[AUDIO LOGO] NARRATOR: OTAN, Outreach and Technical Assistance Network. 

LISET CAUDILLO: Hello, everyone. We are the lucky team that gets to go right after Long Beach. I just had to say that. No, I'm just kidding. I'm Liset Caudillo, and my team member is Maria Pinedo. And we're going to be presenting on our non-profit organization, Proteus Inc. We work under the Education Division, which is also named the William Maguy School of Education. 

So a brief overview about Proteus. Bear with me. I usually have to take a deep breath when I talk about Proteus because it's a lot that we do. So basically, Proteus was started in 1967. We are located in the Central Valley of California, and we serve four county areas-- Tulare, Fresno, Kings, and Kern counties. And we operate a lot of different programs. 

Right now, we have about 37 programs that we administer throughout our counties, where we have about 17 offices as well. You're not going to find a big building of Proteus. What you're going to find is a lot of small offices and service centers located throughout all four counties where we do our services. And within Proteus, the way we are organized is that we have four divisions. And we put all our programs within these four divisions. 

We have our Farmworker Program Division, and we have several programs where we offer job placement assistance, emergency services, training services. We offer heat and pesticide and safety training. And our Farmworker Division also takes the lead in the communities to be active on immigrant rights and farmworker rights. 

We also have our Energy Division, which we have programs through the local utility companies and where we do refrigerator replacements, HVAC, unit replacements, weatherization of windows and doors, and so forth. And then we have our-- it has a new name-- our Community and Workforce Development Division-- where we have grants through our local workforce connection agencies. 

And we offer the same job placement assistance to them. We have job placement assistant assistance programs as well, and we oversee a couple of youth centers where we do youth activities. And of course, then we have our Education Division, our small little Education Division, where we have our academic classes, the ESL, citizenship, and high school equivalency. 

And we have our Career Technical Training Programs in truck driving, our Seed Program, and our forklift certification. And we also currently do financial literacy workshops. And we're, right now, working with other area nonprofits offering Spanish digital literacy workshops in our communities. And so those participants are a combination of our students and other community participants that participate in our other programs. 

MARIA PINEDO: Proteus has a mission statement, but we also go by the William Maguy School of Education mission statement. But basically, it's to provide education, workplace training, job placement, and other support services, primarily to farm-working families and diverse program participants to empower them to achieve self-sufficiency. The William Maguy School of Education mission statement goes a little further to say that we want to provide quality education through career and technical hands-on training and academic instruction that's going to empower our students to obtain those marketable skills that they need to lead them to employment and self-sufficiency. 

LISET CAUDILLO: I wanted to give you a quick visual about what we do. Before I show this video, I just want to briefly mention that-- I believe it was in around 1998 when we were going through our WASC accreditation. Our visiting team suggested to us to give our Education Division a formal school name so that we can start establishing our identity within the community. 

And so I know we have a really long name, but we were named after the first CEO of Proteus, Mr. William Maguy. And this video, it's a little outdated. It was filmed in January by our CEO, but I wanted to show it. It's just 2 minutes, because it gives you a picture, a visual of what Proteus offers. 

MICHELLE ENGEL-SILVA: Hi, everyone. I'm Michelle Engel-Silva, Proteus CEO. And before we move into the new year, I just want to take a moment to reflect the incredible work Proteus did in 2024. Last year, we were honored to serve hundreds of customers through our vocational training, employment, and placement services, academic classes, and our energy-efficient initiatives. We were able to empower others and change lives. 

When our customers faced financial challenges, we were there with support services to help them navigate tough times. But we couldn't have been able to do any of this without the support of our customers, employees, and partners. To our customers, we thank you. You are the heart of our mission. Your strength and determination inspires us every single day. 

In 2025, we will continue to be a trustworthy resource. We want you to come to us with questions and to seek services. We promise to walk alongside you to help you achieve your dreams and goals. To our incredible employees, thank you for your dedication and passion to serve others. It is our hard work and commitment that creates the caring and supportive environment our customers need, so they are willing to take risks and be successful. 

