CAEP
Annual Plan

Produced: Aug 15, 2023, 11:51 PM UTC - By Arora Chavez

30 Mendocino-Lake Adult And Career Education (MLACE) Consortium
CONSORTIUM APPROVED

2023-24

Plans & Goals

Executive Summary

The mission statement of our consortium states that “the ML ACE consortium members are committed to collaborating and sharing resources throughout our region to provide adults with equitable, seamless and integrated educational and/or career pathways/services with multiple opportunities for successful entry and exit”. The goals of 23/24 will continue to offer programs that we offer in 22/23 with an added non-credit, short term CTE program in sustainable construction trade program offered by the college. Most of our adult schools offer high school diploma or high school equivalency certificates, ESL and Citizenship classes, short-term Career Technical Education programs in the health care industry, classes for parents to support in K-12 success and programs for Adults with Disabilities (AWD). We are a collaborative, creative and resourceful group of educators and service providers committed to serving the needs of our diverse, rural, and geographically spread-out communities within our two counties. The consortium consists of seven adult schools in Anderson Valley, Fort Bragg, Willits, Ukiah, Kelseyville, Upper Lake and Leggett Valley. In addition, the Mendocino And Lake County offices of education offers short-term health care pathways and training. Finally, the college is an integral part of the consortium in providing facilities, faculty and support to run the ESL classes and also the non-credit CTE courses.ML ACE approved the 23/24 allocations to its member agencies. As we continue to effectively collaborate to support this mission, we have accomplished a few of our targeted goals, but not all. We continued to offer classes and continued its CTE programs into 22/23. Now that we sense we have passed through the worst of the global pandemic which affected us during the previous two years, there is a sense in the consortium that varying methods of program delivery are viable and should be continued to serve our students effectively post the pandemic years. Our list of accomplishments include: Short-term CTE-Healthcare: During 22/23, the consortium continued to offer training in medical assistant, phlebotomy, dental assistant, certified nursing assistant and vocation nursing (VN). We have the same number of students in each of these programs that graduated this year compared to the previous year because these are limited first-come, first-served basis due the small number for cohort, the shortage of qualified teachers and limited space. In spite of the percent of unmet demand (the number of programs versus the amount of job openings in this career area; we only have one program in each of our counties, except the medical assistant programs which are offered in both of our counties). The medical assistant program graduated 20 students, dental assistant graduated 14 students, phlebotomy graduated 25 while VN had 32 graduates .  Our healthcare programs charge student fees for the programs to pay their instructors. The consortium has been able to give extra funds through our one-time fund requests to pay for supplies, curriculum, and teacher credentialing fees for the instructors. In terms of the sustainable construction trade  program we launched a new program in 2021 in Sustainable Construction Trade, offering this short-term program as non-credit and only for one semester or as an 18 week course. Classes include introduction to construction trade, math for construction, safety standards, Community First Aid/CPR and basic operation of fork and scissor lifts. In the Fall of 2021, there were 14 students who registered and completed the program in one location. In 22/23, we expanded the offerings in another location in Lake County and there were 73 students who completed the program for that year. This SCT non-credit program was also offered with students from the BUILD program, a local program ran by North Coast Opportunities which is funded by grants from the Community Economic Resilience Fund Programs. These courses were offered in collaboration with the college which provided the instructors, the space and the tools, the consortium which developed the non-credit curriculum, and the NCO BUILD program who provided the participants alongside the college students. Several companies in our counties also participated in the program providing construction projects and coaches from the community. This is such a needed and successful program for our community, but the challenges include finding more SCT qualified instructors, more space and more community partners/employers willing to provide students with the on the job experience. ABE/High school diploma: All seven of our adult schools offer a high school diploma or a high school equivalency program.  In 22-23, our consortium member agencies enrolled in total 550 students in ABE, high school diploma and high school equivalency. There were 90+ graduates who achieved their high school diploma or their high school equivalency certificates. 23% increase in enrollment.

