Laura Alvarado: Thank you very much, Veronica. Good morning, everybody. We'd like to thank you for being here with us and spending an hour out of your very busy day on this Thursday. Our goal is to have you here with us as a thought partner. We want you to leave today with thoughts that have been exchanged, that you're energized, and that you have at least one immediate next step identified.

We acknowledge though, you won't walk away with all the answers. This is a really big idea here-- this SB 554, but we do want to gather enough from you to set the stage for us moving forward and to have more conversations. But we will do some problem-solving today. And we're, kind of, unique here, most of the time we walk away wanting answers. Today we want to walk away wanting questions and this is your questions. We want to know what you're experiencing. So again, we can come back around.

But I see everybody's putting their information in the chat. This is great. We do want to have introductions. What we would like as well, in addition to your name and your role and where you're at, is that we want to know your why. What is your why for taking on SB 554? What is your wife or serving our students? So if you would go ahead and add that into the chat along with your introduction or just go ahead and pop it in if you've already introduced yourself.

Ute Maschke: So thank you, Maria, for already adding it to our shared document. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you so much for taking an hour away from your busy work days. As Laura said, this might be unique in that we are collecting questions. If you leave with more questions than you came in with, that might be a good outcome as well. I'm Ute, Ute Maschke. I'm here in the East Region of San Diego and as you can see there for my-- what I typed in for my why-- SB 554 allows us to provide more equitable access for our students and formally address the potential our students have. That's our big way down here.

Today, I can't emphasize enough, we consider you as our thought partners. We hope that we can gather some facts, insights, questions from you and then start working-- thinking about those together. We would like to propose a bigger question toward the end of today's meeting that might lead us straight into a next meeting. And this bigger question is really what might come after SB 554? What is system wide-- what is the next thing we could do together?

But to get to this bigger question we would like to start with three smaller questions. And for those three smaller questions we prepared a tablet as Veronica already mentioned. And when we go to this tablet you will see three columns to your left. Those three columns will allow us to build the rows together. Many of you will be familiar with that activity. So go ahead, click the padlet link in the Word document on your desktop. I'll share the link to the Word document again in the chat.

And when you go to the padlet you will see three columns to your left that allow us to talk about what works well already, where are our concerns, and where do we see potential. So go ahead, click that link to the padlet, take a moment to think about this individually, and then let's see what we can gather together. Laura.

Laura Alvarado: Yeah, so just to reiterate what Ute is saying is when you look at this padlet, as we pull it up, we're really looking to hear what your successes are with SB 554. And this is really regardless of what stage you're at. Some of you might just be in the initial thinking part and identifying who your own thought partners are in this at your campus or consortia or adult school and some might be a little bit more involved. So wherever you are in that stage please go ahead and share what your success is.

Secondly, what's your thorn? What's your challenge? Again, this applies to whatever space you are in this SB 554 journey. And lastly, we want to hear what do you think the potential is. What do you think the potential is for your adult school, for your students, with your consortia, or even in the building stage here at your community college. So if you'd please go ahead and share that.

Ute Maschke: And just in case you're not quite familiar with padlet, you can add to your own comments by just clicking the plus under each column and then either type-- you can have a subject line but feel free to also just type in the main body down here. And you then can also comment on somebody else's input. Yeah.

So yeah, it's perfect. Feel free to add to any of those three columns that you see to the left.

Laura Alvarado: And if you're here, thank you for-- the person who said you're just here starting this conversation, that right there shares a lot of information too with us. So if you find yourself in that place go ahead and post that as well. So we really know-- we know who our audiences and we know, as we move forward, what resources-- what are the conversations that we need to have.

Ute Maschke: While you're adding, I think the two items we want to definitely touch on is coordination or even collaboration between the college side and the adult school side. How does that work.

Laura Alvarado: Definitely. That sounds like a common theme here.

Ute Maschke: That's a really neat success story there. Increasing enrollment from eight students to 13.

Laura Alvarado: [inaudible] equity woven so deep in this. I appreciate that.

Ute Maschke: Thank you, [inaudible], for sharing the link again.

