[audio logo]

Speaker 1: OTAN, Outreach and Technical Assistance Network.

Speaker 2: Hello! We are the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

Audience: Oh!

Audience: Woo!

Speaker 2: Not really.

[laughter]

We just work there. There are 63,000 employees at CDCR. We are the largest employer in the state of California, the third largest correctional or law enforcement agency in the country. So we're just representing a tiny little bit of the teeny-tiny, "Horton, Horton, can you hear me?" of our entire agency. But we've had a good time with you. Malina You will not cry. I promise.

Audience: When I leave you, I will.

[laughter]

Audience: Ahh!

Vera Valdivia-abdallah: Well, there's a rap song that says, hey, we're a different, yes, we're a different. That's CDCR. We're different. So I am not going to read you our mission statement. But in a nutshell, it is to rehabilitate-- is to foster the rehabilitation and the learning of our students, and to facilitate their successful integration back into the community. And this is done with public safety as a primary objective.

So there is a picture right here, right here, right here. Excuse me.

Speaker 4: It's gone now. Don't make me go away.

Vera Valdivia-abdallah: This is one of our graduating classes.

Speaker 3: Please speak at the mic.

Vera Valdivia-abdallah: Oh, sorry. This is one of our graduating classes, and I was so proud. That was our first graduating class with GEDs and high school diplomas. And this is our fantastic vice principal. I'm hiding behind her.

And it was just such a proud moment to have this graduation, and that is what makes me really happy, when somebody graduates. And recently, I bumped into a former student out on the streets. We call it out on the streets.

And he ran up to me, and they called me Miss V. And I was really like, Miss V! Miss V! And I was like, oh, hi. And I didn't recognize him right away. And he says, don't you remember me? And I am now a student full-time at Cal State Bakersfield.

And he said, I am so grateful that I learned computers while I was at the school. And he said, that helped me so much. And it was like so cool. And he says, and I'm not gangbanging anymore.

[laughter]

So going on with our vision, yes, we have 31 accredited adult schools within our education department, over 37,000 students. And of those students, we have adult basic education, high school diploma program, which is all done online, high school equivalency, GED, vocational education.

We also have college programs incorporated, and transitional education programs that are for students who are getting ready to be released, how to function and how to do job interviews, how to do a bank account, those type of things. And then we have a fantastic program also called eLearning that the students absolutely love, which is more of an enrichment learning.

We have more than 1,000 staff members within our school system. And we have five team members, the esteemed Patrick O'Neill.

[applause]

[chuckles]

And then we have Bryan. And then we have Aaron, who's joining us online.

[applause]

Myself, I teach GED and high school, Cyber High. And we have also Dr. Lynne Ruvalcaba, who is not with us, because she had an injury to her leg and had to have a surgery.

Speaker 2: She had a fight with the horse.

Yes.

[laughter]

Audience: The horse won.

Vera Valdivia-abdallah: The horse won, yeah, unfortunately. So I'm going to pass this over to Bryan.

Bryan Boel: OK, I'll go here.

Vera Valdivia-abdallah: OK.

Bryan Boel: When I look at our overall journey on this, if you look at it, 64,000 employees and then 37,000 students, and we're a group of five-- that's pushing this narrative within there. So it's a pretty daunting task right now.

So with that being said, and us being a school district, statewide school district, I'd like to first, when I look at our overall journey, is thank Neda for accepting us in OTAN in this unique school district. And then obviously, our DLAC is in here because you guys have been so supportive of us. We asked probably some crazy questions, or you ask us some questions. And we're like, I don't even know what that is.

And we are sheltered in here. And some of the-- I turn to Miriam, and I said, they're talking about this EL stuff. And it's just going like over my head right now. And I felt bad for our students because what we want to do is we want to really prepare our students the most to return them to your communities, to be a success. And so that's what we're trying to do in promoting some of these right now.

And so going forward here, if we look at some of our accomplishments-- and our accomplishments, when I look at and I see all these presentations, they might be small in nature compared to what you guys are doing. But for us, they're huge leaps and bounds compared to where we used to be.

And so right now, what we did is we created and we tried to create three separate site plans on how to embed technology into digital literacy. And at first, we thought this. We said, OK, well, we'll create one for our level 4 facility, which is our maximum. We'll create one for level 2 and maybe one in between. And then people will be able to grab which ones they need.

And it got to be a little bit too much. So we said, OK, wait a minute. Patrick came together and says, why don't we just take some foundational framework of these three, and then we can use that statewide. And then what they can do is they can just manipulate it how they see fit.

Because what happens is it's not just necessarily a level, but it could be just the layout of their facility and how they program for certain needs. And so by being able to do that, we did create three separate-- and we actually came up with a strategic plan and a foundational framework for the state. And then also, I'll talk about our EdTech committee. We do have a strategic plan for that going forward as well.

