[audio logo]

Announcer: OTAN, Outreach and Technical Assistance Network.

Pablo Saldana: Hello, everybody. Thank you so much for coming out here today to the presentation. We do have about two folks that are going to be coming in later but that's OK. Today, we're really excited just about sharing a little bit of a partnership that we have between the Apple Valley Adult School and Victor Valley College Adult Education Program, which we're located in Southern California in the high desert region of the San Bernardino County. So our presentation is called Stronger Together, community college and K12 success collaboration. And then this is going to be our--

Chun Hee: I'm Chun Hee. Clovis Adult teachers room monitor.

Pablo Saldana: Yes, thank you. Thank you for all your help. We'll go ahead and move to the first slide. Well, before I go--

Adele McClain: We need to tell them who you are and this is the newest member of our team. This is [muffled voices].

[cheering]

Welcome to the Valley Girls plus one.

[laughter]

Pablo Saldana: All righty. So yes. And then Chun, is there a way we can maybe make this little guy.

Chun Hee: Oh, I think I can make it that.

Pablo Saldana: Perfect. All right. So our Apple Valley Adult School is one unified school district and then we have a community college as well. We're going to go ahead and get into the teams here shortly. So Chun, if would you please go to the next slide.

Sorry, just some introductions. So we can go ahead and start with Adele.

Adele McClain: Oh, sure. My name is Adele McLain. I run Apple Valley Adult School. Let's see, I put some stuff on here you might not know. My traits are communication, woo includer, activator, ideation. I'm a daughter of two educators from Florida. I'm bilingual and English and Spanish. Can communicate in French and Italian. I'm a world traveler, a Fulbright scholar, a grandma, foster youth advocate, lifelong learner, pronouns she, her, and hers. And I'm also on various boards of CT, CA, EA, AA, and other things. [chuckles]

Welcome to this presentation. I hope you get some ideas of how you can collaborate with your local community college and/or K12 system in order to bring a better quality of education to the students or possibly bring programs you don't have right now for students. Martha?

Pablo Saldana: Go, Martha.

Martha Mendez: Oh, OK. Hi, my name is Martha Mendez. I'm the program manager for the Victor Valley Adult Education Regional Consortium. I've been with Cape since 2015, February, actually it's my anniversary. So I am a mom of three girls. I have also a little doggy called Ellie. And just a little bit about myself up there, I won't read the whole thing. But definitely an advocate for diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging.

And I'm a vegetarian. And I like to think of myself as a decent cook at home. And I'm an anchor. As an anchor, we don't know if it's a proper term. But I'm the daughter of immigrant parents, my siblings were all born in Mexico and I'm the first one born in the US. And that's who I am. And Pablo, it's his first day officially with our team. So we really are celebrating him.

Pablo Saldana: Great.

Rebecca Monjaraz: My name is Rebecca Monjaraz. I'm the transition counselor for Victor Valley College. I started in 2019. So a little bit about myself. I'm a daughter of immigrant parents. I'm first generation to go to college and to graduate. And I'm also a former VVC student. My top five values or traits would be connectedness, belief, consistency, relator, and discipline. When I saw those results, I was like, yes, that's me, for sure.

I have a seven-year-old daughter, a five-year-old son who are very active in sports. My husband is the one who's always coaching so that leaves me for teen mom. So we've done sports from basketball, t-ball, flag football, gymnastics. And flag football is actually for my daughter.

[chuckles]

Pablo Saldana: I'll be moderating this presentation. My name is Pablo Saldana. I'm an immigrant myself. I was born in Mexico I'm a former ESL student. I recently graduated with my master's at UC Riverside. So I'm just really excited to be in adult education and really proud. My official day. I've been with the team for a while but it's my official day today. So I'm really excited to be here. So thank you for being here.

Adele McClain: We're excited to have you, both sides.

[laughter]

Pablo Saldana: So before we get started, we just wanted to see who's in the room. So do we have any other community college representatives, any folks who-- awesome, which college?

Audience: Alone College.

Pablo Saldana: Wonderful. Welcome, welcome, welcome.

What about some K-12 districts? Awesome Yes, which one do want--

Christina Hyatt: Corona Norco.

Pablo Saldana: Awesome. Thank you for being here. Christina is also our coach. So good.

