Assembly Standing Committee on Higher Education

Thank you. Good afternoon everyone. Welcome to the oversight hearing of the Assembly Committee on higher education. Grateful to all of you for joining us here today and really glad that we're all able to join us here at East Los Angeles College here in Assembly District 49. I'd like to welcome you all to the 49th Assembly District as well. And welcome to our oversight hearing of the Higher Education Committee. Whether you're here in person or watching virtually, thank you so much for your participation.

Please note that all materials for this hearing can be accessed online at http ahed Assembly CA govhearings. I will now go over some key elements of the structure of today's oversight hearing. We will have a few different options for public testimony here today, here today in the hearing room. Also the opportunity to submit written comments.

When we reach the public comment portion of the agenda, I would like to ask that any Members of the public here in the room please approach the mic and form a line. You can exit the hearing room once you finish testifying or return to your seat. Witnesses who are unable to physically attend the hearing today can submit written comments via the legislative portal. Please note that any written testimony transmitted is considered public comment and may be read into the record.

And I'm so grateful to all of you for joining us here today. We have our Vice Chair, Tri Ta of the Assembly Higher Education Committee and a few more Members I believe are joining us as well. But really the opportunity to connect here today to talk about issues impacting California's higher education system. And though the title of today's hearing relates to enrollment decline, we know the recent data looks more promising.

And really grateful for the work and efforts of the community colleges to make sure that we're reaching out to the communities to really make sure that we're out there. And That's the hard work that you're doing each and every day. And I'm so grateful to the East LA college. Thank you so much to Dr. Armand and his team for hosting us here today.

Ms. Velos from the Chancellor's office and to the entire team for having us here at the East Los Angeles College here, where I served as a trustee for the Los Angeles Community College District for nearly eight years before coming to the Legislature last year. So this is coming home and it's great to have our first oversight hearing here on the campus.

And on a personal note, I had a chance to attend classes here in the early 90s, so just a few years ago, and my dad came here in the early 70s. So I'm grateful for the opportunities that East LA College has provided for my family and for many families here in the San Gabriel Valley and throughout California. On September 22, the Chancellor's office released a memo detailing that spring 2023 enrollment increased by 8% from spring 2022 from 1,173,645 students to over 1.273 million.

And that overall system headcount was up by 5%, with 94 colleges exhibiting headcount growth year over year across the system. And I was looking at the numbers today and the presentations and looking forward to hearing from our panelists here today.

We know this is exciting information, and I know we can continue to build upon this to really get to pre pandemic levels, to look at dual enrollment opportunities, to look at areas of growth in our system, and to share best practices with all the knowledge of everyone here and everyone online. So I'm so grateful look forward to hearing your comments. We look forward to hearing your comments, and we want to understand your experiences on campus and what trends you're seeing on your local campuses.

Are your campuses and programs growing? If so, which programs are growing? Are there areas where the Legislature can be helpful, both from a policy and a funding perspective? California's community colleges are one of the crown jewels of our state, and we know that our campuses accept the top 100%, have pathways that lead to PhD, a great job in the trades and public service and everything in between. And we're going to hear from a number of panelists today that are sharing best practices on what's happening.

I see community college trustees in the audience as well, cerulean college leaders from throughout the region. Thank you for joining us here today and to President Roman and the entire team at East Los Angeles College. Thank you for your hospitality. We know that community colleges are the engine of opportunity, and I really want to make sure that we continue to expand those opportunities as broadly as possible here in our great State of California.

And thank you so much again to Maria Veloci and her team from the LA. Community College District for their assistance. And I'm grateful to my staff and team as well for their hardworking assistance working with LACC on this amazing our first oversight hearing. So now I'd like to welcome our Members. Vice Chair Ta, do you have any opening comments, please?

I really want to thank Mr. Chair and good afternoon to everyone. I'm so honored to be here. And first, I want to thank California Committee College for looking for alternative ways to improve enrollment. I like to introduce a little bit about myself. I came from Committee College. I came here in 1982. At that time, I was 19 years old, so I went to community college. So I believe community college is a really good educational environment that give a lot of opportunity for everyone.

So That's the reason why for the last 10 months in Sacramento, I had an honor to work with the Chair to come up with many good Bill to improve California Academy College. And I'd like to give you an update. One of my Bill, strongly supported by the Chair, AB 1173, and that Bill was signed by the Governor that would make sure that all the high school, when they plan to organize college career fair or career know high school need to inform community college.

So I think that's where to help all community college across the state to improve the enrollment. And we all know that California is a rich state. We have amazing University. However, I believe community college I think is still a really good environment to give opportunity to everyone. So I'm so honored to be here. I want to thank the chair for his leadership and I want to thank all of you who here and give us all the update. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Mr. Vice Chair Tri Ta, for your leadership and efforts and for everything you're doing as well. And to the Committee staff, thank you so much. And thank you to Dr. Monica here as well from the Speaker's office. And everyone here is a very special guest. So grateful to all of you for being here today.

And with that, we'd like to welcome Dr. Miguel Dueñas, Vice President of Student Services, and Dr. Nicole Albo Lopez, Vice Chancellor of Institutional Effectiveness, for welcoming remarks and to share your experiences on campus and some of the broader work That's being done by the Los Angeles Community College District. Welcome.

Good afternoon, Chair, Fong and honorable Members of the Committee. My name is Miguel Dueñas. I'm the Vice President of Student Services at East Los Angeles College. On behalf of President Alberto Roman and our nearly 25,000 students, staff and faculty, we are honored to welcome you to the land of the Huskies. East Los Angeles College. ELAC is deeply committed to diversity and integration of its community that it serves. It is the hub for cultural exchange, celebrations, and most importantly, education enrichment for our local community.

Our diverse student body reflects in the surrounding East Los Angeles community, creating a welcoming and inclusive environment for our students of all backgrounds. We are incredibly proud of the wide range of academic, vocational and transfer programs that enable our students to transition to four year colleges and universities. Our dedicated staff, faculty and committed to our student success. Every year, East Los Angeles College graduates over 2000 students with transfer acceptance rates of 91% to CSUs and 76% to UC.

Our beautiful modern facilities and a wide variety of student clubs, student leadership, development and social activities make for a warm and environment for our students. Next fall, we are scheduled to open our doors of our new Southgate Educational Center, which will serve up to 10,000 students and expand educational programs in health sciences, including nursing certification, physical and respiratory therapy. We educate one of the state's largest number of Low income, undocumented and first generation students. 51.7% of ELAC students are on financial aid.

We educate about 5% of the district's undocumented students and nearly 20% of our Fall 2023 class are first generation students. At the height of the pandemic and with fiscal investments from the state and the federal government, we have provided our students the support services they need to succeed. Following the worldwide health crisis, we have become more flexible and nimble.

We are meeting the students where they are, with 45% of our courses online, offer in synchronous and asynchronous modalities, allowing our students to access education that meets their schedule at their own pace. Before turning the microphone over to my colleague, Nicole Albo-Lopez, Dr. Lopez.

I want to recognize and thank Chair Fong for the 2022 $1 million budget allocation for the VPAM Art Collection Digitization Initiative, which makes our beautiful collection accessible to the General public, and his authorship of AB 1096, which will allow our students to take courses in their native language without a requirement of concurrently enrolling in ESL courses.

We also appreciate the Legislature support of the $2.5 million that we received this year to establish the Los Angeles College District small Business and Entrepreneurial Center that will be housed in our campus. Thank you for the opportunity to join here today. I am available for any questions.

Thank you so much, Vice President. Next up, we have our vice chancellor. Welcome.

Good afternoon, Chair Fong and Honorable Assembly Higher Education Committee Members. On behalf of our Board of Trustees and Chancellor Rodriguez. Welcome to LACCD and one of our nine colleges, East LA College. Our district prides itself in providing affordable education to all who seek it. At LACCD, we remain committed to fostering diverse, inclusive, accessible and equitable learning environments for all students and to actively engage with elected officials, nonprofit community Members, and our civic and philanthropic partners to serve this region while promoting inclusivity and advancing social justice.

The LACCD, like most other community colleges throughout the nation, experienced a decline in Enrollment during the earlier part of this decade. Despite nationwide challenges, the district remains committed to identifying enrolling new students to experience the life changing benefits of higher education. Community colleges in California are leading the way nationally through the support and leadership of the state Legislature.

We are tremendously thankful for the policies that the Legislature has passed, such as AB 19, which established the California College Promise program, AB 288, which established the dual enrollment program, and AB 162, which established the Community College Strong Workforce program. These are just a few of the landmark bills that have helped our students and institutions recover from the unprecedented disruption caused by the worldwide pandemic in the past few years. Our federal and state policymakers provided significant fiscal support.

That enabled our district to strengthen student wraparound services including basic needs, retention and completion and educational support services such as tutoring and mental health. As a result, the district is restoring its enrollments. I am proud to share three strategies with you today increased outreach efforts in dual enrollment, the LA College Promise program, and increased support for addressing student basic needs. We have utilized these programs and funding to recover the enrollment we lost during the Pandemic.

My colleague, Vice Chancellor Jim Lancaster, will share our strategies related to adult education, increasing our workforce, baccalaureate degree offerings, and strong workforce programs, which are also experiencing growth from our students and boosting enrollment. The district remains firmly focused on prioritizing enrollments and providing an accessible, affordable higher education.

Through our nine colleges, we continue to see our outstanding and resilient students, most of whom are first generation, achieve great things this fall, the district is experiencing robust student enrollment growth with a steady 17% increase compared to last year and a substantial increase in student unit load of about 14%. Our commitment to student success remains our top priority. We are actively implementing strategies to enhance student recruitment, retention, persistence and success.

Our colleges have expanded outreach efforts to local high schools to increase the number of concurrently enrolled high school students within LACCD five Memorandums of Understanding with New K-12 districts and charter schools were approved this year. The district currently has 29 AB 288 agreements with high schools across Los Angeles County. Within its service area, these MOUs account for approximately 6000 students duly enrolled, an increase of 7% compared to last year. The Los Angeles College Promise Program's first cohort in fall of 2017, consisted of 4067 students.

Let me share the remarkable success of our LA. College Promise Program. The number of students who completed transfer level English and math doubled fall to fall persistence rates increased by 23%, and students completing their program within three years increased by 43%. In the program's second year, there were 33% increase in enrollment of LA. Unified School District graduates into LACCD colleges. From fall 2017 to fall 2022, over 30,000 students participated in the LA. College Promise Program. This year, the enrollment is projected to be over 5500 students.

The pandemic unveiled the great need for student basic needs, which include food, housing, childcare school supplies, emergency assistance and transportation. With a student population of which nearly 50% report being low income, our district recognizes the challenges our students face outside of the classroom. Having a secure place to sleep, a guaranteed meal, or a reliable mode of transportation can be the difference between completing a degree or dropping out.

As such, the district is committed to finding solutions for our students basic needs so that they can focus on their education and make upward progress toward their lives throughout 2021. As the pandemic caused increased uncertainty, incidents of housing and security surged. That year, LACCD advocated for and our state legislative champions helped us secure $100 million statewide for emergency assistance that could be used for housing and other basic needs. We are tremendously grateful for your support.

Once state funding was secured, we created housing partnerships with nonprofit partners to provide safe and clean housing for our homeless students. Currently, LACCD is providing housing for more than 100 housing and secure students. We continue to look for additional ways to support students needing housing. Feasibility studies are underway to explore future affordable housing options. Through the generous confidence and support of LA County voters, LACCD passed a $5.6 billion bond including resources designated for student and workforce housing.

The district is heavily involved in conducting its due diligence and seeking voter input to explore the housing options and models that benefit our stakeholders. On October 20, Eigth, we will hold our first community forum on housing at Los Angeles City College. The LACCD has committed to providing food insecure students with resources on the campus and in their communities. Each of the nine campuses operates its own version of a food pantry that allows students to pick a variety of fresh produce or nonperishable items for use.

These same pantries often provide additional items, including personal hygiene products, bookstore vouchers, gas cards and clothing to help with inclement weather or professional job interviews. These pantries also act as a point of contact for connecting students with additional campus, community and local government services, including mental health care, legal or immigration assistance, or counseling. Additionally, the college Peer Navigators and Basic Need Coordinators help students navigate many of the county and statewide programs available.

