JOY LEWIS: Great. Thank you. I'm Joy Lewis from the WestEd team, and I just wanted to say welcome to everyone to this ELL Health Pathways Community of Practice. We're thrilled to have you all here. I think some more people will be popping in, but we wanted to just get started. So if you haven't done so and you don't mind, please share your name and your role and your consortium or institution in the chat as we're getting started. 

And then just real quick introductions. WestEd team is here. Many of you know Megan McBride, Debi Pezzuto. John Brauer is not able to be here today, and myself. And we have also our collaborators on this project with IRC. And Petti is here, and Amber Shevin is also here. So welcome to them. And you'll see them in the breakout rooms as well. 

So really quickly, our agenda is just to run through our agenda and norms really quick. We're going to then turn it over to Sabrina Lopez, who's going to share a little bit about apprenticeships in the state. And then we're going to jump right into a little background on the topic for just a few minutes before getting into the meat of this conversation, where we get to learn and hear from our three grantee presenters, and we'll be doing that in breakout rooms. And then we'll have a really brief discussion at the end and takeaways, and then we'll talk about our next steps. 

Just a reminder of this group's norms that we've discussed, and we share every time, we're hoping most can keep cameras on and be engaged. And one of the reasons we're doing the breakout rooms is to be able to really have smaller group discussions. So throughout the time together today, you'll be able to hear from all three of them. 

They'll rotate across the three rooms, so for about 15 to 20 minutes, we'll be in the rooms and for each one. So you'll get to hear about all three, and you won't be missing out on anything while you're in those rooms. And I'm going to turn it over to Debi real quick for an overview of what we're doing. 

DEBI PEZZUTO: Thanks, Joy. Sorry guys. I am getting over being sick, and now have a sinus infection, so I sound really good. Very jazz, Phoebe, if you ever watched Friends. Thank you for joining us all. And before we get started, I wanted to thank the Chancellor's Office, CAEP team, Gary Adams, Mayra Diaz, and Jennifer Yang, and the folks from CDE, Carolyn Zachry and Diana Batista, who support the Yale Health Pathways program. 

We'd also like to thank the Chancellor's Office Apprenticeship Program Lead Sabrina Lopez, who already mentioned, is joining us today, and we want to Thank the CAEP TAP team for always being there to help us and help you with all of your reporting questions when it comes to health care pathways. We are not your people for that. 

For the technical assistance timeline, we'd like to just show this at every event. We are smack dab in the middle of our project with the community of practice. We also have a virtual office hours. So Thank you for being here today, if it's your first time. If you've been with us for the other communities of practice, welcome back. We're glad to have you. We're going to have a lot of conversation today. All right. Joy, next slide. 

JOY LEWIS: Sure. 

DEBI PEZZUTO: All right. And so this is Dr. Sabrina Lopez, the Apprenticeship Program Lead at the Chancellor's Office. I'm going to turn it over to her to give us a good overview of how things are going with apprenticeships in California. 

SABRINA LOPEZ: Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you so much for having me today. So I did want to spend a few moments this afternoon to share a brief overview of the current state of apprenticeships in California, available funding and support structures that we have with the Chancellor's Office, and close out with some resources that we have available, so you may remain connected with our office. Next slide, please. 

So we have seen a growth in the apprenticeship registration at the California Community College level. And particularly, however, along with K-12 local educational agencies, we have seen a trend in expansion in apprenticeships and pre-apprenticeship opportunities throughout the state as well. The data on this slide reflects apprenticeship enrollment at the community college level, and is based on course and student coding. 

We have begun increasing our statewide guidance on appropriately coding pre-apprentices and apprentices using our specified data element. So this data might not include students who are previously miscoded in error. Our state chancellor has a strong growth target, so we are aiming to expand apprenticeship registration by at least 15% year over year, with the stretch goal of having apprenticeships take 10% of the overall community college enrollment, which currently serves 2.2 million students statewide. 

Next slide, please. So now shifting over to some funding that we have available to support apprenticeship and pre-apprenticeship programs, the California Apprenticeship Initiative, or CAI grant, plays a significant role in supporting the development and expansion of these programs throughout the state. This initiative focuses on supporting pathways within the non-traditional sector, so every trade outside of the building, construction, and fire trades would be eligible to receive funding if awarded. 

