Renee Collins: Thank you, Mandolin. Hi, everybody. Thank you for joining me during your lunch today. I'm assuming everybody's got a lunch because not many people have their cameras on, so that's all good.

And thank you for joining us to talk a little bit more about learner transition. I know that Holly has shared a Google document that we're going to use for this PLC, and I'm going to go ahead and just share my screen right now, so that we're all looking at it together. All right.

So you should see-- you should see the learner transition here. Learning circle, notes or agenda. And I see that some of you have started writing your name and where you work and your role, as well as maybe a question that you had coming into today's discussion.

What encouraged you to be here today? What questions do you have about learner transition that you would love to discuss with your colleagues? This is what this next hour is for is to really kind of learn from one another. If you take a look right here where it's talking about how are we approaching this conversation, and in the notes column, it says a guiding principle of peer learning circles is that wisdom is in the room. So it's really coming-- the wisdom is coming from each and every one of you. Collectively, we are providing that wisdom.

So me, as the facilitator, I know what I know about learner transition, but I am not the expert. We are all individual experts, and I'm really looking forward to hearing from each of you, whether it be in writing or by coming off of mute and sharing what you know about learner transition or your experiences with it.

So I will look as you're continuing, please do take a couple of minutes, but I'll go over how we're going to approach this conversation. Just know that this is a lightly facilitated, time limited one hour discussion structured around our experiences, lessons learned, successes and challenges that we have around this particular topic.

So before beginning this discussion, we're going to review some questions before-- we're going to review some questions that I actually generated, and we'll talk through those. And we'll give some people some opportunity to reflect and to maybe write some comments in the notes column. And then we'll take some time to discuss maybe some of the questions that seem to have generated more interest among this group.

And if you are generating questions up here in this section, where I've asked you to provide one question you hope to explore today, we'll take some time to explore some of those questions and really make sure that we're being responsive to your needs as well. And then we'll wrap up at the end of the hour, and kind of consider what our next steps or lessons learned have been.

So let me just go and look. See who's in the room. Welcome, Tischel. Welcome, Michele, Tim, Katie. Burr, good to see you. Shannon, Patricia, Karen, Jamie, Katie. Let me see. Keep them coming, please. So curious-- let's just look at some of these questions. Curious to learn how other consortiums are tracking the transition process in their consortium. Good. question. Just want to learn what transition services look like at other adult schools and how they track students after they leave. Good.

How to increase learner transition. How can we increase transitions from adult Ed to post secondary. How can we improve our transitions and better track entering community college with our college partner. How do we do a better job with students with transfer and transition to other educational opportunities in the workforce. Good. All right. Good. Very nice.

So I've got some questions that I want us to start with. About five questions. And again, as you have thoughts or a question, you're welcome to pop it up there in that right hand column. Here are the questions. So the overarching primary question today is how can we improve learner transitions to post-secondary training and employment and what are the key considerations.

So here's my first question, and I invite you to write your answer in the box to the right of the question. I'll read through each of the questions, and then give you a few minutes to reflect and write in the column in the right. So what transitional support services can we offer to adult students to help them navigate the transition to post-secondary training or employment? I think that reflects many of the questions that we had in the Welcome section.

How can we access-- how can we access the skills, interests, and aptitudes of adult students to align them with suitable post-secondary training and our employment opportunity? How do you ensure that the adult education curriculum aligns with the requirements and expectations of post-secondary training programs or employers?

Are there mechanisms in place to accelerate our adult student's transition to post-secondary training or employment? And how can we regularly evaluate the effectiveness of our transition programs for adult students and gather feedback from both students and employers?

So I'm just going to go quiet. I should probably have music in the background. I don't know if my wonderful TAP team can do that on the fly, but I'll give you about probably 3 minutes to just kind of write some answers in the box to the right of the questions.

And you can jump around if you want to go down to the fifth question, so you're not fighting for a spot in the first box. Great. It looks like we're getting lots of good feedback.