Each of the campuses supports signing students up for CalFresh, which helps to provide Low income community Members with financial support that can be used at their local grocery store or supermarket. Transportation can be the difference between graduating with a college degree or dropping out. Over the years, LACCD advocated for providing a fairless Metro pilot for all 550,000 Los Angeles community College student riders across 21 colleges in the county. Chair Fong was extremely helpful and supportive of this effort.

During his tenure on the board in 2022 and in response to the need for transportation, LACCD secured a Senate directed spending appropriations request through the office of the State of the late Senator Diane Feinstein, who sponsored a $1 million allocation to expand the Metro Fairless system initiative pilot program GoPass in Los Angeles County to ensure all community college students can access reliable public transportation.

As a result, today 299 students have registered for the GoPass program countywide 20% of those participants are community college students, and over 9% of them are LACCD students. In closing, these are just a few examples illustrating our ongoing focus on our district's enrollment recovery and, most important, on increasing student success. We look forward to working with you during this next legislative year to advocate for financial aid reform for our students.

We will continue educating our legislative leaders on the need to expand the baccalaureate degree programs in community colleges, to increase bachelor's degrees among the most underserved students enrolled, and to help California meet its regional workforce needs and strengthen the economy. And finally, we look forward to continuing to advocate for increased base funding for community colleges. Community colleges are engines of opportunity, supporting social mobility and the health of the US. economy.

We play a critical role in higher education and offer career and vocational training for thousands of disproportionately low income students and students of color, yet our students receive the least educational revenue compared to its K 12 and higher education partners. Thank you once again for your continued support and advocacy of our community college students and for allowing LACCD to share a few of our strategies as we work to restore enrollments and increase student success. I'm available for any questions you may have.

Thank you so much, Dr. Duenas and Dr. Albo-Lopez, for those robust presentations. I really appreciate all the work that LACC is doing and East LA College is doing. Really appreciate all the work around basic needs and student housing. Dual enrollment on dual enrollment I see our friends in the Alhambra Unified School District here.

In the back we have a school board Member, Ken Tang, Superintendent Denise Jaramillo, and it's that partnership with Dr. Duenas and East LA College to dual enrollment programs at AB 288 and to really sign those CGAP agreements. And I was very grateful for the leadership of East LA College and Alhambra Unified School District. So thank you for doing that. We also have a PCC Trustee ... here too, and everyone here is very important person. So thank you to everyone for being here today.

In terms of the just question of picture to Dr. Duenas, you've mentioned a number of programs on dual enrollment and enrollment growth opportunities, that a number of courses are online. And I know you have an asynchronous and synchronous course with work as well. And eight week classes. When I was parking in the parking lot right now, just seeing the billboard on there, what are some other strategies that you think we can lean into to really look at enrollment growth for UCLA College but across the state?

I think one of the areas that Dr. Roman has really shared with us and advocated on is student connection. How do we connect with our students? What is it that we're doing above and beyond to connect with our students, to meet them where they're at. Having enrollment opportunities on the weekends, during the day, having efforts and opportunities where students could come in, meet with someone, connect, and identify what their next step would be. Also checking in with our students that had disconnected with us.

What are we doing as a campus to ensure that we do our best to connect with our students and find out what's happening? We've done initiatives where we have calling, call banks, folks, connecting with students directly, and That's an effort that is campus wide. The culture has really shifted to one where they embrace the opportunity to connect with students, and it's varied. We do it through different modalities and even through our social media.

Have you seen also our social media ads everywhere, our extensive marketing campaigns on bus ads and really looking at billboards, finding out what the data shows on where our students are and how we could reach them. We've had conversations with students where they shared emails just don't work for us. How else could we communicate? Text message, social media? And we have our student leaders here in the room as well, with their efforts as well to doing activities for our student to connect.

Because when they see Dr. Duenas coming yes, sir. But when they see a peer, tell me more, what can I do? They have a different conversation with them. So really, going above and beyond the efforts of just day to day business, how else could we reconnect with our students? Because our student population has shifted. They're no longer what it was before the pandemic. We really have to look at where they're at now, how we could connect with them and then support them, what they need.

Great. Thank you so much. Vice Chair Tri Ta.

Yeah. Mr. Chair, you know, I really appreciate your question, and I have another question that I'm a big fan of dual enrollment. So what do you expect from us in Sacramento? What can we do more to support dual enrollment?

I think what we've been seeing in policies that have been coming in the last, I would say five to eight years, we've seen a transition happening where more efforts are done and looked at for the student. We're looking at opportunities for students to break down barriers for them to apply to dual enrollment courses.

We just seen the newest Bill, and I forget the name, the number, but again, the Bill to have that parents do not have to sign the K-12 consent for every semester, one time until they withdraw. Those are some of the efforts that policy could help with students to gain access to dual enrollment. Our parents and community Members have a lot on their plate. We wish for this to be an easier process for them to ensure that they have access to our classes.

Thank you so much. And one question for our vice chancellor. You mentioned the $5.5 billion bond and for student workforce housing and the partnerships that are happening in the community with shower of hope, with different entities. Really look at how we expand opportunities for housing and secure students. As you look at the bond going forward. What are some lessons? I know it's still very recent, but I know you have the hearing coming up on October 28th as well.

What are some of the projections that you see that can possibly come out of the housing plans on the various campuses? And I know you're not the facilities chancellor, but I just wanted to put that out there if you had any insights or thoughts as to how we can continue to support our housing insecure students.

With our housing pilot, we definitely learned that we have various populations of students that we serve. We have the housing insecure. We have folks that do not have enough funds to pay rent and are house sharing or living in multigenerational households. We have the traditional college student that is attending our colleges and has a wealth of support from home. So part of what we're hoping to learn through our various engagements with the community is what should housing look like?

And we've determined that it's not a one size fits all. And I would say that the funding that Governor Newsom just signed in place for our foster youth is a great start. While they're attending community college, their room on board is covered. Activities like that are definitely helpful in helping us find the resources to put students into a secure place while they attend college.

Great. Thank you so much. I really appreciate that. And thank you so much again to our panelists from East Los Angeles College and the LA. County College District for your opening remarks and really sharing system wide perspectives as to how we're addressing enrollment declines and strategies to continue to support our students. So thank you so much again. Next up, I'd like to welcome our panelists for our system wide and regional panel.

Our speakers if they can join us up on stage please would be Dr. John Stanskas, Vice Chancellor of Educational Services support at the California Community College Chancellor's office, Dr. Mike Muñoz, President of Long Beach City College, Dr. Angélica Garcia, President of Santa Rosa Junior College, and Dr. Brent Calvin, President of the College of the Sequoias. Thank you so much for all being here today. Really appreciate you providing the opportunity to share your insights on the regional and system wide level. And with that, I'd like to welcome Vice Chancellor Stanskas to begin, please. Thank.

There we go. Good afternoon, Chair Fong. Assemblymember Ta. It's nice to be here. Thank you for inviting us. I am John Stanskas. I'm the Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs for the California Community Colleges. You might recognize me. I've had other roles and met with you before. Part of my past was as the Academic Senate President several years ago, and I'm here on behalf of our Chancellor, Dr. Sonya Christian. And thank you for holding a hearing on this crucial topic. Need to move this closer.

I have to stop leaning. All right, so using full census data from spring 2023, our Executive Vice Chancellor, Dr. John Hetts, recently shared a memo That's available on our website. If you need it, we can send it to you. That shows our system enrollment for the 2022-2023 year. And there's some good news in that. Enrollment has gone up. We've seen positive growth for multiple semesters.

As you're all aware, enrollment was slowly declining prior to COVID and then dropped dramatically as we tried to figure out how to support students in a brand new environment and in a global pandemic. In plain English, as the labor market has been very strong, as we exit COVID, we have seen a slower return to normal of what we expected. And so this is positive news in terms of enrollment.

We initially saw a 2% enrollment growth in fall of 23, and that improved to 8% for spring 23. That's a significant increase across almost all student populations, but specifically, our Black and African American students was up 10%. Our Latinx or Hispanic students was up 11%, and Native American enrollment was up 13%. Overall, system headcount increased by 5% from 1.83 million students to 1.92 million students from academic year to academic year. There is still a lot of work to do.

Certain racial and ethnic groups remain disproportionately underrepresented, including Asian, Filipino, and Pacific Islander students, who either saw declines or slower growth than in others. And similarly, while growth among students under 19 was strong, as we continue to expand, dual Enrollment and Enrollment of students 35 and older saw significant increases. There's still a lot of work to do for the 20 to 34 year olds who continue to decline in Enrollment.

So I'm anticipating your next question, and I'll answer it, but you can just cut me off if you want to. What is contributing to enrollment growth in that way? We don't have a reliable, peer-reviewed scientific study about that. In general, we know that when we are able to meet students where they are and support their basic needs, that they are more likely to enroll, persist, and succeed.

I also think that as the economy is relatively strong, we see those 20 to 35 year olds opting to work instead of going to college. And we don't have, through our financial aid processes, even though we've done a lot of work to expand that. I don't think we're convincing them that this is the best choice for them right now. And so there is work that we can do there as the State of California.

With that in mind, I do want to thank the Legislature for recent investments in expanding basic needs support for our students, funding each campus to have a full time basic needs coordinator and a centralized one stop shop basic Needs Center, for instance, as well as ongoing funding for mental health services. I think all of us are dealing with the trauma that we endured through the pandemic in our own ways.

And figuring out how to help our students move through that and transition back to whatever our new normal will be is really important for us to be able to provide to students to increase their retention and success in their studies. Going forward, we hope the Legislature will continue to invest in making college affordable and accessible for all students by expanding funding for on campus childcare and by fully funding the Cal Grant Equity Framework to make state financial aid an entitlement for all community college students.

I do think that focusing on that 20 to 35 year old I recently was at a college campus for several years and childcare is a huge issue for our students. How can I bring my child to class? Well, you're not supposed to, but how can I have childcare accessible while I am in class and while I am studying? That is a number one priority of many of our students, is taking care of their families, both emotionally and fiscally, as well as in presence in that way.

And I think That's important. I can take a few minutes, if you wouldn't mind, to talk about Vision 2030, the new framework of Chancellor Christian and officially adopted by our Board of Governors in September. It is centered around equity and access, equity and success and equity and support and thinking through how are we taking college to the community.

Because that individual connection to our students that was referenced by the earlier speaker is really important for the student to feel engaged in the institution and that the institution cares about their success and their future as much as they do. So Vision 2030 is designed to take college to the community to look at three broad goals around equitable pathways to baccalaureate attainment that includes the community college baccalaureate degrees, which I know you'll hear about soon.

We just completed a Round Three analysis and are getting ready for Round Four. As well as transfer to our CSUs, our UCs, our Independents, and institutions like the programs we have, and agreements we have with the historically Black colleges and universities to make more availability to transfer for our students and more seats that are available for them.

There's also a workforce and economic development, of course, and finding equitable pathways through healthcare, through STEM, through engaging climate action to have a world for us to grow into, and as well as the future of teaching and learning.

Where we are looking at innovations in generative AI and how that will impact how students engage with us and how we engage with students and how we can use those tools to enhance both the learning environment as well as students readiness for the workforce in the world moving forward. In conclusion, we're very optimistic about the future of the community colleges.

Our system is dynamic and flexible, and we will continue to partner with the Legislature and the Governor to get more dynamic and flexible as we work to meet the needs of our students and our communities and our planet. Thank you. And if you have any questions, I'm happy to answer them.

Thank you so much, Vice Chair Ta. We can go through the panel first and then perfect. Thank you so much, Vice Chair Ta. Next up, we'll have Dr. Munoz, followed by Dr. Garcia, followed by College Coins President, Dr. Calvin. Welcome. Dr. Munoz.

Thank you. Thank you, Chair Fong, for having us today and appreciate you as well. Assembly Member Ta. My name is Mike Munoz, and I serve as the Superintendent President at Long Beach City College. And to just again, to contribute to this conversation with some regional perspective, just to kind of set the stage a little bit. At Long Beach City College, we actually experienced we were ranked number two in terms of managing enrollment loss in the State of large colleges.