Laura Alvarado: Like, there's one here that talks about working with the consortia peers to improve the language. That collaboration and that partnership is really key in operationalizing every aspect of SB 554. Oh, interesting.

Ute Maschke: Yes.

Laura Alvarado: Yes, the post about the conflicting information-- that is definitely something we can address moving forward and provide some clarity on that.

Ute Maschke: So maybe let's give it a couple more minutes.

Laura Alvarado: Yeah.

Ute Maschke: Anything for the first four columns that comes to mind, feel free to add it.

Yeah, and maybe we can right away also address the concern about any impact that this [inaudible] might have on students in the [inaudible]

- Hmm.

So I'm excited about the mix up, particularly, of thought process we have. Some of us are novices, some of us have quite a bit of experience already and awesome success stories to share that will give us plenty of opportunity to also address some of the thorns. Maybe then explore together how we can expand the potential in the next steps together. Laura, where do you think we should start?

Laura Alvarado: No, I-- start here at the beginning. Some of the commonality that I see is just that initial connection part. So the running theme-- as I said before-- the running theme through this is partnership and collaboration but in order to have that you have to have willing partners and you have to be able to identify who those partners are. Who are your partners and really who are your champions within either your institution, or your consortia, or the adult schools. So I think learning a little bit about maybe from those who have been successful. How they were able to work with their consortia or within their college structure. I think that might be a great start.

Ute Maschke: Does anyone want to unmute and share their success story and how they brought it about? That would be wonderful. Increasing--

Crystal Rodriguez: I can share a little bit. I'm Crystal from Clovis Unified. I don't know how a lot of people are using SB 20 or 554 because for us we are allowing our students to take college level courses and also get dual credit. So if they take a world history class at the community college, they can get world history credit for their high school diploma at our school. So we have a really, really good partnership with our consortium transition counselor and our close community college rep.

So our consortium transition counselor is on our campus every week on Thursdays. Somebody is here every other Tuesday as well. So those counselors meet with the students to find out what are their interests, what are their goals when they leave here, where are they going, what are they going to do. So if their goal is to go to community college then what we do is we set them up with our community college representative who's on campus every Wednesday.

And then they will start going through and trying to figure out, OK, what classes are you going to be enrolled in, is there a way that we can get you enrolled in a class right now over at the community college that will also benefit you while you're here at the adult school. So we have one student so far that we've really worked with. We've probably rejected probably four or five students because we don't feel that they are ready and we don't want them to fail the college level course and then have that affect their financial aid later because that could be what happens.

So we make sure that our students do really understand that if they take that community college course and they don't finish it, or they withdraw, or they fail it, or whatever the case may be that, that affects their record permanently at that level. So that is a little bit scary and for some of our students who we don't feel are as dedicated as they really need to be to do the community college or they don't understand what the rigor is going to be compared to the adult school, we've just said we don't think it's a good option.

But with the one student that we are allowing to go over there for summer school is she's very interested in childcare, she's interested in child development, she wants to take classes during summer school but we can also count them towards career or elective credits for her high school diploma. So it's something that's a high level interest for her. It's not a boring class that she may fail. It's something she really wants to go over there and learn and then therefore, that will help her also get credits here towards her high school diploma.

So that's kind of the experience in how we look at the SB 554. I don't know-- I some partnerships are looking at having a dual class where they collaborate with the class where the community college teaches it on this course. And we haven't really elaborated on that so much as we're just trying to use it for what benefits our students here and what they want to do when they're done.

[phone ringing]

Ute Maschke: Thank you. Thank you for sharing this. So I think you bring up some very important points that--

[phone ringing]

--that this type of enrollment, dual or core enrollment, should be done very intentionally so that it can benefit the students in any which way possible. And some of that might also entail or should entail that there are supportive structures around this process so that the students can work with the counselor or the student services, whomever we dedicate to that type of process.

The advantage of SB 554 is that it's under special admittance, right? So that the tuition is waived so that the student does not have to pay any tuition. And the expanded support system that some of us have already integrated is that we also found ways to waive other fees that a student might have to pay. So for us, for example, in the East Region, we were able, with our partners, adult school and colleges, to waive book fees, material fees, student health fees, student center fees, all of that.

