Veronica Parker: So here we are. Good morning, everyone. It looks like most people have joined us. Welcome to the CAEP Summit 2021. My name is Veronica Parker, Coordinator with the CAEP Technical Assistance Project. Looks like we have about 218 people who have joined us and a few more who are in the waiting room that are joining us at this time. We apologize for the small delay, but we will go ahead and get started at this time.

So before we get started, I will go over a few housekeeping items just to make sure that we have a great experience this morning during our opening sessions. So I'll go over our housekeeping items. And then I'll turn it over to Renee Collins, Director of the CAEP technical Assistance Project, and OTAN, Outreach and Technical Assistance Network. So here we go.

All right. So first and foremost, we are recording this session this morning. So the recording will be made available in our vFairs Platform tomorrow. So throughout your conference experience, all of the sessions that you attend, the recording will be made available the following day. So just note that as you are moving forward during sessions.

Next, the buttons at the bottom as we have been in this Zoom platform for almost two years now, just as a reminder, the following buttons are available to you at the bottom of your screen. One being your audio and video. At this time, we are requesting that everyone is muted. If for any reason someone become unmuted, we'll go ahead and unmute you again. You do have the opportunity to use your video. So if you like to share your lovely face with us, you can turn on your video by clicking on the Start Video button.

You are able to see the participant list. So right now, I'm seeing that there are 261 of us in this room. So you're able to see who was with us this morning. You are able to use the chat. So throughout today's opening sessions, there will be an opportunity at the very end for questions. So if you do have any questions, definitely post them in the chat and we will get to them at the end of the opening sessions this morning.

The live chat has been enabled, so-- excuse me-- the live transcript has been enabled. So at the bottom of your screen, you will see closed captioning. Reactions, if you hear something that you thought was amazing and you want to give the celebratory reaction, you can do so. The heart reaction, the smiley face, whatever you like as an engagement tool.

And then to leave this meeting, you will simply click on the Leave button at the bottom right-hand corner of your screen. But stay with us throughout the duration of the morning session. We have some great information that we will be providing to you also. Stay throughout the entire time if you can.

Next, we talked about audio and video. So you have those controls available to you. And then chat, so you are able to save the chat. We have enabled that feature. So if there's great conversation going on, maybe some resources being shared, some links being shared, you're able to click on the chat. And the three communication buttons on the right-hand side, you're able to click on those. And you'll be able to download the chat and save that for future reference.

And in the vFairs Virtual Platform, just a reminder of some of the navigation bars-- excuse me-- the navigation bar and some of the buttons that are on that navigation bar. So you all should have [interposing voices] when you logged in. And you should have hopefully visited an exhibitor in our exhibit hall. You, of course, have access to attendance. That's how you are able to attend this session. And then the resources that are there as well as the information desk. If for any reason you need technical assistance, whether it be regarding the conference program or the virtual platform, you have access to technical assistance via the CAEP technical assistance team or the vFairs technical team. So we have those resources available to you.

We will not use breakouts during the session but they will be available in some of the breakout rooms and breakout sessions. So we'll skip through some of this stuff following the presenter. So we will have PowerPoints that will be shared this morning. So if you need to exit your full screen or you want to resize it, you are able to do so using the controls at the top of your screen.

And then evaluation. So evaluations are extremely important to us at the CAEP Technical Assistance Project. We do utilize the results of our evaluations to inform our decisions, especially as it relates to future planning, whether it be regarding professional development that we provide year-round or the CAEP Summit because we do this on an annual basis. So we take those evaluation results. And we implement changes to the conference experience. So the evaluations are extremely important.

So you'll have access to day one sessions. We are hopefully streamlining the evaluation process where there are just going to be four links total, one for the overall evaluation and three separate links for each day of the conference experience. For day one, for example, you will have a dropdown menu where you'll be able to access different evaluations for the different sessions that you attend. But you'll use the same link over and over again to evaluate each of the sessions you attend.

We're hoping that instead of having 71 separate evaluation links for all of the sessions we'll be offering over the next three days, we're hoping that making it a little bit more systematic. And only having four will hopefully help everyone. So we'll be sure to post a link to the evaluation in our chat. And you'll have access to it at a later time.

So just a reminder to everyone, please be sure to unmute yourself. At any point, if someone becomes unmuted, we'll go ahead and unmute you again.