So essentially only one college lost less enrollment than us, and I believe that was Bakersfield. And so from there, we've been really building our strategy on how to reengage students, those that have been most disproportionately impacted by the pandemic. So there's a few strategies that I'd like to highlight that I think have worked tremendously well in speaking to that adult learner population that I think we're all interested in engaging and reengaging with.

We saw a 21% increase in enrollment for indirect high school matriculants this past fall from the previous fall. And so we did some very targeted outreach. We were able to do some data analysis and recognize that in the City of Long Beach and certain zip codes and certain census tracks, you had higher portion of students without high school diplomas, higher percentage of potential students that were fully engaged in the workforce. So we used that data mining to target special mailers and engagement strategies with those communities.

And so we saw a translation of what that looked like in terms of our enrollment. We also engaged in what we called our Belong Beach City College campaign. It helps to have the word long and the word belong. And so that was a great marketing technique. And so one of the things we did that was interesting is we engaged local movie theaters and so the Barbieheimer Weekend. Everybody heard of the Barbieheimer weekend.

Well, we made sure that we had our Belong Beach City College video in all the movie theaters within a general vicinity of the college. And we saw a sharp increase after that weekend in terms of applications and matriculation, especially with that adult learner population. So really being thoughtful about not just the social media and the target mailers, but thinking about a broader campaign that will pull students in.

And I think another fact that data point that we're very proud of is we saw a 10% increase in enrollment of our African American students. And that was a very important population for us to engage because historically we've seen declines in the number of African American students enrolling at Long Beach City College due to all sorts of environmental factors. And so learning from that and I think it's also important to note we had a zero net loss of enrollment of black students during the Pandemic.

I think we're one of the few community colleges that can say that. And so building upon that kind of concept of making sure our students know that they belong at Long Beach City College, I think has really translated into enrollment gains. Other strategies that we're seeing that are working very well is our case management approach and our data mining. So one of the things that we've done, as many of us know, we talk about unhoused students housing and secure students other vulnerable populations.

But how do you identify those students? Most people will say surveys suggest 18% of our students are housing insecure. One of the things that we've implemented as part of our registration process is prior to every student registering for their classes, they have to complete a preregistration survey. It lets us know if they're housing insecure, food insecure, if they're formerly incarcerated, if they're single parents. And so from the very beginning, we triage them and we case manage them. You mentioned the need for childcare.

We heard that very loud from our students as a barrier to enrolling. And so I'm very proud to share that. We have a groundbreaking partnership with the Boys and Girls Club. We entered into a joint use agreement and we host the Boys and Girls Club on our campus Monday through Friday from 02:00 p.m. To 08:00 p.m. And it's free for our students. And this has been really transformational.

When we start to look at the data of the students whose children are enrolled in the Boys and Girls Club, we're seeing that they're taking more units each term, so it's shortening their time to completion as well as they're finding success. We structured it in a way where, as you know, sometimes some of these programs will require students to participate five days a week to maintain the funding. And as you know, That's not always feasible for our students and families.

So we have it structured both as a five day a week program as well as drop in. And we've seen that model really show promising results for our student parents. And again, so when we start to think holistically, we've really been thinking about how do we use the data to identify the different student populations to really case, manage and serve in a way that really, I think, is deeply connected to student success, as well as what are some of the largest standing barriers facing students.

And so, as we know, we've been discussing housing, and we're working on an innovative partnership with the Mayor of Long Beach, Rex Richardson, as well as the City Council. We are currently in an exclusive the City Council passed a resolution to enter into an exclusive discussion to transfer three parcels of land excuse me, in North Long Beach that are north, just adjacent to the Michelle Obama Library.

We're going to be building not only a North Long Beach Higher Ed Center, which, if you understand the demographics of North Long Beach, it is very much an underserved part of the city. They very much is a walking community. It can take over an hour on a bus to come to Long Beach City College. So it really needs to have long Beach City College needs to have a footprint.

But what I'm most proud of is we are going to also build family housing, because as we've explored affordable housing at Long Beach City College, as you know, many of those projects only serve students without dependents, and that creates a barrier for those with children. And so we're thinking both two projects, one That's going to serve our students without dependence, as well as one That's going to serve students with dependence. And so being very thoughtful about that.

So I want to make sure there's time for my colleagues. But just to summarize, at the highest level, we're really using data both in our enrollment approaches as well as how do we retain students. Because, you know, part of enrollment management is not just about new students and chasing new students. It's also holding on to the ones we currently serve. So we're using data to figure out how to do that better, as well as thinking around some of the larger systemic issues around affordable housing as well as childcare and finding real solutions for our students and families. Thank you.

Thank you so much. President Munoz. President Garcia. Welcome.

Thank you. Good afternoon, Chair Fong, Assembly Member Ta. My name is Angélica Garcia and I'm the Superintendent President at Santa Rosa Junior College, which serves Sonoma County. The college has been in existence for 106 years, has a tradition of long standing presidents. So I began in July 1, and I am the 6th President that the college has seen in its history. The first woman, the first Latina and out queer.

The reason I share that is because it's a lot of change and a lot of connection in with the community. So Santa Rosa Junior College annually enrolls 26,000 students. It's a Hispanic serving institution with a growing Latino population, and that is the largest population in the county. A lot of the work that the college is doing in partnership with county partners and programs and industry and business is really looking at how to disrupt intergenerational poverty and in doing so, looking at educational attainment and unemployment rates.

So we're all taking our part to see what is it that each of our industries can do to address increasing educational attainment and decreasing unemployment rate. That makes the enrollment management issue a countywide issue and not just a Sonoma, excuse me, Santa Rosa Junior College or Sonoma State University issue. So in addition to what you have already heard from my colleague here, Dr. Munoz, outreach in Sonoma County has been greatly impacted. So it was declining enrollment pre pandemic.

But we also had, in October 2017, the Tubbs fire. And that fire burned over 5600 structures. We had a number of students, employees, community Members that lost their home. Over 36,000 acres were burned during that fire. And so in a lot of ways, our community in Sonoma County is still recovering from that. I mentioned that because one of the programs that grew from that, I would say two elements. One was all of our first responders. So Santa Rosa Junior College has two campuses.

One in Santa Rosa and one in Petaluma. And three sites. One is the Santa Rosa Junior College public safety training center in Windsor, which has basic police academy, fire, and EMT training. We also have 365 acres out for Shone Farm. So that's where our AG Science and Vintner wine program is. And we also have newly incorporated Santa Rosa Junior College, Roseland, which is in southwest Santa Rosa predominantly for essentially the lowest income, non native English speaking communities. So that is the expansiveness of it.

And so with the housing issues, there are a couple things that came up. One, an educational program. So we are just building a construction management building that we are doing in partnership with the EDA. It is a first building of its kind in the state. It is an open learning lab to bring forth all new technologies for quick building of houses. We are short in the industry of the workforce that is trained to be able to provide immediate housing construction support.

We also have our welding program that has experienced exponential growth because that is a skill set that is much needed in the housing development industry. So we're recognizing that our welding program, just term over term, is incredibly impacted and with more space, we can take in more students. The other is that we just opened in August of this year, 352 beds for the Polly O'mira Doyle Hall. It is a private-public partnership that Santa Rosa has with a company.

We prioritized students who identified being homeless, foster youth, former foster youth veterans, EOPs students were amongst our top priority. And so that particular partnership has been a multifaceted effort so that we could offer below market housing. And our data shows that about 25% of the residents indicate that they would not be enrolled in our college if they did not have housing.

Some examples of students come from the far northwest coastal region in some of our tribal Native American communities, and so they're able to come and be here. We have students that went from part time to full time because now they could work on campus, live on campus, and not have to lose time in the commute. So that has been a learning lesson for us that we're happy to share with colleagues.

Excited to hear that Long Beach is pursuing the parent housing because we do not have that. So dependents are not within our area. Another element that I want to share is dual enrollment. So I think you're hearing a theme. So we have seen an increase of 17% just in dual enrollment. So certainly the college and career access pathway allows for us to engage in partnerships.

And as we are getting a declining population in Sonoma County, we cannot afford to not build those relationships with students in the K through 12 system. So we continue the partnerships with our high school counselors, superintendents, the superintendents across Sonoma County. We just agreed to come together and convene and literally look from transitional kindergarten all the way through Sonoma State. So having all of the educational leaders in the room so we can talk about what that pathway in our county looks like.

And lastly, just want to share that the efforts to provide student support. So we saw 25% growth in our Sawubona Center, which supports our African American students. That's incredibly high because we actually have a lower African American student population. And so what That's letting us know is that when we create spaces on our campuses where students can find supports, culturally relevant programming, they are finding their way there, they are studying there, they are completing and they are working there. And I will end with my comments there to allow for colleagues and questions. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much, Superintendent Garcia. Welcome, President Calvin.

Thank you, Chairman. Thank.

Sorry about that. Would also like to thank my colleagues as well as everyone here in the audience, for taking time out of a busy fall semester afternoon to come out and support higher Ed. I'm Brent Calvin, lucky enough to serve as the Superintendent and President at the College of the Sequoias, my Alma mater and located in my hometown of Visalia, California. For you. We serve about 15,000 students, headcount 10,000 or so FTEs, one college, two educational centers, one in Tulare and one in Hanford.

I'm going to do my best not to be too redundant, but it's hard when you're batting cleanup after such successful and accomplished colleagues. But we too have seen our enrollments snap back to pre pandemic levels. We were down at one pont 14-15% from pre pandemic levels, and last year we just about clawed all that back. And this year we expect to go over pre pandemic levels. And some of the ways we've done that I'll kind of list out here. But we've talked about it.

I think it's really important to have strong relationships with K-12 partners, and that takes different forms for us. It's me personally going out and presenting to our 13 or 14 K -2 boards and their superintendents once each semester. And yes, it's a pain to get those scheduled, trust me, but it's important for them to see my face, and they're great to fit me in as well.

We follow that effort up with outreach and financial aid specialists that are all assigned different high schools in each of those districts. That's a weekly thing where our folks are on their campuses. And then we do quite a number of registration events and dual and concurrent enrollment events to boost up our dual enrollment. So when it is time to register students every spring, they're not hearing from us for the first time. They've been hearing from us throughout their junior and senior years.

And this is just kind of the culminating event. But we also talked about it's not just recruiting students, it's retaining students. And I think our entire system could do itself a favor by closing that back door and making sure that we're not losing students after a semester or two. And how do we do that? I think it's important to engage students. First of all, support them.

And the legislators have been great to give us the tools we need to support, whether it's tutorial centers, math labs, writing centers, financial aid packages. We needed to be doing all of that. The College of Sequoias has just opened up a Basic Skills Educational Support Services building that was funded through Prop 51, if we remember that, as well as some local funds. And it's just fabulous packed every single day. We also host a number of events.

Sometimes we think of cocurricular things as being secondary to our main mission, but they're so important to our main mission. And so whether it's theater, choir, band athletics, we've got science students on our campus till midnight on Friday nights in something we call Friday Night Labs. And we had one of the founders of Tesla no, not that founder, but a different founder of Tesla. That'd been something that had been quite a coup to get Elon Musk there.

But we had one of the founders of Tesla come and speak to that group of students two years ago. Just a fabulous experience for those students. So I think it's important and to offer students all kinds of opportunities to engage in the college outside of the classroom. We've also invested heavily in career and technical education, and I think our entire system is recognizing the value in high demand, high paying jobs.

I think for too long, high school districts as well as community colleges got maybe too enamored with the glamour and the sexiness of sending all of our students to four year universities. And I'll admit it's a feather in our cap when our students go to UC Berkeley or UCLA. But there are fabulous jobs in industry, and Angelica just mentioned her welding program. We have a fabulous welding program that is just amazing how many students enroll in those programs.

We're opening up weekend programs, night programs, just to try to meet demand. We've also just broken ground on a $40 million funded locally, but a $40 million CTE complex on the Tulare campus to complement that welding facility. And we believe that, yes, transfer is really important, but so is industry, and supporting the industry in Tulare and Kings County is extremely important to us. And then many of you are probably here for the discussion on baccalaureate degrees. And that is a fantastic effort.

And I commend Dr. Carol for everything that she's done to advance our system in that regard. And we're 100% in support of that effort and look forward to having our own at bat on that if it were. But we've also partnered with Fresno State. We're the second largest county out of 58 in the state without a publicly funded four year University. And not coincidentally, we're also the second lowest in terms of bachelor degree attainment.