We recently closed our request for applications that awarded 25 grants across three different categories. We had an apprenticeship implementation and a pre-apprenticeship implementation grant. Category that could fund up to $1.5 million per grant for a total of 3 years. And we also had the third category, which is the apprenticeship expansion grant, which funds up to $1 million per grant for a total of 2 years. 

Eligible grantees include California community colleges, K-12 local educational agencies, and affiliated partners, such as community college districts, county offices of education, and so forth. Next slide, please. Another important funding source is Related and Supplemental Instruction or RSI funding. These funds help cover costs associated with the RSI courses, which are a required component of a registered apprenticeship program. 

The funding is supported through proposition 98 funds, and is divided between Schedule II funding for California community college systems and Schedule III funding for K-12 local educational agencies. It is important to note a few key requirements and limitations of RSI funding. Reporting through NOVA is mandatory in order to claim reimbursement. RSI funding cannot be used to support pre-apprenticeship programs, and it also might not fund-- or excuse me. May not fund on-the-job training wages. So it's only for RSI component of registered apprenticeship programs. Next slide, please. 

In addition to the funding opportunities that we administer through the Chancellor's Office, there are several technical assistance providers available to support apprenticeship program development and implementation. The Foundation for California Community Colleges offers guidance, documents, toolkits, virtual office hours, statewide training opportunities, and other ongoing support mechanisms through their apprenticeship support network. 

Another valuable partner that has contracted with the Chancellor's Office is the LAUNCH Apprenticeship Network, and they provide both statewide and regional support. Their services include assistance with apprenticeship and pre-apprenticeship programmatic development, contract education, coordination, as well as credit for prior learning coordination, employer engagement, infrastructure development, and sponsorship support. 

They also have a number of apprenticeship program standards that have been approved at both the federal and state levels, which may be adopted by colleges for a turn key program development system, giving oversight of curriculum still to the faculty and the college, and ensuring that remains a priority. Next slide, please. 

So to conclude, I wanted to share a few resources that may be helpful. We have virtual office hours every second and fourth Tuesday of the month from 2:00 to 3:00 PM, where you can drop in and ask any questions that you may have and feel free to join us. We also have a California Apprenticeship Initiative Learning Lab this June, which will be in the San Diego region, also open to K-12 local educational agencies in California community colleges. 

It's still pending final details, and we will have a registration link on our web page available to attend that. On the first day of the event, we will have an optional site visit, as we do want to ensure that we highlight programs rather than just hearing about them. We want to see students and the programs in action. So that will be a highlight available at that convening. Thank you so much for your time today. 

DEBI PEZZUTO: Thank you so much, Sabrina. That was like lightning round sustainability advice for apprenticeships. So we really appreciate it. We know, especially from round 3, 2 that sustainability is always on our mind, and when we're talking about apprenticeships today, they're not an easy model. We're going to walk through ways to build up apprenticeships and get some advice from folks that are doing it or struggling with it. 

And so sustainability is a big part of that. Thank you so much for your time today, Sabrina. We really appreciate you. All right. Let's go ahead to the next slide. Joy, we're going to jump right in to a very smooth quick overview of apprenticeships and apprenticeships. Registered apprenticeships and apprenticeships. Next slide. 

All right. So the US Department of Labor actual definition of an apprenticeship is industry-driven, high-quality career pathway where employers develop and prepare their future workforce and individuals obtain paid work experience, classroom instruction, and a portable, nationally-recognized credential. Where does adult ed fit into this? Go ahead on to the next slide. 

When we're talking about apprenticeships with adult education specifically in mind, there are components that are involved. There's a business involvement. We have to have partnership with a business in order to be a registered apprenticeship. We have to have structured On-the-Job Training or OJT, as if we didn't have enough acronyms with adult education, now we've got them for apprenticeships. Here we go. 

Then we also have Related Training and Instruction or RTI, tangible rewards for skills gains. This can look like promotions after they reach a certain point, wage increases, more responsibility at work, something like a paper certification. There's some real, tangible rewards that they're getting. And then the nationally recognized credentials at the end or completion of the apprenticeship program. 

And I added in, this is not what everybody else adds in, but I did, student outcomes tracking, because that's what one of our requirements are for health pathways. We need to be monitoring our students activity the whole time that they're in our programs, and follow up with them after they've completed. Go ahead to the next slide. 

