Senate Budget and Fiscal Review Subcommittee No. 1 on Education

Good morning. I guess I'm not sure this is on and I don't have a sergeant here. Were expecting another Committee Member momentarily. And we're missing one panelist for the first panel. Somehow we will. Here we go. I would ask all Subcommitee Members to report to room 2100 where waiting for either a Subcommitee Member.

We're missing one panelist for the first panel. And we might just start with the first panel if we get another Committee Member. And we'll go from there. A budget Subcommitee number one on education will convene in 60 seconds. Do one of you know who's calling the role? When I call for it, I'll call it. Okay.

Budget Subcommitee one on education will come to order. This is our fifth hearing of this budget cycle. In the last few weeks, we have worked our way through student aid, community colleges, UCCSU, the overview of Proposition 98.

And today we're having an oversight item on the Golden State Pathways Grant and hear a proposal related to the Career Education master plan, which has not yet been released. Finally, we'll be hearing presentations from all three segments on Title 9. We usually take public comment at the end of all issues. We will be doing that today.

And when we complete the sixth issue and get the public comment, I'll take an informal poll of who wants to speak. And if there's a few people that want to speak, there'll be more time. If there's a ton of people that want to speak, there'll be more limited time. We will. We'll figure that out. But while I'm.

I asked the panelists for the first panel to come forward. Liz May from the Department of Finance, Mary Nicely from the Department of Education, and Blaine Torpy from the Eden Area Regional Occupational Program. Let me ask for a roll call, please.

[Roll call]

Okay, Quorum is present. And let me also say, while the panelists are getting ready here, that if you cannot wait for public comment, we encourage you to comment at the Committee's website or writing to the Committee with the contact info that's on the website because we value your opinion.

And if it turns out that we have to limit testimony, you have the option to extend your testimony or present other things when that happens. And so I just want to let everybody know that that's the process and we encourage you to participate with that.

We'll get to panel number one, which is oversight on the Golden State Pathways Program. I announce the panelists will start with the Department of Finance. We'll go to the Department of Education and then we'll go to the Eden Area Regional Occupation Program. Welcome to the Committee.

Thank you. Good morning Chair Laird and Vice Chair Bogue. My name is Liz Mai with the Department of Finance. I will give a brief high level overview of the Golden State Pathways program. So the 2022 might pull the mic. A little closer to you. Certainly.

The 2022 Budget act appropriated 5001,000,001 time Proposition 98 General Fund to the State Department of Education to administer the Golden State Pathways Program, also known as Gspp.

GSPP is a competitive grant program intended to enhance and expand the offerings of pathways from high school to college and career with priority given to pathway programs in technology, health care, education and climate related fields.

The goal of the funding was to support local educational agencies or LEAs to collaborate with other LEAs, institutions of higher education and local labor and business partners to develop or expand the availability of curriculum for coherent and articulated industry themed pathways that go from high school to post secondary education and training and that are aligned with high skill, high wage and high demand jobs that align to either that regional economy or the state economy.

More broadly. Grant recipients are required to provide their students an integrated industry aligned program of study that includes all the courses to meet the A G requirements, an opportunity to Earn at least 12 post secondary credits to participate in work based learning experiences and integrated support services to address students social, emotional and academic needs.

Of course that requires a lot of planning and coordination. So up to 5% of the 2022 appropriation was intended for up to 10 LEAs to provide US technical assistance providers for both grant applicants and grant recipients in both applying to the to the program and to develop, implement and improve their pathway programs.

Up to 10% of the appropriation was for consortium development and planning grants and that's so that LEAs could develop and actually plan with their program partners. And then 85% of the appropriation was for implementation grants to support LEAs in actually offering those pathway programs.

LEAs who applied to the consortium development and planning grants could also express their interest in implementation grants. And so basically at the end of their planning grant, they would submit a supplemental report to the Department that included the implementation plan that they had developed while using the planning grant and then the Department would disperse the implementation grant.

Ultimately, GSPP funds were meant as a sort of like seed funding to kickstart the development or the expansion of these programs.

So grantees are expected to also secure funding either by identifying the funding from their own budgets or obtaining like a funding promise from their their program partners and that is just to fully sustain the ongoing operations of these programs. So that's the high level overview. Happy to take questions at the appropriate time.

Thank you. We'll move to the Department of Education.

Hello. Hello. Hi. Good morning. Mary Nicely, Deputy Superintendent of the Information Technology branch at the California Department of Education, Representing State Superintendent Tony Thurman. I'm offered here to offer a brief overview and insight into the delays and distribution of Golden State Pathways grants to our school districts and execution of grants to technical assistance centers.

For some context, the College and Career transition division in 2022 was tasked with administering $5 billion covering 22 competitive grants. A number of these were brand new grants with new criteria and requirements that that included setting up technical assistance centers across the state which entailed multiple contracts.

To make a long story short, the division did not have the capacity, experience, processes and in the end of the leadership at the division or unit level to effectively complete the tasks.

Instead of raising the red flag to the Executive leadership of the Department of these Challenges, we were led to believe that funds were going out and contracts were being executed. We were alerted last spring not by our division or unit leadership, but by the field and outside parties to these delays.

My co Chief Deputy, myself and the Deputy Superintendent who had only recently began overseeing that branch weeks prior, stepped in to make the distribution of funds and execution of these grants the top priority of the Department. My co Chief oversaw all communications and contracting with the technical assistance centers.

Branch Deputy Ekritoris took over the oversight of the unit responsible for the grant, meeting with them daily to reread all RFAs and teams to ensure numbers were accurate for calculating allocations. And I took on the responsibility personally of developing new formulas for the grant.

Three different grant program allocations, error checking all data for grants, ensuring we had transparency in our formulas and the end determining the grant amount. For each grant allocation, 544 Gans were awarded. The Fund is now.

Funding is now in the hands of our programs and we look forward to seeing the impact of these grants have on developing important programs for our students, preparing them for their futures. The leadership of the division and unit level at the time of these delays are no longer with the Department.

We look forward to building the leadership of the College and career Transition Division as a critical division, preparing our students for bright futures in college and career, and also rebuilding the trust of our schools and our staff, which is essential for our success in administering the Golden State Pathway programs and all of our CTE programs.

I do want to take this moment to thank the Senate Budget Committee Staff, Pro Tems Office, Department of Finance and State Board of Education staff for their support, offering advice and partnership as we navigated moving this program forward. Thank you for this opportunity.

I'm here to answer questions along with many of the division managers and staff from the Career and College Transition division.

Thank you. Mr. Torpy, welcome to the Subcommitee.

Thank you. Good morning. My name is Blaine Torpy and it is my privilege to serve as the Superintendent of the EDENARY Regional Occupational Program in Hayward. We are a Joint Powers Authority Regional Occupational Program serving Castro Valley, Hayward, San Leandro and San Lorenzo Unified School Districts.

We support career Technical Education, or CTE for over 5,000 high school students and provide direct CTE instruction to over 1,600 high school students. Through our adult programs, we provide CTE to over 2,000 adults in the Bay Area and throughout the state.

Thank you to Senator Laird and the Senate Budget Subcommitee for giving me the opportunity to be here this morning. The rollout of the Golden State Pathways program created significant challenges for the Eden Area rop. The three main issues were the application process, the awards notification process, and the unknown outcome of planning grants.

For context, it's important to note that since the advent of the Local Control Funding Formula, there has not been guaranteed funding for ROPS. 55% of Edenary ROP's almost $16 million annual operating budget comes from our partner districts. The remainder is funded solely through grants.

As you can see from the first handout during the 2425 school year, we are managing 17 different grants. Generally, these grants operate on 12 to 30 month cycles.

I say all this because Golden State Pathways had the potential to significantly shift our focus away from the annual grant applications to a more effective model of ongoing funding, allowing us to plan activities and outcomes for students beyond one to two years.

GSPP was intended to be a five year grant to build and expand career pathways and frankly, we were very, very excited about it. As far back as fall 2023 we were anticipating the request for applications so that we could begin planning our application and potential impact for our programs.

It wasn't until January 302024 that the RFA was released with an application Due date of March 19, approximately six weeks to complete an application that was nothing like the applications to which we were accustomed and a short period of time to plan five years.

It's important to note that until the RFA is released and the requirements and restrictions are communicated, there can be little advance plan planning beyond brainstorming. Compounding this issue was the overly burdensome requirements for consortium Applications we applied as an individual LEA for one planning grant and two implementation grants. Only two of our partner districts applied.

Due to timing and intensity of the application for our planning grant, we were hoping to secure out years funding for a brand new pathway and program. This proposed pathway, a zero emission vehicle training program, was being started with C from the California Air Resources Board. Our two implementation grant applications were for medical careers and careers in education.

We applied for a total of $1.2 million, not including a potential $500,000 for a zero Emission implementation grant following the planning grant. The rollout of the grant applications in General is a frequent challenge and we were prepared to deal with that. We were not prepared to deal with the award notification process.

As you can see in handout 2, the award notification process was initially late, rescinded twice and not formalized until October 112024. We had planned to pay for programs and staff using GSPP funds in 2425.

Not being able to do so required us to increase our deficit spending and push the planning and use of these funds to 25-2632% of our high school program staff are partially or completely grant funded. Our strategy of braided grant funding means that any change in funding has a domino effect on the other positions.

This also means that in operational terms this is now a four year grant. An initial shock was to see that while we applied for 500,000 for our medical careers grant, we were preliminarily awarded 785,000. Understanding that this was likely a mistake was okay. However, by the final notification our award decreased by 4.48percent to 368,000.

Again, getting less than what we applied for is not unheard of. But not only did we have to push back the timeline, we had to backtrack nine months of budget and program planning.

The entire application and award process was further complicated by inconsistent and incorrect information which compromised the ability of the Regional Technical Assistance Centers to provide timely and accurate support.

And finally, I'm still not sure how much will be available for the implementation grant following a successful planning program which continues to challenge our ability to plan in the out years. I am not above improvement or reproach and I am currently working on fixing many of my own mistakes on the programs I am running.

It's important to me that the Committee understands that the EDENARY ROP is very grateful for the efforts of CDE to support our students. Evidence of this was the latest effort by CDE to simplify the CTIG application process last fall. Similarly, since October 2024 there has been dramatic improvement in the management of the Golden State Pathways program.

Every person in this room is doing the work on behalf of our students. My hope is that we can learn to be to better funnel our public dollars to our public school students with minimal bureaucratic obstacles and maximum impact for our young Californians. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Let me just begin with the Department of Education. And you were very clear that things are better going forward. But I just don't think I can go past it without asking what happened for two and a half years.

Well, for two and a half years.

You need to pull the mic up.

Sorry. I will just say for two and a half years, we at the Executive level thought things were going fine. They were not. People were not actually executing or administering the grant without our knowledge.

But you don't have oversight in your own Department to not realize in two and a half years it's not moving ahead.

Well, we. We were told it was moving ahead. So. And I think this is part of our overall issues here with actual visibility into where all of our grants and everything are. And that is. You know, I'm just going to be honest.

I stepped down from the Chief Deputy position 2 as actually take over oversight of these types of processes and procedures in the Department of Education that have not had any kind of a single grants management program, any kind of way to look at overall every grant that is coming through the Department.