[laughter]

Any community based, maybe nonprofit folks? That's right, libraries? OK, I know we have some friends from Burlington English. So yeah, shout out to Burlington English. State leadership, projects agencies?

Adele McClain: Oh, there we go.

Pablo Saldana: Do you want to share a little about your organization?

Mandilee Gonzales: So Holly and I are both from CAEP TAP. So California Adult Education Program and Technical Assistance Project.

Adele McClain: Awesome.

Mandilee Gonzales: And the Sacramento County of Education, I'm the director of the Capital Delta Regional district.

Pablo Saldana: Well, thank you for being here. This is a great room.

[laughter]

We'll go ahead and turn into the next one. So this is just an overflow. So today in this presentation, we'll go ahead and get to know the two different agencies represented here, the strengths of the partnerships and the collaboration. So something we'll also cover the consortia leadership, some data-driven decision making practices, addressing the need and success of student transitions, program professional development, also in program development and growth. And then lastly, we'll go ahead and cover some celebrations of our students. Oh, go ahead. Can we go back to the slide? Previous slide, please.

Adele McClain: There's a quote, "if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together."

Pablo Saldana: Yes, that's kind of the theme. All righty. So just a little bit of an overview from our two agencies. So Apple Valley Adult Education, the current enrollment is over 500 students, around 564. It's 100% Title I high poverty. The community offers-- or this organization offers a high school diploma program, GED HiSET prep, EKG, construction, ESL and citizenship, and also they offer CPR classes.

The Victor Valley College, which is just about 15 minutes away, it's our neighbor institution, our enrollment is around 1,700. It's 100% Title I high poverty. Some of the programs that we offer are-- so they're credit and non-credit course offerings. We're working with creating a community health worker pathway, forklift, cosmetology, class A CDL driving and those are just a name of. Those are just a little overview of the two entities. So this is the team. We're going to go ahead and get into a little bit more detail--

Adele McClain: Almost all of this picture.

Martha Mendez: Oh, we are probably in this.

Adele McClain: Oh, those right there.

[interposing voices]

Adele McClain: So I know we're in the desert but look, there's a lake and it's at Victor Valley College. That's another attractive thing.

Pablo Saldana: It's like the only lake in the area.

Adele McClain: And this is my campus and my team. And Coach is there too. So we're all one big team. And this is really Lillia who Pablo replaced. She moved on to another department. [chuckles] Well, my campus is tiny. It has little portables and we have trees and grass that were actually from previous graduations and planted by previous students. And the district decided to water it for me, which I'm truly grateful.

Pablo Saldana: Every tree there symbolizes a graduating class? Well, not everyone but there were two for each graduation on each side of the state before Victor Valley College invited us to have a really great graduation there. So back in the day. [chuckles] Color spot donated. [chuckles]

Pablo Saldana: And then something to notice about the geographical, physical space, it's all connected. So students really-- if you're having a class together, you come out and you're welcomed by the greenery. If you're not in the same class, you can still see each other in passing or in between breaks. So it really does allow for a lot of community building. We have some benches also on the other side, which are really great also for breaks and just that camaraderie that you get to nurture.

So we'll go ahead and go to the next slide. So this is the name basis. So we have Miss Adele McClain who's the program coordinator. We have Claudia Escobar and she is over here. And then we also have Melina Bezada so - So this is the Apple Valley--

Adele McClain: Well, Melinda Bezada can also be seen on the OTAN site as Student of the Year last year. But now she's our employee.

Pablo Saldana: [muffled] a little bit.

[laughter]

Adele McClain: Sorry.

Pablo Saldana: Yes. And then this is the Victor Valley College team. So we have Martha Mendez, who's a program manager, myself, and then there's Rebecca Monjaraz, a new transition counselor. So we want to set the stage. We have this short video for you all to enjoy. So I'm going to go ahead and dim the lights a little bit if that's OK. And then, Chun, whenever you're ready, we'll go ahead and play.

So we're going to go ahead and dive in a little bit more. So we're going to dive into the collaborations and [muffled] because I'm going to ask them some questions. So when it comes to the strengthening of the partnerships and collaborations, ultimately, the objective is really to navigate the politics and strengthen leadership-- oh, there you go building effective partnerships between two institutions. Also, just providing training and planning to improve team dynamics. So my question to you all or to you both, Why was this partnership important to establish?

Chun Hee: So probably just some partnerships, it's benefiting both institutions. But more so, the adult learner to pursue higher education.

