LISA MEDNICK TAKAMI: Implementing SB 554 Adult Dual Enrollment-- From Statute to Strategy. There has been strong demand around this topic, and we thought it would be a good idea to bring the field together to learn more about it. 

So you'll hear us refer to Adult Dual Enrollment as ADE interchangeably, and know that we did solicit some feedback from you in terms of where you may be in your understanding of adult dual enrollment. And we encourage you to put questions in the chat as we move on through. 

And know that wherever you are in the learning curve around SB 554 adult dual enrollment, we are here to support. So with that, we'll go to our next slide. And I will turn it over to Chandni Ajanel for some housekeeping items. 

CHANDNI AJANEL: Hi, everyone. Good morning. If we could go to the next slide, please. So just a reminder that this meeting is being recorded. The recording and the PowerPoint will be released on the Cal Adult Ed website following its remediation. 

And we ask that you please fill out the survey that we'll send out at the end. We really value your feedback and use it to improve our webinars. Next slide, please. 

And then just a gentle reminder that we want to cultivate a gracious space for lively, respectful, and professional discussions. Thank you. 

LISA MEDNICK TAKAMI: Thank, you, Chandni. And with that, I will turn it over to Diana Martinez to get us started. 

DIANA MARTINEZ: Hi, everyone. Thank you, and good morning for joining us. I'll briefly go over our agenda today. We went over the housekeeping and introductions. And then on the next slide, we'll be going over the learning objectives. The way that we set up today's webinar is mostly in two parts. 

We'll briefly be going over the statute and then going over some of the strategies and promising practices, and just examples of what the strategies could look like at your consortium or at your institution. And then we'll be going over some questions and discussion and then some closing activities. Next slide, please. 

And before moving forward. I would like to ask in the chat on a scale of 1 to 5, how comfortable are you with ADE? And it can be very informal in the chat, just so we can get a gauge of your comfortability with this. 

And for learning objectives, we're here to explain the purpose of intent and required components of SB 554 Adult Dual Enrollment. Outline the essential design elements needed to launch an Adult Dual Enrollment program. Analyze common implementation challenges and causes based on experiences and early adopter experiences. 

Design an initial framework for moving from policy understanding to program implementation. Evaluate your institution readiness for Adult Dual Enrollment using key planning indicators. Develop short-term action plans. And identifiers for next steps and leverages available to technical assistance supports. 

And then later on, we'll be touching briefly on the community of practice that the CC TAP team has led and is currently co-facilitating. We did go over first meeting, and we'll go more on that later. But these are the learning objectives that we want you as the audience member to take away from today's meeting. Next slide, please. 

And over here, we're talking about how SB 554 came to be. It was signed into law in October of 2019, so pre-pandemic. And it allows adult learners in high school diploma or equivalency programs to enroll in community college credit courses tuition free while completing their high school credentials. 

So the law states that SB 554 waives tuition for adult dual enrollees. And the funding comes from community colleges receiving enhanced apportionment for these enrollments. And this supports the Chancellor's Office Vision for 2030 goals of economic mobility through degree attainment. Next slide, please. 

And then now we're going to look over between the traditional dual enrollment mindset and the Adult Dual Enrollment mindset. So traditionally, dual enrollment lets high school students earn college credit. And ADE extends the same opportunity to adults working towards their high school diploma, progressing towards two milestones simultaneously. 

Traditionally, the courses are for college-bound students, and they focus on academic prep and general education. And because there are minors, current signatures are required. But with ADE, it's targeting working adult learners and mostly fosters motivation and career exploration and offering higher income through post programs. So it introduces high-opportunity CTE pathways and learner agency in the course selection. Next slide, please. 

And this is where we break down who these ADE students are. They're typically adults who return to education after a time away, having limited to no prior college experience. And they balance multiple responsibilities. Either they're parents or work or have different responsibilities in their lifetime. 

And then they often come from historically underserved or hard to reach populations. And they're oftentimes seeking to explore academic and career pathways and transition into post-secondary education and to gain confidence from these pathways. Next slide, please. 

And then this is how the ADE benefits adult learners. It removes cost barriers. And some institutions, based on either bylaws or the way their institution is set up, they can subsidize books and fees. And students preserve their eligibility for future financial aid, such as the Pell Grants or the California College Promise. 

And it also accelerates progress because college credits can fulfill diploma requirements simultaneously, and research shows that dual enrollment reduces the need for remedial coursework later on in their academic career. And it also boosts confidence and academic self-efficiency for these students. It provides positive experiences outward and inspires families and communities to pursue higher education. Next slide, please. 

And now we're going to move on from statute to strategy. The statute provides a framework, but not the program design. That's where local agencies, members, and consortiums come in with their existing bylaws and-- previous slide, please. 

Thank you. This is where the local agencies determine their values, strategies, and approach. And some of the key considerations are, who can participate, who are the partners, who are the target students for your local region or Adult Dual Enrollment, and how will students be recruited, enrolled, and supported? Who is responsible for advising and coordination, and how will success be measured either through enrollment numbers, persistence, or transitions? Next slide, please. 

Thank you. And then, again, who is eligible? Any adult in high school diploma or high school equivalency programs at California adult schools or community colleges, and includes newcomers either 18 or above, justice-impacted individuals, and undocumented people, and undocumented students can begin logging time towards residency status and future financial aid eligibility courses as well. 

And some of the courses available-- students may enroll up to 11 units, including PE. And it often includes general education, career education, counseling, and college experience courses, and electives aligned with their longer term career goals. Thank you. Next slide, please. And then moving on to my partner, Ute Maschke. 

