[music playing]

Speaker: OTAN-- Outreach and Technical Assistance Network.

PATRICK O'NEILL: Good morning, those of you out there. We're here to talk to you about our experience being in adult education in our environment. I don't know how hard it is for students to get into your schools, but it's really hard for students to get into our school. We have really high entrance requirements.

[laughter]

And it requires a judge, either appointed or elected, to make the final decision if they're going to go to our school. Or schools were all single staff. Our schools are in gated communities.

We have 33 campuses, uniform strictly enforced. Our students are told what to do and when to do anything. They have to be in their rooms at certain times.

[interposing voices]

Pardon?

Audience: Great attendance.

[interposing voices]

Our schools are often racist environments [inaudible]. And it's not the teachers. It's the students. So clearly, we are with the prison system. We know that from the catalogue.

My name is Patrick O'Neill. I am an administrator in the Office of Correctional Education [inaudible] school district. That's what we call our district. I'm here with my team, most of them-- wonderful folks who are passionate about what we do.

Our district is actually the largest geographically in the state of California. We are the state of California. Our northernmost school-- I don't know where north is, is on the northern border. Our southernmost school is Tijuana-adjacent.

The school structure is just like pretty much any high school you would encounter-- a principal, vice principals. We have an art department. We have an academic department.

We have CTE. We have a testing exam athletic department, counselors, and deans-- deans of discipline. We call those guys correctional officers, they carry a gun.

All of our students are convicted felons, but we simply call them students. And some of them actually want to read about "See Jane Run," but they can't. The vast majority of our students come from very broken homes, type backgrounds-- backgrounds you can't even imagine.

When I was teaching transition through the entry course, we were working on filling out a job application. One of the questions on every job application in the country that I'm aware of is Social Security number. Finally, one of my students said to me, Mr O'Neill, my mom sold mine when I was born and she needed money. This is their reality.

I want to tell you about one of my first students. His name was Sam, but we'll call him Sam. He was an energetic 25-year-old. This was his second round as a guest of the state of California.

And he was eager to get back out onto the streets because he had a son who needed his guidance. His son turned 13 and started running with the wrong crowd. Do the math. Sam was 12 when his boy was born. Sam never knew his dad. All he knew was his dad was killed in a gang riot in one of the prisons within the system.

This is generational poverty. This is generational justice-involved. I told you about the Social Security numbers. Most of them, 50% of them, don't know it. 85% of a population is either HIV-infected or hep C-infected.

Few of our students even know someone without history in bond. This is tough. We want them to go into correctional without a computer and just ignore what's going on in your neighborhood. Just ignore the crowd of gang bangers.

Let's talk about our educators. So most of us that go through the education think about hope. They can't wait to sing the ABC song with a kindergartener, or watch those fourth graders divide, or have that intellectual discussion with their high schoolers.

Imagine you're watching a nuclear family at a dinner, and the soon-to-be-college graduate announces, I think I'm going to get a teacher's credential because I want the to teach at San Quentin or Folsom. Grandma's dentures would fly at this announcement.

I don't think any of us-- maybe somebody over here did. I didn't start my career with the notion of teaching in a prison, even though my dad wanted me to. So I like to tell people that I went from being an administrator of an all-girls Catholic school to an all-boys boarding school in a gated community. That's my reality.

One of the other issues we have is, because of state law, our teachers have to have a K-12 credential. We can't hire adult education teachers. We're working on changing that, but it hasn't happened yet.

Our leadership legislature, doesn't believe that online learning is real learning, so we can't count those instructional hours. So we have some hurdles. But that's why we're really happy to be part of the event, learning what that could be.

So I painted this dark, ugly picture. Let me clean it up a little bit for you. Our students know the metric system better than any other. I have no idea what analysis [inaudible] do.

They are eager to learn. They are so eager that they will accept a smuggled cell phone so they can watch college videos. That could result in them being in prison six months longer. They add time, they lost time.

They're very good at rationalizing things and justifying things and convincing people things to do. We get trained how to not fall for their stuff. They are creative. Prisons are the greenest place you will ever see. I don't mean bushes and trees. Nothing goes unused.

At one point, I saw this little origami critter-- this little brown origami critter. They call people amazing. For some weird reason, they have the best penmanship I've ever seen in my life-- all of them. All of them.

