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Transcript of Webinar

Enough is Known for Action: Making the Shift: Successfully Leveraging In School Youth (ISY) and Out-of-School Youth (OSY) Resources and Services

Wednesday, June 24, 2015

Transcript byNoble Transcription Services

Murrieta, CA

BRIAN KEATING: So welcome, everyone, to the "Making the Shift: Successfully Leveraging In-School Youth and Out-of-School Youth Resources and Services." This webinar is part of the Enough is Known for Action webinar series.

Again, if you haven't already done so, go ahead and introduce yourself using that welcome chat. And by the way, we'll be soliciting you for your questions and comments throughout today's even, so we'll be taking that welcome chat down in a minute or two. So go ahead and introduce yourself now, as we see several of you are. But we encourage you to go ahead and use that chat to type in your questions or comments throughout the webinar to let us know what questions or comments you have for our presenters.

All right. And without any further ado I'm going to turn things over to one of our moderators today, Jennifer Kemp. Jennifer is with the U.S. Department of Labor, a unit lead with the Division of Youth Services, Employment and Training Administration. Jennifer, take it away.

JENNIFER KEMP: Great. Thanks, Brian. And thanks, everyone else, for joining us today. We are very excited to be here today to talk to you about making the shift from serving in-school youth to out-of-school youth. We're exceptionally pleased that we are partnering with the National Governors Association, the National Association of Workforce Boards, and state and local partners, along with our co-moderator from the Department of Education, Lul Tesfai.

So you'll be hearing a lot from us as we have our conversation. And I really want to emphasize it's a conversation. You're going to get to hear us present different questions to our panelists today and we're also going to encourage you to think of the questions you want answered.

As Brian mentioned, where you're typing your welcome chat you'll also be able to put any questions that come to your mind as we're talking. And at the end of the presentation, we will go back to those questions and have a discussion with our panelists. So be thinking about what you want to know from our panelists.

So why this topic? Why are we talking about this? By now you all know that WIOA really has an emphasis on out-of-school youth; 75 percent of the expenditure rate needs to be on out-of-school youth. And for many locations this is quite a switch. For some, they're well on their way.

It's a new shift for the workforce system in general. Some states and local areas have been moving in this direction for a while and you're going to hear some examples of that further in the conversation.

And also, when we did our WIOA consultations, we went outside to the town halls and then the feedbacks that we've done from our presentations to the Enough is Known for Action series, what we heard was that people wanted more conversation around out-of-school youth topic. But then there's lots of folks who are still thinking about the in-school youth population, which is a very important population as well.

Enough is Known for Action: Making the Shift - Successfully Leveraging ISY & OSY Resources & ServicesWednesday, June 24, 2015 of 28

So we're going to start off with an overview of in-school youth from our Department of Education colleagues. And then we're going to be thinking about a research study that was recently released, I think like last week or so, from John Martinez. And then we'll get into the state and local folks.

So with that I'm going to stop and turn it over to my colleague Lul.

LUL TESFAI: Thank you, Jennifer. Thank you to our partners in helping put this webinar together. And thank you to all of you on the phone for joining today. This is an immensely important topic, the topic of how to adequately support both in-school and out-of-school youth. So I'm very happy to be with you today and talk about some of the strategies specifically for serving in-school youth that we know of based on the evidence.

There are four main strategies that I'm going to walk through today. The first is integrating academic and career-focused learning; personalizing learning opportunities for students; providing academic, career and wraparound support services; as well as offering career-related experiences and competencies.

The first strategy, integrating academic and career-focused learning, is a very important one. We know that it's important to meaningfully engage students in educational experiences that link what they're learning to future college and career opportunities, present them with career pathways, and provide them opportunities to pursue the skills that are necessary to succeed in our global economy.

All students, but particularly at-risk students who may be less engaged, can benefit from understanding the relevance of academics to their future in college and in career. And from exposure to experiences and advising them, expand their relevant knowledge and skills. One way to do this is through integrating career and technical education and providing multiple pathways towards college and career. This has been shown to adequately boost student engagement as well as student achievement.

The second strategy I wanted to talk through is personalizing learning opportunities in order to support the educational needs of students, but also make sure that the academic and career instruction that they're receiving is of interest to them, making sure that the learning that they're exposed to is appropriately paved, and customizing content and practices for students so that we're making sure they're able to master challenging academic content while pursuing their interest.

Personalizing the learning environment can help students' connectiveness and engagement, and can also increase service providers' ability to know and address specific academic and other challenges that students face. That's reducing the dropout risks.

We know, based on the evidence, that one way to promote personalized learning opportunities is through competency-based programs. These programs allow students to move at their own pace as well as receive the sort of remedial support necessary in order to progress academically.


Thirdly, it's important to provide in-school youth with academic, career and wraparound support to make sure that they are able to successfully graduate and transition into postsecondary learning opportunities, as well as prepare for the workforce. This could look a number of different ways.

Some academic supports include providing intensive in- or out-of-school programs, such as tutoring programs. There are some successful models that have employed specific courses, such as remedial or credit recovery or enrichment courses through summer school or Saturday school. And another form of academic support is through targeted individual or small-group support.

Enrichment opportunities, like leadership development, are also very promising and can increase academic and student engagement, especially for students who are at risk of disengaging from school. But it's also important to provide career information as well, and this could be in the form of sharing requirements in order to enter certain professions. Also sharing information about the skills necessary to succeed in postsecondary education and training are equally important.

And for students who may struggle financially to support their continued education and training, it's important to provide them with information about how they can access financial aid.

Lastly, another important strategy for promoting the success of in-school youth is to offer career-related experiences and competencies, so that students are able to understand how what they're learning in the classroom applies to real-world experiences.

So one way to do this is through an internship program. Mentorship programs are also great opportunities as well, including – as well as externship programs. Offering project or problem-based learning is also a very effective strategy for ensuring that students understand how their learning is directly applicable to what they'll do in their future careers.

So with that, we have a question for you. That question is, "Do you have a strategy for continuing quality services to in-school youth while shifting WIOA funding to out-of-school youth?"

MR. KEATING: All right. And that polling question is up on your screen now. So go ahead and vote by clicking the radio button your screen.

And for those who are interested in dialing in, we're going to go ahead and post that audio information. So we'll ask our speakers to speak up a little bit, for those of you who are having trouble hearing. But if you need it, we'll go ahead and just post that information so you can go ahead and dial in if that's preferable.

All right. So go ahead and it looks like many of you have already voted. If you haven't already done so, go ahead and do that now. And I'll turn it back over to you, Lul, to comment on what you're seeing.


MS. TESFAI: Great. Thank you. So it seems that we have a lot of people participating in this poll. Thank you very much. It seems like a majority of people are answering no, that they do not currently have a strategy. But we see a significant number of people, about 25 percent, are also saying that yes, they are creating a low-cost in-school youth program in order to address the shift that we see in the allocation for in-school and out-of-school youth.

And with that, I'd like to turn it over to John Martinez, who is the deputy director of program development in the Office of Development and External Affairs at MDRC, to share a little bit of information about what we know works for out-of-school youth populations.

JOHN MARTINEZ: Great. Thank you so much. Good afternoon, everyone. Today I'll be presenting information from a recent MDRC brief that draws on available research and MDRC staff on-the-ground experience to summarize the existing knowledge that can hopefully help guide implementation of key WIOA provisions related to out-of-school youth.