UTE MASCHKE: All right, hello, everyone. We're going to switch screens for a moment. And I will share my screen. All right, I hope everyone can see my screen now. Yeah? OK. 

So welcome, again, everyone. We already talked about these key considerations. We want to address a few more of those. And Diana already pointed out who can participate. 

This participation, and to address the key considerations, works best with a case management approach. From your feedback, from best practices shared by the field, we have learned that this front-loaded case management approach serves our students well to not only enroll into this program but also to persist and to successfully complete their dual enrollment work. 

The case management approach includes, as you all know, counseling and goal setting, first of all. Ideally, this happens before the student actually enrolls into the program so that we can learn about the student's life challenges, responsibilities, workload, and their educational goals. 

It then, of course, moves into enrollment support with CCCApply and course registration, and most importantly, with support to navigate the college system. One of the goals of dual enrollment always is supporting students in developing those navigational skills that help them succeed on their educational pathways. 

Of course, this approach includes career and academic support throughout many of our colleges and adult schools built in one-on-one tutoring, built in career services from the very beginning, and also have built an early alert system so to actually share across non-credit adult schools and credit-level college support staff so that we can help and support students staying on the path while they are dual enrolled. 

Wraparound services for most of us can include referrals to food pantries, childcare, housing, health care, and emergency loans. I say can, but because, of course, some of us have restrictions, higher challenges than others. Later on, we'll talk a little bit about which funding resources we can utilize for this. 

When we think about dual enrollment as beneficial to our students, foremost, we can, of course, also think about the benefits that Adult Dual Enrollment has for our community colleges and for our partnering adult schools. 

The latest data we have tells us that about 150,000 adults were enrolled in high school diploma, high school equivalency programs at adult schools and noncredit divisions. There is our opportunity. There is our chance to support students completing their high school diploma and dual enroll, and continuing their college journey towards certificates and degrees. 

Through this opportunity, we can strengthen our communities and partnerships. Best practices from the field have shared with us that working with, for example, interfaith organizations, working with libraries, working with tribal communities has strengthened these educational pathways for such communities into our colleges, which, after all, are community colleges. 

Overall, Adult Dual Enrollment promotes positive outcomes. We now are able to show data on these positive outcomes through research briefs that indicate that students who participate in ADE are more likely to continue their college journey at the degree certificate level. 

And qualitative data that some of you have already shared with us suggests that this dual enrollment program increases students' confidence, agency, and the navigational skills we mentioned. Add in the D for navigational skills, and we have a complete set of success. 

For those key challenges we mentioned earlier to be addressed, we need to think, of course, about an implementation plan. With our dual enrollment programs, in our experience in gathering best practices from the field, has shown us that it starts with a shared vision, and it's worth investing a lot of time into developing that shared vision. 

It might take about almost four, six months before that shared vision is in place, but that shared vision will carry a long way forward and strengthen the program in its implementation and when you scale up. 

A shared vision includes, of course, the big why. How do we support our students with this program? It includes a shared understanding of roles and responsibilities. And it includes willingness to take the long view and invest in this for a long time and for the future. 

The second step then, based on that shared vision, is developing a system that works for your specific consortium, for your college, for your adult school partners. And in that discussion, what might the system look like for us? Processes can be developed. Reference materials will be developed, and there will most likely be a shared data repository that helps everyone to stay on track. 

Best practice here also shared by the field is to develop a memorandum of understanding. This MOU is not necessarily required by law. It is not, but most beneficial when you build and scale out Adult Dual Enrollment. And, of course, ongoing team building and support are crucial for the success of our students in this program and for the success of scaling this program overall across the whole state. 

So when you build out the shared vision, who should be at the table? And that's the storming and norming that might take four to six months. From our experience and insight shared by the field, we know now that college participants should include the president, the vice president, or presidents and deans. 

Those can become our champions. Ideally, they are our champions. When leadership buys into and understands the benefits of dual enrollment, then a lot of other staff members, stakeholders will follow. 

It should include the chief financial officer and the director of admissions and records or enrollment. It might include the dual enrollment coordinators because they're-- even in the name is some overlap. And, of course, it has to include counselors, outreach staff, and faculty. At that school, participants ideally include the superintendent and principal. 

Of course, it will include the adult education transition specialists. They are the experts in figuring out how to develop a smooth transition from an adult school to a college. And, again, it should include counselors, teachers, and subject matter leads. 

Once you have this core team at the table and work towards a shared vision, you can decide on possible partnership roles. Where are our strengths/ Where can we best support each other from our different perspectives? 

In our experience and based on your feedback, adult schools and non-credit programs often take on the role of identifying and recommending eligible students and prepare students for college credit level expectations. They do provide academic and transition support and support recruitment and orientation efforts. 

Many of you when you registered for this webinar mentioned that you're interested in what might this recruitment and orientation look like. Some of our adult schools already have shared some best practices. We'll get back to those in a moment. 

Community colleges do take on the role of offering the college courses, of course, and they have to support adult and non-credit programs in handling the enrollment and registration processes. And I'm saying have to because there is really no other way when we want to think about scaling this program, making it a successful, integrated college effort. 

Community colleges also are very strong in providing access to student services, as you know. Many of our adult schools just simply don't have the funding to provide that extensive selection of student services that we can provide at the community colleges. And community colleges usually take on the responsibility for tracking enrollments and outcomes. 

Ideally, for all of this, you develop a workflow and data protocols that help everyone to stay on the same page and support students in persisting and succeeding. 

