Ute Maschke: Good afternoon. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us. I will share my screen to-- now. Join me on the right. There we go. SB 554, implications for dual enrollment session. And it is lovely to have you here. Jennie on here.

Jennie Mollica: Hi, welcome, everyone. Really glad to be here. My name is Jennie Mollica. I'm with the High Road Alliance.

Peter Simon: And Peter Simon, the other half of High Road Alliance. Just very briefly, I think probably a number of you have been involved with some other webinars we've done via CAEP. But High Road Alliance really focuses on equitable access to career pathways. And we had worked with a whole number of different entities, adult schools in this context, but also community colleges, workforce boards, labor unions, community groups.

Over the last two years, we have done a series of briefs which are based-- sort of like the brief we're going to present and the information we're going to address today. They're really based in your experience, the practitioners in the field. And our briefs have been to-- someone's got some serious background noise.

Anyway, we're going to-- we've done briefs on immigrant integration transition, integrated education and training. And today, we're going to be talking about adult dual enrollment. Next slide.

Ute Maschke: And I'm Ute Maschke. I'm the manager, East Region Adult Education in San Diego.

Peter Simon: Sorry, I didn't--

Ute Maschke: It's quite all right. We have a lot to cover. And I would also like to welcome four guests we invited to the session. Two of them are already here.

So a special quick welcome to Neil Kelly and Carolyn Zachry from the Department of Education. We are also hoping to welcome a little later Gary Adams and Mayra Diaz from the Chancellor's Office for Community Colleges as our special guests to listen in our conversation. And we'll get to that very soon.

What we would like to do with you, as our thinking partners, is to move the conversation on SB 554 forward. And we want to focus on that forward. We want to share our findings. Peter already alluded to them. What is some state of things with you, where are we at in 2022 with adult education dual enrollment and especially SB 554.

And then I'll ask you to join us, invite you to join us in the conversation on how we move the conversation and how do we move SB 554 and dual enrollment forward together.

So why do we even talk about dual enrollment for adult education? Well, we need to. It makes education more equitable. It serves and addresses the needs of adult learners who are often underserved and overlooked. It provides opportunities for those learners to accelerate, to advance, and also explore college opportunities that they might not have even considered.

It does so without pressure or dare I say, use the word, "punishment." And it allows students-- it supports students in planning wisely in how education might interact and fit into their lives. It can accelerate pathways to careers, to college and career goals.

And it is, of course, part of a larger toolkit for transition strategies that we are not only tasked with under CAEP but that we also identified as a true measure of our success, which when we support our students in transitions to successful meaningful lives and jobs, we have achieved our objectives. Jen.

Jennie Mollica: Would you like me to do this one, Ute?

Ute Maschke: Mm-hmm.

Jennie Mollica: OK. So Senate Bill 554 was authorized in 2019. And this slide just gives you an overview of what's included there because it's had real consequences and opened up new opportunities that weren't there prior. So the bill authorizes an adult student, who is pursuing either high school diploma or a high school equivalency certificate in the state, to enroll at a community college as a special part-time student.

This special designation allows students to access college-bearing courses, which they wouldn't have otherwise, and with no tuition costs. And something especially notable about that is that financial aid clock, the time limits on their financial aid, doesn't begin yet. And so that's some benefits for the student.

Clearly, there are also-- in the bill is an enhanced community college apportionment for special admit students. And that comes through implementation of the Student Centered Funding Formula. So it's described in the bill in relation to that. And there's clear implications here for increased community college enrollment.

I don't know if you want to elaborate on that. That was sort of our--

Ute Maschke: For many-- many of you, I'm sure, are very familiar with SB 554 and also with 554 being an expansion really under agreements that already existed. The College and Career Access Pathway Program has been in place for quite a while. SB 554 was, in a way, already an expansion of that initiative to better meet the needs of underserved-- historically underserved populations.

So it's really adding to AB 30 and also now complemented, if you will, by Assembly Bill 102, which is a further expansion of dual enrollment processes that some of us might be familiar with, some of us might be unfamiliar. So let's take a look first at what has already happened in the state of California, and then dive into some thinking together, some questions we might want to address together about that education dual enrollment processes.

And yes, discuss that in the section that John already pointed to that is a little extremely interesting and exciting. All right. Let's move to the next slide. And that's the state of things regarding dual enrollment in the state of California.