So I will just say that as we checked in with staff to say how is it going? Is the money out? We were being told yes, it was. And it was not until we heard from the field and I think from some of the legislative staff that were getting phone calls that it was not.

I'm just going to be very Frank with you about that, that we were not being given accurate information about where our own grants were. That is a guardrail we are putting up.

Yeah, it's just difficult.

I ran an organization of 19,000 people that was a state one and we had a dedicated grants unit and I met with them regularly and was on top of it and understood when there were delays and tried to do things like even if somebody didn't get a grant, have programming for how they could improve the next time and feedback and we were on it.

This just seems like it was a disaster for two and a half years. And the difficulty we have is we're being asked to move ahead with this and that it's very important, but it wasn't important enough to get the money out for two and a half years and. And Those are really difficult government questions when that happens.

Sure.

No. And. And that is a problem within the Department. We do not have a single grants unit, which would be fabulous to have. But unfortunately, the way that the structure of the Department is, is that each Department division has. And each unit within a division has many grants that they're administering.

And we've just never been able to get to a point where we can centralize all of those, especially with just the volume of grants that came in over the last three to four years. Right. It was just a lot. And that is why I'm trying.

I'm putting in place a grants management system for the entire Department which we do not have. So there is no centralized location for us to be managing our grants. And it is not. It's. There's no excuse for it. I will just say that right up front.

It is not anything that I am happy with or that we are happy with as a Department. And it has to change. And I'm.

Well, I appreciate that. And it's just hard to believe it got to that point and that it had to be legislators or individual programs that put it on your radar screen and that there were no internal controls to figure that out. And the. You talked about things having to prove.

And we had the testimony from the Eden ROP about just what happened when the grants were made. Could you speak to that? I mean, sort of higher than they thought. Less short time, not being able to stand it up. How do you respond to sort of what happened at the grassroots level on how this.

Well, at the grassroots level, some of these things were happening and we did not know them and they were not escalated to us. So I think it was a failure of leadership at a certain level that we could not and were not being told the truth. The numbers that were put out were inaccurate.

That's why I took it on personally to take over and look at every single application with this team that had not had any leadership. They went back in and it was all hands on deck at that point to say what happened? Where are we going from here? And how do we.

How do we even cobble together what happened? And we were not getting those answers from the division or unit level ourselves. So we at the Executive level had to piece together with the help of DOF and others as to what was this program supposed to even look like. And so it was a failure.

It was a perfect storm of everything that could possibly go wrong went wrong. And unfortunately, and we all were looking at this as being a high priority and we wanted it to be a success. But we were not being given the information. We were just not being told.

But you don't have any redundancy in the system to where you can check whether or not things are happening.

I will say I was the final check on the numbers. If I had not asked for the numbers, I'm not sure if we would even be where we are right now.

It is a breakdown in a system that is trying to do too much with too few people and a lack of leadership at a level which felt like, hey, I can do this myself and not bring in other people to support that work.

And you cannot talk about personnel actions in public. But obviously the rank and file people who didn't get direction are not responsible. But who was responsible? Were there consequences in any way that you can talk about?

Well, as I am saying, the division level and at the unit level, those staff are no longer at the Department of Education. I will just say that, okay, so there was accountability and responsibility.

I might have some questions, further questions about the actual program now that we've sort of looked back. But let me give my colleagues a chance to ask questions. Questions. Are there any questions? Senator Perez? And let me note for the roll call that we have been joined by Senator Perez.

Yeah, I first just want to acknowledge and, and thank you for acknowledging that things went wrong and, and admitting that that this was a moment where CD had to admit that and then do things to differently because that's really important, that there were mistakes made so that we can acknowledge that and we can move forward.

So I appreciate you just being very blunt about that and that it sounds like accountability measures were taken to hold accountable, you know, those folks who, who may have made mistakes and cause these errors.

You know, I hear you talk about the grant oversight and some other metrics that were put into place to ensure one, that this does not happen again.

And really, as we continue this rollout of the Golden State Pathways programs, I'd love to hear you dive a little bit deeper into that and what's going to be done to one, ensure that the continued implementation and rollout of the Golden State Pathways doesn't face any other delays or confusions and how we're going to prevent future delays in calculating and allocating funds for other programs.

So, you know, obviously we learned a lot and it sounds like CDE learned a lot from this process and that there were places for improvement and for growth. So. So would love to hear you break down some of those details.

So as I said, this was a very high visibility and we do put out billions of dollars in grants every year. We do not usually run into something like this. This was, as I said, a perfect storm of everything that could go wrong went wrong.

But we do actually put out hundreds of millions of dollars a year in grants with no issues. But even then, they're not centralized and they're not in any way where I could look at a dashboard or at anything to say this is where we are. Have contracts been executed, have RFAs been created?

And so we are centralizing a lot of those practices in this particular division. We have had one of our deputy superintendents actually overseeing that division this entire time, and she still meets daily with the staff to ensure that it is on the right track.

So that is, unfortunately, Deputy Superintendent Torres could not be here today, but she took that on almost immediately when she inherited that division to work on.

So we are looking at this kind of coincides with some other work that we're doing around the report of reports, we call it, which is the, the, it's Senator Archiletta's Bill that had to do with streamlining and consolidating reports as well.

So we are looking at, and this kind of leads into what we'd be talking about in our third panel today, which is consolidation and seeing how we can actually reduce the number of grants that we have. How can we consolidate some things? How can we consolidate the reporting?

So, as I said, I have stepped down from the Chief Deputy position specifically to keep the trains running and to create new processes and procedures across the Department, because right now we are very siloed off in how we do our grants.

We get something through trailer Bill or we get something through grants, and those programs kind of just run ahead with it. And one of the problems was our rfa. The RFA itself was not clear enough.

It should have had much more, it should have been much more consistent with some of our other grants so that we could use it.

But it was a new program as well as a very brand new staff on the rank and file level, having to administer a grant that was very new, along with executing technical assistance centers, which was also very new to us as well. So there's a lot of, as I said, it was a storm, perfect storm.

We've learned a lot from that, are building a lot of guardrails around even how we are allocating formulas and developing formulas.

Sen. Bogue, do you have any questions or comments?

Comments and perhaps questions. So I believe the implementation of this program was in 2022. So a couple of things. First, I want to literally echo the chairman's, Chairman Laird's concerns and questions. You had exactly the same questions that I had. So thank you for asking those. I share those concerns.

Number two, when did you folks become aware, how recent did you folks become aware that this was a problem or an issue within the division? And then following up on that question is, do we, has that prompted any other questions or oversight in the other divisions for grant funding within the Department of Education to ensure that?

Because I'm assuming since there were no processes in place in this particular division that something similar would be happening in other divisions. Do you suspect that would be happening or are you folks looking at other grant divisions to ensure that there are processes in place to ensure that this does not happen again?

So this particular division has a lot of grants, a lot of grants that are very high dollar volume and get much higher level of applications. So that also adds to the volume. So this particular division itself has 22 different grants that it administers. So it's a little different than the other ones. Other ones move very smoothly.

You know, we see those, we have different division leadership, I would just say that are very open and come to us for support if they are. They don't have the number of people they need. Their grants are very similar usually. So the, the CCTD College and Career Transition grants are complex. They're just more complex.

There's more demand and they're usually a higher dollar volume that come through. So I am not necessarily worried about the other divisions, but we will be putting the safeguards in place for all the divisions as we move forward. To look at how we are calculating then most of them don't have formulas. Most of them are.

This is the amount that a, if you are awarded a competitive grant, this is what you're going to get. So they're not usually formula based, looking at how many students, how many teachers, how many pathways. So there's a complexity to these particular grants that is not part of what our other divisions look at.

When they are doing grants. They're usually professional development grants or literacy grants and they're very set dollar figures. And so you're not literally having to do a special formula allocation for them. And so this one was particularly challenging.

So was it the, the, the process of how they're allocated per grant, the issue at hand, or is it the fact that there were no processes of oversight as to ensure that it was being implemented correctly?

So there it was. It was probably all of those types of things, but most of it did come down to I Mean, I'm not going to talk about personnel. A lot of things were just done incorrectly and just not done right. I will say the first time I got a spreadsheet, it was just wrong.

It had, you know, not. We can have a different. If we want to go into more detail, it was just wrong. The information was just not accurately put on even a spreadsheet from an RFA so we could do the calculations correctly. It was at the very. Every single thing. I'm going to just say it again.

That could have gone wrong, went wrong.

And it may have been also just because of the volume that this division was working with, dealing with, I believe somewhere in the area of 600 applications with a very small group of people who were not specifically trained for this grant trying to go through and process and read and score and then move into the allocation process.

And it just broke down.

And I'm just looking at the bigger oversight is, you know, we have different divisions and every division. And that's. I think my question is, you know, as you move forward, you're saying you're stepping down, you're going to. Your goal is to really design and implement these processes for this particular division.

And my question, I just want to hear whether or not you're thinking about doing the same thing with every division to ensure that there is oversight. Because you don't know what you don't know until it happens. Right. And so I think that my second question would be that I didn't hear from you.

How recent did you find out that this was actually a concern moving forward and there was another follow up, but go ahead.

Yeah, I think the major red flags went up for us and someone back there can kind of correct me if I want, but I believe it was in May of 24. So it was in the spring and it took us that much time to be able to. Because I think the first allocation, the.

Money was allocated in July of 2022.

Yes.

Right. Okay. Just, just.

There was a big gap in time where a framework was being developed, which I was also not aware of that was being requested. And so. And then hiring staff to actually, to actually be able to administer this grant did not happen until 2023.

So there's often a little bit of a, you know, when. When there is funding that is allocated, staff is given, we have to put in BCPS, and then we have to hire staff. And so there's a bit of a delay in being able to get staff to actually administer.

Can I ask a follow up question? Yes. The follow up question is basically Senator Ochobog's question, because I think her question was, are you looking at other programs to make sure that things aren't happening there? And your initial statement was sort of, they're all structured differently.

We have confidence, but the worst thing that could happen to you is that something blows up in another one. And so have you had a systematic look at grant programs across your Department to know that you have a measure of control in the other ones as well?

So that is the process that we have started, that we are going division by division and working on that. So that is the plan. The plan is division by division. Right now we're actually collecting up their reports. And how long will that take?

That should not take more than, you know, two months for us to be able to do something like that, you know, so put some timeframes in. But yeah, that's. I mean, this is a top priority.

If we have a hearing after the May revise, the two months will pass and we can ask you how you're doing.

I will send you a report.

Okay, great. Yes, but I'm sorry I interrupted first.

No, no, I actually, you. You nailed it. So Senator Lura has a way of, I think, almost reading my mind and actually articulating in a much more eloquent way exactly what my. My question, my thought process is. So he's done this since I've been elected in 2020, let me tell you. I appreciate Senator Laird deeply.

So another question that I have is what are the potential impacts on this program due to these delays, meaning our recipients, and do the grantees that receive planning grants have less time followed by will we need to extend the deadlines to utilize this funding and for the evaluation required.

I believe we extended out some of the program time for them already. And I have some folks back there if we want to bring that.