MDRC is a nonprofit nonpartisan education and social policy research firm that develops and evaluates solutions to some of society's most challenging problems. And we have a long history of working in the youth space.

So today what I'd like to cover is three topics that touch on key provisions in WIOA. Those include reaching and engaging out-of-school youth, adopting career pathways and engaging employers. And I think a lot of the things – some of the things I'm going to mention are things that were mentioned related to in-school youth. I think it's because there is some evidence that suggests that some of these approaches can really make a difference.

So first I want to turn to reaching and engaging out-of-school youth. As you know, WIOA regs require that a higher proportion of funds be spent on out-of-school youth. And this is going to require finding more of these youth to be able to serve them. I'm actually not going to say a lot about that because I think there are a number of strategies, including connecting with community-based organizations or some of the systems that may touch these youth, that many of you are familiar with.

I did, however, want to say something about engagement. In our work we often hear that providers face many difficulties in sustaining participation once the initial connection is made. And past studies and our experience suggests a few lessons here.

First, financial incentive and opportunities for paid work are really important. These can play a key role in the form of positive reinforcement, but are also important sources of support to meet economic challenges.

Moreover, the type of work experience really seems to matter as well; in particular, experiences that relate to the youth's career of interest or feature advancement, or even experiences that are viewed as providing a needed service to the community seems to be important.


Second, opportunities to feel connected to caring adults in the community matter. Programs that offer this can provide much needed stability and emotional support, as well as a sense of belonging and a family-like atmosphere.

Examples of ways to achieve this include enrolling youth in cohorts rather than on a rolling basis, which really can help to reinforce those important (true ?) supports, and emphasizing shared experiences and similarities between program staff and youth.

And moreover, keeping staff turnover low is key; I think we all know that. But it can be a challenge. And in addition to the obvious things like pay and manageable workloads, some of the things that we've seen that seem to matter include strong communication and regular feedback between staff and management, and opportunities for continued professional development growth.

Third, it's important to provide support services that help address barriers to participation. Some are obvious, like transportation assistance, which as we all know is easier in metro areas with public transit and admittedly more challenging in rural areas. Or things like childcare assistance for parenting teens and young adults.

But I think here the bottom line is that individualizing services are best. But it's important to remember that there isn't a one-size-fits-all approach to dealing with barriers. And many of the most successful programs that we've seen have had strong partners, sometimes collocated to try and address some of these barriers.

Another trend is providing more services to deal with mental health and developmental needs. For example, incorporating evidence-based practices like trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy or motivational interviewing have been successfully implemented. And again here, partnership is really important.

In our experience, the reality is that many programs either directly or indirectly serve disconnected youth on the higher end of the continuum. Some of the feedback we've heard about why this is relates to the belief that it's important to screen out youth who are a poor fit, have too many barriers or might not be successful because of the requirements related to meeting performance metrics.

Other programs use a multi-step approach to screen for motivation, but in doing that may end up screening out the more disconnected youth who need and can benefit from the program.

So what about engaging the most disconnected youth who are homeless and runaways, for example? Some examples are out there, though there isn't rigorous evidence yet. I mean, new programs like ROCA (ph) or Larkin Street that use street outreach teams to locate the most disconnected youth and connect them with supports.

Some of the other features or program approaches that have some research support include things like intensive case management and one-on-one services from a caring adult to navigate barriers.


As I mentioned earlier, using trauma-informed evidence-based behavioral interventions to increase motivation and build skills to deal with light challenges.

But there needs to be a balance, allowing vulnerable youth some flexibility related to program requirements – for example, around attendance – to accommodate the very real changing landscape of their lives. But at the same time, setting high expectations and being clear about what those expectations are.

Allowing youth to develop some autonomy and some leadership skills; for example, via youth council or helping with programming. And then finally, helping youth set both short-term and long-term goals. Research really suggest that it shouldn't just be about the longer-term goals. The reality is for many of these youth it's going to take some time to achieve those goals. And these youth often need to feel a sense of accomplishment and growth or get discouraged. And in the absence of shorter-term goals, that can be a lot harder to achieve.

So now that I've covered a little bit around engaging youth, I wanted to spend some time touching on career pathways. And career pathway approaches are based on identifying occupations where the supply of qualified applicants doesn't meet demand, and tailoring the education and training programs to create a pipeline of workers to fill those gaps.

Each pathway has multiple onramps to allow folks with varying skill levels to jump on the pathway. And MDRC has been evaluating a program that shows success in New York that has many features of a career pathway model. And that program is called GED Bridge. It operates out of LaGuardia Community College, City University of New York. And it focuses first on getting students a high school credential and then helping them transition to college.

And I just wanted to run through a couple of the features of this model that seem to suggest that it can help make a difference. First, it has a career-focused, contextualized curriculum. And basically what that means is the programs select an occupational area where workers are in high demand regionally, and then everything in the classroom gets taught in the context of that career. So all of the lessons really touch on and use examples from that career to really tie it back.

There's direct connections to postsecondary institutions. Programs are either offered on college campuses or in some other way to give youth exposure to the college environment. And the courses themselves are also designed to resemble college courses in various ways.

Something that I touched on earlier, they use an approach where they manage cohort enrollment, which means students are only allowed to enroll at particular times and in groups to really kind of push that peer support aspect. For example, at the beginning of a semester. And that's in contrast to many GED prep programs that really allow students to enter and exit courses at any time.

And finally, this was touched on as well earlier, support services to help students enter college and career. Advisors guide students through the college application process and work with students in and out of the classroom on career assessments and provide them with individual guidance to help them choose a career path.


It's also really important to align service options for youth and guide their transition in and out of education and training systems, given the fragmented nature of many of these systems and services. And some examples we've seen out there, which many of you are likely familiar with, include the engagement centers, city-level efforts to connect out-of-school youth to multiple pathways, and intensive case management model to help youth navigate those available community resources and stay on track.

So next I wanted to turn to engaging employers. And the reality is to create the opportunities to deliver on the promise of WIOA, providers are really going to need to engage employers on a much larger scale, particularly private sector businesses. In the past you primarily relied on financial incentives to engage private employers. But even then, participation has been limited.

So when thinking about strategies to engage employers, providers should consider the following. It's important to dedicate resources and staff to job development. And this may seem obvious, but in our experience many programs often place staff in job development positions that don't have business or sales experience or an understanding of the labor market. And these are skills and experiences that employers might expect from someone they connect with around job development. I think the reality is they're more likely to respond to someone who speaks their language.

Next, working with intermediary organizations to link workers to employers in order to better align their services in training with the employer's needs is important. There isn't a lot of rigorous evidence here. Workforce intermediaries have shown great promise in leveraging private and public funds and bringing together cross-sector stakeholders and building a common sense of purpose among stakeholders.

Some examples of intermediaries include chambers of commerce, trade associations, community colleges, One-Stop centers, CBOs and private placement firms.

Motivations to participate in workforce development activities are really going to vary among employers. Though financial incentives may help with motivation, it's not likely the only force that's motivating their decision. Some examples that we've seen include a sense of social responsibility, a sense of philanthropy, the public recognition they may get – (inaudible) – factors.