So that is all that I have in terms of housekeeping. Any questions you may have regarding housekeeping, please be sure to post in the chat. And I will turn it over to Renee Collins, Director of the CAEP Technical Assistance Project as well as the Outreach and Technical Assistance Network. Renee.

Renee Collins: Thank you, Veronica. Good morning and welcome to the annual California Adult Education Program Summit 2021. I want to extend a special welcome to our consortia leads and CAEP members and partners with us today, as well as to our distinguished opening ceremony panel-- State Director of Adult Education, Dr. Carolyn Zachry; California Chancellor's Office, Dean of Workforce and Economic Development, Gary Adams; Executive Vice Chancellor of Educational Services Marty Alvarado; and State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Tony Thurmond.

My name is Renee Collins, Director of Adult Education at Sacramento County Office of Education, overseeing both the CAEP Technical Assistance Project or CAEP TAP and the Outreach and Technical Assistance Network, more commonly known as OTAN. It's my privilege and great pleasure, on behalf of CAEP TAP, to welcome you here today.

We are delighted to have you with us to participate and share in this highly anticipated event, our fifth annual CAEP Summit. Thank you for being here to launch this year's event. That many of you have committed to engaging with us virtually for the next three days serves as a reminder to all of us how important our work is.

The California Community College Chancellor's Office and the California Department of Education are working in partnership to administer the California Adult Education Program. With seven approved program areas, CAEP serves close to a million students that enroll in non-credit community colleges and K-12 adult education programs annually. CAEP appropriates funds through 71 regional consortia across the state that include more than 400 members from community colleges, K-12 adult schools, county offices of education, and a variety of community partners, including but not limited to local workforce investment boards, libraries and community-based organizations.

California Adult Education Programs support adults 18 years and older to meet their educational work and life goals, which can include earning a high school diploma or high school equivalency certificate, learning to speak English, learning to become a citizen, exploring careers, learning new job skills, and earning job certificates. Ultimately, students in CAEP programs gain skills to be contributing productive members of their local economy and communities. A special thank you to our frontline and support staff, our teachers, counselors, transition specialists and others who are key to making these outcomes possible.

This year, our summit theme is Reimagining Adult Education-- Same Foundation, New Way Forward, Recovery Equity, Transition. California Adult Education began in 1856 and has provided a solid foundation from which to grow and expand. Ongoing challenges with the pandemic, racial injustices, and inequities require us to reimagine and re-engineer programs that address these challenges head on to increase student recruitment, retention, persistence, and ultimately, goal attainment.

We have some amazing presenters that are prepared to share with us how they're addressing challenges in their own agencies and regions. CAEP TAP has scheduled 60 sessions that address the CAEP state priorities of equity, leadership, learner transition, program development, technology and distance learning, program evaluation and marketing. The adult education state priorities align with the Chancellor's vision for success goals and the CDE state superintendent's initiative.

Other conference highlights include the recognition of our top two scoring programs for the Advancing California Adult Education model programs nominations and our CAEP update with Dr. Zachary and Gary Adams directly following this welcome session. Tomorrow at 8:30 AM, you will not want to miss our plenary speaker with Dr. Cayanna Good. She is the Assistant Commissioner for Adult Education and Head of the Office of Adult Education in Georgia.

Dr. Good's address will build upon Dr. Noguera 2020 message-- to educate adults, equity must be at the core. The need for system level strategies to identify and eliminate learner barriers and the need for a vision to pursue equity. At 1:30 on Wednesday, participants can take part in mini sessions, designed to ask the leading content person, how to apply information related to a topic area at the consortium and local level? The mini sessions are meant to be a conversation, an elevator chat per se, as opposed to a presentation.

And later on in day two, we will offer six networking or jam sessions to choose from. And discussion will be facilitated by your adult education colleagues. The purpose of a jam session is for attendees to come ready to discuss and exchange ideas on a predetermined topic. Discussion will be lively and interactive.

Throughout the event, be sure to check out our exhibitors in the exhibit hall and participate in the sponsored breaks and lunch sessions to hear more about what our exhibitors have to offer. We can't have a summit without a leaderboard and prizes. Donations have been provided by our generous exhibitors. Also, be sure to stop by the photo booth and share your conference experiences on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter with the hashtags #CAEP21 and #AdultEdu.