And I got tired of listening to the County and City leaders complain about it over the last two decades. And so we just decided as a college that we were going to make it happen. And we invested initially just $2 million to spruce up an old building to lure Fresno State down to our campus. They now offer five bachelor degree programs and two masters on our campus.

With that track record, we invested another $5 million to buy the land adjacent to their current center in order to show our voters that we were serious about this. No, we don't get an extra dime. In fact, it'll probably add $1.0 million of operating cost to our budget. We don't get a dime. But if I'm not going to care about higher ed in the region, who is.

And so with that track record, five or six years partnership with Fresno State and a $5 million investment in the land, we went to our voters measure C, and we asked them to support a $95 million bond measure to build a new University Center and adjoining Student Union, and they passed it. And so give us three years and we'll have our own University right on the College of the Sequoia's campus. And we just felt like that was important.

We lost out on the UC Merced sweepstakes 20 years ago, and believe me, the region is still smarting over that. And we weren't going to get another CSU halfway between Fresno and Bakersfield, so we've done it ourselves and we're excited about that partnership and really thankful that local, regional and state leaders have been behind us all the way. And the last thing I'll say, and this has kind of come out today, every one of our speakers has talked about telling our story better. Goodness gracious.

Almost half of CSU graduates every year got their start in our system and about a third of UC graduates got their start in our system. But the General public doesn't know that. They don't know what a hidden gem the community college system is. And I think it's incumbent on all of us as leaders in this system to tell our story better.

So whether it's billboards or bus wraps, social media, radio, TV, whatever, we just need to do our best to tell our story so that our students know it's not just attending ELAC. I'm not just going to go to Long Beach City College or Santa Rosa College or College of Sequoias. That's part of my educational journey and I'm excited to go there because believe me, we all know once they're on our campus, they have a fabulous time. It's just kind of getting over that initial stigma of not going to Harvard straight out of high school. So I think we can change that and turn it into a positive. So thank you again for this opportunity and thank you for having us here today.

Thank you so much. Really appreciate all the comments from all our panelists here and really for sharing your insights and the work that you're doing, transformational work in your sector communities. And with that I'd like to open up for questions. Vice Chair Ta

I really appreciate that and I'm really pleased and really impressed with all of your presentation. That amazing. That really helped me to understand more about the services and all the good strategy from Committee college system. I really ask you a few questions because some of you mentioned about how to engage community college to the community and concerns about the childcare services and offering bachelor degree program at a community college level. That's amazing.

And when we was in Sacramento, I think I was thinking about it and in my district we have a large Vietnamese community, so English is a second language. So how can you engage college in the area, in the district that English is not a first language? And you mentioning about how can as a community college work with other University to offering like, bachelor degree. I think something like that, I believe could able to engage with Committee more efficiently.

Thank you for the question, Vice Chair Ta. So in Sonoma County in our area, the Spanish speaking population is the largest. So one of the things that has happened over the last decade or so has been offering courses in Spanish in the discipline. So it started out with some faculty in particular departments, and certainly because our growth with GED Prep, ESL non credit, then came the question amidst guided pathways, well, what's the next step and how can we connect?

And so I think that that has been a worthy endeavor. And I think we're getting more requests to offer courses, at least in our community, in Spanish. And so I would say that we tend to start again from the adult learners, the non credit, into the pathway and trying to connect it. Right now, it's been predominantly in education, early childhood education.

And if I could expand Long Beach is home to the largest Cambodian population outside of Cambodia. And so historically, we have not, I believe, fully engaged with the Cambodian community in ways that I think have translated to meaningful registrations and enrollments at the college. So one of the things we've done, we did a couple of things I think, that we've seen translate. So one is we made sure that we started translating much of our brochures beyond just English and Spanish, but into Khmer as well.

Up until last year, we did not have any full time tenure track faculty that represented the Cambodian community. And we have two now that have been engaging with the community that can speak Khmer and engage with families. And then the third thing that we did that we saw help reach this population is historically, the city has had a very large Cambodian festival. And I approached the organizers and the City Council Member who represents that community and offered our campus.

And so we actually moved this last year, the Cambodian festival, to our campus and was a big game changer because these are families that oftentimes have never accessed our campus. And to be able to have several thousand Members of the Cambodian community on campus for the festival, we were then able to leverage some of our outreach supports and our non credit programs and our adult education program. So it became also an educational component to this festival.

So these were some of the kind of ways that we're thinking about how do we get directly connected with the communities? Because, as you know, you can offer all the courses you want, but if you're not doing it in a way That's culturally responsive and engaging, many families don't participate. One of the other things that we have been doing that I think is a little bit different than previous years is with recognizing that transportation can be a barrier for some folks.

So we work with the City of Long Beach to enter into a joint use agreement MOU that we have access to all the Parks and RECs facilities. So we can now take some of our courses out into the local parks that are in the communities that have different, let's just say, classroom space that we could then utilize.

So that way it's not the barrier of you have to come to Long Beach City College in the middle of peak traffic when you're trying to figure out what to do with your kids, but we're taking the courses to them in the communities that they live in. So those are some of the things that we've been doing that I think have made an impact in reaching some of our non-native English speakers.

Basically, I would agree that transportation is a big barrier for many of our students, and offering those programs in other communities is a fabulous strategy. And I also believe that all Community College Systems districts should have agreements with their local bus providers. And our students, all 15,000 of them with their student ID card can travel anywhere throughout Tulare and Kings County, unlimited rides.

And we've had that system in place since 2007, and it was a game changer, and we modeled it after Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. Some of our faculty had gone to school there and knew that with their student ID Card, they could travel anywhere on the central coast. And we duplicated that program, and I think a lot of community college districts have done that. I would advise they all do.

I would also say, Vice Chair Ta, to your question, I think these are all fabulous programs, but we also need to just celebrate the heck out of them. And in addition to our big graduation ceremonies in the spring, we probably have another 25 that celebrate smaller pockets of students. And those are some of our most and best attended celebrations, our ESL program.

I tell our faculty and staff, if you're only going to come to one out of the 25, come to the ESL graduation ceremony because you see the joy of education in its rawest form, and sometimes it's just a certificate for getting through kind of the first level of ESL and just the sheer exuberance over that. It's fabulous. It's really what kind of fuels the tank for the next school year is just to see the difference that we can make in communities that really need our assistance. So I would say, in addition to what my colleagues have said, celebrate the heck out of these programs and you'll see them grow exponentially.

Thank you.

Could I just add, you're hearing different ways that colleges engage their community, and I really appreciate all the examples here from the Chancellor's office perspective. We're trying to provide that flexibility so colleges can tailor their outreach and their communication and inreach to different communities based on the community college and the community they serve.

To that end, we are trying to provide more flexibility around things like the attendance accounting manual so that colleges can choose different, more flexible ways to meet adult learners and all populations by offering courses in a modality and in a term length that will meet the needs of that specific population as well as the regulations that are moving through about culturally responsive programming and instruction. So once we have these students that they feel connected and valued and heard in our colleges.

Thank you so much, Vice Chair Ta, for that very thoughtful question to all of our panelists as well and just want to put out there as well. As mentioned earlier by Vice President, due to Assembly Bill 1096, we're so grateful that the Governor signed our Bill 1096 that allows for community college instruction in language. And here in the LA Community College District, Ms. Willows and team, they've done tremendous work to advocate on this issue, probably reach out to your respective institutions.

And it was great that we presented a Committee that there are over 30 community college districts across California supporting in language, culturally appropriate language instruction. And we're going to be doing a big announcement this Thursday here to celebrate that. But as mentioned by the panelists, we got to continue to share our stories and to really amplify those efforts and provide those supports for our students and really looking at opportunities in language as well.

Here at the LA Community College this year, approximately 7000 students are taking courses in language in Korean and Russian, in Spanish and Tagalog in many different languages. And this is going to be just the first step and continue to expand these opportunities. So I'm so grateful to all our panelists and to Vice Chair for bringing up that question. And secondly, I've heard a number of comments around student transportation as well, the critical partnerships there Assembly Bill 610 authored by similar Chris Holden.

It's a two year Bill, but this is something we're going to continue to push. I'm very proud to be a principal co-author on that as well, and we're going to continue to advocate on those issues and at the LA Community College District when we serve there and have to bring it back here. But we work closely with Metro on building up that regional partnership here in LA County to really have those expanded opportunities for students in Long Beach and students throughout LA County.

So we got to continue to expand those opportunities as well across our state. One question I had was for President Superintendent Garcia, you mentioned the 352 beds Doyle Hall project, and That's amazing. I wanted to hear more about the specific details as to how you finance that project, the long term lease agreement what that public private partnership looked like.

Absolutely. So Santa Rosa Junior College was part of the first cohort of colleges that received the affordable student housing grant. So for us, that was $15 million. The way that the public private partnership works is that we lease the land. Servitas is the private partnership that owns the building. So they put into the element we contributed $15 million to that. What we utilize the grant Fund, however, was to help us subsidize the cost of rents.

So with the 352 beds, we were able to in combination with financial aid and the foundation at Santa Rosa Junior College, we're ranked number one across the state. So we have a very prestigious and we're lucky to have the Doyle Trust, the Frank P and Polly O'mira. Doyle Trust, which grants financial support to all high school graduates in Sonoma County who want to come to Santa Rosa Junior College.

So what we did was leverage the housing grant with our financial aid packages and the Doyle Trust so that our most impacted students, so our homeless students, our former foster youth, foster youth veterans, EOPs, first gen, have the lowest amount of rent to pay. And so with that, we were able to get rents down to 375 a month for a very specific population, and then we have all the way ranging to full pay.

So we benefited from the statewide grant because we were moving ahead on this. We had already broken ground. And I know there was some movement this past summer with the language on the lease. And so we're grateful to the Legislature for the adjusted and revised language to allow for those first cohorts to give us a little bit more flexibility, because at the time when there were changes, we had said, look, the money has already been spent and I already have students in 352 beds.

So grateful for that partnership. And certainly our local legislators in Sonoma County were fierce advocates to support us. And it's a community effort. There's a lot of private dollars from Sonoma County residents that went into it, industry partners. So Kaiser Permanente had one of the largest donations that went in and funded the naming of the great kind of multipurpose room that exists in the building. And so if there's ever a phrase, all hands on deck, it was definitely the case to get this building not just built, but also staffed and ready to support. And so we did have the ribbon cutting ceremony in early September as a result.

Amazing. That's a tremendous work that you're doing. And as most of my colleagues, we're going to continue to push and advocate for additional resources around this issue. I know in the Higher Ed Committee we brought this up and also in budget sub two as well. So we're going to continue to amplify these issues. So thank you for sharing that. To President Munoz, thank you for highlighting your partnership also with the Boys and Girls Club. That's an innovative partnership that you've had with the City of Long Beach and the Boys and Girls Club. They're really building the higher education ecosystem. How do you see something like that being replicated across the state?

Thank you for that question. I think it actually is a model that can be very easily replicated across the state. And here's how essentially the way the project is structured. It's really an MOU as a joint use agreement. So many of us know that many of our classroom spaces are not fully occupied because we've seen an increased demand in online courses. So what we do is you essentially just have to find the dedicated space, an afterskill care provider such as the Boys and Girls Club.

It doesn't have to be exclusively the Boys and Girls Club. There's YMCA together, other organizations, and really just establish that MOU. And as you know, the state provides ELOP funding, which is Extended Learning Opportunity Program funding that oftentimes many K-12 school districts struggle to fully expend their funds. And so by partnering with your local K 12 school district, you could then leverage some of those ELOP funds, which will probably entice an after school care provider to come and work more closely with you.

And one of the things that we did at LB City College is we were looking at our unspent federal work study, and so we allocated a portion of our federal work study budget to support the students who were hiring to work in the Boys and Girls Club. So it's our students who are typically child development majors or early child education elementary education majors, and they're getting paid to work inside our program. So we're actually spending zero General Fund Dollars implementing this program.

