BLAIRE WILSON TOSO: Super. Thank you, Veronica. And welcome to everyone. We're really excited that you are joining us for this two-part professional development session on Using Adult Education Pipeline Data, CAEP Fact Sheets, and Other Data Resources for Three-Year Planning. I know, could I have made a longer title? This is session one. And we're going to focus on qualitative data. 

And we're delighted-- next slide, please-- to be able to introduce today's presenters, and particularly Wendy Miller, who is joining us as the director of San Francisco Adult Education Consortium, to really give us the context and what it looks like on the ground to do some of this planning. I will say this is going to be a whirlwind up front because we're really, we have an action-packed agenda. And we really would like to be able to allow some time to both have Wendy do her presentation, as well as allowing you all time to do some interactions. And then we'll also have some breakout rooms, where you can begin to discuss some of the ideas that we're thinking about and presenting to you here. 

And so also on the West Ed side, you'll get to hear from each of us. But I'm Blaire Wilson Toso. I am lead on the CAEP work for West Ed. And there's Jessica Keach, who is our fabulous dashboard field manager. And then there's Ayanna Smith, who we are delighted has just joined us. And she is managing all the details on this project. And for my part, I'm thrilled about that. But first, I'm going to quickly turn it over to Mayra Diaz. 

MAYRA DIAZ: Hi. Good afternoon. On behalf of the Chancellor's Office, I would like to welcome and thank you for participating in today's webinar presentation. My name is Mayra Diaz and I am the CAEP lead with the Chancellor's Office. My colleague, Lindsay Williams, and myself work collaboratively to support the statewide adult education program at the Chancellor's Office. 

In today's presentation, our partners from West Ed will be covering the session one of a two-part professional development. This first part focuses on the tools that align to the three-year planning and the qualitative aspect of three-year planning, including concrete examples and a breakout component, where participants will have an opportunity to share ideas and get to hear from a great speaker today. So I'm going to let you guys take it away. And looking forward to hearing all this great information. Thank you. 

AYANNA SMITH: OK, and so today we're going to give an overview of the AEP dashboard, as well as some other planning tools. In addition to that, we're going to gather data from stakeholders. And this is where our featured speaker, Wendy Miller, from City College of San Francisco will take over. Then we're going to start using stakeholder data, and specifically talking about data stories and how to use those, and then lastly, identifying possibilities. So, as Blaire mentioned, we're going to have some time in the breakout room to do some individual planning. 

Some of our objectives for today are to identify data sources and the uses of that data for your three-year planning, specifically the AEP dashboard as well as the CAEP fact sheets. We also want to help you identify and engage stakeholders that are relevant to three-year planning, and then using student data stories to identify opportunities and strategies. 

BLAIRE WILSON TOSO: Thanks, Ayanna. So, as I said, this is going to be a whirlwind up front, because we're really just going to review some information that all of you are well familiar with. It just sets the context and the baseline from where we're coming from. And we'll also run through some of the tools that we have developed to support the three-year planning. However, because we already have some-- we have done presentations on that, we've built some how-to guides and some user guides for these pieces, we won't go into them into depth. 

We know that you're all focused on three-year planning and that you are already really well underway. So this is a space in which we're just trying to carve out some time to check in and for allow yourselves to think about some possibilities of what might be missing, what you might want to squeeze in in the last few months of planning. And so, as I said, this session will feature Wendy Miller. And she's a consortium director for the San Francisco Adult Education Consortium. 

We are also, in session 2, we'll also be bringing in an example from the field. And that will feature Harpreet Uppal and her colleagues from the North Orange County Regional Consortium. And while both will feature quantitative and qualitative aspects of using data and engaging stakeholders to plan and set targets, this one will really feature the qualitative aspects of engaging stakeholders. And then session 2 will focus much more heavily on the quantitative data that you can use from the LaunchBoard board. Next slide, please. 

So to frame this, we are using the three-year guidance provided by CAEP, as informed by multiple organizations, including the High Road Alliance, CASAS, SCOE TAP, West Ed, CDE, and the Chancellor's Office. And this is pulled right from that guidance plan. And we'll really be focusing pretty well on section 2 and 3 today. Next slide, please. 

And we are talking about this as for using assessments and metrics and strategies and the tools to explore these questions. And we'll be doing that by using the same questions posed in the three-year plan planning guidance so that you can see how these are aligned with one another. We will want to take the time to recognize that you will need to engage with others in gathering the quantitative data, as well as the qualitative data, that these tools are not the only thing to be using, as well as a broadcast. We're simply going to feature the tools that we have worked on. 

And we're really looking at the data as being a space in which it can prompt us to ask more questions, lead us in directions that we want to explore, and then maybe prompt some further questions in order to come to an answer to help you understand and set your targets. 

And while the quantitative data allows you to identify the outcomes and the numbers, we're really looking at the questions that will help you answer to the why or what more do we need to know today? We are also talking about stakeholders. And while we'll use the term "stakeholders," I wanted to be clear that we're talking about employers, instructors, workforce development partners, training partners, and really importantly, at the end we'll focus on current or prospective learners in order to make sure that your planning continues to have a student-centered focus. And next slide, please. 

So, as I noted earlier, you all are well on the way to the process of gathering the data. And we're looking at these data sources. And we're just curious, which ones have you all begun to employ in creating your three-year plan? Just pop it in the chat, if you don't mind. We're looking at some of those quantitative sources and then some of the pathways and best practices, which include literature surveys, notable programs and colleagues. 

I looked at the chat and I saw Veronica posted today's PowerPoint and thought, oh, somebody posted a-- chatted about our PowerPoint. Yes, but what other tools have you used? Has anybody use focus groups? Have you used LMI in setting your goals and your targets? 

So focus groups, great. Thanks, Karina. All right, I'll keep moving. But feel free to post them in the chat as we move along. Next slide, please. 

So the three-year guidance plan offers the guiding questions and aligns to resources. And we'll be using-- well, we'll be looking at these guiding questions. And if you haven't looked at this before, then the guide offers you tools and resources to access and making these and answering these questions. Next slide, please. 

And as we move through the guidance provided, we'll note that the following sections are outlined. They relate right back up to those five elements of effective planning that we showed you on one of those earlier pages, on the earlier slide. Next page, slide. 

