Senate Standing Committee on Education

Alrighty. The Senate Education Committee will come to order in 30 seconds. Good morning. There is one bill on today's agenda, AB 1098, authored by Assemblymember Fong. This bill has been pulled back for hearing because it was substantially amended. This is the first time the contents of this bill will be heard in the Senate.

Witnesses are asked to limit their testimony to two minutes to ensure the committee is able to complete today's agenda in a timely fashion. Seeing that we don't have a quorum just yet, let's begin as a subcommittee with the first bill.

So, Assemblymember Fong, you can begin when you're ready and I'm going to pass the gavel over to my colleague.

Good morning, Madam Chair and Senators. Thank you so much for the opportunity to join you here today and for having this hearing. Prior to 2011, California had an independent body called the California Post Secondary Education Commission, also known as CPEC, to coordinate both public and private post-secondary education in California.

CPEC provided independent analyses and recommendations to the Legislature. The agency shut down in 2011 due to budget constraints. Today, California is the only state without a statewide oversight and coordinating body. AB 1098 is based on one of the recommendations from the Governor's Master Plan for Career Education.

The bill establishes a California Education Interagency Council comprises of the heads of K12, higher education and workforce and labor agencies, along with the AICCU. California has allocated billions of dollars for various career technical education programs, workforce development programs and career pathway programs over the years. While they each have merit, each one operates independently in silos.

The council will bring together all the different entities together to have a role in education and also looking at policies and funding for focus on jobs and careers in order to improve cross sector collaboration, develop data, informed policies and plans, and to eliminate duplicative efforts.

Together with AB 1098's companion bill, SB 638, authored by Senator Padilla and myself, the council will help to ensure that our policies and programs, funding, and agencies operate in a coordinated and strategic fashion so that all K-12 and higher education students, including opportunity youth and adults, are able to secure good paying jobs.

Here to testify and support is Jessie Ryan with the Campaign for College Opportunity and Jason Henderson with the California Edge Coalition. I certainly ask for an Aye vote at the appropriate time. Thank you.

Welcome. And just as a reminder, you both have two minutes each to make your case.

Senator. Good morning. Jessie Ryan. I am the President of the Campaign for College Opportunity, a nonprofit with a coalition of more than 15,000 business education, student and civil rights stakeholders across the state dedicated to ensuring the racial equity and economic justice of higher education. I'm incredibly proud to be here today to testify in support of AB 1098.

As it was shared, it will create the framework for California's Education Interagency Campaign Council that we believe is critical to ensuring a permanent table with our state's K12 education workforce and business leaders to come together in an intentional and aligned way on systemic change, strategic planning and policy and practice that will keep students at the center of decision making.

As Many know, since 2011, the Campaign for College Opportunity has urgently advocated for a statewide higher education coordinating body, recognizing that it was necessary to maximize state investments in our higher education systems, that it was necessary to ensure alignment with state workforce need and that students had effective and intentional pathways towards degree completion and jobs.

I think unfortunately as we know, California holds the dubious distinction as being the only state state in the nation that does not have some version of higher ed coordination.

Coordination entities in other states have differing degrees of authority as we know, but other states have used them and made a conscious decision to invest in putting a degree of decision making with an understanding that the role of analysis, planning and expertise focused on advancing a common mission with with some authority and staffing necessary to do just that.

I think right now, at this moment in time, it's more critical than ever before because amidst national threats that are mounting daily, a coordinating entity like the Interagency Council is a necessary tool to drive the students interests necessary to meet the future workforce needs of the state.

I will just finish by saying that this is a timely Bill. A Bill that allows us to be not just in in defense mode with federal threats, but set forth a vision necessary to meet the needs of California moving forward. Sorry about that.

And we'll continue with our second witness.

Good morning Chair and Members Jason Henderson on behalf of the California EDGE Coalition. EDGE is a nonprofit nonpartisan statewide policy organization dedicated to workforce addressing workforce shortages. Excuse me, Expanding pathways to economic mobility and helping employers access the work skilled workforce they need.