But the bottom line is, regardless of their motivation, employers are more likely to engage if it's easy and it's perceived as a good opportunity for them.

Next, I think it's important to consider the changing nature of work and employer hiring practices in the U.S. Many employers are turning to temporary staffing arrangements to increase flexibility and they're transferring many of their recruitment and onboarding processes to external providers.

So it's important for providers to consider these intermediaries and their roles in a labor market and consider what potential exists there as job development partners.


And finally, it is important to educate employers on effective youth development and supervision practices to ensure engagement and retention. There's some evidence that even employers that have long had connections to workforce development programs often have limited knowledge about how the programs work, the kinds of supportive services that are available for the youth that they're working with. And moreover, the staff who manage these young people often don't receive training or guidance supporting the development and professional growth of young staff.

Programs should explore how they can engage and educate work supervisors on low-effort strength-based ways to support young workers, without focusing too much on their barriers or stigmatizing them. And if you can do this, it's a way to potentially improve performance and retention for those young people.

So with that, I want to thank you for the opportunity to speak here today. I hope you found some of these ideas useful. They were based on a recently published brief that was written by my colleague Farhana Hossain. And that's available on our MDRC website; it's here on the URL on the screen.

And with that I'll turn it back over to Jennifer. Thank you.

MS. KEMP: Thanks, John. That's fabulous. And I'm sure people will have questions coming in based on what you said.

And speaking of questions, we did get a couple questions that came in and I'm going to take a moment to answer them.

The first question – well, actually, we're going to go I guess to the polling because our questions just moved. So let's do the polling questions and then we'll go back to the other questions.

So the first polling question you see on the slide in front of you on the screen. "How prepared are you to meet –" and this should be the 75 percent "– out-of-school youth expenditure requirement?" Not 76 – (inaudible). So 75 percent out-of-school youth expenditure requirement.

And it looks like – and just wait it out. Well, it's changing. I'll give it a second. It's up-to-the-date moment polling. So let's see here.

MR. KEATING: And if you could just speak up a bit, Jennifer. We're getting some feedback from folks.

MS. KEMP: OK. (Pause.) So it looks like it's a mixture of people who are already expending 75 percent on out-of-school youth and people who have plans in place to be at 75 percent. And folks who have a plan in place to reach the expenditure rate requirement and the – on the graduated increase plan that was outlined in our TEGL. So you'll get to 50 percent this year; you'll be adding more – 10 percent more – (inaudible) – 50 percent.


And then we have a small percentage of people really, really struggling. And we anticipated that some locations would be struggling and so that's part of what we're hoping you'll hear in our next two presentations is some techniques to help you if you are really, really struggling.

So the next polling question and the next thing that I think will help us maybe drill down a little bit is wanting to know if you are in a rural area – if you could go to the next polling question – if you are in a rural area or in an urban area? If you could put that up. (Pause.)

MR. KEATING: All right. And thanks to everyone who's voting now. If you haven't already done so, just go ahead and click the radio button next to rural or urban, depending on which one applies to you.

MS. KEMP: OK. So it does – it has been pretty consistent. About 60 percent of our folks who are joining us today are rural. And we did anticipate more concern for meeting that number in rural areas than urban areas.

So before I introduce our next presenter and have the conversation with her, I did want to address a couple of the questions that have come in through our (hard ?) chat, I guess.

So the first question relates to work-based learning. "A large concern for us is work-based learning. Where is work-based learning defined?" The person who is writing is also writing about the relationship within NEG grants, adult grants. So let me just share that with work-based learning, that is a term that's used in WIOA Title I legislation around the adult programs. With the youth programs we talk about work experience – work experience – expenditure rates.

And so they do seem to be used interchangeably right now, but work experience is slightly different than work-based learning. And if you go to our most recent TEGL we have some directions in terms of counts and the work expenditure rates. And we will be coming out with an additional guidance hopefully before the end of the year, probably more sooner than that, that talks a little bit more about what you count in those – when you're figuring out the 20 percent expenditure rate around work experience.

So just know that those are two terms that are similar but slightly different. And when we're talking about youth formula funds under Title I, we are talking about work experience expenditure rate.

And then there was another question around ITAs for youth and some questions related to the eligible training provider list and how that's all going to work out. And again, we – if you were brave enough to read the notice of proposed rulemaking, we do address that a little bit in our proposed regulations. That is something that's certainly a lot more complex and we will not be issuing – we will not be addressing that particular question in our TEGL that's coming out this year. There will be something about that in the final rule, but we don't have immediate guidance available on that very important question.


So with that I am going to introduce Connie Ireland who is joining us from Minnesota. Connie is the executive director of the Governor's Workforce Development Council in Minnesota and we're thrilled that she's here to join us. Connie, are you there?

CONNIE IRELAND: Yes, I am.

MS. KEMP: Great. You know, when I saw your picture I thought you looked like a tiny Ireland. You just are the epitome of what I think you should look like. So it's always nice to see a face with a name.

So I have a question for you, Connie. I wanted to know a little bit more about the distribution of funding in Minnesota between your in-school and out-of-school youth under WIA. Can you talk us through that?

MS. IRELAND: I sure can. So as you can see on the slide, our first slide really shows the breakdown of funding in Minnesota. And part of this is the distribution of funding between in-school and out-of-school youth. And you can see with the breakdown of the federal funds as well as some state funding that Minnesota receives, that Minnesota's been very fortunate to be able to really have some flexibility and leverage those funds both for in-school and out-of-school youth.

So where we're at now – although WIA contained the 30 percent language for out-of-school youth, we have already – in 2014 we exceeded well over 50 percent. So we actually started to put the plans into place for WIOA coming forward and started to look at how we look at those expenditures to exceed well beyond that 30 percent.

MS. KEMP: Thanks. That's great. You know, following up on that question, what are some of the successes you've had in serving out-of-school youth that helped prepare you for this transition?

MS. IRELAND: Certainly. And as you can see on this second slide, we chose to share this with all of you looking at Minnesota, sitting back and looking at our demographic landscape and looking at growing disparities gaps. We recognized the increase of disparities within students of color and also youth with disabilities.

And so we took that upon ourselves then to say, how can we continue to build the efforts in a much more meaningful way to serve out-of-school youth? So Minnesota and our local service providers really formed an effective referral mechanism with the system to serve the particular out-of-school youth.

So with that, our referral network has now grown and it continues to grow, but it includes county attorneys, truant officers, community agencies with whom out-of-school frequent, working with homeless shelters and service providers and social service agencies. So quite a vast array of organizations and groups that work with out-of-school youth.


And in addition to that, Minnesota has a very effective YouthBuild program, both state and federal funded, which provide models that can be used for transition made into WIOA. Again, another mechanism that we could look and continue to grow and have some flexibility with both serving in-school youth and out-of-school youth.

And one of our most successful in-school efforts has been the Minnesota employment initiative – the Disability Employment Initiative and the partners for youth. Now again, keep in mind this is an in-school youth effort. But again, we recognize that there are opportunities to serve out-of-school youth in this same arena.

So youth with disabilities have the opportunity to obtain the skills and experience to engage employment and/or postsecondary education under this program. And just through this program alone, 40 percent of the participants had a documented disability and we recognize that many of the out-of-school youth have a previously undocumented disability as well.