And continuing along, the other thing we would like to say is that while there is a lot of resources in that three-year plan and guidance that they are not an exclusive listing of data sources. For example, for many of you, you may want to explore your community college data using Datamark or Cookie in addition to what we have placed that is in this guidance. So there are many more. Just because they're placed here doesn't mean that they automatically align or that they are the only tools that you can use for your planning. Next slide, please. 

So we'll focus on the tools that West Ed has developed to help this. And the slides that we're going to walk through now are going to briefly indicate how these data tools align to the questions that are posed in the different sections of the three-year planning guidance document. 

We're not going to go section by section because sometimes those questions overlap. And sometimes they're unique to a particular section. So really, as you move through that and as we look at our tools, we look at it from a more holistic sense and say, so these interrelate. Where do we want them to fit? And we think that the adult education pipeline offers a lot of answers to some of these questions. 

As we walk through, if you'd like additional information-- as I said, this is going to be really a quick walkthrough-- you're welcome to reach out to us. At the end, the last slide, we'll have our contact information. And we are always happy to give you a personalized walkthrough and take a look at your data or use some of the CAEP resources that are on the CAEP website, like the archived webinars, or some of the tools that are linked through our dashboards. 

Most of you are familiar with the Adult Education Dashboard. And this one is really about understanding your own participants, right, about understanding enrollment trends and outcomes. And we provide a longitudinal look. So you can look over the past and see what the trends are. 

We know that COVID interrupts that, but we're beginning to have another-- those layers are beginning to show up. And they'll really be able to be identified also, those trends, and how COVID has affected your possible trends and may influence your planning. And that will be up, the dashboard should be refreshed at the end of April. So the next session, too, will be perfect timing to get a sneak peek at what's going on there. 

And then there's also, when you're looking at the dashboard, it also has a comparison feature that we think is important to call out. Not everybody uses it, but it allows you to, as we're talking about stakeholders, is to be able to look across institutions, compare across consortia, and not as a comparison, but as a way to identify people who you might want to talk to and bring in and get ideas and thoughts about your three-year planning. Next slide, please. 

A tool that we don't talk about much has been developed by one of our own analysts. And it's the AEP Data Story. And this was, it's populated by the Adult Education Pipeline data. And it allows consortia to dig a bit into some of the comparisons that might more, in a more refined way, inform your work. 

So, for example, you can compare awards received, which are viewed simultaneously by distinct awards across race and ethnicity, age or gender. And while, as I said, it draws on the AEP dashboard, it disaggregates it in some different ways and offers you to look at it in some different views. And I think it's a really unique piece. It was not developed under CAEP, but I think that really the analyst who developed it does a brilliant job of looking and asking questions of data. So it's a great example for questions to pose and how to look at the data. Next slide, please. 

So then we also have the CAEP fact sheets, which has five types now. And one, the first one is the American Community Service-- Community Survey. It did get updated with the most recent data, census data, which was really delightful in order to be able to provide you with some more updated data as opposed to data that was, population data that was several years old. And you can see, again, the questions that we think that these can answer are on the left-hand side. 

This also the ACS data up here has different filters you can see along the top. So you can really begin to better refine your questions, such as adults with disabilities, who's foreign born, limited English. And that will populate with the same kind of information for each one of those distinct groups to further your planning. Next slide, please. 

We also decided to include this year a few extra tabs. And one of these is the comparison between your demographic, ACS demographic data for your consortium and your CAEP learner comparisons. And while we know that this is a light touch, it helps to just give a snapshot view of differences or areas that you might want to concentrate or just say, hmm, look at that, there's a question, such as why is the number of Hispanics are higher than those served in the White ethnicity and race category? However, and while we can guess at some of those answers, it does possibly hint at population that you might want to explore and be able to see if you should maybe deliver services that are targeted towards another population that is not always seen in your programming. Next slide. 

We also have the transitions. Again, we really wanted to be able to break out information and present it in a way that people can see it side by side. So these are the transitions post-secondary and broken out, and then once again broken out, again, by different disaggregations. So you can take a look and begin to see an overarching view, which helps to prompt questions into services and categories of demographics, as well as your outcomes. Next slide. 

Our labor market information data looks very simple. The tab looks very simple, but it really has a wonderful depth to it, because there are so many filters that you can do, that you can use on it. For example, you have your macro, micro, and county-level data. And we have done that because people kept saying, well, our Consortium, first, the data is hard to break out on the Consortium for labor market information. 

But also people said, you can't plan just considering your consortium. You need to be able to consider the context in which your consortium, the geographic-- the geography of your consortium, because it expands beyond the boundaries. So learners might travel for different jobs or they might seek other opportunities. 

The other piece is that the tab is great for identifying top 10 industries, as well as prompting excellent conversations with local employers, workforce development partners, and the American Job Centers for a one-stop business development team. This can all prompt these new conversations. And then before we move from that, I also want to say-- it's not on this page. Can you go back one slide, Ayanna? We didn't put it on this one. 

There's an icon for more information. There is a user guide that we put together. There's an icon up in the right-hand side of the screen when you're looking at your CAEP fact sheets. If you click on that question mark icon, you'll get a dropdown menu. It'll take you to the sources that we used, but it will also take you to-- you can click on a how-to guide, which offers you detailed information, as well as scenarios on how to use that. 

And then the last, the third-- the fourth tool that we have developed is this California Regional Education to Workforce Dashboard Guide. And this is one which displays local labor market data alongside regional educational offerings. It's an excellent tool to just get some ideas about gaps and possibilities that might be available between your educational offerings and what's going on in the labor market. And so it can also help you think about ideas for designing your career pathways and any associated programs or trainings. Then again as well, there's a user guide on how to navigate and understand the data provided on this dashboard. 

And just as a note, some of you may have seen that we recently have sent out a message we're updating all the educational information on this. So if you got a message, this is where it goes. And we would be delighted if you can just take a look at those Excel spreadsheets that we provided you and update them so that your data is most relevant to you as you plan. 

And so now, I told you that was going to be a whirlwind. Now I'm really and truly delighted to turn over the presentation to Wendy Miller, who, as we said, she is the director of the San Francisco Adult Education Consortium. And she's going to give you much more detailed information as how they have applied these tools to inform planning. And she'll also highlight the work that they've done to collect additional data from stakeholders to further refine the data and make decisions. 

