 Welcome to everyone joining us from from all over. I'm very excited for the session. We've got a great group of folks who I'd like to introduce in just a moment. I'll also encourage everyone to please use the chat function. You haven't already been using questions in the chat during the session. We'll be gathering them and I'll try to get to as many as I can. First award about me. My name is Elena Silva. I direct education team here in America. I have spent the last 25 years education, search and policy, trying to improve our nation's public education system and ensure that it provides access to an opportunity for all students. So I'm really pleased to be here leading this conversation because it's really central to what we're going to be talking about today. I have three terrific me. I believe you can see now. First, Marie, what I say is the chief executive officer of the Workforce Development Council of Seattle King County. She brings more than 30 years of experience leading workforce development initiatives in the region, having worked in community based organizations, private philanthropy and major public institutions, including the city of Seattle, and more recently the Ms. could I say serve nearly seven years at the WDC known as the private industry council, working as a project manager to implement initiatives that included partnering with agencies to establish the first centralized dislocated worker program site. Next we have with us, Dr. Travis Reeves. He is the superintendent of Surrey County Schools in North Carolina. He spent the last four decades in public schools as a teacher as a coach, an assistant principal and a principal for the district before becoming superintendent first of Ash County Schools and then Surrey County Schools where he has served seven years. He's currently president of the Piedmont Triad Education Consortium and a member of the executive board for the North Carolina Association of School Superintendents. He is also the past president of the North Carolina Association for supervision and curriculum development, and currently serves as a regional president on the board. And finally, last but certainly not least, we have Dr. Alan Friar, who brings extensive experience advocating for smarter and more equitable economic and workforce development strategies. He is currently principal of Peregrine strategies, which is focused on building equitable economies before founding Peregrine strategies he served as the director of workers rights at the North Carolina Justice Center. And before that spent more than a decade working as a policy advisor to members of Congress and as a consultant to nonprofits, universities and state and local government agencies. He also is a Paya Equity Fellow at New America with us where he's been leading the national working group on equity in use of apprenticeship. So, to thank you all for being here with us today. Going to begin with some questions but before that, before I jump into questions I'd like to just offer some very brief framing of the session. The session is entitled youth apprenticeship as a strategy for promoting more equity outcomes for young adults. There's a lot in that in that title. I just want to break down a little bit what we're talking about to set the stage for our conversation. So first, a general note about equity, which is a central tenant of new America's work across the board, and is a core principle of Paya I know you heard and re slaughter earlier and then Taylor white both speak to it. Just to say a little bit more. Some of our very first conversations about youth apprenticeship when we were first talking about Paya and starting Paya we're about this question of equity and whether this idea of partnerships between higher education could really work to advance not just pathways for youth but equitable pathways for youth. And so when we were talking about equity, giving more to those who have less. We knew we needed to not just advocate for for equity as a concept, which is actually quite common. Certainly in our conversations everywhere now, you're hearing it, but to actively remove barriers that are unfairly limiting access and opportunity by a whole set of character by gender by income disability citizenship status, and most starkly by race. So the problem we had a lot of conversations about the problems of inequity and how youth apprenticeship could advance equity and actively work against reproducing these inequities. The problem of inequity is not just that it persists over time and that it derives from a long history of of injustice in our country, but that it persists across systems across our society. Taylor noted this earlier, it's across our systems of education to cross our systems of work, as well as housing and health and many others. It's pervasive in that way and it also starts early. We're talking about high school youth here, but but New America has a whole program on early education for a reason the uneven access to family supports to trained and experienced teachers to materials and technology that starts in the very youngest years and it persists and it builds through elementary schools secondary school and then in the post secondary. While we've seen high school graduation rates improve, and we've seen the gaps between who graduates and who doesn't narrow and that's good news. They're just massive disparities still in lifetime outcomes. In large part this is because the inequities build over time, and they build for individuals for communities and for the institutions that are serving them. Here's one example the unemployment poverty rates for black Americans. For example, they're twice that of white Americans. This is we're seeing that that's one of so many statistics you heard some of those earlier you'll hear more as we move on. Those are only exacerbated by the pandemic that we're all living in right now. Speaking of youth, like Ann Marie you heard her begin by talking about apprenticeships and the idea of rethinking what apprenticeship means and how it functions in our in our society. This is specifically about youth apprenticeship so in the middle of all this are high school youth and quite literally they are in the middle. We heard them speak earlier on the videos and to hear them speak we can we can see this in them. They're not young children and they're not yet adults, many of those who were speaking we're speaking from who are adults now because they have moved along. But when we talk about high school students were really talking about that in between space where these young people need independence and they need autonomy. They need space to figure out who they are they want to be but they also at the same time need a lot of support and a lot of structured