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CAEP Annual Plan: 2020-21 40 Education to Career Network of North San Diego County (Palomar/Vista)

Status: Consortium Approved

California Adult Education Program : Annual Plan : 2020-21 Produced: Sep 2, 2020, 02:47 PM UTC Elizabeth O'Shea-West

40 Education to Career Network of North San Diego County (Palomar/Vista)

Plans & Goals - Consortium Approved

Executive Summary
The Education to Career Network of North San Diego County (ETCN) was able to meet, and in most cases exceed, our goals set in all key program areas. Major accomplishments in 2019-2020 included the following: Organized the 4th Annual Path to Palomar Open House Event showcasing Palomar College’s course and campus offerings to better support students transitioning from adult school to college. A legislative and community outreach campaign was deployed in conjunction with the California Council for Adult Education’s Legislative virtual outreach and a county-wide “Adult Education Week” proclamations by the County of San Diego as well as all city governments in the ETCN service area. We rolled out the ETCN digital badging program to ESL COAAP completers and commenced the development of a second phase for an IELCE CTE course at one of our sites. In addition, we increased the number of online courses across the consortium, offered access to courses in new, remote locations, and continued the alignment and integration of curriculum to accelerate student learning and meet regional workforce needs. Completed our second Woodworking Adult Education Pre-Apprentice cohort at San Marcos Adult School aligned for transition to Palomar College or directly into a trade union program. ETCN reported Career Technical Education course completions and outcomes to the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS,) the results of which are visible across various national databases including EMSI, heightening awareness of program offerings and effectiveness. As part of our goal to serve the whole student, our Disability Support Counselor increased the number of wellness workshops offered to both teachers and students throughout the consortium. Our 2020-2021 plan goals include the following highlights: We will continue with all of our stated goals and incorporate the following. ETCN is committed to addressing the urgent needs presented by the COVID-19 crisis and the current focus on social injustices. These rapidly unfolding events have caused us to reframe our priorities for the foreseeable future. These include: •Serving students in a distance learning environment and meeting their learning needs, meeting staff, teacher, and faculty needs by increasing the capacity of both students and faculty on the use of technology, officially rolling out the National External Diploma Program, providing awareness of pathways to post-secondary education and careers, continuing to provide professional development opportunities for faculty to build understanding of course and/or instructional design, and increasing professional development opportunities for faculty to engage in learning experience to effectively design engaging student-centered courses.  •Responding to student support needs (employment, public assistance, etc.) by using data from county-wide resources to align our CTE offerings and adult education curriculum with changing workforce needs, providing social-emotional support for students to keep students engaged, providing a strong and user-friendly student support online visibility, shortening the timeframe for students to transition to post-secondary education and careers, providing awareness of pathways to post-secondary education and careers by re-imagining the Path to Palomar event to fit COVID-19 restrictions, increasing opportunities for employers to interact virtually with students to share knowledge on potential careers.  •Preparing to handle any potential budget reductions, as the COVID-19 epidemic may continue to drastically change the state’s budget outlook. We will demonstrate that our budget allocations are strategic and responsive to the changes in the economy and to the impacts on adult education programs and students by growing sources of additional funding to maintain or expand programs, and providing professional development training as a consortium to access more resources with less funding. We are also committed to keeping budget reductions to student services as low as possible, in the event of continued state/federal budget impacts. •Examining our role in addressing structural racism within our membership and in collaboration with our partners, we will use a variety of strategies and student support systems to ensure equitable student outcomes for our traditionally marginalized. Focusing on identifying and eliminating barriers to enrollment and course completion, shortening the timeframe for students to transition to post-secondary education and careers, and increasing local site professional learning opportunities that increase our ability to address racial inequities.  We will also improve our practices to equitably support human trafficking survivors through the educational process and effective job placement, and roll out the National External Diploma Program to better serve working adults and students in remote locations.
Regional Planning Overview
ETCN members continued to implement our Three-Year Plan that identified our region’s gaps in services and strategies to best meet those needs, while maintaining focus on improving student transitions, using data to drive decision making, expanding partnerships, and providing equity and access to students. Due to COVID-19, most of these efforts were stopped short as we struggled to develop distance learning plans to serve all students during this time, in accordance with CDC guidelines. During FY 2020-2021, we will continue to look for new strategies to assist all students through this uncertain time. We will accomplish this by incorporating the regular use of data analysis, continually updating information on employers and students, and utilizing demographic and labor market research to inform our decisions. We will continue to conduct a data dialogue protocol among teachers and at Consortium Leadership Committee meetings. We will also continue to participate and align our work with other regional planning initiatives, being better able to leverage labor market studies and research used to inform those initiatives. For example, members of the ETCN participate in the San Diego County Regional Career Pathways Consortium, the Strong Workforce Regional Task Force for the Southern Border Region, and the San Diego Workforce Partnership (our local workforce development board) regional planning processes. Additionally, we regularly reconvene our faculty members and student focus groups to further provide more in- depth feedback on how we can better serve and fill the adult education needs in our region.