Jennie Mollica: Thanks, Ute. So Peter and I wanted to spend just a few minutes at the start of this time we have together today to share with you the brief that we produced earlier this year for CAEP TAP, entitled, Dual Enrollment in California Adult Education and Community Colleges: Lessons and Opportunities.

And really, this is going to be a brief, brief overview because we encourage you to read the brief. It's full of great--

Peter Simon: It's in the chat.

Jennie Mollica: Oh, good. So Peter put the link in the chat. It's right there on the CAEP website. We had the privilege of interviewing in depth 10 programs that are implementing adult dual enrollment. We also held what we call a peer learning circle, where we invited people across the state with varying levels of experience and degrees of involvement in adult dual enrollment to come and share and ask questions and provide resources to each other.

We also had advisory sessions with people who've developed deep expertise in this area across the state. And out of this, our real goal of this brief was to identify practitioners' tips and lessons learned and really to harvest the wisdom from all of you out there who have been working hard to give this a try and implement it. So the brief really summarizes some of those just effective practices and words of wisdom.

Through this work and engagement, we also surfaced what could be seen as some recommendations for sort of systems level improvements or policy recommendations or opportunities to provide more guidance or more structure. And so those are also highlighted in the brief. And we encourage you to take a look. So make note of that link.

Peter Simon: So again, we're just going to just touch upon some of what is-- there's far more details, a lot detail in the brief and examples from specific sites. But the first area was, just in terms of overall themes, was around security partnership and commitment.

And I think-- really, maybe it goes without saying but almost all of these different themes we've worked on partnership becomes kind of the punch line and the key theme. What we really found is that the consortia, who already have been doing a lot of collaborative work, who've broken down some of those boundaries between community college and adult education, are the ones who've been most successful initially in terms of putting in place adult dual enrollment programs.

And obviously, you need a partnership where you need active participation of reps from the adult school and the community college. And you really have to-- what we've seen is, you really have to work at open communication and buy-in and really having everyone at all levels understanding how this works and really having some commonly shared goals and agreed upon policies.

And it's not like a one-and-done. You have to be revisiting these issues. One example where this comes up is in terms of establishing, for example, a data sharing agreement between adult ed and community colleges. OK. Jennie, would you like to speak about the next one?

Jennie Mollica: Sure. Yeah, we've heard a number of themes related to student eligibility and the application process for what was a different student experience in many ways. One thing we heard was significant roles across a number of different functions in the colleges and the adult school, so big roles for admission and records in the colleges, for counselors, as well as for deans providing some leadership around these processes.

There also is quite a lot of exploration of how to define who's eligible within a school and how to document that eligibility to meet the requirements of the legislation. There were also different approaches to assessing readiness for college level courses. There was a lot of work that went into defining application processes to be an adult dual enrollment student, so creating new application forms, creating ways for students to access CCCApply.

There was a lot of interest in how to code appropriately in the MIS. So the coding authorized to enroll in college and adult school becomes a very important code in these programs. And sort of systematizing the use of that code was important.

And then finally, really, a deep understanding that getting all these systems and processes right is really critical to making sure that these students are avoided-- or avoiding being charged tuition, so getting the systems in place to make sure that that's the case. Peter.

Peter Simon: OK. The third point is marketing and student engagement. And I think one, just overall theme with that is-- from what we heard from people, just doing a flyer about adult dual enrollment is not going to work. It really is-- what works has been people to people, often one-on-one outreach and communication because it's a new concept for a lot of people. It's a scary concept for a number of adult students.

And I'll just say that we were quite humbled by the amount of knowledge that staff at the adult school and the community college need to have to really be able to clearly explain this to people. So there's a lot of great examples in the brief around collaborative marketing, both in terms of the counseling department, information sessions.

And I think importantly, having student ambassadors, people, students-- who've been through this, who can talk to their experience and communicate with folks coming up in the adult education world about the value of this-- and specifically because it's a very both salient feature of adult dual enrollment-- and one that, again, people kind of, at first hearing about it, off and go, really? You can do that-- is reaching out to undocumented adult education students because this is a great opportunity for them in terms of access to resources at the community college.

And oftentimes, we found that has been done effectively through the Dreamer or DACA Program at the community college. Jennie.

