Melinda Holt: Thank you so much for attending this session. And we have Stacey Falgout and Alisa Ramirez. Go for it.

Stacey Falgout: So I wanted to introduce myself. I'm Stacey Falgout. I am the Director of West Kern Adult Education in a rural area. I've been in education for 27 to 28 years. And from preschool all the way to high school, my specialty as a counselor and an academic counselor. And also a behavior specialist.

I have been a Dean. I've been a Director of Education of a state prison. A GED instructor. And now I am a Director of Western Kern Adult Education. And so with me, I have a Alisa Ramirez, who comes in as my right hand. And is my second in command. But she is-- we were the only two admin that run this rural area West Kern.

So if you want to give them a little insight, Alisa about you. You're on mute Alisa.

Alisa Ramirez: So sorry about that. I'm Alisa Ramirez. And I've worked here at West Kern Adult Education since 2019. I originally started as the WIOA coordinator and then moved into the site coordinator shortly after that. I come with 10 years of education.

I worked in the elementary school systems as classified staff. I've also done accounting. I've worked in payroll. So I do a little bit of everything here as well. You want to start with this slide, Stacey?

Stacey Falgout: Yes. Go ahead we're going to go ahead and move into our slides. Guys, we kept this very simple 'cause we want to make sure that we're interacting with you. What we did, WKAEN is-- what we call WKAEN is West Kern Adult Education Network. What we've done is we're a joint powers of attorney authority, which is the only one in the state of California. And so it's unique.

There's a positive and there's a negative with that. But we separated from the community college just so we can have more flexibility to do what we need to do for the community that we serve. And that happened in 2017. To have community college-- our community college is still our fiscal agent but as a consortium we operate alone as a whole.

And all of our consortium leads do not receive any funding from us. We receive all of our own funding. So we can best serve the community here at off to the west side of California. So with that being said, we just wanted to keep this PowerPoint very simple. So we can interact and tell you what we did as a school and as an adult Ed to again best serve the population that we serve. We call them sometimes stranded adults.

And how we could align education and pathways and careers for them. So according to the 24/7 street index of West Kern community, we're listed the 50th worst places to live. Which I totally disagree with. I think Taft is one of the best places to live with a lot of opportunities, especially for our young youth. So we're a rural community.

We're right out of the west side of Bakersfield. We connect with them but we do sit-in a pocket of our own. We have our census shows that we have a high school level of lack of education and unemployment, 56 Hispanic-Latino population with 15% of them not US citizens. And I really want to just say that 10 years ago we had 10% Hispanic-Latino.

And in 10 years, our census has grown to 56%. And the unemployment rate because we sit-in an oil industry has dropped dramatically 'cause we all know the situation that the oil industry is going through right now. So thinking outside the box and doing what we need to do for our community has been our number one goal.

And we know that our migrant students are here and our migrant population is growing each day. And so again putting forth what we need to do and helping them as well to get their needs met and unite and streamline that with them as a population, as well has been our focus. Is there anything you want to add in that Alisa?

Alisa Ramirez: No, I don't think so. You can go to the next slide.

Stacey Falgout: Yeah, is there any questions on that? I definitely want to keep an open platform on that. Our core values are just community involvement. It's respect and support toward students and employees. You know, removing barriers. Every time we hear a barrier, we try to fix that barrier.

And empowering our students' success. Removing those barriers we found that transportation was one of them. So we got bus transportations. We've gotten gas fuels. We've gotten different things that we can serve our students and respecting them as far as linking our industries directly to us in every class that we have that our students coming out are employed locally and directly here within our own community. Some are out but mainly right here within Taft.

And then empowering them. Getting them to the correct pathway that they need to be in so that they can be successful as well. And then this is how we did it. Changing our culture. When I came in, I would like to say I've been here for seven years. And I've been a dean-- And then I was a GED teacher. Then I was a dean.

And then I've been a director close to two years now. And so what I identified really quick is that we needed to go back to what this was to change the culture within especially being a JPA especially being adult education. So we defined the population that we serve. Who do we serve? What does this look like?

