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CAEP Annual Plan: 2021-22 40 Education to Career Network of North San Diego County (Palomar/Vista)

Status: Consortium Approved

California Adult Education Program : Annual Plan : 2021-22 Produced: Aug 3, 2021, 05:23 PM UTC Tom Allison

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 our goals set in all key program areas but faced restrictions and low enrollment due to COVID. Major accomplishments in 2020-2021 included the following: Successfully held the 4th Annual Path to Palomar Open House Event, virtually, showcasing Palomar College’s course and campus offerings to better support students transitioning from adult school to college. ETCN held a joint stakeholders' meeting to review data and provide ETCN with strategies and feedback on how to better assist our students and industry. 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. In addition, we increased the number of online courses across the consortium and continued the alignment and integration of curriculum to accelerate student learning and meet regional workforce needs. 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. Completed CALPRO’s Equity training with staff and administrators attending from each member district. ETCN has been participating on the pilot with WestEd on coding courses for the adult education and noncredit college programs to be represented in the statewide Program Finder Tool under development. This tied into our ETCN data dialogue meetings where we reviewed student hours, race and gender data. 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 continued to look for new strategies to assist all students through this uncertain time. We accomplished 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. ETCN members were able to move classes online or in a blended model. We will move forward to offer onsite, online and blended classes to meet more of the needs of our students. We will need to review data and student surveys to determine how we move through 2021-2022. We will carry on with conducting a data dialogue protocol among teachers and at Consortium Leadership Committee meetings. We also continued 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
Develop alternative curriculum and delivery 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?
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 promoting the NEDP with a benchmark of 5-8 students.

Regional Need #2

Gaps in Service / Regional Needs
Provide social-emotional support for students to promote continued engagement, increase persistence and graduation rates.
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?
Increase connections with Student Support Teams and an increase in pathway completions/ graduation rates.

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, student 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?
Gathering student needs information through student surveys, student focus groups, and through social media interactions.

Gaps In Service

New Strategies

Strategy #1
To build overall awareness of Adult Education in the region, we will fine tune our advertising and marketing efforts to include a mix of approaches, including increased social media outreach to promote all adult education opportunities and programs all adult education opportunities and programs and include tracking measurements to gauge success. Specific emphasis in promotions will be placed on student comfort levels and will address safety in returning to on-campus, in-person learning. Furthermore, we will be sure to better share each members' services and programs among our agencies by developing a central system for students to view class/program offerings available at each member district’s site by term. Finally, we will create a robust, ongoing teacher outreach recruitment campaign to address the difficulty many programs are experiencing in recruiting and attracting qualified teaching staff.
Strategy #2
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 by gathering student needs information through student surveys, student focus groups, and through social media interactions.
Strategy #3
Provide social-emotional support for students to promote continued engagement, increased persistence and graduation rates and by proactively connecting with students. Continue with the counseling meetings and touchpoints via video conferencing (Zoom) for students. Reach out to every student.

Seamless Transitions

New Strategies

Strategy #1
Improve Student Support Services through the implementation of accommodation plans with direct support from the ETCN Disability Support Counselor at a site level and to Palomar College.
Strategy #2
Continued promotion of the National External Diploma Program to better serve working adults and students in remote locations.
Strategy #3
Examine correlation between student demographic background and educational achievement to provide additional assistance as needed, ensuring equitable content and access.

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, identify and develop career pathways that are now in demand and what will be in demand due to the changing work environment.

Professional Development

New Strategies

Strategy #1
Create 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.

Leveraging Resources

New Strategies

Strategy #1
Continue to grow sources of additional funding to maintain or expand programs and services to meet and 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.
Strategy #2
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 an Employer Panel that allows for this interaction to occur, and thereby, will create a better understanding of what employers' needs are and increasing adult educations' visibility throughout the region.
Strategy #3
Hold combined/joint advisory meetings for a more effective sharing of best practices and curriculum review.

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 2020 - 2021. 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. In addition funding was spent on meeting the new demands due to COVID-19 i.e. professional development for online technology and curriculum; additional technology tools and PPE. CASAS pre/post-testing was difficult to implement due to the restrictions of COVID-19. Member sites improvised and tried to get this data but not to success of students in the classroom. In addition, the ETCN applied for federal WIOA & Perkins 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 2021-22.
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 2021-2022 school year will be impacted by decreased enrollment, loss of programs due to COVID-19 and supplemental income from the State, difficulty to find and hire qualified staff and reductions of allocated state and federal funds.

Certification

Escondido Union High - Member Representative

Approved by Tom Allison

08/03/2021 10:23 AM PDT

Palomar CCD - Member Representative

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

07/30/2021 09:41 AM 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

07/30/2021 09:43 AM PDT

Ramona City Unified - Member Representative

Approved by Pauline Leavitt

07/30/2021 11:04 AM PDT

San Marcos Unified - Member Representative

Approved by Shauna Wright

07/30/2021 11:02 AM PDT

Vista Unified - Member Representative

Approved by Vista Adult School Elizabeth O'Shea-West

07/30/2021 09:48 AM PDT