 Good morning to our friends out on the west coast and good afternoon to folks joining us from the east coast and everywhere in between. I want to thank you for joining us today for this event. On the road 500,000 ideas for expanding apprenticeship in California. My name is Brent Parton. I'm the deputy director of the center and education and labor here at New America. And it's really our pleasure to share with you today a set of policy ideas that we've been working on as our team for about a year now, but critically in partnership and through the lens of the experience of real innovators both leaders and practitioners across sectors and at the state and regional level across the state of California. Today is really about them and their perspective, but I'd be happy to share a few words on the front end about this research and our hopes for it. I'm going to ask my colleagues to please put up a few slides to share a little bit about the work itself today that we are officially releasing, which is really a thrill, a quick word about what the center and education and labor is at New America. New America itself is a nonpartisan public research organization, we're based in Washington DC, but we have people out across the country doing incredible work, including folks based in California with New America California, where I sit and again, I'm the deputy director of our center and education and labor. We are the public policy part of our organization that is dedicated to relinking education and economic mobility, specifically by focusing on federal state and local policies, as well as the key institutions that better produce outcomes for workers and students in our economy today. The center and education and labor have been working on apprenticeship specifically for some time, and there's a reason for that we think that there's a tremendous untapped potential for apprenticeship, both as a workforce as well as an education strategy within our broader economy. We have put out research, looking at better ways to strengthen the connections between higher education, as well as our K 12 education systems. We've done deep dives on the applications of apprenticeship and what are often referred to as non traditional sectors, whether that's nursing or cybersecurity. And my colleague you'll hear from a little bit later has really worked on a foundational piece of work that this initiative has built off of around state policy approaches for better connecting apprenticeship and college programming. This is a connection to our policy research and technical assistance us at the center also work out in the field, both with folks at the national and local level on a range of different coalitions and initiatives. We've worked for several years now in federal policy with a related to apprenticeship with a broader coalition of groups known as the apprenticeship forward collaborative. And we at New America are the lead partner in a major multi year initiative called the partnership to advance youth apprenticeship, otherwise known as PIA. We've probably heard of it, but where it's an initiative that is working with various states and cities across the country, specifically to build youth apprenticeship pathways. We were thrilled and excited to be able to engage with the possibilities of apprenticeship in California, in part because of the motivation for a big ambitious goal that I'll talk about in just a second. Governor Newsom recently over the past year has established something called the future of work commission that really is an ambitious effort to try to tangle with both the current as well as future challenges that workers and communities face across the state of California. This is an excerpt from an executive order that established the commission itself, and it really points out to something that's really critical. There are more deep structural challenges in the state of California related to where workers are and students and the future of opportunities in the state. However, it's really important to note that the governor by setting up the commission really stated as is seen right here that there is a key role of state policy. Most importantly, the current trajectory we're on or the trends, whether that's the changing of technology and the accelerating impact it has on the workforce. None of these things, none of the adverse consequences we're seeing are inevitable or permanent. There are things that we can do from a public policy standpoint, both decisions from a policy as well as an investment standpoint. But critically, there's a shared responsibility here. There are many things government can do, but there also needs to be shared responsibility for how we can improve those outcomes across industry, education, community stakeholders. So, if we go to the next slide please when the governor set a ambitious goal early in his tenure to establish 500,000 earn and learn apprenticeships by 2029. He very directly linked it to a broader agenda around inclusive development in the state of California. It's something that we have particularly taken note of because it really raises the bar of what the great potential of apprenticeship can be within an economy. Most importantly, the governor's goal, which is to reach 500,000 apprentices and really over 10 years is pushing on a largely registered apprenticeship system that today in California serves just under 100,000 people. What this is is certainly an affirmation of the proven registered apprenticeship model, but it is also calling for in many respects, reimagination of what apprenticeship can be in the state, but more importantly, not as a way of changing the elements of the fundamentals of why the model delivers for both the employers and workers who are a part of it, but the applications of that apprenticeship model to broader sectors and broader swaths of jobs across California's economy. That is a incredibly ambitious vision. It's one that we in New America particularly have taken sight of, and it's one that the rest of the country is watching. So while today is certainly about policy recommendations directions for California. What is particularly exciting about it is that the rest of the country is watching as well. And it also responds to this big bold goal. The last thing I want to say before we dig a little bit into some of the specifics of the work itself is that I want to thank the supporters of this work the James Irvine Foundation for their both thought partnership, as well as financial support of our research to undertake this important work. The premise of what we are putting out today and what we're discussing comes back to this idea that there's an incredibly strong foundation to build on of registered apprenticeship in California across the United States. But what is particularly exciting, given the structural challenges that we face in our economy today, whether they're long standing trends related to declining rates of economic mobility, whether it's the current crisis we're in, both the economic fallout that's happened from the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on workers and students across the state, but also critically looking down the pipeline into the future and seeing how accelerating change is changing the nature of work. All of these big challenges are calling into ideas of what are clear strategies that can help our states but help, most importantly, people confront and address them. We firmly believe, and as our report sites here that expanding apprenticeship opportunities into new industry sectors can extend how we view it the critical guarantees of registered apprenticeship to more workers, students and employer partners across California's economy. So we are reiterating it's important to build on the base. However, at the same time, this goal this 500,000 goal is really calling for that system to reach new heights. The road to 500,000 apprentices which is officially out today is a policy memo that describes a set of four policy ideas specifically to help achieve that roadmap for for getting the state to 500,000 apprentices by timeline. We do outline for specific policy ideas for building a more expansive inclusive registered apprenticeship system. We also profile innovations at the state and local level that inform these ideas. Policy makers in California do not have to start from scratch when it comes to the idea of how do we expand apprenticeship into these nontraditional sectors. So over the course of a year, our team was able to engage with over 100 different state and local leaders across the state of California, and talk with them both about what has been supported and what innovations are out in the field, what has been easy, what has been challenging. It is their experience and it is their creativity and ingenuity as leaders that have informed these policy directions and quite frankly will form the foundation for particularly growing the nontraditional sector of apprenticeship programs that are really core to reaching the 500,000 goal. A couple of things I want to state on the front end about the policy recommendations themselves and what you'll see. I want to reiterate this point that it's critically important to understand that the goal itself 500,000 apprentices, it endorses what is a proven earn and learn model and registered apprenticeship program that has a strong track record in California, particularly where those programs are largely concentrated with which remains largely in the skilled trades and firefighting. But at the same time, reaching that level of scale going from just under 100,000 registered apprentices today to 500,000 of 2029 really also challenges that system to new heights. I think what's incredibly important to understand particularly where we're at nationally right now in the apprenticeship conversation is that this is calling in many respects for an innovative way to grow apprenticeship opportunities high quality apprenticeship opportunities and innovate within the registered apprenticeship system that does offer considerable flexibility for both employer education and other sponsored partners are involved with programs, but at the same time provides critical guardrails and the sense of rigor for both the apprentices and the employers that are the foundation of those programs. So our view is that the goal builds on the strong base, but it also comes with an understanding that much of the dramatic growth in non has to happen in nontraditional sectors. The other thing that I want to focus on because these policy recommendations particular do follow on sort of how do you grow these apprenticeship programs where they are less well established in nontraditional sectors is that these are state policy recommendations so that means that if you have to acknowledge