So we did evaluating the intakes. We reviewed all of our intakes found out directly who are we serving? What are the ages? What is the cultures authenticity? We created all that. We pulled that data in to define what is the population that we serve.

And we created surveys that address the population with the need of interests of both our students and staff. So in this, we did surveys for our staff, as well as our students. So that we can best serve not only our students, but our staff as well. And then who better sees what the students need is our staff. So we really dug in to that data that we needed to really understand the population.

And those surveys came in hand. And so we do it twice a year. And we implement these surveys. And then we and our professional development we talk about those surveys and what we found and how we can serve them better. We developed a cabinet meeting every Friday.

We have a team lead group. Every Friday we meet with administrative staff and our leads. And we discuss what that looks like. So we go over our areas of agenda. It's our marketing. It's our courses. It's our TOPSpro It's our focus area, administration. Our WIOA. We talk about where we're at? Where is our numbers?

What is our statistics look like? We bring it all to the table every single Friday. So then we also talk about what the next week's going to look like. What are those target areas that we're going to focus on? And so as a team, we're all on the same board. And that we are all operating in a system form that there's no one that is left out during this time of process.

So there has been a huge component of ours. And it's also increased our data and how we observe it and how we are looking into those details. So is there anything you want to add to that Alisa? I know that this is an area you know so well.

Alisa Ramirez: I believe the cabinet meetings have really helped us hone in like Stacey has said. I think it helps us talk out, especially as we have upcoming classes, where our student count is especially our CTE classes. And then we're able to brainstorm how can we continue to promote those while marketing is there. I think that's really helped us a lot to work together as a team.

Stacey Falgout: Absolutely. We use survey--

Speaker 4: We a question that came in. I'm sorry I'm interrupting.

Stacey Falgout: Go ahead--

Speaker 4: From Amber Henry. I apologize if you said this. She's multitasking. How many administrative staff do you have--

Stacey Falgout: Two--

Speaker 4: When you say cabinet is that Adult School cabinet or district cabinet?

Stacey Falgout: OK so we did-- good question. So we have two administrators and in our cabinet we have 6. And that means that we have somebody that's over CASAS. We have somebody that does our TOPSpro. We have our front office. And we have our marketing. And we our WIOA.

We meet as a cabinet every Friday. But as far as administration it's just Alisa and I. And then we have an administrator over WIOA but mainly it's just her and I that run this. Does that answer your question?

Speaker 4: Yes, thanks.

Stacey Falgout: Perfect. And we use surveys, data, department meetings, professional development trainings, webinars, and offsite trainings to bring diverse perspectives to our team staff. And by doing this again, the surveys have been huge. We just did a survey on staff and students about respectful communication are they feeling safe or is our staff feeling safe?

You know, who do they have that go to person? Do we provide that? Do they feel 'cause again that retention is going to come with that. That warm, safe environment.

So do we provide that as a school to our staff and also to our students. So that's the one we're working on right now, for our professional development that will take place in November. And then like I said, we have two professional development. Every semester we have one. And webinars, what we do we're big on webinars.

One of us is on something. We're sharing it. Did you look at this one? So we're constantly as a team sharing webinars and moving it around so that somebody seen it that's on Friday they bring it to the table and we're talking about what they learned and how we can implement it. Or how we can see it at a different perspective. So I love that.

And then we do offsite training just like our-- we go to the CCAE. We go to the CAEP. Different trainings that we go to. And then we bring it back to our staff. And usually we take our whole staff. We have 18 completely as far as staff site that work here as teachers and other positions. And then we have a group of 8 under CTE that we run right now.

And I hope those numbers are correct. Is there anything? Alisa you're good with that?

Alisa Ramirez: Yeah.

Stacey Falgout: Is there any questions so far? Again, I want this to be as open platform as we can get. So that we are able to share with you guys what we've done and how we've been successful in doing it. So our WKAEN's core values is community involvement. We're at the table. We've heard that before, if you're not at the table, you're on the menu.

And we've truly, truly believed that. In our rural community, I don't know who would have a boring life here 'cause we are at every event possible. Our faces are out there. We're talking. We're communicating with stakeholders. We're industries.