Meeting Regional Needs

Regional Need #1

Gaps in Service / Regional Needs
Due to COVID-19 restrictions there is a strong need to increase online and distance learning courses, online student support services, as well as providing faculty and staff with online professional development opportunities.
How do you know? What resources did you use to identify these gaps?
State and county mandates were put in place to protect the health and safety of residents and in preparation for further future safeguards we need to increase online distance learning courses to help maintain or increase student enrollment.
How will you measure effectiveness / progress towards meeting this need?
Student enrollment, completion numbers, students transitioning to Palomar College and to jobs.

Regional Need #2

Gaps in Service / Regional Needs
Need to incorporate the regular use of data in decision making.
How do you know? What resources did you use to identify these gaps?
Based on member self-assessments and survey results from key stakeholders.
How will you measure effectiveness / progress towards meeting this need?
By implementing a data dialogue protocol at the Consortium level, we expect to see an increase in shared professional development, professional learning community artifacts, shared documents of all data points, and implementation protocols. Any changing of services and program offerings in response to data collected can be used as a measure. To ensure data strategies are effective we will measure if students are completing courses/programs successfully and obtaining work, if changing workforce needs are being addressed within curriculum, and if changes in services were due to results from an annual gap analysis that includes all stakeholders.

Regional Need #3

Gaps in Service / Regional Needs
Need to build overall awareness of Adult Education in the region.
How do you know? What resources did you use to identify these gaps?
Through our annual community forum, advisory meetings, Chamber of Commerce meetings, SD County meetings, staff surveys, and member self-assessments. Also, through data collected by EMSI, Centers of Excellence, and San Diego Workforce Partnership showing high rates of unemployment, thereby proving the need for more awareness of Adult Education.
How will you measure effectiveness / progress towards meeting this need?
By tracking the number of partnerships we have established and maintained this year with businesses and community-based organizations. By tracking the number of cross-consortia referrals and marketing materials shared between sites. By increasing the amount of joint advisory meetings and other consortia-wide events. Holding a well-attended forum. Informing local legislators. Tracking enrollment numbers. Lastly, by creating an annual report with data to use as marketing material to promote adult education with business partners and legislators.

Regional Need #4

Gaps in Service / Regional Needs
Need to align adult education curriculum to meet changing workforce needs, especially due to COVID-19 concerns.
How do you know? What resources did you use to identify these gaps?
EMSI, Centers of Excellence, and San Diego Workforce Partnership will be relied upon for up to date Labor Market Information.
How will you measure effectiveness / progress towards meeting this need?
Increase in the number of jobs attained, transitioning to post-secondary education, and by an increase in wages.