on the front end, the state cannot do everything whether that's the legislature, the governor or the various agencies at the state local level. But there are some things that only the state can do when it comes to growing these programs. So while we focus on for policy recommendations. We also want to underscore and appreciate that there are a broader range of industry philanthropic, innovation and political leaders at the state and local level that whose leadership and activity is necessary for hitting 500,000. What we have sought to narrow our scope to is what are things that the state can uniquely do to create the framework for that real innovation and growth to happen. The other thing I want to point out is that because there is such an established infrastructure and one that we should be proud of and continue to grow and build upon for registered apprenticeship and the skilled trades and manufacturing, we believe nontraditional sectors have a critical strategy and implementation gap to fill. So while on one hand they have a lot to learn from those folks that have put together programs in well established sectors. There is a lot of room for innovation and leadership to be thinking about how does the apprenticeship model become more pronounced in these nontraditional spaces, healthcare, advanced manufacturing, information technology, education, and beyond. These are opportunities that apprenticeship programs and infrastructure can be built within these new industry sectors and grown over time. Lastly, one thing you will see today, both within the conversations we're about to have as well as the recommendations themselves is the continuity of the theme of community colleges. Through the California apprenticeship initiative community colleges have barely been at the forefront of a lot of the incredible work that's been happening around apprenticeship across the state of California. What we will see though throughout these innovations, whether they are led by a community college partner and not, they are a present institution across a lot of these innovations that are happening. We think there are critical reasons for that happening in particular because we expand apprenticeship opportunities into these nontraditional sectors where college degrees and college credits still matter for career advancement. Community colleges are incredibly important institutions that can bridge the world of work to the bridge the world of learning in our mainstream post-secondary education systems. At the same time, it's critically important to understand that community colleges and aligning apprenticeship opportunities with the coursework that they are able to offer does provide increased funding and sustainability for a lot of the related instruction that is needed for these programs. There are some really important steps to help promote that to happen, but there's a lot more work to be done where regional partnerships for apprenticeship could really be building off existing academic based coursework and a way to sustain programs in these nontraditional fields. So that is something you were going to see either a set of themes across the policy recommendations. It is not my job today to go through these big four ideas in great detail that would be a really bad idea because I want you to read the report that's coming out. So let's say at a high level, these are four state policy ideas, and underneath them are specific actions that we propose based again on a lot of engagement both with folks within California, as well as beyond. Specifically, real quick at a high level those ideas are to create a clear quality framework and advance the use of sector intermediaries to accelerate program growth in nontraditional fields. New partners and new sectors need a clear entry point into the registered system clear guidelines about what can and cannot be done and critical capacity that helps ensure no region has to start from scratch when building these new programs. Number two, while we can create a state policy framework and many respects and at the same time create kind of industry leadership and capacity in these new sectors. So people are hired and educated at the local level. So regions themselves need a coordinating infrastructure to be able to align education workforce industry partners that are really the foundation for a lot of these nontraditional programs. And these regions need sustained support to be able to build the capacity to manage that ecosystem and create a really navigable entry point for both prospective employers and apprentices that want to engage with it. Numbers three and four are a little bit different and that they're focused on sort of verticals across growing the demand for registered apprentices across the state of California. The state and put through public works infrastructures investments for decades has been a clear lever for expanding the existing registered apprenticeship programs in the skilled trades. And one of the state's largest registered apprenticeship programs in the firefighting sector is one that is actually also leverages a decent amount of public investment as a public service. And in the critical lever the state has through both procurement and a direct employer of many high skilled jobs to nontraditional sectors can be a critical agent for increasing the demand, and for the public sector to be a role model employer for registered apprenticeships in the nontraditional sector. We believe that the foundation for building an inclusive of registered apprenticeship system that looks a lot more like the future of the state's workforce lies within a clear statewide strategy to connect youth to to register to apprenticeship opportunities. This certainly includes designing registered apprenticeship models where high school students can access and start this work before they graduate high school, leveraging the state's considerable career Academy infrastructure and CTE coursework that straddles both the K 12 and Community College world, but at the same time, creating clear on ramps for students who have been disconnected from systems to be able to enter existing registered apprenticeship opportunities. We still believe of course that pre apprenticeship programs for example that have a strong tradition or increasingly being integrated within the state's K 12 system have an incredibly important role for building a more equitable and inclusive registered apprenticeship system. The last thing that I will say before getting over to our innovators themselves, you can read about all the specific recommendations themselves, but I don't want to belabor that today. These are different policy ideas, but they're certainly connected, and it starts with an inner governmental vision. This is not just the work of the Labor and Workforce Development Agency. This is about the Community College Chancellor's Office about the Department of Education. It's about GO-Biz and economic development. It's about a government wide vision for how can we pull the various levers of the state to be able to grow the registered apprenticeship system. So it has to start with a goal. You also have an existing registered system with some existing structures to be able to create these clear entry points. So obviously the California Apprenticeship Council, which has been a long leader and is the leader in many respects of the registered strategic standpoint, particularly at the skilled trades and manufacturing, skilled trades and firefighting. But you also have something called the Interagency Advisory Committee on Apprenticeship, which has been a nascent effort legislatively authorized. It brings together a lot of agency heads and representatives of non-traditional sectors. This can be a critical entity that can be supercharged to be able to create an entry point and make it easier for these new programs to navigate and start up and never start from scratch. But creating a clear policy framework and entry point is not enough. That's where the industry sector intermediaries come in, that the ground game, that the connective tissue between the state's vision and the regions themselves that need to be pulling together partners to recruit employers to recruit apprentices and really build these programs. So if sector intermediaries focused on their specific sector can kind of move around working with local partners, they need clear entry points at the regional level and the regions could really benefit from their expertise as they want to set up new programs. So the final slide I'll say here is how you can build a real regional ecosystem. We call them in the recommendations or regional apprenticeship consortia. Understanding there's many regional designations across the state of California that could be leveraged. This regional ecosystem where the state is really asking regions across that covers every square mile of the state to be operating under what we call a regional apprenticeship plan. We're both a received sustained funding to build kind of the capacity that's needed to coordinate multiple programs across multiple sectors, but at the same time provide the state with a clear plan that is less about sort of meeting specific project or program outcomes and much more about system level outcomes in growing the registered apprenticeship system, increasing diversity and inclusion in the registered apprenticeship system and advancing strategic priorities such as completion and outcomes for registered apprentices. So the report talks a lot about these policy recommendations, I could keep you here all day and do that but that's not what today is about. Today we are going to talk about the innovators that have many respects help, you know, have demonstrate what the idea of these recommendations are, because in fact they inspired a lot of them. At this point today we're going to hear from a sector focused intermediary first called the early care and education pathways to success program or ESIPs that's working across multiple regions in the state right now on a registered apprenticeship pathways in the early care and education sector. We're going to hear from a regional partnership in the Inland Empire, known as launch the local apprenticeships United and network of colleges and high schools will hear from a civil service pathways innovation. It's not really a civil service public sector apprenticeship program but it's built on a public private partnership it's a really exciting model that really can show the potential of innovation in the registered apprenticeship system. And last but certainly not least, we'll hear from apprenticeships reaching career horizons or arch. It's really an example of a regionally driven high school use strategy that's getting off the ground in San Joaquin County. So, that's