Whatever that looks like, we are there representing. And I have to tell you, when we first started this I always said, we will never be the tail behind our community college or any of our other schools or any other industries. And we are not. We are the head. They come to us.

All industries, all schools, come to us to find out what are we doing and how do we do it and how can they be a part of it. So we respect and support towards our students and employees. And that's the biggest one. We respect them. Again, we want them to know that they are important. They're valuable. And they're an asset to us and to the community that they serve.

Removing barriers. You know, again we found out low income transportation, low education, ESL. I mean, you name it. Across the board we were seeing a lot of these barriers. And how did we remove it? We go in, we find out how can we do this with our community? How can we serve them?

With transportation, how can we purchase it? How can we bring it to the table that we are empowering them in any way that we can. And we'll talk about how we've done some of those things. But removing barriers was our number one goal, especially in our three year plan of how to implement and remove those. And empowering our students' success. Again, goes back to that core value of who we are and what we represent and it stands by the students we serve.

I think you've gone back, Alisa.

Alisa Ramirez: Let me go back. Sorry

Stacey Falgout: I read that. We discuss our data. These are our team-- this is what we talked about is we discuss data, outcomes, attendance, marketing, goals, and expectations. We talk about upcoming weeks. Again, we go back to those meetings, what does it look like? We talk about that. And the team needs and focus on.

We collaborate as a team in areas of enrollment, retention, and student success. We know that in the retention of what we're doing is the longevity of it. Students can come. We always watch the front door, we forget about the back. And we need to make sure that they understand that we have them all the way through from the beginning to the end. And with that, comes retention.

Get the other one, Alisa. OK. So one of the things that we did and I really want to go through this on different things that we've done. But creating new job descriptions. When I came into my position Alisa and I got together, one of the things that we realized is that everybody's job description was so vague but it really did not define their position as a whole. So we redid it.

We redid everyone's job description. We took it to our legal. Took it to our board. They accepted it. But we really define each job and each person's job description. And that helped us be able to make a system work rather than you're doing this, you're doing that, multiple hats. It's just this is your specialty.

And give you an example of what we did on this we defined employee specialty and strengths and align them to the job that best suits their skills. I just want to say and give you an example. We had a young lady. And she's probably on here. Her name is Iris. And I'm going to put her out there.

She started Western Kern with me. She was probably here a year before me. And she was an aide. First job coming in as an aide and quickly we found that she had some special skills. And so we brought her into the office.

And she started working in the office. And then she was answering phones. But something about Iris as an employee that was just different than everybody else, she's one that loved data. She loved numbers. She likes structure. She likes routine. She likes to really work alone.

And so immediately we knew that we needed to change her job description to make her over our data. And now she's our Pearson VUE test advisor and our TOPSpro And this is what she does she works in both units. She works it together. And our data has grown 70% within a year just by defining her position and what her skills are and her specialty.

And so we did that with all employees. I'm just giving you an example of what we've done with Iris. And how much she's grown as an employee. And how much she's grown into loving the position that she is doing now. And the longevity with her because we really hung in into everyone's special gifts that they have and what they can offer to us as an organization to work in a systematic form that we weren't going outside that box.

We trained and supported them in the areas that they're working in . We train them specifically courses. We change that around. So now we have a courses' team 'cause we know now everything's around classes. So we knew we had to go into that area. Give a shout out. Carol's with us right now. She's been our coach.

We were assigned a coach through the CAEP. And she was with us for a little over a year I think. Correct me if I'm wrong. With that coaching, it really helped us strategically do these things that we did and that was to implement the job descriptions, redo our policies, understand who are to outreach? Who can we talk to?

As a rural area, sometimes we sit-in a pocket that nobody notice who we are. And we don't operate like every other school. We don't operate like the big school. So we do things different. So we needed that structure. And Carol was one that came along and helped us define that. And so this is what we've done. So I just wanted to give a little shout out to her as well.