So you can see the percentages. And based on the past work that Minnesota has done, recognizing that this is an area that we can certainly continue to grow in serving out-of-school youth.

MS. KEMP: Great. Thanks. And just to talk a little bit more about policies, are there policies that you made or plan to make as you transition from WIA to WIOA to help you with the shift in the population?

MS. IRELAND: Absolutely. And again, continuing on the same theme with the youth programs before, so this really demonstrates the breakdown, again, on our youth with disabilities in our YouthBuild program.

But obviously, yes, there are a number of policies that will need to be addressed. But Minnesota's current policies really do emphasize the development and linkages with multiple partners, including – in a mission to serve out-of-school youth. So again, as we look at the linkages and the policies that Minnesota already has in place, they're around truancy, they're around services to homeless youth, runaways, they're around services for those aging out of foster care and youth with disabilities, including juvenile offenders and dropouts.

Now, while we've done a great job up to this point in developing those policies and we recognize that we have created this broader shared vision in the work that we've done, we do acknowledge there are new policies that'll need to be developed under WIOA. And there are issues around co-enrollment and common performance measures and of course reporting requirements.

So this transition to WIOA, we know that what Minnesota plans to do as part of our plan is that we will increase our reliance on state funding through the Minnesota Youth Program or the Youth at Work Program or our competitive grants to serve our in-school youth. And using our – to provide services to our in-school youth we will be using a dropout prevention program.

So again, I think the key here and a message for all of you is that it creates the opportunities and flexibility to continue to maintain and develop new innovative strategies to serve in-school


youth, but also have a focus and a priority to serve those individuals and the youth who have most barriers and engage out-of-school youth and bring them back into the system as a whole.

MS. KEMP: Thanks, Connie. Tell a little bit about the size of Minnesota and the makeup – geographic makeup. You have 16 local areas in Minnesota and some of them are more urban and some of them are more rural. Can you talk a little bit about how the transition might vary for these geographic differences?

MS. IRELAND: Absolutely. So currently under WIOA, Minnesota will retain our 16 local workforce service areas, which covers 87 counties. And Minnesota will then – looking at our regional strategies under WIOA, Minnesota will have six regions that we will be also identifying.

So in the Twin Cities area alone, that includes five workforce service areas. In Greater Minnesota it's local – there's 11 workforce service areas. And again, some of them very rural in – (inaudible) – and some of them more of a metropolitan service area as well. But again, those local workforce boards in each area, they will be setting up the – their local policy and serving their particular geographic area. And it's also our goal to work more regionally and identifying those regional needs, not just specific local areas.

So with this transition, there are a couple things that happened in the state. And the Governor's Workforce Development Council also convened a committee around youth experiential learning and it ties very nicely to the work that has been going on in Minnesota as a whole.

And we came together with the local providers and the state – DEED is a state agency as well – and one key factor that we identified and it was a lack of public transportation in rural areas. And since most of the participants today come from rural areas, they understand that there are greater barriers for youth for work-based learning opportunities or youth experiences or serving out-of-school youth, just based on the transportation needs.

Minnesota is a very large geographic state and so when we're talking rural, we really do mean there are some very rural areas. While that still consists – continues to be a problem in the metro area, public transportation is more readily available.

MS. KEMP: Great. Thanks. And I just have one more just final question. I'm thinking of it a little bit as words of wisdom. Do you have suggestions for other states as they're preparing for this transition?

MS. IRELAND: Certainly. And one of the recommendations that I would put first and foremost is being able to participate and learn from other states. That learning network is very valuable. And you can learn from best practices, learn from other states on what they've done on some innovation strategies, and also learn what not to do.

But in addition to that, within your own states it's really imperative that you form effective linkages and referral mechanisms with your social services agencies, with community agencies, with homeless shelters and with all youth service providers that work with out-of-school youth.


Secondly, I would say it's imperative as well that you have to understand where out-of-school youth congregate and where they go. No better way to reach and engage an out-of-school youth but by understanding, where are they? Going into their neighborhoods. And Minnesota has some great examples from some of our local providers, primarily in the urban settings, of reaching out to out-of-school youth on their own turf, and then bringing them in and providing an opportunity to link them to opportunities and youth programs.

Thirdly, I really think it's important that you form effective linkages and mechanisms with educational institutions and with truant systems, to engage or recruit out-of-school youth as soon as they become out-of-school youth. One of the things that we can also continue to do and do a better job of, how do we reach out to youth before they become out-of-school youth? What is the appropriate age or when is an opportunity that you can begin to start to engage with youth so they better understand the opportunities that they may have?

And I think you heard it earlier too in the engagement with employers as well. So again, working with your department of education, your superintendent in your local areas in identifying some key strategies in that arena.

And then again, I would encourage you to work with your adult basic education offices, Job Corps and YouthBuild to serve out-of-school youth. And again, looking at the ability to obtain credentials or your GED. And again, tying this to the employment opportunities.

And then lastly, what we talked about before is this issue about transportation and what we need to do – the responsibility of each and every state, how can we overcome that barrier to serve more youth and provide them better opportunity?

MS. KEMP: Great. Thanks so much, Connie. I think that was a lot of good suggestions for others. And we saw a few questions come in during your conversation and want them to keep flowing. And we'll get to some of those questions when we get to the end of the presentation.

And with that, I'm going to turn it over to my colleague Lul, who is going to have a conversation with Clyde who's going to talk to us a little bit.

MS. TESFAI: Great. Thank you, Jennifer. And I'm looking forward to introducing Clyde McQueen, who's the president and chief executive officer of the Full Employment Council. Thank you so much for joining us, Clyde.

CLYDE MCQUEEN: Thank you. I'm glad to be here.

MS. TESFAI: So I'm curious if you could share some information about how many young people you have in each of your programs, as well as the services that you provide youth.

MR. MCQUEEN: OK. So basically we serve about a thousand youth annually, give or take a hundred, so between 1,000-1,100. About 670 of those young people are out-of-school and about – between 325 and 350 are in-school. And our expenditures run between – probably right now between 65 and 70 percent out-of-school and the remainder would be in-school.


And as we look at those service levels, I think what we have tended to do is to kind of show how that has an impact on our performance standards. And basically we've been adopting and utilizing the Department of Labor report card. And for the most part, we have met all of our performance standards.

The green means we exceeded; the blue means we're above 80 percent – not necessarily exceeded, but met; the yellow means we're right there on the corner. So for the past couple of years with that matrix, the majority of which were out-of-school youth, we've basically been able to meet all the Department of Labor performance standards.

And we have been able to do that by emphasizing the components of the – what I call the 10 commandments of youth. And if you look at the first aspect that deals with our programming, you can see that we also utilize a lot of supplemental funding. In fact, most of the funding that we use to service out-of-school youth, we have benefited from the Social Innovation Fund and a lot of private foundations and corporations, many of which have been very interested in the out-of-school youth population.

In fact, that is a big topic among United Way here locally specific to this effort. Many of the local corporations and foundations have contributed to this effort as well as the state. And annually we run at least about a million dollars funded externally to service out-of-school populations.

More recently we have just gotten an infusion of TANF funds through the state of Missouri by the governor's office to provide about 4.5 million (dollars) for a summer job league program which targets 16- to 24-year-old youth. Our professional football teams also fund us to the tune of about $400,000 – football and baseball; don't want to forget our Royals. And then we have used WIA money primarily for the work experience and the educational components.