Regional Need #5

Gaps in Service / Regional Needs
Need to shorten the timeframe for students to transition to post-secondary education and careers, as well as increase the number of students successfully transitioning.
How do you know? What resources did you use to identify these gaps?
Based on member self-assessments and survey results from key stakeholders that show there is a need to better expedite the career and education pathway of our students, together with analysis of labor market data and local workforce current and projected needs.
How will you measure effectiveness / progress towards meeting this need?
We will measure our effectiveness through the continued collaboration on developing Palomar College pre-college level English and math courses at the adult schools, and by measuring professional development outcomes, new curriculum created, new pathways formed, and information gathered from student meetings with advisors. Also, by tracking enrollment numbers, successful completion rates, and the time it takes students to complete basic skills and/or career training and to transition to further education or employment in the corresponding industry. By the increase in job opening announcements sent to students and staff, tracking job/employment data of our students, tracking student enrollment into post-secondary education, and by piloting the National External Diploma Program (NEDP) with a benchmark of 5-8 students enrolled.

Gaps In Service

New Strategies

Strategy #1
Upskill both students and faculty on the use of technology, educational technology resources, and distance learning best practices, including increasing student access to technology through professional development, training, and creating partnerships with technology providers.
Strategy #2
Ensure that we are using data in our decision-making process, we will continue to utilize a regularly scheduled quarterly data dialogue protocol at the Consortium level.
Strategy #3
Build overall awareness of Adult Education in the region, we will increase social media outreach to promote all adult education opportunities and programs and include tracking measurements to gauge success. Furthermore, we will be sure to better share each members’ services and programs among our agencies.
Strategy #4
Use data from county-wide resources, such as Centers of Excellence and San Diego Workforce Partnership, as well as participating in employer panels, to align our CTE offerings and adult education curriculum with changing workforce needs, especially due to COVID-19 concerns.
Strategy #5
Shorten the timeframe for students to transition to post-secondary education and careers, as well as increase the number of students successfully transitioning, we will identify barriers to enrollment and develop strategies to eliminate those barriers by gathering student needs information through student surveys, student focus groups, and through social media interactions.
Strategy #6
Provide social-emotional support for students to promote continued engagement, increased persistence and graduation rates, and by proactively connecting with students. To address COVID-19 concerns, we will add online counseling meetings and touchpoints via video conferencing (Zoom) for students and open up counseling times on Saturdays.

Seamless Transitions

New Strategies

Strategy #1
Implement the National External Diploma Program to better serve working adults and students in remote locations. Additionally, NEDP allows students to study and develop a portfolio of interest related to their personal convictions and experiences. Examine correlation between student demographic background and educational achievement to provide additional assistance as needed, ensuring equitable content and access.
Strategy #2
Create an improved system for tracking students’ transitions and transitional needs within ETCN. This should include a streamlined process for referrals that identifies a student’s needs and correctly refers them to the best resource or staff, as well as training for the students in the use of available digital resources to support remote learning.
Strategy #3
Provide awareness of pathways to post-secondary education and careers by reimagining the Path to Palomar event to fit COVID-19 restrictions, offer virtual education and career fairs, establish internships, and create customizable online templates and samples of pathways to visually depict what courses to take in adult education, at Palomar College, and which occupations they can lead to with salary information included.
Strategy #4
Palomar College will continue work to transfer pre-college level English and math courses to adult school ABE programs, for easier access of adult students in the region to these courses and to increase successful transitions to college.
Strategy #5
Align ETCN’s digital badging with apprenticeship programs, CTE, and CASAS COAAPs.
Strategy #6
Improve Student Support Services through the implementation of accommodation plans with direct support from the ETCN Disability Support Counselor and from Palomar College counselors to support transition to Palomar College. This can be accomplished through site visits if restrictions allow or by virtual, online visits.