Regional Planning Overview

We will continue to effectively meet the goals and strategies identified from the 3-year planning, which are 1.to identify, develop and expand offerings of non-credit Mendocino College curriculum in our priority career education pathways, 2. To improve enrollment in existing programs based on community needs data 3. To create and implement strategies that improve the sustainability of our health care programs, 4 to improve access and availability of outside support agency services for our students 5. To finish the pathway maps in our priority career education areas, 6. to continue to collect, analyze and improve the accuracy of our student data, 7. To improve student retention rates from enrollment to completion of personal education goals, and 8. Equitably fill program gaps throughout consortium. These are the metrics that we have selected and included in our three year plan: Student Barriers: English language learner, low income and low literacy. For Progress: Functional level gains in ESL; for Transition: Participants with Transition to Postsecondary (CTE) and with Transition to Postsecondary (credit college);For Success: Participants Who Earn a High School Diploma or Equivalency and for Employment and Earnings :change in median earning. Our SMART goals include: By June 2025, to develop and expand those offerings based on the identified needs, create curriculum in the priority areas of business, construction trades and health care. In addition, by 2025, to increase the number of participants, persistence, completion, and transition rates by 5% . Some of our accomplishments in 22/23 in the different program areas are: ABE/High School diploma: Enrollments in 22/23 in these programs is an increase of 20-23% from 2021-2022. One example of a high school diploma program that surpassed our goal for the year in terms of enrollment is Kelseyville Adult School which enrolled 102 students (TopsPro Enterprise data) and had 38 graduates in 22-23 school year. This is a 37% graduation success rate. In 2022-2023, we have surpassed our yearly goal of an increase enrollment rate of 5% for our ABE, high school and high school equivalency programs. High school diploma students were assisted in taking basic skills classes, ESL classes and even non-credit short term CTE classes in Basic Computer Skills, Auto Mechanics, Sustainable Construction Trade and Child Development classes. ESL: We have continued to offer non-credit ESL courses at different locations throughout our counties. Mendocino College, our partner in providing ESL courses in the different college centers. We also provided ESL courses at adult school locations in Ukiah, Anderson Valley and Fort Bragg. ESL instructors are employees of the college (part-time faculty) and they also provide assistance for ESL students to take other credit or non-credit courses at the college. Following SB 554-dual enrollment for adults, adult school students may enroll in college courses up to 11 units with consent from adult school administration and only pay the student fee and health fee of less than $15 dollars for the entire semester. In 22-23 according to our TE data, we have enrolled 344 students with 200 as participants with 12 hours or more. It is an increased of about 26% from 21/22. Anderson Valley's goal for next year, representative of the other adult schools in our region offering ESL, ABE/High School diploma, and parent education for k-12 success, plan to increase the number of participants, persistence, completion, and transition rates by 5% in these program. AWD: Ukiah Adult School supports the Ukiah Valley Association for Habilitation (UVAH) program which provides life skills training to Adults with Disabilities in our communities. This program also partners with Mayacamas Industries to find internship opportunities in the community for job training which would eventually place clients in employment opportunities. In 21-22, there were 94 clients enrolled and in 22-23, the number decreased to 70 participants. CTE-SCT: In terms of the Sustainable Construction Trade program we launched a new program in 2021 in Sustainable Construction Trade, offering this short-term program as non-credit and only for one semester or as an 18 week course.  Classes include introduction to construction trade, Math For Construction, Safety Standards, Community First Aid/CPR and Basic Operation of Fork and Scissor Lifts. In the Fall of 2021, there were 14 students who registered and completed the program in one location. In 22/23, we expanded the offerings in another location in Lake County and there were 73 students who completed the program for that year. CTE-Health Care: the medical assistant program graduated 20 students, dental assistant graduated 14 students, phlebotomy graduated 25 students and the vocational nursing program graduated 24 students.