So I wanted to share with you what this might look like on the ground, the nitty gritty. Here's a screenshot of our shared system and workflow here in our consortium, the Education to Career Network. As you can see there, this is our workflow and logic model for all our work in Adult Dual Enrollment. 

We first developed the shared vision. That's our project plan that we worked out together. There's the official paperwork in folder 2. And then we developed forms and internal guidelines for our workflow. So in that folder, we developed the special admittance application form for our students. We have special forms for students who might not be residents quite yet, work towards their residency status. 

And then we broke down the workflow in each step at a very granular level. And then the rest is probably pretty obvious. We have a data tracker tool in folder 6 and then marketing materials for different audiences. So we do outreach materials that are tailored toward our stakeholders, be that community members, faculty, teachers, staff. 

And then we develop materials that are clearly and strictly student facing, again, with an eye on where do our students take classes, be that at an adult school, in a non-credit program, or at a community member site. 

So who pays for all of this? That is a question some of you already mentioned when you registered for this webinar. It's a lot of paying forward, but we have resources for it. Number one is, of course, our CAEP funding. 

Our CAEP funding in seven program areas clearly focuses on facilitating transitions to college, especially through our high school diploma and high school equivalency programs. So CAEP is definitely the number one resource for us, not just directly for program support, but also for the staff working with the students in our high school diploma and equivalency programs. 

Many consortia have invested as the consortium and transition specialist that are paid out of a shared fund. So you have shared positions as one option there. In addition to CAEP funding, we have student equity and achievement programs, and we can utilize WIOA Title I funds for this as long as they are not supplanting. 

Colleges can also utilize general funds and some categorical program funding at the college side, as you know. Also, some lottery funds might help with this. 

Some of our consortia have already successfully established agreements with their college foundations, where college foundations then are taking on student fees, parking, health, other student fees, which, of course, are not covered by SB 554. SB 554, as you know, waives tuition but no other fees. So working very closely with your colleges foundation has proven very beneficial for the success of this program. 

And last but not least, how can we cover textbook costs for our students? On occasion, Strong Workforce Programs can help with that. If your college is participating in local Strong Workforce Programs, there's definitely an opportunity for you to create funding through that resource. And as many of you pointed out in our first community of practice, we want to tap into Zero-Textbook Cost initiatives and open educational resources wherever we can. 

This last point is an interesting one in our experience because it opened up conversations with faculty who didn't even know about Adult Dual Enrollment. One of our transition specialists, for example, reached out to faculty directly to advocate for a student enrolled in ADE and open textbook resources. 

In that conversation, the faculty learned through this one student case that this program ADE actually exists and is now a champion of this program. So some of these more nitty-gritty components of ADE also allow you to open conversations with stakeholders that might never, ever have heard about this otherwise. 

So with that, I hope we have already conveyed that Adult Dual Enrollment is a win-win. Many of you already would agree with this, I'm sure. It is definitely a win for our adult learners. It's an opportunity. It's an equity lever. It provides tuition-free college courses. It can accelerate credentials attainment on two ends, your high school diploma completion. 

But also, you might have a chance while enrolled in a career training program at a college to earn more certificates and credentials. And as importantly, it expands opportunities for our adult learners. It broadens the horizon and open doors that adult learners might not have thought about. 

It's a win for our adult schools and colleges, not just because it increases enrollment and completion and thereby also apportionment for colleges, but also because it strengthens our partnerships as one system that works for adult learners and helps us progress towards Vision 2030 goals. 

The path is pretty clear straightforward. The details are a little bit more difficult to tackle. But we have a chance to learn from local and regional models already in place. Those models can help us start a conversation and find new champions if we haven't found them yet for those of you who have not started the program yet. 

And then we need to track this data because we need to become more visible. Adult Dual Enrollment, the law was in place in 2019. It's still kind of a secret for some of us. So through tracking our data and sharing our student success stories, we can also become more visible to new stakeholders, to new champions. 

Each window comes with some challenges. And some of you already pointed that out when you registered for this webinar. Those challenges we summarized in this slide and narrowed it down to a few. I'm sure there are others we want to tackle, if not today, then in our upcoming community of practice. 

Some of these challenges include really, how do we move from theory to execution, from statute to execution? We know the law is there. We know the opportunity is there. But how do we break down the silos and actually integrate and align our systems? 

How do we ensure that Adult Dual Enrollment is equitable and inclusive and not just available? That means, how do I really connect to the hard-to-reach students and share that opportunity in a way that's meaningful to them and helps them understand what the benefits of this program are? 

How can we stronger message and develop engagement strategies? One of those strategies might be to make Adult Dual Enrollment part of a clear and guided pathways model, not a standalone experience that's disjointed from the college system. And importantly, how do we build a data system for accountability and improvement? How can we track our success, but also how can we track our students journey in this program so that we better support them? 

Some of these challenges we started to address in our first Community of Practice that we launched in February 2026. We have now integrated in our CAEP TAP work a Community of Practice for Adult Dual Enrollment. We meet monthly and want to and do address the growing interest and those persistent challenges, some of which I just pointed out. 

It's a wonderful place to share lessons learned, some of which I mentioned throughout the presentation. And it's our chance through this Community of Practice to improve coordination across the state, across program partners, across consortia. So it's a wonderful opportunity to learn from each other. And it is also your opportunity to inform our work here at CAEP TAP at NOCE. 

In next communities of practice meetings, we want to consider creating a resource repository where we might share what the special admittance form looks like, where we might share what our marketing materials look like, where we might share, also frequently asked questions and our shared solutions to those challenges and questions. 