mentored support. They need help along the way and and those kinds of supports are built in for some youth who are led down very well lit pathways to college and careers. For others they aren't so well lit and they're or they frankly just they don't exist so. So enter Paya Paya exists to interrupt these inequities and make sure that we have strong pathways for all students. That is of course, a much easier said than than done so I want to get into some of these questions and pull in my wonderful panel we have here here more about where things stand right now and where we're headed. I'm going to start with Marie and Travis. You're both. You both were good organizations that engage directly with youth and help them prepare for post high school life if that's a job or college or juggling both part time. It's a particularly challenging time for all of us but particularly for young people so wondering if you could just start us off by letting us know what you're hearing and seeing from the young people that you work with. What is their perspective on these transitions and their sense of opportunity, especially given the uncertainty of the current times. If you want to. And then Travis if you could follow. Maria and you have to unmute. Maria I think you're still you're still muted. Yes, thank you. So, you know, we really are hearing that. There's still a lot of just anxiety and tension we're still in lockdown. In our institutions and schools haven't opened up none of the colleges so everything is virtual. And so there's this crisis kind of mode right now and people are in survival. People that are looking at opportunities just there to severe areas run access to technology and navigation are clearly a challenge. So, I think the short term is really connecting to folks and understanding and dealing with some of those immediate kind of survival needs because we know that more and more young people have been disconnected during this pandemic, especially those within BIPOC communities, immigrant refugee communities, their families are going through huge, I mean, they are obviously been impacted disproportionately in terms of layoffs and have less of a safety net. Well, we are still looking to the future. We are recognizing right now it's about how do we create some stability and addressing those immediate needs and get our system to be more accessible to an inclusive in reaching out to these communities. So here in North Carolina, our students are back in school on an alternating A-B schedule. So that's bringing some normalcy back to our teenagers and really all of our K-12 students, but I believe our students are really like our adults. They're kind of all over the place right now trying to deal with the pandemic and have been since March. Our teenagers, they want things back to normal. They want things to be the way they were pre-COVID, but obviously they're trying to juggle life, trying to juggle work, trying to juggle high school. And one thing that we've sensed in our community is many of our students are choosing, we've given students the choice of remote learning. They're choosing remote learning overcoming to face to face because they've kind of gotten used to this flexible schedule. They've gotten used to having a job. They've gotten used to having a source of income. And for some that's been pride. It's given them a sense of belonging and their family. They feel good about the work they're doing. We had several that were placed in a local manufacturer that was making masks and obviously that was a way for our teenagers to connect to the pandemic and feel like they were making a difference. Also, during this very difficult time, I see teenagers having a real struggle with deciding is a four-year university the right decision today because obviously many, many four-year universities are at home. They are on remote learning, virtual learning. And so many, I believe, are choosing community college over four-year universities today just because of that fact because of the economy and because it's much cheaper. So I believe our teenagers are at this weird transition point of just trying to deal with this pandemic like adults, but they definitely want things to be back to normal. Thanks. Let me go pull on that for a minute, this notion of going straight to a four-year college because for decades or longer, we've been pushing college for all. It was a very strong mantra message. I know when I worked with young people decades ago, particularly low-income students of color, Latino students and Black students, I told them go to the best possible, most selective four-year college you can go to. You need to do that. I mean, I was there pushing it and now we're sort of there's a big question mark there about whether that's really paid off and whether that's really the right path or the only path. So with that, given that push and given where we are now, knowing that path is not really such a straight, sure bet for all young people, especially for students who don't have the financial access or access to financial and social supports, not just the money but the connections and the mentorship and all that. In your views, and Alan, maybe you can lead us off on this one. In your views, how does youth apprenticeship offer another path to economic security? And related to that, what does youth apprenticeship mean for the college for all message? Yeah, absolutely. Well, to the first point, I think Travis is right that this does provide a clear alternative to the college for all that can be financially sustainable. You know, in North Carolina, right, the model is free community college. You know, for the first four years you are earning an income while other folks are still in college. And you get a certification and you obviously get your associate's degree. That's the free college and you do it debt free. And from the students that I've talked to and worked with through this process, those are huge selling points for them. And when they can persuade their parents that this is a good idea, it's a huge selling point for them. But it is, it's hard work, right? We're pushing a boulder up a hill and trying to change the track from, you know, Elena, what you described. But the benefits are clear. I think the question, the program question is how do you actually implement the types of changes that will make this apparent for folks. And I do think there's a, you know, there are a list of strong interventions we've seen the literature is pretty clear that engaging folks, students and parents as early as middle school that CTE as a high school track is a thing, a good thing. And, you know, ensuring that that career development counselors in each school where you have a youth apprenticeship program that's