Meeting Regional Needs

Regional Need #1

Gaps in Service / Regional Needs

 Due to the number and percentage of the adult population in our region with no high school diploma, the number of language learners, and other statistics relevant to our adult population in the region as shown in the CAEP Fact Sheets of 2021, the consortium determined that these programs are the greatest needs in our region: High school diploma or equivalency, ESL classes and short term CTE courses in health care, construction/trade and business office skills. Most of the adult schools in our consortium have high diploma programs or high school equivalency programs for our adult students. Some of these adult schools like Anderson Valley, Fort Bragg, Leggett Valley and Kelseyville are geographically isolated areas separated by winding roads and mountain passes with few industries and have higher numbers of adults with low literacy, low income and English learners which have been barriers for many adults completing their success and completion in their program areas. However, we have a bigger-size adult school, Ukiah Adult School which offer not only high diploma in the correctional facility, but also GED prep and testing, Citizenship class, employment and coaching of adults with disabilities through the Ukiah Valley Association of Habilitation (UVAH) as well a robust vocational nursing program. Ukiah Adult School's varied offerings of programs have filled in the gaps for those programs that are needed in other hard to reach areas of the two counties. In addition to the high school diploma programs from our consortium, in Mendocino and Lake counties, there is a federally funded program called HEP (High School Equivalency Program) through the Office of Migrant Education that offers high school equivalency certificates via exams. The HEP program’s eligibility requirements include adults you have never had a high school diploma in the US, have worked at any point in their adult lives as seasonal agricultural workers and are living in the US. Those adults wanting a high school equivalency certificate but do not qualify as seasonal agricultural workers, are then enrolled in our consortium’s high school equivalency programs. ESL classes are offered by Mendocino College and courses are held in Fort Bragg, Anderson Valley, Round Valley, Lakeport, Willits and Ukiah campuses. The Fort Bragg Coastal Adult School also offers a multi-level ESL class and a citizenship class at the adult school are funded by CAEP funds. We will continue to expand ESL offerings in different adult school locations so that many more adults in our communities can access basic skills classes and obtain their high school diploma or equivalency certificates. The two county offices of education along with Ukiah Adult School which offers a vocational nursing program, offer programs in the heath care field. Mendocino County Office  of Education's CTE program offers a dental assistant, phlebotomy and a medical assistant program. Lake County Office of Education offers a certified nursing assistant and a medical assistant program that are critically needed at this time. These CTE programs have great successes and many of the graduates obtained sustainable jobs in our region.

How do you know? What resources did you use to identify these gaps?

 According to the CAEP Fact Sheet taken from the American Community Survey Demographic Data of 2020, from Mendocino County and Lake County census, Mendocino and Lake counties have a population of about 95,000 who are over 16 years old and about 84% of that population are 30 years and older. Of the 95, 000 of the over 16 years old population, we have about  15,181 adults who do not have a diploma and about 3,323 English language learners, 24,383 who are at poverty line or below, 7337 who are unemployed and about 23,165 adults with disabilities. From these data, the barriers that are challenges for our consortium as educational and training agencies center around low literacy, low income, high number of English learners and unemployment.

How will you measure effectiveness / progress towards meeting this need?

These are the SMART goals that the consortium members are committed to achieving to address these regional needs and gaps in services. We will measure the effectiveness and progress of our strategies and activities by evaluating if we have met the SMART goals created by the consortium: OBJECTIVE: By June of 2023, identify non-credit curriculum in the priority pathways of business, construction, and healthcare. By June of 2025, develop and expand those offerings based on the identified needs. OBJECTIVE: By June of 2023, assess expanding credit and non-credit MC curriculum through the use of technology at various locations to offer hybrid synchronous instruction with onsite local tutor support. If deemed relevant, pilot up to three courses between 2024 and 2025. OBJECTIVE: By June 2023, create a document (community catalog) to identify and define support services available for students and communicate those services and connections to all consortium members, with continuous updates going through 2025 and beyond. (academic, financial, housing, emotional, etc.) Here are the SMART goals that we would like to achieve in order to improve the effectiveness of our programs and services. Our strategies will focus on increasing the number of adults served to become participants, increase the number of students completing HSD or HSE and increase the number students transitioning to CTE: OBJECTIVE: By June 2023, the number of adults served who become participants (also known as persistence rate) will increase by 5%. OBJECTIVE: By June 2023, the number of students completing a HSD or HSE will increase by 5%. OBJECTIVE: By June 2023, the number of students transitioning from non credit to credit classes will increase by 5%. OBJECTIVE: By June 2023, the number of students transitioning to CTE will increase by 5%. For Anderson Valley: Anderson Adult school partially met the established regional objectives by increasing the persistence rate by 4% between the 2021-2022 and 2022-2023 school year. We also did have an increase of greater than 5% in students transitioning from non credit to credit classes. However, the number of students transitioning to CTE did not increase. Also, in the 2022-2023 school year we discontinued our in-person HSE program and only offered online HSE in the fall semester, so we did not meet our goal of increasing HSE completions by 5%.Regarding regional needs, we plan to contribute to the following objectives: By June 2024, the number of adults served who become participants (also known as persistence rate) will increase by 5%.The number of students transitioning from non credit to credit classes will increase by 5%.Regarding regional needs, we plan to contribute to the following objectives: By June 2024 , the number of adults served who become participants (also known as persistence rate) will increase by 5%.The number of students transitioning from non credit to credit classes will increase by 5%.We plan on contributing to the first objective through closely monitoring student attendance and participation and intentional communication with students who do not attend class via the teacher and/or assistant. In cases where the student is facing barriers to attending class in person, we will offer alternatives when possible. We plan on contributing to the second objective through ongoing promotion and hosting of the for-credit Child Development classes and specialized support and counseling for students who are interested in taking for-credit classes.