Community California invests billions of dollars annually across siloed workforce programs and education programs that often have their own set of goals, their own set of funding and their own set of rules. AB 1098 addresses these long standing structural challenges.

By coordinating the systems, identifying gaps and disparities and ensuring opportunity, youth and adult learners can access pathways to economic security. This bill's alignment with the Credit Cradle to Career Data system is also critical to provide data driven insights, targeted investments and ensure measurable outcomes. For these reasons Ed strongly supports AB 1098.

Also, on behalf of the California Competes who couldn't be here today, we'd like to register their support as well. Thank you to Assembly Member Fong and to the Committee. We strongly request your aye vote. Thank you.

Thank you very much. So that kind of equated. You went less than your time and you went a little. Went over. So we're. We're good. Okay. We're going to continue with any other witnesses in support of AB 1098. Please come to the microphone. State your name, your agency and whether you're not. You're in support or in opposition.

Morning. Chair and Members Alex Graves of the. Association of Independent California Colleges and Universities. And strong support. Thank you.

Good morning. Jesse Hernandez Reyes, on behalf of the Campaign for College Opportunity and California Competes in support.

Good morning. Danila Rodriguez. With Immigrants Rising and supporting.

Seeing no other witnesses in support, we're going to continue with any witnesses in opposition. Seeing none. We'll bring it back to the dais. Members, any comments, questions?

Oh, it's just me. Senor Cortese think it's no secret I'm not a fan of this approach. Not because it's bad in and of itself, but because I come from the world of higher education. I was the chair of the Intersegmental Coordinating Council as the vice chancellor of the community college system.

I was the student representative to the Committee for the California Post Secondary Education Commission. And I think I've attended more CPEC Post Secondary Ed Commission meetings than everyone in this room. Can I pause just a bit? Yes. For a roll, please.

Really quick. Madam Secretary, please call the roll.

[Roll Call]

Okay, we do have. We have an established quorum, so we'll continue as a formal Committee.

So thank you, Madam Vice Chair. And then separately, I spent over a decade representing California and the inter. The Western Interstate Commission on Higher Education. And there is. We have. We suffer from a collective delusion in California that creating structures and assigning intent about what those structures will accomplish is the same as accomplishing the thing.

And so we just did this with the California Housing and Homelessness Agency. Same thing. Let's merge a couple agencies. We will tell the new agency to be nimble and to align things and to achieve equity. And then we go out and say, hey, we just passed a bill that will be nimble and align things and be.

Achieve equity. We haven't actually done that in that agency. That's the history of our coordinating agencies in California. We had a period, a 10 year period that was glorious. We had an absolutely amazing post Secondary Education Commission. But it was short lived.

And the reason why that Commission functioned so well was that it was run by two former legislative staffers who worked for the budget, what is now the Budget and Appropriations Committee, and the Chair of the Budget Committee and the Appropriations Committee were the essentially the patrons of the Commission.

You knew that if you didn't listen to the Commission, the Legislature and the Governor would be following up because they were that close to the, to the agency which they also appointed that that Commission was appointed jointly by the Governor and the speaker and the President pro tem and the institutions themselves.

When that personal relationship was gone, so was the Commission's influence of any kind and the institutions largely ignored it and so did the Legislature. But it's also true in other states. It is the case that we. California is one of the few with no coordinating entity. But you wouldn't know it from the outcomes.

If you go to the other states, you look at reviews by the Center for the Workforce and the Economy or you read the New York Times when you see which states do the best at improving at social mobility through their public institutions. California is consistently at the top when we have a lot of challenges and problems.

But I think it's going quite a bit far to suggest that we will have a more effective, more aligned, more precise, more evidence based higher education system simply by asking the presidents and CEOs of these institutions to come together and meet once in a while and we'll give them a couple million bucks to work on these issues.

And so I don't, I don't object to it. These folks already meet in their other venues and when they do, they are largely ceremonial. It's like a meeting of the G7. All the work has been done by somebody else and you just come and sign a treaty.