And, Wendy, before I turn it over, I just want to say thank you so much for coming and sharing your expertise. We're delighted. We think that this is really the meat of the program. 

WENDY MILLER: Well, thank you. Thank you, everybody. And it's nice to be here. Can you advance to the next slide, please? So my name is Wendy Miller. I'm the associate dean of Adult Education Programs at City College of San Francisco and the director of the San Francisco Adult Ed Consortium. 

And I've been doing this job since the original AB 86 planning grants. So this is my third three-year plan that I've written for CAEP. Today I'm going to talk a little bit about the context in which we do planning at City College of San Francisco, what our planning principles are, some of the activities we've engaged in, how we're connecting the dots, and how we've gotten approvals from different constituency bodies. Next slide, please. 

So a little context-- I know every consortium is a special snowflake. We are as well. We are a city and county, 49 square miles. We have a single college district, City College of San Francisco, and a single Unified K-12 district, San Francisco Unified. 

There have not been any adult schools in San Francisco since the 1970s when the voters handed adult education over to the Community College District. And there has not been an ROP in the city since 2006. So City College provides 97% of the adult education services in the region. And San Francisco Unified serves a few students who are 18 years old and over who meet the AEP definitions. And then we have community-based organizations and the Five Keys Charter School, combined with SF USD, provide the remaining 3% of services in the city. Next slide. 

So most of the planning happens at City College because we provide most of the services. And all formal planning that has to be filed with the state at City College is governed by a handbook that was put together by all the constituency bodies through participatory governance processes called the Roles, Responsibilities, and Processes Handbook. So all of these plans have to move through our participatory governance structure. Next slide. 

So we align our activities with five main planning principles. Next slide, please. So our first and primary principle is we keep students at the center of the plan. So yes, we evaluate and assess data and we identify needs, barriers, and problems. 

And from there we develop strategies and activities. We set targets and outcomes. And then we wash, rinse, and repeat several times as we go through and continuous quality improvement. But always the touchstone at the center is student needs and student outcomes and student experience. Next slide, please. 

Another major principle is that we provide as many opportunities for participation by employees and others at the college as possible so that they can learn, provide input, and feel ownership. We involve students, classified staff, faculty, administrators, and external partners, the theory being that more input means more ideas and hopefully better ideas and that when people have a chance to participate, they feel some ownership for what we're doing. 

And I should say here, another context is we do not have a separate noncredit division at the college. Noncredit instruction is delivered by academic departments at the college that might also provide credit instruction as well. So we're fully integrated. 

Our third planning principle was that we wanted to plan for things that would actually move the needle on the goals of the consortium, as well as AEP goals. And so we have had, since the inception of the consortium in 2015, the same three goals-- to improve the points of entry and connection to City College from the school district and the broader community, to facilitate adult education student progress towards their educational and career goals by improving instructional and student support service offerings, and lastly to increase the number of adult education students who transition to post-secondary education and employment. And you'll recognize that these are actually aligned with the Guided Pathways Pillars that we also have adopted. Next slide, please. 

Our fourth principle is to collaborate and leverage wherever possible, to build on what is working and scale up successful projects, collaborate with other initiatives, community-based organizations and services to maximize our students' success, and hopefully make 2 plus 2 equals 5. Next one. 

And lastly, we need to balance specificity with flexibility. We've all heard about SMART goals. And it's really good to have very clear goals. But also, as we've all learned in the last three years, we need to be prepared to change on a dime. COVID has taught us a lot about needing to leave space to be flexible and respond to what's actually happening and provide for new innovations. Next slide, please. 

So for us at City College, the constituency input forms the building blocks of our plan. And I'm going to now go into a series of things that we have done to gather constituency input. Next slide, please, Veronica. 

OK, so first off, before I even started this planning process, not this past fall, but the previous fall, knowing that a three-year plan was coming, I wrote to myself a memo about what are the assumptions and shared agreements that I needed to have with people I was talking to about the planning process? And this is actually lifted from a Google Doc, which I shared with everyone, about what those agreements need to be. And the first is, of course, that everything needs to be based in data. It needs to be responsive to documented needs, attached to metrics that are measurable, and reflects the demographic trends of the city. 

Secondly, less is more. Go big or go home. In the past, some of our plans have been a laundry list of possible actions and a lot of little boutique projects. And this time around, we thought, we were experienced enough that we need to commit to fewer impactful, fewer more impactful projects that really change outcomes, partner and collaborate wherever possible to make that happen, to better serve students, and be willing to break with past practice. 

The next thing is that all the strategies and activities that we come up with are put in this plan must align with our Educational Master Plan, our Student Equity Plan, our Equal Access to Student Services Plan, our RISE, which is Reimagining the Student Experience-- that's our Guided Pathways plan-- CAEP guidelines, and we also aligned with our Strong Workforce Plan and a couple of-- a Student Affairs Strategy Action Plan that is being developed right now. And again, that involved a lot of partnering across the whole college. And we thought, we can use this plan to fill in the noncredit student part of all those plans, which tend to focus on credit. 

And lastly, that the plans and strategies and activities must be realistic and doable. City College is in, once again, some pretty dire financial situations. There are changes afoot, layoffs and reduced schedules, et cetera, et cetera. And so there are some changes to how we are doing things to save money as a college. So we can't plan for things with this money that differs from the college's policy and the college's fiscal reality. 

So those were my shared assumptions and agreements. And prior to launching big conversations with people, I would share this with them to see if they felt that they could agree to these things. Next slide, please. 

So not this past fall, but the previous fall, I started having focused conversations with divisions, departments, units, and individuals that serve our noncredit students. These are a list of some of those. Transitional Studies is our high school completion program. But I reached out to and have conversations with the deans, department chairs, and lead faculty and coordinators for all of these things, all of these different groups. I don't need to enumerate them here. 

Can you hit the animation? There we go. Thank you. So the guiding questions that led these conversations, and I provided them in advance to people, were what unmet adult education student needs are you seeing and what is the evidence you have for that need? For a lot of it, it was anecdotal or experiential. But for some people, they actually had data to support what they were seeing as a student need. 

