Assembly Budget Subcommittee No. 2 on Education Finance

Good afternoon. Today's hearing is a Joint Hearing with Assembly Budget Subcommitee number 5 on Public Safety and Budget Subcommitee number 2 on Education Finance. I want to welcome the Chair--when he gets here--of Sub 2, Assemblymember McCarty, as well as the other members today. We will have three panels, starting with the LAO, who will provide. Oh, sorry. Who will provide an overview, followed by panel 2, which will focus on K-12 education, and panel 3, focusing on higher education.

I want to thank all of our panelists today who have traveled from around the state to be a part of a very important conversation that is also very timely. We will be taking public comment at the end of the hearing. I'd like to open with some comments and then pass it on to other members who may wish to make a statement as well.

Primary education and higher education programs in our youth correctional facilities face unique challenges, including the correctional setting itself and whether there is a conducive space for learning within our youth correctional facilities, whether the process in place is coordinated to ensure the least amount of interruption in a child's education with great variance, unlikely educational disruption from one county to the next, including the fact that youth themselves entering the juvenile justice system are more likely to face a myriad of issues, including adverse response to childhood trauma, mental health needs, and other factors likely to have contributed to their entanglement in the carceral system in the first place as youth, and whether the facilities, funding mechanisms, coordination between agencies and staff training are all geared towards prioritizing the best possible educational program for young people, with the acknowledgment that a quality education can reverse the trajectory of the justice system-involved youth that they are already on.

The timing of this hearing is even more critical considering the pending closure of the division of juvenile justice and additional responsibility this means for our county partners. While we know that each county is distinct, we want to make sure that flexibility in educational program delivers still upholds our shared value, that our geography should not undermine justice, and in this case, the education of a child receives.

I come to this hearing today with much curiosity to hear about both the challenges and opportunities from our panelists so that we can think through together ways to not only improve public safety, but to improve the outcomes for our youth. With that, if there are any other members who would like to make comment at this time, you're welcome. Thank you.

We will ask our panelists to introduce themselves before speaking and to keep their remarks within the time limit you've been given so that we can have very sufficient time for our questions. I will pause after each panel for questions from the members. The LAO has provided a handout for the members for their overview and it has been posted on the website for the public as well.

We will now begin with panel 1: Overview of Education in County Juvenile Correctional Facilities and Realignments of the Division of Juvenile Justice, and we'll begin with Mr. Orlando Sanchez Zavala, the Legislative Analyst Office.

Thank you, Madam Chair. As mentioned, my name is Orlando Sanchez with the LAO and I'll be presenting an overview the juvenile justice system and education services provided. My LAO colleagues are here to answer any questions as well as they relate to any other questions that come up.

We prepared a handout where you can follow along, but generally speaking, a youth enters the juvenile justice system through an arrest, and following an arrest, youths are generally turned over to county probation departments where they may be held for a short time in a juvenile facility. Every case for a crime committed by someone before they turn 18 starts in the juvenile court.

After the juvenile court proceedings, if a court finds that the youth is responsible for the crime, it then determines where to place a youth based on several factors. The vast majority of youth are placed under county supervision where they may be placed with their families and supervised by probation. Others are placed in county juvenile facilities such as juvenile halls, camps, or ranches.

Youths are released from these facilities when the juvenile court determines that they are ready for release or after they reach the maximum age in the juvenile facilities, which has historically been age 21, and through this process it can be housed from a few hours in the cases of arrest to a few years in such facilities. In 2022, 41 counties maintained juvenile facilities and the statewide population was about 2200 youths, with individual county populations ranging from 3 to 439 youths.

Most youths entering the facilities are between 15 and 17 years old and male, and combined Latino, Hispanics, and African American youths account for roughly three quarters of the total population admitted. Until '21/'22, youths who committed serious crimes listed in statute could be placed in the state operated division of juvenile justice, which are referred to as DJJ. The state is in the process of shifting or realigning the responsibility for the remaining youths to counties. At DJJ, release is slightly different from the juvenile facilities.

Youths may remain in DJJ until they are released by the Board of Juvenile hearings or they reach the maximum age, which is generally 23 or 25, depending on individual circumstances. The average length of stay in DJJ is about two years. In '21/'22 the population for DJJ facilities was 640 youths across four facilities. While the ages of the youths range from 14 to 25, the average age was about 19 and a half years old.

Males comprise about 95% of the DJJ population, and Latino, Hispanics and African American youths account for roughly 90% of the DJJ population. In rare instances, a juvenile court may choose to transfer cases to the adult criminal court. In the next section of the handout, starting on page three, we cover the transition of responsibility from the state to counties for DJJ youth. This is part of a long term shift, looking back at the population of youths in the juvenile facilities.

In 1996, about 20,400 youths were housed in any juvenile facility and roughly half were at DJJ. Since then, the state took various steps to increase county responsibility, such as by increasing the cost to house someone at DJJ and limiting the types of DJJ youth that could be sent. And you'll notice that there's been a dramatic decline in the population since 1996 for both DJJ and county juvenile facilities, and this is related to a significant reduction in juvenile arrests happening statewide.

And then, under legislation adopted in 2020, responsibility for DJJ youths is being fully realigned from the state to counties, with intake to DJJ happening generally having generally stopped in the '21/'22 budget year. The realignment legislation also changed the maximum age that counties could hold youths in their facilities. In most cases, youth were, that would have been eligible for DJJ, the age limit now has increased from 21 to 23, and in certain cases they may be housed up to age 25, similar to DJJ. Under realignment, DJJ will now close in July of this year and youth still housed at the facilities at that time will be transferred to the counties. As of March 25, there were about 290 youth remaining at the facilities. DJJ staff are currently completing individualized transition plans.

These plans contain information such as each youth's needs, participation in programs, education and security concerns, and to assist the counties with the increased responsibility, the state is providing annual funding based on a formula allocation, and this funding is expected to reach about 200 million in the 2425 budget year. In addition, the state provided about 110,000,000 specifically for juvenile facilities. At the time the realignment legislation was enacted, a total of 926 youth were projected to be shifted at the county level by full implementation at the budget year '24/'25, and this would have represented about a 26% increase from the 2019 county population. However, we want to note that in 2022, the county population was about 1400 youths fewer than the 2019 pre-realignment level.

At this time, it's unclear as to why this reduction at the county juvenile population is seen in the 2022 data, but it could reflect impacts of the pandemic or continued downward trend of juvenile arrests. Moving on to page five of the handout, it covers some of the education services, including post secondary, offered in DJJ.

State law requires the Department of Juvenile Justice to offer high school graduation, or up to high school education, which can include career technical education or CTE, and DJJ hires teachers to teach these courses. In recent years, DJJ graduated over 100 students and over 100 earned CTE certifications annually. The division also indicates that about 50% of its youth have had a high school diploma or equivalent in the year '21/'22.

They also indicate that about 25% to 30% of the youth receive special education services and about 20% receive English learner services. So after a youth completes high school in DJJ, they can advance to college level courses or that lead to an associate's degree or additional CTE certifications. And according to DJJ, its facilities partner with six community colleges and one CSU campus. Community colleges receive per-student funding for these educational costs.

In '22/'23 that amount was about 6800 per student, and community colleges could also cover the cost of support services through categorical programs. At DJJ, enrollment fees are waived for students. Between spring 2020 and the fall 2022 semester, an average of about 80 students completed courses. Then lastly, within this section, DJJ receives about 20 million, primarily from the Proposition 98 General Fund to operate its programs, which is about 24,600 per youth in the '21/'22 year.

Then page eight covers some of these services offered in counties. And similar to DJJ, state law requires that the county offices of education, or COEs, to offer education services leading up to a high school diploma or equivalent for those housed in the juvenile facilities.

Instruction is provided by COE staff to those without a diploma, even those beyond the age of 18. And county juvenile schools are also required to provide additional support for special education and English language learner needs. And the state provides COEs with per-student funding through the Local Control Funding Formula, or LCFF, and COEs receive about 21,000 per student.

In the current school year, COEs generated about 70 million in LCFF funding, specifically for students in county juvenile facilities. And COEs also receive federal Title I and State Lottery support for their schools, including county juvenile schools similar to DJJ. And some county juvenile schools partner with community colleges to offer postsecondary courses, and currently about 22 community colleges have such agreements.

The state does not track how many students are enrolled or completed the courses in the county juvenile facilities, but the Community College Chancellor's Office is planning to begin collecting some of this data later this year. And funding for college courses are the same as in DJJ. Community colleges also receive per-student funding for their educational cost, with additional funding potentially coming from the college categorical programs. As with DJJ, youths in county juvenile schools also have their enrollment fees waived.

And lastly, in the last budget, the state included about 15 million ongoing Proposition 98 General Fund for the Rising Scholars Juvenile Justice Program to provide support services to youth in the juvenile justice system. This month, the Community College Chancellor's Office began soliciting applications for up to 45 colleges to receive these grants, and selected colleges are to receive 300,000 per year for five years to hire program staff and provide these support services.

We also want to note that this grant is modeled after the Project Change Program started at the College of San Mateo. In panel 3, you'll hear from representatives from the Rising Scholars Network and from a representative of the County of San Mateo. And happy to take questions, thank you.

Thank you. I'll open it up to our Committee Members. Chair?

Thank you. Just curious about, I'm a big fan of career technical training, especially for youth that aren't amenable or want to go to college. In fact, I believe if I was a carpenter, electrician, or plumber, I'd probably be a lot better off, definitely would not be here, and probably make a whole lot more money right now.

So when you say career technical education, are you saying they will become apprentice carpenters, electrician, plumbers, drywallers, roofers, or are we talking about that, or are we talking about something else?

Yes. It can vary by county by county if we're talking about the juvenile facilities, but within the DJJ facility, it is our understanding that they receive such training to receive towards certifications, which can be construction and various other types of trainings.

So do they then leave street gangs, become union members instead? Or is it you get a little piece of paper and good luck if you can get a job? I don't know what it--yes, you do all this training, and then you just let them go, because it sounds like you're now starting to keep track of your results. That once people get this kind of education, I get the feeling you may or may not know what happens to them afterwards.

We haven't seen any data that we could present today on what the outcomes of some of these CT outcomes are.

I think that might be good to do.

Yeah. We certainly in the past have recommended such information be collected from various departments.

I think more broadly, the question that Member Jones-Sawyer is getting at is what kind of oversight really is there around the educational outcomes and the educational programs in juvenile facilities from your perspective?

I'll defer to my colleagues. I can answer on the juvenile school side.

Michael Alferes, Legislative Analyst Office. It's our understanding that a lot of counties, they partner with community colleges to offer courses that are for college credit, that they would be able to then go to enroll at a community college afterwards or get a certificate and be able to go into the field.

But I think similar to anybody that gets a certificate in these fields, they would have to go and probably find their own job, as our understanding, and we don't have statewide data that collects this information, but certainly it would be important to kind of look at the overall effectiveness of these type of programs.

Good afternoon. Paul Steenhausen, also with the Legislative Analyst Office. So my assignment, I handle California community colleges, and I can tell you it's been somewhat frustrating to get data on even enrollment, certainly outcomes for youth in county facilities. Currently, through the community college information system, the data system, it does not distinguish between individuals who are an adult correctional facility or a juvenile, a youth in a juvenile facility. It just goes into one data element within the Community College Chancellor's Office data system.

And so the Legislature doesn't have any way right now, teasing out, okay, well, how are the youth in the juvenile facilities doing, these county facilities, versus the adults? Now that's going to change starting in the summer. The Community College Chancellor's Office is adding a requirement for districts to report on juveniles in the juvenile facilities versus adults and adult facilities. That's going to give the Legislature better information.

And I think that change is coming because of the shift with realignment and also the Rising Scholars Juvenile Justice Program that my colleague just mentioned. So the Legislature will be getting better information on what happens to these individuals, what kind of awards are they earning, what kind of jobs are they getting, what are their incomes and that sort of thing. That'll be a much better information set with which for the Legislature to evaluate these kind of programs.

I just think it would be good on our ROI, return on investment. I look at all these programs as investment, obviously into young people, but also into the future of California and making it stronger. And plus, the information you give back to us, I think members will be so inclined to, the return on investment is very good to give even more money toward these programs.

I'm pushing for this so that you give us data to not only prove that it works, but exponentially how it is helping California as a whole in the big picture.

Thank you. Chair?

Yes, thank you. First of all, thank you, Chair, for the other Budgeted Subcommitee for leading this issue with us today, and we're co-chairing. But really it was your push to have this topic and your blending of issues here with education and public safety and criminal justice. I guess the big picture is know years ago, I know Reggie, you talk about, we changed the name of Corrections Department and we put in there an 'r' to rehabilitation, but not enough of the 'r's in there.

There's always been an 'r', but it was small 'r', little 'r'. I wanted to be capital 'r' just like capital 'c'.

So that's the ultimate goal, is not just reducing the population and improving public safety, but how do we keep people from going, circling back through the system? So we're going to get to that. And I'm really interested too, in the higher education ones later in the panel, including the Rising Scholars, which we put money in the budget for, and we have legislation signed. But I'm thinking about, you mentioned that there's fewer people in our juvenile halls.

We have a juvenile hall here in Yolo County, and I think there's like last time I talked to their folks over there, there was like less than five people there. And here in Sacramento county, the same thing. I don't know the number, but significantly lower. So the individuals who are cited and arrested, maybe they're serving or their punishment or their basically term is a little bit different now, whether it's probation or, are their outcomes any different?

I guess is my question. Because before, maybe they're in juvenile hall, we sent in through the County Office of Education or other programs, and they were able to get some type of education. So do we know, is it making any improvements?