Address Educational Needs

2023-24 Strategies

Identify and expand non-credit curriculum in priority pathways: Healthcare, SCT

Activity that Applies to this Strategy

non-credit curriculum in the priority pathways

Metrics that Apply to this Activity/Strategy

  • Transition: Participants with Transition to Postsecondary (CTE) (AE 636 - Overall)

Description of Objective: From data in the CAEP Fact Sheets provided to the consortium which shows low number of adultswith high school diplomas, high number of English learners and increase job demands in these industry sectors, the consortium determined that these programs are the greatest educational needs in our region: High school diploma or equivalency, ESL classes, Short term CTE courses in health care, construction/trade and business off ice skills.

These are the SMART goals that the consortium members are committed to achieving to address these educational needs:

OBJECTIVE 1: By June of 2023, identify non-credit curriculum in the priority pathways of business, construction, and health care. By June of 2025, develop and expand those offerings based on the identified needs.

in our CTE-Healthcare:

  •  We had 20 graduates from our MA program; 25 from our phlebotomy program and 14 from the dental assistant program and 14 from the certified nursing assistant program.
  • A report from one of our CTE-Healthcare programs for 22/23: Enrollments held steady in the MA program and increased steadily in the CNA program, with that program’s enrollment increasing from roughly 50% capacity in the 21-22 program year to 80-93% capacity in 22-23. Enrollment growth is likely linked to surging interest in careers in healthcare coming out of the Covid-19 pandemic but is also correlated to vastly improved LCOE outreach and recruitment. LCOE’s CNA and MA programs were rebranded in a combined effort as Medical Training Programs, with updated branding imagery, an updated and more student-friendly website, and a successful online marketing campaign featuring recent graduates telling their stories. In addition, the Medical Training Programs team, including instructors paid for outreach activities, was present in the community in ways not evident since the pandemic, speaking to classes of high school students and participating in high school events, tabling at community events, and more. Combined Medical Training Programs Information Sessions continued to draw potential students and helped them identify the best program to help them reach their goals. Engaging, hands-on Welcome Sessions for accepted applicants encouraged retention from the time of acceptance to program start.

    Student outcomes in both programs continued to be strong, with CNA graduates finding jobs within three months of program completion at local skilled nursing facilities and hospitals and MA graduates finding jobs primarily with medical clinics that had served as their clinical externship sites. Student retention and program graduation rates held for both programs at over 90%, and 90% or more of students in both programs passed their certification exam on the first try.

  • Goals and objectives for the next year in CTE-health care: 


In our CTE- Construction Trade:

  • in 22/23, we continued to offer the short-term, non-credit courses in construction trade and expanded the offerings in two locations.
  • in 22/23 we had 72 students complete these courses and more than 50% of the students obtained jobs in the construction trade because of their training in our non-credit SCT programs
  • Will continue to offer these programs in multiple locations so that more students can access these much-needed job trainings in our region.

OBJECTIVE 2: By June of 2023, assess expanding credit and non-credit MC curriculum through the use of technology at various locations to offer hybrid synchronous instruction with onsite local tutor support. If deemed relevant, pilot up to three courses between 2024 and 2025

.OBJECTIVE 3: By June 2023, 40% of ML ACE agencies will assist at least 10% of their participants to transition to post-secondary, which includes CTE and credit college courses.