I also asked them, do you think it is a departmental issue specific to your department? Or is it one that's more broadly seen across the entire college? And we heard a variety of responses to that. 

Then I asked people to think about how we might meet the need that they were identifying and how we might assess the success of any proposed solution. And there were extensive notes. And from this, I built a logic model, which I then shared out with people afterwards. And this, these conversations went on for, as you can see, three or four months. Next slide, please. 

So then once the formal planning process began this fall after CAEP had released all of the guidance. And I plowed through a lot of it, made some sort of templates. I started to hold a series of listen and learn sessions that were open to all college employees, faculty, classified staff, administrators, department chairs, anyone that wanted to come. And also some of our colleagues from San Francisco Unified came. And a few students, student government jumped in as well. 

And I held those fairly frequently throughout the fall semester. And, of course, this all had to be done remotely. We were still almost entirely remote at City College. So we had to use a lot of tools like Jamboard, Padlets, lots of Zoom. And we actually had some pretty great conversations. 

But I was able to educate the people that attended about adult education program, the funding, how it works, and about the consortium. And surprisingly, or maybe not surprisingly, large numbers of people don't understand adult education at all in the college world. I shared our planning process and our timeline. I asked people if they cared to participate more actively in the planning process. And some chose to follow up with me. 

We discussed previous strategies we'd employed, what had happened with them, some ongoing work that we were doing, some activities and outcomes. We talked, again, about unmet student needs. We brainstormed ideas. And we identified connections with those ideas and the needs to other efforts that were happening at the college. And next, please, the animation, please. 

So this is what we learned. There was a deep shared understanding of the challenges that our noncredit students face. And across all these different conversations, they were very similar ideas about how we could address those needs. And most importantly, everyone that participated in these showed and demonstrated a deep dedication to improving what happens for our noncredit students. I get choked up. 

They want them to have a better experience. They want them to feel valued. They want them to feel as important as our students feel. And they want them to have really great outcomes. Next slide, please. 

So in all of these conversations, we talked about data analysis. And, as Blaire pointed out and as we've all done, we were looking at the CAEP data sheets and looking at demographics and whatever. And we looked at all this data about who lives in San Francisco, about who City College of San Francisco's adult ed students are. And we looked at the data sheets, the pipeline, 

SF.gov has a profound number of great Tableau visualizations of data about the people who live in the city and county of San Francisco. We looked at poverty maps. We looked at our internal City College data. 

But I also went deeply into reading our three-year comprehensive program reviews that departments make that talk about all sorts of things-- their curriculum, the outcomes of their students, their plans for improvement, equity data. And then in between those comprehensive are our annual plans. And so I've read all of those, discussed them with the department chairs and the departments that prepare them, and also gathered experiences of students and faculty. Next slide, please. 

So with our two main adult ed departments, ESL, which is the largest department at the college, it has currently about 75 full-time instructors and has both credit and noncredit. But the bulk of the department is noncredit, and Transitional Studies, which is our high school completion program. We scheduled separate data dive sessions, where the chairs and groups of faculty attended. 

And we looked at data, compared. And I stole the Jamboard from Blaire from something she had prepared earlier. Can you click on the link, please? So let's see if we can-- so can you advance through? So this was how we did it with each department. 

And so this is one that we did with English language learners, with our ESL department. And so we started with the most basic information about how many adults live in San Francisco and how many of them are English language learners. And you can see that in San Francisco as a whole and with the updated fact sheets, 58.5% of adults living in San Francisco have a bachelor's degree or higher. And 43% of the population is white. So we are a highly educated, highly employed, affluent, and increasingly white city because we've priced out everybody else. 

Can you move forward a little bit through that? So then this is what people said, some notes that faculty put on here when we looked at just English language learners. So thank you. We can go back to the slide. But these are the sorts of things that we did with all these departments. And there was rich discussion. And all of these sessions were recorded and later transcribed. Next slide, please. 

And I told you that when I was doing the listen and learn sessions, there were students in attendance. Some of our student leaders are very active. And I made a presentation to the Associated Students Executive Council and I said, here's what's up. This year we're doing this three-year plan. Would you like to help? 

And they were so excited about being asked that they formed a noncredit student issues work group to assist with the planning. And those five or six students, student leaders became my tag team for all of this activity. They attended every single event. They provided valuable input. And they helped me coordinate and enlist students to attend several student listening sessions that I had, which again, we used Jamboard. And we called them What Do You Need to Succeed. 

We invited noncredit students to participate. We conducted them. We had multiple breakout rooms in different languages. We had Chinese, Spanish, English, and then we also had several other multilingual facilitators on hand. 

So, for example, my main assistant in my office speaks Khmer and Chinese and English. And my other assistant speaks Tagalog, English, and Spanish. So we had a lot of language coverage. And it was really fantastic to just let the students talk. 

And then, of course, I also provided regular planning updates to the Executive Council of the Associated Students throughout this process. And if you can hit the animation for me, so this is what we heard from the students. This is for what noncredit students want. 

They want the same kind of academic supports that credit students want-- tutoring, peer mentoring, access to free textbooks. They want reserve textbooks at the library. They want open educational resources. They want textbook vouchers. 

They want equal access to services, all services. They want social-emotional supports and basic needs assistance-- health care, child care, mental health care, financial planning, food assistance, housing assistance. They want access to and help with technology. And they want to be able to access services in their first language. 

So a lot of these things we have been trying to do. But now we've got a clear mandate to do them and do them full-throatedly and make it a much more universal practice. Next slide, please. So after we had collected all of this data and all of this qualitative input from the people most affected by what we choose to do with our AEP funds on our planning, we decided to build our plan around the strategies that would actually address the things that we had heard. Next slide, please. 

So we thought building the plan's going to be easy. We'll synthesize what we've learned and build a logic model. We'll set targets. We'll finalize what our strategies and activities are to meet those targets. We'll design an evaluation plan for everything we think we're going to do. And we'll build a budget that supports the plan. 

Sounds really easy, sounds really direct. Next slide, please. Not so much. We actually had some pretty profound observations through all of those data dives and departmental discussions and talks with students that presented some planning challenges. 

The city of San Francisco's demographics are changing. We're getting older. We're whiter, richer, and better educated. We have no way to really know what student goals are. We can only infer their goals through their course-taking behavior. 