And really, it's community development. When I meet with students, I always like to enforce-- I have a slide where I show all of the Adult School and Victor Valley College. And I emphasize that we are one team, I say, consortium. I think we are one team. We are all partnered together, and that you are part of something grand. And so I do think that it makes a really big difference not just in this institution, but for that adult learner.

Pablo Saldana: And then why was it important for you?

Adele McClain: For me, because I've been on, you know, planning with Martha Mendez since we started in 2016, we have about 20,000 learners. And at the time, we were only serving maybe 1,500. And through this process, we've been able to almost double the capacity of who we could serve.

We just want to be able to offer more classes. And whoever has the money and the capability to do it fastest ought to be the way that we do this. Take a look at who can do it better and faster.

And my programs, as the K-12 people always ask me, well, you're giving them money. No. When you got $20,000 and you can only serve 2,000, there's such a need that everybody's going to win. And my class, as every class I have, has grown as a result of my partnership with Victor Valley College because I have CTE programs. And with the help of Victor Valley College, I've even been able to enhance what I offer. We even hosted classes at their campus at one point.

If you're truly open to leveraging who can do it the best and the fastest and you keep it student-centered, you're going to offer more things for more students at a lower cost.

Pablo Saldana: Thank you though. Thank you for that answer. So what are some specific-- I know I covered that a little bit. But what are some specific examples of how you've leveraged your partnership to better serve the students or employers in our region and just a broader community as a whole?

Chun Hee: So I know specifically, when I meet with students at always-- they may start off with me, but they may not have their high school diploma. So it's like, hey, Apple Valley Adult School, you can get your high school diploma there. And while you're there and depending how well you're doing, we could do dual enrollment. So it's always like referring to them, she refers to me.

And so specifically, I had a student who, she went over because she was interested in an EKG course that she was offering. And it was in a articulated course. And she had just graduated high school. And she always thought that she could not go to college because of her status and residency status. So she heard about this. She got a flyer, so she went to go visit. And they gave her the information, but they also gave her my flyer.

So she just happened to come to my office. We talked a little bit. And just with that conversation, I told her, you know what, I think you meet AB540 status. We can get you into the college.

And so she's been there already for three semesters. She's going for medical assistant. But now she's talking more about going further and doing nursing.

So I saw all of these stories are just extraordinary. And just to see the light in their eyes shine, and oh my gosh, there's opportunity. And to know that there are people here to support them and to know that we care about you and you are valued.

Pablo Saldana: Thank you. And just to recap a little bit of that. So the AB540 knows the residency status. So if somebody, a student, maybe does not have a Social Security number, their ID or their application might be flagged as an out-of-state or an international student, which would then quadruple their tuition fees.

So with that AB540, assuming you have been in a K-12 school for at least three years or adult school also to encounter at that time. Or once they get a high school diploma or a GED, then that can also be petitioned towards that, which is a huge equity opportunity for us to be able to provide access to students, not only to their general education, but also to transition onto higher education as well or some type of career program. Adele, do you have any specific examples of partnerships?

Adele McClain: Well, I also wanted to mention that as we go forward from an administrative point of view, when we're trying to leverage our resources for getting more money from the state or the feds, the more that you can show you collaborate with your community partners, the better chance you're going to have of using those funding models.

We started the EKG class because I had a teacher that could do it. And the hospital expressed a need. And then Martha didn't know it, but I'll let her tell us her experience. When she applied for the LOI, letter of intent--

Martha Mendez: What really neat thing in working with the community and our partnership is, because we are one team, when we're reaching out to employers, they know who we are. So I was reaching out to-- we're a small community. We have one or two hospitals. And they're like-- I don't know, they're not even like full-blown trauma centers or anything like that.

But trying to find those partners to give you hours or internships with your students is hard because everyone's going after the same resource.

And so I called Saint Mary's Providence, and I explained to them that we're applying for DLL health care pathways and that I needed to partner with someone. And so I let her know, with adult ed, this is what we're doing. She's like, oh! She goes, we hired people, students from the EKG program at Apple Valley Adult. Do you know Apple Valley Adult? I said, absolutely. We host ESL classes there, and they host us. And I said, and that's an articulated course. So they are in fact, receiving college credit.

So I didn't have to go there. Automatically, it was like, yes, what else do you do? So I was like, wow! The work that we are doing, it speaks for itself. But I think it's because of this team, honestly.