On a statewide level, I haven't seen that data. It could vary. Counties can collect that individual data on what those outcomes have been. But one of the reasons that there's fewer people in these facilities is just juvenile arrests are declining and they've been declining significantly for over a decade. And that's part of the explanation.

And it's unclear whether prior to the realignment legislation passing, whether that trend has continued or COVID-19 has had an impact on juvenile arrests, is kind of the story happening there with why we're seeing fewer youth at some of the counties right now.

So what happened to all of the educators that used to go to the juvenile halls? What are they doing now? Where are those programs? If no one's there anymore, what happened to that effort?

My colleague would be able to answer that.

Chair, Michael Alferes, LAO. So our understanding is that a lot of county offices will retain staff even if they have declining enrollments, given that they have to run the program throughout the school year, regardless of how many youth are there, because youth can show up at any time and they need to have a functional program. So I don't know if county offices, you might hear in later panels from the panelists what they might be doing in their county.

But our understanding is there's not a lot of downsizing that's been happening as a result of lower attendance.

So if there's zero population in a county and they used to have an education component going to that juvenile hall, does that program not exist anymore, or are they serving the youth in different capacity?

I think that on some level they would have to have some type of staff on hand in case a youth gets arrested and detained. But I think there has been a bigger shift towards more community supervision and having more other kind of County Office-run schools, like community schools that youth that are on probation, or are referred from probation, or are mandatorily expelled from their school district will be able to attend.

School districts could also send youth that are found with ADA problems or like attendance problems or behavioral problems. But if they're not sent on a mandatorily expelled defense, then they would reimburse the County Office for the funding that they get for educating those students.

As the Chair noted, we have a few other County Office Education coming a bit later. We could maybe ask them some hypotheticals.

Yeah. Thank you. Any other questions for this panel? Thank you so much. We'll move on now to the related Issue number 2, which is K-12 education. As a reminder, the panelists are listed in speaking order, and each panelist is asked to introduce themselves prior to speaking.

And just as an overview with us today, we have Members of the County Office of Education from Ventura County, folks from the Alameda County Office of Education, as well as law School Professor from the Youth Justice Education Clinic, and we also have probation represented. So with that, we will begin with Monica Vaughn, Chief of School's Alameda County Office of Education.

Good afternoon, Chair and members of the committee; thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today. My name is Monica Vaughn, and I'm the chief of schools for Alameda County Office of Education. Today I will discuss County Office of Education Court Schools, the students we serve, and the impacts of DJJ realignment. County Offices of Education, or COEs, operate over 40 court schools in juvenile detention facilities across the state. Court schools provide instruction in all academic content areas through grade 12, including career technical education.

In Alameda County, 98% of our court school students were enrolled in at least one A-G course last year. We also provide all services to students who qualify for special education. Many of our students return to comprehensive high schools within a short period of time. For example, during the last school year in Alameda County, we served 322 students, but only 23 were enrolled for a whole semester, and on average, students were enrolled just 20 days.

As county office educators, we feel it is imperative to use students time in our court schools to support, nurture and prepare our students as much as possible for what comes next in their lives. Our students have been impacted by trauma, negative educational experiences and disproportionate disciplinary procedures. We serve students who have faced significant barriers to achievement and opportunity. Our schools serve a disproportionate number of students of color and students who qualify for special education.

Court schools require intensive staffing levels to maintain a safe and educationally productive student environment. It is not unusual for juvenile detention facilities to separate students based on various criteria, for example, gender, age, or safety factors. A court school with 20 students might need three or four classrooms. The number of students in classrooms can change daily with little time for preparation. I'd like to give you a snapshot of Alameda County's court schools.

On any given day, 45 to 55 high school students and 15 to 20 graduates are in the facilities. About half of our high school students have IEPs. Our incoming students, on average, are age 16, 17 and have 6th to 7th grade reading levels and 5th to 6th grade math levels. Our one-year graduation rate in 2021 was 88.9%, and our one-year graduation rate for 21-22 was 55.6%.

We currently operate seven multigrade classrooms plus PE at juvenile hall and an additional classroom at the camp; we have nine full-time teachers in place, regardless of student numbers, to ensure classroom availability should we need it on short notice. And unlike most schools, our court schools run year-round. We also have other support staff on-site, including a robust special education team including psychologist, resource teacher and speech and language pathologist, a teacher on special assignment for English learners, and para-educators.

If this sounds like a lot of staff for a small amount of students, it is. Our court school students come to us with deep educational needs, which is why nearly all county offices supplement their alternative education funding with a mix of General Fund contributions and one-time funds. In Alameda County, supplemental General funds cover 45% of our total court and community school costs. The education code provides neither sufficient nor stable funding to serve students in juvenile court schools.

County offices of Education are also responding to the changes from DJJ realignment, including serving students who stay longer in our court schools and partnering with probation and our local community colleges to offer post-secondary education opportunities. In Alameda County, we offer college courses both in person and online to graduates, and we've also offered dual enrollment to some of our high school students. But that is not representative of every county. There's a great deal of postsecondary variation between counties.

The role of COEs in providing postsecondary education support also varies by county, as our expertise is really K-12 education. One-time funds for postsecondary will be helpful, but the availability of ongoing resources is unknown to the field.

In conclusion, whether it's for high school students or postsecondary, having strong partnerships with probation, behavioral health, community colleges, our school districts, and community-based organizations are vital to providing the programs and services our court-school students require, and we're very grateful to the close partnerships we have in Alameda. Thank you again for the opportunity to speak with you today. I'm happy to answer any questions at the appropriate time.

Thank you and we'll move on now to the next speaker.

Good afternoon, Madam Chair and Members of the Committee. It is an honor to have an opportunity to address all of you today. My name is Dr. Cesar Morales, Ventura County Superintendent of Schools. Today I will be sharing information regarding what it takes to support the valuable K-12 and postsecondary students in our juvenile court schools. To do that, I want to start by sharing a typical day in the life of a student at Ventura County's juvenile facility.

Each morning after breakfast, the students walk into their classrooms, which are in their cell block common area. They are welcomed by a credentialed teacher, paraprofessional, and a probation officer who remains in the classroom throughout instruction. Students complete their instruction in their coursework, with staff providing guidance on their individualized paths and with online opportunities to participate in community college classes.

Students have access to mental health clinicians, especially those with an individualized education plan, an IEP. New students meet with a transition specialists who communicate with the school district, family, and probation staff. After school, students receive individualized academic support or participate in extracurricular programs through a partnership between probation and the boys and Girls Club. It takes a team to make this happen every day.

We have four General education teachers, two special education teachers, three paraprofessionals, and one site school administrator, a counselor, a transition specialist, and an office manager. All arrived to support the 52 youths, 19 of which are special education students with acute needs. Our goal is for every student to complete their high school diploma and be on a pathway for continued education or specialized training.

I'm proud that we provide robust services to our students, and I want to pivot to the fiscal impact of doing that, but we are like a hospital emergency room right now. We staff educators to the anticipated capacity we have to serve. Regardless of how many students are referred to us in any given day or week. The cost to run our quality education program is roughly 2 million. Just 900,000 came from LCFF, and the remaining 1.1 million was from our local county office of Ed contribution.

The probation Department allocates additional staffing to ensure a safe environment during the school day and consistently applies for one-time grant programs to complement our base services and to bring it back to the students. Latinos are about 50% of the population in Ventura County, but in our juvenile court facility, Hispanic students are 77% of the population, American Indians 3%, African Americans 3%, and white students 17%. Our opportunity at the county office is to create a high-quality education and rehabilitation programs for these students.

We also need to promote restorative justice and diversion practices throughout our community. We have an opportunity to ensure our students become independent and positive contributors in our society. Earlier, I mentioned the realignment of Department of Juvenile justice. Juvenile detention centers are now housing young adults and high school graduates for longer durations of time. Let me start by sharing what's going well with postsecondary services.

In Ventura County, as illustrated in the handout we shared, the Ventura County Probation, County Office of Ed, and Ventura County Community College District partnered together to offer postsecondary experiences such as career exploration, CTE programs, academic counseling, college courses, access to tech equipment and connectivity, and VCOE trustee scholarships to assist with supplies or tuition after their graduation and release.

With all that said, we are presently in survival mode as probation office professionals and educators in the county office of ED and Community College system leverage each other's staff and resources to best meet the needs of our youth and now adults through age 25. This work is largely dependent on a strong partnership between CoE, Probation Department, and local institutions of higher education. As stated earlier, VCOE contributes over 50% of the total cost of education program for the K-12 students through one-time funds and grant programs.

Additionally, we are exploring other grant options via the probation Department and community college system to provide services for high school graduates. The current mode of operation is not sustainable. While we appreciate the existing grants offered to support this work, competitive grant processes are not the answer, as they are not sustainable. Similarly, agency decisions to reallocate resources to Fund this program is not a viable long term solution because it requires reductions in other programs.

We need ongoing funding to support high-quality education for our justice-involved youth that does not require additional grant application and an administrative reporting burden. Thank you for your time, and I appreciate your attention to the ways we can support the students in our juvenile court facility programs.

Thank you. We'll move on to Mr. Ford.

Yes. Good afternoon, Madam Chair and Members of the Committee. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today about how the Alameda County Probation Department partners with the County Office of Education to ensure youth have access to quality educational opportunities. My name is Brian Ford. I'm the assistant chief for the Alameda County Probation Department. The intersection of safety and education is a personal one for me in that I'm a product of both the Compton Unified and Los Angeles Unified school districts.

The challenges that I faced in school shaped my perspective and helped me recognize how critical access to quality education in any setting, for that matter, is a fundamental right that must be honored. We approach this work from that lens, and our partnerships and collaborations are essential to delivering on that notion. And Alameda County Probation operates two juvenile facilities, a juvenile hall, and a residential camp. Our juvenile hall has a rated capacity to serve 358 youth, and our camp can serve up to 60.

Like many other jurisdictions throughout the state, our juvenile intakes have also continued to trend downward. In 2022, we served 445 unique individuals, which is roughly 60% down from 2019. Our average daily population is 75, of which a third of that is SB 823 youth, including those who have returned from DJJ. Males make up about 90% of our population, while 10% are females, and between both, 98% are youth of color.

More than half are 16 and 17-year-olds, but that statistic is beginning to trend higher given the number of realigned youth we now have in our facilities. We've been fortunate in that we've received a slow matriculation of youth from DJJ since July of 2021. There are only three youths remaining at DJJ, of which only two are anticipated to return, with the third possibly being paroled prior to DJJ closing.

So, as Chief Vaughn stated, on any given day, approximately 25% of our population are high school graduates, and of the remaining 75%, they have IEPs. What this means day in and day out is high levels of collaboration between probation, County Office of Education, Behavioral Health, and when necessary, even staff from children's Hospital. A foundational component of our collaboration rests in our incentive-based behavior management program.

We recognize the effectiveness that rewards and incentives have on young people, and this system is incorporated into every aspect of a young person's experience. In 2019, all of our partners participated in a facility wide training and implementation of our behavior management program, and this was essential because it provided a systematic way for teachers and probation staff to work together under one model that was both consistent and predictable in how we managed and respond to youth behavior.

Another layer that deepens our collaboration is our care coordination meetings. We work together with behavioral health and children's hospital to facilitate case conferences for individual youth to identify strategies to help young people be successful in the living units and in the classrooms. Many of our young people present complex behavioral health issues and have acute mental health needs, which has created a circumstance that has motivated us to collaborate in nontraditional ways.

Although I recognize that the panel that will follow us will discuss post-high school education, I would be remiss if I didn't acknowledge the effort that has also gone into ensuring that our high school graduates have access to in-person college instruction. With guidance from ACOE's leadership, probation utilized a portion of our SBA 23 allocation to contract with Laney Community College to provide access to various courses, including business statistics, English, economics, and more.

We have one young man who will be graduating with his AA next month and will be pursuing his bachelor's at Cal State East Bay. However, as true in any system, there's always an opportunity for growth.

Considering the level of acute mental health illness, we see an increased need for higher levels of training across the system for both probation and ACOE staff. You know, we learned from the implementation of our behavior management program that when staff are trained together, it provides an opportunity for all of us to be pointed in the same direction, hearing the same language, and utilizing the same approaches.

And finally, I want to recognize our need for career, technical education, and vocational training offerings, which would have to be done while balancing the configuration of our existing facilities. You know, as stated earlier, you know, college is a path for some, but we must also create pathways for those that have other interests. Increased investments in these areas will make a significant difference in the hearts and minds of our young people, as well as our outcomes. And in closing, I'd like to thank you for the opportunity to speak today, and would be happy to take any questions when appropriate.

Thank you so much. We'll move on to Mr. Dowler.

Good afternoon Chair, Members of the Committee. My name is Tim Dowler. I'm the Juvenile Services Bureau Chief Deputy for Ventura County Probation Agency, and I have the pleasure of overseeing our juvenile justice complex in Ventura County. I want to thank you for the opportunity to talk to you today about the educational services provided by Ventura County Office of Education in collaboration with Ventura County Probation Agency. The youth and young adults in our juvenile facilities are the highest-need youth in our county.

They often come to us with complex issues ranging from childhood trauma, chemical dependency on drugs, learning disabilities, acute mental health needs, high criminal genetic risk factors, and more. These complexities require a multidisciplinary team of medical, behavioral health, human services, schools, probation staff to develop and deliver individualized case plans to safely care for and effectively serve this population from intake to release. Education is a critical component of this multidisciplinary team.