They're not actually working together because having been vice chancellor of the community college system, it cannot work that way. The chancellor is not an independent operator. Just oh, that's a really interesting idea. President of the University of California. Yes, we'd love to do that too. That's not how higher education is governed. That's not how it works.

And so my issue with this, this whole set of approaches that we frame them up as big solutions to problems and we've invested an enormous amount of political and policy and advocacy energy and creating expectations that cannot be achieved simply by these structural, these structural approaches. So as I say, I Don't.

I'm going to support it today in the hopes that people will then move on tomorrow to substantive issues around the real problems that we're facing with threats from the Federal Government and our in. In a community college system, that is where you have a 30% chance of completing a degree or certificate or transferring.

We have substantial real today problems in higher education. And the presidents and chancellors are not coming to save us on a new board or Commission. So that's my ringing endorsement of a bill I'm about to vote for, as well as the Senator Padilla's companion bill, which attempts to do this.

I do want to say I know the author is aware of all of this and so is Senator Padilla. And this is a far superior proposal to what the Governor gave us earlier in the year, which didn't have any of the meat or some of the thoughtfulness that's gone into this.

And so I congratulate and thank the author for really taking these issues seriously. Again, I'm not opposed to the concept, but we need to make real all of the things that the witnesses said and not wait for some set of heroes who are chancellors and presidents, to do it for us.

And through a series of studies and meetings together, it is on us to take urgent action on the issues that are facing our colleges and their students. Thanks, Madam. Madam Chair.

Senator Cortese.

Thank you. Appreciated Senator Cabaldon's points and what he's saying. And you know, I, too, will support the bill today. But I have a question just in terms of some of the kind of almost conclusory statements in the analysis, and that's no offense to the Committee here. I just wanted to take a slightly deeper dive with the author. So.

And really the fundamental question is when you talk about the council being neutral what is that based on? I mean, pardon me for being skeptical about that.

I just feel like maybe similar to the points that were just making, that this whole thing is sort of overlaid on top of a very broken master plan for higher education. You and I have had these discussions before.

I know that's you're not fighting for status quo at all, but how do you get neutrality and then how does this actually work with, you know, the very, at least what many would say are the very broken underpinnings of a larger problem?

Absolutely. Thank you so much, Senator Cortese, and thank you, Senator Cabaldon, for your comments as well, and really appreciate the dialogue here today with this coordinated council. We'll have the heads or Members of folks that report to the principals on the different segments of higher education.

And to have AICCU, to have the different public higher education systems in California, to have K12, to have all the different entities at the table, this hasn't been done since over a decade.

And I think in these challenging times, when we have a lot of different moving parts and pieces, when we have different attacks on federal research grants, when we have the opportunities now to really align as a Legislature, the working efforts that we're doing on career education programs, on the workforce training programs, the dollars that are coming in for strong workforce, all the work that's been done by this Legislature, we want to make sure that we're getting these reports, getting these recommendations.

And then at the end of the day, as Senator Cabaldo said, it's incumbent upon us as well to really continue to drive this here in California. And so I think this body, as a start, the $2 million or 1.5 million as referenced by the Senator, is a start.

And this is something we're going to have to continue to build upon going forward. But as one of the only states in the country and the largest state in the country to not have a coordinating body, it's more critical than ever to have this in these challenging times.

And through the chair, I guess the concern that's out there on my part particularly is that, you know, despite the intentions that you just laid out, that this actually, you know, comes in and reconciles things in a what I would interpret as an objective kind of a way, that it ends up being an echo chamber for a lot and reaffirmation for a lot of the areas where people are stuck right now.

Thank you.

Everybody goes to their silo and says, this is ours, this is ours, this is ours. So we can have a lot of discussion, but nobody's really going to move out of those positions. So I'm not trying to beg the question, I just wanted to further explain my concerns.

I think the last year I've been on Education Committee, this is my fifth session, this has been the eye opener for me as to just how broken things are.