We do have some timelines that we're looking at because the planning grants still have until, I believe, the end of 27, end of 26, and then they can apply for, potentially they could apply in July of 26 for implementation grants. So we do have a window of time that we can move in.

And if we do need to work with getting some extensions we were actually working with Department of Finance and trying to get some dates extended if we needed to.

So Mr. Chair, if I may with Mr. Torpy, how does this work for you? Does that these delays or implementations actually work with within your scope in the real world? Basically.

So I'm sorry, as of October it's been working a lot better. Right. So the, you know, the initially I believe it was from 23 to 28.

And so since they weren't didn't really go out until 24, you know, late 24, early 25, the timeline has been extended to 29 for US and this isn't for every case, but for us it's going to end up being a four year because we're not starting until 25-26.

So an extension would be really helpful but you know, we're able to pivot right now and actually make it work within that four year period.

Okay, all right, perfect. Thank you, Senator.

Then let me ask a follow up question again because an extension is that because of what you were saying earlier, that there was a short amount of time and you had to consult with consortia and other things and you need extra time to be able to satisfactorily put the grant together and be responsive, is that.

Well, there's kind of two components. That's the application process and more time during an application process, especially for such a large grant as this would have been beneficial and that will come into play at the end of the planning Grant.

So not 100% sure what the timeline is between completing the planning grant and then applying for the subsequent implementation grant. So having some extended time there would certainly be helpful. The, I think the, the main issue is the, the life of the grant. Right.

The longer the life, the, the better we are in a position for out year Fund planning.

And let me ask finance who's been excited to not have to answer any questions. This was appropriated in 2022. Now some of this goes to 2029. How does that fit financially or fiscally in the budget? Is this what we appropriated initially? That carries over a number of years? That's what it is.

Yes, Correct. It was appropriated in 2022 and then in the language it is available for encumbrance until June 302029. So that's basically getting the money from the state to the local level and then whatever doesn't.

For example, if the Department like holds maybe 10% because of a contract and which will get delivered at the end, that is considered encumbered. But then there is two years after in 2031, that it will need to be actually paid out to the person holding the contract or the entity holding the contract, if that makes sense.

That does make sense and I appreciate that. That sort of. And then let me go back to the Department of Education because Senator Ochobog started to get to the looking forward part. We have been dwelling on looking back, looking forward. Now you've had to put this in place three years in and with the guardrails you talked about.

So how do you make sure that the implementation is done without delays or confusion in getting this out to door, in addressing some of the issues that that came from?

Mr. The grant that has already gone out. Or the, the overall program? Zero, the overall.

You have this overall program that wasn't working for a long time and now you're trying to really make it work. How do you know expeditiously what you're putting in place is going to get it out the door in a way that it's user friendly? How do you know looking forward that is happening?

Well, we know the funds are out and now it's a matter of working with that staff that is now has leadership to be able to support the LEAs that received or the local education agencies that receive that funding for implementation. And also we will, we should be having those technical assistance centers up and running as well.

Those contracts have all been executed as well. So getting those two pieces in place and regular communications is really all we can do at this point to not, you know, just to be open and honest with how are you doing? Where are you? What do you need? Do you need extensions? Do you not have extensions?

I think that was a, a huge failure as well, was just there was a lack of communication to our LEAs as to what was going on as well as our technical assistance centers as well as with the Legislature, the Department of Finance, everyone else.

As soon as we found out that this was an issue, we contacted the Department of Finance, the Legislature and the state board and said, hey, this is where we are.

Help us figure out how to get through this, because there's just no way we could have done this without going all hands on deck and making it a top priority of the Department.

So you had two chief deputies and a deputy Superintendent who committed literally hundreds of hours themselves to trying to make sure that this was rolled out.

You heard the testimony from Mr. Torpy. Is was there anything in that that was new to you or in the communication you talked. Had you heard that and you'd already tried to adjust for some of the points he was making, I knew about.

I did not know about exactly what he was talking about, but I did know after a certain point that numbers were taken, initial numbers were put up, and initial numbers were being taken down.

So that is something that I knew about, but was not sure how far that had gone because I believe we had to post on our website to allocation at least three or four times and the wrong numbers were put up. Yeah.

Senator Perez, I just, I wanted to follow up on the comments that you made earlier. Just about. It sounds like you're doing an individual assessment of each departments and their grants program, and that's what's happening over the next few months, is that correct?

Yeah, well, we are. Well, this is where we are starting because this is the one that has the most programs. So we are looking at all of those allocations. And the same time we were working on this one, we were working on CTIC at the same time. And so these two big programs kind of crossed over.

So we knew that there were some issues going on within this particular division. But, yeah, we're doing evaluation of reporting.

And at the same time, we are meeting with every single division as we look at building out a grants management system as well, which is also helping with some gap analysis and to understand, like, what are you using? What. What are you actually using for grants at this point?

There's not even a single type of way that people are doing grants and. Within the, within cd, within cde, because. It'S always been very siloed off into. This is the way this program has always done their grants. They receive grants, they do it this way. So there's not any single way.

And we are trying to move at least four of our big programs into a grants management system right now, starting with early Education and our Professional learning division and our Expanded learning.

Okay. So the goal then is to move towards a centralized system so that there's better oversight and accountability. So you're trying to move towards more uniformity so that it's easier so we don't run into these issues again, not just in this program, in the Golden State program, but for all of the grants programs that CD is administering.

Correct, Correct.

So we have visibility into where they are in the process.

And that's. You know, I will tell you, I've worked with folks and have friends that work for organizations, you know, that have grants from cd. And I know the grant process can be very complicated.

And so, I mean, I think that probably improves things for your partners as well, who you're Working with who are going through that application process. You know, I wanted to. And I think that what you just stated actually kind of answers my other question because I was going to ask about efficiency. Right.

I think when we do competitive grant programs that are done based off competition rather than based off district standards needs, they just tend to take longer to administer. And so, you know, ensuring that that process is happening in an efficient manner and that they're being administered in a more efficient manner, I think is something that's really important.

And so is that also then one of the goals of centralizing this? So it's accountability, it's oversight, it's efficiency so that these dollars are getting out to school districts?

Yeah, the, the, you know, the whole, yes, just say yes, efficiency, processes, procedures, all of this need to be put in place. And there needs to be consistency across the board as to how we do these things. These things. Unfortunately, efficiency is not cheap. We have to build systems.

And that is what I am trying to do right now. And we're trying to do that on a shoestring. And so that's often a very difficult thing to try. And be able to build a grants management system for an entire Department is not an easy thing to do, but efficiency is absolutely.

It's not only for the benefit of our staff who are trying to manage multiple ways of running a different grant, but also for, to your point, our school districts and all of our grant recipients being able to go to one place and find this is the grant that I want to apply for, this is what I need to fill out to apply for that.

And then we can actually, at a Executive level, see who is applying for grants, where is it along the way, what's the hang up with that grant? Do you need help or do you not need help? Because there often is a very small team trying to run multiple grants at the same time.

And when you are getting hundreds of grant applications at the same time for two different grants and you only have a handful of readers, that also becomes. Because you have to score competitive grants, that is not an easy thing to do. Takes a lot of time. You have to double check.

You need to have multiple people reading the same grant. And all of it, it's all just very time consuming and hard. And that's the personal aspect that we cannot get away from.

But if I can do anything to at least help on the efficiency side technically and get some consistency so that we don't have to have people relearning and new people coming into the Department to have to run A grant program they've never run before.

If we can make it easy for them to administer that grant, that also helps us get onto the business of education. And we sometimes are just not in that place. We're just, you know, we're just on a hamster wheel. And so I'm being upfront with all of you as to, you know, where we are as a Department.

Okay, well, I appreciate that. And, you know, I appreciate what chair Laird shared a moment ago, which is having you all come back, I think, sometime after maybe. And so we can continue to receive updates on this. You know, I.

Obviously hearing from school districts that were frustrated is concerning to us, but, you know, also, these are tax dollars. And so we want to be intentional and mindful of how they're being utilized and knowing that we're doing everything we can to make sure that they're being carefully monitored and that they're going where we intend them to go.

So thank you.

Thank you. Yes, Senator Ochobo, thank you.

You know, as I'm. As I'm listening to you explain the difficulties of administering all of this grants, you know, we were just discussing, imagine the number of grants that we have going on in our state, number one. Number two, if it's difficult for. For basically government to administer this grant process with. With so many being available.

I can only imagine the complexity on behalf of the LEAs trying to navigate government and the application process from a user perspective. And so if you folks are having a problem, imagine, and especially, especially for our rural LEAs who do not have the capacity to be able to do the labor available, the workforce available to do that.

I know that we have some rural. I was going to carry a Bill a couple years ago with rural LEAs who literally, the Superintendent was doing the work of a Superintendent, human resources, I mean, every capacity they're responsible for doing. And when it comes to the applicant to the grant process application, it is very, very difficult.

So as we're moving forward, I think it behooves all of us to ensure that these processes are also user friendly and not as complicated. And I'm not sure. I'm not an expert, I don't do your job.

But I think we really need to ensure that we're looking from that lens as well, because my heart, I mean, I'm listening to you, and all I can think of is, you know, the user perspective that has to navigate the complexities of the grant process and how much effort and resources it takes to actually work those.

So I don't know how that is managed moving forward. But I think we, we need to have that lens as well. And then lastly. Sorry. And lastly also want to highlight the power of the voice of the people in highlighting what it's not working in government and allowing your local elected to know that.

Because unless you speak up, we don't know. And if we don't know, then we can't address it from a systemic perspective. So if there's a lesson to be learned here is the power of the voice of the people holding government accountable through advocacy and conversations with your local elected.

So please, please, let's use this as a learning opportunity.

And thank you. Can I just comment on that? I. With the rural districts, I was just out at Copperopolis, I think it's called Copperopolis.

Copperopolis.

Copperopolis Highway 4. Yeah. For three weeks, three weeks ago, I spent a whole day with the Superintendent over in Mark Twain Union and we spent a whole day talking about the challenges of a rural school district. She has four staff. And I agree with you 100%.

We need to be looking at something a little different for our rural school districts. Definitely not everything we do works for them. Our focus is often on the big districts. But to your point. Exactly. Those competitive grants, sometimes they just won't even apply for because it's just not worth it.

They can't, they're, they're bus driving, they're doing everything at the same time. So agree 100% with what you're saying there.

And I appreciate you bringing that up because I do feel for those, those folks and I do try and go out and listen to as many of our leaders in all size school districts to understand what they're doing and the challenges they face. So thank you for bringing that up.

And if I can make a follow up suggestion. When I was secretary of resources, we had very small nonprofits for some grant programs that didn't have the ability to do applications.

And for at least a couple of them, we instituted a letter of intent system so they could do a letter of intent and then if it turned out they were eligible and had a good project, then we could negotiate the capacity with them. They just weren't screened out by being a small district.

And it is a way that, that you could do that in. In. I have a district, I have some bizarre small districts. The one on the Big Sur coast has 17 students and it's K through 12.

When I spoke to their school board, if I told them if they had the same ratio of students to school board Members as in Los Angeles, Los Angeles would have to have 385,000 school board Members because of how small they were.