It is part of the transformation required for a youth or young adult in custody to thrive upon release. Ventura County has one juvenile justice complex that houses detention, commitment, and secure youth treatment facility youth, often called SYTF Youth. As of April 14 of this month, 75 youth are being served in our facility, with 92% of them being male. 22 are youth pending court proceedings, 41 are serving a commitment, and 12 were committed to our SYTF program.

36% of the population in the facility were previously housed at the county jail or DJJ prior to juvenile justice realignment and we have two young adults in DJJ that may be transferred to our facility prior to July 1. Out of the 75 youth and young adults in the facility, there are 51 youth attending Providence High School, which is on campus and operated by VCOE. 3 of the 51 youth are serving SYTF commitment. The remaining 24 youth are high school graduates.

Out of the 24 graduates, there are 15 young adults attending online college courses. 10 of those 15 young adults are in our SYTF program. A challenge we sometimes face with providing high school services is an inherent need to populate some classrooms with fewer students due to different levels of classification within the facility to keep the youth safe. Typical classification considerations include detention and commitment, youth age, gender, level of sophistication, previous acts of violence, youth who choose to separate themselves from general population, and more.

This can often place a strain on the number of teaching staff required to instruct in more classrooms and may not be in line with current per-student funding formulas. An approach for consideration may be to reevaluate the current formula for court schools. Another challenge has been resources required for youth transitioning from high school to college and vocational education. Many of these services have been provided in kind by VCOE to ensure a seamless transition for the youth.

We have made collaborative headway in recent months to address a portion of these gaps through contracted services with VCOE to provide career and exploration and workplace essential services in our career center, a full-time teacher to provide academic support for our youth in college, and vocational training in agriculture and automotive care to complement our existing construction, screen printing, and radio broadcasting programs. In addition, Oxnard College recently was awarded the Rising Scholars grant, providing an academic college counselor.

Like most juvenile correctional facilities throughout the state, we are working towards transforming our facility into a more campus like environment for the youth we serve.

As part of the effort, VCOE and probation are working together to brand our high school classrooms with school colors, painting a large mascot outside of the gymnasium like you'd see in a community, providing the school mascot t-shirts for PE, and creating an ASB for youth to have more of a voice for on-campus programming and activities, and potentially have a dual enrollment college pathway for high school youth as well.

The formula for the educational success in Ventura County has been a culture of consistent and healthy communication amongst the team, a shared advocacy for each youth to be successful, and a strong professional relationship between organizations that is bonded by our common goal of safely providing high-quality education to the youth and young adults that we do serve.

Surrounding education services with good policies and procedures, an effective communication plan, and quality curriculum are important to the success of our program, but it's really the people that truly make a difference in these programs. Every interaction with these youth is an opportunity to change their trajectory in their future. Thank you for allowing me to be a part of this process with you.

Thank you so much. We will move on to Megan Stanton-Trehan.

Yes, thank you, Chair Bonta, Chair Mccarthy, and Members. My name is Megan Stanton-Trehan, and I'm an education attorney representing young people who were detained in La County. I currently direct a legal clinic at Loyola Law School, where I also teach courses in education policy and education law. The majority of my clients have spent a significant portion of their educational experience in high school detained in a detention facility.

Throughout my brief presentation today, I'll be relying on my personal experience working with these young people, as well as a recently released report from some colleagues at the ACLU of Southern California, East Bay Community Law Center, and the National Center for Youth Law entitled Decoding Alternative Education. This report looks at alternative schools, including juvenile court schools in the five biggest COEs in California.

So, the concerns that I'm going to raise today as an advocate fall into a few categories, including school stability, transition planning, school discipline, curriculum and staffing, special education, and budgeting and accountability. The model of removing students from the community to a juvenile detention facility and also changing their school fundamentally creates instability for these young people, as chair Bonta mentioned in the beginning of this session.

Changing schools, teachers, and peers, not to mention the trauma of incarceration itself, leaves young people who are detained at a disadvantage to their peers who are not. The California Department of Education uses school stability rate as one of the three indicators for school climate. CDE's data provides that in 2019-to-20 students in alternative schools, including juvenile court schools in California, had an instability rate of 62%, compared with a statewide average of 8%.

The transition process for students into and later out of juvenile court schools can be challenging. This is especially true for my clients, who are special education students who then have to adjust to numerous service providers in both locations with every move. My clients also struggle to adjust to a juvenile court school setting. This and other factors may lead to higher rates of school discipline for these young people inside the juvenile detention facilities.

Some juvenile detention facilities throughout the state, the schools, and those, have a higher rate of discipline for students. A report from the Center for Civil Rights Remedies at UCLA in 2020 showed that some COEs, I'm going to say Los Angeles, Fresno, Kern, San Bernardino, and San Joaquin, had the highest rates of discipline in the state, as well as documented discipline disparities for black and Native American students, among others. In La County, I regularly see my clients suspended and missing in key instructional time.

This is exacerbated by a lack of communication in our county between the LACO and the Probation Department. So, for example, I have a client who misses school for one period. He's suspended for one period, he returns to his cottage, and he stays there for the rest of the day instead of going back to school. This happens a lot for my clients because of that lack of communication.

We also see, especially recently, the issue of if one student in a cottage is suspended and not allowed to go to class, the whole cottage doesn't go. So they're just hanging out in the unit, watching TV, not doing anything educational. Luckily for some of them, they might get some packets, but that's about it. So now, let's discuss curriculum and staffing. Students in juvenile court schools should have access to quality education like their peers in the community, including special education, access to A-G courses.

I heard some colleagues speak about that. That's great. And career technical education options. Unfortunately, a detained student's options can be severely limited depending on what school they're in and in what part of the state, right? So, according to the decoding alternative education report from my colleagues, of the five biggest COEs, only one of those juvenile court schools offered any A-G courses, and all of those courses were online. So, compared with other county offices, those students are not getting access to live A-G courses.

5 out of 806 courses at this particular juvenile court school were A-G eligible. So this is a big challenge of, throughout the state, we have different things being offered to different students. Excuse me, Asthma. I'll also note that for many students, in my experience, it's really important to make sure that the individuals working with them have the appropriate credential.

So special education students working with a teacher with a special education credential, and students who are in high school courses being taught by those who specialize in a single subject. And I've heard from a lot of colleagues who are working inside the juvenile detention facilities in LA County that this is really important. Oh, thank you so much. So I'll just also note from my personal experience, getting students enrolled in an A-G course, even the online ones, is certainly a challenge. It's not the default.

In fact, enrolling them in the easiest course is. And I just want to note that I've had clients who, they spend the majority of their time incarcerated going to school in the facility. If that happens, they have no way to apply to a four-year college for a CSU or a UC in California because they're in the detention facility in LA County the whole time and not able to access the A-G courses they need.

I also want to note that a lot of our clients in LA County have issues accessing their special education services. There's an ongoing attorney general's settlement with the county due to the lack of coordination between the probation Department and COE. So, while these folks here may be working together really well, it's not true for all counties. So what I'll say, I'll limit the rest of my remarks to some recommendations that I have that come from my experience as well as the colleagues that I've worked with.

So as an advocate for young people, I would like you to consider the following recommendations. Considering removing young people from the community and educating them in a facility as a last resort if at all possible. That is being done across the, across the state. I think Chair Mccarthy mentioned that the numbers are going down across the state. And then prioritize in person learning in a classroom with a teacher when at all possible. Right.

And that's for K-12, and we'll hear from the higher ed folks later. But that's certainly true for k through 12. This is really important for special education students in particular, and we saw the impact of that during the pandemic. Make sure staff are appropriately credentialed, including but not limited to, special education services. Implement individualized learning plans for all students, including academic and career counseling.

That's really important because figuring out if they're going to do a CTE program or they're going to do the A-G pathway and then go on that route, they need some help figuring that stuff out. And if it's just like we're going to just assign you this without any other opportunities, that's really challenging for them. I'd also note that in addition to higher ED and CTE options, reading intervention and math intervention programs are really important.

I think someone mentioned before, the reading level and math level of many students in these facilities are very Low. If they're graduating and they're just sitting around without having the access to those intervention programs, we're going to be having them go out into the community without having the skills they might need.

Lastly, I think one of the big things to consider when we're talking about accountability processes is just figuring out how the community that works with these young people is better able to access the LCAP process, the local control accountability plan process, especially for the funding, because I think in some counties that may be done in a more transparent way than others. In our county, it's really challenging to engage in that process for advocates and young people certainly don't have a voice there.

This is really important as we're considering more and more folks returning to the counties with DGJ realignment as well. And I'm happy to answer any questions from my experience. Thanks.

Thank you. I'll open it up to the Committee. Go ahead, Mr. Chair.

Yeah, so I know we have multiple counties here, so maybe you can go back to my first question. There. Are any of the counties, do you have a very limited number, like less than 10 or so, individuals in your county facility, either Ventura or Alameda?

I'm sorry, what was the question?

Do you have less than a handful of kids there still

No.

What are the populations in your.

75.

75.

75. Also in Alameda County.

Okay, so the 75 that you have, I assume that since there are fewer kids arrested and some of the sentencing has changed, is the time that they are serving longer than in years past. Right. They're serving longer. If they're there, they're probably serving a longer. Up to 25 now, right?

Yeah. Well, we find that in Los Angeles County, the average length of stay is increasing, and it's going to increase even further, obviously, with SBA 23 realignment with youth folks standing in their facilities. And it's primarily because the youth that do end up being detained are generally charged with the more serious and violent offenses. It's the 707 B offenses. And generally, those court proceedings take a lot longer than if it were crimes that were not so serious.

So, it's hard to generalize because every individual is different. What's the average education plan program that one of your individual.

Duals is participating with.

Chief Vaughn.

All of our students who do not have a diploma yet are enrolled in high school, and some of them have had dual enrollment opportunities in college. And that's something we are striving to expand. And then students who have graduated already are enrolled in college.

So when you say some, you say--but the majority of them, you probably say, are working on basic skills, the GED type?

We don't happen to offer GED. We are pushing all of our students toward high school diploma in Alameda County, but they are all enrolled in core academics, PE, and as I mentioned earlier, A-G courses.

Yeah. So there maybe are some that maybe did succeed in school. The average student who's in the system probably does not have a stellar academic career, and we hear that over and over from our Vice President of the United States, who always reminds us kids that went through the juvenile hall system in the Bay Area. That being said, there are some that maybe are a higher end. Is it hard for us to have these dual tracks to work some that are trying to get maybe some college type programming and others that are just at the minimal level?

We don't have a dual track and dual enrollment. When we had it, was open to all the students who we thought were going to be there long enough to engage in it, but that is something that's hard to predict. One point if I could make, I've been in my position for eight years now, and when I first started, there were over 100 youth enrolled in our school every day, and now it's more like 50, 45. And the nature of the students has changed.

It's a concentration of need now. We used to have students across a wider spectrum of need educationally, with some students who are basically on track, some who were behind, and some who had basic literacy needs. We are now seeing such a concentration of need. Several nonreaders coming into us, students who have not been enrolled in school, sometimes for over a year, students who are way, way behind, and the very high rate of students with IEP. So we're seeing a much higher concentration of need now.

So concentration at the lower end of education attainment?

That's correct.

And what do we need to do as policymakers to address it? That's the kind of question here. In addition to being interesting, what do we all here at this level need to be thinking about to help this population succeed? We have, you know, LCFF money. We don't have many strings attached going to school districts and county offices of education to do these programming. So what pieces do we need to be looking at?

I think the funding piece is a big one, and with AB 906 proposed to try to elevate the level of funding for our court and community schools so that we can guarantee continuing and expanding our services to this population that are so in need.

Yeah, maybe this is basic, but walk us through how it works for a student funding. Like, we give money to school districts, whether they're Oakland school districts or Sac City. We--LCFF; it's like north of 20 grand per pupil now doubled in the last ten years. That's not the same for students who were in your program. So have you seen essentially the doubling of per pupil support like other--the six million kids in California have?

Well, I think conversations like this are very helpful because it highlights the fact that it isn't a one dimensional issue. We've talked about literacy rates, reading levels, and trying to help the students survive academically. In our facility, we found that we needed to invest heavily in a student library. I send our county librarian to change out the titles of the Probation Department student library, where they gave us an area, and I put high interest reading titles there and change them out every month.

The only way we're going to get kids reading is if they have access to reading material. So every question leads us to a pursuit of how we're going to figure it out. Even though our high school age students, out of those 75 that are in the facility, 13 to 25, 52 of them--51, 52 of them--are high school age. Last year, we graduated 19 of those students with a high school diploma.

We're approaching all of our students to have a high school completion, even if we're funneling them to community college or vocational training programs. Ventura County Office of Ed happened to retain its ROP status. So I have an ROP facility that if they exit the facility and they're in a current ROP-based vocational program, they transition to the general population's ROP program and our VCOE facility.

I believe that we have to help our students be productive wage earners in society in order for them not to fall back into the traps of the streets, so much so that I've recently invested into developing a welding center where community members, as well as exiting youth, will be able to get certified to be welders.

So, Dr. Ross, that was very interesting for me and gives me your perspective, but what I'm trying to look at is--maybe help us. So we have the Public Safety Budget Committee up here and the Education Committee joining as one. So in our world, we fund schools. There's nearly a thousand school districts. We have this world now we fund, not many categoricals, LCFF, we get just essentially per pupil. So how does it work for K-12 education in the county juvenile facilities?

And is it the same, this LCFF formula? And if it's not--I think it's not quite--have you seen the increases in support from the state? In other words, since 2012 to 2023, essentially like doubled money. So, like your school district in Ventura, not you, but the Ventura School District per 6th grader gets double the cash now, per that student. Are we seeing the equivalent for students, whether in yours or all the other 50 some counties in California?