With a registered apprenticeship, it needs to be structured. It's a talent development strategy. It's not just a training program. So we're working on the whole student, which is why it's so helpful when adult education programs work within an apprenticeship, because we can really work on that whole student. They're on-the-job learning, classroom instruction, and mentorship. We're training them to become experts in their field. 

These programs need to be approved and validated by the US Department of Labor and the California Division of Apprenticeship Standards, or DS, catch another acronym, and they need to build a regional talent pipeline. That's the intention here to open doors for our students that are typically under-served. These are students who need to be working while they go to school. They have a life, they have responsibilities, and this is an opportunity for them to do that. 

Go ahead to the next slide. When we are talking about apprenticeships, we're usually also talking about apprenticeships. With the health pathways, we need these to also be registered apprenticeships. NOCE did a fantastic webinar on pre-apprenticeship. So if you're really not sure and you want more details, please follow up and watch that webinar. It was really great. 

With registered pre-apprenticeship, these are going to be programs that prepare the students. They're contextualized, usually Integrated Education and Training or IET programs that prepare the individual to qualify for and enter into a registered apprenticeship. So that might mean that these pre-apprenticeships are maybe more math-heavy, more writing and reading heavy because they have to pass exams in order to get into a registered apprenticeship. 

They focus on building those foundational skills, including job readiness and some industry awareness. Giving our students a leg up is always a benefit if they know some things before they get into the job or into the field. And it does require a formal partnership with at least one registered apprenticeship program. 

So when we went around and we were talking to any of you grantees that even mentioned the word apprenticeship or pre-apprenticeship-- we went around and talked to all of you. We learned a lot about building your apprenticeship first. Then you can build your pre-apprenticeship and how that's complicated and difficult. 

So when you're in your breakout sessions today with your presenters, ask those questions. We're going to hear a lot about where people are at, where we're struggling. Go ahead to the next slide. I sound very jazzy, Phoebe. Anybody watch Friends? I feel like I'm talking to myself. And I can hear myself in my ears. 

All right. In this graphic, this beautiful graphic that Joy made, it breaks down the pathway from bridge programming down into or up into registered apprenticeships. Bridge programming is that first step we've talked about a lot. You guys have probably heard about a lot, and if you haven't, reach out to us and we can give you a one-on-one. 

Bridge programming, is that contextualized, usually built right into the ESL class, ELL class, a ABE/ASE class, whereas pre-apprenticeship is going to be a registered apprenticeship class with the intention of moving into the registered apprenticeship class. So the pre-apprenticeship and the registered apprenticeship, very intentional, very specific. 

The bridge program is getting those students ready to move into those. It's a beautiful pathway for our adult ed head students to ensure that they're committed. Give them background and build community while they're doing it. And as we mentioned before, we're going to have all these slides for you later. And we have a Google Drive folder for all of these community of practice resources. 

And Sabrina's information is also in those slides as well. Or in that folder. Excuse me. So we're talking about apprenticeships. It's not easy. There is a lot that goes into it. It is possible, we do have information, and we have data that shows it is possible to have a health apprenticeship. But there are some realities that we need to face. 

We really need to first understand our regional industry demand. We need to know what's going on in our community, what our companies in our area are in need of, and what their focus is. Excuse me. You have to have a feasibility checklist, and you need to have program design readiness. You need to have your program ready to roll by that time that apprenticeship is live. 

And it needs to have equity access and be a pipeline for students into the occupation that they're training for. I want to now, maybe, Joy, you can stop sharing your screen and I'll just do really quick, the go/no go. I'm not going to walk through the whole thing, because we really want to spend our time actually talking to you guys. 

Let me pull this up. We have created for you a go/no go, is what we're calling it, activity that you can walk through with your teams to see if you're ready right now to start an apprenticeship or work on, you know, maybe you're already there and you're ready for your pre-apprenticeship. This is going to walk you through to see if you're ready. If you're not ready, what the gaps are in your process. 

In here, we've got the whole process for apprenticeship preparedness. Excuse me. Understanding regional demand. So what does that mean, and what does that look like? Where are the labor shortages? What are the public agencies saying? How do we connect with them? How do we do that research? 