Our summit wouldn't be what it is without the active input of our summit advisory team and my extended team from CAEP TAP. A huge thank you to the following advisors and team members. Emma Diaz of Inland Empire, Nada Anasseri with OTAN, Karen Ruiz of the Sequoias, Pang Vangyi from state center, Christy Smith of Mendocino Lake, Elsa Paulette from South Bay, Michele Stiehl from LARAEC, and Justin Gorence of LARAEC. Also, from the CAEP TAP team, Veronica Parker, Mandilee Gonzalez, and Holly Clark. Thank you to each of you for your commitment to adult education and professional development and making the summit what it is.

At this time, I would like to introduce Dr. Carolyn Zachry. I'm going to read a brief bio of hers and then pass it off to her. Dr. Carolyn Zachry is currently the State Director and Education Administrator for the Adult Education Office in the Career and College Transition Division at the California Department of Education. Her office is responsible for administration and management of the Federal Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act Title II grant, as well as coadministration of the state-funded California Adult Education Program.

Prior to her time in the Adult Education Office, Dr. Zachry was the Administrator for the office with the Federal Perkins and State CTE incentive grants. She was on the team responsible for the revisions to and professional development for the California Career Technical Education Standards. She is the past President of the executive committee for the National Association for Partnerships and Equity. And prior to joining the CDE team, Dr. Zachary was a County Office Program Coordinator, where she started a county-administered adult education program.

Within her 33 years in education, she has also served as a site principal and teacher. Outside of education, Dr. Zachry is on the executive board of the California State Chapter PEO, providing educational opportunities for women. Carolyn.

Carolyn Zachry: Thank you so much, Renee. And welcome everyone to the CAEP Summit 2021. I hope that you will take advantage of the 60 amazing sessions. I was going through the agenda yesterday and having a hard time picking just one in each one of the time blocks. And so I'm sure that many of you had a similar situation when trying to plan your schedule.

Also, remember to take advantage of the photo booth. I've already done my photo this morning. So follow up with yours. And don't forget to hashtag with the Summit 21, hashtag-- I'm sorry #CAEP21 on your Twitter feed and LinkedIn so that we can generate some awareness of adult education throughout your social media.

Adult education is important for the individuals that you serve you are helping each person to imagine, re-imagine themselves, to imagine their future. And with your help and with the guidance that we can provide here at the summit and all these amazing sessions, we hope that you will take your program to the next level. Thank you, Renee.

Renee Collins: Thank you. Now, I'm going to introduce Gary Adams. Gary is a Dean in the California Community College Chancellor's Office Workforce and Economic Development Division, as well as Co-administrator of the California Adult Education Program. Dean Gary W. Adams has over three decades of high level management experience in higher education, general government, and in the private sector, receiving awards for excellence in service and accomplishment in all.

In the private sector, he worked as a Senior Director or Manager at two Fortune 500 companies-- Deloitte AND Blackboard. He also built the then largest information technology and audit consulting company in Philadelphia as its managing director with the company later sold to Grant Thornton. In California, Dean Adams has worked for the Joint Legislative Budget Committee, the State Senate Rules Committee, the Student Aid Commission, the Governor's Office of Policy and Planning, and most recently, the California Community College Chancellor's Office. Gary.

Gary Adams: Thank you, Renee. I have the distinct honor this morning to introduce-- Renee, could you send Marty Alvarado the link.

Veronica Parker: Gary, she has the link.

Gary Adams: I'm getting a chat message that she doesn't.

Veronica Parker: OK, I've been emailing her. And she is trying to join.

Gary Adams: OK. All right. Thank you. Sorry. Last minute logistics issues. Thank you, Renee. I have the distinct honor this morning of introducing our system leader for academic programs and student support, Executive Vice Chancellor Marty J. Alvarado. She provides leadership and support for the Academic Affairs and Student Services Programs at the California Community College Chancellor's Office, which is the administrative office for the largest system of higher education in the United States.

In this role, Executive Vice Chancellor Alvarado is responsible for agency-wide policies and programs related to student support, instructional delivery and curriculum-- excuse me. Could you put in the chat the link please, Renee? Marty's trying to join.

Renee Collins: Yes, we can do that.

Speaker 1: He may have difficulty joining if it's over 300 people in the room because I had a hard time getting in as well.

Gary Adams: Maybe that's the logistic issue.

Veronica Parker: Yes, we are working with the technical team at vFairs to increase the capacity. So Gary, you can keep going, and we'll work on our end.