Let's go ahead and start maybe with this first box. It looks like we've had a lot of-- generated a lot of interest around the topic of what transitional support services can we offer to adult students to help them navigate the transition to post-secondary training or employment.

We're seeing-- I invite you to read the responses that are there, and I also invite anybody that is-- would like to come off of mute and share maybe some of the transitional support services that you're familiar with and maybe some of the tools that help you do-- that help you implement those services. Anybody want to come off of mute?

Karen Liu: It's Karen Liu from Woodland Adult Ed.

Renee Collins: Hi, Karen

Karen Liu: Thanks for doing this today. We do an OK job of this. And really our main resource and support service is our navigator, and he does an excellent job. But I just feel-- I think, if we could get our teachers more-- everybody having that same message of really drilling it into our students that it's something easy.

That we're here. We can assist you. We can help. You can go to college or workforce training. So like I said, we're doing it, but I just feel that not to the level that we should be. So our main source right now is our navigator. And one of the comments that I put in is just finding a way to work more closely with our local community college.

Renee Collins: Good. Maybe others, you have maybe some experience with how you are involving teachers in the transition process, or maybe how you're training your navigators or training your teachers to assist with that transition. Anybody want to speak to that?

Speaker 1: I can speak to that for just a second if that's OK?

Renee Collins: Thanks, Sherry. Yeah. Welcome.

Speaker 1: We have four transition specialists. Well, actually three and one regional transitions coordinator. And that coordinator manages the team just to be that glue that puts it all together. And what she encourages the transition specialists that are placed at different adult schools is to reach out to the teachers, go to their staff meetings, make them-- build those relationships with those teachers, so that it's an easy handoff from the student to that transition specialist.

So that seems to work the best. And it just takes time, and they're doing a good job. Some of them have been at their locations for six years. So things run a lot smoother because of that.

Renee Collins: Good. And your transition specialists, are they located at the college?

Speaker 1: They're housed with us-- our office. And then they are located at each adult school. We have three-- four subregions, really. And each of them rotate within their subregion to the different adult schools, and then they connect with the adult ed counselors at each of the colleges. So they're kind of like that liaison bridge. That person between the schools, the students, and the colleges.

Renee Collins: Great. There were a lot of you that spoke about really wanting to track transition from the adult schools to the college. Does anybody want to speak to what you have in place now and maybe what you would like to see or maybe feel like you are using something very effectively that could be shared with the field?

Burr Guthrie: Hello, Renee.

Renee Collins: Hi, Burr.

Burr Guthrie: I can speak a little bit to that. We've been working with our college partner, Hartnell College. It's nothing new or groundbreaking, but we've established a relationship that we're hosting a dual enrollment class on our campus. And we had a pretty successful recruitment. Our last class is tomorrow.

I think, we started-- recruited from our high school equivalency and diploma classes to capture the dual enrollment criteria. And we had like 28 students that-- actually, we did three information orientation sessions.

And that was really key. We had to really hold their hand and help them navigate CCC Apply because it's not easy if you tell some-- if you tell an adult Ed student, go to this website and fill this out, I'd be willing to bet that less than half follow through because it's kind of confusing.

So helping them register with CCC Apply. And that's the first step. Then they have to enroll in the class. So we help them with that. And we had a room of 25 students, and we had three college personnel helping us and a couple of us from the Adult School. So I think there are five of us in the room with 25 students, and they all had a Chromebook, and we had to help them do both of those things.

18 students actually started the class. And I think, I heard this week, tomorrow's the last class. There will be 15 people. Out of those 15, I think seven or eight are going to actually transition out. And the rest didn't feel ready, but they're going to stay with us, and we're hoping to do a couple of more dual enrollment classes next year.

But I think what you're asking was how do we track that. But it's pretty easy because it's one class, and we have a great relationship with Hartnell College. And furthermore, the class is on our campus. So we started with 25, 18 actually made it through the door, and 15 will complete. So it's not too hard to track that many.

Renee Collins: Congratulations. That's a great start. How did you-- maybe you could speak to how you determined what the curriculum should be or what course should be offered first for that transition. And maybe others have something to say, too.