So we would like to invite you to join us in this Community of Practice. Our next meeting is on April 14 at 12 PM. As a Community of Practice, we are a little bit flexible in how long we meet. We always start at 12. We take between 30 and 40 minutes and bring in questions from the field, with the understanding that we problem solve together. 

Some of the topics we want to focus on in next meetings are marketing and recruitment, scaling up, and while scaling up, offering consistent high level of support, which is a challenge for many of us. And we want to focus on how to monitor success and track data. We want to share some data-tracking tools some consortia developed for this program and see how we can tweak and improve them together. 

And with that, let me share some resources which should also go in the chat. We have a practice brief in place now that summarizes some of the best practices we shared today in this webinar. There's also a summary of our seminar webinar last year. 

And there are some less recent but still very, very valuable resources developed by High Road Alliance and the Career Ladder Project. The latter also includes references to ability to benefit, which align nicely with Adult Dual Enrollment programs. 

More recently, there are some efforts to align even more K-12 dual enrollment programs through CCAP initiatives. And most recently, and that's our last resource here, there is an Equitable Dual Enrollment Policy to Practice Guide, which has some valuable information for us in Adult Dual Enrollment, as long as we keep in mind this was really developed for high schools. 

But it's an opportunity for us to look into these data sharing tools and how they might be utilized for Adult Dual Enrollment. And with that, I hand it over to Lisa and Dulce. 

LISA MEDNICK TAKAMI: Thank you, Ute. And thank you, Diana, for presenting on this really important and interesting topic. There are a number of different questions, concerns, different things in the chat. Dulce, did you want to go ahead and start with fielding the Q&A? 

DULCE DELGADILLO: Yeah, let me go in here, and let me go check. All right, so good morning, everybody. I'm going to start from the bottom. I think I'm getting to the bottom. Here we go. Let's see. 

So yes, so Charles Smith added one of the biggest challenges is that adult schools and community colleges have separate information system. A large step towards meaningful collaboration would be aligning the systems. And there was a very good conversation actually happening in here about they don't want to give up the ADE for collecting. 

So MOUs are going to be interesting. How are we going to incentivize these systems? So I'm just curious out in the field if anybody has been successful in being able to do any data-sharing agreements. I know last year I-- or maybe it might have been two years ago that we got a lot of requests around templates for what does data-sharing agreements look like. 

And so I know I sent out our templates within our district as to just what is that time frame looks like, how often, what are the legal repercussions associated with it, and how it impacts potentially your board policy and administrative policies on your community college side of the house. So I'm not sure if anybody wanted to share. And I saw, Ute, you came off of mute. 

UTE MASCHKE: Yeah. So the research brief that's in the resources share some best practices for data tracking for MOUs and shared templates here in the San Diego region. In the High Road Alliance's report, there are also some resources included specific for some consortia who were the pioneers. 

This is probably a good opportunity to give a huge shout out to Chaffey College, which was instrumental to making SB 554 a law. We would not be here without Chaffey College and MAD. 

So if you go to Chaffey College's website, you see a whole web page and resources for Adult Dual Enrollment. Foothill-De Anza has also done some incredible work on this. And we could explore in this Community of Practice to share more resources. 

DULCE DELGADILLO: I think so. That might be a good place. I mean, templates coming out. Another resource that I have actually been hearing about as well, and we just finalized it for our dual enrollment is the application. 

So our students that are in adult, our non-credit high school diploma, we have built a specific application process for the warm handoff when they dual enroll with Fullerton College. Now we're still in the process of doing it with Cypress College. But we have a process of, OK, at this point, we will identify them when they dual enroll. And within our student information system, we will flag them. 

Now, on the data side of the House, legislatively, they have not said you need to flag them, but we foresee it coming down the pipeline because for high school dual enrollment, the precursor to this bill, there's a specific MIS data element that you are needing to report. 

So it is to our benefit as we are building these systems, as we are going and building these partnerships, and we're doing those warm handoffs, simultaneously, we need to think about where is that information going, how are we tracking it, while we are in two complete separate systems, and how are we communicating that information across as smoothly as possible to create that seamless transition for our students? Ultimately, that is the goal. 

UTE MASCHKE: Right. And as many of you pointed out in the chat, that schools and colleges have separate system. And it's a challenge. And yes, so many of us do go back to good old Excel spreadsheets and start tracking there. Necessary right now, also kind of a helpful, intermittent tool to understand best what are we actually tracking and why. 

So for us and some other consortia we have learned from, it starts really with the moment when a student voices interest. The next step is really where are they at. So I want to track the circumstances, the students life and work responsibilities because that sets the stage for successful participation. 

I want to track the student's readiness for this program because that will allow me to, should the student not be ready, reach out to them at a later point and say, hey, we talked first. You are further along the road in your high school diploma now. Let's get back into the conversation and see how ADE can benefit you now a little later. 

And then, of course, we want to track their enrollment, their needs at college. We want to track how they succeed during the first two weeks of the semester because they might have to drop a course and not be punished for that. 

And then, of course, track the needs in each college course, their success in each college course, their success at the adult school where they take high school diploma classes, and their course completion, and their next step. 

Developing this whole data tracker tool, I think also has helped us understand those transition points that most reports that we are asked to produce do not track yet. And as you well know, that CAEP doesn't really have a place yet where we can point out how important transition and support services really are. 

We have the seven program areas, but we sometimes have hard times tracking the in between, when the student is not in class, but we know that our work with the students facilitates their success in class. So I would agree 100% this is coming. MIS and also CAEP will have new tools for us to track those data. So the better our sheets are right now, the easier our work is later. 