enough of slides. Let's get to the people themselves. What we're just going to go is we want to kind of talk to each one of you one by one to talk about the work that you've done and how it relates potentially to these different policy recommendations. This is really about your work, because again these policy recommendations are driven by the experiences that we've been able to learn about from you today. And I want to start with our friends from ECEPS. I am joined today by Randy Wolf Randy give us a wave. Randy is the executive director of ECEPS and I'm also joined by Joya Chevron, the Dean of math science business and applied technology at Berkeley City College give us a wave Joya great. So, that was fast on the front end that was a lot I know we're just trying to tease the report here but really people want to hear from you. Well, go ahead to kind of kick us off. Give us a little bit of sense of what a sector focused intermediary is first by just telling us about what ECEPS is and why you came together to work on apprenticeship programs and non traditional sectors. And if you could reflect a little bit about kind of what's the critical role you've been able to play working with various local partners across the state. I think it would help us get a really good idea of sort of what this sector intermediary model means Randy Joya would like to kick off. Okay, great. So if you think that that Brent covered a lot of information quickly, we're about to set a new record, and we are going to explain what usually takes an hour in about five minutes so I'm just going to talk really fast and people can ask questions later. I'm going to talk about ECEPS and then I'm going to turn over to Joya who's going to talk about her perspective as an employer, and as a community college who's worked with the sector intermediary. So ECEPS is early care and education pathways to success. Originally we focus specifically on early care and education sector. I will go into that in a bit. I want to start by saying, why did we need a sector intermediary? Why is this field important? Why is this worthy of our time today? If COVID has made one thing clear, it is that the field of early care and education is essential. It's essential to ensuring a healthy and growing economy, and it's essential to enabling all other workforces to go to work. Three quick statistics. This is all pre-COVID statistics. When parents can't find quality ECE, the economy loses $57 billion a year in lost earnings, productivity and revenue. The annual economic impact of the ECE industry is $99.3 billion per year, and annually problems related to childcare cost parents $8.3 billion per year in lost wages. This is huge. Why have a sector intermediary? Partly because no one else was doing it. When we first started doing this work, the idea of an apprenticeship for early care and education literally didn't exist, or it existed maybe in a couple of spots around the country, but nobody sort of coordinated that or knew that. Second is because the apprenticeship world is still dominated by the trades, by traditional sectors, by male-dominated fields, and by the for-profit sectors. And just to call out one thing that has become, that's been now publicized. Of the 95,000 apprentices currently in the state of California, 7% are women, 6,600. That's outrageous. And because the fields we work with are dominated by females, that in itself becomes a significant policy and practice issue. So as a sector intermediary, we have like the benefit and the advantage of being mission-driven. We're not driven by workforce issues per se. We're driven because we believe in what we're doing, and that drives the workforce issues that we tackle. I will mention very quickly that the workforce, the ECE workforce in California is one and a half million workers. 90%, 95% of whom are female, 40% of whom are people of color. The human services field, which we sort of are branched into, accounts for 27% of all healthcare and social assistance jobs. So these are very important and large sectors. Okay, quickly, our journey has been, I'm going to go really quick through this. We started out in collaboration with SEIU for four years. During those four years, we registered three apprenticeships for center-based early childhood workers, for Head Start workers, and for licensed family child care providers. By the end of the four-year collaboration, we'd involved over 350 people, 204 program completers at that point, many of whom have gone on, and our aggregate attrition rate was only 11%, which speaks to our program design and the success of our program design. ECEPS launched as an independent sector intermediary in about a year and a half ago, as a fiscally sponsored project of the foundation of California Community Colleges. We didn't set out to become a sector intermediary. We set out to do this work, and then as we realized that there were a lot of people interested in this work, we brought a certain sector expertise and understanding because of our own background in this field. We talk a lot these days in particular about cultural competence and how you're not affected with whatever you're doing with that cultural competence. I think of this as sector competence. Somebody who has never worked in early childhood would be hard pressed to go in and be successful as an intermediary. They wouldn't know what they're talking about, and we were able to offer that. I'll just mention, currently, we are working with early educators and Head Start, home visitors, family child care providers, and youth apprentices in both early education and human services. Our work focuses on program development and dissemination, field building, and advocacy for systems change. And the last thing I'll say and I'll throw it to Joya is that everything we do is through an equity lens, which I don't want to go into it now because I'm so aware of the time constraints. But if people ask, I'm happy to explain our four pronged approach to equity. Okay, with that, let me turn this over to Joya. Wonderful. Thank you, Randy. I had the pleasure of working collaboratively with Randy from the employer's perspective because I was involved in ensuring our classrooms had teachers. It was the Head Start apprenticeship program, and we've always grown our own. But what the intermediary did for us at that time is it broke down silos, in addition to introducing us to a whole bunch of new acronyms, but it got us at the table of understanding how to leverage public dollars, because we were already publicly funded, but we were not able to provide debt-free education, living wages, and the credentials that come from the community college and the system, as you all may know, is a little fragmented. So, Randy, as the intermediary, was able to provide the technical assistance we needed to get at the table of the pots of money that were bigger than the quality dollars in the California Department of Ed dollars. There was a whole other world of Department of Labor dollars we had no idea about that provided the ability to be successful, as Randy indicated. We were able to matriculate 144 apprentices through the employer side of debt-free education, credentials, and BAs. So this world of wanting to ensure that the non-traditional sector, primarily made up of women of color, can access the resource to be the best that they can be in the classrooms, as teachers also provided the opportunity for me at this point to work with Randy. I was always the instructor, but I was able to promote myself into the interim dean role where I currently oversee our career education programs, and I'm able to work collaboratively with our regions, our Bay Area Consortium regions, over, I have seven sectors, but the one that's moving the fastest is the one that has the intermediary. We have our first registered apprenticeship through Berkeley City College, and I'm hoping to work on the other sectors, which I currently oversee of computer science, multimedia, business, applied technology. I don't have an intermediary sector, so I'm trying to apply those skills into my new role, but I will say without an intermediary sector, Dr. Randy Wolf, we wouldn't have been able to get the CAI grant and formalize our Head Start, you know, work program. And I'm available to answer questions because I'm keeping it short as well, but having an intermediary has been, you know, a world of systems change, I will say, as it involves non-traditional sectors. Thank you. Thank you for that, both Joy and Randy. One quick follow up here before we kind of keep trucking through. So we'll hear a lot, we heard a lot across the state of California and across the US, you know, apprenticeships great, believe in it, seems to be a win-win for the employer, the student, but it's just not scalable. And there's probably truth to that if every single individual employer and every single individual college for that matter would be left to its own devices to go build something from scratch. The key value that you've laid out about the sector intermediary, it makes sure that doesn't have to happen. It helps those colleges and other local partners tap into other resources. But share for a second a little bit about kind of, and Joy, you've mentioned this and I know Randy, you've talked about how this, the work of your intermediary is really about changing the workforce development model in that workforce. How does that fit in, Joy, you mentioned the debt-free college. How is this helping you do the work better as a college to serve your students? And Randy, how do you see, do you see scale as partially needed because the whole model of workforce preparation early care can use this innovation? So, wow, that's a complicated question. The issue of scale for us, this is where the fact that we're mission-driven is so critical. The issue for us is, somebody somehow in this country has to figure this thing out with early childhood and childcare and how to make sure that parents have the childcare they need, and particularly that mothers have the childcare they need. And we see that problem. And we know that the issue of wages is the debilitating factor. So we have basically used the, you know, I love apprenticeship, but it's not apprenticeship in and of itself that's that's golden. It's that for us, it's the only golden thing we see right now. If somebody came up with a better, you know, I'll jump this ship. If somebody comes up with a better solution, but I don't think that's going to happen, partly because apprenticeship is something that you deal with wages, where other professional development models, particularly in the world of education, you know, you do student teaching, you don't get paid. We can't do that. We need to fight this battle for wages. And the only way we're