Gary Adams: OK. Thank you. I appreciate that, Veronica. As I was saying, and my apologies for the interruption, Executive Vice Chancellor Alvarado is responsible for agency-wide policies and programs related to student support, instructional delivery, and curriculum with the ultimate aim of increasing student success rates and closing achievement gaps. Prior to joining the Chancellor's Office in 2019, Executive Vice Chancellor Alvarado provided support for scaling up regional cross-sector partnerships and state systems engaged in large transformational change. This work focused on building regional ecosystems to support pathways to college and career success and economic advancement across California.

With almost 20 years of experience in higher education and community college systems, Executive Vice Chancellor Alvarado brings an expertise in program development and implementation, community college engagement and partnership, industry engagement and work-based learning, and has served as a director for learning communities and workforce training. Colleagues, it is my distinct honor to introduce to you Executive Vice Chancellor Marty Alvarado.

Veronica Parker: Marty is in the room. And she is coming off mute.

Marty Alvarado: Good morning. Is that my cue?

Gary Adams: Yes, ma'am.

Marty Alvarado: Good morning. Well, it's a pleasure to be here. Apparently, this is the place to be. I had a difficult time getting in because there are so many participants here. So great to see you all or at least see your little Zoom boxes. And great to be here with you this morning. And thank you for the invitation to share a few words from our Chancellor's Office.

As I was thinking about what to share this morning, I'm here in San Diego at the CIO conference, so it is super nice to be able to be in multiple spaces. So grateful for technology this morning. Because I would not have wanted to miss this. I recall being with you all pre-COIVD just before everything sort of went south and being able to be with you in person. And the energy that was in the room around so many of the changes that were happening, several of the concerns that were surfacing, and just the opportunity to lean into the transformations that our system has been advancing.

So I do want to share a few thoughts on where we are with transitions and a few thoughts on what we're hoping we all continue to do together. So I think we shared way back when pre-COIVD, we really haven't shifted courses. If anything, COVID has really helped us focus and double down on our Guided Pathways and equity-centered reforms to advance the vision for success.

Where we are with several of these reforms, a few key highlights-- excuse me-- that I want to call out is you all likely have been following the state budget we did receive an additional $50 million for the state that is focused on continuing implementation of Guided Pathways. We are very excited about that. However, we recognize that is, while that is necessary, it is not sufficient to keep us going.

And so as we think about and plan for the rollout of those funds, what we want to make sure we are doing is having a laser-like focus, if you will, on what is the impact that we are trying to make sure we can talk about and point to as we continue to advocate for additional funding for our system for the transformations that you all have been advancing, that we all have been advancing. So that was a near-term win, but still lots of work to do.

The reason I wanted to call out Guided Pathways is because that is, as you all know, one of our system's key levers for transformation to advance the vision for success. And often, what we hear as we're working with stakeholders across the field is this question mark around where does non-credit fit or where does career fit and how does Guided Pathways connect with the career side. And what I want to continue to push on for all of us is that we have to interrogate whether or not that question is built around our assumptions that there is something separate and different around career pathways and transfer pathways.

And what I would challenge us to continue to wrestle with is, how do we point to where we see it and where we begin to insert ourselves as career pathway professionals into transfer pathways? And I'll try to say that a little bit differently to make sure I'm hitting that point.

Every pathway-- you all have heard my spiel, likely. I have two degrees in philosophy. And my push is even philosophers need jobs. And in particular, all of our students need careers that help mobilize them to economic self-sufficiency. And so part of where we have to be headed with Guided Pathways is to really begin to blur the false divide between transfer or academic and career.

Two degrees in philosophy and 20 plus years in workforce development. The soft skills we talk about and workforce are the critical thinking skills and other soft skills that we get in our liberal arts degrees. They aren't two separate things. We have to really think about how we do the both end. And then core to what you all do, that we really have to be building towards as Guided Pathways, is this infrastructure that supports lifelong learning. Again, it isn't an either or. It isn't either you pick transfer or you pick CTE or workforce.

And we've tried to talk about this and enact this with stackable credentials. That's our go-to-- stackable credentials. And unfortunately, what we often run into is that we are trying to create these structures inspite of the structures we have that really keep these things bifurcated. And so part of what I want to encourage everyone to think about is we mobilize down this road of Guided Pathways or continue that mobilization with this new $50 million investment is, what structures need to shift if we are going to really realize an infrastructure that supports lifelong learning? Where does credit for prior learning fit in? How does the non-credit side of the house really evolve in order to be best positioned to meet those demands and really integrate?