And so we got the support that we needed. The letter literally came through a days before. But we did get that.

And then they further said, what we really need is community health workers. And what we don't mind, if their first language is not-- we don't need them to speak English. We need them to speak the language that our community speaks and to go out.

And so now as a result, we have community health worker curriculum approved. And our college has agreed to offer them for our ESL at Apple Valley. And then my district is applying for the community health care dollars.

So really it's building on itself. Our good work is giving us opportunities to apply for even more funding and build our program. And the reason it's significant for our community, because we're a vast region. We keep on saying how spread out we are, but we truly are. And we don't leverage with the partnerships that we have. And Rebecca's not out in the field. We cannot. It's impossible for us to serve the community because of the way the funding, because of the funding we have, because of the facilities. There is no way. There was that area that was not being served.

So I think that's one of our major success stories, is being able to partner with employers and then identify areas that we can grow in. And so now we're thinking like, how do we start a community kitchen? And for our students, we don't have-- are undocumented. And they need to work, and they need to earn income. We don't have that in our entire region.

So we were trying to figure out. We're just basically constantly resurveying for the student need. And we are pretty good at getting people sustainable jobs if they can get to the college and if they can meet those metrics. What about the people who don't meet the metrics? How do we meet their needs? Anyway, we're probably jumping ahead, but yeah.

[laughter]

Pablo Saldana: All right. So as a consortia, we're about six different institutions. So there's Victor Valley College adult program. We have Apple Valley as well as for others.

So our real objective as a consortium is really to operate in a way that effectively navigates politics and strengthens leadership skills, and then also just unifying efforts and advancing shared goals across all of our different entities and institutions.

So my question to the group is what strategies have you found effective for navigating political landscapes and rallying support from leaders who have competing illusions?

Rebecca Monjaraz: So I would just say, as a counselor, my role, from what I've seen, it's the people that are on top that make those decisions. They are on board. And so when I go to those meetings, where it's the superintendents from all of the districts and they all meet, I'm like, whoa, these are super important people. But they're all meeting, and it's all for adult education.

And I think it's wonderful, when I always think about the graduation ceremony, how it's one massive regional ceremony. And it's held at Victor Valley College. But I think it's because of the leaders that are on board. But they are Martha and Adele, and they're the ones also who have brought this together. And so that's my take there as a counselor.

Adele McClain: Well, as a consortium, Martha always has attendance from every single superintendent. And people in the state may not realize this, but that's not that typical. Getting them in the same room already was a challenge.

But that regional graduation, you got 2,800 people. You got 400 graduates. The politicians have realized all those people can vote. It's literally to the point now-- which was a great idea. We get all the politicians in the room. We get the political support.

It was so bad last year that we're going to have to put name tags on the floor because the politicians want pictures with each other. All the dignitaries wanted them [laughter]. It's great to get their buy-in. But now we're having to learn how to navigate their buy-in. That's an interesting problem to have.

Martha Mendez: And they're soliciting us to be the speaker for the event. And then we do have a pre-commencement reception. So it actually has turned into the regional educational event of the year, where everyone wants to be like, we started off with one board member, one superintendent. But let's see who comes. And now all the board members want to be there. And all of the board members want to participate in the processional, and their assistant superintendent. So we're like--

Adele McClain: They want to volunteer. They want a shirt. They want to show that they belong.

Martha Mendez: So people, you're going to let them. I'm like, you're not telling the superintendent, no. I'd like to see your mouth. Line up here, sir. But it's become a whole orchestrated event that it's just become bigger really. It's like, yes, line them up.

This is taking my 20 minutes. And I'm like, [muffled]. But it's great because that's how we share our vision. We've used that to share our vision.

And the speakers are our students. And that tells a story. And we don't have to tell all these over and over again because our students are telling the story. And we have heard that those speeches are much more real and compelling and heartwarming, and just what they've overcome.

So then that goes in the news and goes on Facebook and goes on social media. And so for us, it's been-- and it's free because it's on their Facebook.

[laughter]

But I think just because-- yeah, specific techniques and training all-time has really helped us to build the team. I think that we've used CliftonStrengths quite a bit. But the DLAC, the Leadership Academy for us, because I can't say, we get on really well. But in the beginning, there was like, we were filling the-- why don't you do more of this? You know, the friction because we didn't understand each other.