Together, you have all made a difference and accomplished so much. I am very proud to be part of this incredible Proteus team. To our valued partners, thank you for trusting us and collaborating with us. Your partnership enhances our impact, helping us create meaningful changes in big ways. We look forward to strengthening these relationships and building new partnerships in 2025. 

At Proteus, we strive to empower individuals to become self-sufficient and enhance the well-being of the communities we serve. Thanks to all of you. Proteus was successful in 2024 and meeting the school. As we step into the new year, Proteus promises to focus on providing excellent customer service, staying flexible in the face of change, continuously improving, and creating new opportunities to serve more individuals. In 2025, I'm so excited to see what opportunities we have. I'm so excited to see how many lives we will be able to change. Thank you, and I wish you all a Happy New Year. 

LISET CAUDILLO: And just a couple of quick slides. These are our locations. This is the offices we have in Tulare County. We're heavy agricultural area. If you haven't passed by there, Fresno County, Kern County, and Kings County. And this is our board members. We have a combination of private and public sector board members. Plus we have representation of low-income communities. And on the right side is our corporate officers, our CEO, our director of operations, our financial director, and our director of human resources. 

MARIA PINEDO: Like Liset had mentioned earlier, our school is relatively small. We have currently 391 CTE students that have gone through our program or are enrolled for our academic courses. Our ESL count has been 33, citizenship, 56, and high school equivalency, 41, for 130 students. So we're looking at over 500 students a year in our programs. Oops, I'm going backwards. So sorry. There we go. Yeah. 

These are just some of our program flyers we're going to go through quickly. And the way we advertise our academic classes. And those are found on our website for students to easily identify if they go in there, what's available to them. 

LISET CAUDILLO: So our DLAC team. So originally, we started with three. And right when we were going to start, we lost one of our team members. She left Proteus. So we try to recruit for a third one, but we had no takers. So it ended up being Maria Pinedo. She's our ESL citizenship instructor. And it's me. I'm assistant director of Education. And our extended member is our Director of Education, Maria Reveles. 

But I also wanted to point out our additional support because we do have a lot of support within Proteus. It's something we've been wanting to do for years, but everybody, it's a funding issue for us. And we didn't have enough technology to be able to explore other avenues until now a little bit. But I did want to acknowledge our CEO, Michelle Engel-Silva, our operations director, Shawna Rodriguez, and Randy Espinoza. She's like their right hand. So she's always involved in our stuff, and of course, our IT director, Cory Brooks. 

MARIA PINEDO: Despite how small we are, despite there's only two of us, we still have managed to accomplish a lot of things. We have developed our technology plan with an implementation plan. We have signed our Canvas access agreement with OTAN. Yay! Finally, that was a long process, but we finally made it. 

For CASAS testing, we've completed the proctor and coordinator online trainings. And we've submitted the agreement with CASAS. We have two rooms set up for HiSET GED Testing with online proctors. One room is in our Porterville office. Porterville, our neighbor. And we have one set up in Dinuba-- the site where I'm employed at. 

Setbacks. We've had a few of them since starting our program. Our biggest one is that our admissions and testing coordinator. She's been out for several months due to some medical issues and surgeries. And so it's delayed-- our online classes training for e-testing. But she should be back by Monday. And so we're hoping to get back on track and be ready to jump into it here real soon. 

LISET CAUDILLO: Yeah, so we're going to have a very busy summer. And next steps, one of the blessings we got this year while we're going through DLAC is that we received a little bit of funding. And maybe it's huge for us. But for others, it could be not a big deal. But we did get received an award a $50,000 grant to purchase nothing but technology equipment. Yay for us. 

And so right now, we have our IT director busy purchasing a lot of laptops, owls. I believe we're getting a big TV that we're putting on a rolling car and just a lot of goodies that way. So we're wanting to have it all set up for our new school year. And that's what I mean we'll have a busy summer because now we have to get all the teachers and support staff trained to do e-testing. 