And if you go to Parkfield, where The K through 8 was, I think 11 students when the pandemic hit, the poor teacher had to have a zoom room for every different grade and go back and forth to do it. And there were only one or two in every grade.

And so it is always really good to remember that they're out there and all these rules apply to them as well as the bigger ones. And so happy to work with you over time.

If that's an issue I think we have, if I can use the same analogy, we spend as much time on the next five issues as we spend on this one. We'll be here till 4 o'clock, but I think this was a good discussion, both looking back and looking forward.

And we'll be anxious to hear some of the things that come back to us. And I thank you all for, for being on the first panel. We will move to issue number two, regional Coordination for Career Education.

The panel is Abby Snay from the labor and Workforce Development Agency, Grace Henry from the Department of Finance, Lisa King from the Legislative Analyst Office.

There's four chairs and four people, so I'm confident you're going to figure it out. We'll begin with the labor and Workforce Agency. Welcome to the Committee.

Thank you so much. Can you hear me?

That doesn't seem to be working.

There we go. Is that better there?

That is better.

Okay, good. Good morning and thank you so much for the opportunity to speak with you all today about the regional coordination component of the Master Plan for career education. I'm Abby Snay. I'm a Deputy Secretary at the labor and Workforce Development Agency for Workforce Strategy.

So, as you know, In August of 2023, Governor Newsom called for a new master plan for career education through his Freedom Succeed Executive Executive Order. He urged state agencies and institutions of higher education.

You might have to pull the mic a little closer.

So. Sorry.

Yeah, just pull it closer to you. So. Okay. Are we good? I can hear you clearly, but you're facing me. Yeah.

Okay. He urged state agencies and institutions of higher education to increase equitable access to well paid jobs by creating and strengthening education and training pathways that respond to the emerging needs of the economy. The Governor announced the framework for the Master Plan in December with regional coordination as a core component.

The plan calls for assessing regional assets as well as challenges related to regional collaboration. It aims to strengthen strengthen employer engagement, to identify critical skills for the workplace and expand opportunities for work based learning such as paid internships and apprenticeships. The regional collaboration component of the Master plan has two overarching goals.

Preparing people for in demand jobs and meeting employers hiring needs as well as improving efficiency and reducing redundancy in regional coordination.

In the dynamic and quickly changing economy that we have, education and training partners have to work closely with businesses at the regional level to anticipate their talent needs and build training pipelines to meet those needs and prepare students for good jobs and for career pathway advancement.

Regional coordination varies greatly across the state and we want to understand the structures and partnerships that work, why they work and how successes can be adapted and replicated in other regions aligned with the state economic blueprint and the regional plans.

We want to learn the systems barriers that impede coordination among community colleges, workforce boards and other education and training providers and identify solutions that reduce redundancy and enhance efficiency and effectiveness. All toward the goal of strengthening education and employment outcomes for young people and for working adults.

The $4 million requested in one time general fund dollars will enable the labor and workforce development agencies to contract for the evaluation of current regional structures and recommendations for streamlining systems and processes and improving education and employment outcomes as called for in the master plan.

We want to identify how regional coordination models can be adapted to create sustainable forums where educators, workforce training providers, and employers all work together to align education and workforce programs with employer needs.

Recommendations from the proposed research that would inform state policy would go to the State Coordinating Council so that state policy changes would affect education and workforce stakeholders across systems and lead to better aligned planning, streamlined funding, and most importantly, stronger program outcomes.

The research conducted through the regional coordination component of the master plan will give the proposed council the information it needs to develop state policy and structures that support regional coordinations. These are two pieces that fit together.

The research findings and recommendations will also drive change within LWDA and the workforce departments on regional strategies that lead to better jobs for individuals and a skilled workforce for regional employers. And I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you very much. We'll move to the Department of Finance.

Grace Henry, Department of Finance. Nothing more to add, but happy to answer any questions.

Great. Thank you. We'll move to the Legislative Analyst's Office.

Good morning. Lisa King with the Legislative Analyst's Office. So in General, given the state budget condition, we recommend setting a high bar for new discretionary spending this year, particularly on the non Proposition 98 side of the budget, so the Legislature could weigh this proposed evaluation of regional coordination models with its other non Proposition 98 budget priorities.

If the Legislature does wish to provide funding for this evaluation, we would recommend it focus the evaluation on specific ways the state can incentivize local education and workforce agencies to adopt more effective regional coordination practices.

We say this because with some previous state led efforts around regional coordination, we've seen that some local agencies have been more willing to engage than others on the coordination piece. Thank you.

Thank you. And maybe for one question, and I don't know whether it's the Agency or Finance, the Legislative Analyst laid out some concerns. How would you respond to the concerns they laid out?

Can you please specify which she just did.

But one of them was focus on achievable goals. Another was why this was prioritized in a tight budget period for discretionary funding outside of Proposition 98.

I think if we look at the vision of the entire career education master plan, you know, it is a vision that aims to increase pathways to opportunity, to increase talent pipelines for employers to really strengthen the California economy and the individuals who work in that economy.

And there's several core components that are really that will work together to achieve that vision. One is the State Coordinating Council. You heard about that at the last Joint Hearing and another is the Regional Coordinating Council. This is a big state. We have regional economies.

We have these large systems that operate, that have statewide oversight, but operate at the regional and local level.

And we really need to understand how to align, coordinate at the regional level among the education providers, the workforce providers and the business community to create opportunities for work based learning, to increase apprenticeships, to make sure that we are developing and delivering on programs that will get our young people and working adults into the jobs that employers need, especially those good jobs.

What would be. I appreciated the lao's question about how to create incentives for greater collaboration. And I think that's exactly what the research will lead us to do. What's working now, what gets in the way? Incentives might come in the form of funding.

We would like to see greater alignment of funding, you know, even in terms of timing, different proposals, of encouraging collaborative efforts at the regional level. So I'm hoping this answers your question.

But I think that's all part of this, this research piece, as well as looking at what levels, what policy levels at the state level could create those incentives.

See, I appreciate it, but it's just so difficult when we have a proposed 8% cut to UC and CSU to say let's spend more money on something else for collaboration when we can't even sort of deal with some of the basic stuff to going on in those systems.

So let me ask my colleagues if there are any questions or comments. Senator Perez.

I mean, I would agree with exactly what Senator Laird just shared. Right. I mean, especially as we're looking at career education.

I mean, we know that one of the major things that I hear, especially when I talk to employers, is a need for us to, you know, have more workers that more skilled and trained workforce that have their degrees in specific fields, particularly, you know, whether it's fields like health care. Right.

I know obviously there is absolutely a need for more students and young people to go into CTE programs, to go into the trades. The demand for, you know, electricians for plumbers is there as well. I'm working on a Bill related to apprenticeship programs to help with building that out.

But the higher education component of it, both with the CSU and UC are also going to be a huge component. And we already know those institutions are being, you know, greatly impacted by potential cuts at the federal level as well. And so this is a whole ecosystem. Right.

And I think the whole purpose of, when we think about that pathway of moving a student from getting in through tk, all the Way to the finish line when, you know, they're getting to 12th grade, if they're going to higher education, if they're going into to pick a trade and going directly into the workforce, that that process is seamless and that we're not taking a one size fits all approach.

And so, you know, just want to continue to be mindful of that because we need all aspects of our workforce to be covered. So.

And I would encourage you to look at this request as a modest investment that would leverage those that could help leverage those much greater investments that are under pressure and enable us to use those in more efficient and more effective ways.

It's not your phone. No, no, I know it's not. You were looking down.

And also, just as a reminder, I love your description of an ecosystem and let's make sure that's including adults who are already in the workforce who need to upskill, as well as young people in our community who are neither connected to school or work. I mean, that's certainly a very strong priority of ours.

Complete your question. Senator Ochoa Bogh, did you have any questions or comments?

So with this ask in this effort, how does this, how does this fit.

In with the hearing that we had earlier today? How does this all work together?

I'll let the labor and workforce person speak for the Government Operations Agency.

Oh, I could speak for the labor agency.

I'm teasing. They're the ones that we're in our hearing this morning.

Yes, yes, yes. But I do think it's important, as I mentioned, to look at these as like two components of a larger strategy and vision that have to be working together. What we are starting to learn from the regions is that there are state policies and procedures that impede effective regional coordination.

And I think we can learn what we can learn from the regions can help inform some levers and policy change at the state level. This will all work together. So I think it's important to look at these as two, you know, just iterative and connected bodies that will work towards a common goal and vision.

And Chair, if I may Makintokonoga Block, Department of Finance, to your question about resource efficiency, we completely understand the fiscal constraints, but we're hoping that this $4 million investment will help set us up for a future of efficiency.

For the other investments that we're referring to the Interagency Council, the Secretary of the labor and Workforce Development Agency sits on the Interagency Council. And so the recommendations from this report will be reflected in those meetings through the agency. Secretary.

I'm not going to ask your same question. But let me ask a follow up because what we have here in different items is we have this, we had the hearing this morning. We have some sort of consolidation of, of programs or plans or a plan to do it. That's the next item on the agenda.

How does this fit overall? Which is what I think the question is, is if we're talking about what we talked about in the joint Hharing this morning, we're talking about this, we're talking about consolidation of the program. How do we know it all fits together if we approved every piece of it.

And not redundant.

I mean the, the plan itself. You know, we're expecting to be released by the Governor soon. You know, the framework has the core components that have already been released. Been. I'm sorry, been released in December.

If we look at that, I think those components form a cohesive vision of a plan going forward that, you know, enables us to more efficiently and more effectively prepare a workforce for the economy. California needs. There's the state planning component. There's the regional planning component.

There's better alignment of career pathways for students in Our K through 12 system in higher ed and working adults. There's improving and expanding apprenticeship, other forms of work based learning. There's the tool that I know you'll hear about later this morning, the career passport. There's that element of increasing access and affordability.

I can see how it would be frustrating to be where you are and see these different components and not see how they all fit together. But I think the vision of the whole entire career at master.

That's what we were just asking you. How does it fit together?

I think it fits together through a common vision of these aligned components.

No, keep going.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That vision towards increasing some of the elements that we know work, work based learning for students, increased access and affordability for students and for work for current students, for working adults, for opportunity, youth, for greater connection, collaboration and alignment.

Yeah, Senator Perez has a follow up question. I'm not sure that Senator Ochogo finished, but I have a comment and that is, is that we have all of those pieces in front of us now and it would be really helpful to have an overall vision that fits it together and says this is the vision.

We want to try to align the programs. We want to have a plan, we want to have some sort of coordinating council. This is the vision. And then we could decide if that fits.

Rather, it's kind of like being a doctor that looks at the hand and then looks at the heart and then looks at the foot and somehow you're doing that. Could we just have some whole look at this that gave us a sense of these are how the pieces fit together and these are why it makes sense.

And I should also say, and I was going to bring this up in the next item and it's only a plan, but when I was a non profit director, the state was always proposing this wonderful consolidation to make everything easier. And the consolidation always went with a lot less money, which was in many ways their goal.

And so it's this wonderful consolidation for efficiency, but you paid for efficiency and less services. So I think we want to know if some of those things are the questions here.

I mean, as a former nonprofit director myself, I share that and I think there are differences between collaboration and systems change and you know, and consolidation. And this is really much more about alignment of goals, alignment of systems, alignment of funding.