They get a certificate, and we have the ugliest certificates that come out of our computer. They'll trade five or six Cup-O-Noodle to be able to send it home. Cup-O-Noodle is money in prison.

Because we are committed to reducing recidivism, we do work, we thrive and we grow in what we do. We know that college, or some college, drastically reduces the chance of recidivism. But we're not there in terms of technology. Our schools are a cinder block. [inaudible]

Have you ever seen a preschool classroom? There's always [inaudible] that's out in the open, but in a corner? That's our reality. We have to watch our people. It's not fun sometimes.

But before I introduce my colleagues, I do want to tell you, the past seven years have been the most rewarding of my career. I have never encountered students who are more ready, willing, and eager to learn, and grateful for everything that we do. When we have a graduation, the pride on these family members' faces is incredible. And our pay is better than most by about 40%. Just saying.

[laughter]

So I'm here with my colleagues. Two of my teaching colleagues are here. One we have a video. Another member of our team is from our enterprise technology EIS.

And then we have our Grand Poo-bah, the incredible Dr. Ruvalcaba. So I'm going to let them introduce themselves. Thank you.

John Richards: You looking at me?

PATRICK O'NEILL: You.

John Richards: We practiced this a lot.

[laughter]

Practice makes perfect. My name is John Richards, and I'm a correctional educator at Pelican Bay State Prison. I was a public school teacher for roughly 18 years in an alternative setting. And then I ended the program in the public schools. And so then I became, fortunately, a correctional educator in [inaudible] California at a California correctional facility.

Mr O'Neill mentioned that we have 32 institutions. They all have different missions. There are all different levels. They are level I, II, III, and IV.

You have to get promoted from a I or II to get to a III or IV. So not only do you violate on the street. But then you come into a facility, and then you get promoted into a more restrictive environment.

And even though the public education code calls it a least restrictive environment, by the time they get to me in Pelican Bay in Crescent City, of our five yards, four are level IV. Two are, in addition to level IV, the restricted custody. So they don't get to come out and play with others.

We have approximately 1,800 inmates. We call them students. And of the students in our facility, about 800 of them are without a high school completion.

So we have ABE 1, just like the adult schools. We have ABE 2, just like the adult schools, ABE 3 like the adult schools, ASE, CTE.

Then we have college. We have junior college. And then we have four-year college. What I do is take them from ABE 3 to a high school diploma. And I use multiple ways for them to get there.

My reality is, on the five yards in our prison, we are basically satellite schools within a single school within a facility. We have an admin that is a hub, and then we have our five yards, and our teacher located on all five yards. And we don't see the other teachers day to day. We might see them once a month.

So you have four teachers on your yard-- in my area, 1AD I II, I, II, III. Then we have a college teacher and then we have a CTE teacher. We also have a couple other teachers that have come online in the last couple of years, which Mr O'Neill talked about, which is Transitions.

Our entire goal is to re-enter them into society in a pro-social manner. So when I talk about a promotion, going from a I, II yard to my yard, they picked up another case. Sounds cool. Sounds really cool, but what they did is on the inside, they made either another mistake, or they were told by somebody else to do something and they needed to do it. It's their reality.

Politics and the gang politics stops at the school's doors. They all work together in our facility. It doesn't matter what color, what race, what religion. They will help each other in my classroom. And then they might be enemies out on the yard.

And then rinse and repeat. They come back in the next day, and they all work together. It's magic to watch these people work together.

You then have tutors and clerks. Yes, sometimes if a student doesn't pick it up-- now realize, my students are failed everywhere. They failed in the public schools. They failed in YOP. They failed in the lower school levels.

And then they come to me and they say, hey, Teach, I'm not very good at this. And I say, look, I'm not very good either. I'd be at Harvard. I'm not. I'm here with you.

But we started laughing. We have an interaction. They like sports. We thought about the Warriors.

Most of them are from LA, so they automatically hate the Warriors. Now we have pro/con essays. Now we have something to talk about. It doesn't matter as we go through discourse versus debate conversations with these people.

Once they start talking, they realize they're just like everybody else. They have goals and dreams and hopes. And I tell them, just like Mr O'Neill said, if we don't allow them to enter society pro-socially, they're going to come back, we have to transition them to the outside.

74%, if we can get them two years of college, don't come back. That's a big number, because if they don't give you the education, 75% do come back. That's a real problem.