Team building. So our team building said multi-disciplinary. For us, we had not only our headquarters. We had IT, which has been invaluable, bringing Erin along with us. And then we had site based. And so we had our visionary people that we were looking at statewide. We had the safety and security coming from Erin, and then we had our site level. And this is how it actually works.

And what was really nice about this is not one voice was more important than another during these sessions. And everyone had an opportunity to really voice their concerns or where we needed to go. And it was-- it was really good. I will say this, the greater standing of Intersight needs-- and also, go ahead if you want to go forward, and I'll go to this-- minimal conflict to date on this.

Our group didn't have conflict. We work in an environment where you have to pivot daily on things that happen. And sometimes, you pivot in a moment's notice. Sometimes, you could be running a program of, five minutes later, everyone has to go back. And it's a total recall, and you don't have anyone in your program or classroom.

And so we're really cognizant of what everyone's time and what happens with everyone. And so we just leverage teams. We understand that everyone has concerns. I've been on meetings before. And I'm like, Cassidy's walked in the room. I have to go. I'll call you back. Or we'll be on teams.

And it's just the nature of what we work. So since we work in so much conflict, there isn't conflict within in the group, because it's just an accepted norm of what we have to deal with on a continual basis. Valuing each member's time is so important. Patrick and Lynne-- to give you some sort of semblances, there's two of them right now. And anything that has to do with technology throughout the state will filter through two people.

And so we understand when there's time. There's eLearning he's responsible for. He's responsible for a host of other things along with it. And so one security breach could go down. I remember at RDJ. And all of a sudden, everything has to stop sometime statewide or whatever to go. And that will all filter through somebody. So it's very important to be cognizant of those people's time.

I've got to give Erin a shout out-- I know she's not here with us-- because our relationship now with IT is so much better. We used to try to get technology or programs, and we were met with a flat-out no many times. It was just easier to say no because of security.

We understand that-- I see these great things, and I go, that's a great program. Well, we can't house them on our network. Why? Because they can actually get through the network and communicate with somebody else. And we're like, how did they do that? We're like, we're not sure.

[laughter]

And so you can imagine getting a large group of people in an incarcerated setting that can communicate with each other and the problems that could happen. And so Erin has been like, not no, but let's look at this a little bit, and let's figure out what we can do or how we can make this happen so it's safe and secure, and we can still provide something.

So she has been that voice for us and has been so important that we can actually have hope now, where before we're like, well, I guess we just can't do it. But Erin has been that, giving us hope, peace, within this group.

Speaker 4: OK, so before [muffled voice] went

Bryan Boel: Oh, and then-- oh, yeah. And then also, can you go back to that one? We've got to at least acknowledge-- there she put the curtain back. There you go.

[chuckling]

Speaker 4: Dr. Lynne?

Bryan Boel: Yeah.

Speaker 4: OK.

Bryan Boel: You bet.

Erin Case: All right. So communication is key for the success of any project, and we work collaboratively through our agency-provided tools, sometimes struggling, as Bryan said, with CDCR's significant security restrictions, like not allowing us access to Google Docs.

But we always found workarounds and approved methods for information and documentation sharing. We found our weekly scheduled meetings were unrealistic for all of our various schedules, so we leaned heavily on email and Teams messages and video calls. And we really did everything possible to keep those lines of communication open and help each other out throughout the process with encouragement and consideration.

So to be successful, we all approached this effort with a student leader mindset-- I'm sorry, servant-leader mindset. And we genuinely want to help one another, this department, and our population to progress through technology and the advancements that we can provide to them to exceed those department mission, vision, and goals. Next slide, please, Patrick.

Woo! This is already a little bit touched on, but I'm like the others in our cohort. We're not focused on one location, but 31. And a one size fits all approach never would work for CDCR And each institution, honestly, is run like its own little kingdom.

The overall rules might be the same, but how they're interpreted and employed at any one institution varies. And that's based on a lot of different factors, including the population, the security level, geographical location, and the leadership. Leadership is always there.

One of the biggest issues we encounter in providing technology to our students and the educators is the infrastructure within the institutions. So as you may or may not be aware, providing network connectivity through 1-foot thick granite walls and metal doors with environmental extremes that are heavy snow and rain, and very humid or very dry, temperatures from below 0 to 130 degrees, it makes design, construction, deployment, maintenance of our technology very difficult.

So we continue today to improve and expand the accessibility of technology-driven education statewide. Additionally, we continue to engage our partners with division of adult institutions and our own Information Security office to understand the possibilities and improvements we can experience with providing broader education resources to our population, which often leads to a need for us to negotiate changes to our outdated but standardized security decisions.

So things that other educators take for granted, like the ability to email their students, have students access a website or login to open-source materials or resources, they're never simple for us. We can't just, oh, I found this last night. They need access. It takes weeks, sometimes months to get all of that done because our student network is a zero-trust infrastructure. That means everything is unknown until it goes through the process to be a yes.

So lastly, we did lose one of our members to a scheduling conflict. We did not get to replace him, but it was felt. That knowledge loss was felt, but it made everyone else kind of come together and do more.