going to be able to fight it is two things. One, we replicate these kind of programs so they become such a prevalent model that people just assume this is how you do it. And two, we build a coalition that goes beyond the early childhood educators to include the workforce world. So we go, you know, our link arms and go together to say, you know, I've been saying this, I need the folks working in advanced manufacturing and it and cybersecurity to go with me to Sacramento to say, you got to fund this group and fund this intermediary because without them, our workers can't work. Then we have a coalition that we took talk about significant systems change that address what you're asking. Yeah, absolutely. Enjoy it from the perspective of a college, because this isn't about just a bell and whistle necessarily because it's nice to have you mentioned it's a better it's serving your students and really Yes, just in a clear pathway in the sense where they also have the ability to get the knowledge and the skills but also the earn and learn and the formalization the employee employer placements and career education programs was nice as it really connects the industry with the college curriculum. I do believe now as a new dean I see it takes a long time to get the curriculum through so one of the systems changes, you know the credit for experiences in the comments competency base, which there is movement in that area to try to not have such a long timeframe before the student can access these portable certificates post COVID as our industry is changing. I know that's a mouthful but we want to stay relevant and responsive to current trends and practices. And sometimes when you have these institutionalized colleges over 100 years those systems don't move as fast as you need them to as it relates to our industry needs. So, I think that it's great to be on the other side and see the difference between having an intermediary and not having one as well as understanding there's already regional and statewide efforts to address some of these key regulatory needs as relates to credit for experience and competency based, which is, I'm realizing not always a friendly word to say college but I'm learning the culture and the discourse. That's great now I love, I love to mention this one quick, really quick thing because we're talking about California and the possibility of replication. We are a really small team with a really skeleton structure and we are none the less being able to function in five counties at this point with five community colleges with the potential for much more we have much more potential that we've even begun to tap. And that's just to say, this can be done. Great. Well, I could not think of a better way to kick off the conversation enjoy a particularly that last point of how these intermediaries can help a college partner, keep pace with industry and the changes in industry in a way that any individual institution can't do. So, behind every report there's many great people. One of those other folks is my colleague Mike Prebble from the Center on Education and Labor I'm going to hand to him to take us through the next part of our conversation specifically the policy discussion around regional partnerships thank you Randy enjoy it for kicking us off. Thanks very much Randy enjoy it. So Randy enjoy I've also also helped us last week on our partnership to advance you to apprenticeship summit so we are. We are, you know, asking a lot of them thank you very much for joining us and thanks Brent for getting it off on Mike Prebble and the policy analysts with the Center on Education and Labor in New America. Again, thank you all for being near and especially to those of you who made the report possible. As Brent said, our next idea section has to do with sort of reconceiving how public and private apprenticeship investments happen in California. Specifically how those investments can happen under a regional strategy. There's this kind of constant tension in apprenticeship as many of you know, between the need to build apprenticeships for very specific purposes so you know one apprentice one employer. And to also make use of economies of scale when it comes to things like employer engagement when it comes to developing standards when it comes to curriculum design and related and supplemental instruction. So that tension is one of the things that led us to think a lot about regional collaboration is being a key enabler of California's growth towards the 500,000 apprentice system and one of the partnerships that's been really important. And helping us think that through is Inland Empire's launch network who we are lucky to have with us here today. So I'd like to introduce our two colleagues Charles Henkels and Natalie Weaver who are here to share their work on launch with us. Charles Henkels is interim director of regional apprenticeship and work-based learning with the Riverside Community College District. Natalie Weaver is manager of apprenticeships and grants the Chaffee College in Fontana. So Charles Natalie welcome. Thank you. We're going to turn it over to you to get sort of an overview of your partnership. And also to try to help us understand why a regional approach to apprenticeship was so important in the Inland Empire. Yeah, well, I'll kick us off Natalie if that's alright and then hand it over. First of all, thanks so much for having us here. Everybody that's out there. It's incredible. It's incredible to see this kind of, you know, energy and enthusiasm and so, you know, I just just want to say hi. I wish I could see everyone face to face. But this will have to do. So, you know, the way that I would kind of tell us a little bit of a story fashion where, you know, where our regional collaboration or initiative or whatever you want to call it came from was when, when we really got started in working on expanding apprenticeship. I think one of the things that we kind of quickly realized was that programs weren't enough. So having, we had asked, you know, our state apprenticeship agency at the time this was back in like 20, you know, 2018 we said how many apprentices are in, you know, in our region. At that point there were about 15,000 active apprentices, which should seem like a pretty good number. And so then we kind of began, you know, poking the question a little bit further okay if we're going to grow this number. Who is it going to be who's going to be an apprentice so so beyond just what trades or what occupations are we going to focus on, you know, our next question was, who are we talking about are we talking about you know workers are we talking about students. You know, we know we had about 80,000, you know, CTE students in our region for example so we asked are we talking about them. Are we talking about, you know, potentially high school graduates and at the time when that that 500,000 number came out. We also at the same time had about it, you know statewide at about 450,000 kids graduating high school and immediately just kind of you know just some some connection that we started linking that hey, maybe that maybe the population base that we're talking about our, you know, young adults entering the world right choosing, you know, sort of choosing a choosing a pathway. And so we went back to the state agency we said okay, we need to figure out where this is working, how is it working and how we can, you know, replicate and expand it. So we asked, how many people are starting an apprenticeship after you know after high school can you help us connect with those programs. What we learned was only a small handful and I mean that quite literally a small handful of people were actually moving from the high school system into registered apprenticeship. And yeah, and I'm not going to step on too many youth points don't worry. I don't know if your next group, but it kind of explains a little bit where our regional collaboration came from. And the average starting age of an apprentice was actually, you know, you know closer to 30 years old. And, and so what we asked, I think from a system lens so you know from a program lens we talked to directors we asked how do people get into your apprenticeship program, what you know how do they get started. And truthfully we heard all sorts of responses there were a lot of different answers to that question. But the real question we started asking was, how does someone enter the apprenticeship system. Right. So, so if I was a, if I was a student at you know high school or a student that you know you know colleges like that. I can start building my next step, right. And so, you know, high school graduates I know they are there a lot of them are already, they already identified their college they're going to go into or they've already already working a job or they're already, they're already building in their next step and apprenticeship always seem like it was impossible to get something concrete established early on right it was more like you almost had to get lucky for a program to, you know almost to find you as opposed to you choosing the apprenticeship system. So in our region we have 56 K through 12 districts, we've got about 12 community colleges. We have you know number of charter schools we have a we have to county office of education, we've got a pretty expansive network of potential apprentices. And, and basically what our, our big question for launch was, alright, if we were taking an apprentice centered approach. You know, we build a system. And, and I think it was pretty clear that we knew hey there's got there, there must be some connective tissue between all these organizations. And, and so we're launched really started from was really, I think just more an agreement on philosophy as opposed to an agreement on, you know, on design. You know, we basically we had a number of community college deans we had our workforce board, you know partners, we had some representatives from a few state agencies, you know just get together. And you know essentially we were asking the question, are we going to do this together or not. And I think that was probably, you know about is about as much as we identified early on as far as what is our, you know procedural approach to a regional collaborative. So the question of whether we're going to do it together or not and that was, you know that was the first question we answered and the answer was yes, we were going to approach us in a way where we were going to work together we didn't know what that was going to look like, we're going to figure that out. But we knew that in order for us to build a system that would scale. Similar to the way that our CTE has scale in our region I mentioned that number 80,000 before we knew that that was was really kind of what we're building. And