So we have lifetime by committee, which is when they come in for five years 10 different times. We try to stop that cycle. Now we're here for DELAC, we're here for distance learning and technology.

We have a plethora of riches. Our cup runneth over when it comes to hardware and software. They're everywhere-- SMART boards, dumb boards, monitors, computers. What we don't have yet, and we are probably six to 12 months away, is a blended learning model where we can teach.

They can learn a little bit before they get there with a laptop. We can give them an assignment. They can come back in, and they do have a ton of time.

And some of these people want to get out and they want their diplomas, and they want to be able to return with a skill. Technology is going to allow us to do it. But we have to be restricted because of our population, which is what causes most of our issues right now. It's not a lack of. It's the inability for us to be able to use it in a pro-social manner where they're not out in trouble doing things with our machines.

Our EIS people are working overtime because they have 24 hours a day to figure out how to break it. And these people only work eight to 10 hours a day to figure out how to lock it all down. So they have a 2 to 1 advantage over us. But the ones that want to learn, I mean, I've been responsible, or near responsible, for hundreds of GEDs and high school diplomas.

I always say that in my last lesson that I give to the inmates before I retire, I'm going to say, I saved the state millions of dollars. It costs $60,000 a year to house these guys. If I can get them on the streets and they don't come back, I save $60,000 a year.

Plus they get an incentive of six months out to get this high school diploma and a lot more incentivization to finish their college. That's so they don't come back. As a good educator, with our technology available to us, my entire goal every day when I go to work is for them to learn something.

We do discipline not at all. We do classroom management every day and we teach them individual lessons like, how did that work for you? I don't know.

Last time you tried that, this is what happened. You think there's going to be a difference. We try to teach you to think, because somewhere along the way, they lost that cause and effect.

But this distance learning program is going to empower them through some of our Canvas programs to make better choices. If we are successful, we are going to be able to help roughly 105,000 people. Half of that don't have their diploma, and the other part we're trying to get to go through college.

Our director of BRP [inaudible] said anybody without a high school diploma is illiterate. We need to end illiteracy in our correctional facilities. That is what this small group is trying to do. We have a plethora of bridges and hardware and software we need to implement.

That is where we're going next for our blended learning, and I think we can do it. And it's just going to take a little bit of time. So thank you for your time.

PATRICK O'NEILL: Thank you, John. Our next speaker couldn't be with us today. So he sent this.

Bryan Boel: Hi I'm Brian Boel, academic teacher from Valley State Adult School. I'm going to introduce you to the role technology plays in our academic environment. Located in Chowchilla, California, Valley State prison is a level II institution that houses just under 3,000 incarcerated men.

Within the walls of ESP lies Valley State Adult School, a campus that covers educational needs from adult basic education classes to career technical education, and even a bachelor's degree program through Fresno State. About half of the population attend classes at the school. Here in our ABE classes students, use technology to supplement direct instruction from the teacher. Each classroom contains desktop computers with the appropriate level academic software. ABE 2 classes utilize Achieve3000, while the ABE 3 and GED classes use Aztec software.

Our CTE classes work hard to keep up with the advancement of technology outside of these walls. For example, in the electrical program, students have a reference code book to answer technical questions related to their program. These are large paperback reference manuals that trade workers outside of the incarcerated setting house on their laptops. However, the electrical program is piloting an Achieve3000 math program to help build the foundational skill level of the students.

Students in our college courses are issued a laptop for use with their class. Merced College and Fresno State utilize Canvas to post lectures, instructional materials, and to receive homework from their students. These are the first students at the institution to have the opportunity of a blended learning environment.

Inmates housed at Valley State Prison also have the ability to access supplemental educational material. Every inmate is issued a tablet that contains an OpenStax library of educational materials and Khan Academy videos that can be accessed for free. Establish utilize an institution-wide network so these materials can be accessed within the individual's housing unit.

There has been an incredible change within the technological environment within CDCR in the last few years. But while this is a start, our foundation is far from solidified. 1 to 1 laptop distribution is only occurring with post-secondary students at the current time, plus the inmate network is inaccessible in the housing units.