And your step ahead argument, you know, a step forward is great, you know, for this bill, but seems like, you know, that old expression we need to blow up the boxes, you know, comes into play here. For me, it's everything just needs to be vitiated, voided out and started over again.

Maybe I'll be surprised, maybe the recommendations of the council will be to actually do things like that, but I just wanted to get that off my chest today.

Thank you. I appreciate you. And we don't want to be an echo chamber for this. We definitely want to be collaboration and to really, I hear, opportunities going forward. I know you and I have had conversations on different legislation on how we look at whether it's in the San Jose area, Silicon Valley area or throughout our state.

And when I was in Los Angeles, we convened what we call the Los Angeles Workforce Systems Collaborative, where we brought together labor, we brought together business, we brought together city hall, we brought together all the different entities come to the table, talk about how we build out job training programs for the region and how do we utilize dollars that were coming from the Federal Government at that time to build out these things.

So on a statewide basis, some of the principles of we don't want to be an equity, we want to get things done. And so I really appreciate all your comments and look forward to future conversations.

Senator Gonzalez Good. Senator Cabaldon.

One other thing to this point is because what really worries me, but which could be resolved to some extent if all of the Committee consultants here, and I see one from the Assembly of Higher Education Committee, if they all signed a statement that they will not recommend in the future on any of our legislation that maybe we should just send it to the council to study for two years.

This is what really scares me is because when you look back at the last since the Post Secretary Aid Commission was erased 15 years ago, I think you can make a very strong case that it has been the strongest era of California higher education policymaking since the Master Plan, that because there was no council, there was no echo chamber, there was no why don't we just think about it some more.

Let's Commission one more study. Let's think. And the Campaign for College Opportunity and California Compete Support have been at the forefront of this. But this is the period in which we got transfer associate degrees. It's the period in which we reformed remedial education and developmental education.

It's the period in which we reformed the way we think about math over and over and over again. If you compare that to the 2000 to 2010, 1990 to 2000, 1980 to 1990, there's no comparison.

And so when we say, you know, we suffer from not having a coordinating entity, not having a coordinating entity has allowed for much more policy innovation to occur at the state level.

And so I'm not saying the coordinating entity will stop it, but it is my big worry is that all the advocates and that we will start to say, well, that's a very Interesting, compelling idea.

Why don't we send it to the council and let them look at it for a year when what we have been doing for the last 15 years is we say that's a very interesting, compelling idea, let's try it, let's do something about the problem. That's the biggest, that's my biggest worry.

And so I'm just for any Committee consultant within Earshot or Department of Finance analysis, please do not let this council turn into a graveyard of important innovative innovations in higher education that we desperately need for California and students. Thank you.

Are there any other questions? Comments? Senator Ochoa Bogh.

I'm assuming that because of the, of the direction in which this is coming from the Governor's Priorities and Perspectives Initiative, I'm assuming that there's going to be, and I know this is not the Budget Committee that's going to allocate the funding for this particular Committee, but just for my own information for the public, what is the cost going to look like for this particular agency?

And the reason I'm asking is we do have agencies right now such as the I mentioned previously with the Intersegmental Commission for our University that is not being fully funded and the work that they can do and they've been wanting to do has not been able to be accomplished because they're not fully funded.

And so here's another component where you know, concerns have been expressed and yet, you know, do we do we plan on fully funding this? Because there are other agencies and other components that we currently have that are not being fully funded.

So here we are creating another entity and where's the funding going to be prioritized to be able to meet this.

Thank you so much Madam Vice Chair for that question. Comment. In terms of the funding, we have a baseline of $1.5 million that's in the budget right now. But going forward to fully fund it, to scale it up, we want to get it started and we want to get it off the ground.

And I think this is a long time coming. This has been years in the making.

At the same time, to fully bund it would take millions of dollars more going forward, but wanted to just get it off the ground and get it started so that we can have better inter segmental coordination to degrees, to silos, to really look at the opportunities to connect on a much system wide basis here in California in terms of higher education.