And we evaluated job duties and their hours to make sure that they can obtain their daily workload. Some of those things, a lot of our students, we encourage education. So they're going to school. And they're trying to do different things with their families. So we want to make sure that we are meeting their needs too.

That they're able to obtain this daily workload. I want to go back to Iris. What we found is that she was doing courses TOPSpro and Pearson VUE. She's an amazing employee. But what we were doing to her was giving her way more than what she needed to do or could do. And so we needed to separate that and give other job descriptions that we can make this 100% effective rather than 70% because we don't have employment for this.

So that defining job descriptions, that's what we had to do and we've done it. And then we hired our GED instructor to come in and oversee the courses because why? He's talking the CASAS language to our instructors. And we needed an educator to come in and teach it at the level that we needed to incorporate that. And then we also built teams within departments to allow those support system. That's what we did.

So we have a CASAS team. And then we have a WIOA team. And then we have our admin team. And then we meet with them weekly. So then we can address any matters. And then we have an open door policy that they can come in and be with us at any time and/or share those concerns. Last thing we want to do is wait a week before we fix the problem.

So our doors are open. They know that. And they're able to come in at any time to address those issues as we move forward building our school as we grow. I think we had a question.

Speaker 4: We do. There's two questions actually. The first is from Amber. That's great. Can we get a list of the positions you have supporting your program? That is a position we do not have and it would be very helpful. We don't even have a job developer counselor. It's just me and an office manager while running two other k-12 schools.

Stacey Falgout: My gosh. Yes, we will give you that. And that's what we did. We went and we just researched job descriptions of who, what does this look like? And how can we implement it? And also we have the staff that we already had. We just moved them around because we found out that they had special gifts in areas. And it worked. So.

Speaker 4: The other question is from Kathy Kiely. If I pronounce your name incorrectly, I apologize. Kathy would like to know how many employees do you actually have.

Stacey Falgout: Altogether we have 18 that work on site with us. And then we have eight CTE instructors with two assistants. Is that correct Alisa?

Alisa Ramirez: Mm-hmm.

Stacey Falgout: And then Alisa is there anything else that we have done. I know Alisa is on the back end of this. She wears multiple hats. She does a lot of this with our employees. You want to share that Alisa?

Alisa Ramirez: So yeah, I would say the most support for most of our staff in helping like we talked about students in our upcoming classes. So I'm always going around where we at? Where's our student class? Especially with Iris tunes. Like I've worked a lot with Iris closely. She used to be at the front desk.

But I'm just there supporting them along the way are we having problems? Again, I feel like even though we've defined their descriptions on what they're doing, I do feel like we are able to move around when somebody is gone. We know what each other's jobs are. So in case Iris is gone she does our Pearson

VUE. We do have somebody who is certified as a proctor in Pearson VUE to sub for her when she is away if something were to happen. So even though we've aligned, them we do have other people who can step into that position if needed. And I think that's been really important to us versus coming to a complete stop.

Speaker 4: We have two more questions from Soraya Ledesma from Mount St. Jacinto. Are they full time or part time instructors? And how many students do you serve in a semester?

Stacey Falgout: So our teachers are all adjuncts. So they're part time. And then our immediate staff which is our office Alisa, myself, the WIOA and our CASAS overseer and our Pearson VUE, TOPSpro lead, they're full time. So we have a total of I think it's five full time.

Is that correct Alisa?

Alisa Ramirez: Yes.

Stacey Falgout: Five full time. And then as far as students we serve, we're at 146 right now and duplicated in the month of September.

Speaker 4: OK. Another question from Kathy. What organization does adult high school diploma in your area?

Stacey Falgout: There is no other high school other than our Taft Union High school that does a diploma. We do the GED.

Alisa Ramirez: Bakers' school would be the closest.

Stacey Falgout: Yeah.

Alisa Ramirez: 45 minutes out.

Stacey Falgout: 45 minutes out. Good. Yes, 45 minutes out.

Speaker 5: And just GED not high set as well or just that's it, right?

Stacey Falgout: We do GED in Spanish and English. And we do offer the high set as well. Yes.

Speaker 5: Thank you. Just curious.