I think we're seeing the appropriate impact of that money. And I know supplements--

But, one at a time. Is it LCFF or you get your different money per student?

It is LCFF. However, let's remember, whether it's incarcerated youth or special education youth, it's not enough money to cover the expenses. On the special ed side, school districts are spending 65 percent of their own resources to cover the bill. We need to look at students in the juvenile facility in the same way that we're looking at students from a funding perspective of students with an IEP. And then when they're in the juvenile facility and they have an IEP, it's even more intense.

So, yes, we've experienced and are appreciative of the funding levels that we have. The expenses are higher, but even though--it's having less of a negative impact because of the increased funding, but we can't minimize the fact there is a negative impact.

I'll also just ask a related question. So, one of the kind of themes throughout all of the panel discussions were really around the level of school instability, right? So participation rates 62 percent versus 8 percent in this really helpful report for the decoding alternative education that was provided and that you spoke to.

So, given the fact that we are based on enrollment or ADA, essentially, and that overlay of school instability or participation for every individual person, I have to imagine that it is very difficult to be able to track the amount of funding that will be going towards every individual student with our current funding formula, which I think is obviously the subject of AB 906.

So if you could speak to essentially kind of the mismatch of the way in which we are funding your respective programs versus what the actual need is, that would be helpful to me. And then just also a little bit of a click-down on the IEP specifically. So you remarked, I think, all of you, that the percentage of youth who are incarcerated who have an IEP is extraordinarily high. I don't believe that those IEPs also speak to the disruption that happens with their particular incarceration necessarily, right?

These are IEPs that are coming with the fact that they have other ACEs issues, other learning challenges, learning disabilities. And in addition to that, there is essentially kind of a new circumstance by virtue of where they are going to school that causes additional specialization that's needed.

So if you could kind of speak to, one: the mismatch of funding and the programs, and two: what it means to have an IEP as a student within the context of either the juvenile courts or in their juvenile detention facility or the county community schools.

Wow, you captured that very well, Chair Bonta. Their experience is different than when in a school district school program because of the access to special ed credentialed staff. For example, in ours, 19 of the 51 high school age students are in special ed. We happen to have two special ed teachers who are teaching multiple grades.

And then also as a former special education teacher, you have students that are resource students and some that are Special Day Class students and some that might have moderate to severe intellectual disabilities, aside from any conduct disorder or behavioral issues that need to be addressed on the Ursus Clinician side or the behaviorist side.

But the downside to the population and educational experience in the juvenile facility is that there needs to be effort on the socialization piece because they may not be with an adequate number of their age-appropriate peers to have legitimate experiences where they can excel at an as rapid rate as they would be in a normal school setting.

So making it virtually impossible for there to be an accurate implementation of their IEPs because they're not actually being provided with the teaching staff or the type of teaching that they need in order to be able to fully address their IEPs in a developmentally appropriate way?

So in a school setting, in any environment, you have to work within the context that you're in. These students have to be there, so you have to adapt, and much of the socialization issues or setbacks that they may experience we've had to address in other ways. We work in concert with probation as well as behavioral health. What we've done in order to help students, even with empathy or care for others, is we've introduced therapy in concert with probation with animals.

We've had miniature ponies brought in so that students learn to interact and start developing some empathy skills as well as therapy dogs in the cell blocks. And while that may seem far-fetched, you have to engage students with an opportunity to feel and have empathy, and then you need to have their behaviorists and therapists help them transfer those skills to interacting with age-appropriate peers as well as peers of different ages.

You have to modify, and you almost have to approach the situation like MacGyver and play the cards that you're dealt with. But it's not an ideal setting, but I think we can all agree that the starting point of the setting in the juvenile facility might not be ideal, but in concert, all the professionals have to work together to make the experience as productive for that student so they can become independent and thrive in the general community when they're released.

Thanks. And if any of the other panelists want to address the mismatch in funding, that would be helpful. I'll just add another question because I also want to be respectful of making sure we get to the next panel. So, pleased to talk about the mismatch and funding. I am deeply concerned about the inequity in basic access, for instance, to A-G courses.

So the fact that Kern and Santa Clara County and Orange and Lake--only five percent have actual availability of basic A-G, of being able to have a student meet their A-G requirements. That's quite concerning. So if you could also speak to the fact of just is there a basic standard of practice or a standard of rigor that we are attempting to offer students who are involved in any form of detention?

I can speak first to the A-G. It is something that across the state, county offices of education are working to increase. In Alameda County, as recently as 34 years ago, we did not have A-G classes, and it's been a huge undertaking and one that we strongly believe in as a way to increase the rigor in our classrooms, as well as to ensure that all students have access to A-G at all times.

So that is something that county offices are actively working on, and we are seeing an increase. Some counties have made more progress at different rates, while others are focusing on other growth areas. I did want to address one piece of the mismatch that you referred to, Chair. One issue--you brought up the stability rates. And stability rates are set based on the number of students who are enrolled in a school for an entire school year.

Court schools have phenomenally low stability rates. I think mine is three percent, which is a good thing. We don't want to see students enrolled with us for a year. We would like to see them transition to district schools. But this does create a mismatch, felt particularly by our smaller county offices of ed. So in counties where you may have be operating two classrooms at some times and other times only need one classroom.

You must staff to have two classrooms ready because you don't know Monday morning when you walk in whether you're going to need two classrooms or not. So a certain amount of staffing has to be in place for the just in case or be prepared for a Monday plan. Similarly, I can relate to that. Speech language pathologists are very hard to come by. There's a shortage across the state, and we retain a part time one.

I don't always have students who need speech language, but I often have a few, so I retain a speech language pathologist. So these are some examples of how we have to be prepared. Otherwise, we will not be staffed or able to meet the needs of students when they come in, and we don't have warning about when they're coming in.

Do you have a question? A comment?

Let me do it this way because I may need to have a separate conversation. I think Mr. Dollar has worked not only in--oh, Mr. Ford. I'm sorry. Mr. Ford has worked not only Alameda, but you also worked in LA County.

I have. Yes, sir.

LA County is a mess, and I'm being nice, and I would like to know, what are you doing differently now that isn't--this may be a five-hour discussion, so I don't know if--maybe we talk offline, because I also don't want to get you in trouble, but we've got to do something with LA County.

I can give some brief context. So my experience in Los Angeles County, I worked there for 16 years, and I started off as a detention service staff working in juvenile hall, and I worked in juvenile hall between the years of 2002 to 2005, and after that point, I transitioned to camp. And as I kind of rose up the rank, I was on the adult side.

And so I worked in adult supervision and adult operations up until 2018, and then in 2018, I transitioned here to Alameda County. So my role in Los Angeles County was not in a leadership role at all, and I had no involvement at all in how the facilities were ran in Los Angeles. So, unfortunately, I couldn't speak to that, sir.

Okay. Thank you.

Any final questions for this panel?

One more question, Chair.

Go ahead.

Okay. These are for the two county offices of education. This is about the transition plans for the students when they arrive at the court school and when they return to their school of origin. What are the roles for the County Office of Education in this, and who else has a role in this process?

We can tag team this. We have a transition specialist as well as a counselor on staff at our facility, both in the intake and as well as the transition out. They make sure that there's a proper handoff to the school district official and meet with the parent as well as the student on that transition, and after the handoff of the baton, per se exists, then for subsequent weeks, there's still contact.

There are occasions where the student might not feel comfortable going back to the school district setting, especially if there was gang activity or affiliations and they're afraid of not being successful in the school environment. We make sure that they have access to counseling from the school district side or we maintain communication on our end. We put a lot of energy and expectation into the transition process, and we believe that it doesn't begin at that moment when they're going to transition out.

But throughout their experience and stay there, we're constantly trying to build the students, having the skill set to reengage in the general setting, and working with the families as well.

I would echo the point of my colleague that we view transition as the point when students are booked. That's when we begin on transition services. In Alameda County, we have both an orientation and assessment center that works with youth when they first come in. While students are there, we develop an individualized learning and transition plan for each student who is enrolled for at least 15 days because it does take us some time to work with the student.

And Alameda County has a transition center, which is a multiagency collaboration to try to work on helping students and their families when the students exit Juvenile Hall. The Transition Center is managed by probation and also has behavioral health care, Oakland Unified School District representatives, as well as the County Office of Education. I will say just for my county, it's an area that we've put a lot of effort into and it's not enough.

The transitions are hard and whereas we greet students who have had struggled with education in their histories, we also know that they struggle when they leave our facilities. So that is a huge area of focus for us in Alameda County.

If I can comment just quickly about Ventura County and the way that we support transition as well, as far as probation is concerned, we have a team. Usually it's definitely ran by the supervising probation officer that's out there, but also we have lived experience mentors who are in our facility, embedded in there. We have four of them. All they do is work with youth. That's all their job is, really. They transition out with them.

And we also have a community-based organization who we contract with who does the same thing. They work with the youth and their families on the transition, with the probation officer and the lived experience mentors. And part of that is trying to make sure that they get back in school. And if I have time, I'd like to comment on the A-G, the college piece.

Ventura County--I'm not sure we stay away or we stay away from A-G courses at all, the online college courses that they're taking. We have one youth who's 28 units away from his AA. We've had two youth who have been released from SYTF, one in February, one in March. They both were attending college. They both are still in compliance with their supervision terms, and they are both still attending those college classes as we speak.

And if I can just do a quick plug, our vision is to next semester have in person college courses with a cohort, that's two-year cohort where at the end of that, they get their associate's degree, and then we'll set them up while they're in the facility if they're still with us to get a bachelor's degree, similar to what DJJ does.

I think the unfortunate reality is that we have with Alameda County and Ventura County here, probably the more further along and developed programs, and we know that there are other county offices of education where students are having a very different experience, and that is an opportunity and a challenge for us. So I just wanted to ask a very quick question about to our probation leaders here. Do you track the recidivism rates for youth that are committed to your facilities?

So we've recently hired a researcher that's staffed on full time with us, and that's his first duty is to establish recidivism rates ongoing.

So not yet?

Correct. But typically what we would do is we would outsource that to a consultant who would come in and do that, but you're right, we don't have our recidivism--

In Alameda County?

Same response. Not yet.

Okay, great. Thank you so much. I really appreciate you all coming out.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We'll move on to Panel Three, which is the Higher Education and County Juvenile Correctional Facilities.

Thank you very much, Chair Bonta. I appreciate being here today. This is a really important topic for me. My name is John Keene. I'm the Chief Probation Officer in San Mateo County.

I want to talk a little bit about my county in terms of just kind of our demographic information, and then really get to the important stuff, which is to talk about this really wonderful program that I've had the pleasure of the last decade to see grow and build and hopefully become a model for what's possible throughout the state. In San Mateo county, we have an average daily population of about 25. We are rated in our juvenile hall for a capacity of 180.

We actually, our demographic breakdown, we are 70% Latino represented in our facility. Our average term of stay inside of our facility is about 32 days. And that's really important because I want to talk a little bit about some of the challenges later when we talk about that kind of higher education goal that I think we have to improve on, that our median stay is only six days.

And I really want to stress that because I think that's an important part of what we hope to try to accomplish, and how do we do that in an effective manner, considering that we only have a limited amount of time with some of the young people we work with, our average age population is roughly around 70%, between 15 and 17, only about 27% over the age of 1818 and above.

That's really important just because I know there's a lot of concern, obviously, with the transition from DJJ and what it will look like. It's important to note, and I think Chair Bonta hit on this earlier when she talked about the great variation between county to county in terms of how we all look and kind of some of the challenges we'll face. So, for example, in San Mateo County, we're not expecting back a huge impact from DJJ realignment.

We didn't overly rely on DJJ as a way in which we did our business before. We tended to keep all of our young people local because we believed that we could serve them in their natural communities. And so I only have one person who is still at DJJ, and that young person will parole out before they come home. So we won't be impacted directly from the closure.

As we think about our future state, we're probably only going to have somewhere between one to five young adults that we see this new kind of way of doing business impacting us in terms of our facility. We have one young person now, who is in our facility, in our secure track program, that young person technically is capable of spending up to seven years in our program. But even with that, that's not a guaranteed amount of time.

Along with the new legislation, it does allow for when those young people go back to court every six months or so for review, there's an opportunity for the young person to leave a secure space and actually go into a less secure environment. So it's not a guaranteed that every time a young person is sentenced to a period of time inside a facility, that they would do that number that you see kind of broadcast out.

When I think about kind of what probation's role is in terms of this goal of achieving higher education and facility in our space, I really saw myself 10 years ago stepping into this role as how can I kind of help create more yeses than no's in the facility? I think for a long time, we kind of didn't necessarily envision at the local level this idea of creating a space for higher education, because typically young people didn't stay with us very long.

So it was these conversations around, why would you build something that is potentially that you won't see kind of fork its way through this fruition? So I really tried to look at it from the perspective of what are some things we can do to connect our young people to higher education, and also what could we do in our facilities that were not originally built for this purpose? We were not originally built for long term stay.

We were all young, supposed to be transitional spaces, and once a young person received their dispo or their disposition, they would transition out of our facility, back into the community or wherever they're going to go at that point? So we looked at, in San Mateo county, we looked at, okay, what were some things we could do immediately that didn't require a bunch of funding, didn't require for us to have to do a lot of ask of others.

So really we started to look at the logistics of our facility. What could we change around the facility to make it work? Could we create a space inside of our current configuration to allow for higher education to happen? And so a lot of it was about really talking to our staff and willing to change the mindset of our employees around this concept. What can we do to bring the young people together, but also create and strengthen the partnerships we already had?