And so to your point, starts at 1.5 million, but from there we hope to augment the going forward.

So it is something that we expect to cost much more than 1.5 million annually or is this every couple of years? Do we have we looked into that cost or fully funding it moving forward, what is that going to look like approximately?

Well, when the body hopefully gets established according body we can look at what the initial costs are and then going forward we can try to allocate the see what the budget allocations could be going forward in terms of the amounts.

It's 1.5 million to start with, but that's not going to take to implement all the recommendations to do all the work. And so from there to get started, I wanted to get off an opportunity to just have it launched first and then from there we can build upon.

So running it, just the running part of it, just keeping it alive. Do we have an idea what that cost is going to be? The implementation is going to be different depending on the recommendations, of course for the different schools. And I understand that. But just to run the Commission, what is the ongoing cost? That is.

The ongoing costs are. We can get back to you on those numbers.

Okay, no worries. If you don't have that, that's perfectly fine. And this is not the Budget Committee. I just, I do sit on budget one. So I was just kind of curious as to what that's going to look like just because we do have like as I mentioned, other agencies that are not fully funded.

They exist, but they're not fully funded. Can't. Can't do their job. And then the other question I had was for you, ma', am, my question had to do with. It was mentioned that there's other states. We're one of the only states that does not have something similar in existence in our state.

Curious what other states have this model and what outcomes have they seen that do not compare to California that we would want to emulate or strive for.

So I really appreciate the thoughtfulness of your questions both on the budget expenditure and the model itself. I think it's really important to say that this is in the infancy, right.

We are literally looking to stand something up that would be different than the approach that other states have been taking and would be responsive to the needs of California. So you know, where has having coordination worked?

Well, I do want to get back to something that Senator Cabaldon said because he is by far one of the most knowledgeable leaders on higher education in the State of California and I've worked with him for 20 plus years.

This is an area where I respectfully disagree on the issue and I will just say why I do not want to see innovation stall or the inability to have responsive policymaking.

But in states that have been successful in implementing coordinating, what they have done, where we have struggled is they've been able to do analysis and research that will power their policymakers, their Gubernatorial administrations to make the kind of investments that are evidence based that we right now in the field are struggling to do.

In the absence of a coordinating entity, we're stepping in to fill that role. But as the cradle to career data system is being built out and the absence of the statewide entity have had a real challenge to meet that moment. The other piece is great. Policy has been passed and the campaign and others has led the way.

But in other states where coordination has been effective, they are bringing stakeholders to the table to do the difficult and thorny work of implementation.

Because at the end of the day I look at the intersegmental transfer task force that I sit on, we had to codify that to implement the associate degree for transfer STEM pathways to assess regional needs to do that deep dive across the three systems of public, post secondary and with our independent colleges and universities.

Because for 10 years in the absence of a statewide coordinating entity, we were only able to make a certain level of progress before we stalled. So that policy implementation and that analysis and that setting of the table of stakeholders with a charge and an expectation that there are metrics in moving towards that charge is key.

Yes, Senator Choi and I just want to highlight. Senator Choi, we're at 9:40 so we have about 20 minutes until we get session started on the.

Yeah, quickly. This bill is to create the California, according to the summary here, California Education Interagency Council to align the state's education systems with the workforce needs, fostering collaboration to build career pathways and address economic changes. The council will also act as a forum to discuss intersegmental issues among higher education institutions.

To me this is creating another council to achieve these objectives. But we have so many layers of higher education and educational topics to teach and then also pathways to create through vocational and technical education programs. We have a Superintendent of public Instruction and do we have Education Secretary? No.

And then also UC system and then also Cal State University councils and the regions, all different layers of agencies are working but here on top to achieve our goals. What the education needs will be for California, we need to create another intersegmental council. To me it's a duplicate.

And then also will become less efficient because of another layer of governmental operations.

Thank you so much Senator Choi for your comments. Really appreciate it.