Student Acceleration

New Strategies

Strategy #1
Continue to work on blended strategies and remote learning models, flexible entry and exit points, to address integrated instruction to accelerate students.
Strategy #2
Research the possibility of using a pathway mapping tool to clarify paths for students.
Strategy #3
Pilot new Integrated EL Civics (IELCE / IET) programs for new emerging sectors. Students entering these programs will have ESL support while being trained to enter a career pathway, along with being able to obtain industry-recognized, postsecondary credentials, such as short-term vocational certificates, CTE program certificates, apprenticeship program certificates, and industry-recognized certificates.
Strategy #4
Coordinate students to meet with their advisors regularly to discover courses that transfer directly to college and to determine and discuss students’ education and career pathway.
Strategy #5
Expand the use of Student Education Plans (SEPs) for students that lead to accelerated pathways to success, thereby allowing students to better meet their educational goals in the short-term and long-term.
Strategy #6
Research, identify and develop career pathways that are now in demand due to COVID-19 and the changed work environment.

Professional Development

New Strategies

Strategy #1
Continue to provide professional development opportunities for faculty to build understanding of course and/or instructional design to facilitate flexible entry and exit points and integrated instruction to accelerate students.
Strategy #2
Develop consortium-wide online professional development opportunities and house them online for all staff for easier access and to participate in learning with lower costs, especially in preparation for potential budget reductions. Professional development opportunities should include handling student transitions, student crisis management, teaching best practices, COVID-19 regulations, shared positions’ responsibilities, ASAP, referrals, and more.
Strategy #3
Develop and encourage participation in online Job Alike Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) across the consortium to benefit larger groups of staff, possibly including Super Region partners.
Strategy #4
The creation of an annual professional development plan based on the results from an annual professional development survey that will encourage communication between staff and administrators and promote a better understanding of what professional development training will be needed.
Strategy #5
Ensure participation in CAEP-focused conferences, including, but not limited to CAEEA, CASAS, and CCAE.
Strategy #6
Using TDLP survey data as well as other survey sources, create targeted data-driven professional development opportunities that can be modified by new data over time.
Strategy #7
Increase and/or identify local site professional learning opportunities by partnering with organizations such as the SDCOE and NCRC to enable our staff and faculty to learn strategies to address racial and social inequities and barriers that block our traditionally marginalized students from accessing higher education opportunities and career pathways.

Leveraging Resources

New Strategies

Strategy #1
We will expand cross-consortia awareness and promotion to build and maintain strong communication pathways between all sites by sharing and showcasing site-specific marketing material, course catalogs, best practices/strategies implemented, program offerings, as well as consortium-wide programs and services with a consistent and complete messaging towards both students and site staff.
Strategy #2
We will track the number of cross-consortia student referrals due to students’ needs not being met on-site and develop pre-college level English & Math by adult school partners either on Palomar’s campus or online.
Strategy #3
Continue to grow sources of additional funding to maintain or expand programs and services to meet any potential budget restrictions set in place due to COVID-19 impacts. This can be accomplished through grant writing and by establishing strong community partnerships with resource and funding providers, including participating in Super Region efforts to apply for Strong Workforce Program grants to fund career education efforts and to ensure adult education and noncredit college programs are represented in the Program Finder Tool being developed for the region.
Strategy #4
Increase opportunities for employers to interact virtually with students to share knowledge on potential careers, current job opportunities, and education and training needed. This can be done by hosting a virtual Employer Panel that allows for this interaction to occur, and thereby, will create a better understanding of what employers’ needs are and increasing adult education’s visibility throughout the region.
Strategy #5
Participate strategically in community meetings, such as chambers of commerce, North County Works, Adult Education regional meetings, San Diego Workforce Partnership Collaborative meetings, and will include any events that will increase visibility among the community and potentially draw potential students to enroll.
Strategy #6
Increase our consortium’s legislative awareness by creating marketing materials, such as an annual report that includes data that highlights our successes, demonstrates the need for adult education programs and services, and projects future needs and funding.
Strategy #7
Hold combined/joint advisory meetings for a more effective sharing of best practices and curriculum review.
Strategy #8
Increase and/or identify local site professional learning opportunities by partnering with organizations such as the SDCOE and NCRC to enable our staff and faculty to learn strategies to address racial and social inequities in classrooms and barriers that block our traditionally marginalized students from accessing higher education opportunities and career pathways.
Strategy #9
Provide professional development training as a consortium to access more resources with less funding.