And a large number of our noncredit ESL students appear to have goals that don't align with the consortium's goals. And our transitional studies and noncredit ESL student populations are quite different. Our ESL population tends to be older, female, and Chinese. There are a significant number of Latinx in there as well, but primarily Chinese. 

Our transitional studies students tend to be more male, significantly more male, slightly younger, Hispanic or African-American. What they need, what supports them is probably quite different than what would support the noncredit ESL student. We have, at the college, a diminishing number of noncredit CTE offerings. And because curriculum at the community college belongs 100% to faculty and departments are looking at reduced instructional budgets, the ability to create a responsive new short-term vocational training is very limited. 

We have had a continuing decline in enrollments in our noncredit ESL department. That decline began in 2008 and continues to this day. And, of course, COVID has exacerbated that. 

And lastly, the student-centered funding formula puts constraints on what we can do. And when the college has budget shortfalls, we can't supplant with these funds. So those are some of the challenges that we're facing. So next slide, please. 

We also had to look at, what do we really have right now? What are our current assets? And what about the strategies we're using? 

So we started to talk about these, we meaning me and the people who are the most concerned with adult ed. How have we allocated our AEP resources in the past? What assets do we currently have and can continue? What projects and initiatives are ongoing? What's working? Where can we improve? 

And are there new strategies we want to try? How will we measure what we do? What resources do we need to do it? And who else needs to be involved? 

From that-- next slide, please-- we created our draft plan. So I created a public-facing plan that includes all the elements that the CAEP NOVA plan requires, but actually contains graphics, charts, and a much more comprehensive narrative so that it's readable to the general public. And I've started sharing that with the community. Next slide. Next slide, please. 

So if we go back to our consortium goals, we clumped the strategies we heard from everybody into things that are responsive to the three San Francisco Adult Ed Consortium goals. So the first one, connection and entry. First things, fix the front door of the college. Noncredit students have had a really challenging time with our noncredit enrollment and registration system and continue to do so, particularly with everything being online and remote. So we need to fix that. 

We are providing additional staffing for the outreach office and for the Noncredit Admissions and Records Office. We have invested in a big contract with Language Line Solutions. And so every key document is translated into the San Francisco seven languages. 

And we are providing real-time interpretation services for student service counters. And that is both remotely and in person, and deep collaboration to better improve the connection with San Francisco Unified. And, of course, these metrics that it would affect would be enrollment and head count. Next slide. 

Our second big goal, student progress. Facilitate student progress towards whatever their goals may be. Strategy number one, clear pathways, provide some clear pathways for our non-credit students. Empower them to map their own progress and give them help along the way. 

We're continuing to develop online and hybrid course options in noncredit ESL and traditional studies. We've used a significant number of our AEP dollars to develop a fully online ESL and fully online high school completion program. We've invested in software that supports learning, things like Newsela, Pronto, GoAnimate so that teachers can create engaging online coursework. 

We've invested in technology to loan to students-- Wi-Fi hotspots, Chromebooks, and laptops. And those are managed through the library. We are investing in expanding our learning assistance program to provide tutoring and mentoring for noncredit students. That plan is in development now. 

We are also working to address students' basic needs. The state gave us a new mandate in the community colleges to develop a Basic Needs Center. And that came down at the same time that City College was awarded a grant from the United Way Bay Area to develop a SparkPoint Center, [COUGH] excuse me, Center. So we are going to use some AEP funds to help make that center run and to make sure that it provides all those basic needs services to our noncredit students. 

And lastly, professional development for everybody who wants it in things that improve teaching and learning, things that improve diversity, equity, and inclusion, or other, let's say, discipline-specific things that faculty and others need to do it. And, of course, we've got our metrics down there. Next slide, please. 

And lastly, we want to increase the number of adult ed students who transition to post-secondary education and employment. Again, clear pathways, making sure that all the career services that are available to credit students are also available to noncredit students. We have employment training specialists. We have career counselors. 

We have, excuse me, we have a lot of resources. They're primarily aimed at credit. So we are working on expanding that so that noncredit students have better access to it. And, of course, our theory is bring the student, bring the services to the students. Don't ask the students to find the services. 

We're trying to expand our dual enrollment and credit recovery programs with San Francisco Unified so that those students who are likely to become adult ed students because they're not being successful right now in K-12 are already welcomed into the City College family. We're looking at trying to find ways to develop new short-term vocational training. We're looking at doing it through contract ed right now, and then hopefully institutionalizing it. We'll see how that goes. Providing internship opportunities for students so that they can get some real work experience, and again, professional development for everybody. And we hope that this will increase the number of students who complete certificates and transition to either credit or employment. Next slide, please. 

So this is my timeline that I had. We're actually, we're now in April. We are right now, I'm waiting for one more approval. Next slide, please. So this is what I've gotten with the Noncredit Adult Ed Committee. It's a committee of the Academic Senate. That was my advisory body here. 

And the Classified Senate, I presented to them just before we went on spring break. And I'm waiting for their determination as to whether or not they're going to recommend the plan for adoption. But once I have gotten that, I can move forward. And next slide, please. That's it for me. I'd love to hear from you and while I get a glass of water. 

JESSICA KEACH: Thanks, Wendy. Does anyone have any questions for Wendy based on what she shared with you all? I really resonated with your planning process, your different principles, where you had students at the center. But that visualization was really helpful for me. But I'd love to hear from the group. Are there any questions or comments for Wendy? 

BLAIRE WILSON TOSO: You must have been brilliant. There is a comment in the chat, Wendy. And it just says, fantastic presentation. 

WENDY MILLER: Thank you. I feel like I ran long. And I apologize for that. 

JESSICA KEACH: That's OK. You're the main show today. So I think that you sharing all this information was just so critical and can really inform the conversations that are coming up next. So if there aren't any other questions, if we can jump to the next slide-- all right, so originally we were going to jump into-- oh, someone said so useful and my brain is whirring. Oh, good. That's good. 

OK, so we were going to jump into some breakouts. But I think in the interest of time, we really want to get to our second breakout. So if you'll advance to the next slide, Ayanna. Ooh, go back one to where it says debrief. 