In terms of the inter coordinating segmental body here, this is really to look at all segments of higher education, including our Independence, our public higher education systems here in California, our K12, but to bring all the different principles together, to bring folks that represent the principals to the meetings, to look at implementation, to look at recommendations, to really have those conversations at a system wide level, at a statewide level.

California is the only, the largest state in America that does not have a coordinating body for education and for workforce. And this is one of the recommendations that came out of the Governor's Career Education Master Plan.

And as a Legislature, we've been doing a lot of work in this space here to really promote career pathway programs and workforce training programs here for everyone across the state.

And so when we look at the future of workforce, when we look at the impact of AI, when we look at the different things going forward, we need to really have a system wide body that would provide that opportunity to have coordination across our state. And to everyone's point here, we don't want to stifle on innovation either.

We want to make sure we continue to, to push the envelope, to really provide those opportunities here for our students in California. And so this body would be a body that would provide the recommendations to the Legislature as well.

But at the same time, we have Members that are on the Budget Committee on education, Finance and Education Committee, and Assembly Higher Ed and Assembly Ed. And so we've got to continue to push legislation forward as well. But this body will look at opportunities to bring all the different entities together. Thank you.

Great seeing no other questions, I will go ahead and close. First of all, Assemblymember Fong, I appreciate you bringing this bill forward because I understand how important and significant it is.

And I do think it's very full circle for me to be sitting here with my old boss, Jessie Ryan, who I worked on so many reports with on this very subject around creating an intersegmental coordinating body, something that we pushed for during my entire tenure when I was at the campaign for College Opportunity.

Unfortunately, as we all know, our community college system, our UC system and our CSU system often don't talk to one another and sometimes even compete with one another and fight with one another. And the only folks that lose out are students.

And so making sure that we have a space where they are forced to work together on everything from transfer and ensuring that courses will be eligible for transferable admission to financial aid to, you know, college applications or even A through G requirements, having those discussions and having a space for those discussions is really important.

You know, me and Senator Cabaldon have talked about this many times, but figuring out how to give that sort of body some sort of teeth to hold these folks accountable and make sure that they're actually participating in a meaningful way and collaborating with one another is always going to be a challenge, and I think we recognize that.

But we absolutely know that we have to create this space and we have to do something about this because it has been so, so necessary for. So appreciate your work in this space. My recommendation is an aye vote, and I will go ahead and see if we have a motion, if there's not already one that's been made.

Oh, okay. oh, and do you want to close? Yes.

Thank you so much, Madam Chair and Senators, thank you so much for the robust conversation here today and to our witnesses as well, and to everyone who's been involved in the space together here to this point today.

This is more critical than ever to establish a coordinating body here in California to decrease the silos, to increase the segmental coordination. I think everyone has made that point loud and clear here.

But as we go forward, when we look at our career education master plan, our workforce training programs under K12 and partnership with higher ed and the independents, it's more important than ever to have all the principals at the table to have conversations to how we continue to improve access to higher education here in California.

And really appreciate the comments here today, but look forward to future conversations to you as we hopefully are able to launch this and would love to work with each and every one of you in partnership on this as well.

At the same time, the work and efforts to have a coordinating body, the first one that we haven't had since 2011, I think it's more critical than ever in these times. And so with that, I respectfully ask for an Aye vote. And thank you so much.

Thank you so much. Assemblymember Fong, do we have a motion on AB 1098? Senator Cortese moves the bill. Okay. And the motion is do pass of the Senate Appropriations Committee. We could call the roll.

[Roll Call]

Okay. And we will put that bill on call. Thank you so much, Assemblymember Fong.

Thank you so much, Madam Chair and Senators. Appreciate you.

So we will go ahead, Just. Just say open up the roll. We'll go ahead and open up the roll for Senator Reyes, if you could call roll call.

File item 1, AB 1098. Fong, the motion is due. Pass Descended Appropriations Committee. The current vote is 4 Ayes and no Noes, with the Chair and Vice Chair voting Aye. [Roll Call] Awesome.

Okay, this Committee is adjourned. Thank you. That, and that bill is out. 50.