But this academy has helped us understand each other and what each person's role is and why. And we're not able to provide X, Y, and Z or vice versa. There's a reason why, and now everyone knows why. We didn't necessarily have that before.

Adele McClain: And it's given us better student perspective as to what the student needs, what is the student struggle, and coming from me to them or them to us, what are they feeling, how can we better facilitate that. Because how do we capture that? All of that we learned as a result of this process.

In the program, I just can't say enough for being in the Leadership Project because we went from having basically two Ed classes in the adult, and now it's six in two years. I think we've done almost four classes each, so a total of eight classes in a year. But we're able to demonstrate where persistence is higher, attendance is better because of the partnership, because we have comparison in three different campuses. And so we have outcomes to demonstrate our success. And that leads to funding. So I think that competing interests, I think we just keep it student-centered and focused on those successes.

Pablo Saldana: Yeajh, because I get that you all answered that second question. Do you have anything else to add regarding how you articulate a compelling vision and move collectively as a team?

Speaker: I can say something.

[laughter]

One thing going off what Martha was saying, and I think sometimes you have to really realize it's important, that boundaries were removed. When she said it was hard for us to work at the beginning, was because in the online, their college, we're adult ed. Oh no, we don't mix. There's a competition. Oh, no, they're Burlington. They're vendors.

I think once we got that off our mind and really focused, like I said, this is for the students, also our superintendents came back because they also had that mentality of despair. Oh, Apple Valley, hm. They had also come.

So it had to really be like, OK, first step, let's get these boundaries out of the way. Let's get these walls down. We are not here to compete. We are not here to show who's better than who. Really, really here to help these students move on.

And it's worked. Why? We get benefits, they get benefits. And guess what? The whole community is getting benefits. And that's important. You're right it is important.

I have a specific question. That first step that you were talking about and to bring up the campaign. What activities or what was it that helped you shift that mindset to really remove those barriers to help your leadership start to shift that mindset? Was there an intentional activity?

Adele McClain: There's an activity in the DLAC leadership.

[interposing voices]

Martha Mendez: We got into it a little bit at one of it. Not like that. But we were actually, there was friction! So it was something strange.

Adele McClain: I think there was. At least for me, it came from, she's my boss. She's my boss.

Martha Mendez: Balcony's amazing.

Adele McClain: Yeah, it came down to that. There was stuff because she's letting us know. We need to do this with Victor Valley College. Like I said, we were very pushed back.

Martha Mendez: Yeah, we could do this.

Adele McClain: Yeah, we were very pushed back off.

Martha Mendez: It was, maybe at the time, I got to what or go where? Not like that, but you know. It's a big job. And so it's a heavy burden.

Adele McClain: Yeah. So pretty much just learning her strengths, learning and realizing it in a different perspective. The same for each team member. At least personally for me, it helped me like, what--

Martha Mendez: But there isn't any--

Adele McClain: My basement is preventing me from really seeing her strength.

Martha Mendez: It's like a plan.

Adele McClain: There is an activity.

Martha Mendez: It was site plan too though because we came together. And at first we were to each doing a site plan, and then we're like, no.

Adele McClain: There was there like, an activity like, you get the best of me when-- I had to tell them, you guys get the best of me when you guys let me know for sure what we're doing. I don't do well with, let's get on a plane and just fly anywhere. I need what are we going to do, what is the plan?

Martha Mendez: Specifically, it's let's schedule registration dates, and let's tell you when our counselor is going to be there. If this is the day the class starts, then they're like, we need to have a counselor--

Adele McClain: We need communication.

Martha Mendez: --beforehand. But I do think that there was an activity in DLAC that helped us break it down into pieces. And when you see the pieces, then you can identify the areas of opportunity.

Adele McClain: The roadmap.

Martha Mendez: Yeah, the roadmap. And then we did a tour. So they came on campus and toured every department. And why? It's a process to just get a student onboarded.

Adele McClain: And also I think that when we started, the first time I thought about DLAC, which was two years before this project, I was looking to my teachers. And then I realized teachers don't enroll students. Teachers don't know the hurdle. It needs to be your support staff. If you want to make systemic change into systems, you must involve your front line people. If you do not, then you're missing the piece that is going to increase the friction. That's where everything happens, is your front line staff, with Pablo, with Alina, with Claudia. These are the people who are going to make the change in your program. You too, Rebecca, by the way. You tell us what, this doesn't work.