Burr Guthrie: Sure. Really, we worked with our consortium director and the director of, I want to say workforce development at the college. I'm not sure of the title of the director we worked with at the college, but they made some good suggestions. So we ended up renting Counseling 1. Not in the college world, but I think that might-- I think that might be similar to other community colleges. It's basically study skills and expectations and preparing you for success in college.

And then they selected-- we talked again, and we said this was successful. Let's add another one. So we're going to do Counseling 23, which is similar, but a little bit deeper, and it's more of a career exploration.

Renee Collins: Good. And are they transfer credits from the community college to a different college?

Burr Guthrie: I'm pretty certain they are transfer credits. It's a three credit class. I'm pretty certain they are.

Renee Collins: Others with experience with starting up courses at the college or at the adult school? So have that partnership. Anybody else want to speak to that?

Speaker 2: Can I ask a question in regards to the partnership? We don't have something like that right now. So I'd love for people who do have it, is there-- how did you get the conversation going? Like Sherry, you talked about your transitional specialist meeting with the counselors at the college, who may not be super duper familiar with CAEP or adult education. How do you get those conversations started and who do you get them started with to have that connection?

Speaker 1: I think my question would be, do you have any relationship at all with your college or do they receive any CAEP funds?

Speaker 2: Yes. Yes.

Speaker 1: But nothing's been happening with that or--

Speaker 2: There's been a lot of turnover. That's mostly the issue. There's been other issues, too, but for this conversation, we'll say it's mostly turnovers.

Speaker 1: So do you know a contact person there?

Speaker 2: Yes.

Speaker 1: So I would call-- to email them. I would invite them to lunch. I would tell them the importance of what the purpose of-- you're probably going to have to retrain them again if they're new, especially too and what the CAEP role is all about and how they're planning and getting the Adult School students ready. That's going to be-- they always look at high school, but they can also look at adult schools to help fulfill their enrollment crisis that they have as well.

But then just trying to build that relationship and explaining-- maybe going back to some of the historical documents, what was the intent, why did the college get the money, what are they doing with the money. The list could go on, and we could talk about that in our other meeting. But I think, definitely, just forming that relationship, taking them for happy hour, meeting them, getting to know them better, so that you can help to facilitate what needs to be done.

Speaker 2: Thank you.

Speaker 1: As far as tracking, too, while we were so on that subject, I mentioned there are other webinar that we had that we use. Unite Us for refer-- outgoing referral system, and then ASAP created our own consortium's transitions section, if you will I guess. So whenever a transition specialist meets with a student at a site, they record that information so then we have record of that. And then each transition specialist shares a Google Sheet with their college partner-- their college counselor.

Renee Collins: Good. So ASAP has a template that could probably be reproduced then for other agencies if that was something that you were interested in tracking them that way. Yeah.

Speaker 1: That was the plan, and we were going to present on it. But I think there's still some kinks to be worked out. But, at least, it's something because we never-- we didn't have anything.

Renee Collins: Yeah. Thank you. And I'm seeing in the chat, Ivan said we worked with Benjamin Grainger, the director of College Readiness. Among other things, he's responsible for dual enrollment for high school students. And it was a natural extension of his work to help us with dual enrollment for adult students. He's been a wonderful partner.

I think finding those key people who are real supporters is so essential. It's so essential. Thank you for sharing that, Ivan. And then Michelle talks about the high turnover at the colleges, and you work to establish a relationship and then maybe that person goes away. And then feel like you're starting over and-- anybody addressed that? Or kind of gotten around that or figure to work around for that? Kind of having a-- establishing those relationships, and then-- I don't know.

Do you have a work group as opposed to a single person that you're working with so that if one person does go away, all of that knowledge doesn't go away with it? Anybody have any experience with that?

Speaker 3: I can share our experience at Oxnard Adult School. We have a partnership with Oxnard College. We are very close to them. But having that document there, and we share the information, and that stays with the agency, whether I go away or somebody goes away, it continues.