Now, mind you, again, I mentioned, I'm here with the CIOs. This is my message to them as well. How do the transfer? How does the credit side? How do they create an infrastructure that is best prepared to integrate with the non-credit side? So that we are building towards that structure of lifelong learning.

And so what will be harder to do, but what we all have to really begin to wrestle with as we are going on this learner's journey of evolution, is really thinking about how do we also begin to let go of credit and non-credit as constructs and really think about centering lifelong learning. However we get there, the end goal is students' ability to access lifelong learning, building upon their previous learning, and continuing to move forward in ways that are validated through transcripting.

And so that also requires that we continue to evolve how we think about what our role is within teaching and learning and within the credentialing space. Because if that's at our core, then we can begin to dissolve these false constructs. Because college work is college work. And we've created these constructs in order to perpetuate the elitism that is inherent in higher education systems.

And I pause because I wrestle with how explicitly do we need to call this out. And I think ultimately, the answer is very explicitly. I will say we wake up every day here at the Chancellor's Office, ready to come to work, and dismantle inequitable structures. And part of that is being able to call out where the inequitable structures exist. And so this sort of brings me to our DEI work, our diversity, equity, and inclusion work, here at the Chancellor's Office and in partnership with all of our stakeholders across the field.

As many of you know, we have had a really robust agenda around diversity, equity, inclusion that started with the vision for success and was only strengthened as we went through 2020. Prior to 2020, we had a task force of diversity, equity, and inclusion task force that has-- that I'm sorry-- I'm noting things in the chat. And they look so good. So I'm going to try not to get distracted. But thank you to everyone who's posting things in the chat.

So the task force was meeting pre-COVID, pre-2020. The task force identified 68 recommendations, really focused on trying to ensure diversity of our faculty and really wrestling with what the composition of our institutions look like in terms of personnel relative to the composition of our student demographics. Again, 68 recommendations, they're all available on our website. We can share that afterwards.

And then following that task force recommendations in the adoption by the board, a workgroup was implemented made up of a number of state level association stakeholders. Each of those associations had a work plan. Here is the work that we think our association needs to do in order to realize in advance full implementation of these 68 recommendations.

And so that work has been progressing it's been amazing to be in a space with colleagues who are not only wrestling with hard concepts, engaging on a learner's journey of none of us really-- or most of us, I shouldn't say none of us-- most of us did not go to school to become experts in diversity, equity, and inclusion. And so really being able to be in that space of how do I learn more, how do I ask questions, and then how do I wrestle with conceptually, what structures do we need to have in place as a system in order to move this forward.

They're really hitting on. As I noted, it was about our staffing and our demographics of our system staffing or staffing system wide or personnel system wide, they're really wrestling with hard concepts around personnel. And so one of the big efforts that is moving forward that I would encourage everyone to keep an eye on and join us in advocacy around is embedding DEI criteria within evaluations and tenure review-- all evaluations and tenure review from CEO to administration to classify staff to faculty.

And the conversations that have been happening in those spaces, in the work group spaces, has been incredibly powerful around, how do we ensure that this is an opportunity to support development and understanding and learning in order to reduce microaggressions in the classroom, in order to reduce microaggressions across our campuses, and in order to really strengthen the inclusive environments that we are trying to create both for on campus and in the classroom? And so it's been incredibly powerful to hear your colleagues comments and questions and engagement in this topic.

We will have a presentation to our board in November. I would encourage you all to listen in on that and hear about some of the work that's happening there. But new regulations are planned to be proposed in January that really focus on evaluation and tenure review, embedding DEI criteria in evaluation and tenure review. And we are very, very excited about that.

I think what it does for us is sort of draw wise lines in the sand of the messaging and the expectations that we are trying to communicate to the world that this is a place where everyone belongs. And that's super, super critical as we move forward.

So I talked about Guided Pathways. I talked about our DEI worked some critical components. What I also want to note for today is that we continue at the state office and our advocacy for additional resources, new changes to policy and regulations, cleanup language. We have a lot going on around AB 705 equitable placements. We have a lot going on around equitable transfer outcomes. You may have also heard that we are busy rolling up our sleeves trying to figure out how we implement common course numbering and a few other efforts.

I will pause a moment on common course numbering because I'm sure lots of folks have lots of questions on that one. Part of what is required in the legislation around common course numbering is that we convene a state workgroup task force that helps us map out an implementation plan for how we ensure that a common course numbering system actually serves students better. So the whole intent of this is that it is student-facing. And that the way we implement has to ensure that students benefit from the effort.

