CDE Apprenticeship Program

ACTE, the Association for Career Technical Education, has a magazine that is published every month or two.  The September issue had several very interesting articles that spoke about Apprenticeship specifically and how CTE makes a positive impact in career workforce development in general.  Here are the articles and links to the PDF files:

CTE in the Economy:  Finding the Upside in the Downside

Registered Apprenticeship:  Stepping up to the President’s Challenge

Career and Technical Education: Pursuing a Pipeline for the New Green-Collar Workforce
More articles here.

Take a look and send them to those who might be interested.

Here’s a brief wrap up from the CAC meeting, as it relates to the training side of things.

Our meeting at 11am on Wednesday was attended by about 20 people, LEA’s and sponsors included.  We had a good discussion about workers compensation issues as well as a new set of procedures that we’re looking at implementing to provide more consistency from one LEA to the next in how programs are monitored and supported.

Workers Compensation Issue:  at this point, there is Labor and Ed Code that can be interpreted to mean that if an apprentice is NOT employed (receiving unemployment) and is injured during training, the LEA may be responsible for the workers compensation insurance.  We will look into this more and hopefully find a reasonable solution.  LEAs may be over-exposed to serious injury claims as it currently stands and that could lead to some dropping out of the program all together.  More information to come on this issue.

Annual Program Evaluations:  most of the LEAs already work closely with the program sponsors to evaluate the training programs, monitor attendance taking procedures, etc.  What we are proposing is a set of guidelines, some required and others recommended, that will provide a higher level of consistency from one LEA/program to another.  And with the increase in turnover at the LEA and even program sponsor level, this is a good time to solidify procedures used in monitoring and supporting all apprenticeship training programs.

We will be working on a draft outline and gathering feedback from LEAs and program sponsors over the next 2-3 months.  The goal is to implement this beginning May 1, 2010 and put it into use for the 2010/11 Fiscal Year.

And finally, with regards to online/distance learning for Apprentices, if you have any questions whatsoever, contact me (John) and we can talk more about this issue.  The RSI Sub-Committee recommended to the full CAC that they accept a resolution promoting use of distance learning as long as it was of high quality and properly monitored.  The CAC minutes will reflect the actual wording if you are interested in that.  Basically, it is being used effectively world wide and in certain instances, distance/online learning is very appropriate for use in Apprentice training programs.

Next CAC meeting is in January at the Sacramento Radisson Hotel.  Plan on being there if you can make it, Wednesday is the best day to attend so that we can all meet again to discuss these and other topics.

Good afternoon all,

The CAC meeting in Anaheim is next week, Wednesday through Friday at the Sheraton Park Hotel on Harbor Blvd., next to the Convention Center.  I will be in attendance thanks to the approval today for my travel.  I’ve sent out an email to the LEA’s asking that if they can, they attend on Wednesday to meet together around 11am in the sub-committee meeting room.  I’m waiting on confirmation that we have the room but if not, we’ll find a spot to sit down and talk.  The RSI committee meets at 1pm on Wednesday and I highly recommend that you attend that meeting as well.

It is very important that the K12/CDE side of Apprenticeship in California be visible and in attendance at these meetings as much as possible.  There are several grants that have been awarded and more will in the future, which the K12 community can participate in as partners.  Most grant recipients are Community Colleges along with non-profit groups or some combination thereof.

Email me at jdunn (at) cde.ca.gov if you have questions.

John

(sent via email this morning too)

As the budget has finally settled and the real funding numbers have surfaced, my earlier calculations for funding amounts were off by a small amount.  Instead of a 4.5% reduction from the final 08/09 allocation, the real number was a reduction of 5.25%.  The attached spreadsheet illustrates the final amount, based on a total funding package of $15,692,601.  The hourly rate has not changed, it remains $5.06 at this time.

The early indication is that there is not enough money left to incur mid  year reductions as we experienced last March.  That being said, it would be prudent to factor in some “wiggle room” and ensure that should mid year cuts occur again, you have the ability to re-capture funds.

Also, as we saw in July, should the legislature choose to “sweep” unused funds from our account as a way to balance the budget on paper (only to return the funds in the next fiscal year), those LEAs who reported all or most of their hours by April were not affected by that sweep.

The real (final) allocation letters will be emailed Tuesday of next week, with the adjusted numbers.  You can print them at your leisure and if you need a letter mailed, let me know and we can send one out that way too.

Have a great Labor Day weekend.

Allocation List Apprenticeship Allocations_Sept_09

Good news!  The budget was signed and we’ve been able to take a look at the details and it appears that the Apprenticeship line item was not changed.  Therefore, we will be taking only a 4.5% reduction for 2009-10, which is what was in the March budget revision for this fiscal year (2009-10).  The hourly rate remains the same, at $5.06.