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.
To ensure fiscal accountability and continued transparency, ETCN employs an outside auditor to review our books annually. Funds were allocated and spent according to our goals for FY 2019 - 2020. These included increased emphasis on stakeholder/partner engagement to support student education and career success; implementation of common student data tools to gather, measure, and analyze student and/or program successes and outcomes and share best practices; platforms to assist students with work-readiness, career exploration, and job search; and continued alignment and integration of curriculum to accelerate student learning and meet regional needs. To accomplish the goals above, members interacted on a more frequent basis, with shared positions spending time addressing the needs of each individual member district. CASAS pre/post-testing was used at all member districts as a common student data tool. In addition, the ETCN applied for federal WIOA grant funding as a consortium. This has created additional opportunities for us to leverage resources and align services and data collection across all of our member districts. We have jointly utilized 231/243 funding to benefit ETCN students and our ESL/IELCE programs. Our members are committed to continued progress towards the realization of the vision and goals of the ETCN Three-Year Plan and will continue to implement identified strategies that fill the regional gaps in service, support the seamless transition of students, increasing professional development opportunities for staff, better leverage resources, and to accelerate transitions for learners across the consortium.
An approach to incorporating remaining carry-over funds from prior year(s) into strategies planned for 2020-21.
A standing agenda item at every leadership council meeting is a fiscal agent report; this report includes examining planned v. actual expenses. Our fiscal agent, Vista USD, will hold regular meetings regarding specific fiscal practices, reports, and deadlines among the member district's fiscal representatives and leadership council members. The ETCN Leadership Council approved the budget for its CFAD submission and projected a budget for the following year.Based on expenditure projections, any carry-over identified is used to either carry incomplete activities into the next year, accelerate portions of the plan with later start dates, or support new budget requests. Members making additional budget requests are asked to identify whether the request is one-time, short-term, or on-going, so the expense can be appropriately budgeted in future years. In addition to regular monthly meetings, the Leadership Council members participate in an annual planning retreat. The retreat is used to amend and update our regional plan, while the regular Leadership Council meetings are used to monitor the implementation of the plan and tend to the business aspects of our consortium's operation.Due to COVID-19, we anticipate continued reductions in our overall WIOA performance payment points as expenditures to ensure health and safety (following guidelines by CDC) increase. In addition, the 2020-2021 school year will be impacted by decreased enrollment, loss of programs due to COVID-19 restrictions, and reductions of allocated state and federal funds.

Certification

Escondido Union High - Member Representative

Approved by Tom Allison

08/03/2020 02:04 PM PDT

Palomar CCD - Member Representative

  • Suzanne Sebring
  • Director, Occupational and Noncredit Programs
  • ssebring@palomar.edu
  • (760) 744-1150 ext: 3758
Approved by Suzanne Sebring

08/03/2020 05:12 PM PDT

Poway Unified - Member Representative

  • Kathleen Porter
  • Executive Director, Career Technical, Adult and Alternative Education
  • kporter@powayusd.com
  • (858) 668-4016
Approved by Kathleen Porter

08/03/2020 02:25 PM PDT

Ramona City Unified - Member Representative

Approved by Mrs. Erin Kent

08/05/2020 11:06 AM PDT

San Marcos Unified - Member Representative

Approved by Joanne Wimsatt 2902538

08/04/2020 03:16 PM PDT

Vista Unified - Member Representative

Approved by Vista Adult School Elizabeth O'Shea-West

09/02/2020 07:47 AM PDT