we knew that in addition to that we were building something. You know that needed to be, I'm not going to, you know, Randy and joy just did an excellent job but we also needed to do something that was kind of qualitatively different from what had already been done before. So it was a huge, huge project. That was what really drove us to this kind of this kind of regional approach. And then the other big thing, you know, for us was, like I said we want to build a system where people could choose it where they could, they could choose it and that day they could do something that put them in the apprenticeship system put them into what we were, you know what we're doing. And then I think I wanted to hand this off to Natalie now because I wanted Natalie to talk more about the industry leadership side because that's sort of the second component so now I'm going to take it over you. Thank you. Yeah, so hello everyone, Natalie Lueber at JP College. So Charles Charles did a good setup of addressing the opportunity for industry and, and for those that are out there that know apprenticeship or even just workforce development programs knows how important it is to have the industry input and guidance to launch apprenticeship in just any type of training program. And so in the Inland Empire region we have almost 5000 manufacturing companies in our area. In addition to that, we're growing distribution hub in that region. And so looking at advanced manufacturing was kind of one of the first industries to help launch this launch project. So, in that regard, we kind of took a multi employer approach. We're looking at all types of sizes so from small medium to large businesses, and those that are larger, you know, could kind of take a look at this and address it within their own company, but we're looking at those that you know, only need one and one businesses at a time. If that so we're looking at it at a systematic level to kind of help them and kind of plug into the system, so that we can we can help all companies at all sizes. Now, I'm looking at the, the occupations that I oversee we have to the industrial maintenance electrician and industrial mechanic occupations and their competency base. So that was another key thing and joy I'm glad you brought that up, because one of the things that we wanted to make clear for our employers is that, you know, we want these apprentices to go through at the level that are at the speed that they complete these these competencies and graduate, you know within two years or it could be up to four years or whatever the occupation demands up for them. And so, just to kind of go back to that story. One of the things and why launch is so important for us is once once chiefly college has started to kind of work with employers and we have a committee that that provides the input made up of employers who who provide the curriculum guidance the competency and all of that. And, and we were able to register apprentices we looked at how we can replicate this within our own region. And because we're connected with all the community colleges within launch. We were able to look at the high desert so for those that aren't familiar with this Southern California, we're located a little bit inland and about an hour away is Victor Valley College. And so, there's a there's a freeway that often is closed due to accidents and and stuff like that and so we looked at Victor Valley to replicate the occupations that we had at chiefly college to help employers up in that region. And so, because we had the demo use in place and because we're able to be connected with this college, we were able to share resources such as trainers materials, and all of that and we're able to get a cohort launch that Victor Valley College, due to this collaboration. So looking at this we're able to, we launched our first one actually a couple months ago with five employers and 12 apprentices. We could have had more but COVID. We had some COVID regulations, but we are looking at launching another one as well, and then just continuing to replicate this through San Bernardino and Riverside counties, so that we can, we can grow and share these resources together. And that's a fantastic overview thanks to you both for just kind of given us a sense of you know what launch is about, and especially helping us understand how this sort of regional network approach can help do more of the same good things across the wider region, especially when I mean there are barriers of space there are barriers to employer participation, especially when we're talking about sectors of which there are a lot where it's many small employers who maybe don't see the value of starting sort of ones or partnerships, unless it's easier to get that off the ground. We've gotten a lot of great questions from our audience today and unfortunately we don't have time to address them all right now we have to get through our other panels there is one that I wanted to put to you just sort of on the, you know, on this question of, you know, of establishing and strengthening regional collaborative similar to what, similar to what you know you've been able to do through launch in the empire. We got a question about funding no surprise here. Certainly the you know the regional collaborative that you've set up has made it easier in some ways to sort of pool funding into you know to make use of to make use of commonly available funds and you know make the money do more. I'm wondering if you could tell us a little bit about just the different roles within within your, your network, and how they, you know basically how they fund those different activities. Yeah. Well, I think you know there's, I look at a couple different levels of funding, you know through our network that are really critical. One, you know one particular level of funding is what we use this phrase, you know regionally administrative locally coordinated. And what we mean by that is, in order for these programs to work, there needs to be a you know a very kind of ground level, you know person to person interaction with apprentices with businesses, you know with with the users. And so there's a level of funding that needs to be placed in. In terms of like the, you know right now everything is virtual but but in terms of like the location specific, you need capacity. And so, you know, as you're kind of venturing this direction. That's one area to look at it's just, you know, personnel capacity with that being said that capacity also needs to be informed capacity. So that's an example of, you know, somebody that kind of entered the apprenticeship world just just a couple years ago, and has had to really, you know ramp up and it's done an amazing job of learning the apprenticeship system but it takes time and it takes a lot of, you know, takes a lot of going through experiences in order to really match that system. So capacity is critical to fund. The other thing though which we where we've kind of had an interesting, I think we've been funded by malt like we've targeted this in with different kinds of funding. But that that's on the more like the system side of this so creating that kind of connective tissue takes a lot of work. I really had mentioned like mo use that have been created in our region, things like that where it's it's not necessarily a program level it's done at a, you know, connecting organization level. And what we found is, as far as funding are really critical partners have been we have received some grants from private foundations a James Irvine Foundation partnered with us last year. And also, we just asked our region over the past few years to use in California there's this thing called strong workforce funding which was through the California Community Colleges Chancellor's Office. We asked them hey would you be willing to use some of your regional funding to help us sort of put the system in place. So back in 2018, our regional colleges kind of committed to this project I look at it as they sort of took a leap of faith with us and said okay we understand the systems development that needs to be put in here. So we receive some help there. I think, ultimately, I you know and I think Brent kind of talked a little bit about this earlier. The recommendations that you're putting together, I think this is one of those areas where they are really interconnected. And because I think we're kind of approaching, we are approaching a strategy and a model that if not, you know, really connected to a state level framework. Ultimately, it's going to be very, very challenging for us to continue this work, you know, decades into the future which is, which is where we're trying to go. And so we are, I think at the same time is pursuing grants, you know, procuring funds to, you know, to develop this, we are doing it with the intentional, you know, hope that you know ultimately we're going to be able to rely on, you know, our state to kind of back this approach. And so yeah, it's, if the question was about where do we get the funding. There's anywhere we can but the answer is, we look for funding that kind of aligns with that, like I said, both those sides of that vision the system and the programmatic. Any last words Natalie there's I can, I can close this out to know yeah I think I think Charles covered it really well and we do also use the California apprenticeship initiative funding. But one of the key things that that I think Charles tries to keep in mind and I think our region does too is is to look at these grants and other sources of funding to move our project forward versus starting a new one and then letting it, you know, subside because we don't have continued funding so so having that is is crucial. Thank you. So yeah, Natalie Charles thank you very much for that sort of intro. We'll try to get to a few more of those questions, you know, just to sort of close out this section another really important question I think we got is at a time like this. With so many competing priorities in terms you know on the on the state government's plate. How is, you know, how are we going to continue to sustainably fund apprenticeship partnerships. So the answer to that in the chat I think was that depends in large part on our attendees here today we need to continue to advocate for a more sustainable funding structure. That's one of the. So underneath that sort of idea to on supporting regional collaboratives we have some very specific sort of tactical advice for how we can we can go about that. I think that's one of the things that we have to ask for all of your support in sort of making that happen. So want to move on to our third big idea. As Brent said, you know, this report has been about a year in the making. And like everything that started a year ago the economic