Improve Integration of Services & Transitions

2023-24 Strategies

Improve the eff ectiveness of all programs as evidenced by increase persistence completion rates

Activity that Applies to this Strategy

Improve the effectiveness of all programs

Metrics that Apply to this Activity/Strategy

  • All: Adults who Became Participants (AE 202 - Overall)
  • Success: Participants Who Earn a High School Diploma or Equivalency (AE 633 - Overall)
  • Transition: Participants with Transition to Postsecondary (CTE) (AE 636 - Overall)

We will continue to support the goals and strategies identified from the previous 3-year planning which include strategies:

  • To create and implement strategies that improve the sustainability of our health care programs,
  • To improve access and availability of outside support agency services for our students
  • To finish the pathway maps in our priority career education areas,
  • To continue to collect, analyze and improve the accuracy of our student data
  • To improve student retention rates from enrollment to completion of personal education goals,
  • Equitably fill program gaps throughout the consortium.

We had improvement and progress with this strategy and objectives:

From one our member agency in Anderson Valley: Our school partially met the established regional objectives by increasing the persistence rate by 4% between the 2021-2022 and 2022-2023 school year. We also did have an increase of greater than 5% in students transitioning from non credit to credit classes. However, the number of students transitioning to CTE did not increase. Also, in the 2022-2023 school year we discontinued our in-person HSE program and only offered online HSE in the fall semester, so we did not meet our goal of increasing HSE completions by 5%. 

From our agency member  in Ukiah:

  • For our ESL students, in 21-22 the persistence rate was 59%. In 22-23, the rate increased to 62%. It did not quite reach our goal, but we are on the right track. 
  • Our HSD students had a different experience. IN 21-22 their persistence rate was 58%. in 22-23 the HSD rate was 56%. 

To further improve the persistence of our students we will be implementing a number of changes. First, we are changing the way that students participate in CASAS testing. We have a very structure testing procedure which we will using this year to ensure that all students receive pre and post testing using the correct tests. Second, our HSD students will have access to an online curriculum, Cyberhigh, to make the curriculum more accessible,  at home, and to ensure that the curriculum is current. Third, in order to improve our persistence rate, we will be piloting SignalVine this year. This platform will allow us to send two way texts, phone calls, and files without having to use our personal phone numbers. We hope to maintain better communication with students through the use of this platform thereby improving our persistence and retention rates.

From our agency member in Fort Bragg:

In 2022-2023, our programs were effective in meeting the needs of our learners. ESL/Citizenship Class met via Zoom, weekly; 24 students served; 5 students earned their United States citizenship in the High School Diploma program,  Approximately 60 students served; 23 students earned diplomas. We met regional and educational needs of our population through offering these courses that meet the most common needs of our local adult learners. Considering we were operating in the wake of the COVID 19 pandemic, our participation was strong and promises to continue growing stronger. We are striving to improve the effectiveness of our services through adjusting our delivery model to best meet the needs of our learners. Because some students were not able to participate in the Zoom format for ESL/Citizenship classes, we will be offering these also through a hybrid model (students have the option of coming in person or attending via Zoom) in the coming academic year.


Improve Effectiveness of Services

2023-24 Strategies

Improve access, availability, integration and effective of programs in the region

Activity that Applies to this Strategy

Improving support services within the region

Metrics that Apply to this Activity/Strategy

  • All: Number of Adults Served (AE 200 - Overall)
  • Transition: Participants with Transition to Postsecondary (credit college) (AE 637 - Overall)

OBJECTIVE: By June 2023, create a document (community catalog) to identify and define support services available for students and communicate those services and connections to all consortium members, with continuous updates going through 2025 and beyond. (academic, financial, housing, emotional, etc.)