We have a very strong working relationship with our County Office of Ed in San Mateo county. We are offering classes at age in our space. We also have high school diplomas. We do Geds we've always had a very comprehensive and robust platform for our young people. So this idea to transition to a higher education space was not very foreign for us. So what I tried to do was really look at what was needed.

And so whether it was kind of bringing Internet into the facility, which at the time we first started talking about this, that was a really big ask. Trying to find opportunities for the computers and monitors and basic things that were necessary was also something that was really important. But really the strongest and most important thing was that we had a tremendous partnership with the College of San Mateo through the project change program.

They really set a pathway for us to follow and to support them to create an environment in the facility, but also equally as important to create a space for the young people once they transitioned out.

One of the real gaps, I believe, in this program, or in the program offering of higher education is really the same that exists when you talk about high school students or even elementary school students transitioning out of facilities, is this idea of them going back on a campus or being introduced to a campus for the first time and feeling welcomed in that space.

So one of the most important things that this program does is this ambassadorship that it has on the college campus, where an individual has somebody who sits there and works with them and helps to kind of shepherd them through this experience of being on campus and seeing what it feels like. And so it's really, I think, one of the real strong parts of what we do that was really fundamental to how we started in the first place to get things going during the pandemic.

We really were already positioned well for online learning. We had already done that for many, many years. We'd had a combination of online learning and in person Professor support from the early onset of our program. Oftentimes the professors on campus would comment that they didn't believe our kids were actually in custody because they were performing so well. They were actually doing better in the course operations than some of the young people that were on the outs.

And so we really looked at this as an opportunity to continue to expand upon this. And so when the money and the opportunity for the rise of scholars came, it was really a warm welcome to our collective hearts in terms of what we've been doing. So I think, really, our goal in probation is really to make a space for these things to happen in our environment. So we support it and have supported it from the beginning in almost every avenue.

I will say, though, that it was interesting earlier to hear the conversation about rehabilitation and how important rehabilitation is to this process. But I like to remind people that rehabilitation preassumes that people are in a good place to beginning, and that all we have to do is dust them off a little bit, put them on a good path, and then bring them back.

I think that no place is this more a contradiction than the idea of education, because most of our young people come to us with deficits and challenges to begin with. So I see probation and community supports more from an abilitative perspective than a rehabilitation. We actually are helping to build new pathways for young people, and that's what project change does so well.

And we're just really proud as probation Department of San Mateo to be able to support that really quickly because I want to leave room for my colleagues to speak in terms of just some of the gaps and challenges that we've been able to see over the last 10 years. I think a lot of it is just the basic logistics of having access to the proper level of Internet support you need.

Bringing in high speed Internet was a challenge, really to build in this building that wasn't really configured to have holes and things drilled in it for supports, finding the proper level of technology to actually do it in that space, to get past some of the genuine concerns that maybe some of the staff may have around access and people doing wonky things on the Internet when you have access to it and kind of chats and all of that thing kind of getting past that.

But also something that's really important that I want to highlight is that the fluidity of entry into a juvenile detention center does not match well with the idea of a college kind of course structure. And so one of the things that I think is really important for this Committee to consider in terms of expansion is trying to figure out how to support programs that allow for the fact that you're not always going to have these learners through a traditional kind of college experience.

And so for our college peers and our college partners in this process, I would love to see something that supports their ability to not only maintain college professors who are available to support this program, even when enrollment is Low and even when enrollment is very fluid.

I would also like to see something where, when those young people transition out, because, as I said, my average stay is 32 days and a mean of six, that they still have access to that program, they still have access to those ambassadors and that support. And so I think that's really going to be a fundamental part of how we consider higher education throughout the state moving forward.

And lastly, just to highlight some of the things that I think we do really well, which I think are innovative, in my opinion. I think the ambassador conversation is really innovative, and I think it's really important for supports because it speaks to the issue that was raised in the last panel around this idea of helping youth transition back to campus. That is very true. Also at the higher level as well.

Young people need people on campus to help support them so they can feel welcomed and wanted and a part of that process, because, frankly, youth and detention spaces, when they transition back out to places of education, they oftentimes are not treated as if they're wanted there. And I think that's something that we don't talk about enough. Lastly, continually, we're very proud of the integration of the prison education program that is also working in the state right now. We love the connection that we're doing with that.

We're looking to expand more access to more technology throughout the facility, add an even higher speed access throughout the program. And to a point that was mentioned earlier, now that our program has shrank as much as it has, we've had to reimagine our vocational training program.

We used to run a camp several years ago that actually had a full fledged vocational training program where we did Habitat for Humanity training, where we did construction works, we did food prep work and things of that nature where young people were able to get certificates that they could take out and actually start the work process. We've had to shutter some of that because that population decreased so much. So now we're able to figure out how to re envision that inside of our facility.

And so we have a couple of programs right now that we're very proud that are getting ready to start that will actually go back to some of those trades that we were teaching before. And so I think those combinations of things added to the work that project change does so well is going to offer, I think, an ongoing support for not only what we do with our young people today and our young adults in the service today, but also in the future. So thank you very much. And I look forward to answering questions at the appropriate time.

Thank you. And I think we want to keep everyone's remarks to about five minutes. I really appreciate that. We'll move forward with Kelly Nadler.

Hi. Chairs and Committee Members, good afternoon. Good evening. I'm Kelly Nadler. I work with the California Community College Chancellor's Office and one of three regional rising scholars leads. And I've really taken the lead on our youth justice program. There's a handout here that I'll loosely walk us through, and then I'll expand on some other parts. So for those who don't know, rising scholars is a collection of community colleges who serve incarcerated and formerly incarcerated students.

Thanks in large part to Assemblymember McCarty, we now fund 80 of the 116 community colleges to do this work, which is huge. In the last year, about. We serve about 16,000 students per semester, and we see that continue to grow. The trajectory is that we got all of the funding in order to serve our incarcerated and formerly incarcerated students. And what we discovered is that our young folks who were juvenile justice impacted were being left behind.

It is an expensive feat for our colleges to serve in juvenile halls, camps, and secure youth treatment facilities, mostly because those are extremely small class sizes. And the way our system funds courses means that we have a minimum number of students per class in order to make it financially viable for the college.

Because of this, we worked with the youth law center, assemblymember Ting, and many of the folks on this Joint Committee to obtain that $15 million in ongoing funds to expand rising scholars offerings specifically to serve juvenile justice impacted youth. The $15 million makes us the first state in the nation to dedicate higher education dollars specifically for this population, and we're really honored to take on this charge. So essentially, we'll be dividing those funds between up to 45 of our community colleges.

It's a three pronged approach for the community colleges where there will be courses offered in detention, there is an in person requirement, so each college is required to offer at least one course per semester in person at the facility. There is also the transitional support piece. So the college will hire someone full time with these funds. Who? It is their responsibility to help transition students when they have movement.

When we talk about student transitions, we often think about transitioning from detention back to the community or the campus. But we're also here thinking about students who are stepped down for their involvement in college. So if a student starts with a college in a security treatment facility and gets stepped down to a hall, we want the college to provide a continuity of access to higher education.

If a student starts in a juvenile hall and they are served by a particular community college district, and then they're stepped down to a camp, and that camp is served by another community college district, it's the college's responsibility and that full time employee's responsibility to work with the additional campus to ensure a continuity of access to higher education. We've piloted some cross district MOUs on the adult side with our jails, and I'm pushing our colleges to sign those on the youth side as well.

So those are the first two prongs of this three pronged approach. There's the in detention education, the transitional support, and then there is the on campus support piece where our students are required to have a designated space on campus, to have peer support networks, to have a club, to have access to basic needs centers, and to have access to, hopefully, paid peer mentorship roles where they can actually help those who are a few years behind them.

We're hoping that this initiative will promote new models like alternative sentencing, step down for participation in college, and really help counties reimagine the way that they leverage access to higher education. To decrease their reliance on our juvenile detention centers, we will be collecting student centered data.

With this initiative, I created a mis code for our public facing data mart specifically for these students, where, when a college goes in, if they are awarded a grant, they will be required to go in and tell us which location the student is being served in. So we have security, youth treatment facilities, juvenile halls, camps in the community, at alternative or community schools, and then also on our college campus. And so what we'll be able to show you is, where are our students succeeding?

Are our students in secure youth treatment facilities because they have longer stays succeeding? Are they retaining from semester to semester, and where we're struggling? Right.

In addition to that data element, we also withheld $750,000 from the first year of the funding, as was written in the budget Bill Language, in order to hire a research firm to do a five year research study that looks at elements like recidivism, like employment placement and other details, so that, really, California can look at this initiative and say, here's where we're succeeding, and here's where we need to fill in some of the gaps.

And the hope, really, is that we become a national model and that other states can increase their reliance on access to higher education and decrease their reliance on juvenile justice. Detainee. It's important to note that under this initiative, the definition of a juvenile justice impacted youth is very broad. I fought pretty hard to make it so that our colleges can serve youth who have been arrested, detained, or even referred to probation.

We know that about 40,000 young people in California were referred to probation in the last couple of years. And so that means that our colleges can be reaching into our community schools, our alternative high school districts, and providing dual enrollment opportunities to build pathways from those environments to the colleges so that not only are we reaching these young people once, they're already in trouble. Right. But we're helping reach them before they potentially continue on a pathway to the youth system or to the adult system.

I've listed out the timeline. We just released our RFA, so the request for applications is out. We will be announcing the grantees at our July board of Governor meeting, and then our colleges will receive the funds, probably September October of this year. If a college is well established like our San Mateo College is, they will hit the ground running, expand.

If they need a little bit more time, we'll have implementation plans so that folks will have six months and a year, a year and a half to implement some of the program models in order to get things fully operational. This is a collaboration, really, not just for the community colleges and the probation departments, but also the county offices of education.

And any college who is applying is going to submit a letter of commitment signed by the County Office of Education and the juvenile probation Department so that all entities can be on the same page about what they are signing up for. I have one last comment, which is just that on this second to last page, there's a request. I submitted this with Mark Martin, but there's budget language.

We have $3 million to reimburse colleges for the textbook costs, and right now that language says that we can reimburse colleges for the textbook costs of students who are inside CDCR. We do not need the full 3 million for that reimbursement process. And I'm asking that that language be adjusted to include juvenile detention facilities and county jails so that we may reimburse colleges for those costs so that the about $300,000 per year per college does not get run down by paying for textbooks, essentially.

So thank you for your time.

Thank you. And we'll move on to Ms. McGarry.

Good evening. I am Dr. Mariko Peshon McGarry. I'm the Dean of the Prison and Reentry Education Program for Los Rios Community College District here in Sacramento County. The district has four colleges, American River College, Cosumnes River, Folsom Lake, and Sacramento City College. And really, my purpose in being here today is to bring this home. So, 20 minutes from where we are seated is Keefer Boulevard. And what is on Kiefer Boulevard? The youth detention facility.

That facility, on average, has 900 unduplicated youth cycle through the facility each year. We're anticipating 50 to 70 DJJ students arriving on July 1 of this year. The opening remarks to this hearing consisted of terms like variance, disruption, myriad of issues, entanglement, incarceral systems, and that reality is not happening far from here. It's in our backyard. In Sacramento county, we host two level four, the highest level state prisons. We have several county jail facilities and a youth detention facility.

The two state prisons and the prison industry authority are 4.4 miles away from Folsom Lake College. It's in our backyard. They shop at the same stores. When they return home, their children go to the same schools. It's really something that happens in the community, and thus it is the community college's obligation to serve them in an equitable and high quality manner. Los Rios Community College District truly believes that education belongs to everyone.

When we began our feat with incarcerated students at the state prison level in 2016, the emphasis was really on career education, but not just career education, so that students could exit those facilities and swing a hammer or work at a restaurant. The goal was that they would exit those facilities, return to the community and to campus and manage the construction site, manage or own the restaurant, ensure that they could earn a livable wage and advance the workforce with their transferable units, certificates, and degrees.

In 2018, when we began with the youth detention facility, we used the same labor market data to inform our degree offerings and our course schedule because it's really not useful to say, great, you're going to graduate in four to six years with a degree in sociology without any jobs waiting for you, without a clear pathway through higher education and into the workforce. So we've used the labor market data and aligned that with the CSUs to ensure that our students have a long term transition plan.

What we need to ensure is that in this level of facility, we have open access, open entry, open exit, and re entry course opportunities so that students aren't penalized on the end when they have to exit for court, when they transition in and out, when their length of stay changes unexpectedly. We want to ensure that we're offering program pathways that allow students to enter, complete, persist, and continue their educational goals, regardless of what level of facility or how long they have in that location.

Many of our students in all of the facilities will tell you that it's not reasonable to call this reentry or rehabilitation because they've never done it before in this manner. We've never had this many systems collaborate and come together to ensure that their life course trajectory was appropriately supported with the same level of quality that we provide. On a college campus in Los Rios, we're committed to accommodating a student's access and pathway through a youth detention facility, not modifying the standard.

We have that standard of education and special education, and as a district, we're committed to doing the same. So in some ways, we're experiencing the academic AB 109 reality where in 2011, county jails were trying to figure out how to create dental suites in facility because the length of stay required more medical support. We're now trying to create biology labs and art studios in correctional facilities for youth that otherwise wouldn't have access to those very same courses they could walk onto campus and enroll in today.