crisis of the coronavirus pandemic really changed all the parameters of this discussion about halfway through the third policy idea of this report I think really speaks to the problem of economic recovery that we're all now faced with an apprenticeship role in it pretty directly. I think if you flashback to, you know, a conversation like this that think tank webinar two years ago you'd mostly be hearing about apprenticeship as an employment strategy that depends on private sector organization. And that makes sense of course I mean if we're thinking about a time when the unemployment rate is three or 4% what we've learned in the great recovery. I guess the recovery from the Great Recession was that depending on the private sector alone will not be enough to drive economic recovery, especially to drive rehiring. It'll take a lot longer and it'll cause a lot more economic pain for Americans if we just rely on the private sector and if we ignore some of our largest employers which are in the public sector and who can play a large part too. So that realization is part of how we got to our third idea in this policy framework which is leveraging public spending and public employment as a way to support economic opportunity for Californians through apprenticeship. A partnership that was really important in helping us think that through is the Z systems apprenticeship program which is a partnership between the Department of Apprenticeship Standards, IBM, SEIU 1000 about half a dozen other California State agencies. With us today we're happy to have Kelly Mackin regional director of strategic partnerships with the Department of Industrial Relations Office of Apprenticeship and Workforce Innovation and and Siddharth Srinivasan who's an influencer program manager for IBM's Z ecosystem team. The ecosystem is mainframe computers for those of you who don't know they're really big computers. So Kelly Darshana I'll turn it over to you to give us the overview of the systems and to tell us a little bit about the motivation for this public private partnership which predates the pandemic and what it took to make it happen what it took to get it off the ground. Thank you. Thanks so much Mike for inviting us to be here today. So back in 2018. We learned about some pretty troubling statistics related to our California State Department vacancy rates we were looking at projections of about 38% vacancy in critical it rolls over the span of five to 10 years and at the top of that list are mainframe IT occupations. And so why it is so troubling is because we have a number of state departments that run on a mainframe system. These are systems that provide vital services to the public. Some of the departments include the Employment Development Department, the Franchise Tax Board DMV and then the California Department of Technology so you know you can appreciate that unscheduled disruption resulting in failure to process. Many of the daily transactions that are provided by these departments could be costly and potentially disastrous. We're talking about unemployment insurance claims, tax refunds. In the case of DMV we're talking about registration renewal and driver's license renewal and so forth and so I think it became abundantly clear to a number of us who are engaging with these departments that we needed to do something and we needed to think outside of the box they were struggling to find talent to fill some of these critical roles and so what began was embarking on the first private public partnership for apprenticeship in California, and that began with working closely with IBM runs and developed the technology bringing in their subject matter experts and essentially utilizing their very adapt and curated framework that is currently DOL registered and integrating it into an approved California set of standards. The framework itself is fairly comprehensive as I've learned the technology is very nuanced and very complex and so it was really essential that we do a lot of vetting on the front end and and integrate into our selection process. A mechanism by which we could learn about a particular candidates aptitude mostly for learning which is something I learned which is that you don't have to have the technical skills but an aptitude for learning can take you a long way in being successful in an apprenticeship program. And then what started as just sort of this concept began to build out into a full fully engaged apprenticeship program where we launched our first cohort earlier this year. One of the other elements of this particular apprenticeship framework that was developed that was new and unique. Along with a number of other things that we've done to really create a 21st century solution tied to this time tested model is this sort of lift and shift model which is where we can take our existing approved framework and allow for other governmental entities to sign on. One of the things that we've learned as we've begun to engage with our other counterparts in government including local counties and cities. Municipalities and special districts is that they too are struggling to find the talent to bring in to run the technology that's so vital to their operations in order to provide services to the public and so through this model. This allows for many of these other governmental entities to simply sign on to those existing standards through employer subscription agreements with the caveat that we can really tailor the program specifically to their operational needs and build a model that will essentially provide them with the framework that they need to secure the talent that they need. And so that's the first goal. The first goal was to address these really, really troubling vacancy rates. The second goal was really about investing in our state workforce and bolstered by the strong support that we have received from our governor and the administration. Coupled with some of the other successes that we had already developed in the way of our civil service apprenticeship programs. We knew this was the right path to take we had already developed other it apprenticeship programs including help desk and networking. We're going to be launching cybersecurity in the spring. We also developed the first ever financial services apprenticeship program focusing on taxation and accounting occupations. And then of course the first of its kind in the country are LVN to RN apprenticeship program upskilling our LVNs and our correctional facilities and moving them into vital RN roles in order to address some of those vacancies that we were experiencing. And so so bolstered by the successes that we had coupled with a recognition that it was important for us to set a standard. We are very acutely aware that we're the largest employer in the state 230,000 plus strong and that implementing a model like this provides strong testimonial that if the state of California can take a model like this implemented as a workforce development strategy that other public sector entities could do the same and frankly private sector entities and so those were really our two goals. And then lastly I would say that you know for those of us who've been involved in registered apprenticeship for any length of time. One of the more exciting aspects about the registered apprenticeship model itself is the by extension it lends to diversity and inclusivity. And we have really, really impressive cohorts that in any of these number of apprenticeship programs that I've talked about that really are reflective of the diversity of our diverse population are incumbent workforce in particular in the case of these apprenticeship programs we have apprentices that are women minorities, single parents veterans, the disabled underserved populations across the board and it, and that was a really strong role for us to provide upward mobility opportunities for our state incumbent workers we're through this model and through our partnership with IBM and some of the other work that we've developed with our state civil service apprenticeship programs. We're kind of reimagining how employees promote and creating viable career pathways that they would have otherwise not been able to pursue because of the lack of access to curriculum and on the job training in order to meet the minimum qualification so we're setting what I think are a number of California first and I'm proud to say that a number of the programs that we've developed have been replicated by other states as well. That includes the interest in the public private partnership that we have created proudly with IBM the private sector leader and apprenticeship. So those are really the two primary reasons we developed it and I'll hand it off to sedarsha and she can talk a little more in depth about the launch of the program and how our cohorts have been running. Since that happened in the earlier part of this year. Hi everyone. Yep. If I could, I have a that that thank you very much for that introduction I'm sorry we're short on time but I might put a little more targeted question to you sedarsha. Kelly for that sort of introduction I think that really speaks to one the existing capacity that California has in terms of the interagency advisory committee on apprenticeships. And you know this is a committee that has some groups focused on civil service focused on it. Well actually Kelly would ask had asked us to share her contact information of course anybody on the call who's interested in supporting this kind of apprenticeship expansion. Certainly welcome to sedarsha. You know I wanted to ask you sort of more specifically as you know as Kelly said IBM is kind of a national leader in non traditional apprenticeships with its new collar program. You know the the systems apprenticeship I understand actually was the first of its kind for mainstream technology and IBM portfolio. And since then IBM is built it out into a nationwide program we talked a little bit earlier about the importance of you know supporting standards development for non traditional programs. And that is an IBM national profile national advocacy made this made it easier and made it easier to support the systems program in California specifically. Great question Mike first thank you so much for having us on this webinar and Kelly that was an amazing introduction to the partnership that we have had over the years here and it's been such a pleasure working with Kelly, I must say that. In terms of the national presence and the national apprenticeship presence that IBM has what in the way that helped us in this specific partnership was having those registered standards the competency frameworks ready and in place right the registered standards with the Department of Labor that that really helped this partnership because we were able to bring