Stacey Falgout: Thanks. One of the areas that we're moving in this new job description is we put the money where the heart is. And that's a marketing. So many times we want to pull them in. So we did a deep dive into marketing of who are we serving. And we know that our lower 18 to 24 is on Instagram rather than Facebook.

Facebook is the parents telling their kids to get off the couch. But then you get into the 18 and 24. They're on Instagram and Twitter. So we really hired a marketing specialists to come in and work directly in that into our website. We push out flyers every single week whether it's our CTE courses. Whether it's on our WIOA.

Whether it's on our ESL or GED. And then what we do too is we bring in a photographer. We have a photographer. So then we make all of our pictures exactly synthetically just the same that they know it's coming from us. And we simplify what those flyers look like. And then we put those bar codes on everything. So if they want more information then they would click and go to that area directly.

Is there any questions on that.

Melinda Holt: No questions. But Carol Herota had a statement WKAEN team has created a system process and supports a culture to efficiently serve adult students. WKAEN faculty staff are able to show evidence of student outcomes and attendance persistence always student focused. Network with this team.

Stacey Falgout: Thank you. She's awesome. She's awesome. Thank you Carol. Go to the next one. There we go. This is our system.

Our students and our staff work in a system that does not change. That is the biggest thing. Students will come in again, or stranded adults hey, I need this at this time or I need this at this time. We do not bend. Our system is put into place.

We will not operate. That consistency has been a benefit to us, because once they know the system then they'll operate within it. Sometimes their lives are not as organized. And we definitely don't want to follow that. So everything that we do is within a system. Our testing is at a certain time. Our assessments at a certain time.

Our counselling is at a certain time. Our classes. We do not change that. We keep that directly within. And the only time that we will switch those things that we meet as a group and we define what that means or what that is. And it's always in the best interest of the students. Never in the best interests of the staff. So we make that very clear.

WKAEN has created an effective module for each GED, ESL, CTE in this module is step by step. Our students need to know what is those steps look like. We do not work in vague information. Step 1, we're going to start here. Step 2, go from here. So we clarify that very and be very precise what that transition looks like.

So it's seamless. And we really have honed in on that to best serve our students as well. Our team meetings and administrative. Again, meetings are held weekly. And I want to go back to the effective module. What has happened since October of last year, we have tested over 125 GED students and only two have failed because even inside the GED classroom, the instructor has honed in on this curriculum nothing more, nothing less teach to test.

And the GED teachers and our ESL teachers have learned that our goal is to get them to the next level. And so by doing that, we have had success and making it simple for our students. And another thing that we've done and I'll talk to you a little bit later about as we go through what the counseling looks like. Is there anything you want to add Alisa?

Alisa Ramirez: Oh I mean, we do make some exceptions. But I do agree that this bending and not-- because sometimes we've have made exceptions in the past more frequently. And it just never pans out. We reschedule testing and then they don't show up. And then we had to adjust somebody else's hours in order to accommodate that. So it's really work to stay within the system.

Stacey Falgout: Any questions on that? Go back. We're on the next one. And that one, professional development. So what we do for the staff is we could not do what we're doing here in this community without our staff. So we really treat our staff and go above and beyond for our staff because again they're on the front line. They're the ones pushing. And they're the ones in the trenches working with our students.

And giving them all they got. I always say it's 90%-- 10% teaching 90% cheering. We are breathing a hope into our students. And we can't move in that order unless our staff is completely happy. So one of the things we do is we provide professional development training for our staff every semester. And this is every semester we do different activities.

And, then our training is consist of our data our reporting, our curriculum, sexual harassment, positive communication, state codes and guidelines, and survey results. We come up with new surveys. We present it. And then what we do is we like to follow a theme. We have different ones that we do just fun themes.

We come up with. We decorate the whole room. We serve a meal. We usually do it in the evening 'cause we have a lot of teachers that work daytime. And then we do team building activities and collaborating. We're doing one in November. And we're doing bingo.