It's all through the partnerships with Long Beach Unified, Boys and Girls Club, as well as leveraging our own existing federal work study. Obviously, there's a lot of in kind support, but here's the ask that I have for the Legislature currently, right now, the after school care dollars are only eligible to LEAs, so only local educational agencies can apply. Community colleges are not eligible to apply. I think it's very important to expand the eligibility criteria excuse me, to community colleges.

And this is why more than 50% of our students that are enrolling at Long Beach City College don't live within our school district's boundaries. And so we have to identify additional funding sources for those families that aren't attending Long Beach Unified Schools. They may be coming from Paramount or Downey or Compton, just the surrounding communities.

And so if community colleges could be eligible to apply directly for these funds, that will reduce that barrier of, zero, you're an out of district student, therefore your child doesn't have access to this after school care program. In certain know, we're very fortunate in Long Beach that we have a pretty linear pipeline.

It's Long Beach Unified, Long Beach City College, Cal State, Long Beach, but we know many community colleges have four or five or six K-12 districts in their boundaries, and it would be much more complicated for them to implement a model like this without that support. So I think That's one of the recommendations I would make.

Thank you so much, President Munoz, for putting that out there, and we can definitely take a look. So I really appreciate you amplifying those efforts and looking additional fundings for childcare programs. And my final question I would have is for our President Calvin. Thank you for mentioning the partnerships with higher education and looking at the partnerships with the UC and CSU system and really taking the horns by the bull and really making sure that you're advocating for your communities.

And so when you look at that partnership with Fresno State and really advocating for those bachelor degree programs and colocation on the campus, is that something that could be replicable across the state and other areas, but really or is that more an issue that you have to deal with in your respects of communities?

That question has been asked before. Thank you for that, Mr. Chairman. We were able to do it because we have a long standing relationship with Fresno State, much like what Long Beach City College enjoys with Long Beach State, and I think it is replicable across the state. I think there are a few places where similar agreements are happening.

I don't know that it's the right strategy for all communities, but certainly for rural community colleges like our own, where there are not a lot of four year opportunities for students, it certainly works. That's why we were willing to make the investment, because without it, our students, not only were they not going on, they were tapping out after two years, but there was a serious brain drain issue.

And there continues to be in our region because when cos students don't stay home for their four year degree, they come to the LA Basin or the Bay Area. Where do they do their internships, where do they do their student teaching? Obviously in those places. And they get hired there and they get on that pay scale, and we don't get them back to our region. So not only are we doing this for students, but we're doing it for the region as well.

Employers like Trader Joe's look at our region and they don't get past that 1st 14% bachelor degree attainment stat. They'll take a peek and they'll move on. So large employers want to have an educated workforce, and a lot of times we're judged just on the bachelor degree attainment number. So the strategy was kind of a three pronged approach help the students, help the region, and get more employers into our region. So thank you for the question.

Thank you so much, President Calvin, for your leadership and efforts there and to really expand those bachelor degree opportunities and to all our panelists. Thank you for everything, the expanding opportunities here in higher education here in California and respective regions. And it's great to hear all the different system wide perspectives as well, from the chancellor's office as well. So thank you so much. Thank you so much to our panelists. And now I'd like to introduce Members of the workforce panel.

Joining us is Rising Scholars Network Regional Coordinator Javier Rodriguez of the Community College Chancellor's Office. Also joining us is Rio Hondo College Fire Academy Director Chief Kurt Norwood. And also joining us is Los Angeles Community College District Vice Chancellor of Workforce Development, Dr. James Lancaster. Welcome, panelists. So we'll start with Mr. Rodriguez, followed by Mr. Norwood, followed by Dr. Lancaster. Welcome.

Before I move on to the program overview, I would like to take this moment to acknowledge the representation that we center in The Rising Scholars Network. Not only am I the subject matter expert, I am also the subject after experiencing incarceration as a youth growing up in Los Angeles, the California community college system served as a vehicle for social mobility, not only for me, but for my peers who shared similar lived experiences.

As a proud alumni of Los Angeles Southwest College, I transferred to UCLA and earned my bachelor's in Anthropology, my master's in social work, and I am currently enrolled in the Doctorate of Education program at UCLA. My research and personal testimony demonstrates that the more advanced degree a formerly incarcerated person attains, the far less likely they are to recidivate.

The commitment from our State Legislature to directly and fiscally expand access to higher education for all formerly and currently incarcerated people is not only profound, but monumental in the lives of all justice involved Californians. As a formerly incarcerated professional, I want to send a sincere thank you to our state legislators for creating policies that pretty much demonstrate to all justice involved Californians that we matter.

So now, as I start with the program overview, the Rising Scholars Network is a network of California community colleges committed to serving incarcerated and formerly incarcerated students. By providing degree granting programs in correctional facilities and on campus support services for students who have experienced the criminal justice system just impacted students can be significant barriers to academic and career success.

The Rising Scholars Colleges elevate opportunities to individuals, communities, and families impacted by mass incarceration, leveraging instruction, counseling, job opportunities, and more to build generation of graduates and leaders in our communities. The Rising Scholars team advocates for the colleges and works with correctional partners to reach solutions, build resources for prospective students, and foster a shared learning environment and a joint commitment to quality among Members of The Rising Scholars Network.

Rising Scholars Network is a perfect example of bringing the college to the community, specifically to all our incarcerated and detained Californians. At scale, we have 89 college programs where 78 of them are on campus, 25 are serving state prisons, 28 colleges are serving county jails, 43 will be serving youth facilities, and seven are currently in federal prisons, where we have over 15,000 students served. In 2021, we received 10 million of ongoing funds, which we awarded 59 colleges with existing programs.

15 colleges were awarded with implementation grants, and six were awarded with planning grants. In 2022, we were awarded $15 million to serve juvenile justice, and we awarded 44 colleges. Current updates that we have within the Chancellor's Office. One now includes Rising Scholars in title Five, as in a Categorical program thanks to AB 417. This gives colleges increased flexibility to matriculate incarcerated students and identify Rising Scholars as a priority registration population.

We also have Professional Development Coordinators continue to host professional development events for the Rising Scholars colleges and for formerly incarcerated students. Student Equity and Achievement Rising Scholars is identified as a student equity and achievement population. Our region for Success is directly aligned with Chancellor's Office from job preparation, counseling, support, relevant on campus employment opportunities, and serving traditionally underrepresented populations in efforts to reducing the regional achievement gaps. One specific way is the expansion of the enrollment into juvenile detention facilities.

Thanks to our juvenile justice program, Vision 2030 is directly aligned with the Rising Scholars. The way we achieve equity and success is by increasing completion of degree or certificates at a community college while focus on baccalaureate attainment either through transfer or through our community college baccalaureate programs, through workforce, and essentially earning a living wage. The second pillar in our Vision for 2030 is equity and access. And the way that we achieve it is by increasing access, participation, enrollment for justice-involved individuals.

And third is equity and support, where we are increasing the number of Pell Grant recipients in the California Community College Promise Grant recipients, and then reducing units to associate degrees for transfer completion. One of the biggest program outcomes that we have that I truly believe is the heart and soul of the Rising Scholars is the peer support system that organically was created by having the tools we need to create the sense of belonging on campus.

There's three individuals back there who I believe are Rising Scholars students. And just to show you just the power in having that peer support on campus, in 2021-2022, our success rates was 83%. Our retention rates were 93%. We awarded over 2500 degrees and certificates. We've built regional consortiums with free record clearances and expungement services, and we established transfer pathways with our partners Project Rebound and Underground Scholars. And lastly, the Chancellor's Office is in consultation and coordination with an independent third party evaluator, which we will conduct rigorous program evaluation for our Youth Justice Grant and our General program funds. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Mr. Rodriguez. Next up, we have Kurt Norwood from the Rio Hondo College Fire Academy. Welcome.

Thank you. Chair Fong and Vice Chair Ta. I appreciate the invitation today to speak introduce myself a little bit. I am a product of the community college system. Both my daughters, Cal State graduates and UC graduates, are also products of the community college system that would fed into those prestigious schools. So, I am an advocate of the community college system. I'm a 35 year veteran of the fire service.

I worked for the City of Arcadia for 30 years, and I've been an adjunct employee, faculty Member with Rio Hondo College for the last 21 years. I was appointed as the Director of the Fire Academy and Fire Technology for Rio Hondo College about 10 months ago, overseeing the fire technology program, the Fire Academy, we have a Wildland technology program, we have a Wildland Academy, we have EMT, we have a physical fitness for fire technology. We run physical fitness exams for the region.

As far as the hiring process, our campus is six acres located in Santa Fe Springs. It's an off site facility from Rijano College, which is in Whittier. On those six acres, we have numerous props that have been funded by federal grant daughters through Homeland Security, in hazardous materials, search and rescue, rope rescue, and other technical programs. But the bulk of what we do at the Fire Academy is we run two full time Fire Academies per year that correspond with the semesters.

We run seven EMT classes through their year, and the EMT programs are almost 100% vocational job guaranteed once they pass the national registry and they get their EMT license. We have partnerships with local ambulance companies that hire our EMTs right as soon as they're done. The Wildland Academy also too is almost 100% job placement with a partnership with the Forest Service, the Angeles National Forest, and other federal land management programs throughout the state. So That's almost 100% job placement for those students.

Fire Academy is a little different. They come in and our students are well, let me start here with that. Rio Honda College's enrollment has not quite rebounded as a whole for the college. From the Pandemic numbers, we were averaging around 13,000 total FTEs in fiscal year 18-19, and we're around 11,000 FTEs right now for the college and academic year 22-23. But the Fire Academy itself does not have those same issues.

We've actually increased our enrollment from Pandemic numbers, we've maintained our enrollment levels and actually surpassed what they were five years ago. And it's mostly because people are still looking at those vocational programs and trying to get out into the Fire Service and compete for those municipal fire jobs. And That's what the Fire Academy is providing them as the baseline to compete for municipal jobs. County jobs a little bit different than our land management partners when it comes to Wildland Fire Academies, our outreach programs.

We continue to reach out to our feeder high schools within the district and especially when they're in their juniors and senior years and we go out there and meet with them on a continual basis both in providing them information on the EMT programs, the Fire Academies and the Wildland Fire Academies. So the college also too is in the process right now, the Rio Honda College is in the process of rebranding program to also increase the enrollment in some of the general other educational programs at the college.

And the last thing I'll say about the Rio Honda Fire Academy, we have those six acres we sit in the middle of about Santa Fe Springs. We're also the main regional training facility for the local fire departments within northern Orange County and the Los Angeles area partnership with the LA. Area Fire Chiefs Association.

Last year we ran about 20 agencies through, allowing them to use our facilities in terms of burn containers, rope, rescue containers, flashover containers, vehicle extrication and so we've had not to mention we've had numerous law enforcement agencies come in who want to use our forcible entry. So we estimated over 2500 students either in the private and public sector and students of Rio Hondo College came through our facility last year. So That's where we're at.

The Fire Academy in General is doing well in terms of enrollment and job placement, especially for the EMT and Wildland Fire Academies. I said the fire academy. They have to go out and start competing against other candidates for some of the other jobs that are out in the region. Available for any questions. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Chief. Really appreciate your comments and thank you for everything you're doing. And next up, we have our Vice Chancellor of Workforce Development for the LA. Community College District, Dr. James Lancaster. Welcome.

Thank you, Chair Fong, Vice Chair Ta, thank you so much for inviting me to this afternoon. You said. I'm Jim Lancaster, Vice Chancellor of Workforce and Economic Development for the Los Angeles Community College District. Or, as I'll refer after this LACCD, Just to shorten it up. A long standing primary mission of the California Community Colleges is to advance California's economic growth and global competitiveness through education training services that contribute to continuous workforce improvement That's actually in the ED code.

This mission has enabled California's Community College to provide the critical knowledge and skills that employers seek, provide indemand training and competencies to close skills gaps and provide the opportunity for our students to engage and thrive in the economy. This is done through the 116 California Community Colleges that work through a regional consortium model within regions throughout California. It's accomplished through multiple curriculum modalities and delivery models that are available depending on how the workforce needs to be addressed or what's best for students, if you will.

The most popular one, of course, is credit certificates and degrees, which is the one That's more commonplace. Little lesser known to some folks is non credit certificates, which often we refer to as Adult ED, and then ones that are lesser known, but we like to use for workforce as well as fee based programs or extension, and then contract education, which is paid for by an agency. So all those are utilized at LACCD.