So we did have a partnership a few years back, and somebody connected with me, and we articulated what we needed. We will be having a course here at our site that's non-credit. It aligns to our last ESL class. This is for an English class. And then they plan to provide a credit course the following semester. So it's about the MOU. Having that document.

Renee Collins: Good. Thank you. Is that MOU something that you would be willing to share, Leticia?

Speaker 3: Sure.

Renee Collins: Yeah.

Speaker 3: Good.

Renee Collins: Thank you. That's great. So that was out of Oxnard, if any of you are looking to make connections with colleagues. Thank you so much. What else do we have? Maybe we can go to the next question. If you have-- speak up you, guys. I do not need to be the one speaking all the time. You can absolutely carry the conversation. Thank you.

OK. Let's go to this next one. How can we access the skill? How can we assess the skills, interests, and aptitudes of adult students to align them with suitable post-secondary training and/or employment opportunities? And I'm seeing stuff like my plan for the future meetings with teacher on a forum to organize data. OK. Maybe somebody wants to speak to that? It sounds like that's something that you've created maybe within your agency or consortium? My plan for the future meetings?

Michelle Parsons: Yeah. That was me my plan for the future meetings. What I found when I first came into Adult Ed about six years ago was that our teachers-- our students didn't really know who their teachers were. They didn't really sit-- especially in our Diploma agency. ESL, for sure, they did because there's a lot more direct instruction. But with HSC and diploma, there's a little bit more of a hybrid and online.

So I wanted our teachers to sit and meet and talk with their students and get to know their goals and who they are. And it has made a huge difference. And they all love it. So we do-- my plan for the future, right now we're doing it on a Google Doc. But since we're switching to myOneFlow instead of ASAP, we're thinking maybe it can be done there.

But what it does is we ask questions, like, what brought you back to school? Why was it important for you to get your diploma in HSC? And what is it that you want to do in the future? And we list a lot-- all of our CT classes that we offer, our community classes, and then just other options that maybe we can have in the future. So it can be disaggregated later to plan industry sections and sessions. And so as students are getting close to graduation, the teachers can go back to the form and see what their teachers have said-- or their students have said.

Also, they know their story, and they're able to motivate them based on their story. I'm 70 years old, and I'm here, and I want to show my grandkids that I can get this diploma. And they can motivate them in that way to help decrease stop outs and move them towards that transition. So it's been really useful, and they really enjoy it.

Renee Collins: Good. Is that's something that you would be willing to share, Michelle?

Michelle Parsons: The Google form? Yeah.

Renee Collins: Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if you can-- you could either drop it in the notes here or I suppose people maybe could reach out to you.

Michelle Parsons: Either one. I'll put it in the notes.

Renee Collins: Yeah. Thank you.

Michelle Parsons: Sure.

Renee Collins: Yeah. I think, maybe, the more resources that we can gather and assist each other with, it really saves us a lot of legwork in reproducing a lot of these resources. So thank you. We appreciate that.

Michelle Parsons: Sure.

Renee Collins: How about virtual job shadow? Does anybody want to speak to that?

Karen Liu: Hi, Renee. It's Karen Liu. I put that in, and everybody's sorry that I'm not on camera. I'm eating a spinach wrap, and I don't want to have spinach teeth.

Renee Collins: Don't worry.

Karen Liu: We have that program-- virtual job shadow, so students can go on and do the assessments and see where their skills are and their interests. We had one student who really thought he knew for sure what he wanted to do, and after going through this program, he found out he was actually more interested in manufacturing. And so it's a really good program. It's just a little bit labor intensive. So right now it's not being used to its fullest potential.

So I'm looking at ways so that we can, especially for our diploma students, use it more for them. We have a lot-- there's a lot of activities for those of you who use Burlington English with your ESL students. There are some career-- all the career pieces built into that, so our teachers use that for ESL. But virtual job shadow mostly for diploma students and high school equivalency. So my task for next year is just finding a way to make this less cumbersome, so students can get the benefit of it.