Jennie Mollica: Hm? Yeah, so we heard a lot of different approaches and even philosophies around which courses adult dual enrollment students would be enrolling in through the college. So some programs are limiting those to sort of a few courses that seem to be most appropriate. Some are coming up with a sort of broader number of recommended courses. And some are really believing that they need to make any course open to their dual enrollment students and really encourage students to explore that on their own.

This is reflected also in how the programs are structured. Some are intentionally creating cohorts of dual enrollment students, who go through a course or a set of courses together. Some are working with community colleges to reserve seats for adult education students in certain classes. And then some, in that spirit of openness, are really allowing students to have single seats in any class in the college.

Some of the focus on specific courses is around guiding students toward courses that could help to meet GE requirements or that could count toward a high school diploma or high school equivalent, given that that is one of the student's goals who are-- for students who are eligible for this program. Or some are more employment-focused and encouraging students to pursue college courses that lead toward certificates or could prepare them for employment. Peter.

Peter Simon: OK. Then the final area is supporting persistence and completion of college courses. And again, as we've referenced before, the transition in different consortia-- they have different titles-- but the people doing the transition work, which is often transition specialists or counselors, have a huge role.

And we had a chance to interview several of them who work specifically with adult dual enrollment. And again, I think we were quite struck by the amount of knowledge they have to have in terms of breaking this down. And then each student situation is somewhat different. So there's not a cookie-cutter kind of thing.

It's really important, from what we learned, that the support has to be continuous both on the adult school, adult education side, and at the college side. So when a student transitions over to going as a dual enrollment student at the college, it's not like the adult school says, goodbye, good luck. Let us know how it goes. It's very much an engagement throughout the whole process.

And some examples we heard around what's done to really support the persistence and completion are having dual enrollment orientations for students who are engaging in the process, offering college readiness courses, including offering them at the adult school, weekly advising sessions, help with textbook-- both access online but also the cost of textbooks.

Some folks have been doing regular text messaging between the transition staff and the adult dual enrollment student and just making sure that the transitioning students coming to the community college are aware of all the college services because they probably are not aware of what's really available to them. And overall, just being available to troubleshoot the problems that come up. Anything you want to add on that, Jennie?

Jennie Mollica: Yeah, just one more thing before we hand it back to Ute and kind of open up for discussion here. But I think-- we don't have a bullet for it here. But really, one of the overarching themes is--

Peter and I found just a lot of interest and enthusiasm about this new opportunity, a lot of curiosity about what the possibilities could be and about how to structure a really strong program, and just so many questions, so many-- so much eagerness to connect to others who are doing this work, sort of looking for ways to get support from peers but also ways to get guidance and instruction or direction from the state level.

A lot of openness, I think, to hearing, how can we do this well? And how can we learn and put together the strongest programs we can to benefit the most students and really make this impactful? I think that's the point we're at right now across the state. And we just heard this kind of enthusiasm and commitment to really doing this right.

Peter Simon: Right. And that's why we really welcome the opportunity to have this discussion today specifically, so thank you. Ute, back to you.

Ute Maschke: So yes.

Peter Simon: [laughs]

Ute Maschke: You asked me talk It's an exciting tension and opportunity. There's eagerness. There's curiosity. There's excitement. And then there's also this moment where we still find ourselves, three years later, not knowing really how to move forward, many of us.

So SB 554 came on board fully in 2019. In 2022, many of us are still in these sort of initial stages excitement, a lot of questions. I'm not exactly sure what's best how to work the and how to move forward, which for my impatient nature is not good.

Peter Simon: [laughs]

Ute Maschke: Three years later, what's not working well, what could be better, where is the opportunity, those questions also, I think, came to the fore when we met as a community of practice and started to talk about this. How can we move forward from initial planning and excitement into taking SB 554 and other doing moment initiatives to the next level?

Some of you might have been in another session during the summit where there already was a suggestion what else to do with SB 554. Now, we have this interesting expansion of the college and career program athletes already. So we want to dive a little bit into the-- where are we at with SB 554, what can we do in the future.

And we wanted to share with you four questions, one by one, for us, together, to explore. Feel free to unmute or add to the chat. The chat has the advantage of us not missing something. And then half our guests listen in. And then we'll come back to our guests after those four questions and see what is the takeaway for us all, how can we move forward together, regardless of where we are in the process.