touching the bigger program where apprentices from that school are going to the program train those counselors is huge. And we recognize there's high turnover among career counselors. And so finding a way systemically to train and engage them every year or or touch them intentionally regularly so that they're aware of the benefits of the program. I think it's hugely important. And lastly, I think that there is, it's really crucial and I know we'll get into equity later in this conversation, but it's crucial to make sure that apprentices that students see apprentices and employers and plant managers who look like they do. So intentionally recruiting folks of representatives of color who can go into the school and engage the students is critical I think to putting in place the kind of overall structure where the students can see that there's a viable alternative and that you don't just have to go to a four year college. Travis and Marie, feel free to jump in. You want to comment on what this means for college for all or even just off of what Alan was. So I will say there's been a shift in the past few years on these well paying careers versus a four year degree, and what may or may not lead to that good paying career. In our community in North Carolina, especially southeastern United States, there are many families who are apprehensive about manufacturing jobs. They're apprehensive because of what's happened in the past. And so we have some grandparents telling their their grandchildren don't don't don't don't just rely on that credential or that two year degree you really want a four year degree. And so what we've found is that there is we have to reeducate our parents grandparents in our community on the availability of what jobs are right here at home. And I think it's real important for rural school systems like mine to to connect the dots of life for their students to the local jobs and the really the availability of great careers right here locally. So we've been working on that. And Alan to your point, an eighth grade career inventory is given in all of our middle schools. And we think it's important that kids at least have an idea of what's out there and then we try to connect those those high school pathways to those eighth grade career inventory. So, you know, we're not trying to put kids down a pathway but we're trying to really open up all paths. And then in our school system, we think it's real important to tie in those those local business leaders and local folks so that our students can really see the connection from middle school high school community college and then then beyond. We also think that I've got some great examples of a young man that comes to mind, earning $11 and 83 cents an hour as a beginning wage as a high school intern. That's really more than both his parents combined were making and he was bringing more home through our internship program or paid internship program than what they they had ever made. And so it really was, you know, and he's working in one of our local animal processing plants here locally in agriculture. So that's important. It's important for us to be able to open up the doors of opportunity but there is a lot of educating and re educating our youth and our parents to what the availability of good jobs and great careers are here locally. I'm going to push back a little bit because I think one of the challenges is recognizing that there has been this mistrust around education and communities of color because of tracking. And yes, I absolutely think it's important that we provide access and more awareness about the different careers opportunities and I will push even further that as we think about apprenticeship. Thinking about it more broadly of not just those CTE technical education, but there are some other apprenticeship pathways that we should be considering. We are increasingly seeing great huge disparities. The cost of living in our region is just skyrocketing because the onto the tech industry, you know, when looks to Seattle as this very wealthy region and thriving economically. This is pretty COVID, but, but at the same time, the middle wage jobs have disappeared and we have seen, you know, even greater growth in those low wage jobs, which people cannot afford to live even live in Seattle, right in the city. So, as we start talking about youth apprenticeship and thinking about career exploration. Absolutely. One of the issues that we know is because many young people, especially from lower income households and communities of color. Don't have the same networks and access to, you know, different industries and how do we start providing early on and working with the teachers and career counselors to increase their knowledge of, you know, what those careers are. And years ago, I did this work with an immigrant youth employment program and we did focus groups. Many of the African immigrants, but when we were doing these focus groups. Set up for young people, all the elders were coming to see focus because you're doing in community in the evenings and recognize that, oh, maybe we needed to do this intergenerational piece because their elders and parents. It was important for them to actually understand what these different career pathways were opportunities. So, I just think you have to be very clear around not tracking, recognizing that it does happen and I would say building in some more kind of race explicit strategies and and approaches. And then the whole thing about trust is huge. Thank you for that but let's just stay on tracking for for a minute, because we have a long history of education into work tracking in this country, separate paths for folks who aren't familiar separate paths for students based on presumed academic abilities but which actually perpetuate racial and class segregation and we've seen this and there's plenty of research to show the effects of of tracking, where it disproportionately negatively impacts where it was on the lower track. So in this case what we're talking when we talk about youth apprenticeship, we, what we want to avoid doing is is perpetuating that or reinforcing some sort of low track, where it would be this a low track into a low wage low status job. That's what we don't want to do because we've lived in that world. It still exists actually it's in a lot of our schools we see it every in probably every single public school district that you can go to in this country you see some version of it there. So we're trying to fight against that and actually to ensure that youth apprenticeship is not doing that and instead is ensuring that that it's enabling all students and particularly I would say low income students and youth of color who were the ones who were in college that's