We offer over 2,000 different certificates and degrees across our nine colleges and that includes non credit options, and we're very proud to include the only State's Technical College and LA Trade Tech College. We also have a long history of adult education and committed to increasing those programs and growing that student population as we move forward. It's actually one of our fastest growing populations right now is our adult head population.

We partner with K-12 Partners through a local consortium to develop regional plans that expand and improve adult education services. And those plans include elementary and basic skills classes for immigrants, programs for adults with disabilities, short term career technical education that has high employment potential, programs for apprentices and then a growing number of classes, thanks to your Bill that are taught in native languages of students of the students. These are exciting times for those in community college career education.

The renewed focus on workforce development and new statewide initiatives to bolster and fuel that focus is welcome. The Community College Vision 2030, led by our State Chancellor and the currently developing state plan for CTE, will provide an equity recalibration across the system.

When these are coupled with the strong workforce program, California Adult Education program and other statewide economic programs such as the which being renamed to the new California Jobs first, the State's Community College will lead the way in ensuring the economic vitality of our communities as well as achieving California's 2045 goal of net zero carbon emissions and 100% clean energy by supplying a highly skilled workforce to the sector.

So next, I just want to sort of go through a few items of potential where we can do some improvement, use some additional resources. One is leveraging our hidden workforce. So, the hidden workforce includes caregivers, people with disabilities, refugees, veterans, retirees and the formerly incarcerated. These groups are willing and able to work, but often remain unemployed or underemployed despite global talent shortages.

Ensuring this part of the workforce is engaged to meet the talent needs in California is critical as we look at the labor market right now. Trends in Future Direction Los Angeles County's population has declined by 3.4% from 2017 to 2022, following by 343,000 individuals. The population is expected to decrease another half a million between 2022 and 2027. The population decrease over the next five years is expected in all age cohorts from birth to 59 years, with the only increases in age cohorts 60 to 84.

Contrary to the population decline in LA. County jobs increased from 2017 to 2022 by 1.1%, adding 58,000 jobs, and another 326,000 jobs are expected to be added in the next five years. Recent labor participation rate was minimal, with only a 0.1% increase that happened. This inverse relationship between population and job growth may be partially due to the greater availability of remote work, as we see currently right here in LA. With the increase in office market vacancies that are drastically going up.

However, the need for workforce supply is going to continue to increase and will be an issue if we don't leverage the entire workforce, including the hidden workforce. Looking at bachelor's degrees, Healthcare and social assistance is the largest and top growing industry in Los Angeles County, with LA's Healthcare sector being a regionally traded industry, meaning it's an export, ensuring this industry has an adequate workforce is paramount for the LA economy.

According to the LAEDC, the Los Angeles Economic Development Corporation, the healthcare industry had the most robust post pandemic recovery in LA. Adding 81,000 jobs. Healthcare practitioners and technical healthcare professions are currently the top posted occupations now in the county. 22% of Los Angeles County residents possess a bachelor's degree and 7% hold an associate's degree. When developing a workforce training response, we must analyze and include the occupation's expected degree requirements to ensure our students have a competitive advantage when they leave us and they enter the workforce.

In Los Angeles County, we are meeting the number of countywide associate degrees, but fall short of meeting the demand for bachelor's degree required jobs. As more jobs shift to requiring a bachelor's degree for employment, this gap will widen. Should we not increase the number of bachelor's degree completers? This gap will be particularly challenging for LA's economy.

In areas like Healthcare previously mentioned, community colleges are well positioned to fill this demand gap across California and in Los Angeles for workforce development, we need to focus more on the occupational supply demand gaps as we develop and improve bachelor's degree programs and less on whether a program is being duplicated at another public University. Small businesses are going to play a key factor here as well. Employer engagement in Los Angeles and across the state is vital for career education programming.

Employer partners are critical for work based learning opportunities, developing and refining the curriculum, identifying securing faculty and equipment, and ensuring students that they'll obtain the skill proficiency needed to survive and to thrive in the occupation. In Los Angeles, one third of all businesses have one to four employees. Another one third have five to nine employees and 20% have 10 to 19 employees. 85% of LA's businesses have less than 20 employees. Only 0.1% of LA's business have 500 or more employees.

Our community colleges must do a better job of engaging and partnering with these smaller employers. They're critical. They are essential partners, but often they need more resources to support and advise our colleges. As we look to continuous improvement, one area of focus should be helping our smaller business partners to better participate in workforce development.

Looking at Credit for Prior Learning Students can now earn credit for prior learning to jumpstart career education coursework, earning college credits for specific college level skills and knowledge gained outside a college classroom. This option allows students to often shave off six to 10 months of coursework of time, getting into the workforce earlier and increasing lifetime earnings.

I can speak from experience when it comes to credit for prior learning through the Swan Bill, which is now Long Sunset, I was awarded 34 upper division units towards my bachelor's degree. The units were awarded based upon my professional development transcript from my employers, industry certifications and other occupation specific learning and skill assessments completed.

While the option for credit by exam has existed in our community colleges for years to award credit for prior learning, the umbrella act of prior learning assessment, which may or may not include examination, is newer and for career education, we believe a game changer. As we look to build this program out for our students and communities, additional resources will be needed to ensure the full scope can be achieved in career education.

I can imagine a future college transcript including a list of competencies and occupational performance objectives met in addition to the coursework. Looking at the hidden costs of career education recently, strong workforce modified allowable expenses, permitting colleges to pay for third party credentialing and licensing often required by industry for employment. This change was a big win for students, and I want to thank you for the support on that. However, the path of prosperity in many occupations requires the employees to be self equipped.

Relying on the employer for tools and equipment, particularly in the trades, often results in lower wages. Cosmetology construction, plumbing, HVAC, automotive service, aviation technology, information technology and many other occupations require the employee to have tools. Owning your tools and subcontract occupations and for entrepreneurship opportunities is even more critical. I can attest to this.

Having graduated over 30 years ago with an Associate's degree in Automotive Technology from Cerritos College, for me to move from helper to Master Technician was not only dependent upon my acquisition of knowledge and skills, but also on my procurement of thousands of dollars in tools and equipment. With so many of our students being housing and food insecure, we must recognize the very real and additional barrier that goes unseen and often unaddressed when talking about career education and workforce training.

Without providing the support to fully equip our certificate and degree earners beyond the training, the full realization of the high wages associated with these occupations may not occur or be significantly delayed. Again, thank you for your ongoing support for workforce development and career education. To guarantee continued success, I would like to recommend additional support for engaging the hidden workforce. Funding credit for prior learning assessment, increasing the number of bachelor's degrees being offered at community colleges, particularly in allied health areas.

Equipping Career program completers with the tools and equipment needed to fully realize the high wages associated with the occupation and helping to bring more business owners, small business owners into partnering in workforce development. Thank you very much.

Thank you so much, Vice Chancellor Lancaster, for your leadership and efforts on around workforce development here at the LA Community College District. And thank you to all our panelists for your comments and insights. Really appreciate it. Vice Chair Ta. Any questions or comments?

Yes, thank you. Really appreciate that. And I really, once again, really impressed with your presentation. That's amazing. So I have a question that how can you recruit students to the healthcare tech program? Because we all know that right now it's a high demand in the community.

Healthcare is one of the most impacted across the board. So any of our programs, whether That's rad tech or nursing or whatever, and they often, of course, have a longer term entrance into that because of the prereqs. One of the things that we are looking at and we've talked to some other employers about is there a better pathway?

Not really apprenticeship, but I mean, ideally it would be great if you can do apprenticeship in healthcare, right, where you can get somebody in and get them actually working in a livable wage job as they transition through and become a nurse. So patient care technician, which is a much shorter transition. So something That's much quicker and faster, really, to be able to ladder them up and then move them in, especially, or to bring folks in from the outside.

That's why credit, or I should say prior learning assessment is so critical is because as we look to all these jobs that are beginning to change, folks are not going to need to be 100% reskilled. They're going to need to be partially reskilled. And so being able to do prior learning assessment at the maximum level to be able to ensure that we can give them the credit they deserve for the work that they've already accomplished will be critical.

And That's no different in healthcare and clean energy or whatever it is, that component, as we work to build that out is critical for making sure that we don't prolong the training that somebody needs in order to get a job. I always talk about lifetime earnings. I do not like to dip into somebody's lifetime earnings, get them through and get them out working as fast as possible. I think That's critical. So we've got to continue to build those pipelines.

Thank you so much, Vice Chair Ta. Quick question for Chief Norwood in terms of the fire programs, and thank you for your leadership at the City of Arcadia as well. In terms of the fire programs that we have at Rio Honda and across our state, what do you see that we need to do more for our campuses to really support the training in the fire academy, to make sure that it's continued to be relevant and to make sure it meets all the requirements up and down the state. I know that with everything That's happening around climate change and everything, we've had much stronger wildfires out there. And so when your work is so critical developing a next generation workforce and firefighting, what do you see as some of the challenges across our state?

The local community college fire academies are basically a foundation because once they get hired full time in a municipality or a county agency, That's where they're going to get the bulk of their hands on training. And if there are certain agencies that are more urban and certain agencies are more rural, although all the agencies in the LA County regions continually send equipment outside of the state. So when it comes to wildfires.

The thing that's most important is recognition, getting them opportunities to see and visualize how something could go sideways. And that can be said true for the structural firefighting. Also, as far as the structural firefighting goes, some of the equipment and like the burn containers and some of the containers we use, they become outdated. They no longer meet NFPA standards or OSHA standards. And so we have to constantly look for revenue and help from the college, let's say for budgetary to purchase.

And these things, these containers are expensive. They can run half a million to $2 million, depending on the types of equipment you want in them. So, obviously, revenue, I mean, budgetary constraints are always a concern for us and the community college. Rio Hondo College, just like any college that has public safety programs, it's just part of the pie. They still have to distribute their funds throughout the rest of the college to fund all the other programs. So ours just happens to be a little bit more expensive in terms the because of how they're manufactured and built.

Thank you so much, Chief. Really appreciate that.

You're welcome. Thank you for the question.

Thank you. And Mr. Rodriguez, in terms of the rise of Scholars Network and the work that you're doing with Justice Evolve Students, when we look at partnerships between the nonprofits that are working with Justice Evolve Youth, Amity Foundation or other groups and their partnership with LA Trade-Tech. What are some of the things that we can continue to do to support justice evolved students who are transitioning pursuing college degrees or to workforce education on the campuses? How can we make that process more smooth for our justice involved youth?

One thing, two areas that I see. The first starts with disintegrated youth is encountered with the probation system. That's when the reentry process starts. So being able to make that touch point with the college system to ensure that the youth is exposed to the opportunities that the college has to offer. And the second piece is going to be, we understand that youth have a family structure.

So for the colleges to also, through the rising Scholars Network to embed that family support, as we know the youth is going to go back home and knowing how it is important for the college to also be in communication and in support of that family.

Thank you so much, Mr. Rodriguez. Really appreciate those comments. And lastly, for our Vice Chancellor James Lancaster, you mentioned the work around LA Community College district and LA Trade tech. We know that there's a number of programs on carpentry around, welding around the building trades. How can we continue to amplify those partnerships with industry and then with your leadership, are with the LA Workforce Development Board and the state as well? Just a quick answer. I just wanted to put it on your radar. I want to amplify and support the work that you guys are doing here.

We need to continue to work regionally. I think That's the biggest thing, because one of the things that we don't want to do is we don't want to get programs that are out of alignment. And so making sure that we're working regionally, that we're bringing larger groups of employers together to actually advise on skill sets and competencies and things like that is critical because what gets confusing the industry is when we have a college That's here and it's got a 20 unit certificate that leads to the same occupational outcome and another college over right next to it That's got one for 40 and same occupational outcome. And it's confusing for students, it's confusing for industry.

And so that work sort of bringing people together to have the conversation and creating competency panels. And sometimes we may have to look at how do we compensate an employer to actually send their employees to one of these competency panels to give that information, because That's where the real information comes from. So I think those are critical and making sure that the response is right size. We don't want to over respond. We don't want to under respond. And so that regional model strengthening, that regional collaboration, I think is one of the most important things for workforce development.