So I hope that will work for us. The first question we have for all of you. Regardless of where you are at in the process, what is the adult education dual enrollment strategy that has worked really well? From you're-- where you are sitting, what has worked for you? If you could add a few things to the chat or feel free to unmute and share, that would be awesome.

There's already one coming from John. He had to leave. He mentioned ATB Any thoughts?

Peter Simon: Any thoughts? Maybe particularly one where you thought, wow, that worked much better than we thought it would, which we heard from some people.

Dana Galloway: I'll speak up. I'm Dana Galloway from the West End Corridor Consortium, which is Chaffey College. So as you know, Chaffey College, I think, was in one of the ones that was interviewed in the study. And they were kind of out in the front.

But what I noticed is that this is a program that you don't just do it. You don't just figure it out. You have to constantly keep evolving and adjusting. And it just seems like the college is always working on the application form, the onboarding process for students, the outreach. We're just constantly doing what needs to be done, and looking at what works and what doesn't work, and just evolving.

It's a program that is just-- you have to look at your students. They're maybe not the same from year to year. So even though Chaffey was or is one of the big ones-- and we had almost 200 dual enrollment students in the past, I think, '21, '22, which is a large number, I think, in the state-- we still have to keep working on it constantly.

Ute Maschke: Yeah, thank you. I think it also deserves extra credit to you. I don't think SB 554 would have become reality without Chaffey College.

Peter Simon: [chuckles]

Dana Galloway: Yeah, I remember those days. It was kind of touch and go. And it was like, let's mobilize the troops. But we did.

Ute Maschke: And I think that's a very valuable strategy, to consider it as a-- always a process. It's not one-and-done. Having that open mindset helped us as well here in this region of San Diego tremendously.

Dana Galloway: Yeah. And then when you have things like pandemics, which just throw everything off and change your kind of whole way of doing things, so now basically, I think the entire program is an online program now-- which we sort of, no surprise, found that that worked better for our adult students with all their schedule challenges and that sort of thing. So you find out things that you didn't realize at first.

Peter Simon: Mm-hmm.

Ute Maschke: Yeah. I would agree. We had the same experience. For us, what worked really well was actually when everything was online. It's working now, too. But it helped us, I think, matching students with courses they were interested in and that were manageable for them much faster. And online actually benefited many of our students who had transportation issues or work schedules that didn't allow for a certain class-- for them to attend certain classes.

So in a way, that time worked to our benefit. In the chat, their support services were mentioned twice in our consortium. And I think that somewhat similar to Chaffey. We actually designated persons who are coordinators or contact persons for this, for our dual involvement initiatives. It needs and deserves the support almost on a one-on-one basis with students, I would agree.

Any other best practices, positive surprises from anyone else?

Jennie Mollica: I see Neil's hand.

Ute Maschke: Oh, Neil.

Neil Kelly: Yeah, I was looking at the data and you would think there would be a drop because we have one metric in launch word that says, co-enrolled in a credit-bearing class. So that would be co-enrolled, meaning in the adult school or maybe noncredit, in a credit-bearing class. And all our other data from the last couple of years has dipped but not in dual enrollment.

It's kind of stayed steady. In fact, it's actually increasing a little bit. So that's encouraging to see. Despite the pandemic, we're on the upswing with what they consider co-enrollment. I don't know what that data actually is. But at least, it's encouraging to see that.

And then I've been doing the transition strand at the summit this week. And I've sat in quite a few different presentations. And like Dana was saying, there's all kinds of things that you have to stay on top of with transitioning students, helping them figure out to use the community college registration system, to getting familiar with the campus. There's so many things that has to go on. So I just wanted to share that.

Ute Maschke: Thank you. Yes, Dana. Dana points out enrollment in our dual enrollment program actually did increase during the pandemic. I think that's also one of our positive experiences. We actually had a different type of student, a new type of student, joining us for these dual enrollment in SB 554.

Students who were kind of tired of doing the high school diploma weren't really motivated. But when dual enrollment came on, they had additional motivation to join our high school diploma, high school equivalency programs, and start college through SB 554.

So we actually also-- we are finally able to reach those students. And that increased numbers at the adult school and the colleges. So it has a really--

Peter Simon: It's really interesting, yeah.