But seriously, when the person first comes in, not the first person they see, they come at you with all their barriers, you must involve the people who are actually going to see the students, and mutually create your systemic change. It's not the idea from the leadership that's going to make the change. It's the people who work with the students on the front line.

Pablo Saldana: And I'll just add to that. The particular student population we work with, maybe students that haven't been in school for 30-plus years. They have 50 barriers before they gave us a call or before they came to our counter. So just understanding the value that they bring and just honoring their presence and their contributions is really important. And I think all of us reflect that. And that's the thing that really anchors us at the end of the day. We'll go ahead and move forward if we don't have any more comments regarding the consortia.

Did you--

No, I don't.

Christina Hyatt: I actually have a question. In my new role, part of what I do or what I will be doing is working within the consortium. And it's actually, one of our members is here at Fremont. And so we are developing or embarking on a workgroup across the various program areas.

But what I want to know from you all is, when you guys chose to come together and to be more intentional about your partnership and working together, what was the one thing that you worked on? And how did you approach it from a collaborative standpoint? Because we're trying to figure out where we're going to start, where are we going to start to transition our students back from the adult school to the college and vice versa. But taking into consideration what the students want to do in terms of programming and educational goals, et cetera, so we're fuzzy on how to get started.

Martha Mendez: I think Adele and I are both jump-in kind of people. We're always, why not or why not do it. But the one thing I think that we both do, and Adele does really well, I think is include the people and bring people who are involved to the table. Just whatever your role may be, invite everyone, have the dialogue. I believe that that's what we did first. But do you mean for the workgroup or for this part, the consortia?

Christina Hyatt: Well, the workgroup feeds into what the consortium is going to be doing as a whole. And so just trying to-- so for me, I'm with the CTE workgroup. So I'm trying to figure out what is one activity that we can work on within that workgroup to further develop the partnership because the relationship is not an issue. Or I haven't seen that in my short time being here. Everyone is on the same page. They work together, et cetera. But the actual activity, the actual work program, whatever the case may be, that part is still on the bond.

Martha Mendez: Well, we focus on a gap, what is the need. So first of all, what can we do and what are we missing? And so we actually did look at our annual plan. And where is the gap?

We looked at the data that Kate provided. And we saw that in the different demographics, different demographic groups, which area are we doing well? Even compared to the state, our graduation rate is pretty darn good. For adults, we'll do that really, really well.

What we were not doing really well was capturing ESL students. And we're like, why is that? We're like, duh, we're huge region. The bus takes two or three or four hours to get to any location. And so it's very important to offer ESL in the neighborhood.

But our adult schools are capacity. And we don't get a whole lot of funding. So the gap was identified based on those percentages first. And then we said, how do we do this? And then we thought, oh, and this is also a good way for the Dreamer and get students enrolled. The term, I'm sorry I'm slipping.

The legislative piece is, how do we help this community? And we're like, oh, the hours, ESL can help, high school diploma. So really looking at the student and all those pieces that can help them.

But first we looked at the data. And then data, which students? Do we have this huge population of students where we couldn't make the need? We just weren't making a dent in servicing that population.

Adele McClain: And servicing that part.

Martha Mendez: And then we also knew that there would be growth in our region. And that it was expected to double in size. And that we were now the college, 67% Hispanic. So we saw it coming. And our leadership was actually like, what are you going to do about this?

Adele McClain: And so to prove that point, we were 100 students. And now in one semester, we had 267. So I think we're more than-- we've more than tripled our enrollment for ESL for the college. But that's how we--

And you're in charge of CTE now, is what you're saying. And do you have a growth plan, where you think this is going to grow already? And everybody is on board to partner, but your systems might not line up. What do you do for the person with the Dreamer compared to AB 540? I would definitely, when you plan, make sure that you have the people, somebody from the registrar's office of the college, somebody from your registrar's office for the high school. Because the devil's in those details. If this doesn't match that and they don't have a good system of talking, you can't get the student from one place to another. There's no bridge. But yeah, OK.

We do the same for CTE in terms of what do we have, what's the pathway. So for health care, identifying where our students would be most successful, at what different intervals can they jump back in. So definitely the path because we did have that in mind with our ESL population, thinking about EKG and medical assistant, phlebotomy. So those are all now being developed as non-credit. But we have been able to influence that and to advocate for growth in those areas.