Thank you so much. And with the leadership of the Chancellor as well, and Chancellor Rodriguez and LACCD, the LA Orange County Regional Consortium, and really looking at those rigid parts is so critical. So thank you so much again to our panelists for your leadership and efforts around fostering productive relationships and workforce training with our community colleges. Thank you so much again to Mr. Rodriguez, Mr. Norwood, and Dr. Lancaster. Thank you so much... And now we're on to our last panel.

I'd like to introduce our speakers for the Bachelor Degree panel. And we're honored to be joined today and thank you so much for your patience. We're honored to be joined today by our California Community College Bachelor Degree Program Association President and CEO Dr. Constance Carroll and Cal State University at Fullerton School of Nursing Director Dr. Penny Weismuller of the TriCounty Nursing Concurrent Enrollment Pathway. Warm welcome to both of you. Thank you so much for your patience. And we'll kick it off with Dr. Constance Carroll. Welcome.

Thank you very much. The purpose of the community college baccalaureate and by the way, I did bring a handout for those of you who may not have it, is to provide bachelor's level training in an applied manner leading to jobs. These programs are all about job attainment, which is important. The reason for this is because the high school diploma, as we all know, is no longer the entry point for jobs.

And unfortunately, in many cases, the associate degree is no longer the entry point for many jobs, since many employers and fields now require or prefer a bachelor's degree. So in order to ensure that our students in community colleges are competitive. We have developed the bachelor's pathway nationally. Right now, 25 states offer, empower their community colleges to offer bachelor's degrees. My report says 24. But Massachusetts was recently added, and we're very proud that California is part of that number. Thank you.

Thanks to the Legislature, over 150 community colleges nationally offer degrees, and there are over 600 degrees. We are very grateful for the support of the Legislature for passing Senate Bill 850 in 2014, authored by Senator Marty Block, and that authorized the pilot program for bachelor's degrees. We're grateful to Senator Jerry Hill for seeing that the pilot program was extended in 2018. And I see a typo that should be Senate Bill 1460.

And then recently, in 2021, Assemblyman Jose Medina was the author of Assembly Bill 927, which expanded the bachelor's opportunity to all community colleges in California with some stipulations. Number one, that there would be a cap on how many bachelor's degrees would be approved each year. And that cap is 30. And also underscored that there should be a stronger communication collaboration between the California community colleges and the public universities in the state. The cost of the programs are remarkably affordable. All four years cost $10,560.

That is almost unheard of, but those are the basic tuition costs. The programs are accredited in exactly the same way as all bachelor's programs are accredited to the total of 120 units, 36 units of General education and the like. So there's no difference in terms of those requirements. What I'd like to emphasize, however, are some statistics that I've provided on page 3 and 4 of my report.

First of all, in these programs, from the pilot programs, the pilot programs are the programs that have completed, and so we have got information from them. 63% of the students are students of color, and 66% are female, 33% male. And 75% of the students belong to one of the impacted group categories first generation, receiving FAFSA, Low income, experiencing housing and food insecurity, indicating some sort of disability, or a veteran.

So these are exactly the kinds of people, the broad range that the Legislature envisioned should be supported in these programs, and we are happy to see this. In addition, 72% of the students, because of the low cost, found no need to take out a student loan, which is very important. 83% of the students were employed in a job. And here's some interesting statistics. 80% noted in the report found a job or were promoted within three months of graduation.

And we just got word this morning from the UC Davis Wheelhouse program that that is up to 98%. 94% are now employed in the same field of study that they graduated from. And very important to us as well. 94% were employed in the State of California. And I think we all know that oftentimes students who move away from home to obtain a bachelor's degree leave the state and don't return.

So this is an investment in California, and the average income impact for the student graduates was roughly $25,000. So the students are getting jobs, the students are remaining in the state as taxpayers and participants in labor, and all at a very, very low cost. In a survey by the Legislative Analyst Office, we noted that heard from the students themselves, 51% said that they would not have pursued a bachelor's degree at all had it not been for the availability of a bachelor's degree in their local community.

87% said that the value of the program was worth the tuition cost and that this cost was affordable for them. And 92% said that they hope that the community colleges should continue offering bachelor's degrees in the future. So the benefits are, number one, that these programs address local workforce needs, and in all of the application materials, the community colleges need to demonstrate what those workforce needs are. Second, the programs provide access to students who are placebound.

Our community college students are not able to travel in order to pursue their bachelor's degrees, so having them in their home community is very important. And finally, they provide high quality education, since many of the colleges often already offer an associate degree in the same field. So it's really, in many cases, an instance of ramping up to the next level.

And that has been very successful, high quality, with talented and qualified faculty Members, as well as State of the art facilities and equipment, because most of the community colleges in California have pursued successful bond measures and have brand new facilities and State of the art equipment. And of course, affordability is very important at $10,560 for all four years now, there's some challenges and ways in which we feel the Legislature could be of support, greater support.

First of all, these programs are offered by community colleges from their own resources. They receive no additional funding. And at some point, we feel that there should be some state investment in these programs, especially given the track record and their importance to the California economy. Second, we hope the Legislature will support our effort to continue the process of resolving intersegmental differences. We have a Committee that's been working very hard and successfully to resolve these differences.

And last, the California Master Plan for Higher Education does need to be revised because it does not address the bachelor's degrees offered by community colleges. It also doesn't address the standalone doctorates that the California State University has been pursuing. I've also attached a list of the 33 programs that are currently operative and the 29 colleges that offer them. So we're very proud to see this. Dr. Stanskas indicated that cycle three is about to happen, and I believe That's another 12 programs in cycle three. Yes. And so this is really a great movement for us. It's a great movement nationally, and we're very, very pleased by all of the success of the California community colleges.

You will see as well attached our Association, which includes some of the state leaders, the leaders of the statewide academic Senate, many of the Superintendent, presidents and chancellors in the state, including my dear colleague and friend Francisco Rodriguez, who is a very, very effective advocate for the community college baccalaureate in California and for the Los Angeles Community College District. So let me stop here, and you may have questions later, and I'll be happy to address them.

Thank you so much, chancellor Carroll, and thank you for your leadership and efforts on the BA programs and degree programs. Next up, I'd like to invite up our next panelist, Penny Weismuller. Welcome Dr Weismuller.

Thank you for having me. Appreciate the invitation. Chair Fong and Vice Chair Ta. I'm here to talk about the Tri-County Nursing Program. We also call it the concurrent enrollment program. So you may hear me say both things. This was a partnership between Riverside Community College, Cal State Fullerton, where I sit as Director of the school of nursing, and Cal State San Bernardino. We had a long term relationship, actually, with many of our community colleges to bridge into the baccalaureate in nursing.

Some of the issues that were fraught with difficulties were things that on both sides of the equation. One was there were often prerequisites to prerequisites at the community colleges. Students would finish at the community college with 90 units that impaired their ability to get financial aid once they got to 120. And on the nursing programs in I'm speaking to Fullerton, but also San Bernardino, some of our faculty were overly enthusiastic in what was needed to get there.

We started working together. Riverside community colleges and the two CSUS, driven by the Institute of Medicine, report that 80% of registered nursing registered nurses should have a baccalaureate degree by 2020. We were far behind on that. We're inching forward in California, but we're not there yet. The national education progression nursing collaborative had a goal that by 2025, 1 million incumbent registered nurses and 90% of new associate degree graduates would matriculate to the BSN by 2025.

At the time we started this, the average time to completion of the BSN after the associate degree RN was over eight years. Why is that? First of all, probably an income issue, very much an income issue. When we look at students that attend the community college and they have access to the California promise, they are still working during their associate degree program to help support their families.

And then when you graduate and can get the income of a registered nurse, it's like, zero, I'm getting that income. Perhaps I can delay, perhaps I can delay. And so they delayed getting that baccalaureate for eight years. When we got together, our goal was to help our students graduate quickly with a baccalaureate degree, that if a student entered the community college and the student entered the CSU, they could complete their baccalaureate in the same amount of time.

Our initial meeting to plan this Tri County program included administrators, including the Chancellors at the Community College District as well as the Cal State Chancellor's office. We also had a Legislator, Senator Roth, who was there for legislative support. Very helpful to us. The ongoing team of 10 included faculty and administrators from all of those San Bernardino Fullerton Riverside Community Colleges and the Chancellor's offices.

We also had specialists to consult with us to address the challenges of linkage with financial aid admissions and developing a memorandum of understanding between our programs so it doesn't happen overnight. We started in 16, and by 2019, we admitted our first classes to get all of those things done. Our project goals were to develop the ADN to BSN pathway in 120 units, not to have excess units at the community college, and not to have repetitive nursing units at the Cal State.

The streamlined pathway allowed clear entry to nursing classes by minimizing prerequisites to prerequisites, and at the CSU by minimizing repetitive nursing content. So the plan was, we're going to finish this in 120 units, and we're going to help at the community college by having those students take some of their baccalaureate classes concurrent with their associate degree classes. So when they finish, they could graduate within six months. If you graduated and take summer and spring or two semesters.

The bottom line is, the students that entered the program would graduate if they entered the CSU or the community college. They would both graduate in the same 120 units in the same amount of time. So our values, I think I've heard a lot of the same values today. We want people that represent our communities to provide care to our communities. This is really important. It is a national goal.

The diversity in nursing needs to be improved, and by our working together, we can increase that diversity of nurses who will remain and provide culturally congruent care to the people in that community. We also wanted to provide ready access to that baccalaureate education for diverse students by eliminating cost and time barriers. So the model we're proud of mean I'm very proud of the relationship that Fullerton has with RCC. We've worked together for many, many years, and we've had a lot of successes, so I'm very grateful.

I know Cal State San Bernardino feels the same way. So pre nursing students take courses to both meet both nursing programs prerequisites as well as CSU lower division General education. Our two independent programs, the community college and the CSU, are running simultaneously and in alignment with one another. Students are concurrently admitted to both programs and take courses for both institutions, either on site, at the community college or online. And this streamlined program completion in 120 units.

I'd like to talk about the diversity data over 75% of our TriCounty students. Our concurrent enrollment students come from diverse backgrounds 49% Hispanic, 16% Asian, 8% Black, and 4% Native Americans. Or it I'm forgetting the name right now. Our Native American population, the pass rates for NCLEX remained strong at the community college, even though students were taking additional baccalaureate level units in their associate degree program. The graduation rate when they finished is at this point, for our first two cohorts 100% graduation rate.

And for right now, we're approaching that where people are maybe taking longer than the summer and the one semester, but they're going to be graduating. So I'm very proud that that is enduring the partnership for this. The value of this program, I think, comes from building on the strengths of our community college partners as well as the strengths of the CSU and their nursing program.

So it capitalizes on both of our strengths, allows students to have an experience in both types of institutions and meets that goal of more baccalaureate prepared nurses. The reason for that, I think I didn't say that at the beginning. The reason for that is there have been a number of studies that baccalaureate prepared nurses institutions in which they work, where a higher percentage of baccalaureate prepared nurses are working, have safer patient outcomes. And That's why the institution of medicine wanted it.

Why if you look at Future of Nursing 2030 Institute of Medicine, everyone is pushing to that direction so we can have safer patient care. And with this partnership, more diversity in our nursing workforce to meet the needs of our varied communities here in California. Thank you.

Thank you so much for that robust presentation. Dr. Weismuller, really appreciate everything you're doing in the nursing profession and growing that next generation healthcare workforce in California. Vice Chair Ta, any questions or comments?

Yes, thank you. I really appreciate the presentation from Dr. Carroll and Dr. Weismuller. That's really amazing. So I have a question and also concerns. I think we're all aware that the student who going to community college now said that they have totally different perception perspective than us. Like myself 30 years ago. So I am 50 years old. So 30 years ago, I think that a lot of students in my time can't really motivate it to go to school.

But now, today, I feel that a lot of students, they are lacking of motivation because of many other issues like social media, COVID or many other family issues. That really not a motivation for the student. And I'm really impressed with your presentation mentioning the MOU between Committee College and CSU and all of your number, dr. Carol, That's amazing that the people going to Committee College with a really high number to get a job, I think That's a really good news. So how can we replicate the MOU or many other program to respond to high demand from the community?