those standards and get that as the starting point and help with help the state of California. Take that and run with it in coming up with that actual technical content and the competencies that they needed for the specific roles. There are two specific roles when it comes into the IBM Z space. One is of a system administrator and the other being the more generic software developer or an application developer on IBM Z. And having those two standards ready and registered with the Department of Labor was certainly the biggest contribution from IBM for this program coming into this private public partnership. And then of course all of the technical expertise that we were able to provide and share in building out technical training aspect as well. Thank you so much. And so, you know, there's there's much more we could say about IBM's role, you know, in California than nationally, you know, with regards to apprenticeship expansion, certainly also a thing that's worth bringing up about the systems is the interest in expanding its sort of pre apprenticeship opportunities. That's a really important characteristic that we need to be mindful of in California and elsewhere. When we're thinking about increasing the opening, widening the aperture I guess is the tech is the talent management jargon to get more people into these programs. We do need to move on actually I wanted to say this is a final note. We had a question earlier from Dylan Cook about the federal Department of Labor and how programs like this can use federal investment and policy support. As the step has to support state and regional expansion, I would also highlight that IBM has played a part has has received federal funding for apprenticeship expansion under the scaling apprenticeship through sector based strategies grant which I believe was issued last year. So some very exciting work there to keep your eye on. You can follow up to a Siddharth and Kelly on that point. At this point I do have to pass it back to Brent for our fourth and final panel or set of panelists. Thanks Mike. Thank you everyone so far so to bring us home I want to turn to a couple people to talk specifically about the new strategy to mention. If you're if you're talking about kind of reimagining the potential applications of apprenticeship to get the 500,000 goal. The idea of more seamlessly connecting youth to apprenticeship opportunities coming out of the high school years in particular is a key foundational piece. It's unique in the world and that we don't use apprenticeship as a transition strategy from K 12 post secondary into the workforce and so there's some been some really exciting innovations and we're exciting to be joined by Pam nap who's the director of college and career readiness the San Joaquin County Office of Education and her partner Salvador Vargas, who is the Dean of career technical education and workforce development at San Joaquin Delta College. We're a little bit have you each share a little bit about the genesis of arch, which is an exciting high school registered youth apprenticeship program that really kind of provides that seamless path. In particular because right now we're facing this historic disruption to both learning and work for young people across the country. So, ways that we can keep them connected to systems is really going to be huge for preventing a really a lost generation of young people. I'm what I love to hear you share a little bit about in your work is how it's so deeply integrated within your kind of education programming and systems bridging K 12 and higher ed. You know that that's really, I think one of the kind of exciting elements that youth apprenticeship types models really force and catalyze so Pam Salvador because you tell us a little bit about the start of arch and particularly why a youth strategy and San Joaquin County is the path you went down. Thank you so much, Brent. I will let Pam talk about arch and then I'll provide some more info behind that. Thank you so much for having me here thanks Salvador. It's a pleasure to see everybody and this is truly an exciting opportunity for youth in California and across the nation. First, it started for San Joaquin County through our local workforce investment board with educators and others within the governmental sector, coming together to answer the call for 500,000 apprentices in the state of California. And so the work began in July 2018, and I came on board in July of 2019. And so there was a champion on the committee in San Joaquin County from one of our rural school districts. The problem that we were facing at that time pre COVID was California was rolling out one to one devices, computers for all of the students. And this is a great idea in theory but in reality, these devices tend to get damaged and repairs need to take place so one of our rural school districts, the concept of growing our own became very evident in talking about how we can meet the need of apprenticeships. Additionally, we have very strong career tech ed programs in our high schools I prior to coming to the county administration last year, I was at another district in San Joaquin County, and I was in the capacity of career tech and director and college career counselor so I've spent 20 years hanging out with teenagers and I understand that CTE is an awesome opportunity for them to build upon what they're learning in the high school, seamlessly moving it into the community college level. Another area for that is dual enrollment, which is within the last five years in California and so those two programs bridge beautifully meeting an apprenticeship. I keep saying in my indoctrination to the world of apprenticeships in this last year so Natalie I completely understand what it's like to have to learn this by very, very quickly, but I keep telling everybody that apprenticeship is the cherry on top of this Sunday of CTE it is the ultimate opportunity for students in career tech ed in high school to learn the skills, take dual enrollment classes within those same career tech areas at the community college and work at the same exact time partnering that learning with that is so prevalent and important in apprenticeships so at our small rural districts, the superintendent there said let's hire our own students let's grow our own students in it so that they can work within our own it we have students at our school districts helping to meet the need of fixing and helping to facilitate the one-to-one devices that are out there with our students and so I'm happy to say that coming a full year we have put to the division of apprenticeship standards we have put our standards online for information technology specialist. They're sunsetting sun shining they're hanging out there until October 30 and in that same exact period of time everything is happening exactly simultaneously so we have to date six students at three different high school districts who we have started in their RSI related supplemental instruction at San Joaquin Delta College in CS11 and we are moving forward to having their orientation and we hope to have them sign their registered apprenticeship paperwork sometime during National Apprenticeship Week and so that's where we are I do want to quickly say something that we did receive the California apprenticeship initiative grant for $500,000 to help us build this program but what's really important and to one of the comments from Harriet Aspenza is that this grant while we received notification of funding last November we just received the dollars two weeks ago and so I want to make note that we have moved forward without any funding due to the passion of everybody in San Joaquin County to propel using high school students in their CTE classes and moving forward so that's what I wanted to say about that for and so Salvador please I think that you said it all very well and one of the things that I really need to emphasize is that this happens because people have ideas or are innovative are committed or really want to make a difference in this world and I would be amiss if I did not give credit to John Dunn one of the champions for this whole initiative on working with high school students. I for one believe sincerely that we need to start working with K-12 in a whole different way to prepare them for apprenticeships. I don't think and I don't subscribe to the idea that I necessarily should be a pre-apprenticeship or something different than an apprenticeship. I think these individuals are capable, high school students are capable of any other individual to learn, work and earn. So I don't think we can wait for them to have options. I think we always give them the options of becoming lawyers, engineers, doctors, which is all good. It's all great. But not often times we're given the opportunity to work in other fields that are as good paying jobs or better at times. So I'm very engaged with this one because I believe as one time high school teacher, and now being a city in career education Delta College, that these pathways are the ultimate goal for all of us. I think that we can get students from very early on pre-K all the way through high school and into college with a apprenticeship model. I think that we need to support the employers in making sure that they are able to do these kind of opportunities or give this kind of opportunities to students. There's a lot of challenges. There's a lot of barriers, but I also know that like work life such as New America, we're going to be able to open some windows and hopefully open up more opportunities for the students through the legislative process. I know that does a lot of work to be done yet, but I think that we have started in a very, very good step. We're very proud of what we're doing. We have six apprentices that will be learning in high school, learning in college, earning credit towards a certificate and degree and or transfer and making money at the same time. What a wonderful idea. I think that this is what we're bringing to the table. I think we have lots to go yet. There's some challenges in front of us, but I think that everything that we need at some table, we have employers who are committed. They want to do this. We have the K-12 system that is committed. They want to do this. And we have the college that is committed and wants to do this. So once we all come together and are committed to making this happen, it's going to be possible for these individuals to complete their journey. Well, well said, Salvador and Pam. Thank you. It always strikes me as we think about the 500,000th apprentice in 2029, that person's probably an elementary school right now. And if we aren't thoughtful about that path of that person takes to get to apprenticeship, you know, the average age of an apprentice is quite