In 22-23, agency members continue to identify, define and provide various services to our students in our region in addition to academic services and advising. Many of our agency members refer and got students connected to other wrap-around services and support via personal communication through phone calls, emails and Zoom calls. Since many of our adult schools are in remote areas in our counties (i.e. some more than 2 hour-drive from the epi center of our MLACE office), communicating and connecting students to different services (financial, academic, mental health, basic needs, etc) is a challenged. Many of the services offered by the college district and a larger adult school (i.e. Ukiah Adult School which offers a variety of programs in ESL, High School Diploma and GED, Citizenship, test center, vocational nursing program, program for adult with disabilities plus high school diploma offerings in the correctional facility) are situated in the the large town of Ukiah in Mendocino County, which is not readily accessible to students who live in rural areas of the two counties that we served.  Public transportation is sparsely available but not easily accessible to our low -income students. Yes, we can provide online communication, but many of these rural areas have very narrow broadband and low wi-fi connectivity that taking classes online or receiving services online is sporadic and unpredictable. However, digital communication is vital in reaching our remotely-located students. One way that we would like to continue providing support services to these students is to continue funding student and outreach specialists who live in the community who can assist students where they live and can communicate the students' needs as a bridge to connect them to main hub of services in Ukiah for those living in Mendocino County and to Lakeport for those living in Lake County.

Another way that we are improving in this objective is through our My Professional Center or MPC ( formerly called CPS-CommunityPro Suite). The consortium purchased this system initially as an online referral system for our professionals  and agency members to use to refer students to other agencies within our Consortium. This online system also has a feature that creates a menu of community services that are accessible to all our member agencies. Many of the services (academic, financial, housing, mental health, skills-building, etc.,) are listed and described in our online community catalog in MPC. Also, we have partnered with Career Point and a few community partners in co-listing these services in this online format so that agency members and their staff can utilize the features in MPC which include access to the online community catalog, referral of students to other agencies and student tracking. The student tracking system through MPC will assist us in compiling reports on our students who are co-enrolled in several training and services while helping us track students' progress in transition from ABE or ESL to credit or non-credit courses plus inform us if students are getting CTE training job, training or support from our Career Point (a workforce development board agency)and the getting the jobs they need to earn living wages to support their families.

We will  continue to collect, analyze and improve the accuracy of our student data so that we know how we are meeting the priorities and objectives that we have enumerated in our 3-year strategic plan. Though we have TopsPro as our state-required student data management system capturing many of the data from our adult school and county offices of education enrollment, we do not have the MIS data in TopsPro. This MIS data, which is the college enrollment data system, is not accessible in TopsPro and the MIS data for non-credit students has to be parsed out from the credit bearing students. This presents a problem if the two systems are not integrated in one system. For this reason, we think that MPC can provide us with an integrated data management system if we are to improve in our collection, analysis and accuracy of our student data.

This year in 23/24, we will evaluate the efficacy of this online student management system for our consortium and review if this system is maximized to its full potential and how we can generate relevant and appropriate reports that will help our consortium improve the accuracy of data collection and analysis.


Fiscal Management

A narrative justifying how the planned allocations are consistent with the annual adult education plan which is based on your CAEP 3-year plan.

The CAEP allocation for this fiscal year slightly increased with the addition of COLA but no additional monies were given for enrollment in our CAEP-funded programs. Therefore, we will have to reconfigure and leverage existing funds to sustain most of our programs.  We continued to fund our support specialists in remote areas so that students will have points of contact locally and connect them to transitional services whether in basic skills, ESL or to CTE programs in our region. Another use of our CAEP funds was our subscription to an online referral system and student tracking system called Community Pro Suite (CPS or now currently called My Professional Center or MPC). MPC is a valuable to tool to have for seamless support and integrated communication among agencies involved in wrap-around services for students. In 22/23,we transitioned to hybrid consortium meetings  with members required to attend in person and community partners given the option to join via Zoom. We continue to follow Brown Act guidelines when public meetings were allowed to meet remotely with some restrictions. In addition, There were turned over in personnel which accounted for the fluctuation in our expenditures. It must be noted that in NOVA, it looks like we have 100% more than we have been allocated for this year. However, we are spending our CAEP allocation a year behind since we have been given CAEP funds but were not utilized by our consortium until after the second year of the formation of the consortium. In addition, we limited our travel travel expenditures for this fiscal year. In addition, during 2022-2023. we drastically reduced our expenditures for fee-based professional development activities but we continued to attend webinars, conferences and workshops via online. In the next three years, there will be uncertainty about the return to in person classroom instruction as the only method of instruction. Undoubtedly, the combination of virtual and/ior hybrid classes are more advantageous to adult students, thus there will be increased expenditures in paying for instructors, for stronger Wi-Fi connectivity and more student-friendly technology.