College students must take their laptop outside and situate themselves on the far end of the yard to catch the network from nearby buildings. They can be hindered at this access at any time by yard recalls, weather, or any other custody security concern. Teachers have also been tasked with the responsibility of remediating lower-level technical support functions, such as enabling accounts and resetting passwords. However, ongoing training is needed to build the capacity of staff so this becomes a natural process.

As you can see, VSP has introduced technology to our population. But ongoing security concerns, training for both the students and staff, the purchase of additional laptops, and the installation of an institution-wide inmate network are all necessary steps we must take to move forward in the process. I hope this gave you some insight to the education and the correctional setting here at VSP and the foundation being laid by CDCR. Hi I'm Brian--

PATRICK O'NEILL: So we started up north. We're in the middle. Now we're going to go down south.

Vera Valdivia-abdullah: Before we move on, a couple of things I do want to say about Brian's particular case. Valley is what we use 90% of the time to model new things. So if there is something in our system that is out ahead, it's likely to try at Valley. So some of the things he talks about, particularly the information available on those tablets, is not widely available in our system. His prison is out ahead. If it works there, then we will live out elsewhere. But just I wanted to put that into a little context.

Audience: May I ask you a question. The tablets that they're using, are they from a server provider?

Vera Valdivia-abdullah: Yes. Hi my name is Vera Valdivia-Abdallah. And I teach at Lancaster State Prison. It's in LA County. And when they're saying now we're going to go down south, What you saw there on the video was like, oh, wow, look at all this technology.

So I've only been with CDCR for a year. It's my one-year anniversary. And I never knew about the education system within the Department of Corrections. And basically, I moved and went to the prison because it was close to home, because I was commuting 2 and 1/2 hours one way to a public school where I had been working in.

I bought a property, and I could only afford a property out yonder. So I was driving a lot. And that's when I found out about CDCR. And I thought, well, let me check that out.

And everybody I talked to said, I really like it. It's really great. We don't have to deal with parents.

[laughter]

So I taught ABE 2, ABE 3, GED, and I do Cyber High. And I have taken a group of students from ABE 2 to GED testing this year because I changed with them, which has been great to see them. When I stepped into my classroom at CDCR-- so I am at a level IV prison, and I have a lot of life without the possibility of parole students. I do have a few that do have some dates for release upcoming maybe in 20 years or 10 years.

So we have it divided into yards, and I am in what's called B yard. And currently, I'm the only teacher there. So it is pretty isolating. We are supposed to have three classrooms, and we have a shortage of teachers. So I'm teaching ABE 3, GED and Cyber High currently.

When I walked into the classroom-- I'm dating myself. I started teaching in 1995. And I felt like I had stepped back to 1995 because there was a complete lack of knowledge in my classroom. I used my whiteboard all the time, and that's basically all I've been using. There is a SMART board installed on one of the walls that has never worked because it was supposed to be with a laptop, and I only have an old desktop.

But the exciting news is that I now have six functioning desktops in my classroom. And I was finally able to-- it took several months to get my password to get myself situated and to create student accounts, and to teach some of the students how to get on. And we still struggle with what's my password, I have forgotten my log-on, the difference between capital and lowercase letters.

How do you operate a mouse? Wait, it's locked, what do I do? So you have to have a lot of one-on-one attention for the students.

So we've gotten the six desktops going. They use Aztec. They use a Achieve3000. They use the Kaplan. There are some online courses that can take to prep for their GED.

The good news is, I was told that we're getting laptops next week. So I'll be getting laptops in my classroom. And I'm thinking then how do I get 18 students logged on at the same time when we don't know how to use a keyboard? So they all know how to use smartphones because they all have them, even though they're not supposed to. And if you get caught with a smartphone, that's six more months of incarceration.

Last week, we finally got our tablets, and it was like Christmas, Hanukkah, [inaudible], birthday, weddings-- everything rolled into one. I have never seen so many happy people at one time, and they love it. And you know what really got me so excited is they came-- you're not supposed to bring tablets into the education, but they smuggle them. They get them in.

And then they're sitting in my classroom, and they're like, oh, I can study now while I'm here. So they weren't even so excited about watching sports or listening to music. They were like, oh my god, there's education stuff on there.

So most of my students, I can say, are motivated learners. There are some hardcore guys that will just absolutely refuse to go to education. And I usually go to the housing units and I talk to them. And the funny thing-- we're recorded, right?

PATRICK O'NEILL: Yeah.