We then have some must have feasibility checks. We want to walk through and see if we've got all of the appropriate paperwork and things that we need in order to actually do this. Do we have our program design readiness? Can our program sustain an apprenticeship? Do we have the people that we need? Do we have the students that we need? What else do we know? We have the employers on board for us. 

And then what does equity access and pipeline look like in this model that we're trying to build? Then we also have a quick scoring rubric. So you can just quickly go through these questions. Give yourself a score of 0 to 5 or in some cases, 0 to 10, based on 0, I'm not ready at all, 3 is I'm in progress. We've got some paperwork out there. We're trying to get in contact with DAS. We're trying. And 5 is we are ready to enroll students. We are live. 

And based on your overall score down here, you can see. I mean, you kind of know in your heart where you're at, right? But if you're not, you can take this little rubric to your team or maybe to your leadership and see if you guys are ready. All right? I'm going to go ahead and stop sharing. But that no go worksheet activity will be inside the drive for you, so you can take it with you and see if you're ready and see where your questions are too. 

When you're going through this process of building a registered apprenticeship, feel free to reach out to any of us at WestEd or IRC. We are your team to help you guys with programming. So let us know what we can help you with. Oh. Thanks, Susan. She said great tool. All right. Next slide. 

JOY LEWIS: Thanks. So now what we're going to do is get into three rooms. As I mentioned, we're going to do these rooms, because we want to have smaller group engagement with our three presenters. And so all you have to do is get into the breakout room that you're invited to, that Holly's going to open in just a moment, and you stay there. And so we're going to spend about 15 to 18 minutes with our first presenter. 

And then you'll stay there, the presenters will move to the next room, and you'll get a new presenter. And so there's three that will happen three times over the course of our time here together. So just accept the breakouts, and we will see you on the other side. 

HOLLY CLARK: OK. We're going to go ahead and open up the breakout rooms now. They are open. Everyone should be getting an invitation. Please go ahead and click to join. 

JOY LEWIS: So Chrissy and I are going to go into room 3. 

HOLLY CLARK: OK. 

DEBI PEZZUTO: Jennifer, I'm going to meet you in room 2. 

JENNIFER PESAVENTO: Room 2. That's OK. That's what I was double checking. 

DEBI PEZZUTO: Yeah. 

HOLLY CLARK: OK. And then Suzanne and Megan are going to room 1. Sophia, are you on? She may have stepped away from her computer. 

WENDY EXZABE: It says not joined. So I don't know-- 

HOLLY CLARK: Yeah she she's probably stepped away from her computer. Ann, are you here? Yeah. And they've stepped away from her computer. Who among you can just click on whatever room you want to join, and then when you leave, click exit to main room, and then you can go into another room if you want. OK. We are all back. And whoever would like to take over can take over. 

JOY LEWIS: Got it. I just want to say an enormous thank you to Chrissy and Suzanne and Jennifer for agreeing to share. We really tried to get a wide representation of different types of programs. So I hope you heard that in the three presentations, and I hope you had some great discussion. Reflecting on what you've heard, I wondered if everybody could kind of either unmute or put in your chat any like ahas or takeaways that really kind of hit you while you were listening to those presentations. And we will kind of collectively share those out. Don't be afraid to unmute, please. 

DEBI PEZZUTO: Yeah, guys. We're all friends here. Where did Jason go? Jason, you had some feelings and thoughts. I mean, you were in our first group, and it was a little bit of a struggle. Jennifer's chat was a lot about what she's struggling with. Go ahead. Jason, what did you learn? 

JASON ROSS: I mean, one of the things I have learned is that persistence does eventually pay off. But I mean, the problem is, there's so many roadblocks, and there's so many things on all of our plates that it's really hard to keep excited and energized about something like this when no one at any level seems to be making it easy on us. 

Without you guys and your expertise, we would really be flying blind, most of us. So at least Thank you for what you guys do because you are giving us some kind of guidance. But I think I put in my chat, not everybody saw it, but we applied for phlebotomy IET. We had a very successful MA one that we started first. Wanted to get that going. Then the plan was to start phlebotomy, spent a lot of money bringing in somebody because we're not a huge staff to help write the application, get all the documents together because it's literally dozens and dozens of documents and licenses. 