Ute Maschke: Mm-hmm. We then-- let's check out another question. From your perspective, from where you're at in the process, what have you learned about partnering through working on adult education dual enrollment and SB 554? Yeah, we'll come back to that after the question.

From your perspective with adult school or college, did learn-- what did you learn about partnering? Jennie, did it come up in the-- when you have the interviews with the focus groups?

Jennie Mollica: Peter mentioned a few points. It's definitely a theme we saw that-- programs that were able to describe some existing strength in their adult education consortium were leveraging that because they had-- over the years that the consortium had been established, they'd been working across their adult ed community college boundaries in a variety of different ways around transition services or other programs.

And so they described that being an asset in exploring adult dual enrollment together. I think something else that we noted is not only partnerships across the adult ed and community college space but really a need for partnerships within institutions to sort of pull this off because of the sort of complexity of different processes that had to come together and the different individual roles that had to support programs. But I'm curious if others on-- in our session today have experiences related to this.

I see Kim saying, differing processes can make joint programs difficult when partnering. Do you want to say more about that, Kim? I think you're not the only one who would make such a statement.

Peter Simon: Yes.

Kim Haglund: Sorry, I lost my mouse for a minute. [chuckles] At the-- well, yeah, there's differing processes. Whether it's the way the office runs, the way enrollment is done, one does CASAS, one does not, more online here, less online there, they can make things difficult. And it can make it scary, the idea of change, because how does that change affect our students?

Any change that we make in the background, we want to either, one, benefit or seem as seamless as possible for our students because many of them, especially at the adult schools, in early ESL courses particularly, there's a stranger danger element there. They're in their cohort of people who they're just getting to know, they're learning to speak the language. And when you throw a wrench in there and change happens, it can be very frightening. It can be very scary.

So that's what I meant by how differing processes can make programs difficult. And partnering can be quite difficult when you have to make changes within the way that you're actually operating behind the scenes rather than what you're doing that's student-facing. Does that kind of make sense?

Ute Maschke: Carolyn just raised her hand.

Carolyn Zachry: I just have a quick question really for Kim, based on what you put in the chat. And I'm wondering if you can elaborate more on your comment about who gets apportionment or points if the student is dual enrolled. Can you elaborate more on that?

Kim Haglund: Yeah, I'm just curious because we actually had this discussion. We don't have many students that take advantage of this. So that's my bad, so I need to deal with that. But so if you have a student who's there, they're at the adult school, and you know they're working on their high school diploma or they transfer-- or I'm sorry.

They're enrolled in other courses, so they're taking classes at the adult school and at the college, working towards the same goal. How does that work as far as-- the adult school would get their WIOA points and stuff for whatever the students are doing there. And then the college would get what they get for what the students are doing there. Does that make sense, what I'm asking?

Carolyn Zachry: Yes. And so when I'm looking at dual-- when I'm thinking of dual enrollment and how all of this was written, it's really to put students in credit-bearing classes not noncredit classes, right, Peter and Jennie?

Peter Simon: Yes.

Carolyn Zachry: And so to me, then the college is getting that FTES for that credit student. And as the adult school, because they're dually enrolled, then you're getting whatever-- if you're WIOA-funded, payment points, that would go for your WIOA of funding.

Kim Haglund: OK. That makes a lot more sense. Because I-- we do have students who are enrolled in the adult school and enrolled in noncredit courses at the college and enrolled in maybe a beginning credit class of some kind. So it's dividing those upper-- Yeah, OK. Thank you. That makes a lot more sense.

Carolyn Zachry: OK. Thanks for clarifying, I appreciate that.

Ute Maschke: So without getting too much into the sort of nitty gritty details, it's worth considering that it's cut off at 11 units at the colleges. So SB 554, it's not a full-time. It's 11 units, which makes sense if SB 554 aims at accelerating the completion of high school diploma or equivalency certificates. And that counts at both sides, on both side-- so credit, FTEs, at the colleges and toward high school diploma completion or WIOA points.

When everything aligns, well, the student is able to enroll in a credit-bearing course that counts toward prereqs that they might have at the colleges or helps them attain a career technical and industry certificate, and also get units credits for their high school diploma completion. So the student, when everything aligns perfectly, could really benefit tremendously from being dual or co-enrolled on the SB 554.