Vera Valdivia-abdullah: Oh, the funny thing is, somebody cursed at me before and flipped me off and told me to get out of there. He was never going to come to education. But the fact that I went to see him and said, you need to be in class, guess what? He has the best attendance now in any class.

So they're really, really motivated. And they really want the technology. They all know how to use cell phones, but they don't know how to use a keyboard. They don't know how to use a computer. But they really, really want to.

And what's exciting for me with a technology being slowly incorporated, so I see it over this whole year span, now when next week I'm supposed to have laptops. That's so exciting. It's to see the technology being rolled out. And I keep telling them, look, guys, we're working on this blended learning because they want to go back to their cells and they want to learn more.

We have a program. It's called PNP, where they have tutors. So we're tapping into some of the inmates who are further along in their education that can be tutors. And we have some real math whizzes out in the yard that will sit with my GED students and will tutor them.

So they're really excited to be able to use their computer. And I've shared the plan with my inmates and said here is what we're working on. So the plan is you're going to be able to take your laptop and tap into some additional video.

Say maybe you didn't understand the math lesson from today. Well, there is such a thing as Khan Academy. You can go into the videos and watch the videos and further your education that way, or repeat some assignments or do some additional assignments to what is your knowledge.

And they're super-excited about it. The ones that have possibility accessibility to get out, they're really focused on I want to get my degree, I want to get an accounting degree or I want to become a barber or I want to get an electronics repair person. So they have goals.

And one of the things in education in the prison system, what I really love about it, is that they say like, wow, I can do this When they get an assignment back from me, and I always put smiley faces-- put a little comment. And they're like, wow, I've never gotten a smiley face before.

So that's the little smiley face. I taught second grade. That was what I was teaching on the streets.

And people ask me, how is it teaching in a prison? And I'm like, it's no different than teaching second grade. I use the same motivators-- putting a smiley face on the paper and saying, well done.

Or I have little stickers I put on each one of their papers. So they took the little smiley sticker and put it on their hat. And they walk around the yard. So they're really no different than regular students.

In terms of technology, it is a bit of a challenge just getting some of the basics done, like how to operate the mouse, how to operate the mouse keypad, how to keyboard. So I'm really looking forward to doing some keyboarding with my students, putting some of the stuff aside. Because when they do GED tests, I have quite a few students who haven't passed the reading language arts course because they couldn't navigate the essay. They know how to write it, but they can't type it. So they all just run out of time.

And I try to coach them and to visualize this, because we didn't have the computers to really practice visualizing. You're going to get the laptop and you're going to have to type your essay. So don't write them on a piece of paper, because they'll write the whole essay out by hand. And then they try to tape it, and they're like this.

And a lot of my students have been incarcerated 20 years, 20 or more. They've never seen a computer on the streets when they were out. So this is all really, really new for them.

And some of them are saying, you know what? I think I'm too old for this. And I'm like, no, you're not.

And then when you see them-- I have my oldest GED student. He's 68 years old, and he wants nothing more than to earn his GED. And he was like, Miss V-- that's what they call me, I don't know. Old man over here, I don't know how to do that.

So I could sit with him and say, look, you just move it. And now he can, I can operate this now. And he did his first lesson on Aztec, and he's like, wow. He calls himself old man. "Old man-- I can do it." It's really funny to see that they just missed a word.

And so they really are motivated. And I think that the introduction of technologies is going to really open up a new world for them. And it shows them, too, we believe in you.

Like, it's not just us saying that you can do this. You can do this. And in terms of being able to enter back into real life after incarceration, I think this will give them the tools to really be able to function, like how to do a job application, how to do a training program online, how to function in the real world on the street. We call it on the streets. Thanks.

PATRICK O'NEILL: Thank you. So how often do you hear educators talk about when they were on the streets? It's such an odd term.

Our next presenter will be on a video. She is from our Enterprise Information System. I got it right that time.

Again, our district is the whole state. And we're dealing with buildings that were never intended to deal with school and rehabilitation. They're built to house people who want to leave, so lots of challenges. So this is an Erin. And Erin is amazing.

Audience: Patrick [inaudible].

Erin Case: Hi. I'm Erin Case, IT manager with CDCR's Enterprise Information Services Incarcerated Population and Community Solutions Team. I appreciate the opportunity to participate in DELAC and TDLS. I apologize that I cannot be there in person with all of you. Our team is responsible for collaboration, coordination, and project management when it comes to all education technology efforts for the department.