So that it's a truly no cost experience for our students who are taking high school classes or high school equivalency classes at the adult school and a credit bearing course of their choice at the colleges. Laura, do you want a chime in?

Laura Alvarado: Yeah, I think based on what Crystal said the two takeaways that I have from there are having that transition counselor. Whether that transition counselor stems from the consortia or a counselor maybe on the college side. But even equally, because we have four adult schools in our district that we work with SB 554, and I do find that those adult schools that have counselors, as compared to career techs, but have a full counselor within their campus tend to be the most successful at enrolling students and the students tend to be more successful as well.

But I think it's because we really work on student support services on both sides. But the other takeaway that I heard from Crystal was the onboarding piece and being selective with who comes in, which can go different ways. I mean, that selectivity can-- there's caution with that. That said, I also have my one adult school that has put some parameters on the students that come in and they're proving to be the most successful. And those parameters could be simply as having one semester under your belt at the adult school. So you really learn and get acclimated to returning back to school before you come in. Crystal, is that what you're finding?

Crystal Rodriguez: I think that's a great idea because what we find is that this is new for us and so we've gone into the classrooms and talked to the students about it and of course everybody's like, oh, I want to do it, I want to do it, I want to do it, but yet they're just barely trying to come back to school. They haven't been in school in 10, 15 years. They have families. They have jobs. And so we try to get them to understand that don't overwhelm yourself with this new process. Just come and get used to being back in school. Can you handle just the regular rigor of an adult school, which for us is very different than the rigor of a community college?

So if a student-- for me, when I go through and do those evaluations to see if the student's really truly capable, I look at their whole situation. So it's not-- it is a true like situation-- it's a student by student. It's not a wraparound for all students. The student will come in and meet with me and we go through everything. What does your family schedule look like? What is your job schedule look like? How many hours are you putting in at adult school? Are you doing the online program? Are you doing classes on campus?

So it really is looking at the student and do I really feel like they will be capable of handling that added piece, which a lot of times if I don't know them yet I have to wait, like you said, a term or two to make sure everything they are doing here is going to help them or benefit them going over to the community college.

Ute Maschke: I have a tiny little bit however there, right? So SB 550-- the beauty for me for SB 554 was also that the adult learner has a choice. True choice, right? An opportunity and a choice. So we also do these one on one conversations with the students. We evaluate the overall situation, the other responsibilities and roles. Sometimes we have a student who says yes, yes, yes. I know, I know, I know this is ba, da, ba, da, but I want to try. So in which case it's sort of a balancing act, right? We don't want to set up anyone for failure but we also want to respect our adult learner and making that decision.

So we also work very closely with those and select college courses that are a little less intense. And then also build in, sort of, a timeline where we say try it out, you can't drop this course without any penalty, right? You have a grace period. If this is-- and students, I think, very quickly pick up whether it's too much or more than they can stomach right now.

So we make sure that they drop out within the two week drop out period. Just a bit. It doesn't happen very often, but we have that option also. For most of our students it is that conversation, one on one, looking at their whole lives, at responsibilities and then usually deciding on one college course to just try it out, to start it up. That seems to work very good.

Laura Alvarado: So, Ute, I'm going to take a quick step back here because we have a question from Francisco, which really starts-- it addresses policy and Ed Code. The question was does residency apply to students enrolled in college courses at SB 554? So the answer is SB 554, the legislation and then Ed Code says that at a local decision it could be authorized that a nonresident students can enroll using SB 554. It doesn't say it's shall, it says it may.

So in other words, you're-- in our case, we used just our VP. But your VP or governing board can authorize non-resident or undocumented students to access SB 554 and take college courses for free. So this is the equity anchor in this legislation. How that came about was that when SB 554 was written it mirrored dual enrollment legislation. Within dual enrollment legislation, because the students were minors, the question about residency was left out. The legislator just went ahead and said yes, obviously we're not going to require minors to show if they're residents or have citizenship status.