Imagine you've just gone into breakout, talked a lot, had that whirring, going on those whirring conversations. I'd like to open it up to the group to just brainstorm and talk through some of these questions. We'd love to know from all of you in the audience, what strategies have you used to gather stakeholder input? What information did you gain? What would you do differently in the future? And that might be helpful if you can provide any recommendations on things that maybe it didn't go as intended and what you would plan to do, if you're going to do it all over again, any additional strategies or activities that you think you could use to get more information. 

And then are there any new strategies or stakeholders that you would like to engage for your three-year plan or in the future as you revisit your plan? We recognize that it's pretty late in the game. We saw Wendy's timeline and how she got started two years ago. So we really want to recognize that, honor that, honor where you are in your plan, but also send out a reminder and just a notice. 

Planning is ongoing. So you can always use these strategies to engage your students and your stakeholders. So I'm going to open it up. I hope someone has something they'd like to share to answer any of these questions. 

AUDIENCE: This is Harpreet. And I can chime in a little bit in terms of the North Orange process. So, I mean, I'm from the research. So I'm not the lead. But for in terms of our consortium, we have done some open sessions, where we have presented the fact sheet data and the AEP data to showcase what are the needs based on the data of that also in our region, and then had in these open sessions basically all the constituents participate and share what were their initial thoughts when they looked at the data, because a lot of them didn't have a chance to look at it prior to our presentation. So this was their first time interacting with the data. 

And there was a lot of things that stood out to them. And then that started a dialogue. So where is the need? What can we do? What have we been doing within our consortium where we're meeting the needs? 

So we have done four open sessions. And then there's been individual conversations within the institution. So in our consortium, we have three funded members. We have in one ROP Institution. We have North Orange Continuing Education. And then we have Garden Grove Adult Ed. 

And so they have been having separate conversations at the member level. And then we're having conversations at a consortium level. And then as a researcher for adult ed, I'm just participating in every section and providing support in terms of data needs. 

JESSICA KEACH: That's great. Have you come across any challenges in that process? It sounds like there may have been some challenges around folks not being familiar with the data previously. Have you seen anything else? Or are there any recommendations you would have for folks on this call on how to navigate sharing data with unfamiliar-- with audiences that may be unfamiliar? 

AUDIENCE: Yeah, I think one of the challenges has been we produced a planning guide to support our consortium with all the data needs. But it's getting the folks to look at it and try to understand. So that was a challenge. So I think it helped having the actual platform where we presented. 

We expected everyone to read this 50-page document and come prepared. It's like, no one has that kind of time. So we learned that as we were going, like OK, maybe we needed to have started earlier and had breaking-- and broke-- and disaggregated the data where it's digestible for the audience. 

I think when we were coming from the research perspective, and we kind of have that lens. And that's what we were going with. And then I think we were expecting a lot from our constituents to have the same level of understanding. But we learned that that was not the case, because we hadn't given them that time they needed to process the data from research. 

I'm on the AEP Launch Board all day. And in fact, she's like, I live and breathe the methodology. And so do you know my colleagues? And Jason's on the call, too, and he can probably step in. And I think we learned that as we were going through this process, that we need to give our members that time and that platform for them to digest that data on their own time and not expect a lot. 

And we're like, here's the data. Now, tell us what stands out to you. And they're like, I need more time to process. And we're like, we're out of time. We're running out of time. So moving forward, maybe having those conversations very early on-- we need to start two years, like how Wendy has started. We're like, we're way-- we're late in the game. 

JESSICA KEACH: No, that's really, really helpful information. So my background is in community college research as well. So I hear what you're saying about sharing with the group a bunch of different data points that you're so familiar with. And people's eyes glazed over a little bit. And you're like, wait, no, this is really interesting, I promise. Just stay with me. 

So the idea, I think Wendy put it in the chat, doing sessions in bite-sized chunks made it easier for them to engage folks. And I think also, to Harpreet, to your point, it's like sharing maybe one really key indicator and then allowing for that time to process, allowing for folks to have some individual time, some reflection time, and then engaging in the discussion. And there are actually some really useful tools out there to be able to facilitate that kind of data discussion. And so maybe it sounds maybe in a future session or somewhere down the line sharing some of those practices might be helpful. 

OK, I have-- here's data. Now, answer the 20 questions right now. Yes, I try, I've tried to steer away from doing that. It is a little bit ingrained in me, but I've really tried to stay more high level. 

I wanted to ask the group another question. We talked about stakeholders and engaging stakeholders. I'd love to know if anyone has engaged employers in their planning or if they would like to, particularly around CTE or some of those integrated programs. Is there anyone who has done that? And maybe if you haven't done that? Do you have any ideas around how that might be done? 

JENNA CESTONE: I'm Jenna. Hi. I'm at Silicon Valley Career Tech Ed and Adult School in the South Bay, in San Jose. And we engaged with our CTE teachers. But a lot of what I'm hearing is very similar. We have a lot of similar echo challenges. 

And then we are positioned in the South Bay around probably five to seven different community colleges. So we're situated around Mission, Evergreen, West Valley, San Jose City College. And they all have what Wendy was referencing, noncredit courses for their ESL adult learners. So it's something in the South Bay that's always been a challenge, because we have CTE on our site. But our students go to ESL noncredit courses at the City College and then have to VTA transit to get to our site to stay dual enrolled or to get any kind of strong workforce, WIOA 243 funding. That kind of situation is happening. 

So we try to get our counterpart at the community college involved in the conversation. And we had a work group at our consortium where we would meet maybe monthly and we would discuss what we see happening in the data, where we asked our students, what do you see yourself studying? Why are you coming here? And our demographic is drastically different from Wendy's in what they're looking to come to school for. 

But we have a similar ESL contingent in the morning, where we have a lot of Chinese older retirees, mostly women, and Vietnamese contingent in the South Bay, and recently a lot of Afghani ladies who are strangely, oddly enough, verbally fluent, but have no literacy in any language. So it's a very strange contingent that you try to serve. But the community college cannot handle these students. So even though they have a noncredit ESL course, they don't necessarily have a newcomer to handle the refugee population we're seeing coming over, either from Syria or Afghanistan or either from South American countries, coming up from Venezuela or any kind of situation that they're coming to us from. 