Bad news!  The budget “swept” $1.4 million from the 2008-09 allocation, representing the amount of money left in the account as of June 30.  This money is supposed to come back to the LEA’s eventually but not soon most likely.  Perhaps not ever.  The majority of the Apprenticeship funds are expended by May 1, because of the April attendance reporting.  But because we count the attendance in May and June, and report in July, those funds were still in the account and were swept.

Allocation letters will be coming out shortly.  Stay tuned for more.

Yesterday we sent out the 2008/09 Annual Survey for the Apprenticeship programs affiliated with the CDE.  It is a new format and hopefully should allow us to collect the data much more efficiently than we have in the past.  This will also allow us to extend the deadline to October 1st, so that we can make a report to the California Apprenticeship Council (CAC) meeting in late October. The Survey is here

Also, the CAC meets this Wednesday through Friday in Burlingame and the CDE will be there for one or two days.  If you will be there, please take a moment to say hello.

Budget will be signed by end of the day today, we hope.  We don’t have any information on what the cuts to Apprenticeship will be other than the 4.5% that is already expected based on the March budget act. We will post the info as soon as we hear.

Thanks, let us know if you have any questions on the survey or budget.

John

Good afternoon.  A week or so ago the CDE posted information indicating that the federal ARRA funds that are earmarked for the Categorical areas had been released.  The link to the press release is here.

Here is some information from the press release regarding the funds:

“SFSF is part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009 signed into law by President Barack Obama. SFSF is intended to save and create jobs and advance education reform. SFSF may be used for any activity authorized by the following federal statutes: Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), Adult Education and Family Literacy Act, Perkins Career & Technical Education or Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).”

Many questions have been fielded regarding how these funds should be spent.  At this point, the general understanding is that once the funds get to the school district or county office of education, they are “flexible” and do not have to be re-directed back to the particular Categorical fund that was reduced.  For instance, the losses/reductions which occurred in Apprentice programs were part of the calculation used to come up with each districts reimbursement.  However, that does not mean that the district must use those funds to replace funds lost.  We are working to clarify this, as there are similar questions from the ROCP side also.  Tier 2 language does not affect the ARRA funds, from what we understand.

That being said, apprenticeship coordinators should create a dialogue with district administrators so that they can, at a minimum, provide reasonable arguments to support the reimbursement of Apprenticeship funds.

Here is also a list of the Apprenticeship Funds from ARRA and SFSF, per LEA in the program.  This is from the CDE spreadsheet that specified what funds were used to calculate the districts share of the ARRA funds.

Apprenticeship Funds from ARRA and SFSF

We will let you know if we hear anything new regarding how the funds should be spent.

Good morning.  Today we will be sending out an email to the LEA distribution list asking that you complete a brief 4 question survey on Survey Monkey.  We want to update our contact information and this is the quickest and most pain free method we feel.

If your LEA has not completed the survey or lost the email (or we don’t have good contact info), here is the link:

Contact Information Survey

As of this morning, the Apprenticeship Budget Resource Code is:  0000

That is the default code and should at least keep the funds separated from the Tier 3 categoricals that the funds were associated with.

______________________

Some of you may know this already but the resource code provided by the CDE for the Apprenticeship allocations is the same as for ROCP’s.  Because of that, there has been some confusion regarding the Tier 2 status of Apprenticeship.

The CDE fiscal people are working on a solution but in the meantime, if you or your finance people at the district/county level have any questions, please have them give me a call (John Dunn, 916-319-0460) or email: jdunn @ cde . ca . gov

Here are some links too:

CDE Flex website

SBx34 Budget Flex document

Jack O’Connell’s press release regarding the budget included a reference to Apprenticeship:

“Another important part of this proposal that I appreciate is that child nutrition, special education, and economic impact aid, as well as our apprenticeship programs, are not included in the transferability as these programs serve some of our most vulnerable children or, as in the case of apprenticeship programs, provide unique training and career exposure opportunities to our young people.”

http://www.cde.ca.gov/nr/ne/yr09/yr09rel31.asp  (link to release)

I had a very good discussion the other day with one of the training directors.  The discussion turned to how well the relationship between the training committee and the LEA Apprenticeship Coordinator was working and the high level of support that the training director and the JATC received from the LEA.  What came from that discussion was how the training committees, coordinators, etc. can help their LEA Coordinator.

In these very difficult economic times, with additional cuts to Adult Education, ROCPs and other areas which work closely with Apprenticeship, it is important that the District/County Superintendent and Board of Education understand how Apprenticeship impacts their district in a positive way.  Both financially and in job training.  If you have a good working relationship with your LEA, which is usually the case, let the people who sign their checks know.  It might save their position and allow the program to continue on, while we wait for the recession to end.

We all need to support each other right now.  Training committees and LEA’s work together constantly but many people outside the Apprenticeship community do not understand that relationship.  Now is the time to promote the positive aspects of Apprenticeship and build a solid foundation of support within each school district and county office of education.

Call me if you would like some additional suggestions.  Or even better, leave a comment explaining what you do to support your LEA and/or training committee.

John