Many medical metaphors have been used today, and really, it's the continuity of care or support that we're committed to. Our return of investment is very, very high in Los Rios. We know that for every three unit course a student completes in a semester, we save our local community over $4,600. With over 1200 enrollments per semester, we're looking at $4.6 million in savings.

Because students do not recidivate as frequently that come out with a college degree or a community college network to rely on as they return to campus and enter into the workforce. Our faculty attests to creating long and wide bridges across systems that really are overlapping on a daily basis in a correctional facility based classroom.

We're working within title 15 Ed code FERPA, many highly sets of bureaucratic regulations that really mean we have to get creative in ensuring students have access to the same college experience that they would on a college campus. We have very, very high levels of persistence and completion rates in Los Rios, with an almost 80% success rate, which outcompetes all of our on campus rates. According to CDCR, individuals who complete college courses while in facility at the adult level have a 1.9% recidivism rate.

We know in this region we hover around a 60% recidivism rate, but we attest that really this comes from the student experience that began long, long before their incarceration time. Many of our students share with us that they were born in California correctional facilities, and so by the time they enter into a college course, they're asking questions like, who could we become?

What would happen if educators are empowered to meet the academic as well as the social and emotional needs of students by implementing early prevention strategies, culturally responsive pedagogy, and restorative justice practices. This is really the commitment and the mission of Los Rios Community College District and community colleges throughout the state. Thank you very much.

Thank you. We will move on to Mr. Heiner.

Afternoon Chairs Bonta and McCarty, honorable Members of the subcommittees. My name is Dr. Brady Heiner. I'm a Professor of Philosophy and the interim Executive Director of the CSU Project Rebound Consortium I'm also a member of the Higher Education Advisory Committee for the Office of Youth and Community Restoration. The project Rebound Consortium is a network of programs at 15 CSU campuses across the state that supports the higher education and successful reintegration of formerly incarcerated students, two thirds of whom come from historically underserved backgrounds.

Only 5% of the 830 students currently enrolled in our programs are under the age of 25. Most are adults seeking the transformative power of higher education after having served years in state prison. However, 36% of project rebound students have prior juvenile justice system involvement, as do many project rebound staff. And so many people in the project rebound community have strong motivation and aptitude to serve as credible mentors for system involved youths.

So, through grants from the Department of Juvenile justice in 2020 and the California Wellness Foundation in 2021, Project Rebound has piloted programs to build postsecondary educational pathways for juvenile justice system-involved youths at eight CSU campuses at Humboldt, Fresno, Fullerton, Pomona, Sacramento, San Bernardino, San Francisco, and San Marcos. These programs operate at two DJJ facilities, three CDCR youth offender programs, six county juvenile correctional facilities, one juvenile court and community school, and two continuation high schools.

All of the programs leverage the power of the lived experiences of formerly incarcerated University staff and students. All provide credible mentorship and personalized academic advising designed to create supportive pipelines to help youths pursue higher education. Post release all introduce system involved youth to college through instruction on admissions, financial aid, academic degree programs, University campus life resources, and system navigation, and all foster the foundational knowledge, skills, and attitudes necessary for college success and lifelong learning.

Most project Rebound youth engagement programs currently provide noncredit course modules or certificate programs, which, in addition to college preparatory curricula, also include topics such as creative writing, intro to sociology, ethnic studies, conflict resolution, and restorative justice. Fresno State's in-person mentorship program operates in conjunction with the dual enrollment program provided by Fresno City College's Rising Scholars program.

Sacramento State has taken the CSU project Rebound Outreach Program, a robust, workshop based pre college orientation and certificate program consisting of 890 minutes workshops that has been successfully offered to 500 adults inside CDCR and adapted it to the specific needs of youths in CDCR's youth offender programs.

San Francisco State's College of Ethnic Studies, in collaboration with Project Rebound, provides a 12 unit certificate program for 33 youths inside of DJJ that consists of four online courses and ethnic studies taught by San Francisco State faculty using synchronous video conferencing that fulfill lower division General education requirements at any CSU.

Cal State Fullerton's Dare to dream program, an eight week certificate program that has been offered to 48 incarcerated youths in Orange County since last fall, brings incarcerated youth participants to visit the University campus and join University students in classroom discussion. Youths also visit Project Rebound's John Irwin House, the first transformative housing initiative for formerly incarcerated University students in the nation, and are equipped with college startup kits from the University bookstore.

This summer, Fullerton will launch its Rebound Academy, a post-release transitional college experience for system-involved youths loosely modeled on the educational Opportunity program's highly successful summer bridge program. In closing, I wish to issue a strong cautionary note. If there's one thing that we've learned through Project Rebound's pilot efforts, it's that youth deserve and benefit most from a continuum of care characterized by consistent interpersonal proximity, presence, and community. With credible mentors from incarceration to matriculation and graduation.

Under the seductive auspices of access and student choice, and under the triage pressures of the impending closure of DJJ, we are already seeing a strong statewide momentum toward remote, packet-based, or asynchronous online modalities of college instruction and engagement. It's true that a tablet or laptop can function as a portal to a statewide array of online academic programs and course offerings that youths could potentially continue without interruption post-release. It's also true that online college is much less resource-intensive than in-person college programming.

However, California's goal for youths should not be just college credits, but personal transformation, successful social integration, and college persistence and graduation. And that requires balancing the values of access and student curricular choice with the sometimes competing values of educational quality and life affirming socialization embodied in in person programs that offer communities of belonging through real time mentorship and peer to peer interaction. Thank you. Happy to discuss further or address any questions Members may have.

Thank you. And we'll move to our last panelist, Edgar Villegas

Good afternoon honorable Chairs of the Assembly Budget Subcommittee on Education Finance and Assembly Budget Subcommittee on Public Safety and esteemed Member Committee Members, thank you for hosting this information hearing on K-12 and higher education and county juvenile facilities. My name is Edgar Villegas. I'm 20 years old and I live in Orange County. I'm a former incarcerator to use recently relieved recently released from a juvenile facility in Santa Ana.

More importantly, I work at California State University of Fullerton as Project Rebounds Dare to Dream Youth Mentor and this fall I will be starting my freshman year at CSUF as well. I'm here today to share my experiences with navigating life at the intersection of the educational system and criminalization before, during, and since my release earlier this year on January 13, 2023. Prior to my incarceration, school was not a safe and welcoming it was not a safe and welcoming space.

I struggled with school for several reasons, violence, lack of a caring community, and the sense of not fitting in being with some of them. I was five years old the first time I came into contact with law enforcement. By 8th grade, I was kicked out of the district and placed in a continuation school. The education that was offered in continuation school was poor and that is describing it nicely. The teachers did not care about teaching, so the students did not care about learning.

We were mostly given worksheets and I completed the homework packets that were thrown at me and because of that was given a high school diploma. But it was just another piece of paper to me. It did not mean very much to me because it was not my idea of how I would finish high school. It was not until the last time I was incarcerated in 2022, that I began to think about education differently.

I decided to roll in a couple of community college course, this mainly to keep myself busy and pass the time. To my surprise, I did well in my classes, public speaking, history of rock, sociology and career and life counseling, earning all a's. That is when I realized that I was not as stupid as I thought I was. During this time, I encountered project rebound. Many programs offered services, but this program was the first to generally go the extra mile.

Without asking, I found Mr. JC, Project Rebound's program Director, taking the initiative to appear at my court hearing advocating for me. This really allowed me to see what I consider a person's true colors, if they genuinely did want to support me or not. He took it upon himself to go the extra mile without me, but the difference is that it was for me, not somebody else. Seeing how supportive the team was intrigued me to continue participating in the daredevil dream course.

A couple of weeks before my release date, the program asked me if I would consider joining their team as a staff in a position that was not even created yet. At first I did not want to believe them. I questioned why they would go out of their way to even create a job for me. Fast forward to my first post release court appearance.

I saw Mr. JC and Miss Ingrid, the Juvenile Justice Outreach Coordinator, in court, and to my surprise, they had shown up to support me. When the court was over, I asked Miss Ingrid to give me a ride back to where I was living, and she did. But first she took a Detour to Cal State Fullerton's campus and the Project Rebound Offices. That was when I was once again presented with the opportunity to work with Project Rebound.

Although still skeptical, I was willing to give it a chance and I am glad I did because it has worked out well for me so far. Project Rebound has given me an employment and a sense of community. I now see options and opportunities for a better life for myself that I did not see before Project Rebound came into my life. I'm looking forward to starting my academic journey in the fall.

Although I have not decided on my major yet, I'm interested in both sociology and psychology right now. I'm not sure about my career path yet, but I have learned that I do like working in the higher education space and with system-impacted individuals. I'm thinking about social work or some sort of counseling career, but I am still undecided. I would like to offer these recommendations that I believe would be impactful to better engage incarcerated youth.

First, students who are close to graduating or taking college courses in youth correctional facilities should be assigned an educational team. I myself have an educational team, but I consider Mr. JC all three of these. The team would consist of an academic peer navigator who would get to know what fields of interest the young adult is considering and a case manager who will provide support with navigating services for reentry, and a life coach, which is someone who would be considered a homie.

All this would be available to everyone in the youth facilities. To conclude, the current programs, classes, resources, et cetera, being offered to long-term youth offenders and graduates must change. There are services and programs that are ineffective and have been in place for some time that no longer help the youth once they graduate from high school. The things we should be teaching these young men and women are often restricted because they are in a juvenile facility, although they are already above age.

I was once denied the opportunity to create an email I was once denied the opportunity to create an email address so the college I was registering to would be able to contact me. These are just a few suggestions to better provide and ensure academic success for these incarcerated youth. Lastly, you should know that all colleges also don't have the right policies in place to support incarcerated students. And many times probation policies conflict with these college policies. Youth facilities are not college campuses. Thank you for listening to me, and if I may ask for just a couple of minutes or a couple of seconds to freely talk.

Thank you. Please. You want additional time to.

Zero, yeah. I just wanted to point out earlier I heard about the question of why juveniles have incarceration rate has been decreasing. I'm 20 years old. 10 years ago, I had a lot of older people opinion. I guess I had lifers coming out of prison. One thing they always emphasized was the importance of education because the lack that, I guess they realized they weren't in the right path, but it was too late for them.

I was told they were my first advocates, my personal advocate, my personal life coach. And I think that's why, because many people who did gain parole or were able to do that transition out from the system to out here go back to their communities to talk to their own people. I believe that's why in the last decade, recidivism has decreased in regards to minors and youth. I know many people still inside and out here who have changed their life.

So their stories, now that I'm more mature and more, I'm able to see the world in a macro level, just rather than in my own county, rather than my own city. In my head, I believe their stories and what they have to offer is very authentic. It can be just given by someone who has a degree or doesn't have no life experience, but has a degree, I believe that's a big key for that. But that's it. Thank you for hearing.

Thank you for all of your sharing of your experience, Mr. V. I guess, but especially the most hopeful and real way that we know that good things can happen from when we empower community to be able to represent and give back to community. So thank you for sharing that. I'll open it up for panel questions to you.

Yeah, you can go first this time.

O, fine. I'll go first this time. So I think one, I did want to just ask Mr. Villegas a follow-up question to your commentary around the way in which the college campus policies don't necessarily mesh with the policies in probation. And just from your own kind of lived experience, maybe some examples of where you saw those two things not really lining up in the way that they should.

Well, first and foremost, the juvenile probations. I'm assuming the setting. It was a juvenile facility. Probation was big on privacy or big on the emails. I couldn't create an email because of the possibility. So that's one of them. How even though I'm above 18, I'm still getting traded as a juvenile, in the sense of I don't know what's best for myself. And another thing is, we were only given courses that were non-credited based on the university's availability.

And whatever their schedule was that they gave the university, the university would give it to probation, and probation would either deny it or accept it based on the programs that they. The schedule that they had. Based on the camp, and it's the camp and then the halls. I've been on both, but I live most of my life, my juvenile life, in the halls. They're mainly based on programs for each. How do I say it? They're characterized.

There's the long term, two long terms, and then there's the camps. Two camps, I believe. One camp now. And then there's the Ward. Disabled guys, like the people that need help, they all have their own thing, but once you hit graduate, whether you're 18 or not, there's no services. They're freeballing it, for lack of words.

There's no protocol that they're actually following with OCD in high school, kind of based on what I said about in continuation, they just toss you packets and they give you credit regardless if you answer them right or not. But in the higher education, it's more based on the University's policies of kind of the requirements and probations. Unwilling. Like fuck. I don't know if it's. They're just. They're just not unwilling to do it or like to accommodate that, or like, they just don't want to.

I don't know. But their thing is about staffing, their thing is about security or liabilities, not. Necessarily about the learning. There are. How do I say, people who I've heard speak about the MOUs, or like the university's MOUs. I'm not much familiar with that term, but I know that was a big part of an issue that was talked.

Yeah, that's helpful. Thank you. So, Professor Heiner, I just wanted to also thank you for being here. And I also understand that Ms. Romero Ralston is here as well, in the audience today. Wanted to just give you a shout out for your leadership in expanding what is a relatively small program at CSU into what is today such an incredible opportunity to support our youth in juvenile facilities. So I want to thank you for that. And just also wanted to have you expound upon a little bit.

You mentioned in your testimony the need for offering kind of asynchronous and synchronous learning opportunities. I think that was addressed in terms of the kind of interruptions and the fact that this system wasn't really built for long-term stays for the most part. And Mr. Villegas also spoke to the idea of giving people packets as opposed to what we know needs to happen.

So if you could speak to, if nothing else, kind of the staffing models that you think are appropriate to be able to ensure that there's a kind of longevity of support and learning opportunities and course offerings. And I think all three of you might be able to answer that.