You know, it's frustrating for people at the local level to have to stay on top of different grant announcements and solicitations. We could do a much better job.

Well, Senator Niello also made the point this morning in the hearing that this is coming from an administration that is time limited in how do you know that we make all these changes and then a new go just in time for a new Governor that you have to hope is committed to exactly what the changes are that we're doing, which is, I don't know.

You weren't going to speculate on who the new Governor.

I just wanted to highlight that all of that effort would very much be benefited by groundwork of research that provides an indication of direction to move in about the regional coordination on the demand side and on the supply side. Because right now those are two things that we're trying to get to move together.

Senator Perez had a follow up question, even though the conversation just meandered way past the time that you had to follow up question.

I, so I just, I want to follow up, I think on both what Senator Ochoa Bogue and Senator Laird are sharing and point out a couple of things. So we have a cradle to career data system that's been created. I used to work at the Campaign for College Opportunity. We advocated for that. It's great.

It's been coming to fruition. You know, some of the studies that, that you know, are suggested in here around coordination, around looking at how our students are moving through the system. I expect that some of that data is going to be collected through that system that we've, we've created.

You know, in addition to that and this happens at every level of government. I do want to highlight that. So this is whether it's the state or the county. I used to be the mayor in the City of Alhambra. This happens there.

There was a Commission that was put together around workforce that focused on apprenticeships and came up with recommendations. Our bill is based off of those policy recommendations because they weren't taken to action. So all of this great work was done and research was put together, but the actionable part wasn't taken.

And so I think, to Senator Ochoa Bogue's point and Senator Laird's point, sometimes I think it feels like we spin our wheels a little bit instead of actually getting to the execution of some of these programs, the continual studying, the continual assessment.

But we have already put things in place so that we can analyze some of these very issues that we're talking about. And so it's like continuing to layer things. You know, just a moment ago, we had CD up here, and I've had administrators complain to me about the numerous studies that they constantly have to do.

And it's, you know, putting together data and constantly doing data analyzation. But so much of this, the studies that are being done and that they're. The standards that they're trying to meet and the data that they're collecting, it's duplicative. And that's what I see sometimes happen here as well. And so I do want us to.

To acknowledge that, to take a look at what we have and the investments that we've made already, because we have made some good investments. We do have some great policy recommendations that some that have been presented and created by the state itself.

And we should actually take some of those things and take them to action rather than continuing to spend dollars on assessing these things. When I think we might know the answer to some of these questions, yeah.

I can really share some of those concerns. And let me just say that this is the year, as you may know, that workforce data is being entered into Cradle to Career. So the labor agency is working very closely with Cradle to Career, and we are so excited about that partnership.

And that data system is going to enable us to make much better informed decisions because we will be able to connect actual employment outcomes and earnings outcomes with experience in different programs. I also want to reassure you that Secretary Knox, that we are not viewing this as research in an academic sense. That's.

Secretary Knox and I both come from the field. You know, we've spent our careers actually running programs, you know, working with state agencies.

We're really I think it's almost more appropriate to think of this as action planning and really wanting to understand, you know, quickly what's working, why it's working, what's not working and why, and and to really, again, work with that state coordinating agencies on ways that we can leverage funding, align funding, and just make the system at the local level, the regional level, work better than it is.

The last thing I want to highlight is, I think what would help a lot of this is making sure that the Administration is communicating with us as these plans are being presented.

Because when something looks duplicative, when we already have something like Cradle to Career that we've invested so many dollars in and we have questions, it'd be great to just have some of those conversations.

And we're talking directly with our education advocates and partners that are in this space that have been advocating for these systems for many years and can provide helpful feedback, and we want to be a part of that solution.

And I'll just say in the hearing this morning, the Joint Hearing, it was one of the interesting things that came up was how some of these programs are placed organizationally. So that's why this morning we had govops, which was an unusual place for the thing we were talking about this morning.

And Cradle the Career is not placed in a place that comes before us directly. So that's a. A whole nother issue. Anyway, Senator Ochobog told me that she didn't have any further questions. And so I think we have expressed ourselves clearly. And just to. To reiterate for the uninitiated, I didn't say it at the beginning.

You know, this is whatever our fifth hearing, and we don't take action, but we sort of express General directions in the hope that the may revise and the outcome in June will reflect some of the General directions we express. And I think that's the. I'm always intrigued at others that are. That are accepting and rejecting items.

Right now we're just trying to give feedback that we will make consistent in the negotiations, but we hope it gets consistent before. Before we have to negotiate it. So that is just the nature of why we comment and don't take action. So thank you very much for being here. Thank you.

We're going to move to issue number three, the Career Technical Education Overview and streamlining proposal, which we have started to talk about. And the panel will include Elena Powell from the Department of Finance, Michael Alferis from the Legislative Analyst Office, Mary Nicely from the Department of Education, and Chris Ferguson from the Community College Chancellor's Office.

And when you're all ready, we will go in that order. We will begin with the Department of Finance, which is, I'm sure instinctively Mr. Ferguson wants to reach to the mic when I say that. But we'll start with the Real Department of Finance. Finance right now.

Elena Powell, Department of Finance. I'll be giving a brief summary of the proposal on behalf of the administration before opening up for questions.

The Governor's Budget directs the Department of Education to examine the feasibility of streamlining grant processes for specified historical Tk12 career technical education or CTE programs into a single consolidated application process rather than through separate application processes.

The intent of this proposal is to provide information to the appropriate policy and fiscal committees of the Legislature, the Executive Director of the State Board of Education and Finance that could be used to inform future policy conversations around the streamlining of CTE program application and reporting processes to the extent that the Department determines it may be feasible.

The proposal requires the Department to provide two reports. The first would provide key pieces of information on select historical career technical education grants including the purpose and funding history of each program. And the second would provide information on which program processes can be consolidated and possible implementation plans for this streamlining.

And I'll be happy to take questions at the appropriate time.

Thank you. We'll move to the Legislative Analyst's Office. Welcome. Absolutely.

Thank you. Mr. Chair. Members of the Committee, Michael Alferes with the Legislative Analyst Office. We don't have any specific concerns with the Governor's proposal, but we were asked to provide a brief overview of the state's dedicated funding for CTE programs.

So the state annually provides about 500 million in Proposition 98 funding across seven CTE programs which are all listed on page 10 of the agenda. The vast majority of the funding, about 4,450 out of the 500 million is provided through just two programs. Specifically 300 for the CTE incentive grant program administered by CDE.

This program is commonly referred to as CTIG and 150 million for the K12 component of the Strong Workforce program that is administered by the California Community College's Chancellor's Office. The remaining five programs listed on the agenda are all administered by CDE and and make up about $50 million total.

The proposal is to consolidate three of these smaller programs into one reported application starting with CTIG and Caseload Strong Workforce. Both programs have similar goals of expanding high quality CTE across the state. Each program provides one time competitive grants with similar allowable uses of funds.

Schools, school districts, charter schools, county offices of education and regional occupational Centers that serve students in grades seven through 12 may apply for funding from either program. Both programs generally require applicants to provide a local match of $2 for every dollar that they receive in funding from the state.

For CTIG, the program is intended to cover a broad range of goals beyond workforce training such as student engagement and career exploration.

Prospective grantees submit applications directly to cde, who primarily scores applicants based on a holistic review of their CTE programs and makes awards for K12 strong workforce there's a greater emphasis on meeting regional workforce needs, so funding is allocated from the California Community College Chancellor's Office to a regional consortia based on a formula that considers information such as a regional share of statewide attendance for grades 7 through 12 and regional workforce needs.

Each consortium has a K12 Selection Committee that evaluates applications and makes awards to grantees. Additionally, grantees are explicitly required to partner with the community college or community college district in implementing their CTE programs with the use of the funds that they receive through the through the grant program.

So, moving on to the smaller ongoing programs, the state provides 21 million for California partnership Academies. These are programs at high schools that operate small learning communities that integrate a career theme with an academic focus in grades 10 through 12.

This includes funding for the Clean Technology Partnerships, which are partnership academies with a career focus that are around green technology and environmental sustainability.

Next, the state provides 15 million for the CTE Initiative Program, not to be confused with the CTE Incentive Grant, which is intended to move linkages broadly between CTE programs at schools, community colleges, universities, and local industry.

More than half of the funds from recent years for this program have been used to augment funding for the California Partnership Academies, and the remaining funds have been used for a variety of different projects such as CTE related Professional Development and Virtual Platform for Career Exploration and counseling administered by the San Joaquin County Office of Education.

Next, the state provides 6 million ongoing directly to schools to improve the quality of their agricultural education programs. Funds typically are used to program by grant sorry by grant recipients for instructional equipment and supplies.

Lastly, on these ongoing programs, the state provides 5 million ongoing through the Specialized Secondary Programs grant that is aimed at encouraging high schools to create curriculum and pilot programs in specialized fields such as technology and the performing arts.

There are also two high schools that are affiliated with the California State University System that receive ongoing funding from this grant. Lastly, as noted on page 13 of the agenda, the state has also provided close to $1.0 billion in one time funding in recent years aimed at encouraging career pathways and academic pathways.

Half of this amount was provided to the Golden State Pathways program that was covered in the first issue item of the hearing today. Of the remaining amount, 200 million was provided through a competitive grant process for increasing access to dual enrollment for high school students.

And there was another $250 million in nonprofit position 98 General Fund that was provided to the Department of General Services for a competitive grant program to support regional collaboratives that are focused in healthcare and education. I'll stop there. Happy to answer any questions that you might have.

All right, thank you very much. We'll move to Mary Nicely of the Department of Education.

Hello again. Good morning, Mary Nicely, Department of Education, representing state Superintendent Tony Thurman. We are not opposed to looking at combining any of these grants and studying those. This kind of comes in line with the other work that we're doing regarding some efficiencies and being able to streamline some processes and reduce potentially the grants.

We do need to look at the different criteria that would be part of those grants very closely to ensure that there's not confusion in the field and that they're going to the right audiences. I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thank you very much. We'll move to Chris Ferguson of the community college chancellor's office.

Yeah, Chris Ferguson, Executive Vice Chancellor of finance and strategic initiatives at the California Community College Chance Chancellor's Office. I'm primarily here to answer any questions that may come up around the K12 strong workforce program and dual enrollment. We're supporters of a consolidated application. We think, you know, there can be some synergies there.

We have a great partnership with CDE. It's improved significantly over the years in administering the K12 strong workforce program as well as focused on dual enrollment. Specifically, our chancellor has a goal of having every ninth grader effectively having every high school student take at least one course through dual enrollment that has transfer applicability.

Strong supporters of dual enrollment. Just a little bit of data from our program over multiple years. Throughout the rounds over the past several years, 315 lead local educational agencies have participated and received grants impacting approximately 5,800 schools across California. 59% of the lead local educational agencies have secured multiple grants over the years as well.

An example, in the Pajaro Valley in Santa Cruz County, there were.

Which is just a random example.

Just random.

And you have one from San Bernardino now Hamburge as well.

Unfortunately, I do not. Four of the career pathways that were established through the K12 Strong Workforce Program or three. Sorry, no. The four biotech, sustainable agriculture, IT programming, and graphic design.

