaping and transitioning it to low water use and native plant landscaping.

We had a successful run with that. But at the end of the first year of that program, so that was two cycles of this certificate program, the Tubbs Fire, which also combined with the Atlas Fire and the Nuns Fire, happened in Sonoma County. And it really devastated our housing market, our employment, our economic base, really, which is focused on agriculture and tourism. So the focus went away from transitioning landscaping to how do we prevent something like this from happening again, how do we address overgrowth and defensible space.

So we worked-- I partnered very heavily with our economic development board, which is part of the County of Sonoma, still the Graton Day Labor Center. But we also had other partners come in, because it was focused on defensible space, but also we lost close to 6,000 homes and buildings in Santa Rosa alone. And we had to recover from that in our construction industry.

I wanted to give you the background on that, but I'm going to focus on how we develop the Fire Abatement Program. So in talking with officials from our county office, from the landscaping industry, from the fire industry, I was going to say prevention, but it's also addressing fires. We developed a certificate program.

And when I talk about our certificate programs, those are all in the non-credit end. So anything that is pre-apprentice, anything that is an integrated program, is going to be on the non-credit end. As we were developing non-credit career training programs at Santa Rosa Junior College, we had three things that we had to adhere to. And that was we couldn't duplicate anything that was already offered through credit.

We needed to make sure that there was a vertical avenue into credit and also a horizontal connection to English language development and to basic skills that would lead to a high school diploma or high school equivalency. All of the programs that are offered through the Adult Education Department and Career Training are offered in a bilingual format.

85% of our students, their first language is Spanish. And so the majority of the programs are bilingual English-Spanish, although this semester, they have started a Mandarin-Spanish. Mandarin-Spanish, that would be very difficult.

[laughter]

Nancy Miller: I would like to sit-in on that class. Mandarin-English, digital skills training program, but this one, we knew that there were people that were in landscaping that could transition. There was a lot of focus on, again, fire abatement. But how do we-- we were already in a 300 person a year deficit in the landscaping industry in our area. How could we ramp up people going into this field, both in construction and in landscaping?

Tragedy, as someone mentioned earlier, I think it was Peter. Tragedy sometimes brings opportunity or often brings opportunity. And so, for us, what that meant is we partnered with the Economic Development Board and we were able to qualify to get an economic development administration grant that was partnered with FEMA to develop a center-- it was a $8.2 million grant-- to develop a center to train people in the construction and landscaping industry.

Subsequently, after the PG&E settlement for the 2017 fire, in our partnership with our credit side of agriculture, we have a Natural Resources Department. We also are extremely fortunate. I know this does not happen everywhere in California, but we're extremely fortunate to have a 365 acre vineyard farm and forested area that we can actually practice in.

So we have that as one of our campuses, to be able to bring students to train them in the abatement programs. So our program consists of learning about the laws regarding defensible space, so understanding that what it means, what it looks like. We do tree trimming as part of that, start into the arborist program and the apprenticeship side.

The credit side would be in arborists with Atlas tree service, but also on the credit side. And then some general landscaping forklift operation and OSHA 10. And we do pay for our students to get the OSHA 10 certification. We offer general-- and we offer construction OSHA 10 and OSHA 30, and then we also offer it in Spanish and in English.

So that the non-credit certificate will become that pre-apprenticeship. The Atlas tree services in the process of getting their apprenticeship program, they had to align with the college. They're getting their apprenticeship program approved through the state, the office that does apprenticeship programs. And then that will connect in the credit side.

So students will be able to transition to a credit program in forestry and natural resources with the credit apprenticeship or paid apprenticeship program. As part of this, we also offer-- we were able to apply through our Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act Grants in the last round and got 243 money. So that's the integrated training programs for immigrants.

And we received funding to be able to run both math and English training as part of this certificate in the non-credit side. So we do provide intensive support and basic skills. They do get bilingual support in that. And then if they need a high school diploma, the latest program right before I retired in December is we were working with our College Skills Department on the SB554, that if once students completed this and needed a high school diploma, they would enter into the high school equivalency program in College Skills and then have up to 11 credits--

They could take up to 11 units on the credit side as part of that SB554. So that was another branch of this program that opened up through legislation for our students. So that is basically it. I think that I mentioned that there was a PG&E settlement. Our credit program, our agriculture program applied for and received a $500,000 grant out of that funding, to be able to support what we're doing in our fire abatement, pre-apprenticeship to apprenticeship.

Peter Simon: Terrific.

Jennie Mollica: Fascinating, Nancy. Thanks

[interposing voices]

Nancy Miller: There is a lot of--

[interposing voices]

Nancy Miller: A lot of branding, a lot of partners.

Jennie Mollica: Yes, I was going to say-- I was going to say, yes, great work bringing in additional resources, using both the credit and non-credit sides of your institution. And then community partnerships, the Day Labor Center, obviously Deep Employer Partnerships, and kind of building that you're building the apprenticeship at the same time as your apprenticeship, it's a huge overall effort. But it's going to yield great results.

If anyone has questions for Nancy, feel free to post them now. Or we can also take them at the end. Did you want to add another point, Nancy? I think I cut you off.