So what do we do? We have regular consortium meetings. But I echo what you're saying, Wendy. Nobody understands the beast that is adult ed. And the doorway into the community college world is fraught with multilayered online applications and health screenings. 

And you go through one door if you're undocked and you go through another door if you're docked and you have all the right paperwork. And the computer will always get, even if I have a student sitting right next to me and I'm scanning everything in with them, I'll get an error. And I'm like, I'm a fluent technology user and I'm looking at all their documents and I'm feeding it into the machine and I'm still getting jammed up. 

So the doorway does, even down here, that we echo what you're saying. That doorway needs to be, I don't know, either with a real person who can process it the way we used to and they can sit with them one on one and do intake, because everybody who comes through doesn't have the necessary documentation that we have. But we have a program for them. 

WENDY MILLER: We call that concierge service. 

JENNA CESTONE: I need a concierge, oh, my gosh, preferably with a spa treatment. I know. So, I mean, we're seeing a lot of-- I love how you have your data packaged. And your presentation was so wonderful and tight. And I thank you for that. Yeah. 

And the other, the key problem-- I just want to bring this up, and maybe you all have suggestions for me-- is that my stakeholder group that I started this journey with, they are completely all gone. Everybody left. So my entire management, my team that I had around me, they all have moved on to other pastures. Literally eight key personnel have left, including transitional specialists, guidance counselors, all your key personnel that you would build out a program. 

So that when new folks come on board, they're like, well, where are your stakeholders? I'm like, Kansas, Austin, Nevada. They've moved. Right, they were part of the great migration, the great resignation. So then I'm the one lone person standing and I'm holding up a program that no longer has stakeholdership. So when you build that stakeholdership and then the whole floor falls out beneath you and you're like, yeah, we'll get back to you. So anybody who can help me out with that, I would love a way forward. 

JESSICA KEACH: All right, anyone can help Jenna out. Send some stakeholders her way. Thank you so much for sharing that. It's really helpful to understand the unique challenges in each consortium. 

One thing that stuck out to me with what you said that tied to Wendy's presentation was this siloing of noncredit and credit on community college campuses. And I think that noncredit practitioners on the community college campus feel that so strongly. And then that silos and trickles down to the adult ed partners and the adult schools. And so I just wanted to point out in terms of engaging employers, right, our credit programs, credit CTE programs have advisory boards. And those are made up of employers in the area. And it's a legislative requirement. 

So if there's any way to connect, make those connections between credit and noncredit, those employer advisory boards and to bring in adult ed along with noncredit and really in the K-12 adult schools, that might be an opportunity to really connect the dots for some of those students and some of those programs. And typically, community colleges have some kind of career education committee or they have the work on strong workforce. And so those might be some good avenues for entry. But we'd love to hear more about what other folks are doing. 

I see Blaire came off mute. Do you want to jump in here? 

BLAIRE WILSON TOSO: Of course, I always want to jump in. This is such, it's an interesting conversation. And I hope, Marina, that it's OK to put you on the spot. I was so curious when you said you had engaged with employers and you created a survey and partnered with the career centers and workforce boards. I was curious as to what kind of information you asked for. And then, more importantly, what kind of information did you gather? And how did it, if it did inform your plan? 

AUDIENCE: Yeah, so I'll share. Can you hear me OK? We created a consortium survey, so as a consortium, in addition to individual institution survey. And we came together and put together this survey with our consortium partners and then send it out both as a consortium and then individually as partners, if that makes sense. 

And then we at the college have a Career Center. And so I worked with our Career Center to send it out to all of our Career Center employer contacts. And it's all going into the same data set, so this link that we shared with everyone, including the Chamber of Commerce and the social services in our region, our workforce. We sent out that same link to all of our contacts. 

So has it informed? Yes. The kind of questions we asked were about the needs of employers. What skill sets are needing more attention? What as a college, as a consortium can we do, as an adult education provider can we do? 

And then we had an opportunity to follow up. So if they needed, if they'd like to take this conversation a little further, we wanted to connect with them. And so, so far, I mean, I think it's still-- we're still collecting more information. But that is our plan, to just follow up with those that we can to better inform what additional programs we need to look at and assess whether its LMI data supports it and so on. 

BLAIRE WILSON TOSO: Thank you. I appreciate that. I'm always fascinated. I think some of these pieces seem so evident to us and then others are a little bit harder to get to. So I appreciate you adding that to the conversation. 

JESSICA KEACH: Thanks, Marina. Is there anything else anyone would like to share about strategies they've used, strategies they might use, or hopes or wishes that you could use? All right, I think we'll move on. We're a little bit behind schedule. 

So I want to do a quick check in. Let's see what's next. So, Blaire, do you want me to walk through the data stories? And then do you want to do the breakout or should we move that to the next session? 

BLAIRE WILSON TOSO: Thank you for allowing us to adjust on the fly here. I would like us to cover the data stories to inform planning and just set that groundwork. And then we can move in. I think we'll up top. It's really an interesting way to combine narrative and voice and data to help-- we were talking a little bit about how you get people thinking about things, how you present data, and then allow people to digest it and ask questions or at least reflect on it. I think this is a great intro. And then we were excited about our activities. So session 2, we'll start with it up front. 

JESSICA KEACH: All right. OK, next slide, please. So Blaire shared earlier, and I'm sure many of you are very familiar with the CAEP Fact Sheets. CAEP Fact Sheets use a combination of student outcomes data and community data to understand how we can better serve our adult learners. This year, we were able to add a critical component to this resource. It's what you see on the screen right now. And this is our Student Stories Data Tab. 

So West Ed interviewed a number of students and created data stories that combine the student's lived experience with the data that appears in the CAEP Fact Sheets. So it's a little small, but you can see Lucas's story here on the screen. Of course, this is a fake name, right? We want to protect the anonymity of students. 

But I'll share a little bit about what we learned about Lucas in that interview. So Lucas was kicked out of high school due to low attendance and tardiness. And he later ended up leaving his continuation school with about 10 credits left. Later in life, Lucas connected the dots when he realized that he had been suffering with undiagnosed sleep apnea. That really caused him to have trouble sleeping and contributed, he felt like, to some of that tardiness. 

He found success as a forklift driver and auto mechanic technician. But he wanted to find a career with more upward mobility. His wife was attending a local community college and encouraged him to return to school. He did. And he ended up earning his high school equivalency. And he's transferring to community college. 