As with all agencies, changes to our work environment, leading to 100% telework, has changed the way in which we conduct business. Let's discuss some of the efforts and issues currently impacting our progress. In October 2022 we completed the Inmate Domain Redesign project which was a significant infrastructure effort requiring resources from multiple divisions within CDCR.

The project team consisted of approximately 40 people with a capital expenditure of about $16 million. The goal was to significantly increase the number of incarcerated people participating in rehabilitative programs. The successful implementation of this effort allows for more than 30,000 incarcerated students to access the online curriculum and allows the environment to be expandable, able to support up to one million end point devices.

We have deployed over 6,000 laptops to provide improved educational resources for face-to-face college students. Over the next 18 months, we will provide laptops for correspondence college students, and evaluate providing to GED, high school diploma, and ABE 1, 2, and 3 students. This will be effective in providing technologically advanced tools for higher education of the justice-involved.

We are also providing laptops for instructors and providing interactive whiteboards for all instructors to use to enhance their teaching and the content provided. With the improved technology, we are working to provide more professional development and training for both instructors and students through electronic methods, reducing our overall output of printed paper products.

We are working with several other divisions to provide wireless access in all areas within our institutions. This project has been hampered by supply chain issues, as well as competing department priorities, creating resource constraints. Taking information provided by DRP, we have identified the first 11 sites which include bachelor program expansions for priority construction and installation of the wireless access points.

Our team is small, consisting of only 12 people, including our chief with support from local IT to handle on-site institutional activities. We do not have dedicated staff to manage inventory, evaluate potential breaches or breakage, or handle on-site issues without competing for resources for the rest of the institutional needs.

As of today, our biggest concern is identifying and eliminating security breaches by incarcerated individuals who see an opportunity to circumvent security measures and violate policies for their own gain. Technology in the hands of the incarcerated poses unique concerns. We chose to provide an internal solution, which came with its own issues. We are working to identify physical security measures to apply to the laptops, as well as more stringent software security to alert IT, educational, and custodial staff of the breaches and who is conducting them.

Due to these security concerns, DRP is forced to take another look at the deployment schedule to determine what we can do to provide better security, inventory management, and investigative resources prior to handing laptops out to more incarcerated with less incentive to follow the rules and use the resources as intended.

Security requirements limit the type of technology, hardware, and software we're allowed to provide and to use. For example, Chromebooks are considered disallowable hardware for incarcerated students, and Google Docs is not approved for staff use. The security measures put in place to enhance public safety and promote successful reintegration through education, treatment, and active participation in rehabilitative and restorative justice programs can also create roadblocks for educators, students, and IT. We have to be creative in our solutioning and focus on the business of providing specific needs, and not the name-brand solution they think will solve their problems.

It is the mission of EIS to be the catalyst that drives transformation across this department. EIS leverages technology, innovation, and process improvement to support the security, safety, rehabilitation, and efficiencies needed for a safer California through correctional excellence. We are working in a collaborative manner with executive leadership directing priority of efforts, technological method of delivery, and funding sources. In addition to laptops, we are deploying tablets to all incarcerated people statewide in all institutions and fire camps camps.

These tablets are intended to provide incarcerated people with enhanced communication and entertainment, as well as rehabilitative resources. The tablets allow incarcerated people access to incoming and outgoing electronic mail, outgoing telephone and video calls, incoming video messages, and photos. Additionally, users have access to ebooks, audiobooks, podcasts, FM radio, movie and music subscriptions, department materials, and mental health and rehabilitative resources. We are working on a list of nearly 50 requests for more access and content.

By providing resources through multiple methods and for all incarcerated people to access, we are able to decrease incarcerator violations, recidivism, and generational incarceration, to increase opportunities for higher education, work experience, and preparation for life outside the institution. We are providing opportunities to develop skills, and abilities for the incarcerated population, leading to a more successful retention of their freedoms and reduced societal impact from criminal activity and incarceration Thank you so much for your time.

PATRICK O'NEILL: Thank you, Erin.

[laughter]

And now our queen, our leader.

DR. LYNNE RUVALCABA: I'm just here to wrap it up-- bring it home. Really quickly, Patrick, can you go back to either your slide or John's slide where we had a picture of one of our institutions?