So when we wrote the legislation, when it was written for SB 554, the Ed Code for that was in there but apparently it wasn't read and we didn't put lights and sirens around it so it was able to get passed through with that written in there. So absolutely yes, SB 554 is a key mechanism to enrolling undocumented students. So here's a little piece behind that. When they're enrolling in the adult school should that student have their secondary credential from their home country? That's great. They can still enroll obviously at our adult schools working on a GED or high school diploma.

So it's not just having a secondary credential, it's a United States secondary credential. Even so much so as we've had some students who possess a GED, go to the adult school and say, well, now I've actually would like to complete my high school diploma. I don't want the GED. I want a full diploma. I want the full credential. And the Adult School will re-enroll that student or will enroll that student and then they're also again, eligible for SB 554. But that is a local decision.

Ute Maschke: Yeah. At our colleges and our adult schools we actually started that conversation not with the dual enrollment director or manager or whatever that position might be for. We met directly with admissions and records and with faculty to advocate for SB 554 for implementation. And that worked amazingly well once we sort of steered the conversation into that direction.

Here's an opportunity for that learners to experience college without too much risk or very little risk really. Might you be willing to help us facilitating that [inaudible] process. Faculty and the admission and records were on board, right? If someone came in with non-residency status, admissions and records has the opportunity, the [inaudible] option, to clear that student for special admittance status.

So we started our conversation there, which in hindsight also allowed us to not always compare to the high school dual enrollment processes. In my experience that was sometimes sort of an unnecessary distraction to always compare to how does this dual enrollment process work for our high schoolers. In a way [inaudible] because it is a little bit different. And if a student drops a course within the grace period there's no or no negative consequence whatsoever for that [inaudible] student. It does not have any impact on financial aid at all, right?

So participating in SB 544 does still allow a student to later participate in college promise programs and other initiatives and the whole other support structure that is already in place. So someone wrote that it's on-- yes, we don't have a dual [inaudible], we don't have a-- we currently don't have a dual enrollment director at our community college. You go directly to admissions and records. That might also be a good starting point.

Laura Alvarado: So there's a question there on financial aid and grades. Does anybody have any experience in that on seeing how their students grades have posted and if it's had any-- or what effect has it had on the backside? Anybody can share about that?

Crystal Rodriguez: The only thing I know about the financial aid piece are so what I've been told is that if a student does decide to take those courses at the community college and does fail them, when they do attend college later they go to apply you have to maintain that 2.0 average to qualify for financial aid. So if it does drop your GPA below a 2.5 then it could affect whether or not you could get financial aid in the future.

Laura Alvarado: I think I would agree with that. In our experience. We do work very hard in reaching back out to students who may have not been successful in a course and helping them to repeat that course if necessary.

Ute Maschke: Yeah, we also-- we have a dedicated transition specialist, support specialist, who stays in very close contact with our cohorts, our SB 554 cohorts, so that we can make sure that either they drop out or they switch from [inaudible] to pass/fail option so that we can avoid these scenarios wherever we can. But really it starts with the conversation before all of that. Is this a good fit? Does that match your other responsibilities? And can you take on this additional workload?

If so let's make sure that all the support structures are in place. So in that respect, we did not have any negative experiences that have impacted somebody financially but yeah, you can avoid that throughout.

Laura Alvarado: There was another question we have here. Oh, MOUs. Has anybody had experience with building MOUs between the consortia or the adult schools and the community colleges?

I think that's a no. So that's an area that we can maybe jump into later. With us we don't have an MOU and to be honest we've been really remiss on not getting our policy our board policy and we've built everything with our adult schools. But that is an area that needs to be refined. Ute, I'm looking for the Ed Code that allows for non-residents to participate. So if you want to go ahead and jump in. I'm going to be finding this here.

Ute Maschke: Yeah, so I wanted to come back one more time to this. The coordination is sometimes challenging, I would very much agree. It can either from the adult schools or the colleges. When we started this conversation we took almost-- yeah-- 9 to 10 months to build that [inaudible] on both sides, right? Our students were champions right away. But we took that longer time to have meetings for faculty meetings with admissions and records, meetings with student support services on our college campuses.

So really also facilitate a conversation among faculty and then between faculty and instructors at adult school so that we all understood who does the work, who would take on how much responsibility. For us the colleges were mostly concerned that this could add more work to admissions and backwards and their one person dealing with special admissions.