So we have some updates and some work that's happening around how we make sure that we are starting with a solid foundation of the research and a strong implementation plan that we share and communicate prior to any sort of activities mobilizing. What I would also encourage you all to stay attuned to is our consultation counsel.

Transfer is a topic that our consultation counsel has prioritized. And so we are bringing regular updates around equitable transfer outcomes, including common course numbering to that space. And so we'll be continuing to provide updates to those stakeholders.

I think I will pause there because I'm just firing off lots of stuff. But what I really want to emphasize is that Guided Pathways is really our signature reform around transformation. So if nothing else, continue to be thinking about what are those friction points, what are those integration points, and how do we begin to dismantle them, and what are the high leverage points. So you all are with students all day every day. If there are friction points in your way, if there are structural barriers that we can be addressing, please surface those and say, these are the things we need to remove in order to best serve our students. When I think of Guided Pathways, that's the core. It's not is it academic or is it career or whatever it is. It is really, are there friction points that we need to be removing for students?

At the core of this, the second point I wanted to make sure I leave you with is equity. Who is benefiting from our current structures? How do we ensure that we have the right structures in place so that it is equitable in terms of who is benefiting? And how do we begin to make sure that we are having those conversations so that we don't have-- I saw pop up in the chat a little bit ago-- we don't have those second class citizen experiences? Because that is 100% what we are trying to address and move away from. Because our learners are here to learn. They are not here to be judged on which classes and which courses or which content. Everyone is learning when they come to us. And that's what we need to be focused on.

The last thing is that there is a lot happening that third point that felt like lots of stuff swirling. It's because it is. There's a lot of stuff happening at the state level a, lot of new legislation, a lot of questions around funding, new state budgets. We're just beginning advocacy for '22-'23 state budgets. So stay tuned. Keep an eye on the stuff that is happening and scrolling at the state level. And if there are questions or concerns or what's happening there, please don't hesitate to reach out to us. We're always happy to talk about all the stuff that is swirling at the state level.

So, yes. And then I see a few items in the chat. And I will say, to some of the points around decentering whiteness or not being race neutral, what I want to make sure that we are continuing to talk about is that we have to operate with intentionality. We have to be clear about who our redesigns are aiming at and how we ensure that we are disaggregating data and being transparent about who we are intentionally designing for.

So thank you for all of that. Thank you for all the work that you do and inviting me to join you today. And please don't be a stranger. Come and harass us at the Chancellor's Office. We love hearing from you. Thank you.

Renee Collins: Thank you so, so much. That was very inspiring. OK. I would like to now invite Dr. Zachry to introduce our State Superintendent of Public Instruction.

Carolyn Zachry: Thank you so much, Renee. And thank you for those inspiring words from the Chancellor's Office. We appreciate those. So it is my pleasure this morning to be able to introduce to everyone Superintendent Tony Thurmond. He was sworn in as the 28th California State Superintendent of Public Instruction on January 7th in 2019.

Superintendent Thurmond is an educator, social worker, and public school parent, who has served the people of California for more than 10 years in elected office. Previously, Superintendent Thurmond served on the Richmond City Council, West Contra Costa Unified School Board, and in the California State Assembly representing District 15.

Like many of California's public school students, Superintendent Thurmond came from humble beginnings. His mother was an immigrant from Panama who came to San Jose, California to be a teacher. His father was a soldier who didn't return to his family after the Vietnam War. Superintendent Thurmond met him for the first time when he was an adult.

After superintendent Thurmond's mother died when he was six, he and his brother were raised by a cousin who they had never met. His family relied on public assistance programs and great public schools to get out of poverty. His public school education allowed him to attend Temple University where he became student body president. He went on to earn dual master's degrees in law and social policy and social work from Bryn Mawr College and began a career dedicated to service.

Much of Superintendent Thurmond social service work has focused on improving the services provided to foster youth and directing programs that provide job training to at-risk youth. He also led programs that provide help for individuals with developmental disabilities. Tony has 12 years of direct experience in education, teaching life skills classes, after-school programs, and career training.

Superintendent Thurmond lived in the Richmond City and served on the Richmond City Council from 2005 to 2008. While on the council, he served as liaison to Richmond's Youth Commission and Workforce Investment Board and the council liaison to the West Contra Costa Unified School District. He was Chair of Richmond's 2005 summer youth program, which employed 200 local teens.