And then I love the ideas about starting to do more surveys. We survey students, but I don't think as much. So a way to maybe the workaround, if we're not always able to have a student sit down and go through all of the assessments with virtual job shadow, would be to just start really putting out more student surveys to see what their interests are.

Renee Collins: Yeah. Great. There was a lot of-- there were a lot of comments about surveys. Does anybody want to share about surveys that they're using at their site right now? And if you have links to those surveys and want to drop them in the notes column, that would be awesome, too.

Michelle Parsons: I just wanted to add one more thing on the link that I'm going to put in there for my plan. In the survey, the Google form, there's a video about growth mindset. About 11 different strategies for growth mindset. And we ask them to choose which one kind of resonates with them and how they're going to use that in their education. So I just wanted to add that part on there, too, in that Google form that that's what they'll see as well.

Renee Collins: Great. Thank you. No one else doing surveys right now of students in any way? You can know their aptitudes, their interests, their skills? And maybe it's happening more at the classroom level and you're not necessarily hearing about it at the consortium level potentially.

Let's go ahead to the next question. How do you ensure that the adult education curriculum aligns with the requirements and expectations of post-secondary training programs or employers? We spoke to this a little bit. Burr spoke to this a little bit, but what else do we-- some responses.

Program workgroups with member representatives from both K-12 and the local community college to do a crosswalk. MOUs for dual enrollment. Community partnerships and collaboration of what employers are looking for in new hires. CTE advisory members. How are you connecting with the employers and the industry partners? What does that look like for you? Burr is saying a community advisory committee.

Burr Guthrie: We also try to access and work with the Workforce Development Board trying to tap. We owe our Title I funds to developing programs and curriculum with guidance from the Workforce Development Board and having them connect us to employers.

Renee Collins: Right. And they're really the ones that can tell us what the most in-demand careers are right now, right? And they can kind of put us in the direction that we need ahead. Do we want to do something with cosmetology or do we want to do something with manufacturing depending on what the needs are in the community where you're at? Good. Anybody meet regularly with their Workforce Development Board? And if you do, what types of things do you discuss with them?

Sherry commented, our transitions team meets monthly with the different CBO to keep apprised of any changes or new services that can benefit students. I also serve on one of our workforce development boards adult council. Sherry, can you tell us a little bit about an adult council? That's the first time I've heard of that.

Speaker 1: The present regional workforce development board has different committees basically. So I was appointed to be on the adult council. And basically, it's anything to do with their adult services that they provide that they have to get approval. So it's kind of like the mini approval before the big board approval. And we talk about everything.

The council and-- what I just started to say is that our transitions team, we have two workforce boards in our consortium. And our transitions team are actually co-located at each of those sites as well. So they rotate within their subregion, and if there's a workforce development office in their area that they pay out there once a month or so and just, again, making those connections. And it's worked out very well.

Renee Collins: Thank you. Any of you tap into your, like, maybe the high school CTE advisories? Maybe with Perkins? And talk to the employers that are part of those?

I know when I was an administrator at a school site, I tried to-- tried to do the combination where you would have-- maybe you have a high school culinary arts program or food and hospitality program, and you wanted to offer the same thing for the adults in the evening. Well, I would have those same employers or some of the same employers and advisors kind of serve for both the high school and the adult ed. Anybody tried that at all? No? OK.

We can keep going. How about this next one? Are there mechanisms in place to accelerate adult students transition to post-secondary training and/or employment? And we're seeing dual enrollment. We are a Title I being on the ATP list, right? IET programs, apprenticeship programs, externships, academic counselors.

Talk to me externship. Who's doing externship? That sounds interesting. Can you speak to that? Would externships be associated with maybe a training program and then before you exit the program or complete the program you're doing some type of work based training?

Burr Guthrie: I can speak to something I know about externships. There are some third party private post-secondary providers that work with some adult schools, and I know of two. And they have in their MOU promises to facilitate externships. And as opposed to an internship, it's not paid. That's usually voluntary. Sometimes, it works out really well, but sometimes it doesn't work at all.

Renee Collins: OK. So you're saying that the externships are not paid, and they're voluntary?