And then we're going to give out gifts. And then we create space that are safe and conflict free. In this area that we can talk and be open and be transparent of any concerns that we're seeing. Or that we need to address. Or that we missed as admin and as leads. And how can we best serve them to make it a bigger and better place? We have little to no turnover.

We have a young staff that are bought in that go above and beyond. And we also like I said we have the best of the best. I have to say that. And so in our professional development this is where we bring everything to the table for everyone. And it's always a great experience for them and for us as well to know what their needs are.

So what we did this is one of the biggest things we wrote into our three year plan. And we felt like this was the most important part of what we do. And that's that transitional counselor. We call them transitional case managers. By doing that, the transitional counselor and the case manager, we hired two. The counselor and the case manager is to walk them.

So it's one thing to be a counselor. I'm a counselor myself. And we can say, hey, there's FAFSA going on. Go to the community college. We know that that bridge needs to be met. And that all of our students don't feel comfortable just walking on to a community college. They need that handhold. That warm handshake. And so we have developed that with a counselor/case manager.

And so what they do is they work-- they're from Taft community college. They work at the community college in their high risk area, which is their EOPs. And then they come straight with us. They work on our site. So our students have their own counselor within. And for the career and educational pathways, so what they do in that is they define as they meet with them.

And then they create a yearly calendar for our students to say this is what's happening on the community college this week this date. You can go over to your FAFSA. This date, this week you can go over and fill out these forms. Or go to the bookstore. Or say that they even need services. And that they need different financial aids, different grants or different services, transportation, housing or even clothing or food. That case manager/counselor is the one that's going to assist them.

So that we make sure that this is seamless for these students to get where they need to go and further their post-secondary. And then both counselors meet with the students one on one in group settings. Both counselors are connected to our GED, ESL, and CTE classes. They go into our classes. They talk to our students and tell them the different things that they have.

And then both counselors create that yearly calendar to best assist the students with upcoming events and dates and happening with post-secondary education. And I want to go back to our Second Counselor. Our Second Counselor is more the social and emotional. But what we do with this counselor, is we assess the students.

We use a form called Tradify and we assess-- this counselor goes in and meets with the students as they're going into GED or CTE or even in WIOA. And we're now doing it with our high school and our college students that teamed up with. And we are assessing them to define really going into the GED, what side of the brain do they even use.

If they're more on the left side, we're going to start them in science. We're not going to put them in liberal arts. And when they go in there, we've found that once we strategically look at how they learn, what they learn, what side of the brain that they're using, we've had 99% success in our GED. And we align what that looks like for their career pathway.

So this counselor comes in and we also talk about coping mechanisms. She's a part of teaching the students about dress to impress. Strategies on how to keep a job. We can get them jobs, how do they keep it? And what does that look like in protocols? And we use essentials.

She aligns her curriculum with that for all of our students. And then both counselors like I said make that coming in events dates and happening within the post-secondary. And our goal is to get them to our post-secondary education into those career pathways. Alisa, I'm going to hone in on you of that.

Alisa Ramirez: I think it's really helped us a lot Tradify is one of the apps that we use. It's really quick. It's pictures and you're answering me not me. And so I think it lasts like no more than two minutes. And it really breaks down. Like Stacey said what side of the brain they think of but also all their traits. And it'll list your top 10 traits. Where are the best work environments are for you?

And I think Stacey does such a good job of really helping them discover who they are and where their strengths are and where they can apply those strengths into a career for themselves. I think it's really worked great for us. And Brie does that as well. We've trained our community college counselor how to use it as well. So again, I talked to a lady in one of the conferences, she termed it a really good way.

And that she said, you're getting them to start- like Stacy said left side of the brain we're going to start them in science. We're going to tackle those easier ones. And now they feel like they've achieved something. And now those harder ones when they just have language arts left and that's the one thing holding them to getting their GED. I think it's a lot easier for them to conquer versus starting them in the most difficult subject first.

Stacey Falgout: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Is there any questions on that? OK. And then the next one. So this is what we do here in this rural community. I cannot say this enough of being at the table. I'm also on the Taft City School District Board. So I serve on the K-8 school board. Alisa here is on the Taft Community College Board a WIOA coordinator. She's on the Chamber of Commerce board.