Superintendent Thurmond served from 2008 to 2012 on the West Contra Costa school board where he coordinated a plan to keep schools open during the 2008 recession. Superintendent Thurmond helped restore fiscal solvency and local control to the school board while supporting campaigns to put millions of dollars towards preserving counseling, after-school, music, and athletic program. Under his leadership, the school board rebuilt dozens of schools to provide state of the art student learning facilities.

Superintendent Thurmond funded programs to help students learn about and apply to top universities. He also led efforts to expand drug and alcohol treatment services for youth and to bring nutrition and wellness programs to schools. Additionally, Superintendent Thurmond spearheaded a campaign that reduced school suspensions by 27%.

Education is at the core of Superintendent Thurmond's legislative record. He authored legislation that successfully expanded the free lunch program, bilingual education, and the Chafee grant college scholarship program for foster youth. Additionally, his legislation guaranteed preferential voting rights for school board members, improved access to families for early education and child care, and shifted millions of dollars directly from private prisons to schools. Superintendent Thurmond introduced legislation to expand STEM education, improve school conditions for LGBTQ youth, and tax private prisons to fund early education and after-school programs.

In recognition of his social service leadership, Superintendent Thurmond has been a fellow in the Annie E. Casey Foundation's Children and Family Fellowship Program. Superintendent Thurmond lives in Richmond with his two daughters who attend local public schools. They are his inspiration and his constant reminder about the promise of our neighborhood schools and the strong future that every student deserves. It is my pleasure to now introduce Superintendent Tony Thurmond.

Tony Thurmond: Thank you, Dr. Zachry. I think you said it all, and so I'll just make a few brief comments. Thank you for that very kind introduction. Good morning. Buenas dias. A good day to all. Thank you to all of the adult education leaders and staff educators, participants, and partners. Thank you for your comments, Chancellor Alvarado. And for all the great work everyone is doing to reimagine adult education. I want to thank our staff. Thank you, Dr. Zachary, Pete Callas Renee Collins, and others, who are working on the California Adult Education Program and the Technical Assistance Program, and the many, many partners in the consortium.

As I come to you, my thoughts are really with various members of my family in my community who have utilized adult education opportunities. Like many of my family who pursued either a GED adult education, as Dr. Zachry mentioned, my family includes many who have emigrated here from Panama. And that has also meant the opportunity to use adult education programs to study and learn to be able to move towards citizenship.

My first real introduction in a formal way to adult education came from my time serving as a school board member. And I had the joy of working with wonderful educators and administrators and participants. I also watched that often adult education got treated like some kind of after effect rather than recognizing how important and powerful it is as a way of helping the parents of our students to support their own development, but also to support their students' development.

I served on a school board that was facing financial challenges that we ultimately overcame. But along the way, our K-12 schools said, hey, let's borrow money from adult education to help the district stay solvent. But there was never a conversation to say, how do we continue to invest and reinvest in adult education? And I think those are the conversations that sometimes play out and that we need to as we reimagine adult education, really give it the support that it deserves to make the investments that it deserves.

We have a California budget that has record investments. And there are many who are projecting that the next budget will see record investments as well. Let's make sure that we see a historic investment in adult education programs. And I'd like to help lead that conversation with all of you who are doing the important work in our community, whether it's through our community colleges, our pre-K through 12 institutions, or apprenticeship and training programs. We know that there are so many great offerings for anyone and for everyone.

As we try to work through this pandemic and all the challenges that it provides, literally our health and safety, trying to overcome the barriers that have come from race and seeing things like the killing of George Floyd and the spike in hate against the Asian-American Pacific Islander community, the mistreatment of unaccompanied minors, we know that adult education has an important place in helping our schools do a better job of connecting to our families, of having what we call family engagement. During this pandemic, through the partnership with many foundations, I was able to launch a new family engagement division at the California Department of Education so that we can do a better job of connecting with families and helping schools do a better job of connecting with families.

Through that, we're building our first ever parent advisory council statewide to advise the state superintendent and the governor and the legislature on all matters related to school from the standpoint of parents. And so I say that to say that we'd like to build a very strong partnership and a deep nexus to programs around adult education. Thank you for reimagining adult education.