And then we're going to get our Canvas training going. We'll be setting up a training with OTAN to come out to our site this summer to start training our instructors on using Canvas. And I don't think we've mentioned it here yet, but we are exploring Northstar as well. And our neighbors here they're right next door that are going to help us with that. No. But yeah, so that's what we have as far as next steps. 

So other areas of importance and relevance. So what we also see that we'll be doing is-- so now with our new technology, we're probably going to make some changes and an adaptations to orientation and admissions process using more of our technology. And of course, we're going to have to increase our student assessments. 

With all this new technology, we really want to measure how effective, what kind of an impact this new technology is on our students learning process. Are they getting to test for their high school equivalency a lot sooner and things like that? And support needed. Just continued support. Again, I also we want to acknowledge our amazing coach, Yesenia. 

Thank you very much. She's been a very helpful. So we look forward to having her continued support and also from the amazing OTAN staff. Oops. And because we're going to be doing e-testing now, I also anticipate having to touch bases with CASAS for some support. 

This is just a couple of random pictures of staff there. We wanted to put our altar there because our Porterville location has area, and they're always celebrating over there. So they build an altar, or they decorate for September 15 or 16th or something. And they have fun. And I just wanted to briefly mention we didn't put a slide in here. 

But we did want to mention on how we've learned a lot through going through DLAC and learning on team building and communication and whatnot. We did things strategically when we chose our team. We already knew each other very well and stuff, but we've learned to also be alert to other things. I know for me personally, I've identified things that I need to work on. 

I jump to conclusions a little too quickly, or trying to be not too judgmental and little things like that. So they've been a really good experience to learn from. And in summary, we're just going to continue working on our plan and tweaking it when it needs to be tweaked. And our overall goal is for our students to achieve their educational goal, obviously, with Proteus. 

But we also hope to empower them with more technological skills that they'll be able to take with them. And we hope that they go into higher education and use those skills, or whether they go into employment. Again, they could use those skills or in the community and just work with their kids and whatnot. So that is our ultimate goal. And any final thoughts, Maria? 

This is a picture of our-- so one of our workshops for digital literacy in Fresno. The students got refurbished laptops. So that was just a picture of them. That was nice. 

MARIA PINEDO: Yeah. 

LISET CAUDILLO: Anything else? 

MARIA PINEDO: I just want to say how grateful we are to be here. I don't think I ever saw us being a part of something like this. So yeah. Thank you. 

AUDIENCE: It was a big asset for Proteus to be able to be a part of it. 

[APPLAUSE] 

LISET CAUDILLO: As Proteus, we are very, very thankful that the DLAC program exists because you don't know how much you helped us fast-track this technology plan and concept for us, and ultimately to benefit our customers. And that's what matters right there. So thank you. Thank you. 

[APPLAUSE] 

MODERATOR: Thank you, Proteus. We are opening the floor for questions. And we have a few over here. Let's start with Rachel. 

AUDIENCE: With the different sites that you guys have, do you offer all of the classes that you advertised online? Are they offered at all of your sites, or is it site specific? 

LISET CAUDILLO: Our classes are not at every site, but they are scattered. We have some in Fresno County. And we used to have one in Kern County. So we do have to travel. It does present its challenges when we have to do that, but we're able to navigate that. So yes. But not at every single site, but yes at some of them. 

AUDIENCE: Hi. Great presentation. There's a lot of really good information. Thank you. What I wanted to ask you was-- you said that you're pretty relatively a small school, right? 

LISET CAUDILLO: Mm-hmm. 

AUDIENCE: What are your challenges as far as marketing your school? And how do you guys do that? 

LISET CAUDILLO: I would say one of our challenges is that we're under the Proteus umbrella, which is what's mainly known out in the community. And so a lot of times, we'll get, oh, you guys are a temp agency. No, we're not. But we do offer employment services to customers. So a little bit of challenge in that. But at the same time, it's a benefit. 

So as far as outreach, we do a lot of the usual things that Proteus does. So we've got a marketing team. We work with a lot of local agencies because we've always had to do that. And so we network to them, and we outreach with them. And somebody else mentioned, and I'm sure all of that word of mouth. That word of mouth brings them in all the time. Yeah. 