You know, our Initial data is showing that slightly more students do that are participating in these programs do ultimately enroll in a community college as well as slightly more students are in these programs from underrepresented backgrounds as measured by free and reduced price meal counts. So we see a lot of benefit to the K12 strong workforce program.

We see a lot of benefit to dual enrollment programs. And to the extent we can be efficient with a consolidated application, we're happy to work with our partners to make that happen. Thank you.

Let me start with a high level question and I don't know how who to address it to.

But this is reminiscent this is a study, but this is reminiscent of the effort to really shrink categorical programs in K through 12 when we went from 80 something to 12 or whatever in categoricals and everybody's proficiency until their categorical escape getting gored.

And the reason is is there all those categoricals is to make sure those individual things happen and are funded. How is that not going to happen here? Or how is that at play here? Because one of the things that I heard Mr.

Al Faris mention was sort of green buildings and in one part of it in training, and you consolidate this into a major program and you have green buildings as one of the I'm not presuming the outcome of the study, but it informs us in approving the study.

How do you make sure that green buildings are part of that, but you're consolidating it. How does that work?

I'm happy to take that. Elaine Powell, Department of Finance so to clarify, the Administration is proposing to examine the feasibility of consolidating just the application processes, not the programs themselves.

So this would actually lead to an easier application process for LEAs to apply for multiple grants, rather than having to do those same grants and do 345 separate application processes for all of them. There would just be one application for all of those grants.

And sometimes it seems like that's almost harder than consolidating the programs. So you would, because one of my other questions was going to be on the grant application, how do you deal with the fact that now there's all these different deadlines and all these different, well, I mean same fiscal year, but sort of different grant periods.

You just have one application that sort of highlights all those differences and allows people to do their core information about whether they're a nonprofit or an LEA or whatever it is.

So the administration's intent is to examine programs that have remained largely unchanged programmatically and have and finance has not hurt concerns from in the field for the last recent years, this would.

Well, that's a very interesting metric. How do you measure that? Do you have a help desk in finance where there are a lot of concerns, you've toted them up and that knocks somebody down the list?

No, but there are, historically there are some programs that have just been more stable for these ones. We're looking at ones that have been stable for over a decade, financially speaking. So.

So then if somebody doesn't make the list, they have to consider themselves unstable?

Of course not. But applications are just more steady programs.

Understand how to apply for these various grants in a way that sometimes once with fluctuating, sorry, fluctuating fiscal or programmatic changes that change more on a year to year basis, depending on the funds, depending on the formula, those ones tend to cause more questions to be raised because they're trying to each year understand how to apply for those and in the best way to apply for them versus these kind of more stable historically programs that they have a much greater understanding of and have been doing it the same way.

And the implication is, is that you streamline the application process, you save money. That's the implication here is if in fact that happens. Nobody's proposing lowering the pots that go to these individual programs by that amount, are they?

No, the application process is for. The consolidation is for the application process, not the programs themselves. To the extent that the easier application process might lead to additional LEAs applying, we may see an increase in competition for the funds. But other than that, there is no intent to reduce funds for any of these programs.

Yeah, I was talking about the fact that you might save a little money on the application process and you want to keep it in the programs, I assume.

Liz Mai, Department of Finance. I think also the intent of this is to make it easier for the LEAs rather than save money because we, I don't know, finding efficiencies of, oh, this program covers the same thing. That this other program is.

Okay, let me ask my colleagues if they have any questions or comments. None there. None there. Well, I think just what I expressed, just our General direction and we're anxious to see how this unfolds. So thank you. We'll move to the school facility program issue number four. Three panelists are Alex Anaya Velasquez from the Department of Finance.

Edgar Cabral from the Legislative Analyst Office, and Rebecca Kirk from the Office of Public School Construction. And we will go in that order. So we'll begin with the Department of Finance. Welcome to the Committee.

Good morning. Chair and Members. Alex, are you timing yourself? I was checking if it was the afternoon. Right. Good morning. And I slashed to the afternoon on here, so just wanted to make sure work.

Good work.

Yes, Good morning.

Well, hopefully this panel doesn't go to the afternoon afternoon. But we'll see what we can do. We shall see.

Alex Anaya Velasquez with the Department of Finance for the Office of Public School Construction. As noted in the agenda, the Governor's Budget allocates 1.5 billion in Proposition to bond Fund authority for the School Facilities Program in 2025-26.

This funding level of 1.5 billion is the same as the amount allocated for the school facilities since 2019-20 and and prior to the Governor's Budget, the annual amount have been comprised of a combination of Proposition 51 bond fund and general fund support for the School Facilities Program.

In addition, the Governor's Budget allocates 16 positions of which 14 are for OPSC, the Office of Public School Construction to manage the School Facilities Program.

SFP provides 59.5 million over five years starting in 2025-26 from the 2024 State School Facilities Fund and allocates 356,000 ongoing from various funds to implement and oversee the educational facility components of Proposition 2.

As a reminder, the recently approved Proposition 2 authorizes a total of 8.5 billion in state general obligation bond funds for K12 schools to be allocated through the School Facilities Program with programmatic changes that took effect as of October 31, 2024.

These funds are allocated across several key $4 billion for modernization, $3.3 billion for new construction, $600 million for charter schools and $600 million for career technical education project. The requested positions will enable OPSC to maintain its current annual application process rate of $1.5 billion worth of applications and implement the programmatic changes outline in Proposition two.

This concludes my remarks and I welcome any questions at the appropriate time. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Move to the Legislative Analyst's Office.

Good morning. Morning. Edgar Cabral with the Legislative Analyst Office.

We don't have any specific concerns with the proposal as my colleague from the Department of Finance mentioned this would the positions that would be added under the Governor's proposal would be subject efficient to continue to process applications at the same rate that the state has been doing over the past several years.

Thank you. We'll move to the Office of Public School construction.

Good morning, Mr. Chair and Members. Rebecca Kirk, the Executive Officer for the Office of Public School Construction within the Department of General Services and Staff to the State Allocation Board. I think our colleagues at the Department of Finance provided a great introduction to the budget change proposal and what's been included in the Governor's Budget.

I would just add that the requested expenditure authority in this budget change proposal not only facilitates the Office of Public School Construction's ability to implement the extensive changes and new programs in Proposition 2, as well as administer that 8.5 billion in new bond authority that was authorized by voter approval of Proposition 2, but also allows us to continue to administer the school facility program as we do not otherwise have an adequate source source of administrative funding in 202526 or beyond.

And I'm happy to address any questions.

Let me ask a couple of questions or I actually generally know the answer to, but I want to make sure that everybody does. On the the first piece is there were some things in the bond that changed, like the the state grant amount for new construction, a couple of other percentages.

How does that affect people that were in line already and had applied before the the bond passed?

Excellent question. Proposition 2 and the underlying legislation that placed it on the ballot specified that any applications received by our office on or before October 30th of 2024 are essentially grandfathered under the provisions that were in effect in the statute for our program as of January 12024.

And then any applications that we received on or after October 312024 are subject to all of the changes in Proposition 2. So we do have a little bit of two sets of processing as we are implementing the changes in Proposition 2.

And then as we have talked about in the last years here, the bond money from the last bond ran out, I Forget the year 2021 or sometime in the past.

And then we were appropriating every year out of the General Fund to try to keep the school projects going in the hopes that what happened happened that the bond would pass. So how now will we because I think the governor's recommendation here is authorizing part of the bond for up to the fiscal year.

How will this roll out both recommended in this year budget and expected in future years against the applications and amounts in the bond? I mean is it going to be an annual appropriation for a certain amount that equals schools? Who's in line? How is it expected it will roll out in the next few years?

Sure, I can take that. I think we're returning now with the voter approval of Proposition 2 to more of a historic norm for the school facility program being historically a bond funded program. As you mentioned, Mr.

Chair, there were a number of one time significant General Fund investments from, I believe, budget acts of 20232022 or 20222022 and a couple of years thereafter in the period in which we hadn't had A bond since 2016 pass in California on a statewide basis for school facilities.

Moving forward, what has historically occurred and what seems to be included in the Governor's Budget for the budget year is essentially specification of the processing rate that the Office of Public School Construction would bring forward in that fiscal year.

As the colleague at the Department of Finance mentioned, the Governor's Budget maintains the recent rate of about $1.5 billion in school facility program applications annually. If we maintain that rate in the future years, the $8.5 billion in new bond authority authorized in Proposition 2 would take that out to about roughly a five year time frame.

Okay, thank you. That. I don't know if my colleagues have any questions, Any question. My colleagues don't have questions, but I think that is good. We wanted to just air that out and where we are and what we're doing. So I appreciate that. That was just very helpful.

We're going to move to issue number five, credit for prior learning and career path. Specific reports we have back Chris Ferguson from Community Colleges, Justin Hurst from the Department of Finance, and Lisa King from the Legislative Analyst Office.

And we'll go in that order. So we'll start with Mr. Ferguson. Welcome.

Sure. So the Governor's Budget includes 50 million, of which 7 million is ongoing, to support the development of credit for prior learning programs in community colleges.

Credit for prior learning gives students a jump start on completing their degree and entering the workforce by partnering with industry and identifying transferable skills that can be counted towards a college degree or certificate.

Credit for prior learning is a powerful economic tool to make educational opportunities more accessible and provide more equitable career and completion outcomes for all Californians, especially for apprentices, veterans, and working adults.

Credit for prior learning sets students on a structured and rewarding journey, a rewarding learning journey by honoring their documented lived experiences and earned skills that they've learned on their, in their employment or in their service learning.

And it allows, you know, for that skill to be matched with credit, that counts toward an associate degree, a credential, a certificate at a community college.

Research shows that just that students who receive just 15 units of credit for prior learning are nearly twice as likely to complete their educational goals, completing in nine to 14 months, less time than their peers.

By bridging the divide between industry, skill and college credit, Credit for prior learning directly supports California's vision to prepare all learners for high skill, high wage employment. I think what I would add here is we are largely, we would largely be providing resources to community colleges. The credit for prior learning is issued through your local community college.

We are helping with the infrastructure at the state level. And I just close with the credit for prior learning budget proposal would ensure seamless integration into college outreach and enrollment practices. And again, this funding would support critical infrastructure at the local level, allowing students to get additional credit in terms of career passports.

The Governor's Budget provides 50 million one time to support the development of career passports through California community college districts. So it's very focused on community college from the start, but intended to allow for other institutions in the future to also harness and utilize a career passport. The information reflected in a career passport is maintained by the student.

They have control over it. What I would add here is that the career passport would assist individuals.

It would with no college, some college and certificates apply for a job, they would be more able to convey the skills that they've learned in an educational setting, in a work setting, and convey it in a way that industry recognizes, or using the terms that industry recognizes to help them with that endeavor.

It would be useful for people to document post college learning as well through our community college system, such as when they come back to our institutions to upskill or reskill. So we see a lot of value to our students and to our employer partners.

And the Career Passport will help employers engage in skills informed hiring practices in alignment with their ultimate economic demands and workforce needs. So with that I would conclude my remarks and happy to answer questions at the appropriate time.