If you look at the activity that we fund, the activities that we look at are primarily focused on what I would call the 10 commandments of youth. And some of those activities focused upon tutoring, study skills and dropout prevention strategies.

But basically, we hire a teacher to work inside our organization who also is qualified to teach the HiSET or GED remediation. That way, they can also teach job readiness skills as well as teach programming that relates to GED, if necessary, in a lab.

We also have computer labs, where students can do their own GED self-paced remediation, which actually seems to be pretty popular, as long as we proctor it.

Another strategy we've found to be most effective is the summer employment or work experience opportunities linked to a credential. As an example, we will provide – we provided funding for a customer service class. They got a credential and then they went to work at a customer service facility. The credential then, we will laminate it and they can use it in their back pocket and that becomes an effective street cred with employers when going to look for employment (or poses ?) opportunity.


Another area that we've found to be most effective in working with this population – particularly those who may have some criminal or warrants that are out, which is not unusual for a lot of poor people. They do have a lot of warrants for things that, like, drivers licenses, parking tickets, et cetera. We have a relationship with a legal aid that does warrant release.

We have also found – I think most importantly has been credentialing a young person and doing concurrent programming. That means that we will integrate work experience with credential-based postsecondary training, combine it with a community service activity. But we do it all in groups.

The one thing that we have learned throughout the additional funding that we have is that young people work better as a group. So we do a lot of cohort-based training that averages 10 to 15 young people in a group. They're all in the same target area and we've found that to be most effective when we have been able to sustain this group.

Also, in the follow up component, we have found alumni groups to be most effective at sustaining their engagement in the program. So by that we have found that those programs have been able to keep us going and keep the youth engaged.

But we also do not want to eliminate the in-school component. What we intend on doing with the in-school component is making that a sector-based challenge grant to work with those secondary institutions and try to focus them on sector strategies with youth that may be at risk of dropping out. But ask them to do a challenge grant concept with it.

In all these activities, I would say the most important lessons that we have learned is that, A, we need to make sure that there is no firewalling of training activities. We want to be sure that people understand that they must integrate distance learning with work experience and combine on-the-job training with classroom training. That way, it creates a no-firewalling activity, which we've found to be pretty (detrimental ?) to youth.

Second is also a theme-based community service mentoring – theme-based community service where our young people are able to go into the community as a team, work in areas where there's homelessness or hunger, have a reflection period. That makes them better citizens and more connects them with the community.

Also, we feel that having a youth career center or an area, if you don't have the possibility to have a center, that is youth-friendly and designed to operate in a manner that operates according to youths' time zone. Young people tend not to operate according to an 8:00 to 5:00 dynamic. And so that means that we must be able to work outside of normal parameters that typically adults operate in. They want to be very engaged. Technology is very important. We have a recording studio for our young people so that, again, they can feel engaged in the activity.

Most importantly in terms of our rural programming, we do have a county that's about 20,000, has about five cities and – (inaudible) – one of these very rural agricultural-based programs. So far, this programming is very important. Distance learning is very important also because a lot


of times there are learning packages that you can buy that have credentials, such as those in fiscal and otherwise, that would combine and (proctored ?) to the local programming can be very (focused ?) in the state.

Also, working with the local libraries. And also with vocational rehabilitation, who also happens to have service learning internship opportunities that can be used by the young people.

Finally, in terms of employer engagement, we have dedicated youth job developers whose primary focus is to place those development opportunities for youth, and they must also be also be able to work with those young people.

And the main thing is the staffing. You must have staff who are not afraid to go into the neighborhood, who are eager to engage and can identify with young people, and also can be able to work effectively with them in the programming.

Earlier it was mentioned about a program participant council – youth council. We have what we call a PC, which is a participant council, where we use young people to give us advice, to sort of give us better insight so the program can be more effective in terms of engagement and retention. And a lot of times they can tell us things that we never even thought about. For example, using supportive services more like a voucher that you can have a whole array of services from which you can use; as opposed to saying, these are the only services. A lot of times things come up that we aren't aware of that young people deal with.

Also, we have a reverse call center where we do outbound calling using text messages, email, as well as phone, because they're very, very mobile. And the other thing that we increasingly found important was the whole (warrant relief ?) aspect to it.

So integrated funding for rural sites, having both distance learning, using cohort-based activities, and then overall having the follow-up being tied to alumni activity. But most importantly I would say is making sure that there's cohort-based activities because we have found that those sustain, have better results. We have – it's easier for young people to actually keep lookout for each other. They sustain the cohort. And we've also found it to be effective in terms of getting feedback to us to the program as it becomes available.

MS. TESFAI: Thank you so much, Clyde. It sounds like you're really implementing a lot of the evidence-informed strategies that were discussed earlier in the webinar. It's been really great to hear about the wonderful work you're doing in Kansas City.

I am cognizant of the time but I wanted to ask you one question about the composition of your workforce investment area. I understand that you do also serve rural areas in addition to urban areas. And I was wondering if you can share with us in the next one or two minutes how you address the different issues that the rural areas might face in your community?

MR. MCQUEEN: Well, first, in our rural area, our rural office is in a little town called Richmond, Missouri, which is the county seat for Ray County, which has no more than 20,000 people; one of the smallest counties in Missouri.


We have a location working out from a library. A lot of times we don't always have enough space; we work with the local libraries. We use a lot of work experience that's site-based, but we still maintain our cohort of credential.

There's a technical – there's not a community college there but there is a technical school that is about eight miles away. But we try to get them to come to locations that are mutually beneficial and acceptable to the community. We tend to use libraries. We have a GED program from a neighboring community come to our site to make the GED programming available.

We have particular relationships with elected officials there. We work constantly with them to do community service projects and have work experience tied to things in that community. But most importantly, we know that we have to – they have access and that's why our persons there have cell phones. We utilize the library a lot. And we even use lots of county offices a lot. And our person there also does a lot of Saturday work. They do a lot of work there on the weekends because sometimes young people are working during the week and can't get to us.

But the cohort activities, distance learning, community service linked up with some of the community institutions, and we intend to work with voc rehab a lot more because they do have a lot of internships that we feel could be of value to that rural population.

MS. TESFAI: Thank you so much, Clyde. And thank you to those of you who are participating in this webinar. I see several questions coming in. I want to remind you that we will have a Q&A portion of this webinar later on, so I encourage you to write down any questions you have so we can try and address them during this time together.

Next I'd like to turn it to two individuals from the Spokane Area Workforce Development Council. With us today we have Dawn Karber, who's the chief operations officer; and we also have Jessica Cato, who's the workforce program manager at the Spokane Area Workforce Development Council. Thank you for joining us.

DAWN KARBER: Thank you. And thank you to everyone out there for joining us. We just want you to know how excited we are by the changing landscape of WIOA and that you're interested in hearing from us on how we've been transitioning from an in-school to out-of-school model.

And before I dive into that, though, I want to just provide a quick overview of the Spokane region and Spokane WIB so you know who we are and where we're located. We are a single-county region in eastern Washington; we're on the Idaho border. A population of about 500,000. We have 12 school districts in our region.