Taft and-- both myself and our administration is on multiple Taft College Advisory Committees. Transitional Independent Living which is our SPED. And our special education we just put myself in-- I've been on it but I've added our GED instructor. And so that's within the Community College and for our community as well.

Alisa and I and many others serve in the Soroptimist International. So we are at the table of everything that they do, especially with the Taft City School Board and the Community College. We have four grants that we have written so far with the Taft High and the college as we serve it now in our CTE areas. So everything that we have done, we have said, OK, we want to be a part of.

So that we can move and make things happen for the best of the organization. One of the areas that I did not put on here is that we are now having a second site put into place. And the second site sits directly in the Hispanic-Latino population. It's a building that's under construction right now. And this building will serve our ESL, our civics, our citizenship our parenting, our financial literacy.

And with that will be a preschool that the state will come in and put beside it. So then our migrant families will be able to have their children in preschool while they come to class. So this is just our new movement that will be kicking off in January. And we serve multiple different CTEs as well. But we're a small powerful team.

But again, with all the staff that we, have the right people on the bus. And that's what it takes. Put the right people on the bus and define what their specialties are and move forward. Is there any questions for us? OK. Well, we appreciate sharing.

It's been an honor. We wanted to tell you about our little area that nobody hears about. And who we are what we're about. And how we've done this? We will provide this PowerPoint. You guys have our email. Reach out to us and we will let you know and give you some insight of tools that we've used.

And job descriptions how we've used them. And how we've defined moving forward and how we've gotten to yes, to our board members. And how we were able to move in the way we did.

Speaker 4: Stacey, there were some questions but I didn't know what context they were in. So I'm going to ask Kathy and Yolanda to please unmute if you can and ask your questions in regards to what form do you use? What form are you talking about?

Speaker 5: They weren't-- there you talked about it for me the Tradify. We discussed it. Showed it I've already looked it up. I would like to know how much it costs. So--

Alisa Ramirez: I can tell you

Speaker 5: Is it expensive?

Alisa Ramirez: No, actually it's unlimited. So you get to use it unlimited for a year is $1,000.

Stacey Falgout: And I can tell you as a counselor, I have used everything known to man. And sometimes we don't get an accurate reading because the kids don't want to read it. Or they don't understand the word verbiage.

Speaker 5: Exactly.

Stacey Falgout: And so they're shutting it-- yes so what I do-- yeah. And I just want to clarify on that real quick. So when I do the Tradify, it's a yes. It's a picture. It's two minutes. But what I use is I said there's a picture in there of hiking.

I don't hike. I want to hike. It looks great but that's not me. So sometimes we answer things because it looks good. It's not me. I'm not going to hike. I'm not going anywhere.

So it's not me. So I explain that to the students. So we can get a real accurate reading on them and understand who they truly, truly are. But it's a two minute. Yes, our whole staff has done it. We've done it with multiple-- the high school and we've done it with the college. And we use it all the time.

So it's great tool.

Alisa Ramirez: That's our WIOA flyer. So this is what Stacey was talking about our QR code that we put on everything.

Stacey Falgout: Yeah.

Alisa Ramirez: And I actually have a contact for a sales person. So I will put that in the chat. I'm going to stop sharing. Work that out.

Melinda Holt: And Alisa while you're doing that Anthony Burik has a question.

Stacey Falgout: Yeah.

Melinda Holt: Anthony you're muted.

Ann Waver: Alisa, what did you say the amount was for the-- after the year?

Alisa Ramirez: It's 1,000. It's $1,000 a year and it's unlimited. And you're able to look back up. Like they create a profile. So you can always go back and look up if they come back in for counseling. But they can-- Stacey always does really good because she's like if you forget who you are, go back and look at this.

She prints it out for them. And they also can log in and go back and see their results.

Melinda Holt: Anthony?

Anthony Burik: Yes. Hi, hopefully you can hear me. So Stacey and Alisa, first of all, thanks so much for your presentation. My question was-- and maybe the reason why some of us came to your presentation is. So we're curious to know like why do you think that some of these steps work better in your rural community versus like trying these same steps in other communities that might be larger or more urban?