DULCE DELGADILLO: Yeah, I think wearing my hat as an IR professional, what I know is going to be asked because we are already being asked at a district level is where are these students dual enrolling in? Is it high-- I'm sorry. Is it CTE? What specific CTE programs? Is it ESL? 

That's exactly right, Ute. They're going to be tracking their success rates. Are they being retained in those classes that they are dual enrolling in? And then completion rates at some point. So it is going to be really important for you to be intentional in building those pathways and then being able to get the data that helps. 

I wanted to touch base because I did see a comment up here around student services, specifically around case management. So thank you, Alejandro, for chiming in as to what does case management specifically looks like. And so going back to Ute's comment of where are we capturing our students that are not enrolled but are still utilizing these services, as a community college, those are being captured in your MIS file, that is, student services file, your SS file. 

So it is critical for you as an institution to ensure that your noncredit student services, which they have specific MIS data elements to report noncredit student services. So what does that look like? A non-credit orientation, a non-credit ed plan for our students, or a non-credit assessment, which we already know the adult education assessment file has already been implemented in MIS. 

So being able to capture that whole piece is going to help you tell the story of-- and this is what we track locally. Just like credit, when our students are enrolling in these pathways of CTE and ESL and they receive a non-credit educational plan, we know they have higher success rates. We know they complete at higher rates. We know they transition and have higher rates of success in that next class. 

And so it's really critical that we just don't only capture that piece of the academic and they enrolled in that class. But we also have to pick up on what are the student services, and now we have those data elements to report on that are truly supporting our non-credit students in those pathways that we are carving out for them. 

UTE MASCHKE: Alejandro brought up a good point. There's a little bit of conversation about the benefits, credits, high school diploma. So I just wanted to chime in and reemphasize, yes. 

So a student who takes college courses when we meet with them to decide which courses to take, the conversation is usually about, where are you at in your high school diploma completion? What are your short-term and long-term goals? And then we'll figure out how fast or slowly the student wants to move forward. And then next step, we figure out which college courses benefit those goals. 

So a student can take, for example, general ed English at a college and thereby knock out 10 units towards the high school diploma completion. They can. That's a conversation you will have to have with your high school district. What exactly the number of units is. What is the equivalent for three college credits, for example, at the high school level? 

When it works really well, the student can do three things at once. They earn college credits that also count towards high school diploma completion. They knock out general ed course requirements. And they might also get a career training, a CTE certificate. That's the ideal case scenario. 

Many students cannot take that many courses because they are adult school students or noncredit and credit-level college students. But there are these sweet moments where a student can complete prerequisites, for example, toward nursing, work towards the high school diploma completion, and also get a certificate. That's the most beautiful way this can develop, especially for students who might not have residency status or are undocumented. 

Because as you saw in the very beginning, SB 554 serves all adult learners who are enrolled in a high school diploma or a currency program. And that's it. That's the only condition. So that's Alejandro where it's not enhanced, but it counts towards many goals. 

LISA MEDNICK TAKAMI: I've seen a number of questions, comments in the chat, wonderings about this and that. So this is a time to really come off of mute and either ask a direct question or just a query or wondering about a best practice. 

We've shared a lot of content, but we definitely have left time this morning for discussion, so please do feel free to come off of mic at this point and ask a question or however would help you as you're looking at ADE, either to start or where you are currently. Hey, Rick. 

AUDIENCE: Hi. Good morning. Thanks for all this great information in one place. This is one of those things I feel like I have to see a bunch of times to figure out how it actually overlays with our shenanigans in the South Bay, I know you shared a bunch of resources about MOUs and also data sharing and also the data resource, but I was wondering one of two things. 

Either, UTE, in the example you shared how you have it set up. Where you're operating, is the MOU about Adult Dual Enrollment? Does it contain the data agreement component in that same document? Yeah? 

UTE MASCHKE: Yes. 

AUDIENCE: OK, yeah. I just wanted to know if we could get two birds there. And then, two, I've been tracking all the links and trying to paste them in my notes, but it was there one in particular that had a suggestion about the specifics of the data sharing infrastructure, or is that something that you can infer from looking through some of the resources and putting your own thing together? 

UTE MASCHKE: Definitely, you can infer, I think the brief, the first link we shared on resources, has some direct links and examples for that. For the data sharing, the MOU, theoretically, each consortium already has an MOU with your partners within the consortium. 

And since each consortium has adult schools and colleges, theoretically, data sharing is in place already. However, for the benefit of the strength and the success of ADE programs, it's very helpful to have a specific MOU and data sharing agreement just for this program. It helps all stakeholders and participants to be on the same page. 

It serves as an excellent reference material when, say, in enrollment or admissions and records a person leaves and a new person comes on board. Here's your quick guide to ADE. So I would highly recommend having a separate MOU with a data-sharing agreement being part of it. 

AUDIENCE: Awesome, thank you. 

LISA MEDNICK TAKAMI: Go ahead. Is it Renu? 

AUDIENCE: Yes. I just wanted to chime in. I'm a transitional counselor at Mt. SAC. This program is very close to my heart because during pandemic, we started this implementation in Mt. SAC because of our great leader, Madeline. We only had two students at that time who could have benefited out of this program. 

And at that time, we just heard about this program, and I reached out to Madeline. At that time, there were only two students, remember that? She thought those two students could benefit out of this program. And we started our journey in Mt. SAC. 

And today, we have hundreds of students who are enrolled in this program. This program is probably one of the best programs for students who do not have any other way of establishing residency. This is a pathway for them. 

We have a wonderful success story. We were just mentioning about how students get into this program, not only get their high school diploma, they get into college. Not only they get into college, they get into one of the most rigorous program on our campus, the RN nursing program. We have a student who just started the program. 