We assured them initially that we're not talking about hundreds of students here but rather a smaller group of students that helped a little bit the conversation. And then we also guaranteed that we would do the preparation with the students. So we committed to-- we promised the college side that we would prepare our students in ways that would have them college ready.

That is a promise we are working very hard on. It's not easy as you may know but that did the trick for us. We showed a lot of commitment from the adult side. There were some adult school teachers who were worried that we would set up students for failure and that has not been the case. Some of the faculty concerns were that this would be too much for students.

There was a very general concern your adult school students are not ready for college, period. Which was a generalization that needed correction. We shared with them our syllabi, our course outlines and how rigorous high school diploma, high school equivalency programs are. That was an eye opener. Some faculty just didn't really know what happened at adult school and how these programs are structured.

Some faculty were concerned that it would add to their workload and then some were concerned about whether our students were ready for blended learning or remote, we started that during the pandemic. In our case, that was easy to explain. We are using Canvas at our adult schools as well. So our students were already familiar with Canvas as the learning management system. So I think yeah, that was probably where our faculty is concerned were.

How do you measure or determine whether students are college ready? That's a really good question. We do in two ways. After we do outreach for this special program, students have to meet with a transition specialist and do a type of intake where we look at the student's life and work responsibilities and ask them to share with us how they manage their time. And that question itself is usually already an indicator whether someone is ready or not.

And then we look at where are they at in the high school diploma courses and which college courses are they initially interested. And from there it usually breaks down into recommending, take one college course not three that you want. You can always come back into SB 544 the next semester. We also use CAS testing, right? But that's just one score, that's just one number. It's more the conversation with our transition specialists and the student being able to map out for us their responsibilities and their time management skills. And Laura put in the Ed Code-- no, in the moment she will.

Laura Alvarado: Yeah, I put in an assembly bill number from 2016 that does allow a college to collect apportionment for those non-resident students. So which is key in the whole piece really on being able to sell to our leadership of the importance. I mean obviously the equity piece is there but it is one more way so we can receive that apportionment. Give me a moment. I'm looking for the exact Ed Code.

Ute Maschke: So [inaudible] one more item for us, and that was one of those moments where I SB 554 was really a catalyst for much broader conversations. We created a brand new academic program, ESE program class, for accelerated learning that we are thinking about making that class a prerequisite for participation in SB 554. It's a four week class within the academic programs. The student can earn five English credits towards their high school diploma.

And when they complete those four weeks with an essay, we evaluate that essay and then count that essay as a prerequisite met for participation in SB 554. This accelerated model has actually rejuvenated our high school programs. We have now students interested in completing their high school diploma because we offer this faster, accelerated four week class with the add on you can then also explore college for free. So it actually turned out that SB 554 got us out of our box and into rethinking some of our academic programming.

OK. Some-- I was-- So one of the questions in the chat was on the panel was also about conflicting information whether or not dual enrollment can be extended beyond high school diploma, high school equivalency participants. Laura, do you want to chime in there or are you still looking? You're still looking?

Laura Alvarado: OK, tell you what, I'm going to-- we'll come back to the-- Francisco, I will definitely get you that Ed Code information. I have to read into it a little bit though. So say that again, Ute, I'm sorry.

Ute Maschke: So I think we want to address that question, can SB 554 be extended beyond high school diploma, high school equivalency participants?

Laura Alvarado: The anchor of SB 554 is the student enrollment in an or HSC program. That is the true anchor of the actual legislation. It was mirrored off of the current and past research of high school dual enrollment. So the short answer is no. A student does need to be enrolled as a high school diploma or high school equivalent student. That said, there are creative ways to do this. There are creative ways to incorporate other adult school students.

So a couple of examples with us, one of my adult schools they have a cohort of ESL students who are also enrolled in GED prep. They have a civics pathway, a business/civics pathway as part of their program and part of their ESL and program. So they've supplanted one of their pathway business courses with a credit course from us. So these are ESL students but they've cohorted them in a GED prep group as well.