He was particularly excited about career exploration and is considering programs from physical therapy to real estate. So Lucas said that he really appreciated the flexibility of his HSC program. And that included flexible testing dates, test vouchers, active support and coaching for his academics. He was quoted as saying that teachers are heroes when they care about their jobs. 

So I'd love to see by a show of hands or maybe the thumbs up feature, do any of you know or serve an adult learner like Lucas, right? Perhaps you know that a learner came through their connection with someone in a program that you were already in, right? OK, I see a few thumbs up. Thank you so much. 

So in this data and in this story, you can see his experience integrated with related quantitative metrics. And those are the little charts integrated all along the data story. So an example would be 19% of learners transition, adult learners transition to post-secondary. Right, he would be one of those students. 

And then finally, you'll see a bot-- at the bottom of the data story, there's a question that prompts you to consider what opportunities exist to support students like Lucas, right? Our activity was going to be to split up into breakout groups and explore another student story, student's data story, Cynthia's story, and get practice identifying relevant opportunities, right? So seeing what comes out of the qualitative data, the student story, and connecting that with data for your own institution and initiatives that you can build to serve and honor those students. 

So we're not going to be breaking out into breakout groups now. But stay tuned. Blaire put it in the chat, session 2, we'll really look forward to diving into Cynthia's story and having some group conversation around some strategies that you might develop in response to some qualitative data. All right, next slide. Skip this. 

Session 2, stay tuned. Come back and meet Cynthia. And then I'm going to turn it back over to Blaire. 

BLAIRE WILSON TOSO: Thank you. We included in this a way to build your own data stories on learner profile development. And so there is instruction on that if you want to when you get the-- I should have put that in the chat. But there is a guide to really how you do this and engaging students and asking good questions that align with your intention. And so that's one of the things we're going to talk about in the data stories, is that they're developed with intention. 

And they're really unique in engaging stakeholders by placing the data bites about your own consortium and then along with the student story, so that there's something-- that it centers both the learner and it humanizes the data, which is really important for the planning and engaging stakeholders, especially if it's stakeholders who have preconceived notions about who your learners are. And we hear lots of stories about that as well. Next slide, please. 

So we were hoping that in between that you might have the time to do an exploration activity for session 2. And there, you would look at your data points in your own data and then choose one of these and identify a stakeholder who you would want to interview in order to inform that. And we think pushing beyond some of the people who you generally engage for that. 

And then maybe do an interview with that stakeholder. And then come prepared to share your experience. What was it like? Is it hard to engage? There are certainly stakeholders who are much harder to engage. Or maybe there's someone you haven't thought for or thought about previously that you are now thinking about after Wendy's presentation, and then what you might have learned from the interview and how it informed your three-year planning. 

And Jessica mentioned this earlier, but that is not just about three-year planning. There are also strategies. You revisit your plan every year to revisit that and encourage you to engage in continuous improvement. I was fascinated, Wendy, when you were talking about the steps that you had already taken, even beyond submitting a three-year plan, based on the feedback that was directly related to the student input. There's an immediate response that you can have. 

So any last thoughts? Any questions? Has this provoked any ideas? Is there something? Or think about it and you can send something on to us about something that you felt like we missed and you would like to see or have discussed in session 2. It's the nice thing about session 2. 

Yes, I will. Sue, yes, you have an old version of the PowerPoint that was posted. We actually have one that's updated and remediated. So we'll send that on so we can get that out to you as soon as possible. Let me just grab that really quickly. 

JESSICA KEACH: While Blaire is grabbing that, are there any other questions or any final thoughts that you all would like to share? 

WENDY MILLER: I just-- I'm going to put my-- this is Wendy. I'm going to put my email in the chat. So if anybody wants to sort of contact me and steal anything, fine by me. I'll share whatever I've got. 

JESSICA KEACH: That's great. And I will go ahead and put my email and then Blaire's email in the chat as well. So if you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to us. 

BLAIRE WILSON TOSO: All right, do you want to just-- Ayanna, I'm going to turn it over to you for the last couple of slides. And then we'll turn it back to Veronica. 

AYANNA SMITH: Sure, so just wanted to remind you all of some more of our upcoming webinars. We have a few individual webinar opportunities, as well as more of these two-session PD opportunities, and just reminding you as well, again, to come back for the part two for this PD. And thank you all. 

BLAIRE WILSON TOSO: Yeah, we'd like to take a big thank you. We know that an hour and a half is a lot of time for you to take out of your very, very busy days. So appreciate your putting the time and effort into thinking about your three-year plans. Next session will focus on quantitative data and the updated dashboard with the refreshed data for 2021 data, which is, you all will be seeing hopefully also imported into your note data. And if there aren't any other questions on there, I'll turn it over to Veronica. 

I'd like to say a big thank you to SCOE TAP. They're always very supportive. And they were on the ready for all the breakout groups. So I don't know if they're feeling relieved or if they are disappointed. And lastly, a big thank you to you, Wendy, for helping provoke such a great conversation and sharing so much information. 

VERONICA PARKER: You're welcome, Blaire, and the rest of the West Ed team, as well as Wendy and Mayra and our TAP team. We're always ready to pivot on the fly, whether it's creating the breakout rooms, closing them, whatever the case may be. So whatever you need, we're here. 

But yes, thank you all very much for your time this afternoon. As Ayanna mentioned, part 2 will take place on April 28. So we know that there are a few who registered for today who had not registered for the April 28 session. So definitely go ahead and register for that session if you have not already done so. And also register for our other PD opportunities that we have. 

And most importantly, please complete the evaluation for today's session, especially as West Ed is preparing for the April 28 session. If there are any pieces of information, details, maybe information that you would like them to consider to include in that April 28 session, any feedback you have regarding the session as they are preparing for part 2, please be sure to share on that evaluation. And we'll be sure to get that information to them so that they can incorporate as much as your feedback as possible for that April 28 session. 

So again, thank you all very much for your time and your participation this afternoon. And we will see you all soon. Have a great day everyone. 

JESSICA KEACH: Thanks, everyone. 

BLAIRE WILSON TOSO: Thank you, everyone. 

WENDY MILLER: Thanks, everyone.