I know that my colleague, Dr. Van Hall at Riverside Community College received a grant to provide consultation to other community colleges. Our nursing consultant at the CSU Chancellor's office, Dr. Brady and I, who were part of this initial thing, are also interested and willing to provide consultation. I think there are some rocky challenges between coordination of financial aid, and there's a variety of things like that that you don't think about that could be problematic, but can stand in the way of students.

So it is incumbent upon us to coordinate with one another and make smooth and seamless pathways for students to be able to complete a higher level of degree. I would say that for nursing, I think there is a robust demand. If I just look at applicants to my baccalaureate program, freshman entry baccalaureate program, there are 3000 qualified applicants every year for 40 spots for my accelerated program, where they have a bachelor's degree already, and they want to change their career to nursing.

I have three to 500 applicants every year for 40 spots. So the more that we can work together to expand the opportunity for baccalaureate nursing education in California, it meets our health care needs. And we certainly have a number of students that really want this career. They want to provide care to their communities. So it's incumbent on us to create those opportunities for them to do that.

Thank you so much, Vice Chair Ta. Thank you for that question and for the response. And as we look at healthcare in California, we know that then Vice President Biden actually visited West LA College to highlight the dental hygiene program, bachelor degree program at West LA College. And as we look at scaling these programs across California, that coordination with between the community colleges and the CSU is ever so critical. So I'm glad that you brought that up.

Chancellor Carroll, thank you for resonating that information going forward. In terms of the program, have community colleges generally been happy with the job placement rates and promotion rates of the graduates? I know you highlighted that there's been a very high retention rate and opportunity. And whenever you report also the increase of $25,000 in their salaries as well, how do we continue to support these programs and the impact of this within California and within our system to uplift these programs?

Yes, I think by supporting the expansion. This is new for us in California, and there have been some startup difficulties, some points of disagreement that needed to be resolved, and this has been the case in all of the states that have these programs. But I think we're reaching a point now where we've begun to become more sophisticated in what we're doing, and most of these disagreements are being worked out one by one.

And I think the fact that we already have 29 colleges involved, offering 33 bachelor's programs, another 12 on the way for the discussion between the California community colleges and the CSU primarily, and yet another group, this is already making a huge difference. And I think the numbers will result in the kind of opportunities that we really need. There are areas of critical need. One of them is nursing, and there's a variety of ways to reach that goal.

Another is teaching education, teacher education, where there is also a profound shortage. But the local communities have been identifying areas of critical need, and the community colleges in those areas have been stepping up to offer the programs that the communities need locally for their jobs. And the important thing with this particular movement is that it's locally motivated. It's not coming up with theoretical degrees that perhaps some people would like to see. No, these programs must be grounded in the actual job needs in the local communities.

And I think That's what is making them so successful. And as long as we keep doing that, everybody wins, the students, the local communities, and the state.

Thank you so much and really appreciate those comments and thank you for your leadership there, really around these programs. And so, Dr. Weismuller, in terms of the concurrent nature of the pathway, thank you for highlighting some of those challenges there, but really making sure that students, the credits that are taken, really looking at the articulation agreements and everything there and the number of participating schools that have grown now, do you see increased coordination and communication amongst these types of programs?

Yeah, I know that throughout the state there are other partnerships that have been developed or are being developed. I think that there are some challenge that the hard challenges that I see is not so much the curricular challenge and coming together to, like I said, the prerequisites to prereqs or excess nursing units, but the challenges of the administrative side. When we have students who could get financial aid, they've got to apply a certain way when they're in a CSU and not just at the community college.

So there are those kinds of things that I think require a lot of attention. I do think that from my knowledge, from within the CSU nursing programs and the community colleges that I'm aware of, there is great interest in this. There's been investment in these two types of education for nurses, and there's a benefit that can come from us both utilizing our strengths. So I think it's indeed possible. I will say nursing graduates have I'm going to say we have 100% employment rate. And the unfortunate thing is some of those new graduates make more than my lecturers in nursing when they graduate. So it is a robust employment opportunity.

Thank you so much for highlighting those robust employment opportunities and really for the partnership between the Kelsey Fullerton and Cal State, san Anton, Virginia, and Riverside Community College. And thank you, Chancellor Carroll, as well, for your partnership across the system and really looking at the different segments and how we can continue to partner and to elevate the opportunities for our students in California. So thank you so much again to Chancellor Carroll and to Dr. Weismueller for your comments and presentation here today on the bachelor degree programs.

Thank you. We've had three robust panels. And thank you so much to all our panelists for their tremendous comments. Next up, we'll move on to item number five, public comment. There is a microphone set up in the middle. Thank you, sir. I'd like to now invite Members of the public to speak. Each Member of the public will have two minutes to provide public comments. Would anybody like to provide any public comment? Please step up. Welcome. .

Thank you.

Hi, thank you for gathering these thought leaders together. It was a very interesting presentation. I've been made aware of a wrinkle in legislation that prevents our college from providing all the service we want to for our students. And it's the 50% law. When that was created, it requires the budget to go 50% to faculty and 50% to non teaching staff. And I think it was created to constrained administrator salaries. I'm not sure. But in any case, today things have changed so much for our students.

We want to provide mental health counseling, we want to provide success coaches, we want to provide them academic counseling, career counseling, and we can't provide all the support we want to because of this. So if there was some way to give more flexibility, as long as services are being provided directly to students to allow us to do that.

Thank you so much for your comments. And just for the record, if you could identify yourself I know who you are, but if you could identify yourself on the record. Thank you.

I'm Tammy Silver, a trustee at Pasadena City College.

Thank you, Trustee Silver. Any other public comments? Welcome.

Thank you, Chair Fong. Thank you, Vice Chair Ta. My name is Russell Castaneda-Calleros. I'm the Director of government and Community Relations at Rio Hondo College. And thank you for involving us in today's second panel. And thank you, Mr. Powers, for reaching out on behalf of the Committee. And I want to just reiterate, and maybe you already know this, but Rio Hondo College stands very interested in continuing our involvement in the bachelor's degrees.

As you know, we're one of the original 15 that Dr. Constance Carroll talked about earlier today with our automotive technology program. And we're hoping to add a second one in this latest iteration, the digital music production technology degree, which we're very excited about. And I know our faculty has been engaged with his counterparts at the local CSUs helping to iron out some of those kinks.

And we're happy to defer to the timeline over at the Chancellor's office level and at the state level that you are a part of. So thank you very much for your continued support. We recognize that we want to increase our number of graduates and baccalaureate programs and Rio Honda College is happy to do our part. And thank you for providing this hearing. Thank you to Maria Valos and her team for putting together this hearing. Here at ELAC. Very much appreciated. Thank you.

Thank you, Russell, any other public comments? Come on up. Welcome.

Good afternoon. My name is Mar Romero. I'm a student here at East Los Angeles College, and I'm also the student government President. I'm also the Legislative Affairs Director for Region Seven in the Student Center for California Community Colleges. And I would just like to commend individuals who are fighting for community college students such as yourself, Assembly Member Mike Fong. I know that you're a champion for higher education as well as student government in the Golden State.

You've helped not only student leaders from across California community colleges, but you have assisted with AB 1541, which grants student trustees the opportunity to vote advisory in the districts. So I just like to commend people like yourself, and you are an inspiration to people like me and to other people that wish to continue fighting for community college students. So thank you.

Thank you so much for your leadership, appreciate you. Any other comments? Seeing none. Thank you so much to everyone who's provided a public comment. And I took notes on each of the public comments, so thank you so much. We'll move on to item number six, closing remarks. Vice Chair Ta, would you like to provide any closing comments?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. And I want to thank all the experts from Committee College for being here and give us the update and your presentation so amazing. I learned a lot from all of you today, and I really appreciate that. And I want to thank a leadership from the Chair for the last 10 months. We work together well, and we understand that we need to continue to support community college, especially for a low income family, for a low income student.

And with that said, for next year session, myself and I believe the Chair, we continue to work together to strongly support Community Colleges. So I'm honored to be here. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Vice Chair Ta, for your comments and for your leadership benefits on the Assembly Higher Education Committee and for everything you do for our students in California. And thank you so much to all our panelists and to my colleagues, to all of you for your tremendous service and leadership here today at our first oversight hearing on higher education on the road.

And I'm glad that we had it at East Los Angeles College, and it's an opportunity to connect and so many thought leaders here in the audience. I'm so thankful and grateful to all the leaders providing information on enrollment decline, enrollment growth, also looking at retention, recruitment strategies, but also looking at how we grow our future workforce here in California.

And to highlight the partnerships that are happening between the CSU and community college system in our bachelor degree programs as we look at continuing to scale that up for students here in California as we continue to expand opportunities for higher. Education across our California's higher education system. And we know that our community colleges, serving over 2 million students each year, provides those critical opportunities, accepting the top 100% of students in California. When we hear about the welcome letters going out to freshmen through the LA.

College Promise Program, the partnerships with Long Beach, and all the highlighted partnerships here today up and down our state. It's that work That's being done by everyone here in this audience, everyone online. And I'm just so grateful to everyone for your leadership and efforts in uplifting our California community college students up and down the state and really providing those opportunities to grow our workforce. We know that we're in a critical workforce shortages across many different industries in California.

And as we look at the future of work, it's really the community colleges in partnership with industry, in partnerships with strong workforce and the Workforce Development Boards, California's Workforce Development Board, the local Workforce Development Boards and industry to really grow the future workforce of California and our community colleges, building that pipeline. Also with our CSU and UC system in terms of the articulation agreements we saw, the Governor just signed the Bill also for the Associate Degree for Transfer program, for a pilot program at UCLA.

As we continue to look at those opportunities to expand opportunities for California's community college students, it's that work that is so critical. So I'm so grateful to all our speakers here today for everything you do to uplift our community college students. And as we heard, there's a number of challenges, but there's a number of opportunities going forward as well on these programs.

And I'm so excited about the work ahead as well as we tackle these issues to really expand opportunities for California's higher education students and California students in General, and building that pipeline between our K-12 systems and strengthening those community partnerships. And I want to give a big shout out to the Assembly Higher Education Committee staff. Janice, our principal consultant, thank you to Kevin. Kevin's are really Kevin's up here on stage. Give a big round applause.

He's really the one to put the agenda together as well. And to the entire team, to Ellen, to Kirsten. Thank you guys for everything you do each and every day for the Assembly Higher Education Committee as well. I want to give a shout out to my team as well. A number of them flew down from Sacramento for this event.

Sophia, thank you to Anita, to Kylie, to Stephen, and locally, to our district team as well, Jennifer Tang, thank you for reaching out to a lot of folks as well, our district Director, and to everyone for being here today and to the entire district team. But also thank you to East Los Angeles College. Thank you to Dr. Roman and his team. We're so grateful to have Vice President duenyos here. He's in the back. He's always working hard but really putting together those partnerships locally.

And we heard about those partnerships, really with the K-12 system. And before Dr. Duenas came to East LA College, he was at LA USD when I first met him there. And we did the Go East program, and that was within President Marvin Martinez of East LA College. Now who's the Superintendent of Rancho Santiago.

But the work That's being done to really provide those partnerships with Alhambra Unified, with Garvey School District, with a number of school districts, LA Unified School District throughout the Singapore Valley and throughout California is so critical. And those are partnerships that we're trying to replicate across our California's higher education system and the future. Leaders like Martine, thank you for your leadership and efforts here at East LA College. And thank you again to Ms. Velos from the Lake Community College System for having us here today.

And really want to shout out everyone here and to our chancellor as well, Chancellor Rodriguez. I know he couldn't join us here today, but he sends his best and has been a great partner on Lake Community College District, but also his leadership up and down the state. We had a number of bills that were sponsored by the Lake Community College District this year that we got through to the Governor and signed.

And we'll be celebrating and continue to share those stories and highlighting our opportunities here in California. And one of them is Assembly Bill 1096 that we'll be highlighting on Thursday here at this very campus. But I'm so grateful again to all of you. Thank you so much. Again, we'll be respecting everyone's time.

I know we've gone past a few minutes, but thank you again to all, everyone, for a robust oversight hearing on Assembly Higher Education Committee and enrollment issues, Retention, Recruitment and Growing the Future of California's Workforce and continue to embrace the hopes and aspirations of our students here in California. Thank you so much. With that, this meeting is adjourned.