That is also something, in our work with the colleges, that sort of surprised us all, how beneficial this can be for an adult learner who's eager to accelerate and get to a next stage in their journey. It was also a positive discovery for all of us, that we finally might have a tool to support students more, who do not qualify for Dreamer, who do not have residency status, who are not-- there's no way for them to participate in community college courses to matriculate unless they're bleeding money.

So we found a beautiful way to have a bidirectional-- an opportunity for a bidirectional partnership, where our partners at the colleges, especially at admissions and records, can recommend to students to start at an adult school with their journey or continue their journey first at the adult school through SB-- through dual enrollment under SB 554, participate in college courses while collecting enough time toward their residency status.

Bringing this all together, we discovered-- and Peter already alluded to it-- means one has to have quite a bit of knowledge, understanding of these complex processes, which are also sort of unique to each college. They are handled a little bit differently at each college.

And sometimes the strange negotiation process between what's happening on the ground and what the law, the letter-- or the spirit even of the law tell us to do. And I think even the two colleges we are working with, even their processes are slightly different, where all of us are sort of grasping, hoping for some more guidance.

And I see Neil's hand-- Neil's hand up. I wish-- just a quick response to the question, are there visa restrictions that disqualify a student for dual enrollment? The-- how can I say that? The usual? Except for-- at the adult schools, the only condition there is, is somewhat-- the student has to be older than 18. But if you have a J-1 visa or even an F-1, you would not-- that would not be an option. Neil?

Neil Kelly: Yeah, some of the other partnerships-- and you might have references-- is the-- we've seen some schools working with UCs and CSUs on the AB 540, SB 68, qualifying through the adult school, the number of hours. So if you're a nonresident, you don't really have to pay that nonresident tuition. So that gets waived.

It's a little complicated. We haven't streamline the process. It's kind of on an individual basis between you and your UC or you and your CSU right now. And so the other one I wanted to bring up, and John-- I think John Werner put this in the chat, is the ability to benefit although that you have to be a resident and you have to show that you're a citizen, but that's related to Pell Grants.

And you can-- if you're still-- I think if you're still working on your high school diploma, you can get Pell Grants to attend college. And they waive those fees as well. Because you're a resident, you get the tuition-- resident tuition fees anyway. But that's another avenue. We have a few, not many.

It's more of a-- we've seen that with the CSUs, using ability to benefit. And a lot of the for-profit colleges using that because they can get the federal grant. So that's another one that I think Chaffey is trying to put into their pathway matrix. It's a little complicated. And it's only for certain types of students. So out of this dual enrollment effort, there's all kinds of other things that you can partner with.

Peter Simon: Thanks, Neil.

Neil Kelly: Sure.

Ute Maschke: Thank you for bringing this up. Yes, ability to benefit, I think Chaffey might be spearheading that. We're spearheading that one as well because it could be a nice stepping stone. SB 554 and once you're ready and have gathered enough, you can then move into ability to benefit. All right. Thank you. More questions from our end. How do you ensure the implemented processes are running smoothly?

I think Dana was the one-- or it was actually Kim bringing up, this is a process. So this has to be nourished, cultivated all the time. How do we do that?

Dana Galloway: I can address that from Chaffey's perspective if you'd like. We talk about it constantly. It's always an agenda item in our consortium meetings. We also are very willing to devote resources to this program because we realize that it needs it. As you say, it's that one-on-one relationship, working with the students, that ensures success and that we-- or the enrollment grows.

And so we're-- our group at least realizes you've got to give it some resources. So in fact, this year, we just authorized-- we just gave some funds to our college for some more counseling hours and that sort of thing. So it's something that is important to the group, and it's working for our students. But you always have to keep on top of it. Communication is the key here.

And they report back to the adult schools, how many students from each school. We keep track of our own statistics as far as transitions and, of course, the dual enrollment, and everything. But we get regular reports. And so we know how everybody is doing. And if someone needs some help, we'll give it to them, that sort of thing.

So you have to keep on top of your data. You have to collect it. You have to put some money into it, and communication, as I say. But it's a high priority. So it's always being discussed.

Jennie Mollica: It's interesting to hear your example, Dana, of a program that's already so mature in a sense because I think a theme that we heard among emerging programs was also how critical it was to define that team, define its communication patterns. And the teams differed from site to site. Some came out of the college and career readiness work that was already happening.

Or some came out of an existing transitions team or some kind of existing partnership that was there. But all of them needed to give attention to that, what is the structure that's going to allow us to communicate well and collaborate well.