high, compared to leave other countries in the United States. And we talk a lot about the need for more diversity and inclusion in apprenticeship. But if there are not clear on-ramps that start way back into our education system to make apprenticeship opportunities valuable, we won't have the foundation to build a more inclusive system. With that as a maybe slightly inelegant transition, I want to ask really some question, one question, we might only have time for one question, but it's a big one. And I want to put it kind of to whoever wants to jump in on this because it's come out from the Q&A several times throughout the panel discussion. There has been a big focus on trying to increase for years now equity within a lot of existing apprenticeship programs and there's been incremental progress in some respects and actually California is comparatively speaking a pretty strong leader in terms of racial representation with an apprenticeship. It's still a long way to go on the women representation front. But one of the other things that we also want to talk about is not just inclusion within existing, but how can apprenticeship programs be an equity strategy for industries that are trying to increase diversity and inclusion. So could folks share a little about what's important to keep in mind for building apprenticeship programs from the work you've been doing and how you think about equity and working with your industry partners on these these critical fronts related to diversity and inclusion. Does anybody want to jump in a little bit on that? I'll start and say that that's a that's an important issue with career tech education. We're always trying to find students going into the non-traditional careers. And for us with IT, it's the same. We need more inclusion of women in the IT world. And I think that this model working with the high school counselors throughout our region and high school CTE directors in our region were able to meet that need of equity and inclusion for women within IT. And then we're going to grow that model in our other three areas of logistics, home health, AIDS, and automotive. And so I think that if it starts if we can have a solid education with our local high school partners, and explaining that which is already part of all of the rules and prerequisites for most of the CTE funding anyways to make sure that there is an equitable access to career tech ed. Great. Thank you, Pam. Randy, you mentioned earlier that equity is a big part of your work. You mentioned even a several components. Is there anything you wanted to share a little about how you're thinking about equity as a sector So for us, we don't need to think about equity in terms of women because we are such a female dominated workforce. But I think the thing I would say in this context is it's not enough to talk the talk. It's very easy to say we're focusing on equity. We really want diversity. People know how to use those words more and more. That's not what's going to make the difference. You have to actually embed in your programs policies and support student supports and funding to make sure that the barriers to success that low income students first generation college students non traditional students, young people and the people whose communities have been marginalized and, and, you know, and ignored. So that the apprentices come to this with barriers and with challenges. If you ignore those challenges or you don't build your program to intentionally address those challenges, your outcomes are not going to be any better than anything else that we've seen with all respect, including the K 12 system and the outcomes there. And so for us what that means is I'll just give you a couple of quick concrete examples so it's not just theory. We do something called embedded tutors, so that at every class there is someone sitting there watching what's being taught learning what's being taught, and can then be the one who's the direct tutor for those students. We, we on board all the instructors for our classes joy can talk about this better than me because she's done this but, but we don't we as an intermediary, we don't leave it to the community college again with all due respect. We don't leave it to the community college to make those unilateral decisions we want to know who that instructor is. We want to sort of make sure they understand who our apprentices are, what it means to teach a cohort group, which is a cohort. Our programs are all designed as a cohort. We don't send people off one person here one person there, the 25 or so folks are taking the courses together in a community based setting at non traditional hours. We design our programs to meet the needs of our apprentices we don't make it the other way around with the apprentices have to meet the design of the program. Joy, you want to jump in what I miss. Yeah, you captured it Randy we just need to check our structurally designed systems that were created initially to keep certain people out and I'll just say that access is critical as it relates to our dual enrollment system. We need to look at how our high school students can even access our community colleges is there a transition lays liaison on campus. There, there's a bunch of factors but whatever is a barrier needs to be remediated. And we need to check our implicit bias as relates to certain sectors we need to check our own understanding of what it means to be intentionally responsive to groups of students who historically have not had access to program design for earn and learn. It's not just the college is the college is the K 12 is the employer is all of us that need to be responsive to their remediation and ensuring their success to reach their, their high school diploma their credentials. So other things we talked about today so we really need to intentionally design and be responsive to the cohort of students we're serving. Others want to comment on this, how you're thinking about equity within your work on apprenticeship. Yeah, you know I was, um, I mean I was mostly I just dropped the mic. You know, drop the mic but I think, you know Salvador said something I think that was so critical was use the word commitment. And I think one of the things that we found like like kind of coming from the industry side was a lot of the industry partners that we worked with their initial questions were all about how do we get kids interested in us right how do we get, you know people interested in coming and you know I think what we kind of do you said, think about it the opposite how do we get you interested in these kids. And, and so I think when you know when it comes to equity, where we've really I know for us but we've really changed our mindset a lot is we're now thinking about how to not to build programs for people but to build programs to people. So, you know, go to the communities where they are, begin the program there. And, you know, and kind of, you know, basically take where you're trying to get work backwards. But I think what we found is that's, that's worked, you know that that I think I agree with you know Salvador's comment about you know there's there's a lot of people that are ready for an apprenticeship. And so, just, you know just creating pre apprenticeships I feel like it's not enough, you know we really need to figure out how to bridge apprenticeship to those people that are ready. And, and that's, that's our equity framework is like it says to move that move the programs to people as opposed to creating ones kind of for them to find. I'll put Charles. Any other final remarks. I just had a meeting with my regional colleagues, a few hours ago, and the conversation came up and we were talking about equity. They had equity as one of the topics to discuss over other topics. And my point to them was, I think that we have a wrong. Because we want to make equity an item or a line item. It's not a line item is the overarching strategy is the umbrella over everything we talk in this class and do. And while we don't do that. I think we put equity aside and individualized and make it a silo. So let's remove that and when we talk about things let's talk about from the equity lens no matter what it is. We'll put Salvador. Well, believe it or not, I think that you know this could, I think we could keep going this conversation has been fascinating I hope we can continue it we're unfortunately just about a time to close us up here I will say one thing another common theme. We heard from many folks on the Q amp a and about equity inclusion and how we change the dynamic of apprenticeship. And then there's always, because this is apprenticeship you can't have an apprentice without an employer or a labor union that's willing to take that apprentice on it is a model that is driven by that and I think we all appreciate and understand that in all of our work. I do think that something that has been interesting about today hearing across all of you though, is that we know we have to get more employers and more people engaged to drive the expansion of the system. What we're trying to examine today is what's the infrastructure with the innovation that's needed to do that in sectors where there is not a strong tradition, or experience or know how or awareness of the apprenticeship model. And so I do hope that that has been something that we I think have explored from a lot of different angles here, and we hope at least this research helps kind of keep the conversation going in California. Without that in mind, I do want to say thank you so much to all of you for joining us as panelists today. Thank you for all of you of all your time and insights over the past year plus, we will not stop bothering you or any of the other folks out there who I know who are listening in who we couldn't include here today, but who have been equally as important across the state of California to getting us to where we are now. I'm going to have my friends put up just one more slide to kind of bring us home here. If you want to read more about the policy ideas and innovations there is a virtual format of the report available on our website. There's also of course the PDF version, and thanks to our events team for helping us put that together. Excuse me our communications team putting that together. They are online, the recording of this webinar is going to be online and accessible. And like I said, hopefully the conversation is just getting started. Next slide please. I want to continue the conversation because you just haven't had enough we have a robust social media presence for we're going to continue to kind of get out a lot of the key messages and clips from this conversation. So please do weigh in but for now. Thank you all so much. Happy Friday, happy weekend, and we'll talk to you soon.