But funding is our biggest barrier because we're not part of a public system. We don't get public funds. We're considered a private school, and we are overseen by the Bureau for Post-Secondary Education. So we are monitored. They're not even under California Department of Education. It's under the California Department of Consumer Affairs. So you don't want to-- yeah. 

MODERATOR: Other questions? So Carlos, Todd, and then Anthony. 

AUDIENCE: I just had one more. So being a CTE guy, I love the ones that you guys have the forklift and the truck driving one. They're huge skills. Do you guys know if they're planning on expanding your CTE programs? 

LISET CAUDILLO: We would love to. Our biggest problem is funding. Because again, we're not part of the public system, so we don't have any kind of big accounts to be able to purchase the equipment. That's where we get stuck on. What they want us to do is identify trainings that are in demand. Well, a of those in-demand jobs are things that are very expensive. 

We would love to start a welding program, but logistically, we can't afford it. Again, the funding barriers are always our problem, so. We do. We look for other opportunities, but the funding is always a challenge for us. 

AUDIENCE: One thing. I mean, even though those are opportunities for you, but you are partners for consortiums that are CAPE consortiums. So I think that could be one area in which you can partner with others in your consortium, which I know you already do with Porterville Adult School, so that's great. Todd. 

My question, I think, is a spin-off from the first one. I'm just trying to understand the scope. It looked like more than a dozen locations, several counties. So is the implementation of your program, does it expand through all of those, or are you concentrated in one location for this project? 

LISET CAUDILLO: Oh, for the project, no. It's going to cover all our school locations. So the majority of our classes are in Tulare County, but we do have some in Fresno County. Our Kings County location is not far away, so that helps. And then we've had classes before in Kern County. So anything we implement for the school, it's going to be at all our school sites. 

So we're not necessarily in every office, but we have several in different counties, so. Yeah. So when we get visited or when we get WASC visit, it's always a challenge because we have to spread out a lot of teams to get the visiting committee members to see. They have to see every single site. Yeah, we're not in just one location. So it's a blessing, but it's also a challenge. We like to be out in the communities where our customers are. 

AUDIENCE: Yeah. And then for all of your classes, but the CTE classes, are those concentrated in one space? 

LISET CAUDILLO: Those are. 

AUDIENCE: That everybody has to come to? 

LISET CAUDILLO: Yeah. We've had truck driving. For example, we had truck driving in Fresno County, but there's a lot of schools over there. The competition was too. And there's a lot of politics down there with their workforce development agencies that we ended up closing that one down. Well, right now they're all in Visalia, on our main campus. 

AUDIENCE: Wow. Thank you. 

LISET CAUDILLO: Thank you. I apologize. Just for time purposes, I have to speedy up stuff. 

MODERATOR: That's no problem. Last question over here. 

AUDIENCE: Yeah, just following up on the geographical challenges that you face across the four counties and all the s sites. So all of this new technology is showing up like, boom! Just at once. So I'm just curious. What are your feelings about? Do you feel overwhelmed? Do you feel like, oh my god, now we have to use all this stuff. And maybe also within Proteus itself, how do you all feel about all of a sudden this technology just showing up at your doorstep? 

LISET CAUDILLO: One, it's just the Proteus way. We just get thrown. We get thrown into things, and here you go. Figure it out. No, I've worked for Proteus for about 20 years, and so I'm used to the surprises that way. And so, yes, it is nerve wracking. Like I was sharing with Maria, I'm a little nervous because it's like everything is coming in all s once. 

But then again, going through this process, everything slowly starts to feel easier. Like, oh, it's not as complicated as I thought it was. So I think our biggest challenge is s to be teaching our teachers that Canvas or any of the software systems out there. That's going to be our biggest challenge. But just some of the basics, getting the technology, the computers in there. That's exciting. I'm looking forward to that. So yeah. 

MODERATOR: Amazing. Isn't it amazing to see how we offer programs in so many shapes and sizes throughout our state? Amazing work. Thank you so much, Proteus. Great job. 

[APPLAUSE]