Thank you very much. We'll move to the Department of Finance.

Good morning Chair and Members. I think my colleague with the Chancellor's Office did a great job introducing both of those investments. So I'll just speak a little bit more towards the intent from the Administration first for the 50 million associated with credit for prior learning.

This investment is intended to build upon, expand and embed processes for awarding credit for prior learning across the community college system.

The trailer building which associated with this investment requires more systematically establishing and maintaining a process across the colleges to identify the students who may qualify for credit for prior learning with a specific focus on certain groups such as students with prior military service and working learners.

The language also requires more systematic communication with students regarding the credit opportunities that are available to them as well as supporting faculty groups to build upon existing credit for prior learning initiatives.

The second investment for the career passport that 50 million the Administration goals for this investment as described in that trailer Bill are to develop a secure digital tool that displays an individual's validated skills, credentials and academic achievements and is intended to be shared with employers to present a skills based portrait of a student's career and experience with the tool to be provided at low or no cost to the individual.

The intent is for this to leverage the electronic transcript information from E. Transcript California and information on validated skills from Credit for prior Learning initiatives to populate the information that would then be presented through the Career Passport. I'll be happy to take any questions.

Thank you very much. And then we'll move to the Legislative Analyst.

Lisa King with the Legislative Analyst's Office. So I'll start by walking through our comments and credit for prior learning and then I'll turn to Career Passports regarding credit for prior learning.

While we do think that credit for prior learning can have state benefits, we would note that existing funding is already available for these activities proposed under the Governor's Budget. Specifically, Last year's budget included $6 million one time for many of the same system wide activities including convening faculty work groups and developing a related technology platform.

That money has not yet been spent and is available to cover such costs in 2025-26. Locally, districts also have funding from programs such as the Strong Workforce Program that they could use to expand credit for prior learning at their campuses.

Rather than provide additional funding for credit for prior learning at this time, we recommend instead requiring the Chancellor's office to report on how it uses the funds provided in last year's budget, the outcomes of those efforts, and any remaining barriers and associated costs to expanding credit for prior learning.

We think that this information could help the Legislature make a decision down the line about whether and how much additional funding to provide for this purpose. Turning next to Career Passports, we have a number of concerns with this proposal. First, we don't think it addresses a clearly defined problem.

There are many existing tools for job seekers to communicate their skills and experiences to employers, including resumes, interviews and platforms such as LinkedIn. In our view, we don't think the Administration has identified what's lacking in these existing tools and how the Career Passport would improve upon that.

We also have a concern that employers might not value a new and unfamiliar tool over these existing tools.

Second, while we are aware of some pilot projects similar to Career Passports in other states, we aren't aware of any that are far long enough in implementation to have demonstrated outcomes, and that makes it difficult for us to determine whether this proposal is likely to have positive impacts here.

Third, at this stage, we are still missing some key details on this proposal. For example, under the proposed trailer bill language, the Legislature would receive information on a timeline of key deliverables in March 2026. That's the type of information that ordinarily the Legislature would have before it has to make a budget decision.

Given these concerns, we recommend rejecting the proposed funding for current passports. Thank you and happy to take any questions. Questions.

Thank you. Let me ask in maybe the Department of Finance, the way our staff report summarizes what the Legislative Analyst just said is that the proposal does not address a clearly defined problem, the proposed approach is largely unproven, and the project schedule and total costs are unknown. How would you respond to those concerns?

Specifically for the Career Passport? Correct? Yes. Okay. The Career Passport is intended to address some of the challenges that we've heard a little bit earlier in some of the prior panels that we've been hearing from employers, and particularly with that expressed interest in finding and matching the right candidates to currently open positions.

We do know that some learners and workers have faced a lot of challenges with regards to gathering and then subsequently presenting their experience in a way that accurately defines their skill set.

Another way to put this is we know that some employers are looking for skilled workers who typically use college degrees as their own way to screen candidates, but in doing so, they may miss out on some of the qualified people that are potentially able to fill that role. This can put a variety of individuals at a disadvantage.

And if they gain the skills in a variety of contexts, such as for those student groups that have been mentioned, for example, through prior military experience, then this is a tool that would then enable them to bridge that gap and be able to qualify for those positions.

And the clear timeline for deliverables seems off in the future, like March 2026 if I read it right. Why should we do that in this fiscal year if deliverables are way off in the future and we have various budget issues?

The Administration is prioritizing this as one of the key pillars of the Career Education Master Plan. Some of the best practices that we've been hearing from other states is that there needs to be a strong push from the Administration for it to be a successful initiative.

That proposed timeline gives the Chancellor's office, in collaboration with Cradle to Career and the labor Agency to develop a more refined timeline to deliver on those key aspects of the, of the proposal and then would then be able to subsequently go through a process to develop the actual investment without over promising up front.

Mr. Ferguson is leaning into his microphone, so I will.

Yeah, I think from our perspective, you know, on the timeline, we, we still see the ultimate value for our students and what it will potentially do to help them get quality employment, especially living wage employment that leads to economic mobility over time.

So we think having the resources available to do this is beneficial toward making sure we can achieve that ultimate goal. So again, strong supporters because we just see the value for our students.

You know, the long term could be, you know, a next step of using some of the AI solutions that are out there to help those students then translate even their career passports into say a resume, allow for practice. There's software out there that allows for practice on the front end as well.

So we just see a lot of value to our students.

Senator Ochoa Bogh, any questions or comments?

I think a couple of comments. So I see the value for. What are we referring it to? Credit for prior learning, especially when it comes to our military.

You know, I've carried a bill in previous years that would give actually credit to our military in order to get higher level work in the Legislature, in government, in, in the process. So I completely get the merits. I'm just, I share the concerns with the LAO with regards to.

It's almost as the intent is to kind of cradle our workforce to get employment.

And I'm trying To figure out whether or not the responsibility to giving that credit, the skill set should fall on the University or should that be it's a responsibility on the employment side to ensure that they have methods in which when the application is being, the application process is being designed, they should include a component where it allows for folks to actually state what is not necessarily under the major per se.

I'm trying to figure out how much of this should fall into, in a way, cuddling the student on the University part and how much of it should be on the well thought out process of employment application on the labor part of it.

Yeah, I think from our perspective and to your point, the career passport and the structure of the trailer Bill language around it would allow for the community colleges to validate those skills.

So if a student does have that does get that through credit for prior learning, it's a way for us to validate that so, so that an employer has confidence that that is the skill that that student either received through their prior work or received skill wise through their academic setting through their transcript.

So it does enhance what your transcript would say, what your work experience would say in that regard.

And in many respects it's taking some of those core learning objectives that each one of the courses a student would take or receive credit for and enables those core skills to be displayed in a way that adds value for that student when they're seeking employment.

Certainly there's a trade off between the value to the employer versus the value to the student, but being able to recognize all of those skills and our courses have a plethora of skills that are taught and that our students obtain and allows for a healthy translation when seeking employment.

And we know like in our data sets, we know oftentimes that our students are completing degree programs and are not necessarily becoming employed in the area in which they were studying.

So this can be very helpful in that regard too because it's a way to convey all of those skills in the sectors in which you are hoping to, you know, ultimately seek employment in and have that be aligned with your educational opportunities.

Mr. Chair, if I may. So let me follow up on the LAO based on that perspective. What feedback would you give as far as this is something that we do not currently have in our system that allows us to accommodate that specific application?

Yeah, I think we would just note that there are existing tools that allow job seekers to convey their skills, including in some cases validated skills, to employers.

So for example, there are some industries such as healthcare and IT, that have a system of certifications that are designed for that purpose, where individuals can or in some cases must complete a certain license or certification to validate their skills before receiving a job.

In other industries where there is a less formal type of certification process, there are still options that employers can use such as interviews and skills skills assessments during the hiring process that can allow them to get a better understanding of an individual's skills.

And so I think in assessing this proposal, you likely would just want to ensure that if you are approving a career passport that it's adding value on top of these existing tools rather than just creating another version of that.

So if I may, Mr. Chair, go back to our community colleges. So what you just mentioned with regards to besides giving credit or validation to prior skills that are coming in into our community colleges was intriguing to me.

What caught my attention, what you also said was that many folks are not getting jobs within their majors or do I know that? I was a religious studies major and here I am. So I completely understand that.

Do you foresee that this component would allow for people to become more employable, helping those that do not necessarily have a matching major to a particular job? Do you feel that this would actually enhance their ability to be employed? Not well, in General, for everybody as a whole?

Yeah, I think that would be the case. You know, to your 0.1 of the one of my former staff members, salt of the earth, excellent, smart, outstanding budget analyst background in education was history.

But the analytical skills that were acquired through that program, if you're better able to convey some of those background skills, some of that information, certainly we would view that as being helpful to those students who may not have a specific, a specific interest in the area in which they were receiving a degree, a certificate, a credential, but be able to be employed in a living wage job or a job that supports economic mobility.

So yes, we think that that is absolutely a possibility because it helps convey to the LAO's point. You know, we would add that leaning back on just licensing requirements would be a bit difficult given that not every one of our majors has licensing requirements.

And licensing requirements can be difficult for some individuals to ultimately seek employment in a given field.

Thank you.

Yes, I think. And you're going to say that if you're a politics grad rather than history, you can have good budget analytical skills.

Absolutely. Michelle Nguyen, Department of Finance I just want to agree with the comments from Mr. Ferguson. I think sometimes when you're looking at a resume and you see someone is a veteran, they have a joint services transcript, maybe they did some service work before they joined the military. It. You just may not.

I think that the intent of this program is to show, you know, there are some kind of, like, specific subject area skills that someone can gain in all of their different experiences, but then they're also generalizable and transferable skills that they gain in those, in those like, learning and different work experiences, too, that I think this investment is intended to highlight for students to, you know, kind of understand all that they bring to the table and then also to help them in their conversations with employers, too.

So just want to agree with some of those comments.

Okay. And if this is, if the program were to move, be approved and move forward, would there be a component as to whether or not the intent could be measured?

So if you implement this program and say your veterans are moving forward with employment and they're employed based on that skill set, would you be asking employers if that was a determining factor just to ensure that it actually made a difference in whether or not they were employed? I mean, for an assessment, evaluation purposes moving forward?

That's not part of the current trailer bill, but I think that would be an interesting, you know, it would be interesting to kind of gauge that.

I know as part of the, some of the budget development work that is happening for the Career Passport right now, some of our departmental partners are having conversations and in the governor's office are having conversations with employers right now to talk to them about, you know, kind of having a broader, kind of a broader based way of evaluating prospective hires as they're going, as they're going through the hiring process, especially in light of some of what we've heard of folks saying that they're having trouble matching the right employees to the open positions that they have.

So I, you know, I think we'd certainly be open to something like that, trying to, trying to measure that out.

I think it probably would be hard to say, you know, this specific employee was definitely hired because of the career passport specifically, but that it could be, you know, a component for understanding if they got hired for that?

Well, I'm just kind of curious because if you're not hiring because they don't have the exact major credential and you are trying to justify the fact that you need this because of the skill sets that perhaps are not highlighted, I think that would be an easy check mark to ask the employer.

Well, if they were to be hired or if they were hired is, you know, it was, you know, just have a box that says determining factor was their past experience.