So these students have dreams. These students have so many barriers. But if counselors can sit with a student, get to know the student, get to know the barriers, and if the counselor knows the resources, they can connect the student with these programs. So if you don't have this program on your campus, your students are missing out a lot, what they can benefit out of it. Mt. SAC is a prime example. 

We have a wonderful program. And students are just-- I mean, it's a lot for a counselor because there's a lot of case management that goes with it, where we're talking about case management trainings. When we're counselors, we also become case managers too because we need to know students history students stories to connect them. 

So if you have a heart and eagerness to learn about these programs, I think you can make a very successful program at your college. So I just want to chime in a few words about how great this program is. 

UTE MASCHKE: Thank you for this awesome endorsement. I couldn't agree more. Absolutely, this is such an exciting program. It's such a unique and amazing opportunity for our students and to support our students. The enrollment in this program has no limit. There's no set time frame, how many semesters, month, years the student can participate in it. 

Of course, the spirit and vision is that to accelerate high school diploma completion. However, and this is also a support structure for our students who otherwise would not have any access to college-level work, to college resources, to high school diploma completion while being enrolled in a college. So absolutely. 

And it is an additional and significant addition as such to other mechanisms we already have. There is a traditional concurrent enrollment, co-enrollment, that has always been an option. There has always been the option that a college offers non-credit classes at an adult school and finds out what is the best course to offer at an adult school. 

Adult Dual Enrollment is that icing on the cake that opens up more doors for our students. It allows the student to decide which courses they want to take. It gives the agency to the student. Of course, we want to support them. Of course, we want them to have navigational skills to select the courses that benefit them most. 

LISA MEDNICK TAKAMI: Renu, I will echo Ute's sentiments in thanking you for elevating the work at Mt. SAC, as Ute's has been sharing the work from the consortium in her area. And I did see in the chat a number of questions around-- Dulce mentioned student services. We've talked about counseling. We've talked about case management. 

So we still have some time if anyone else wants to come off mute and share how you are taking care of that counseling/student service/case management approach ultimately for the success of our students, especially our undocumented students. I heard that mentioned. We are in a moment where that is absolutely critical. 

And what Ute said, that there's no limit on how long students can do this with huge, potentially huge payoffs. So would anyone else like to come off of mute and share what they may be doing? 

AUDIENCE: I can share a little bit. 

LISA MEDNICK TAKAMI: Good. Thanks, Arlene. 

AUDIENCE: Hi, everyone. I'm from Redlands Adult School. So I've had the privilege of working as a Redlands adult school counselor full time. But I'm also transitioning. I transitioned into being a Crafton Hills Community College transition counselor for Redlands Adult School. 

Now I moved from being full-time adult school, now I'm half-time adult school and half a transition counselor for Crafton Hills Community College for the adult school. So I have the benefit of being in both worlds. 

But before that, I would work very closely-- like we built a very strong partnership with our local community colleges, both Valley College and Crafton. And so because we have that close connection with our community college, if our community college counselor couldn't help a student or follow up with a student because of time constraints, then we would jump in and support that student with whatever they needed since they were on our campus as well. 

So whether it was completing college applications, financial aid, the dual enrollment process, we work very closely as a team to support that student. So we're kind of always in the know as the adult school counselor and always in the know as the community college counselor. 

Now that I've transitioned into being half and half, I've been able to really seamlessly check in on the students as both their adult school counselor and as their community college transition counselor. So I have access to both databases. 

So if you can have that position or have that partnership with the college where you have a counselor that plays that halftime time role, it breaks away that barrier of being able to access data because I have access to the college data system and my adult school ASAP data system. And I'm able to connect with the teachers and the campus very seamlessly. 

But when you look at the kind of actual what I'm doing day to day is once I get a student enrolled into a dual enrollment class, I do follow-up appointments. So as soon as I enroll them, I don't just leave them. And I let them know that. I'm not just going to enroll you in a class, and that's it. You're off to college on your own. I let them know I'm going to follow up with you. I'm going to check in with you. 

Even if you don't need me in two weeks, we're still going to meet to see if you have any questions. And if you don't, great, beautiful, I'm happy you're doing great. If you do, I'm going to help you navigate the online Canvas system so you know what you're doing. And we're going to check in a week before classes so that way, you know what to look out for. 

I'm kind of explaining what a syllabus is because I think those are all things that we take for granted when we think back when we were first college students. We were like, OK, what is this big document? So I preview what that first day is going to look like for them. So that way, it's not a shock wave. 

And I let them know if there's anything confusing, come see me right away. I'm here with you. Like you're not bothering me. Even if we're meeting every week, that is OK. I'm here to support you 100% 

So making sure I'm doing those check-ins with them and also constantly keeping them updated with dates and deadlines because the dual enrollment application is done every semester. So making sure they're aware of those processes and consistently sending that information out to them to make sure they're supported. Yeah. 

UTE MASCHKE: Thank you, Arlene. That's a great approach. I can feel already some of us thinking, well, yeah, but that's a huge investment. I don't have the staff. Where's this coming from? It's certainly a consideration. 

Some of our consortia also have created an Adult Dual Enrollment team, where in the case management approach, we meet monthly and review all students or groups of students in the program. So there's a monthly check-in in as a team. And there's also a monthly check-in with each student. At the beginning of the semester, it's actually every week with a student for precisely the reasons, Arlene, you pointed out. 

Many of our consortia actually do enroll on a rolling basis all throughout, not just at the beginning of a semester or so because it allows us to prepare students for the college work that's ahead of them. Renu, yeah. 