Burr Guthrie: The ones I'm familiar with, that's correct.

Renee Collins: OK. Good. Thank you for that. Anybody else want to speak to maybe any of these programs that you have in place? Maybe you've got a successful IET program that you could share with us or an apprenticeship program? Maybe something that's going well for you at dual enrollment?

Guess I have a somewhat unrelated question, but still related. What do you feel is the-- many of you are on the call are either member-- you're the lead kind of voting member for your district or you're a consortium lead, what do you feel is the role of the consortium lead when it comes to learner transitions? What do you feel you should be responsible for as a consortium lead? Or those of you that are not consortium leads, what do you think that the consortium lead should be responsible for as opposed to anyone else?

Burr Guthrie: Renee, would you repeat that, please? What are our consortium directors? What is the expectation around what?

Renee Collins: What do you believe your role is in learner transition as a consortium lead? What should-- and this is really just-- I mean, there's no right answer. I'm just curious what maybe consortium-- what role consortium leads have taken in learner transition? And maybe you believe that you want a bigger role or a smaller role? I'm just curious if there are some kind of key tasks that are rising to the top that our consortium leads are doing to support learner transition.

Burr Guthrie: I can speak to our consortium. I don't think our consortium director-- I don't think his role is to actually work with students and help them, but at a higher level. So our consortium director, Ivan, I know he has to step out in a few minutes, he might be already gone, but we have a great working relationship.

And what he's done for me has suggested or brought to our group opportunities to increase transition or many things. But in this case here's an opportunity to increase transition. Is this something any of our members would like to explore? Some of the members are small and don't have a lot of capacity. But I thought, yeah, I want to do that.

So I think the consortium lead's role is to, on a higher level, to explore opportunities to improve transitions and to help and work with members. But I don't see the consortium lead as actually hand holding students. That might be the case in some smaller consortia that are rural and a consortium director may have multiple roles.

Renee Collins: Yeah. Thank you, Burr. Anybody else have any thoughts on that?

Speaker 4: We facilitate transition navigator workgroup meetings so that the transition navigators or individuals that are helping students transition at the school sites can talk about what strategies they use, what's worked for them, that resources or accessing to support those students. That's one thing.

We also facilitate training opportunities for them. I think those are two of the ones we do like almost on a monthly basis. And then also, I think, as a lead, you try to develop or help develop those relationships with the community colleges and partners and the workforce and employers. And that also takes time.

And like you said, Burr, when there are opportunities reaching out to individual members to pilot things or to work with each other, to try things that might be-- that we can expand to the consortia.

Renee Collins: Great. Thank you, Patricia. Patricia is with the Capital Adult Ed Regional Consortium in Sacramento, if anybody wants to reach out to her about transition. So the transition work group that you were sharing about? Good. Any other thoughts about the consortium leads role?

We're going to encourage you to look in the chat, too. Burr added, I will add that we applied for CAI grant and will be awarded in June to create a pre-apprenticeship program that will feed into the college's apprenticeship program another opportunity from our consortium director. Way to go, Ivan. So CAI is apprenticeship initiative. What's the first word? California Apprenticeship Initiative, I think. Yeah. Offered through the community college system, I believe. Yeah. Thank you.

Good. Let's jump to the last question. How can we regularly evaluate the effectiveness of our transition programs for adult students and gather feedback from both students and employers? Some of our answers were monitor and check student completions and transitions, regularly survey students and employers, looking at MIS data, workforce development board data, establishing partners in the major post-secondary options. Anybody want to speak to any of that and how you're doing that in your consortium or your district?

How about I was having a separate conversation earlier this morning wondering whether any of this kind of transition of students from between members or from members to the community college member, whether any of it required a data sharing agreement to allow agencies or to allow consortium members to be able to share data about their students, especially if they're transitioning maybe from one Adult School to another Adult School or from the Adult School to the college? Have anybody had any experience with that? Any data sharing agreements out there?

Or maybe you can speak to the importance of it or the lack of importance of it.

Speaker 5: Can I ask Sherry you a question?