And in the last year, I would say, we have realized that we have some – been preparing for WIOA without even knowing it. I would say longer than a year, actually; maybe even the last few years. And so we found ourselves in a position that we're able to share what it looks like, the transition from an in-school focused model to an out-of-school model.


MS. TESFAI: That is wonderful context. Thank you so much. We're curious, what has been your strategy over the last decade? I know you talked about it a little bit, but if you could share a little bit more information about how you've been thinking about this actively in preparation for the shift in WIOA.

MS. KARBER: Sure. Well, since the implementation of WIA – so about 15 years – we have been offering services through a one-on-one model. So a young person would meet one-on-one with a career specialist and all of the services were individualized. And that's something that we really were proud of. We were really proud that each youth would have a service strategy that was designed to meet that individual's needs.

Over the last few years, though, we have realized that it might be time to rethink our services. So what we did is we held community focus groups and really turned to the community and our partners to see what they needed from us, from the workforce system, with the end goal always being having a work-ready workforce. And what we heard is they really wanted us to build a place, a one stop, for youth.

And at the time, we didn't have access to any other funding and we were WIA funded and still we set out to do this and to make it work. And we launched – we've launched the center. It's called the Next Generation Zone. And it started with two partners, all of our WIA staff. We don't provide direct services as a board, so we updated all of our contracts and said, if you provide WIA services for us, you have to do that through the Next Gen Zone.

So all our partners moved into the Next Generation Zone, as well as our community college partners. So we started with GED services and WIA services. And it went so well – not at first; there were ups and downs, don't get me wrong. But ultimately, it went so well that about a year and a half ago we started welcoming other partners. We have YouthBuild and Job Corps and a high school dropout re-engagement program. Although at that time we were still enrolling youth about the 50/50 in-school/out-of-school rate.

So that brings us up until just about a year ago. Again, we held community meetings and focus groups and we turned to our partners and said, we've created this center; we've tried to do what you asked of us; how are we doing and what more do you need? And what we realized then is that we really needed to transition to pretty much everything that John had on his list earlier. And we have done that.

So now our services are trauma-focused. We've put a lot of effort into partnerships. We do cohort-based opportunities, work-based learning, we have motivational interviewing, we have collocated partners, and we focus on career pathways.

So we really turned to our community, listened to what they need. And of course, they're not going to say, we need motivational interviewing and career pathways; but we took what we know about workforce development, what they said they wanted and implemented that into the center.


So by the time WIOA was authorized, we were really ready to go. So we immediately changed the name – the way that we called the Next Generation Zone, the way we referred to it, and we now refer to it as a career education center for young adults, ages 16 to 24. We have a focus on in-school youth – excuse me, out-of-school youth. (At the end of the slide ?) I just transition.

We were enrolling about 350 kids in WIA each year. We'll continue to do that, but in 2015 we're going to have 99 percent of them out of school. And I'm happy to report we also see 2,500 kids each year – young adults, excuse me – in the Next Generation Zone, our one-stop. And the young adults that are visiting us absolutely love it. We don't have to do marketing or outreach anymore; they bring each other in, which is really just a testament to how well it's working.

Also, the community and businesses are really supporting us, which is demonstrated through the funding we've now received from them.

MS. TESFAI: Thank you for that information. It's so exciting to hear the significant shift you've made in the last couple of years. And it sounds like you're certainly ready to start implementing key provisions of the law and do a lot to serve the out-of-school youth population in the Spokane area. So thank you so much for sharing that.

I understand you have the 21st Century Career Skills Academy for out-of-school youth. Would you mind sharing a little bit of information about that?

MS. KARBER: Yeah. Absolutely. We're really proud of this. It's cohort-based. And I'm going to turn it over to Jessica to talk about the 21st Century Career Academy.

I do want to just – (inaudible) – for a second. She comes from the WIA youth program. She was a staff person in the Next Generation Zone who implemented this model for us on behalf of our board. And she did such a great job that we were able to, unfortunately for them, steal her away and bring on the staff to the board. And so I'm going to turn it to her and she can talk to you about that.

JESSICA CATO: Well, good afternoon, everyone. I'm so excited to be here and share with you a little bit about our 21st Century Career Skills Academy. Dawn, if you could switch to the next slide. Thank you.

So last winter, in 2014, we began sketching out what it might look like to offer services to groups instead of individuals. And we did a lot of research on best practice programs and found that the common threads of their success were peer connection and support, wraparound services, soft skill training and real workspace connections, including work experiences, job shadows and industry tours.

And our youth staff were already very skilled at facilitating youth work experiences for youth, so we built a three-week academy model that provided exposure to industries; teaches soft skills, including teamwork; assessments on learning and communication styles; budgeting; and have connections to employers and regionally-significant industries in our region here in Spokane.


And instead of working with youth one-on-one, we began teaching the same content we had already taught to youth individually, just to groups between 10 and 15 youth at a time. And at first the staff were actually pretty hesitant about the change. I think one of the main hesitations was that they worried about giving up control of, quote, "their" youth and their individual performance.

But once we started piloting it last July, it took about three or four months of running the academy to really find rhythm and settle in, and then for staff to really find their strengths and find their roles within the academy. All of our youth career specialists, which are our WIA staff, teach in the cohort and they've really settled into that role over the last 11 months.

And this change to an academy model has transformed our program. Instead of being touched just by one case manager in our center, each youth that comes into our center is touched by at least five staff. And the youth really have a whole support team behind them, from entry into the center through their work in the academy through a work experience or a training, and then transition into postsecondary or employment.

And the academy model has really increased youth connection to our center and given previously disengaged or opportunity youth a place to identify with and a place to call home. And I think that has been the main – the biggest success of the program. We have young adults that finish our program and they come back months and even years later and bring their friends. And like Dawn said, we do almost zero outreach for our program because word-of-mouth in our community is just that strong.

MS. TESFAI: That is fantastic to hear. Thank you so much for sharing that information about your 21st Century Career Skills Academy for out-of-school youth.

I know you mentioned earlier that by 2015 you anticipate serving 99 percent out-of-school youth. I'm curious if you could share some information about what you're doing to continue your commitment to in-school youth while you're shifting WIOA funds for this out-of-school youth population.

MS. KARBER: Sure. There are several ways we could answer that question. But we wanted to focus on just one today. We brought something up on the screen; you'll see the Passport to Success. We wanted to focus on this because it's been really easy for us to implement and we think that anyone across the country could take this tool or create their own and implement it in their own community.

So this, though, again, we started with the belief that we can't be all things to all people so we have to have partners. And we know that students are engaged in their schools. So once they're engaged in – (inaudible) – they're engaged in their schools, they have a connection to their teacher. And we really needed to utilize that relationship to meet our end goals.

So for the project, again we turned to the community. We found out what they wanted and needed. We held focus groups with educators and businesses and students. And from that


process we created the tool which we call the Passport to Career Success. And this provides educators a step-by-step career preparation guide to be used in the classrooms.

And students throughout the community are already talking about this. Again, it launched and was so much more successful than we ever could have imagined. We created it for a handful of schools that we were working with and it really has spread from there.

And since launching it, Jessica and her team of partners who are out there presenting on it have already presented to over 400 high school educators. They present this along with labor market information, which I find particularly impressive because when we were enrolling in-school and out-of-school youth we could serve about 175 kids as in-school. But now, since we're able to teach the teachers how to offer career education in the classroom and focus – and have a focus on career pathways, we're able to affect the lives of thousands of youth through these teachers.