And they've had the application for over six months now. They don't return phone calls. They don't return emails. I've sent them an email about every two weeks for the last two months, no response. You can't get anybody up in Burlingame to answer a phone. It's one of probably the most frustrating thing in 27 years of education that I've experienced. 

It's just like, I don't understand why the state gives away the money, but then doesn't put the people in place to do the work on their end. So I get that the office is overloaded because there's 32 other adult schools and community colleges applying for a phlebotomy school right now. So even that, when I heard that is like, OK. Where's the coordination? Does the state need 32 different schools right now, all starting at phlebotomy program that most of us aren't going to have as soon as that money runs out. 

I just feel like there definitely needs to be more state coordination. If there's all of this money, more money needs to be put toward the front end of it and making sure it's easier on us, the people that are trying to implement it and get it to our students as quickly as possible. I might lose my teacher because she's sitting around, and if I can't start this soon, she's going to go somewhere else. 

And now, all the information was submitted was is with her name. So now I got to go back to somebody who I can't contact and say, I have to change out the license, change out these forms, put the new name in. I mean, I'm getting to the point where 10 grand in, we might just say forget it. And that's our money. adult ed money that we're never going to get back. 

DEBI PEZZUTO: Well, I hear you, Jason. And I one thing that I like to highlight from what Jennifer was talking about today is that while she's been trying so hard to make the apprenticeship happen, other positives have come out of it, like the clinicals that she was able to set up, the externships that she was able to set up that are paid externships, which is so awesome. 

And the taking the time while the struggle is happening, to build some relationships. And I know that Chrissy's also problem solved, Suzanne's also problem solved. And I know that you guys are. And Heather too. I see you, Heather. Also working on building some relationships and problem solving while you've got the time. Yeah. 

JASON ROSS: So amazing things have come out of it. I mean, our partnership with Memorial Care with our MA program, upskilled there. Was half their employees who are ELs-- no ELs and then half of our EL students from our level 3 and level 4 class. We ran two cohorts, everything from the CEO of Memorial Care down. We're at our graduation. It just great community press. 

And Memorial Care agreed to be our phlebotomy externship site if we ever get phlebotomy approved. So I don't want to say, no, it's been so many positives. It's just this one thing. I wish I would have chosen community health worker because that would have been easier. It wouldn't have had to be approved in the same way phlebotomy is because of the blood. Lesson learned. I'm still kind of new to this whole thing, but-- 

DEBI PEZZUTO: Yeah. For sure. Well, you guys are struggling for the right reasons, and I hope that when you're struggling to build these apprenticeships too, that you consider building or designing bridge programs for your students to do some work and get into those occupations while you work on getting those apprenticeships. Go ahead, Joy. 

JOY LEWIS: Well, we're almost at time. Holly dropped the evaluation in the chat. There it is, again. For the resources we talked about and shared, there's this link here. There's tinyurl or the QR code. Please feel free to grab a picture of that. And just a giant thank you to everyone, and to Sabrina from the Chancellor's Office for sharing with us today. Really appreciate it. And then the last thing is this emails. If you need to reach us or need any support, we can certainly send you in the right direction. Anything else? 

HOLLY CLARK: No. And I just do-- oh, go ahead. To the team of facilitators, any last comments? Because my last thing is always to please fill out the evaluation. West Haven IRC put a lot of work in to this community of practice, and they value your feedback so much. And we send it up to the state leadership. 

Everything you say, we send stand up to leadership to read, and our leadership, their data people, they read every evaluation. So let your voices be heard. Fill out the evaluation. It only takes a couple of minutes. We use it to form how we do PD going forward. Let's reward our facilitators with just a little bit of your feedback. Last comments from our team that put this on. 

JOY LEWIS: Just that word. We do take the feedback, and for the next planning of the next session, which will be in the fall, we haven't picked a date, but it'll probably be August or September, so stay tuned for that information coming up. 

HOLLY CLARK: Yes. Thank you guys for spending today with us. I know an hour and a half is a big chunk of time, but we appreciate you. We couldn't do it without you guys. We do it for you and it's rewarding. So thank you, and we look forward to seeing you at our next events. 

JOY LEWIS: Thank you. 

HOLLY CLARK: Everyone. Have a great rest of your day. Thank you. Bye-bye. 

DEBI PEZZUTO: Bye. Thanks, everybody.