Renee Collins: Sure.

Speaker 5: Sherry, I know you use Unite Us to refer students. How do you go about-- one of the challenges I've had is respecting students' privacy. So there might be a student that we want to refer somewhere, but that student didn't sign a release of information. So it's either we contact the student. Say contact x. So that's an additional barrier. Does Unite Us help with that or how do you go about that warm handoff so that students don't get lost in that transition?

Speaker 1: So Unite Us has an opt in type thing if the student-- you could probably meet with the student via Zoom and share the link with them. And then they just do some-- it's really simple opt in type thing. And then there's different levels of access just like with CommunityPro that I'm the most familiar with because Unite Us is still new to us. Our transition team are the ones that use that the most. But-- so we lost my train of thought.

Renee Collins: So they opt in, when they--

Speaker 1: Thank you. They opt in and receive the services and that's the only way that they could do that. I was going to say something else. It was really good. No clue.

Speaker 5: Ping on me, [laughs] if you remember.

Speaker 1: The data sharing. I guess maybe I was going to go to the data sharing agreement thing. The question that it's really super simple with-- oh, I know. I remember now the other part is that each person has its own level of access to Unite Us. So it just because you-- I can only see what you can-- I mean, if we're in education, we see that part. If we're in health care, we only can see that part. But the referrals still goes the same.

Speaker 5: Thank you. So if the student does access services through Unite Us, do they have to opt in is that like an automatic?

Speaker 1: Yes. They have to opt in in order to. But it's very minimal information that's shared. It's not like with CommunityPro. I'm sure there's causes scores. It's a matter of basically a phone number. Maybe an email address and their name. Like this person needs services for this. So it's very safe, I think.

Speaker 5: Thank you for saying that.

Speaker 1: [inaudible] comfortable. Sure. The agreement with Unite Us, there's no data to be shared. It's just a matter, like I just said, we're sharing the phone number, name and maybe an email address. We're not sharing any other information.

So the joining part with when we did CommunityPro, it took like two years for some districts to vet the contract in order to share their data. With Unite Us, there's no data to be shared. We don't have to upload anything. It's just a very simple opt in agreement that people have to do if they want to use the platform. Agents will teach you.

Speaker 5: Do all your students sign up for Unite Us?

Speaker 1: They're starting to. And we're starting to get referrals from the workforce, too, which is really cool. So it's like, oh, it's working. Yay. Slowly but surely.

Speaker 5: Well, thank you.

Speaker 1: Sure.

Renee Collins: I kind of took a look back through the questions that folks had, and I think we were able to address most of them. Is there a burning question that you want to address or topic you want to address before we kind of start our wrap up?

There is a question that Burr put into the chat. Are there any-- regarding the consortia lead PLC, are there any consortia that occasionally meet together and share ideas and resources across regions? Can anyone speak to that? I know there are, Burr. I just don't know-- I don't know exactly where they happen. But maybe some people are on this call that are part of one of those regional groups?

Speaker 1: So our Central Valley corridor region, which is Kern consortium, Sequoia's consortium, West Kern, West Hills, State Center and Merced gateway, we all try to meet as a super region once a quarter. At least, to just touch base and see what's going on. And we always just text each other. Again, it's building that relationship. But it's really nice to be able to be around people that speak the language. So you're welcome to join us if you need to jump in and speak with other people that know what you're talking about.

Renee Collins: How did that form, Sherry?

Speaker 1: It was kind of a-- I don't even know. I'm like, how did they even have-- like how do you become friends with someone? All of a sudden your friends. Am like I don't know how it happened? I think it's just a matter of John Werner and I being at CAEN and CCAE kind of helped to make relationships and meet people. And there's like, oh, you're a lead. You're a lead. Well, what are you doing? So we just started meeting.

Speaker 6: Yeah. I got to jump in on this one. I'm part of that super region. And I have to say that those meetings really, really helped me when I started doing adult education. I was coming from K-12. Well, P12, and it really helped me. And Sherry and John and everybody on the group welcomed me.