All right, so CDCR is unique, based on many factors, and not the least of which would be our population. So moving forward, we do hope to encourage and mentor individual institutions to join the ETLC and take what we have learned, what they will learn, and take it back and strengthen the delivery of educational resources through technology to our growing student population.

We continue to test the benefits of NorthStar. And while NorthStar is currently only approved for staff use with CDCR and not student use, we expect the use of NorthStar to expand in the very near future. And additionally, we are currently working on a list of over 37 projects specific to incarcerated population's access to technology and to improve and increase their experiences through education and rehabilitation to offer them a successful transition back to society.

All right. And I stated on one of the first slides, our mission is to facilitate the successful reintegration of individuals back to their communities, equipped with the tools so that they can be productive members of society. In order to do this, we have to start changing the mindset of our old guard. We need to continue to embrace the fact that with resources, people are less likely to come back into our institutions.

So resources to me does not mean a handout. That means a hand up. So we want to provide a path for all of our population to progress and to grow and to develop their skills to ensure they have options to successfully integrating back and supporting themselves legally. The experience with OTAN has and will continue to foster a societal benefit, reaching well beyond the student themselves, but to every person who loves or comes in contact with them moving forward.

Speaker 2: So as Erin said, I want to put an emphasis on the first bullet here. Give back to OTAN. So one of the things we're talking about now in terms of sustaining our growth is that we're going to move from being a consumer of OTAN to a producer through OTAN and giving back our resources as we can to be partners with them moving forward.

Our sustainability has been a topic that we've pretty much started talking about from the beginning. These are some of the things we've gotten done. We've created our EdTech Leadership Committee that John mentioned-- I mean, Bryan mentioned. We were talking about the one we left, so now I'm thinking about John, so Bryan.

Bryan mentioned we are we've pulled them together. Our leadership committees aren't always the most popular things for our staff to join, because it's a lot of extra work. And we're begging. We had 23 applications, which is unheard of. And our group is starting with 17 core members. So it's huge.

And we're going to throw the work to them. What needs to happen? Why do you think it needs to happen? The reason I asked, I think the hard question here of how did you get that set of rules built, we want them to take care of that. What does it look like so that there's the buy-in?

We're committed to a cycle of continuous review and update. We will be pushing forward another site this year. In fact, Shannon Woods, a dear friend and colleague, is online. Thanks for stealing my thunder again, Neda. I'm used to it now. Thank you.

[laughter]

I invited her to join. She does a fantastic job as the assistant administrator at our Folsom Prison. And so from there, we don't know. We want to work out. We can't. I mean, we don't want to wait 31 years to cycle-- well, really, be 62 years to cycle everybody through. So we have to figure that piece out.

Audience: You have 23 applications for--

Vera Valdivia-abdallah: The leadership committee--

Audience: --for the--

Vera Valdivia-abdallah: At tech. Yeah.

Audience: Wow. And for institutions?

Speaker 2: Yes, all different institutions from all the different areas that-- and programs are all represented real well. I'm the spreadsheet king, so everything's lined out on a spreadsheet to make sure we're represented.

OK, so we have an idea to create tech coaches. And because of this exercise, I added to our strategic plan a line that I called "sustaining momentum." And so how do we have to do that? Who do we have to call to the table? Thank you, Adele. How do we frame the questions differently to get what we want? How do we change the thinking of the old guard, Erin? That technology isn't a bad thing. It could be useful.

You have to think of our COs. If all the bad guys can talk to each other on the yard, they can stage one heck of a riot, and people die. That's our reality. So it's not just a matter of we're being mean to them. They can't talk to each other. There's real-life consequences.

So moving on. I didn't want to pass this by, and Neda knows me. I always talk about this. TDLS was huge for us. Weird statement, "All Fruit, No Pits." That's the TDLS experience.

You're not paying a bajillion, million dollars. You don't have to sit through a bunch of ugly presentations. You don't have these sales people following you around, taking pictures of your badges so you're on their email list. It's all fruit without having the nuts.

We will continue our involvement. Sorry, Neda. I know you're of two heads here, but we will discontinue funding Q. And we are going to fund TDLS. And the encouragement to present has been huge.

I've always-- clearly I can talk in front of people, but I've always wanted to present at conferences. And she made me do it. And now my partner Amy and I are presenting at CASAS and GED this year. So it's been wonderful. The entire experience has been outstanding.

[applause]

We've had our challenges. We've grown. We didn't think we could do it. We said we couldn't do it. They said, you'll do it. We did it, and now we have to frame it so it works for us, going full circle to what my partner said.

We could not have done this without our DLAC mom and our DLAC angels, Neda and Marian. We have a little thank-you for both of you, for all that you have given us and all that you have done for us and not getting really, really upset when we don't return every email.

[laughter]

But it's been an outstanding experience. Will you please give them their gifts.

Bryan Boel: OK.

Thank you very, very, very much.

[applause]