Nancy Miller: That's we do have a community-based organization partners. And we also partner with our AJCC, which is job link in Sonoma County. And so job link will come in and they'll interview all of the students that are signed up for the program. Only about 60% have social security numbers. So job link will serve the students that they can in this program, but we serve all of the students that come in through adult education.

And the majority of how we get students into our program is we advertise through Facebook. We do radio advertising. And those are the two main sources, but Facebook, we have about 8,000 followers on our page. And they're really, really good about getting the word out to everybody they know when we have new programs or opportunities arise, particularly when it's apprentice or landscaping construction-based.

We also had a private investor come in and donated $50,000 to help support students. So we were able to give boot vouchers and tool vouchers to the students who completed the certificate programs in construction and in the landscaping or a fire abatement.

Peter Simon: That's fantastic.

Jennie Mollica: Fantastic, yeah. OK, thank you. Thank you, Nancy. I actually don't see any questions right now for Nancy. Keep thinking of those questions. And feel free to post as we go along. But I think we're going to move on to the next slide.

Peter Simon: Is this one--

Jennie Mollica: Yeah, Peter, you can go ahead.

Peter Simon: Again, I think a number of you probably know this, but we're also struck by how still a number of adult education consortia are not really fully taking advantage of the resources available under the Public Workforce System. We're going to hear in just a minute from our final presenters about the power of co-enrolling adult ed students and WIOA Title I services and all the resources that can come with that. But also just really quickly under WIOA, that they have a lot of money, really, work experience on the job, training money that can support your students as they go to work, various employers, doesn't even have to be a formal apprenticeship or a pre-apprenticeship.

It could be just done on a case-by-case basis with employers. Also there are funds under WIOA Title I for supportive services such as transportation, which is a key barrier to overcome for a lot of jobs, child care, work uniforms, tools, et cetera. And importantly, also they're in the business of helping people find jobs. And notably, most educational institutions are not so good at that.

So when you partner with them, you plug into a very vast network of job resources when you work with your local one-stop. And on that note, I want to introduce our third pair of panelists, who are from the Verdugo Jobs Center. And they're going to talk about how they've worked with adult education and doing co-enrollment under Title I. So please, can I hand it over to Rasheedah and Ani?

Rasheedah Scott: Thank you, Peter. I really appreciate that introduction. That was perfect. Hello, everybody. Again, my name is Rasheedah Scott. And today, myself and my colleague Ani Khachikyan will present a little bit about how we were able to partner with our adult education partner, Glendale Community College. Slide.

There is animation in here. So there might be like an additional click you would have to do, just so you know.

Jennie Mollica: Cool.

Rasheedah Scott: OK. So just to go over a really high level what WIOA Title I eligibility requirements are essentially it's adults who are 18 or over with barriers to employment, dislocated workers which is industry speak for individuals who have been laid off or terminated from their employer and they're unlikely to return to their previous occupation. And likely to return to their previous occupation is subjective-- well, at least at our center as it could be because their industry is obsolete, it could be because they need to upscale. You just have to build that strong case.

And they have to be collecting unemployment insurance, or recently exhausted unemployment insurance. That's dislocated worker in a nutshell. And then WIOA also have the youth component, which is for youth and young adults between 18 and 24. So essentially that is our basic eligibility requirements for WIOA Title I eligibility. Next slide, please. And then one more time. Sorry. There should be a title.

Jennie Mollica: There it is.

Rasheedah Scott: OK. There we go. All right, so when it comes to workforce services in practice, here are just a few examples of the types of resources that are available to your students if you decide that you want to work with your local AJCC and refer them to your AJCC partner. Resume writing, where job search, labor market research, and a little bit more about that, with the resume writing, case managers do work closely with the clients to create or edit their resumes. And when it comes to job search, we do assist by referring the clients to different job leads, depending on their career goals and class schedule.

Our Workforce Center is very, very, very specific about honoring individual's actual responsibilities that they have outside of coming to our center. So we take into consideration child care, their educational goals-- short term and long term-- their employment goals-- short term and long term. And that's how we are able to determine what type of job leads that we're sending to them so that it makes sense, given their assessment when we meet with them.

And we also provide labor market research for our clients. And that means mapping out an employment plan of action for our clients while still honoring their education status and their education goals. And this plan of action is a live document. It's something that continues to change and continues to pivot as we continue to work with the client.

So it's not in stone. If there are different developments that come up, we're able to pivot and figure out another way to assist them meet their goals. We assess what types of education and training is necessary for them to meet their goals.

So we look at where they're at and where they want to go, and we create those steps together with that client to ensure that it's a team effort, when we work with them. And finally, we provide research on in-demand growing industries and career pathway options. So when they're in school, it's important as I'm sure everyone knows that even if it's they're going and they're taking their ELL classes, if they have a career goal in mind, it's important that they start learning about that goal, learning about what it is that they're going to have to, what type of education or training they're going to need in order to attain it, what types of ancillary occupations align with this employment goal, and can they get to those jobs, can they get that type of job right now, just building that path for them.