Again, I'm going to turn it to Jessica and she can walk you through this passport tool.

MS. CATO: So unfortunately, we weren't able to put the whole passport up on your slide. But what you see in front of you is the main page of the passport. So you can see that the passport is divided up into four sections. And really it's 17 steps, just a comprehensive guide that helps get students career ready.

There are four sections: planning, learning the language, preparing and then taking off. And the passport is designed to be used in multiple learning environments, such as in a classroom as a part of a curriculum or individually by students. So for example, we have some districts here that are incorporating the passport into their high school and beyond planning, and also into CTE curriculum. We're also using the passport at our Next Generation Zone for all of our out-of-school youth and our GED students.

So it's a very flexible tool. It's web-based and students can actually save everything online. We're launching that platform, actually, next week – our full online passport platform.

It's specifically designed for 16- to 24-year-olds but we've had a lot of interest from other groups wanting to expand the passport to adults. So it's just a really flexible tool that is online and available for your use. And if you have questions about it, we're happy to answer it. You can contact us with any interest.

MS. TESFAI: The Passport to Success for in-school youth sounds like an excellent resource. And we wish you the best of luck launching it fully next week. Thank you so much for sharing information about that with us.

We had a quick question from other folks on the line for Dawn and Jessica. Is your youth center located in an area where your youth primarily live or hang out?

MS. KARBER: Yeah. When we launched the Next Generation Zone, we made sure to evaluate all the data. And we wanted to have a center that was located near where the youth live and hang out, so we did definitely pay attention to that.


We recently signed a new lease. And before doing that, we did analysis again. So yeah, absolutely, that is a top concern for us.

MS. TESFAI: Great. Thank you, Dawn and Jessica, for your presentation.

We're going to transition into the Q&A portion of this webinar. And thank you once again to folks on the line for submitting questions throughout this webinar. We wish that we can get to all of them, but unfortunately we will not have enough time to address all of your questions. But I certainly want to encourage you to submit them in the comment box, as well as to follow up on the website. There's an opportunity for you to access an email and I'll share that at the end.

But the first question, this is for Dawn and Jessica. Someone says, "Are there specific sectors that you focus on? If you contract with business service providers, do contracted business services support the activities of the Career Skills Academy? Is there a connection to adult services, including access to training funds and/or on-the-job training?"

MS. KARBER: Yes. So in our youth one-stop we subcontract out our WIA youth dollars to three different partners that offer the full spectrum of youth services, from training, support services, everything that is – (inaudible) – offered at the Next Generation Zone. And actually, physically that center is located right across the street, or the parking lot, from our adult and dislocated worker one-stop. So everything's in one hub. There is a very strong connection.

In terms of sectors, so our area has five sectors that we have determined as in-demand that we focus on. And those here in Spokane are manufacturing, health care, IT and professional services, transportation and warehousing, and finance and insurance. And all of our career skills academies are centered around one or more of those sectors.

So although we might have 15 youth at a time who might not all be interested in health care, for example, they're all being exposed to health care. They're learning about careers and career education in the context of that sector. So we've found that it just exposes kids to such a wide variety of sectors, something that they may have never considered and giving them a context to learn that information.

MS. TESFAI: Great. Thank you for that response. This next question is for Connie, but I'd like to invite anyone on the line to answer. The question is, "Are there industry-recognized credentials issued to individuals or youth served within the DEI? If so, what are those?"

MS. IRELAND: So Minnesota's Disability Youth Initiative actually will end this September. And the focus that – the primary audience for that particular initiative was in-school youth. And the goal and the outcome was high school diplomas, GED or occupational skills, which Minnesota did fulfill those requirements. With an addition, there were a handful of participants that participated in YouthBuild as well, so that co-enrollment.

And Minnesota did a really good job on some career pathway work in a pre-apprenticeship program. So again, we were looking at pre-apprenticeship within the construction arena. So if


Minnesota plans on continuing that work and serving youth with disabilities, and now with the age change within WIOA, we plan to reach out to keep those youth engaged and move them forward to – in particular those that participated in the pre-apprenticeship program in construction, to move them along that career pathway.

So that's where Minnesota feels like we have – we've done some established work in particular with adults, but now really expanding those models again to serve youth. And specifically then in particular sectors.

MS. TESFAI: Great. Thank you, Connie. This next question I'm looking to Sarah Hastings, my colleague at DOL, to answer. But of course, I encourage anyone else to chime in. The question is, "Under WIOA's 20 percent work experience funding requirement, must/should the classroom instruction component be included towards the 20 percent calculation? Or should actual work experience activities be the only type of expenditures counted toward that percentage?"

SARAH HASTINGS: Thanks, Lul. And hi, everyone. Right now – you know, most folks have seen the previous guidance that we put out through our training and employment guidance letter. And we did address this to some degree and so take a look at that. If you have not seen our previous guidance, we start to address that issue.

We will address it even further in our upcoming guidance, so there will be another training and employment guidance letter – a TEGL – that will get into kind of more of the specifics around what counts and what doesn't towards the 20 percent work experience requirement. So be on the lookout for that.

But we definitely know that this is a question people want to really know what exactly counts and we will be getting to that soon. So thanks for the question. (Pause.)

MS. TESFAI: Great. Thank you so much, Sarah. This next question is for Clyde and it's related to customer service credentials. "Where is this from local career and tech? Do you develop this credential? Was it found online through an accredited site?" Clyde, do you have that answer?

MR. MCQUEEN: Yes. Well, the University of Central Missouri actually developed the credential for us that we did in concert with some employers. And so they developed it here locally.

However, the national regional federation does have a customer service, retail service curriculum that's available for free. I think it's available online. And we also worked with that credential as well.

MS. TESFAI: Thank you for that information, Clyde. This next question is about regional collaboration, which was mentioned previously on this webinar. And this question is for Clyde in particular but I encourage anyone to chime in. "Could you please offer some specific examples of regional collaboration to serve out-of-school youth? And what specifically does this collaboration look like?"


MR. MCQUEEN: Well, three examples. One is we have what we call job-o-ramas, or employer events, where we bring education entities to talk about postsecondary opportunities in hot jobs. Secondly is where we bring employers to talk about the career opportunities that don't necessarily require a four-year credential; can be a 12- or 14-week certificate.

And then we bring all the young people together. And we bring them from all places, our rural communities and rural employers, as well as our suburban and urban areas. And we make sure we have enough of a budget to overcome the transportation challenges that all youth have. And from that, you have a real synergy because of all these young people don't necessarily have the means to come together collectively.

And we're planning another one – we're trying to do one of those each year because it creates (a lot ?) dynamic and there's synergy because it's not so segmented. And that's basically what we call a school-to-career. We call it a job-o-rama type of thing and that's what we do consistently.

Secondly, we also have a lot of career-focused activities where we do customized training classes that have credentials that are sector-focused that we draw from all sectors of the community. But we do them at the career center. The school lets us do the training at the classrooms that we have inside the career centers themselves. And those have also been found – (inaudible).

MS. TESFAI: Thank you so much for that information, Clyde. Our next question is for Dawn. The question reads, "In Ohio the WIA staff cannot offer services directly; they need to be procured. Are your partners conducting the services or are WIA staff conducting the services?"