I think it's the only way that you could justify evaluating the program years forward to kind of overcome the fact that we already have systems in place that allow you to delineate all of your experiences and your credentials.

So I'm just trying to see if there's a way to justify what you're doing because as of right now, arguments on both sides are not seeing the value. So I'm just trying to help visualize whether or not, especially because it's the veterans and I have a very soft spot for veterans. And that's what we're highlighting here.

Yeah. I think we can try to find some way to consider that as part of trailer bill amendments for may revision, something that we're definitely open to.

Yeah. And if I can help separate the two in terms of credit for prior learning and the number of units that will be issued, a lot of academic detail that will be available. We do have some of that information readily available today for some students in community colleges that are being issued credit for prior learning.

So that is. That is available today. We're happy to get that information that we do have to staff so that that can be provided to you.

And then on the second part with career passports, certainly to the extent that there is that type of linkage and then we can see that in the future, we'd be happy to report back.

Okay, thank you very much. I think that was very helpful. I appreciate the receptivity to that. That completes our discussion of issue number five, and we're going to move to our last issue on the agenda, issue 6, title 9 updates.

We have listed Isabel Alvarado from the University of California, Peter Lim from the California State University System, and David O'Brien from the California Community Colleges.

And then we'll begin with the University of California. Welcome.

Good afternoon Chair Laird and Members of the Committee. My name is Isabel Alvarado, she/her/ella. I'm the Deputy Title IX Director in the UC Systemwide Title IX Office or STIXO, which is part of the Systemwide Office of Civil Rights in the University of California's Office of the President.

Thank you for the opportunity to provide this Committee with an overview regarding how the University is preventing and addressing discrimination and harassment based on sex in compliance with state and federal law, including Title IX. Each of the University's ten campuses, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Office of the President has a dedicated Title IX Officer.

These Title IX officers and their teams are responsible for responding to all reports of discrimination based on sex, including sexual harassment and sexual violence at their campus or location.

STIXO is the policy owner for the comprehensive systemwide Sexual Violence and Sexual Harassment or SVSH Policy which prohibits all forms of harassment based on sex and applies to all faculty, staff and students and third parties.

The SVSH Policy also has implementation frameworks that clearly outline investigation and adjudication processes under the SVSH Policy, including remedial measures for a complainant and potential disciplinary actions or corrective actions for a respondent to depending on outcomes. The SVSH Policy serves as the cornerstone of UC's Title IX compliance program.

Some key provisions in that policy include specific definitions of prohibited conduct, responsible employee reporting obligations, alternative resolution and formal investigation options, and supportive measures available to assist or protect parties and the broader community even if an individual does not participate in a formal resolution process.

The SVSH policy also contains answers to frequently asked questions from UC community members. A key responsibility of STIXO is to provide guidance and support to the campus and location Title IX Officers to ensure consistent implementation of the VBSH policy across the system.

For example, STIXO leads a monthly check in meeting with the Title IX Officers who separately have monthly one on one meetings with the systemwide Title IX Director to whom they have a reporting line.

STIXO also regularly provides written guidance and training to the campus Title IX offices and is responsible for managing the system wide required online SVSH training for all faculty, staff and students as well as overseeing the systemwide case management system to track SVSH reports.

Each UC campus has a Center for Advocacy Resources and Education or CARE Office to support complainants and Respondent Support Services Coordinators to support respondents in SVSH matters.

In addition to these efforts, UC has made great strides in the prevention, detection and response to reports of sexual misconduct arising out of the clinical setting, particularly at our academic medical centers.

The University has issued systemwide guidance on investigating prohibited conduct in the patient care setting, enhanced chaperone standards for sensitive exams, and introduced boundaries trainings requirements for healthcare providers like physicians and advanced practice nurses.

We are proud of the collective commitment to this significant effort and to our ongoing work to protect patient safety and continuously improve patient experience and outcomes.

I would like to end by emphasizing that at the University of California we are committed to full compliance with state and federal law while keeping at the forefront the well-being of our community, our commitment to both fairness and compassion, and the University's culture of safety, respect and accountability.

We strive to build best practices informed by the law, the data and feedback from our community members. Thank you.

Thank you. We'll move to the CSU system. Welcome.

Good afternoon. My name is Peter Lim and I serve as the Executive Advisor for Civil Rights Programming and Services at the California State University Chancellor's Office.

Today I'm here to provide an update on CSU's system wide efforts to prevent and combat sexual harassment, comply with Title IX, and to highlight how our university partners support students and employees affected by Title IX misconduct.

I'm pleased to report that at the Chancellor's Office and across all 23 of our campuses, we have worked diligently to build a strong, resilient team dedicated to creating and sustaining an inclusive, supportive campus environment that is free from discrimination and harassment.

At the CSU, we have a systemwide non-discrimination policy that defines sexual harassment and clearly outlines the reporting and investigation processes. In March 2025, so very recently, we updated this policy to align with the recent change in federal regulations.

As you may already be aware, in July of 2023, after completing an audit of the CSU's handling of sexual harassment reports, the California State Auditor found that the CSU had not done enough to address reports of sexual harassment. The findings were a call to action that spurred the creation of our Office for Civil Rights Programming and Services.

The State Auditor issued 16 recommendations for the CSU and I'm pleased to report, and consistent with the handout I provided to you, that we have timely and successfully completed the 15 recommendations due to date and earlier this month we notified the CSA or the California State Auditor of the completion of the latest items for their review.

The final recommendation involves an enterprise level case management system and we are working with IT to ensure successful implementation. That will be completed by July 2026 as required by the State Auditor. To strengthen our efforts, the CO or the Chancellor's Office has tripled its Title IX and civil rights team from 5 to 15.

This substantial increase in staffing has allowed us to provide enhanced support to each campus by offering direct access to a civil rights attorney and a civil rights specialist. These professionals collaborate regularly with their assigned campuses by assessing all new reports and helping their assigned campuses determine appropriate next steps.

This has created a new level of consistency, oversight, and professional development for our campuses. Transparency and accountability are essential to engendering and building trust with our community members. To foster these values of transparency and accountability, every campus now publishes data and statistics on their websites quantifying the results of their work.

Additionally, we have implemented regular evaluations of each campus's Title IX program. Recently, we conducted a full review at five campuses to assess the effectiveness of their Title IX programs. A report summarizing these reviews is published on our website, making it easily accessible and readily available, further demonstrating our commitment to transparency and accountability.

Each December, under SB 808 and SB 1166, we provide a report to the legislature on the number of cases per campus and the length of time for cases to be closed. We also provide a report to the CSU's Board of Trustees each and every time the board convenes, and we did so as recently as yesterday.

As we move forward, we will continue to build on the lessons learned from past audits and our program reviews. Ensuring the CSU system leads the way in providing a supportive and responsive environment for our campus communities and that meets the needs every student, staff and faculty member.

We are dedicated to maintaining this momentum, working closely with campus leaders, faculty, staff, and students to create lasting, positive change. Thank you.

Thank you. We'll move to the community colleges.

Thank you Chair Laird, Subcommitee Members. I'm David O'Brien, Vice Chancellor for External Relations at the California Community Colleges Chancellor's Office.

On behalf of Chancellor Sonya Christian, I want to thank the legislature for your attention to this critical issue and reiterate that like my colleagues from the University of California and the California State University, we are committed to ensuring that the California Community Colleges provide a safe, welcoming and inclusive campus environment for all members of the campus community, students, faculty and staff.

Discrimination on the basis of sex or any other protective characteristic has no place on our campuses. Period. As your staff agenda notes and I think it is an excellent summary, our system is unique in the fact that we are decentralized.

As the Chair knows all too well, our colleges are governed on a day to day basis by their locally elected boards of trustees, and it is typically the districts or the campuses that have the primary legal responsibility for Title IX compliance.

That being said, we were fortunate to work last year with Committee consultants from both the Senate and the Assembly side on legislation as part of the Call to Action package that the legislature considered.

In our case, it was Assembly Bill 2048 by Assemblymember Mike Fong that helped sort of deal with the unique nature of our system by asking us to convene a work group that is going to issue a set of recommendations to the Board of Governors and the legislature later this year.

So I was pleased to be appointed and honored to be appointed chair of that work group by Chancellor Christian. We have had three meetings already. Our workgroup includes members of the Board of Governors, campus and district presidents and chancellors, trustees, faculty, other staff and administrators, including Title IX coordinators, and, of course, students.

And our charge essentially is to deliver a set of recommendations to the legislature and the Board of Governors by the end of this calendar year, though we're hoping to make it much sooner than that, on how we can strengthen our Title IX policies and policies on sex and gender equity to ensure that we're providing the same baseline level of support across all of our campuses, that we have a series of best practices and procedures in place, and that we're evaluating very carefully what our resource needs are in this area.

Just to give you one example, the Chancellor's Office for the Community Colleges does not have and has never been funded to receive funding or positions for any sort of central office of civil rights at our Chancellor's Office. We are a small but mighty team.

But this is one recommendation that we expect our work group to take up and perhaps submit as a proposal for next year's budget discussion. Ultimately, our goal is to ensure that, regardless of the situation at the federal level, our students and faculty and staff know that we take this issue seriously. And that absolutely includes members of the LGBTQ community, pregnant and parenting students, and other groups who are protected under a previous set of Title IX rules and are protected under state law.

So we expect that our annual update to this Subcommitee at the same time next year will be more substantive because we will have the recommendations from our work group. And we're grateful to the legislature for their engagement with this issue.

Thank you. Appreciate the reports of all three of you. And this is an informational item, and that's what we wanted to do.

But let me ask a question of the CSU representative because you're in a unique position of a bill that was passed in 2023 that actually required a report every year out of things that had happened. And this is a good list.

And we had charts in our agenda that sort of listed the reports of harassment, discrimination and by sexual conduct, but it doesn't show it year to year and when-- This is a good summary, but it doesn't tell us how it affects the outcomes.

And so is what you're doing reflected in sort of year to year numbers that show that this is a problem that is diminishing as opposed to going up? How does that look?

Thank you for the question. Peter Lim from the Chancellor's Office at the CSU. The metric I think, Chair Laird, to evaluate the effectiveness of our Title IX programs on each of our campus, one key metric is to review the number of reports that office is receiving year over year.

What we want to see is an increase in reporting to those campus Title IX office. Not because we're saying that the prevalence of sexual harassment is increasing, but we want to show, or we want to see that people who experience sexual harassment are comfortable contacting their Title IX office and that that campus has engendered trust.

So while you'll see these reports, you'll see academic year 21-22 and year over year after that on the specific Title IX websites on each of the campuses. As you look at kind of the metrics that you raised, I'll raise one campus in particular, which is San Jose State University.

And I only raised that University because I was reviewing their metrics for the board presentation yesterday. If you look at 21-2022, that campus has approximately 36,000 students and 4,000 employees. So a small population, like a city, 40,000 people. In 21-22, they received 120 Title IX reports.

And if you compare that to the size of that population, that's one key metric that will show us that there was not a lot of trust in accessing that Title IX Office of Services in 21-22. If you look at those metrics in 24-25, you're over 400. So you have a 300% increase from 21-22 to 2024-25.