Christina Hyatt: OK. Thank you.

Pablo Saldana: I think this segues really well into the data and how we utilize tracking systems to demonstrate impact and enrollment, persistence and matriculation. So my question is, What data and metrics are you tracking to demonstrate the impact of expanded course offerings and partnerships on enrollment, persistence and matriculation rates?

Mandilee Gonzales: I know data is something big. I know that the college has their own internal MIS data system. So we have self-service, colleague. That's where we pull our data, specifically me, because sometimes our system doesn't match the Adult School. That is something where I really wish that there was one common portal.

But I have my own way of tracking students of when I meet with them. So old school way. It's an Excel. But it's something that it's for my own sanity as well, to keep track of who I'm meeting with. But it also just shows in the numbers. We offer ESL at the college, at Hesperia and then Apple.

But Apple, they are just maxed out with their enrollment, and it shows. And that's why they have continued to offer even more classes there.

And a reason for that, someone could ask, but why? There could be several reasons. But I really do think one of the major things is that they do feel the partnership, that it's Apple and it's BBC. They have such a welcoming campus. But yeah, the numbers are there.

Patricia Olivia: Then the other matrix that we would look at, we do every single year, we look at the cost preparedness for NAB and [muffled]. And then we also look at LaunchBoard. We know that the LaunchBoard data is dirty, but we still look at it. And I tried to scream at the top of my lungs and go, she says that's not right.

[laughter]

So I'm always going like, yes, OK, MIS does not line up with Foxpro. How can we fix it? OK, there's these people called West Ed. Make sure that I'm in the room if they're having a conversation. If ZTE is launching a webinar, make sure that we're all in on the conversation because then maybe our metrics and our data will become better because people realize we exist and we're doing something positive, promoting change that's real. Does anyone have any questions?

Pablo Saldana: Is there any questions in the chat?

No.

Pablo Saldana: Do you have anything else regarding data? We'll go ahead, and move on over to the next slide. So this is a little bit about our progress. So as you can see, we really started in 2016. And does anyone want to talk a little bit about--

About this?

Pablo Saldana: Yeah, about the progress.

Adele McClain: Well, we did not always succeed at our pilots. We tried collaborating with ABC a number of times since 2016. The first thing I noticed is, hey, we have a bunch of students that are disabled coming in here. How do I get services for them, blah, blah, blah? So we tried to do a DSPS class. It wasn't well attended. But I realized that we needed a special Ed teacher that would try to make 504 accommodations and knew to refer students to DOR to other mechanisms. So I hired a person who comes in hourly after school, that is a regular Special Ed teacher for our district. As a result of the DSPS classes not working.

The second pilot was an introduction to college. That's what we were trying to do to every single student that came in, at least let them know that they're there. And that intro to college piece actually used to have some more verbiage. But we piloted a Guidance 50 class that also, we bought the books and everything. Still not well attended because my communication piece with my students wasn't that good, and they didn't understand.

The Guidance 50 was just too surreal for them. How did this apply to me? They didn't understand what that meant. Merlina has since told me, I should have done Guidance 101. It was [laughter]. But I didn't. I didn't have her input at that time.

Then the college provided a brand ambassador, which was effective at getting students enrolled. But that's where it stopped. They weren't taking classes. They were just getting a student ID.

Then, 2019, first CTE course. So I wanted a CTE course, and my district doesn't have ROP. That's fine. So they have a JP, a joint powers authority. They're like, well, you can pick some classes that are articulated for our regular K-12.

That was actually a big win for me. I did it because I had to. But the benefit to that is, those courses have the same hours that you would have at the college. So if you're trying to make a Dreamer pathway, it's perfect because they're getting high school credit and college credit at the same time. Because Martha went also and asked, Can we please have a writer? Can we be part of the MOU that the high schools already have for these articulated courses, so that these students will attain high school diploma credit and college credit at the same time? Even if they don't need high school diploma credit, it's a place to monitor it, and they get it anyway with this added to their transcript.

2021, we expanded to two courses. And then in 2022, that's when we really started looking at the data, the three-year plan, and said, we got to serve more of these students. The need is overwhelming. And these are parents of our families. How can we do better? So yeah, now we are at citizenship classes.