MS. KARBER: So in Washington we call our board staff WIB staff. So I'm going to assume that that would be the appropriate translation. And we don't offer – we are WIB staff, Jessica and I, and we don't offer any services directly. We contract that we procure all of our youth services. And so when we refer to partners, we're really referring to someone who is a non-WIA-funded partner but is housed within the Next Generation Zone and offers services as a comprehensive plan for our region.

So yes, we do procure out youth services.

MS. TESFAI: OK. Thank you for that information. And just to stick with you for a moment, we have another follow-up question. The question is, "Are you serving 16- to – are you just serving 16- to 24-year olds? Why not 14- and 15-year olds?"

MS. CATO: This is Jessica. Yes, we are just serving 16- to 24-year-olds in our Next Generation Zone. And we put a lot of thought into this when designing the model. We talked with a lot of partners and it really just came down to youth experience for us. And truthfully, we just didn't want 14-year-olds in the same learning environment as 24-year-olds. So we think that the model we created for 16- to 24-year-olds is a really comprehensive model for that age group.

MS. TESFAI: And one more follow-up. "What is your attrition rate for the career academy? How do you keep youth engaged to attend the full three weeks?"


MS. CATO: So we have about a 75 percent completion rate. Seventy-five percent of the youth that start, complete the academy. And we put a lot of thought in the structure of the academy and I think that it comes down to peer connections and peer support. The young adults that come into the academy develop a community in those three weeks and they want to come back and they want to learn. It also can be attributed to our amazing staff that really take the initiative to engage with each young person and develop those relationships.

Through some private grant funding we're also able to help every youth that comes with transportation, so that has removed that barrier. And I think that the combination of those three factors – peer support, staff support, wraparound services and transportation – has made our 75 percent completion rate possible.

MS. KARBER: And this is Dawn. If I can add, for some programs that might sound completely impossible because you may not have access to private funding and you may not have a one-stop center. But just know we started exactly the same we; we didn't have any of those things and we've just built them over the years.

MS. TESFAI: Thank you for that information, Dawn and Jessica.

So we have about 10 minutes left. But before we wrap up we wanted to have an audience discussion. So we are going to ask you a question. And unlike our previous polling questions, this isn't a multiple-choice question; we actually want you to type in a more detailed response.

The question for you all is, what is – we'd like to hear from you your progress on making the shift and what additional resources might support you and position you for success in the future.

MR. KEATING: All right. And to facilitate you letting us know that – to answer that question – we want to invite you to type right into the chat window that just showed up on your screen. So go ahead and just type in your answer right now into that chat window. And I'll let the team comment on what you're seeing as those responses come in.

All right. So we see a few people speaking – or typing. Again, we'd like to hear from you on your progress on making the shift and what additional resources might support you and position you for success in the future? So just got a couple minutes for this, but we want to hear from you. So please go ahead and type in now; we see you are.

MS. TESFAI: In the meantime, Sarah Hastings from DOL, could you provide an indication as to when the next TEGL will be released?

MS. HASTINGS: Thanks, Lul. And I'm seeing already a couple points about sort of the TEGLs and when those are going to be out and if we can speed up the delivery of the messages and the important information that comes out in the TEGLs.

I actually – we are working hard to really resolve some of these specific questions and we want to make sure that when we put out the guidance that it's the right guidance for the field. And so


we are really looking at these issues very carefully and working as quickly as we can. And so in terms of timing, I don't have that information. I know we are working to try to get that out as soon as possible, but unfortunately I don't have a specific date or timeline for that. But soon.

We're really trying to work to get that out as quickly as we can because we know folks are really eager to have information to know how to proceed and to develop their programs. But we are working on it, so thank you.

MS. TESFAI: Thank you for that information, Sarah. And thank you to all of you who are answering the question. The question is, tell us a little about your progress on making the shift and what additional resources might support you and position you for success in the future.

We heard from Amy that, "It'd be great to know a little bit more about the 21st Century Career Skills Academy model that Dawn and Jessica talked through today."

Alfredo says, "It'd be great to know if youth providers are allowed to use the state eligible training provider list."

I've heard a couple of folks, including Cindy (sp), say that it would be helpful to have more information about apprenticeship and pre-apprenticeship programs.

And Monica is saying that it would be wonderful for her local area to offer more apprenticeship opportunities and on-the-job training.

Thank you for all the comments coming in. If you've already made a comment, I encourage you to respond to something someone else on the line has already said. (Pause.)

Monica says, "It would be great to have more ideas on how to reach the older population of out-of-school youth, specifically those between the ages of 21 and 24 that's not typically identified as youth." (Pause.)

And Tamara (sp) says, "It would be helpful to have additional resources on education offered concurrently with work-based learning and occupational training." (Pause.)

Amanda says, "It would be helpful to know more information about how to effectively serve youth with disabilities and how they can apply the project search model for out-of-school youth." (Pause.)

I wish I could read through all the comments that people are providing. It's all wonderful and very helpful and I want to let you know that the Department of Labor is taking your suggestions and your requests for information very seriously. And the information you're providing today will certainly go towards informing technical assistance that the department plans to offer in order to support the successful implementation of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act. (Pause.)


I know we're nearing the end of our scheduled time. So I just want to thank everyone once again for making the time to join this webinar. I want to thank our presenters, Connie, Clyde, Dawn and Jessica, for sharing information about your local programs. It's been incredibly insightful. And I also want to thank John Martinez at MDRC for outlining the evidence-based strategies that we know are effective for supporting out-of-school youth.

In the last couple of minutes I wanted to turn it over to Sarah Hastings from DOL to share some information about some upcoming events.

MS. HASTINGS: Great. Thanks. Thank you so much, Lul, for moderating this conversation. And thanks to all the presenters who shared such fantastic information.

I wanted to give you some information about our upcoming webinars here. And you can see we've been doing – if you're not aware, this is our Enough is Known for Action webinar series and we started this a few months ago. And we are going to continue each month, the last Wednesday of each month, to continue these really important conversations with all of you. We're happy to get your feedback on what's helpful to you and we got some good information just from that quick audience discussion.

But you can see the next three webinars that we have posted here are the youth with disabilities, which will be July 29th; career pathways, August 26th; and implementing WIOA in rural areas, which will be on September 30th. They're all at 2:00 Eastern and you can – I think all of you know how to get access to these and register for these webinars since you are on this one successfully today. But you can get registered for these at Workforce3One.org.

And you can also access the past webinar recordings that we've done at Workforce3One and you can take a look. There is a page that has all of these listed and you can listen to the archived recordings of these.

So we look forward to having more conversations with all of you. We have some good topics to discuss in the coming months. But we thank you all so much for your time today. And thanks to the presenters and the moderators for participating in this conversation.

For those of you who don't know, for all your WIOA information if you have not been to this page you can find our TEGLs and you can find the NPRM and you can find all the good information about WIOA at www.doleta – D-O-L-E-T-A – .gov/wioa. And if that is tricky, all you need to do is google DOL and WIOA and you will get there. And there's a lot of great information there. So that's your go-to place for this information.

And thank you again to everybody for participating on today's webinar. We really appreciate your time and look forward to chatting with you all soon.

(END)


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