Dana Galloway: Right.

Ute Maschke: Dana also brought up a point that's very important on our end. We keep track of data at the adult school site because right now, there is still no solid way of keeping track of our dual enrolled students at the college's site. So we bring that actually to our conversation with the college partners.

Here, here's where our students are at. Here are the hard numbers, which I think is important for all of us but also to explore new opportunities for us to expand programs regarding dual enrollment. What works well, what doesn't, which courses do students choose, which professors are they sort of leaning toward, that's important information for the colleges. And DP appreciate it.

It is very intense, and time and human resources-consuming. So to Dana's point, some financial support, some designated monies to support this position because [inaudible]. It is additional work for admissions and records who are often already sort of maxed out.

We had two questions in the chat.

Peter Simon: Ute, can I just add? As you mentioned before, one thing we heard from a lot of people was the critical importance of establishing a data sharing agreement between the college and the adult school. In terms of-- as was just mentioned about tracking progress, so you don't have to constantly be chasing it down, figure out ways to automate that. And so legally, establishing those agreements was really important.

Ute Maschke: And maybe going backwards, the question-- no, it's actually the first one. Could you elaborate on the if that what's giving the students credit for college courses, doesn't always happen, how have the other colleges done it? Who's part of those conversations, and the important, et cetera? There are so many questions yest.

So part of the conversation-- and maybe Dana and Kim can chime in. For us, part of the conversations had to be admissions and records, financial aid, counseling. At the colleges' side, we also brought in two department chairs, math and English at each college, because that's where many of our students sort of tend to take courses.

And then on the adult school side, we brought in transition support services and ABE, ASV high school diploma program directors to help with that project. It turned out that admissions and records is a very strong partner to nurture and to stay in close communication with, probably not that surprising.

But that was also a crucial part of the conversation on credit for college courses. That's a mapping project that we engaged in. And there are some general regulations. But we focus on our example. We looked at the college courses that we could map backwards as contributing to the completion of our high school diploma.

So English 120, for example, the review of the curriculum and review of the requirements our school district had has allowed us to say use the amount of units that you can get for that college course. School districts handle that slightly differently. But generally speaking, it's a mapping of courses at the colleges to the high school requirements. We have an adult certification for the completion of high school diploma or equivalency.

How's the student classified after she completes the high school diploma and just dual enrolled. So they will be-- they will-- depends on where they're going. They are not dual enrolled SB 554 students anymore. They have either reclassified as full-time. They lose the special admit status.

What else do we have in the chat? Do you know we have an assistant director of adult education at the college, who's entirely CAEP-funded. That is a nice practice. She works closely with counselor at the college in adult schools to keep track of students and what they have done.

Jennie Mollica: We definitely heard many good examples of CAEP funding being used in this space to kind of knit the systems together and do that really intentionally. I think the staff position that Dana describes is one example. But we heard a lot of different examples of thoughtfully using those funds.

Ute Maschke: And then, yes, constant communication is key, yes. Great. Before we check in with Neil and Carolyn, we have one more question-- hopefully, one for all of us. What's getting in the way of expanding or studying the implementation of SB 554? What are your experiences? Why-- for me, the question related to it is also, why is not everyone doing it? So what's getting in the way? Staffing changes?

Jennie Mollica: Well, behind Kim's point-- correct me if I'm wrong, Kim, but sometimes-- I think we heard, just the immense need for leadership to launch something like this, it really takes some intentional effort in finding the right leaders.

Kim Haglund: No, I totally agree. And that's what I meant, is that you have a point person or a very strong person who's really into this program, is willing to commit, and that person leaves, then you need to either replace that person.

Or you have office staff and-- A&R staff members, who are helping to facilitate the program, they leave. Now, you've got to train somebody new and make sure everybody else is aware that this program exists. New principals come in, the principal of the adult school, that kind of stuff.

Ute Maschke: Yeah.

Peter Simon: Happens all the time.

Ute Maschke: Yeah, same in our region. It's one of the pain points for us. There's really-- there's not a system. So it becomes very person-dependent. And the person might not just move and go into another job. It might be as simple as the person is on vacation for two weeks. And the whole process for some of our students comes to a halt because paperwork cannot be processed or another specialist at A&R doesn't know about the special processes for SB 554 or any type of dual enrollment from the adult schools.