What is it-- what's the magic that's happening out in your rural community that maybe we're not aware of in other communities around the state?

Stacey Falgout: You know, that's a good question. No matter what your team leads like I said, being at the table. And I don't think that we're doing anything magical. To me, it's not rocket science. You know, it's just what we had to do here in this area to get us out there. We were just under the table.

We were under Taft College. We were just a GED class. We were just in ESL under a Community College. And we wanted to put our stamp out there on the map and say no, we are separate. This is who we are. We have our own site.

And this is what we're doing. And to make it bigger and better, we just defined it. I think anyone can do it. It takes time. It takes strategic planning and understanding that empowering our employees, empowering our students. And it just fell into place like a puzzle. Once we defined our population, our special staff, and getting the right people on the bus. Does that answer your question Anthony? ,

Anthony Burik: Yeah. I think so. Maybe just a follow up question, because I'm also thinking about some of the things that you said in your presentation about making connections with other folks in your community, right? And I'm assuming as a person who lives in a big city that maybe it's easier to make some of those connections just because it is a smaller community. Maybe it's a little clearer who those people are exactly.

If I go to my local Chamber of Commerce, I'm not really sure who's the first person I should talk to. Whereas maybe it's a lot easier just to walk into the Chamber of Commerce and Taft. And you know exactly who it is that you need to connect with. So maybe can you talk a little bit maybe just about some of those community dynamics in your community?

Stacey Falgout: Yes, I taught in Clovis Unified for 23 years. I was in Clovis. So I definitely know the difference of a bigger school section than a small rural area. And I'm from Taft. So it is easier to walk in everybody knows everybody, everybody knows everybody's title. The one thing in a bigger sector in a bigger school is being at the meetings knowing who it is getting on those different collaboratives that they have.

In a bigger area they have their adult. They have their community college. They have these different things that you just got to be tapped in and getting a hold of those right people that you have connections to. And then getting those emails of like hey, this is happening at this time. Or the workforce this is happening. And having someone at the table to those things links that together.

But it is different. A rural area where-- like I said we know everyone. And in a bigger district, it is different but it is happening and it is there.

Alisa Ramirez: And I also want to add to that. I mean, I think about that too. Where I came from before all the connections. And yes, we are a smaller community. But I think when Stacey talks about community involvement, I really want to say we are really involved in our community. We're doing the trunk of a tree at the REC department this Thursday.

We attend sit and sips which the chamber holds every Wednesday. I mean, we are really involved in our community. And the connections that we have made just attending these community meetings. And also attending meetings that from being a board member or trustee. You know, yesterday me and Stacey went for-- it was the C-Tech building in Bakersville.

And got to see a tour of their building which was fabulous. And just meeting people there and making connections. So I just think any involvement in your community, you're going to start making those connections. And it'll lead to other places.

Anthony Burik: OK. Great. Yeah, thank you so much. I appreciate it.

Stacey Falgout: Yes, is there anything else?

Melinda Holt: Stacey and Alisa we do have request in the chat. Is it possible for you to upload your presentation in the chat before we close the session?

Alisa Ramirez: Sure. I'll try that.

Melinda Holt: That would be so marvelous. That question came up a couple of times during the presentation. All right while we're waiting for that go ahead.

Kathy Kiely: Melinda, this is probably a question for you I'm sorry. But I've been trying to find them. They were supposed to be uploaded before. And I don't know where on the summit website to find them. I've gone to all the little connections. And I don't know.

I'm just feeling dumb today.

Melinda Holt: I'm feeling dumber because I don't know how to answer your question. I thought they were on the site too. And I just went to look.

Kathy Kiely: OK, thank you.

Melinda Holt: Right. It's OK. It's in the chat right there. Alisa just put it in. So if you want to hit the Click to download button, it should download. And we'll stick around to make sure that you can get that done. Question for the audience. Being in rural districts, does your administrator district principal have other duties or schools to run? Is that normal for small districts.