PATRICK O'NEILL: Yes.

DR. LYNNE RUVALCABA: So my part of this, to wrap it up, is to talk about where we're going. I think it's important to go back to where we are and where we've been and how we got here. So our keynote speaker presented a list of things yesterday of how our students succeed? What do they need to be successful. And it listed a number of things-- support from their family and their schools.

And as she went through that list, it struck me. And I leaned over to my partner in crime here and I said, if I don't get those things-- she asked, what happens if I don't get these things? And I leaned over and I said, they come to us. That's how this works. That's that school-to-prison pipeline that is so talked about. So how do they get here-- which you can't see in this picture, is that I'm--

PATRICK O'NEILL: It's your magnetic personality here.

DR. LYNNE RUVALCABA: What you can't see in the picture-- there's my little red mark, is there is what we call an LEF. In our business, we talk about the LEF a lot. It's a lethal electrified fence. Lethal-- that goes around that. And as Patrick said to get inside, to get to us, it takes a lot of work.

So they've come to us because they lack the things that they need to be successful. They've come through that pipeline. And when I came into my first role, which was at a prison as a principal, I walked on the yard. And having spent a number of years in public education, my first thought was, this is what we've done. This is what we've done by not providing the right things in the right ways.

And one of those right things in the 21st century is access to technology that will allow them to be successful. And we can't say, oh, we can point to the exact cause. But this perfect storm comes together for most of our residents that just shuts doors for them before they even know they exist.

So where are we going? Where is CDCR intending to go with our education? We're going to take the school-to-prison pipeline and change it to what I term the prison-to-progression pipeline.

It's not just a job. You give a guy a job, he doesn't like it, he doesn't find something to fill the gap. You give him a profession, you give him a skill and you give him the ability to feel proud about what he's doing.

He's never coming back to us. He's got many more things to do on the outside. But you can't do that. You can go forward to the next slide, please.

PATRICK O'NEILL: Yes.

DR. LYNNE RUVALCABA: You can't do that unless you set them up for success. And our teachers are doing exactly that, and they have been doing that for groups like this with golf pencils and paper for years. And now they're getting their computers and they're starting to give them these access skills, if you will. But we have still large holes in what we're doing.

Patrick works on what we call our e-learning, which provides skills that we aren't addressing in class. Just before you all walked in here, he and John were talking about a wealth-building course. How do you teach an individual who didn't have any means of generating their own income, other than criminal activity, to actually understand what it means to build wealth and find success? These guys stood here in five minutes and germinated that course that will be provided through campus eventually to any student who wants to get it.

We are headed in the near term to a point where our institutions are covered with wireless in housing units, so that they can take those passions that they have for learning and the time that they have for learning, and extend it beyond the two hours a day that they can spend with us-- or if they're in CTE, their six-hour day. They want to. They are passionate. They ask all the time.

You saw the gentleman sitting on the side of the wall. That's not a staged photo. That happens all over. At this point, they'll carry their laptops until they watched [inaudible]

So in our institutions, they have a laptop that is very limited. It was not intended to do anything other than to be a thin client to reach the cloud. But because of some changes after COVID, it now has to have a live signal in a place that doesn't exist right now.

That system is no longer available. So they'll walk around. They can't see. We don't have the youth connected. Here's your wireless strength.

PATRICK O'NEILL: Or the Starbucks sign.

DR. LYNNE RUVALCABA: So they use the Starbucks model simply by carrying it and waiting until Canvas starts to move. And then, oh, I'm going to sit right here until that stops. And then once there are more guys all inside that classroom, and my signal is weaker, I'm going to move closer. And they are trying to get this done. It's amazing to watch.

So we are going forward with, as Erin has mentioned, more wireless. We're hardwiring in the first 11 institutions. Our plan was to have it done in 18 months for all of our institutions. With budget limitations and supply chain, it's going to take a little longer, but we're going to get there.

We're also heading into an area where we're going to use more online educational resources. We have a process called whitelisting. And what that means is, from the teacher to their administrator to DIS me to people above me, it takes that many people signing a piece of paper saying this is a worthy site and it's a secure site and the student can have it. We'll give them access.