So our students, who was-- not being able to register for the courses they were interested in, they lose the time frame for it. And that's sometimes the whole semester. So this whole process is still extremely vulnerable to personnel and too person-dependent for us, for our experience.

Yeah, it's not an institutional process. And I can see that as a challenge that will only get bigger when we now think about also the new Assembly Bill 102. What else might be getting in the way, quiet audience? Dana, is there something that you-- is on your mind for that?

Peter Simon: I would think some of you came to this session to find some guidance and inspiration on how to address what we're bringing up here, that we heard a lot of that, where there was a lot of bumps in the road for people either within their institution or just not understanding the law, I think, the legislation, how it worked.

Ute Maschke: You and Eric were not being familiar with the process?

Peter Simon: Mm-hmm.

Jennie Mollica: How to start when you're new? I appreciate you mentioning that, Eric. I think you're not the only one who feels new. There certainly are such large numbers across the state who are in exactly that place. And I think it's one of our big questions. And I think part of the reason for sparking this kind of dialogue is to see what-- what's it going to take for others to feel able to enter this space.

Ute Maschke: Yeah, and a little bit-- I also would-- Ashton points are great. It needs leadership buy-in. It's a lot to ask a single faculty member or a single A&R person. The leadership needs to be committed to that type of dual enrollment process, even if it's not the biggest number of students initially who might go through SB 554.

So far, from what we've heard in the field, it has always been a very sort of individualized solitary implementation, someone who's interested in it and drives the implementation of that process forward or a team at a local college driving this process forward. But no, not really-- not really a system or a guidebook or guidance on which steps to take.

So we have best practices. And I think the summary that Jennie and Peter put together points to those. But there's really not something like a toolkit that we could readily utilize, especially when we're new to the processes.

Jennie Mollica: And Ute, we heard again and again that ask for that guidance. And we had to be very clear that what we were producing in this brief was really feeding back what we heard in terms of these themes of practices that seem to be working as well as sort of challenge areas. But we definitely heard the need for something that was more of a kind of formal guidance document.

Peter Simon: Right, how to do it.

Ute Maschke: How to do it and be flexible enough so that each consortium still has enough rate flexibility to work with their colleges and with their adult schools. So there's this huge potential to make SB 554 this very tailored-- a tool that can be tailored to each individual student and each individual college level scenario.

However, before I can tailor it to individual needs, I need to have sort of a structure in place that makes me comfortable-- makes me feel comfortable enough to then tweak and tailor to the specific needs.

Peter Simon: Mm-hmm.

Ute Maschke: Yeah, flexibility, communication, and compromise are key. When I initially did this, I first created a list of appropriate college courses, had it approached, then approached the adult school. That's a-- yeah, that's a very good option.

We started from the adult school and went to the colleges, and lobbied on behalf of the adult school. So for us, it was the other way around. The adult school was more interested in that opportunity for our students. There are-- and we actually shared with our students that the choice is theirs. But it's an informed choice.

Students meet with a transition specialist, who introduces them to what the college has to offer and which courses might work better than others. So there's quite a bit of this one-on-one educational journey mapping going on before a student decides which courses to take.

I think one of the-- what might sometimes get in the way for us is A, it's very person-dependent-- it's very vulnerable to that-- and supporting our students who have to reapply for SB 554 every semester to ensure that they stay in the program, and that there's still no way to track data across two different systems, our adult schools and the colleges. That makes it harder to-- it makes it harder to convey how important that program is for someone else.

What else? Well, for the moment, that's it. Let's move forward a little bit and see what our partners, our guests for-- Neil and Carolyn, what are your impressions? What are your takeaways so far?

Carolyn Zachry: So I'll jump-- I'll jump in first. Listening to all of this really reminds me of back in my ROP days and articulation agreements with our community college and how those articulation agreements were instructor-to-instructor and how it went to the state, our goal-- and we never got there when I was in that role-- was to look at course to course statewide articulation agreements.

And so listening at the beginning made me think so much about that. In that, in those articulation agreements, if one of those instructors left, you had to start all over again. And so I think it just goes back to how agencies within a consortia need to work together to perhaps do, as Kim said-- I really like what Kim said about creating-- as the college taking-- creating that list first of what are those college appropriate classes, getting it approved.