Yeah, thank you. So I think Edgar spoke really pointedly to it when he pointed to a peer navigator. Right. So I tried to foreground in my remarks that almost all of project rebound staff have lived experience with the criminal legal system, and 36% of our students have juvenile justice experience. So that credibility when our staff come in as representatives of the University and really seek to secure the consent of youths in the process. Right.

And really seek to build trust and are able with great facility to secure that buy in and show up, as Edgar mentioned, in youth development court and show up at release. Right. And to take Edgar on that detour to the university campus. Right? So having credible mentors who are peers, and now that we have graduates, when we bring youths who are still in custody onto campus, they're now seeing Edgar and others that they were inside with living a new life. Right.

Employed on a college campus, enrolled on a college campus. So I think that's important that the continuity, right? So many youths have been failed and are survivors of systems of organized abandonment, that the coming and going of staff and the coming and going of programs, I think just heightens the trauma that's associated with that. So having programs that really invest and create those pathways rebound, even when in custody, is building that pathway and building a sense of identity and inclusion and belonging on the campus itself.

I appreciate that. I just wanted to get a little bit into the heart of what it would mean to actually be able to scale at a level that would have the kind of impact that we want across the State of California. So if you can speak either, I guess we have rising scholars that has kind of some legitimate scale here, too. But I know that project rebound is also in the process of trying to do that in a very thoughtful way as well.

So if you could give us a sense of the plan scale, but then also the funding resources required to be able to achieve that level of scale and some of the funding sources that you think need to be tapped into.

That's a big question.

Sorry.

Yeah. And I don't know that I have all the answers for you right now, but I can certainly do some thinking and research and discussion with my colleagues and get back to you. But I'll say that our reciprocal rate across the system is less than 1%, and 66% of our students are earning more than 3.0 every single semester. So we have a high success rate. We have learned in the short time that we've been pivoting to try to support youth, that it's very resource intensive.

So the scale of staffing required to provide youth with the support, empowerment and continuity that they deserve is greater. I guess that should come as no surprise. But at the same time, we strategically have approached the adult build. We've strategically built a prison to college pipeline from the adult system first, because now we have 830 credible messengers and further alumni who we can leverage federal work study, for instance, to employ on campus to help do this work. So there's a great deal of supply of ambassadors, but it's about capacitating them, I guess.

Similar question for Ms. Nadler related to the Rising Scholars Program.

A question of scale or. Yeah, we have done this before, which is a really fortunate advantage. We scaled programs from having a couple to 44 and now to 80 on the adult side. And so we've learned a lot of lessons along the way about what works and what doesn't work. We are tapping into some of those project rebound graduates to potentially run our programs.

It's very exciting to have a pool of 800 people that we could potentially distribute these 45 job descriptions that will be coming out from the campuses to ensure that we're hiring folks who are credible messengers. Right. We don't require that the program lead be formally incarcerated themselves, but we do require that they have direct experience with systems of incarceration. Scaling is going to be a bit of a task. We've withheld some dollars for staffing.

Basically, I'd like to take the role that I'm playing now, which is in addition to doing a lot of the statewide organizing on the youth justice initiative, I do regional technical assistance and provide. I'm on the phone with college practitioners from more than 30 colleges. It's like 120 people every single day. I go to campuses, I work with their probation departments. I bring solutions about what happened or what was successful for resolving an issue in one county.

And I bring about five different options to another county who's experiencing that same challenge. So we're going to hire more regional coordinators so there will be point people across the state who can help negotiate and navigate the challenges that have come up locally. We're also really committed to this data piece because I think as we scale, it's going to be helpful every year to be able to see where we are succeeding and also where we are failing so that we can pivot in order to meet that need.

And question for Chief Keene. I really appreciated the comment that you made about basically wanting to make sure that you're offering more yeses than no's, and you raised a lot of the issues that have presented. Some no's related to kind of some of the logistics. Another piece of what I think both we are both passionate about is really around digital equity.

It strikes me that a lot of the issues that you've related to, Internet technology access, and even partnerships with community colleges and some of that security and some of the security issues have been presented as barriers. So can you speak a little bit to the ways in which you think we might be able to resource that not only for where you are, but across the state?

Thank you very much. I appreciate the question. I think it was really impactful listening to Mr. Villegas talk about his difficulty getting an email. And that really kind of resonated with me because it took me back to 2010, 2011, 2012 and we started to talk about these things, and it felt like, why would you want to give a person an email account or something of that nature?

It's those types of logistical barriers, I think that we really have to be very intentional about really eliminating. As I said, it was the idea of trying to just find ways to say yes to things and to try to be creative in a space where potentially maybe we have been more stagnant in the past.

It's really important for me to note that my peers across the 41 counties that run juvenile halls are very committed to this issue of looking at things differently, finding an opportunity to find whether, if it's logistical barriers that we can knock down this collaboration with the rising scholars focused around trying to figure out kind of what's this way of replicating some areas in which we can do similar things.

And so I think for me, it was really the idea of just finding some of these very interesting. They seem very trivial today they do. When we talk about ideas of saying that you can trust youth with things other than just pencils to write with, right, writing utensils and the email access or something seems silly today as having to have someone stand over you shoulder while they're on their computer to operate it because you're worried that something's going to happen and things of that nature.

And so I think it's just from a scaling perspective and maybe even an idea chair of thinking about how do you financially support that. I think that when you start to think about funding, having funding that's specifically earmarked to those barriers, I think is really important. We really, in probation across the state, we really appreciated the 100 million that was allocated for us for looking at our facility improvement and things of that nature.

A lot of the things that we can do to soften and to improve the facilities, to make them more meanable to longer stays, I think it's going to be able to be achieved with that. But I think for what I feel this Committee wants to really focus on, I think there needs to be continued investment in that arena, and I think investments that are really focused specifically on those things. So to say this money is specifically to be used to remove these types of barriers, I think is in a very important part of any future legislation that you would consider.

Thank you. I appreciate that. And my last question would be for Dr. McGarry. It seems like Los Rios Community College District has really figured out a lot of things, particularly in terms of the course offerings and the methodology of offering those courses, and just wanted to have you be able to speak to the kind of ways in which we might be able to adopt some of what you all have been able to put in place across other community college districts.

We've been really intentional about ensuring that there's these parallel experiences. So if a student were to walk onto a college campus, they have an array of choices, degree pathways, metamagers, resources, and the goal is to create the same experience as closely as possible in a correctional facility. In doing course scheduling, the dream would be that a student in a correctional facility enrolls in their courses for the semester and let's say eight weeks in, they release.

They should, in theory, be able to return to their community campus and enroll in that same course at the same point in time. So if we're offering art 300 in a correctional facility and a student releases eight weeks in, and it's a 16 week course, if we also have art 300 on campus, there's no reason why they can't continue that enrollment in person on campus because it was an in person course to begin with. So we only offer face to face. It is definitely true.

It is much harder to underserve a student up close and personal when you're standing with a group of students. When you're dialoguing with a group of scholars, you will rise to their level of potential, just as you would on campus. So when we look at scheduling, we're not doing one-offs in facilities. We're offering degree pathways that upon return to the community, they can walk back right onto campus and continue that enrollment without losing time and space in that academic trajectory.

The same is true in facilities. So facilities that have multiple levels or multiple yards or multiple locations, we're always trying to create the same offering at the next level. So a student that moves from a level three to a level two in a facility should be able to pick right back up that next week in their business 300 course without having to drop, have a withdrawal on their record, and impact, ultimately their financial aid down the line and their degree completion.

So aligning the offerings, making sure that our services and supports are as parallel as possible so that that open entry, open exit component can be picked right back up in the community is really important for that long-term planning. It's also doubling the investment because whatever we offer in facility has to be on campus. Whatever's on campus has to make its way into facility. Appreciate that.

Go ahead, Chair Bonta, if I may just address an issue that you raised in relation to the other panels about the absence of A-G Requirements. It seems like AB 130 is a policy mechanism at your disposal that can intervene in that respect, because we're seeing AB 130 being just in the short time that we've been doing this, abused, which is that the intent, I suppose, was to allow youths who have had their educational trajectories interrupted catch up, but it's actually being utilized, I think, to get students high school degrees quicker and out of the responsibility of educators faster, but not equipping them to enter college.

And I know there are consent requirements that I don't know what those forms look like that youths sign in order to get their high school degree quicker and whether they're fully and meaningfully informed about the way that that closes off the doors of four-year universities. So we are at the university at the four-year level.

We have MOUs with our admissions departments that we've designed to sort of respond to the needs of folks who are returning to the community, and we're starting to now adjust them to respond to the specific needs of youths. But that's one area that I think warrants addressing.

And if I may, Senate Bill 416 that Hueso passed in 2021, which was written by rebound project rebound staff and students, has put some guardrails on CDCR in terms of post-secondary education that I think are translatable for some of the. I mean, chair Bonta, you started the session by talking, speaking to the idea that geography should not undermine justice. And we need that flexibility. Our counties are very different, but we need some commitments to quality. And SB 416, at least for the adult system, I think put some of those in place, and they were drafted by folks with lived experience. I think it's worth looking at.

Chair, do you have any questions or comments? Looking at the ingredients? I'm eating the red six ones while I can.

I'm telling Mr. Gabriel is going to know what's going on here within moments. You addressed a lot of our questions, but maybe just paint me through just kind of big picture here. So, on one of the LAO things, it says there are roughly 3000 so students in county juvenile facilities. Is that about right? 3200.

Okay, that's roughly in politicians, yes. And she said earlier in the prior panel that a lot of the students are concentrated in severe learning attainment. So that leads me to think there's probably not a ton that are at the high achieving college level. Maybe like. So maybe Los Rios, is it at Los Rios? Is it 10%, 253050? They're kind of at the potential college level, just based roughly. Go with it.

I think there's a tendency to underestimate a student's lived experience and the applicability of that experience in academia. So community colleges, you don't have to have a GED.

You'd be 18, right?

Yeah. You could be 14. You could be 16. You could be incredibly credit deficient. You could have credits from all over the country. And we'll still enroll. And what will happen is the curriculum will accommodate the student experience. So we're really not filtering those students out.

Because community college does have basic skills. They have adult dad. They teach people with fifth-grade education grant. A lot of people go to adult school, too. I guess what I'm trying to get at is when I think of rising scholars and project rebound and underground scholars, their attractiveness to us to fund those, especially in the state prison system, is recidivism, people going out.

We want people that have education, like Mr. Villegas talked about here, are less likely to get back in the system and more likely to succeed. So we want more of that. But on this younger population, it wasn't always the group that I was thinking about, Grant. But I'm glad that we're here focusing on it. But I'm just wondering, if there's such a small amount of students, how do we most effectively reach them?

I know you were saying too, like some of these students, they may not be good with YouTube University. That's why I think that this whole Calbright thing is a ridiculous idea because those population don't do well with. Just log on. Here you go. You need a peer advisor, an adult working you through these, because you may not have had a great education system before, and that's why you maybe ended up in this juvenile justice system. Right. But that being said, if there are so few students that you're reaching, does the economies of scale make sense? You know what I mean? Are there so few people?

Can I offer angels, advocate counternarrative to that?

That's just a question. How does the math work?

Well, I think the other thing, and I will put Mr. Villegas on the hot seat right now, how many youth in your lived experience do you think had the ability to put themselves in the mindset, to be able to be college going regardless of the circumstance that they were in?

Wow. Over the years?

Yeah. Could they have done it if it had been offered to?

Yeah. Yeah, most definitely. I saw many people go into CYA, DJJ, or just date straight, but they lost hope. They lost hope for themselves. And it was just for simple things that weren't available to them or that were restricted, that were taken away because I say taken away because they're there, or some things were there. They were just favoritism. The word is kind of what comes up.

But yeah, there's programs that I didn't see or heard of or participate when I was younger that I for sure would have taken when I was younger. But yeah, I do see a lot of people in their potential. And I have a lot of stories that I hear also from coming out from prison or in prison as well as in federal state prison. So, yes, I believe there is a big number. Percentage wise, I'm not good. I'm good at math. Not that good. But yeah, I think there's a good handful.

Though, if I can continue my questions, ma'am. And I was actually making a logistical conclusion here. So when we visited Donovan prison recently, allegedly a delegation, we saw some of these inmates that were trying to enroll. And I guess it was the underground program here, which is not here at the table, that's the UC program. And there was supply and demand problem. There was a bunch of students, young adults, who wanted to participate, and there wasn't enough offerings.

I'm just wondering if we have the same thing here because there are so few people in the 18 through 25 cohort here in the juvenile justice system in California. Is there like almost an adult-to-student ratio, like a one-to-one, or is there still students who are having a tough time signing up? You know what I mean? Because in the prison system, they're having it. You win a lottery if you get to sign up for a college-level course. And in here, I'm just trying to paint a picture as far as what it looks like for people looking to get that support, either one. Yeah.

I think it's going to change with these 45 colleges who will have programs. The idea is that access to education and higher education for a young person who's in our system should be a. right.

I sit on the BSCC's Committee that's rewriting the title 15 and title 24 regulations for our secure youth treatment facilities. And I'm trying to get language in there that education access can't be removed as like a punitive step. Right. And so I think when we're talking about rising scholars, the definition and the number of students is a little bit different because the requirement is that that access for those almost 3000 students is there.

But we have an expanded definition that encourages our colleges to reach into the community. And we know that in the last couple of years, about every year, 40,000 young people in California are referred to probation. And so we're asking our colleges, we're saying it's a requirement that you put justice involved.

Not necessarily.