So you can imagine that bureaucracy. That wheel is slower than trying to roll a rock uphill. We're trying to streamline that process and have more online educational resources that we can get into the hands of our students when they've got that device, when they can log in from their day room, sit around, do whatever they want-- watch videos, and have access. Just yesterday, I had a fantastic conversation with the Aztec people about getting their e-books right on our computers and on those tablets that shall not be named.

[laughter]

As Erin mentioned, if you get requests for putting things on the tablets-- the vast majority of those requests are not the entertainment stuff. They want education. They want to be able.

Can I get to my college? Can I take classes on this tablet? Can I get my textbooks so I'm not trying to carry around 15 different things? And it's all that type of request.

Now, on the other side that education doesn't cover, it is the substance abuse, mental health supports. We're putting mental health supports on those tablets so that those late night-- let's be realistic, the late night I need drugs, I need a fix, and I can get it in this prison and I know it, are being replaced with I can get on this tablet and remind myself that my coping skills, or remind myself that I cannot do that.

Our philosophy is the busier we keep them, the less they have time for stuff like that. So we are prioritizing putting a vast library of things on the tablets that are available to our general population.

The reality is, with 13,000 students currently, there are multitudes more that are waiting for us. So where are we going? We're expanding the ability to deliver some blended learning, some e-learning, some online activities to bridge the gap until they can get into one of our formal programs.

Now, beyond that, we have this visionary in charge of our department, Dr. Brant Choate. And he runs around the world dropping what we call CBIs-- Crazy Brant Ideas.

[laughter]

He knows it. He embraces it. But he is like the hit-and-run guy on the freeway. He'll walk past you and say, that's a great tool, make it happen. And he leaves.

And until recently, 17 months ago, those ideas were dropped in various gardens. And they started sprouting and getting roots in different places. But there wasn't a way to benefit. If we're growing strawberries here and strawberries there, and you've got a fertilizer and I don't, you're going to get two different results.

So in one of his Crazy Brant Idea moments, I think, he had an idea that they needed an ed tech person to start to corral all of this and make it happen. And that's how I ended up here. So Dr. Choate and I talked about things like virtual reality headsets.

How do you teach someone the world if they're in the middle of an [inaudible]? How do you inspire a guy, like Ms. Reed said, who's going to be with us the rest of his life to have any sort of passion for doing something other than bare inside crime or nothing? We want to inspire him because in California, there's a never say never attitude.

One of my very close associates runs an internal program for therapy dogs. He was the first person sentenced to multiple life sentences without possibility under the Three Strikes law in California. As he'll tell you, I wasn't a bad dude. I was just multiply awful. And I ended up here for 190 years.

What kind of inspiration can you have facing 190 years? His inspiration came from dogs. His inspiration got into the point where the governor signed the first order to get him out. 13 years, 190 want to go home and make a life-- no skills. Nothing other than passion for dogs.

He runs our programs in our prison now for dogs. But there's a never say never attitude. If he can get out, so can everyone else.

And it's our responsibility to make sure we send them away with the best possible chance. To do that, they need to be able to get online and fill in applications. They need to understand social services. They need to have connection with adult education on the outside because many of them are going to leave us before they finish that GED.

We need to strengthen that bond to say, oh, you're going to Placer County? Here are some resources. You reach out to them. And in that spirit, we started early conversations providing a tablet of sorts that will enable them to continue having access to specific resources for 30, 60, 90 days, whatever it is.

It's still in a very crazy idea stage. But instead of just handing them money that will be used and gone, we want to hand them something that says we recognize you're probably going to be unstable for the first two months that you're out. We recognize that that's going to be the most critical period in your am I going to recidivate or not.

And we're going to give you this so that you can continue to find those resources. You can have internet access to apply for jobs. You can get a hold of any of the services that you need right there, and maybe some of those non-health supports-- maybe they'll continue on as well just to keep you going.

So those conversations are really where we're headed. We're trying to, again, change the dynamic of our students can succeed maybe to our students will succeed. And not only will they succeed, but they're going to thrive. They're going to go out prison to profession.

And we're going to be inviting them to come back and stand up next to us and talk to you guys next time, because we do that at some of our conferences and tell you what role technology played for them in being successful. Because as Patrick has pointed out, there are ways to put together virtual ATM machines, virtual services on the web. And nothing is impossible. And thankfully for us, we have a leader who really honestly believes that and amazing folks who are like, that's an idea I can make.