AUDIENCE: Yes, I just wanted to add one more thing to it. If your campus do have a DREAM program on campus like Mt. SAC does have it, collaboration with the DREAM program is the most essential connection you can make on campus for student support because we can help them. 

When our students come, they come from all lives. They have asylum cases. We have refugee cases, nonresidents, undocumented, to make sure this is the right fit for the student. And we also have to talk to the DREAM program because that's where the students are going to get additional support once they are on campus. 

So having the collaboration with the DREAM program-- I, on daily basis, talk to the DREAM staff because I have a lot of questions sometimes. I don't have all the answers. But when a student is sitting at your desk, we want to make sure that we answer students' questions. If that means we have to call to the DREAM program and connect with them, that's the support the student needs. 

So when the transition does happen, they're not lost on campus. They have me always here or somebody who's in the ASAP program-- we call it ASAP at Mt. SAC, or they have somebody at the Dream program. So we work very closely with our students who are part of this program with the DREAM program. So just to chime in about the DREAM program if you have one on campus. 

LISA MEDNICK TAKAMI: Perfect. Very helpful, Renu. We appreciate that. And Arlene, thank you for sharing a model. Part of the community of practice and, of course, the webinar today is to share-- excuse me-- best practices and models. That's what we're collecting. Andrew. 

AUDIENCE: Sorry, I had to think twice. I go by Luke, but I didn't update my Zoom, so my bad. 

LISA MEDNICK TAKAMI: Sorry. 

AUDIENCE: Yeah, I hope everyone's doing well on this Friday. Just quick question, I'm from the San Diego Community College District, so we have City, Mesa, and Miramar, College of Continuing Education. I appreciate all the information. 

Just looking at a practical lens, how do folks navigate the outside of obviously like the $46 per unit fee for credit courses? How are we navigating the health fee, rep fee, books? I know we talked about OER is something. Let's push students to those Open Educational Resource sections. We know those fill extremely fast. 

How are we navigating the textbook, enrollment fee, or the course material costs? I know we talked a little bit about the foundation but maybe some real-world examples of how we're navigating that. 

I think we had one we had one institution that started diving in. We get students with holds for the health and rep fee. That's a real thing that we're seeing right now. And then there's, obviously, the barrier students jumping into courses, because the textbook fee, because they're not enrolling at the best time possible. We all know that. So any real world examples of what you all are doing with the getting those things covered. 

UTE MASCHKE: So foundations are a real world example. Very real. There are two or three consortia we know of that already established a special donation fund, a fund only for that enrollment programs, where as soon as students are enrolled the enrollment office flags them, there's a notification for our foundation, which then kicks in and covers the fees for our students. It's a conversation. If you have one on your campus, your putting campus police because they can also waive fees under certain conditions. 

It's also a conversation you want to bring, when you can, to your president, vice presidents, because they can also negotiate fee waivers with their governing board. The governing board can make that decision when they understand how valuable this program is. And the textbook cost, material fees, also, because as you might need welding equipment, a helmet, or a calculator for engineering, or a laptop even. There's also this crucial moment in the case management where we, early on, look at the right courses for the student. 

Don't choose the one with the textbook. Let's try to find the option that is either online or has a zero textbook option. So that is a lot of nuanced one on one work also with the student. And the adult schools also are willing to help. Sometimes the adult schools actually have some funding and some wiggle room to support students in certain ways. There's EOPS for gas cards sometimes. So really, it takes this network. But for what feedback we've gotten from the state, foundations can play a wonderful and crucial role in this. 

LISA MEDNICK TAKAMI: Wonderful. Thank you. Thank you, Luke, for asking the question, and Ute, for responding. Here's an interesting question from Lincer Lopez. Do you all have dual enrollment courses predetermined? It sounds like to me that they register for whichever college class, depending on their academic goals. I always thought it had to be a dual enrollment class with only ADE students. I would appreciate any clarification. 

UTE MASCHKE: Yes. A common question. The SB 554 provides the legal foundation that tells us a student can select, can get, can select courses up to 11 units, except for PE. It's their choice. It's their choice. It's their goals that determine this conversation. Now, of course, we want to help them to make an informed decision. So in the case management approach, these initial meetings with students want to center the conversation on, where are you at? What's your foundation? What's your high school diploma? What's your life responsibilities? Now let's look at courses and how they must benefit your goals. 

Are there prereqs for a course? So let's figure that out together. But then it has and can be the student's choice. Traditional dual enrollment, high school dual enrollment does work with this cohort model. But the beauty of that dual enrollment is that it allows us to support a student in exploring college in all its depth and breadth. 

LISA MEDNICK TAKAMI: Wonderful. Let's see. For experience ADE programs-- this is a question from Katie-- how many students do you have participating? How have you grown with numbers over the years? So we talked about the importance of the student support, case management, counseling component. What about growth? So I see that Heather from San Joaquin Delta talked about, they've had some growth. So Heather, if you want to talk about-- come off and talk about that growth, or if anybody else would like to talk about how growth has been developed over time. 

And By growth, we mean successful growth because we want those students when they're transitioning to be as successful in the credit courses as they were in the non-credit. So Heather or anybody else want to share on that? 

HEATHER MALOY: Sure. Hi there. Heather Maloy, San Joaquin Delta College. I really greatly appreciate-- I can't remember who was just speaking from SAC in regards to the importance of SB 554. I know it is something that is near and dear to my heart, as well as I see it as a means of-- it allows many of our students that would never have a chance before to attend college and to really give them that opportunity, especially those that are non-resident or undocumented. 