That's right. And the intention is to say, we know that 2200 students, it's not a ton of students. We want all of them to have access and those who are not, we also want to use dual enrollment.

But what we are intending to do is to use these college programs to stop a young person who may have been referred to probation or even arrested, but hasn't yet been detained from ever getting to a place where they're going to be detained by offering an alternative with these on-campus support programs, these dual enrollment programs, these outreach programs. And so there's that 2200, but then there's thousands of other young people in California who are also able to be served through the community college system.

Yeah. So two more questions. So if I recall a couple of years ago when I first heard of rising scholars, I said, do you want to do more? And the folks said, yes. And I said, how much money do you want? And they said, well, how much do you have? And I said, give me a number. And I think it was 10 million. I said, how about 15? And so there's 15 million in the budget. And I guess the question is, is that enough?

Are we serving enough, and what's the number we need? So that's question number one. And then, of the rising scholars network, what's the proportion you think that you serve with your current kind of operations on the ground? There's a lot with juveniles or adults, and I guess adults, as in not the 18 to 25 juvenile definition.

It's almost all adults right now. And so that's why we had to have a separate pot of money, because it's so much more expensive to serve juveniles.

And that's. You're at El Dorado. Well, you're Los Rios, too. Oh, you're the Chancellor's Office. I'm the Chancellor's Office, yeah, I'm sorry about that. Yeah, no, it's okay. But I wanted to ask for specifically, at Los Rios, all is true.

It is more resource intensive to serve youth. It's more resource intensive, period, to serve incarcerated students.

But what's your current, you think, rough ratio you serve with adults versus our 18 to 25 juvenile definition?

Oh, 20 to one. In this region? In the Sacramento region, we have three state prisons, two county jails, one youth detention facility. Right. So when you think about that to scale, our prisons are very large in this region. Our jails are cycling many people through at four different levels. It's a substantial difference. The challenge for youth is not skill. It's time, right. When we offer courses, we can say, here's 10 class offerings, but their enrollment is going to be based on how long they can stay in that class.

They're only there for, what you say, a month. So how do you navigate that? You're really trying to set somebody up for when they go correct home.

So the goal is completion before release, and so you have to plan for release upon entry into the course. So we have to know release dates at the time of enrollment. We have to structure course terms accordingly. We have to make sure that we have appropriate offerings based on their level and length of stay. So what we end up doing is duplicating class schedules in those facilities to ensure that students can enter, complete exit, reenter at a different point in time.

At the youth level, it's very episodic. We might see them three times in one year, but each length of stay is different, so we need to make sure that there's an access point to appropriate course offerings.

Okay, thank you. And we'll be in touch with our chancellor's office because there's news about a not really great budget situation, but in the Prop 98 side, there actually is a little bit of flexibility. Thank you.

Thank you so much to our panelists for the robust conversation. And before we move to public comments, I will turn it over for any final words from our Chair. And I just want to echo many of the sentiments that we shared between our colleagues today. We know that educational inequities continue to exist in our schools, and they're exacerbated within our juvenile facilities.

And when you combine that with the predominantly low-income and black and brown youth in particular that enter into our juvenile justice system, the inequities get even further compounded. There is no doubt that education is not only a way to be able to open doors to opportunities, it is also a pathway to justice and to allow for our youth to be able to thrive and to create different kind of trajectories for them.

So I want to thank all of the panelists for the very robust conversation, for our ability to just recognize that we have some additional pathway building that we need to engage in over the course of the next several years together. And with that, we will move to public comment. Moving to public comment. We'll start with any public comment in the hearing room. Each person will have up to 1 minute for public comment. Next, we will turn to the phones.

The phone number to connect is on the Committee website and should also be on the screen if you are streaming this hearing, the public toll free number is 877-692-8957 and the public access code is 131-5437 with that, we'll start in the room. Thank you.

Good afternoon, Chairs and Members. This is Derick Lennox. On behalf of the California County Superintendents, I first want to express appreciation for these committees holding this hearing and bringing together all of these educational interest holders. We did not see this to the same extent that we are seeing it this year of legislators visiting school sites, staff visiting Juvenile Court School Facilities. It's really incredible, and I want to express special appreciation for including student voice in the conversation.

I thought Mr. Villegas was really excellent, and it's hard to respond to everything here. So I'll just say this, that I appreciated all of the different diverse voices being brought to the same tables here. We are in a process of continuous improvement throughout our schools, and juvenile court schools are no exception.

So some of the comments and the reports here, at first, I think that many of us in the school side looked at and said, wow, that's a little bit critical of us, but that's exactly the point. And so we're glad that the Legislature is involved with this and being part of the growth mindset for our schools and the children that we serve. Thank you.

Good afternoon. Josh Gogger on behalf of the Chief Probation Officers of California, thank you for having this important hearing today. As you heard, county probation departments are in the process of implementing DJJ realignment across the state. This policy shift will increase the local age of jurisdiction and average length of stay of youth and juvenile facilities in many counties. This undoubtedly shifts the needs of our population with this landscape, probation departments have looked to modify programs and facility space to accommodate the shifting educational and rehabilitation needs.

As Chief Keene noted, we strongly supported last year's 100 million investment in juvenile facility improvements, which will assist with education delivery, and thank the Legislature for your support. However, we can always be doing more to incentivize robust partnerships with our education partners and provide adequate learning environments, especially as DJJ realignment reaches full implementation. That's why, for example, CPAC facilitates quarterly meetings between rising scholars, regional coordinators, and probation departments to help identify solutions to challenges that may be hindering program creation or expansion.

We are eager to partner with the Legislature to advance our shared priority to provide robust education opportunities for justice involved youth and look forward to further conversations. Thank you.

Good evening Madam Chair. Lee Angela Reid on behalf of the Sacramento County Office of ED I just wanted to thank you for the hearing and the voices that were heard and to tell you that the programs that you're creating work, we're seeing the evidence Rising Scholars project rebound, and just want to share a story of a young of a remarkable student from Sacramento.

He just recently graduated the Sacramento County Office of Ed K-12 program with a high school diploma and he was duly enrolled in his college courses to earn an AA. During his time in the program, he participated in the culinary and preappointed ship construction program through Northern California construction and training. Over the last year and a half, he earned his AA through rising scholars at Lake Tahoe Community College. He's been accepted at CSU Sacramento and Project Rebound is helping him with his housing.

The Sacramento County Office of Ed partners with the Lake Tahoe Community College, SAC State, and are re-engaging with Los Rios to expand the resources to their students. They Fund their transition specialists with grant funds that support the youth in their coursework daily, manage their enrollment, provide tutoring, monitor progress, and communicate with their postsecondary partners. They also work with their CTE programs. Also grant program. Also grant funded. Because we don't have the CTE dollars, but we hope that'll be corrected through AB 377.

Sac County expects to have another three youth graduating with their AA this fall. What you're doing is working. It's fantastic. And I thought that was a nice way to end the evening. Thank you.

Very nice way to end the evening. Thank you. We will still move to phone lines.

Operator?

I apologize, ladies and gentlemen. If you wish to comment, please press one, then zero at this time. We'll go to line 18, please go ahead. Okay, we'll go to line 22. 22, please go ahead.

Hi, good evening. Elizabeth Escovell, trustee for the Yolo County Board of Education and also Vice Chair for the California County Boards of Education. The Yolo County Office of Education supports five school districts, amongst other programs, but does serve a court school that I've had the chance and opportunity to visit and tour. Just a quick update on where we're at. Last year, we had two students on a regular basis, and there have been conversations in the last two years to close down the school.

But unless the county supervisors vote to do that, we have an obligation to continue serving and educating the students at our court school. Last year we had about two, and in the past three months we've gone from eight to five to seven. So that really shows the volatility of how many students come in and out throughout the calendar year. So we are operating year-round, and as you've heard, there are highly specialized staffing needs and the state funding is based on average daily attendance.

And so to end, I just want to share that the Yolo County Board of Education has passed a resolution in support of AB 906, which establishes a base funding level for juvenile court and community schools to support the unique staffing and programs necessary to serve students. Thank you.

Thank you.

Next to go to line 23, please go ahead.

Good evening, Madam Chair and Mr. Chair and Members of the Committee, Chris Reefe, on behalf of the California School Boards Association, just want to echo the comments of my colleagues during public comment about this hearing, and thank you very much for having it. What you're hearing during, especially in the first panel, is a lot of the challenges, but also a lot of the successes that we're seeing in our juvenile court and our county community schools.

But one of the biggest challenges is the issue of consistent funding. Based upon the volatile nature in which students are referred to these programs, we're doing more with less, but with the expected realignment of DJJ and the downstream implications of what that looks like. If we don't stabilize the funding we're very fearful that these type of consistent growth and gains in academic performance and just the ability for students to return to their schools of enrollment are going to be jeopardized.

And so that's why we're really pleased that there was a reference, AB 906, when that came up in the conversation during the first panel, how much. It's a very great partner to this conversation in terms of how we can much more greatly stabilize and enhance this funding so they can meet the existing expectations before moving to the next steps of how we kind of grow those expectations.

So really just want to call in the Legislature to help support AB 906 and thank you again to the Committee for its leadership on the issue.

Thank you.

Line 16, please go ahead.

Good afternoon, distinguished Chair and Members. Pamela Gibbs, representing the Los Angeles County Office of Education. First, I'd like to thank the Committee for the continued support from the pupils attending juvenile court schools. It is important to note that students attending juvenile court schools could not always avail themselves of programs or funding available to other students in the TK through 12 education system.

We urge your support for a funding mechanism, including a base funding level, to address the highly dynamic nature of providing services in the juvenile court and community school environment, as you heard today, and the averaging of attendance methodology used by school districts. LACOE was a proud sponsor of the At Promise legislation in 2019, authored by Assembly Member Joan Sawyer. We're pleased to hear the comments today.

Of course, that legislation referenced changing the at-risk youth to at-promise youth and the penal code and education code that pertains to these students. Our hope is that with this necessary funding in AB 906, our pupils will receive the support needed to live out the goals of that legislation to achieve college and career success. As co-sponsors of AB 906, we look forward to working with you to provide more information about this funding.

I know we've met with many Members on the Committee about this issue previously, and we look forward to continuing the discussions. Thank you.

Thank you.

Line number nine, please go ahead.

Good afternoon, this is Dr. Montepres. I'm a board member of Los Angeles County Board of Education and President emeritus, Los Angeles Mission Community College, who ran these programs. AB 906 is a must. You heard throughout the testimony the obstacles, short-term, long-term, A through G, all of the challenges, the special ed situation.

So the county office education across the state has supported AB 906 as a funding mechanism to help address not only the K12, high school requirements, A through G, and so forth, but the higher education partnerships that are to occur. So we fully endorse AB 906. Thank you so much.

We'll go to line 17. Please go ahead.

Yes. And good evening. My name is Yvonne Tan and I am the county school board member of Los Angeles County Board of Education. Last year, we served nearly 1,800 students in our county schools and camps, and that's year-round. And we must provide a full continuum of services and programs for these kids in every single location, every day, every moment that they check-in.

As a past school teacher and school principal, I know these kids when they re-enter back into my school, this at-promise youth, that they really do so much better if they have had these high-quality and continuous education at the court schools. So I urge please support AB 906 and provide us the base funding so that we're ready for all these kids, our at-promise kids, anytime, any day, every moment, and send them back successfully back to their school of residence.

So thank you so much and we urge for your support. Thank you.

And we'll go to line 20, please go ahead.

Hello, my name is Gina Cuclis and I am the President of the California County Board of Education and a trustee on the Sonoma County Board of Education. As County Office of Education board members, we are asking for greater and more stable funding to help juvenile court and county community schools meet the needs of some of California's most vulnerable, but yet, at-promise students.

In my County Office of Education community school, Amarosa Academy, our goal is to get our students back to their district home schools as quickly as possible. As research shows students perform better when they are reintegrated from juvenile court and community schools back into their home school as quickly as possible. Yet, short stays at court schools create financial volatility since their funding is based on the number of days students attend.

In other words, average daily attendance is a failed funding model for county-operated court and community schools. That is why we need AB 906 and I urge you to please provide the base funding for these highly important programs to serve our students. Thank you.

And we'll go to line eight. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon. I am Michelle De Werd and I'm a board Member on the Santa Barbara County Board of Education. I support AB 906. We serve Santa Barbara County's juvenile court and community schools year-round, which includes the Dos Puertas School at the Juvenile Justice Center, Los Robles High School at the Los Prietos Boys Camp in Santa Barbara, and the Peter B. Fitzgerald Community School in Santa Maria.

These schools are critical safety nets for our students experiencing unique barriers to academic success, career education and social emotional well being. AB 906 establishes a base and stable funding for programming and for the unique staffing needs to ensure robust programs for some of our most vulnerable youth. Ongoing programming includes college and graduation readiness. Santa Barbara County Office of Education just recently was accredited by WASC and now are offering a through g courses.

They also offer prenatal and parenting education, career education which consists of manufacturing skills program. Please support AB 906, and I thank you for your consideration.

And we'll go to line 24. Please go ahead.

Hi, good evening. This is Ryan Morimune with the California State Association of Counties. I'd just like to say thank you to the Chairs and staff of both subcommittees for convening this hearing and to the panelists for the robust discussion. We appreciate the work amongst our education and probation partners and look forward to continuing conversations and investments to expand quality educational opportunities in our juvenile facilities.

And, Madam Chair, we have no one else wishing to speak at this time.

Thank you. With that, we will adjourn the Joint Hearing of Assembly Budget Subcommittee Number Two and Education Finance, and Assembly Budget Subcommittee Number Five on Public Safety. Thank you.