I'm only counting this by semester. So let's remember that when I started, we only had one class. So this is how many we have in a semester. But then you have to add another four to that because I now have two. And the BBC is providing four, so that's six per semester. So it's just a tremendous amount of growth. And we did that.

Pablo Saldana: Does anybody else have anything else to add to the progress timeline? As you can see, there's that forward motion. We'll go ahead and move on over to the next slide.

So this is just a little bit of a highlight over Apple Valley Adult School program. So they do have a high school diploma, high school equivalency program, they have construction, EKG, computers, and graphic arts.

Adele McClain: And we're piloting the North Star also, that we got as a bonus of being part of OTAN. And this is the Leadership Project. I was very happy that one of my teachers was willing to pilot it. And it seems to be going really well.

So we do it as an independent study model. The first module, the teacher helps them with it. And then it's an independent study module.

My graphics teacher left me because of becoming an admin. But other than that, we still have to go [laughter] under construction. And I'm taking those two courses and trying to apply for HRTP.

I did apply for the grant. They ran out of money. They told me my application was great. So I'm going to try again in the fall with her there.

[laughter]

Pablo Saldana: All right. So there has been a lot of improvements and increases in enrollment. So as we talked about ESL, the numbers are going up in regards to course offerings that we have as a partnership. North Star Pilot, that's a computer basic literacy courses or EKG, and then our childcare services. Do any of you want to talk about our friend, Maylene?

Patricia Olivia: Well, I'll tell you about Maylene. You actually saw Maylene on the video. She was the ESL student with her Cuban accent.

Actually this week, her husband came back, who was taking that ESL class. So Maylene came to our school because she needed ESL. We gave her the information for Victor Valley College because the level she needed was with them.

And then we also told her regarding our EKG class. She graduated from the EKG class. And actually, this week she started working with Saint Mary's Hospital as a technician. So pretty much you see the whole connection and process, and at the end, what we wanted the student to learn that.

Pablo Saldana: Also something that's pretty revolutionary to me and really exciting is just the health child care services as well. So Apple Valley is just an amazing organization that allows students to have child care while they're--

Speaker 2: It was the pandemic. I'm going to be honest.

It's child supervision, child care. I'm glad it contains [muffled voices] supervision.

Adele McClain: The teachers' union said teachers could stay home. They classified unions, so they had to come in. So then we had this thing called child supervision for adults. And I was like, could we use that for our ESL students? And the district said, sure, we have a policy, let's put it in place and see how it works. And it's been working for me and them.

Pablo Saldana: It's that ability to network and figure out, OK, what are some loopholes or some workarounds that we can do to also bring it to the students and [muffled].

Adele McClain: BBC flexes their times and their hours. So that it is during the time that our parents have students in school. That's also because outside of their typical hours.

Pablo Saldana: Yes. All right. We'll go ahead and move on to the next slide, please. So I have some more questions for you. So in regards to addressing the need and successful student transitions, what are some tools and strategies and resources that you provide for student successfully to transition between issues?

So I knew that my goal was to transition students. And I needed to find a way to do that with the adult schools. And so part of that is the foundation of my relationship with the adult schools because it's also me visiting their campus or me letting them know what services are available to the student. So having that communication and then knowing it being very transparent.

And one of the things I remember, Claudia, part of the DLAC project that we had, it was to build our partnership. And I guess also for me, I always assumed that they know my day to day. And they didn't. And so we had a little activity, where we walked and we had a conversation. And Claudia didn't really realize that there was a barrier with students trying to communicate with me, and that I had a long list of student phone calls and because of my part time hours.

So it was a lot of clarity for both of us to really understand her me, and me her. But basically for the transition piece of it, I have a flyer that is handed out to all of the students. It has my picture. So they can know, OK, this is the transition counselor, but it has my contact information.

It also has my calendar scheduling links so they can scan it on their phone or go to the web page. They can view my calendar for the entire consortium. So they can see when I'm going to be visiting Apple Adult School. So they can pick the day, the time schedule with me. They get the confirmation.

But honestly, I have had students where they're like, oh, you're booked. You don't have anything available. But they see that, oh, you know what, but in two days, you're going to be at Snow Lion Adult School. I've had students schedule with me. And I'm like, oh, you're from Apple Adult School. But they're like, yeah, but I saw that you had an opening, so I'm meeting with you here. So I'm like, OK, cool. So the scheduling piece has been really helpful.