In this moment, we must do everything that we can to reimagine education. We have to acknowledge that even up to now education hasn't always been good enough for all of our students. But we have an opportunity in this moment to build back better, to make sure that everyone has access to a computer or access to high speed internet, to be a part of the initiative that I've just launched to make sure that our students learn to read by third grade, to make sure that they're part of the initiative that includes my literacy so that our students learn to read and write in more than one language, to be a part of our effort to support Black student achievement. Because while we care about the achievement of all students, we continue to see that the achievement gap continues to widen and has deepened during the pandemic.

I believe that we can build back better. I believe that in spite of the challenges that we are facing, we can reimagine an education system that does better for all of our students, our six million pre-K through 12 students, and our adult education students. And I think that there should be no daylight or separation between the two. We should do all that we can to steadfast work towards supporting them because all of our students and families will benefit.

So you have my commitment in my pledge. Let's get together and talk through the details. And think through how as we reimagine adult education, we also think through what are the resources that our state and our sectors need to provide to support it going forward. Dr. Zachry, I'm looking forward to hearing what comes out of today's conversation. I continue to be a fan of adult education. And if you allow me to help champion its cause throughout our state and throughout our nation. Thank you all for the opportunity to say a few words. And I look forward to hearing what comes out of today's convening. Have a great day, everyone.

Renee Collins: Thank you so much. Build back better our new way forward. All the speakers this morning have been very inspiring. So thank you, thank you for being with us.

At this time, we are going to transition into recognizing our advancing California Adult Education model programs. This last spring, CAEP TAP launched our new website, Advancing California Adult Education. And in conjunction, the first annual Advancing California Adult Education nomination process. So consortia and member agencies were encouraged to submit innovative, emerging, and promising practices aligned to the CAEP approved program areas and one or more of the CAEP state priorities.

This year, 14 consortium member agencies completed the nomination process and met the rubrics minimum score to be recognized as a model program. The rubric asked consortia and member agencies to identify how the need for the program was established, how the resulting program addressed the need, the unique features of the program, any outcomes and supporting data that was available, and replicability of the program for other consortia and member agencies.

All qualifying nominations are available to view in the exhibit hall and on the Advancing California Adult Education model programs tab on the website. And you'll get to the website by going through the caladulted.org or CAEP website.

The two top scoring programs have been invited to the summit. They were provided a booth in the exhibit hall to highlight their programs and have a program to highlight video that is in process of being developed. But unfortunately, it was unable to be completed for showing at the summit. But instead, we're going to hear directly from our top scoring programs today.

And I will start with the first, the Los Angeles Regional Adult Education Consortium, or LARAEC, has been using online platforms to deliver professional learning to their teachers throughout the pandemic. They used a similar approach to reach out to students and termed it the LARAEC Edge conference. Briefly, Justin Justin Gorence and Michele Stiehl are here from LARAEC to tell us about how they identified a student conference as a need, the response or how they responded to that need, and some of the initial outcomes from the conference.

So I want to invite-- can I have Michele or Justin out there to come off of mute and share about your program?

Justin Gorence: Good morning, Renee. Thank you so much. My name is Justin Gorence from LARAEC office. So excited to be here. I'm joined by my colleague in the office, Michele Stiehl, one of the tri-chairs of the conference. Unfortunately, our other tri-chair [inaudible] wasn't able to join us this morning.

Also, I want to say thank you. We're so honored for this recognition. And we have to give a shout out to our member districts, our point people, our executive board, our Project Director Lanzi Asturias. We got a tremendous amount of support on this Event it wouldn't have been successful otherwise.

All right. So the LARAEC event, the conference, what was it? How did it occur? Where did it come from? So just to give you a little bit of background. The Edge event really grew out of these discussions we were having with our action planning team members. And the action planning teams for LARAEC really operate as kind of the engine that makes our annual and three-year plans go. And we were having this conversation about how to best provide transition resources to our staff and students, how we could support transitions to college, especially in a COVID environment that is so difficult.

So we started to look at how we could use the structures that we had kind of already built for our online teacher conference that had just occurred and how we could support students directly. And it really kind of all came together in the creation of our first student-facing event. So Michele is here, and she's going to tell you a little bit more about the event itself. Michele.

Michele Stiehl: Thank you, Justin. On the LARAEC Edge conference actually came together very quickly. We dreamed up, as Justin said, the idea and talking to action planning teams at the end of the year last year and got this conference idea approved in late January. And then by April, we have this big conference. We wanted the event to be very practical and useful for students and staff and include the field as much as possible and its creation. The intent really, for us last year, was really to support the field as much as possible and put things out quickly that are practical and useful right now.