So they're-- technically, they're dual enrolled in the sense at the adult school, but then duly enrolled with us for credit courses. So can you enroll just a straight ESL student into SB 554? No, because that anchor, that key still has to be the HSD, HSC. Some type of secondary credentialing current enrollment. When we process students-- so we use forms that are completely electronic processing.

The student completes a Formstack and they do. They sign and verify-- e-sign-- that they are in fact enrolled in HSD, HSC. That automatically moves to the adult school designee and they again have to verify if that student is enrolled. Once we receive those verification's, we're good. I don't need to know what program, I don't need to know what they're taking but obviously-- I can share these forms-- I do need to have that student enrolled and verified, period. And this is auditing. So this is where we have such a close relationship with admissions.

Is admissions needs to see our form stacks with all those verification because when we get audited, when we do get our yearly internal and external auditing, they need to see all of that verification because the legislation is anchored within that structure. I'm going to go-- I'll pull up-- I will share a link to my forms. Actually, we go live-- oh, I'm going to give you my summer form because that's currently open.

Ute Maschke: So, Maria, I see you have a question. I'll get to you right away. I just wanted to add that this is-- I mean, the intention of the bill is really right to encourage students and support students in completing high school diploma or high school equivalency and sort of tracking towards college. So I think that is an important intention to address and acknowledge, right.

The idea is to accelerate that experience, that degree or high school diploma completion and then also have an entrance way into college. So we want to be mindful and careful what the bill says and not risk this special admittance opportunity is taken away from us. But at the same time, it's also on us to explore it to the fullest and use it as an equity tool, right?

So it helped us to rethink acceleration in our high school diploma programs overall. It also helped us to rethink, if you will, core enrollment within an adult school, right? Why not have an ESL student take ESL classes and ESE classes at the same time? Why not restructure an existing ESE class to better meet the needs of an ESL student?

So it's also opening up, I think, opportunities for us to rethink that school structures and break away a little bit from this sort of traditional program approach, the [inaudible] ABEAC and CTE. The same thing for career training programs. Why not have high school and career training at an adult school and at SB 554 as an extra?

Laura Alvarado: I posted a link to a application for summer. Just a little background, at Chaffey we offer two different versions. So we have what we call adult ed partnership, which are pre-selected courses that are available to our SB 554 students. In these pre-selected courses you choose your course and we will enroll you. We do batch enrollment.

Under our dual enrollment program the student can take any course that's available that particular term, provided it's not a PE course, which is-- we don't allow that. But the student has to self register on their assigned registration date. So that's a-- without going into processes, we offer it two different ways. The link that I sent right now to Formstack is for the one that has-- I think we're offering, for summer, 25 or so courses that are available.

We cap enrollment so we ensure that they have a seat if it's not listed on there. So this might show just a handful of classes. It's because the remaining have filled-- we move it once a class fills. We had a-- Maria-- Ute, we had a question from Maria.

Ute Maschke: Yes.

Maria Einaudi: Hi. Thank you, I will lower my hand. It's going back to something that Laura was talking about at Chaffey College around the auditing process. And I was curious if the actual concurrent enrollment form serves as the verification that the student is enrolled in the adult school or whether you need additional information or if that suffices.

Laura Alvarado: So it does serve as that verification. Formstack, it allows a workflow. So if you are that-- let's say, you are that adult school's designee, my Formstack or when the student submits it, it goes directly to your email, to your work email. You get notified, you verify it, and it is automatically routed back to us. So because we have control of the structure and we have the recorded name-- so we only allow one designee per adult school. It's all tracked and that suffices to meet any of the auditing standards.

Maria Einaudi: OK. One last piece of this question is does the student have to be enrolled in the adult school before the start of classes at the community college?

Ute Maschke: Yes, I would think-- Yes.

Maria Einaudi: OK.

Ute Maschke: Yes--

Maria Einaudi: Then I think I have my questions answered. Thank you very much.

Ute Maschke: We have 10 minutes left and I want to guide us to the last part of our conversation today. Down here in San Diego we are not quite as advanced as Laura. We are still dealing with mostly PDF forms that are fallible and then submitted to the college's admissions and records. But the process is the same, right? We review with the student. The student has to complete an SB 554 application form. That form is approved by our program director and then admissions and records can start working. So we collect those PDFs for auditing purposes.