And previous, before COVID, we were meeting in person. Then we did a Zoom in one way or the other. And we text each other and ask questions. And to be honest, those really work because it's like my support group. I'm the only one in two counties, so I don't have that support. So the group has become my support, and I ask questions. And we help each other. We all help each other with whatever we need. We are very open. I'm very lucky that I was completely new, and the group welcomed me and showed me the ropes here and there.

And Sherry, I kept her on a speed dial. So if you got on my phone, 911 is the number 1. I will recommend to any other regions to have it because you do need that support. Well, I only can speak for myself, but I really needed that support and they came through for me. And they shared a lot of the information because they are part of like so many committees and stuff at the state level. So they are always sharing with us. So I'm very, very grateful. I know that it was between you and John idea, and it's still working. Seven years later, it's still working for us.

Speaker 1: Robert, do you remember how we met? How we started that?

Speaker 6: I know I got an email invitation. So even Neil went to one of our meetings when we met all together.

Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 6: I mean, seven years ago, you were asking for me to have part. A lot of space in this memory. But, yeah, if you don't have it in your region, I recommend it because it do help you, especially with changes, and three year plans and annual plans and all those new things that are thrown at us. I mean, you need that because, like I said before, many times you are the only one in the whole region. Who you go to bounce ideas with? Yeah. That's all I wanted to say about it. And I was eating, too, so I wanted to show my face.

Renee Collins: No problem. Thank you for sharing that. So we are within about 5 minutes of reaching 1:00, so I do want to encourage you to go to the bottom of the document where it says closing and next steps and take a minute, please, to just type in the box, what was the most useful take away from this discussion, questions for future exploration as they relate to learner transition, and then any other questions that you have. Just know that the CAEP TAP team is here for you to really kind of address all of those things that, Velma, I think we politely pass off to you.

So anyhow we were just-- we're happy to be here to help in any way that you need it. But any last closing remarks or additional thoughts about-- I appreciate it I do want to just say that I did appreciate the comment about the consortium lead, PLC, and we are exploring being able to bring that to the team. So thank you for that.

But the Super regions, I know there's also kind of a-- I believe there's a Bay Area group that a few of them get together. I believe there's a far North team of consortia that get together. All very informal, I believe. So if you're looking to become part of a group like that, and you're not sure where to turn, certainly reach out to TAP, and we can see what we can do to connect you with other consortium leads in your region. And maybe an existing group that might be operating.

Speaker 7: So as we approach the 1:00 hour, I'll just go ahead and start our closing. But I want to allow everyone to have the time to make sure that they grab the PLC document, and you will continue to have access to this. So if there are other items that you would like to contribute to or there are shared resources here, you can always come back to it.

I'd like to say thank you so much to Renee Collins for facilitating today's PLC. And thank you all today for coming, attending, spending time with us this afternoon and contributing to the conversations and the continued conversation around learner transition. And unless there's anything else, we'll go ahead and leave the room open for a few more moments while everyone can continue to add to the document or ask any final questions. We're here for a few more moments.

Renee Collins: Thank you for being engaged today, everybody. It was fun to spend the hour with you.

Speaker 7: And if you could also take a few moments, Holly Clarke has popped into the chat the evaluation link. We really do appreciate the feedback that you provide to us. It does help inform how we plan our professional development moving forward. So please just take a few moments and grab that link. As well as check out our registration site. We do have additional professional development coming up through the rest of, I would say, summer going into fall. So definitely take a look, and we hope to see everyone soon. Thank you, everyone.

Renee Collins: Have a great afternoon.

Speaker 7: And then I don't know who shared the document, but Michelle just popped in the chat, the my plan doc that was shared, they do need access to. So maybe make it a view only so they can make our copy. Whoever shared that, we would greatly appreciate it. Thank you.

Renee Collins: That's Michelle Parsons maybe.

Speaker 7: Oh, OK. I don't know if she's still on, but Michelle, I will reach out. We can reach out to Michelle Parsons on your behalf for everyone.

Renee Collins: Thank you.

Speaker 7: Thank you. Bye bye.