Included in our expenditures and as part of our budget for ML ACE administration, we created an internal mini-grant allocation process for non-MOE funds. We call these "project based funds". Over the past three years, ML ACE Agencies have submitted proposals for on-going programs/projects. These projects were then reviewed and approved (or revised or denied). In November, of each program year, member agencies provide a detailed presentation to the consortium that shows how the project-based funds and the CAEP allocated funds are spent and  how they are aligned the expenditures to our consortium-level annual plan. The implementation of these processes gives ML ACE significant oversight of the funds and ensures internal accountability.

An approach to incorporating remaining carry-over funds from prior year(s) into strategies planned for 2023-24.

In terms of carryover funds, we will continue to incorporate remaining carry-over funds from prior year(s) into strategies planned for the next fiscal year. Each member agency provides their internal plan for spending down their carry-over funds, which include strategies that are aligned with our current 3-year plan. Our policy includes language that ensures the agency can only spend the funds on current approved programs and activities from the original approved project based proposals or previously MOE funds

In compliance with the California Adult Education Program’s Policy on Carryover funds, (also called AB 1491), The MLACE consortium created and voted on by members by-laws that are consistent with the carryover funds policy outlined by the state. First, members voted to use no more than 20% as the maximum carryover threshold for each member. The steps and process for technical assistance and support for members having “excessive” (more than 20%) carryover is outlined below. The consortium members are aware that though no punitive actions will be enforced at the member level, however, at the consortium level, AB 1491 policy states that a consortium with more than 20% carryover will be flagged by the state. Here are the processes put in placed in our by-laws:

1. Process for technical assistance for members having excessive carryover—

  • At the end of Q2 reporting (March 2024), before certifying Q2 expenses in NOVA, the fiscal agent and MLACE director will reach out to consortium members whose carryover is above the 20% threshold as determined on the NOVA reporting system.
  • At the Q2 reporting period, the members with a carryover of more than 20% will inform the MLACE director if there is any forthcoming project/expenses that the funds will be used to expend the carryover. These Corrective Actions need to be entered in NOVA fiscal reporting.
  • No funding will be taken from the consortium member with more than 20% carryover during the first two years. 
  • At the end of two years, if the consortium member is consistently having a carryover of more than 20%, the consortium member will be assigned a Program Advisory Team (PAT) who will carry out a review process and provide fiscal assistance to help spend down the carryover. See the attached document on the Program Advisory Team Process.
  • Alternatively, at the end of the two years, the member can elect to return the carryover funds (after the two years and technical assistance) to the Consortium’s one-time account. These funds may then be accessed by any consortium member through our one-time proposal fund request process, which is acted upon quarterly at consortium meetings. 
  1. Process of reducing member allocation if member has “excessive” carryover in two consecutive fiscal years:
  • The fiscal agent and MLACE will reach out to consortium members with 21% carryover or more at end of Q2 reporting (March) beginning in 23/24.
  • The member with a carryover of more than 20% will be given an opportunity to spend a down carryover for the fiscal cycle.

3. If the identified member consistently has more than 20% carryover, (period of two consecutive years), that member will be given technical and fiscal assistance. 

4. At the third year, if the carryover is still above 20 %, the member will be placed on the PAT process after the 2 years. Alternatively, the member may be encouraged to voluntarily return carryover funds to the fiscal agent and the funds accessed by all members through the one-time request process.

Certification

Anderson Valley Unified - Member Representative

Approved by Noor Dawood

08/15/2023 04:23 PM PDT

Fort Bragg Unified - Member Representative

Approved by Arlissa Tupper

08/15/2023 03:03 PM PDT

Kelseyville Unified - Member Representative

Approved by Joe Del Prete

08/15/2023 03:08 PM PDT

Lake Co. Office of Education - Member Representative

Approved by Beth Hampson

08/15/2023 03:27 PM PDT

Mendocino Co. Office of Education - Member Representative

Approved by Tami Mee

08/15/2023 04:13 PM PDT

Mendocino-Lake CCD - Member Representative

Approved by Amanda Xu

08/15/2023 04:03 PM PDT

Ukiah Unified - Member Representative

Approved by Eric Crawford

08/15/2023 03:16 PM PDT

Willits Unified - Member Representative

Approved by Arora Chavez

08/15/2023 04:51 PM PDT