So let me switch back to our shared documents into where we are at 12:50. Some of you already put in some next steps into the padlet. Pilot this program, start the conversation, test it out. If you have more next steps to add to the padlet, please add those there. We have a question for you all. Back to our big questions, what comes next? I think we would like to continue this conversation.

If you are interested, you can type your name in the table underneath with your contact info. And anyone who wants to come off mute and share what their next steps are, that would be wonderful.

Laura Alvarado: Can I answer Linda's last question here and she's asking if there's a time limit for adult school, HSD to HSC students to complete their secondary credentials while enrolled in dual enrollment. The answer is no there is not. By nature, student working on their HSD will complete those requirements more quickly when their duly enrolled because obviously if the adult school is allowing for those units to meet some of their high school requirements it narrows down the time.

For the GED students again, if a student is actively participating and prepping for their four tests they'll do it in a somewhat timely manner, but technically there is no time limit. So if it took two years for that GED student to complete those GED requirements they can essentially be enrolled in adult dual enrollment for two years or two months or however long that takes. But no, within the legislation there is no time period, no time frame.

Ute Maschke: And that excites me every single time we talk about it because that is equity, right? And it allows someone who starts as a non-resident to collect the time it takes to move into residence that status. So, if utilized in smart ways, this can be such a powerful tool for our students and support them on that journey.

Laura Alvarado: As we close out, this padlet is going to be open. And so when we walk away from here you still have time to add whatever your thoughts are and your successes, your thorns and your buds. I'll share a quick success with us which is just internal in the college. We now have it changed where our honors, our adult Ed students can now be part of our honors program.

Previously, you needed to be full time. But by nature of being a special part time admit you're capped at that 11 units for a student so our honors department is going to now allow our students to also be honors. So in the mindset of setting up an equity based program, there's this other piece, there's this potential of taking it much further and using SB 554 as the floor and not the ceiling and to really build on that. So just some of our roses and some of our buds all kind of blended in together.

Ute Maschke: Yeah, I'm going to add to exactly that. We had one student who was able to complete all his pre-req's through college courses to join the allied health program. That was wonderful. The thorn was that he then had to move out of our area and SB 554 is usually a partnership between a set of schools and one college so he had to move to another college and that sort of made it harder to have him move into the same position where he could utilize SB 554 a bit longer.

So we need to find a way to make this work across various colleges eventually. We're almost out of time. I want to thank everyone for staying with us for this hour and sharing your roses and the buds and the challenges. Thank you also for those who want to continue the conversation. And yes, as Laura said, feel free to add more to the padlet. Laura?

Laura Alvarado: Yes, again, thank you and this is a big journey taking on SB 554 but it's one of those that all the work that is built into it will never be regretted. We've had some pretty amazing success stories. If you go back into the link for the Formstack that I sent, if anybody wants to complete it, please do. What you can do is just email me and let me know so I can delete it right away so we don't enroll you into a class.

Or when it asks for a student ID number, actually, just do 1234567 and I'll go ahead and delete those because that way you get a truer feel and then the emails that you receive on the back end and what have you. But I just need-- I just-- if you do it, do it in the next little while so I can just go in and make sure that I can clean it up. But please, feel free. And again, thank you so much for spending a Thursday with us.

Veronica Parker: All right. Thank you, Laura, and thank you, Ute, for today's PLC as well as the top team and high Road Alliance for being with us this afternoon. And thank you all for joining us. We have put in the chat the evaluation for this particular PLC so if you do not mind just take a minute or two to complete the evaluation to let us know what you thought about this conversation this afternoon. And if there are other areas that we could potentially address when it comes to this particular topic.

We've also put in the chat a notice about our next webinar as well as registration for all of our upcoming webinars, which the next would be on our adult education pipeline and the latest build five. So that will take place next Friday April, 29. But again, thank you all very much for your time and your participation this afternoon. And we look forward to seeing you all soon. Take care everyone.

Laura Alvarado: Thank you.