So I just wanted to say that. I wanted to hear others in the room, what they're doing. You don't need to hear me in the room again talking about all the things. But yeah, we've definitely seen a lot of growth over time. We also had implemented SB 554 in the heart of the pandemic. And maybe that was a good thing. Maybe it was a bad thing. But I know we've had some growing pains, is that we've actually have seen such an increase in growth that I've had to hire more staff. 

It's not a huge growth, but it's a growth for me. I think I wrote-- I can't remember if I had 386 students currently. But I think it's really important is, I think what we have found out within the last few years that we have implemented, it's really important to have those touch base meetings with your adult schools and having those strategic calls with the team and just saying, OK, here are the students. Really evaluating how we're designing this process, too. 

Because I'll be honest, when I first designed it, it was like, all right, let's open the floodgates. But then over time, when you self-evaluate, you're like, OK, what are some other supportive services that we need to be doing? What are the different elements? So we've also, especially when it comes to data, too, looking at their success and retention. I will say that currently the students that have gone through the SB 554 and dart program have about a 30% to 40% success rate compared to our average college student at San Joaquin Delta College. 

And so that's something that I celebrate. Definitely have to get creative and do a lot of politicking, or should I say, networking. I'll say that, in the sense of being that advocate internally in, and even externally and sharing how important SB 554 is to really gives the students the opportunity to be able to take college classes. Currently, right now, we have a student that's attending Tracy Adult, and he is working on his high school diploma. He is from Fiji and he's utilizing SB 554. 

Currently, the student is actually on track to graduate this year with his high school diploma, his AA, and will be transferring to a four-year university. So that's something that SB 554 is something that's an accelerator for our students. It's not just for those 11 units, but this is something that's ongoing. 

LISA MEDNICK TAKAMI: That's great. Heather, thank you for sharing a success story. I also saw on the chat when we were talking about different support agencies within and without. So we talked about the Dream programs. We talked about EOPS, and then I saw someone mentioned CalWORKs as an additional support. We have just a few minutes left. Ute, if I could ask you to go back to the CC TAP listserv slide. So if there's anyone who may be new to our CAEP ecosystem, we encourage you to subscribe to our CC TAP listserv. 

This, along with the CAEP newsletter, are the vehicles for the CAEP TAP office to take in your requests and promote different PDs that are coming your way. And then if we could go ahead to the survey slide, and please provide your feedback on today's webinar. We want to thank everybody for joining us today. And while you're filling out the webinar survey of the QR code, we do want to just see if there's anybody else who may have either a burning question or a best practice that they may want to share. 

AUDIENCE: I have a question. How much? And I guess, how much of a decision maker-- because I know when we're doing a dual enrollment, it's an agreement between the college and the adult school-- the adult school site. Now, one thing that we are facing in our area is, one of the adult schools-- and I know that the legislation says it's a recommendation from the adult school, but they're giving us really strict hard lines as to, if a student doesn't meet this requirement, we won't sign for their dual enrollment. Is there something that-- I don't know. Any words of advice or anything that maybe I can take back to that adult school site? 

UTE MASCHKE: Very good point. Yes. I think we all run into this challenge. One case, of course, if you could pull in an example from Heather, for example, and showcase how successful this program is, even and especially for students who some teachers thought were not ready. Here in our region, one of my consortia, they developed a rubric to evaluate the students' readiness across their adult schools and the college, to have a more or less objective tool to gauge the students' readiness. 

That tool has some shared criteria for time management skills, goal setting, understanding the demands this program might have. And each of the students who shows interest in this program meets with a transition specialist, a counselor for an interview. And the rubric is then used to gauge the student's readiness. Developing this rubric took a moment, but that's how we got buy-in. And teachers did come along because they accepted that this rubric is an objective tool. 

There is this sort of gray area when, say, one of us says, no, not at all ready, give them one point, and the other one says five points, totally ready. Well, we also pull in CASAS scores. The CASAS scores are just one element of this, because data show us that students might score, quote unquote, lower on classes, but still perform really well in college courses. That's where motivation comes in. The intrinsic motivation is a huge factor here. A student who never thought about high school diploma as something they ever wanted to do because school is the last thing they ever want to do again. 

The combination of having access to college courses now, meeting other students their age at a college campus, kicked them into gear and motivated them. So the rubric as an objective tool helped us there. Some of our consortia also built it out a bit more. They developed a prompt for students that students have to write a short paragraph to respond to a prompt that gauges their readiness for this program. It's an additional tool that also allows you a little bit better of an understanding of what the writing skills are that we still want to see for college students. 

LISA MEDNICK TAKAMI: Terrific. So we've gotten several requests, Ute, for that readiness tool. The readiness rubric. Excuse me. If it can be shared, we will share that out in Resources. We want to thank everyone for joining us this morning for a really great discussion and an important topic. We will be following up. Everything will be posted on the Cal Delta website following remediation. You do know of the webinar survey, and we'll go to the last slide, which should have contact information. There we go. 

Please do fill out our voices from the field. So if you have-- thank you, Ute. If you have interest or expertise in adult dual enrollment, this is a great way for us to contact you. I think Chandni kindly put the QR code in the chat if you're interested in joining the community of practice. If you didn't see that, you can also reach out to us directly. We welcome your participation in the community practice. 

And we wish everyone a great rest of the day and a wonderful weekend. Thank you so much. 

UTE MASCHKE: Thank you all. 

HEATHER MALOY: Awesome job. Thank you. 

PRESENTER: Thank you guys. You guys did amazing. A lot of great information.