why the college for all was a movement in the first place, making sure that there's access their supports and their system so that those youth have those opportunities that they really were denied for very long and in many ways still are so. So I'll just as a question I'll pose. What do you all see as as the best ways maybe strategies within youth apprenticeship to ensure that these programs are not replicating that pattern of tracking. We can start anywhere whoever wants to start go for it. I'll be glad to start in our school system I think it really boils down to one thing and that's trust and relationships. Really, that's not some innovative crazy idea that that's what education, a good education is about. I do believe attitudes are changing students and parents want these opportunities, but I believe it all starts with a personal connection and it relies on our educators and Alan you mentioned our counselors in my school system. We have created a position called a career coach, and this career coach goes out into our area businesses understands their needs and then actually has conversations with our college liaisons and can counselors and really that person becomes the career maker. We've also found that many times the minority students they need someone to say to them you would be a good fit this would be a great opportunity for you sometimes our African American students don't see themselves in that way as maybe so as some of our Hispanic students so we have good examples of where we've had to overcome barriers transportation being one of those barriers for our students to get them into those paid internships apprenticeships to make sure that they have that availability. We can provide that but there's a stigma tied to a yellow school bus dropping a high school kid off at a job right and so we've got examples of grandmothers taking their their grandsons to these jobs which is great. But transportation is one of the bears that we've run into in our school system trying to provide equal access for all. Alan you had touched on just a minute ago counselors and I know there's some comments as well. In the chat around this the sort of direct steering of students in one direction or another so I mean tracking works in both ways right. But you there's active involvement of an adult person someone in there and someone in these young people's lives that's explaining to them. This is how it works. This is how you do it. It's actually not that other kids just understand it better. It's that they are being given very direct explicit instructions and and all sorts of code throughout their lives of this is how it works. And some kids aren't getting that and so for kids who aren't getting that where do they get it they get it from counselors. So what are some of the other strategies or other places where you might you might see that. Yeah and I'm going to address the counseling piece of it just for a moment, because this is where we see a lot of on the one hand implicit bias, and on the other I think intentional efforts to try to break that down. We, we did focus groups that that that showed that there was a very real understanding on the apart of school administrators, and the folks running the program so whether they're in your intermediary whether the employers that for a lot of students of color in particular the career counselor could well be the first exposure to apprenticeship and technical careers. And I realize I'm talking technical careers in this case that they might get and they might not get that exposure anywhere else and so you begin to drill down within the school of who's recommending to the counselor, who, who would be a good fit for for apprenticeship or for CTE. Who are the groups of students who are then when there are exposure opportunities, whether it's school wide assemblies or invited groups. Right, there's just the recognition that some folks due to implicit bias are thought of as well they're not going to go in the trades they're not going to go into CTE they should do something else. And you see this particularly in Travis I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on this but the focus groups we did in the rural South so that that in a lot of places, manufacturing, even if it was advanced manufacturing was seen as something the white kids did. We even had a focus group where we're one student who was not going to be a youth apprenticeship but he said, you know, I don't need to be an apprentice my uncle runs, I think it was textiles. He's just going to hire me and I'm going to go work for him and the students of color didn't have those types of social networks among owners and what business owners and so there was just the sense of like that's not for me. But I, the last story I'll close this part with is that we also talked with. There was one particular youth apprentice who said, you know, I had never thought that higher education would be for me higher ed is never for people like me and he was African American referring to the community. And then he said that this program is called gap gap is for us it works for us and I belong in it and I just there was something intentional about how that particular program had engaged students of color work with the counselor to engage students of color, where they tried to address this implicit bias over who gets picked and who doesn't very intentionally tried to engage a broad cross section of student bodies, and also marketing materials that reflected a high degree of diversity and sort of maximal saturation with the with the marketing and global calls to everybody and anyway, there are other strategies we can talk about later on as well, addressing the equity pieces but those are some of the things that we saw that were helpful. Thanks, that's that's helpful Maria I want to go to you for a minute on this but also on the employer side in general, because there are a lot of programs a lot of efforts out there to connect K 12 and higher education, some effective some not. This is actually trying to connect all three right K 12 higher education and employment or employers, but there's a role then when you think about who is influencing these young people for employers. So, you know what kind of role how equipped are player employers to be a part of this to recruit to mentor to support you. I guess I would say it depends and it really is important to prepare the employers and think about kind of their environment and the work you know, even being able to be a more inclusive environment and their implicit bias right in terms of communication styles and, and just, you know, patterns in industry and example it's working in. We have a pretty robust construction for apprenticeship apprenticeship track. In this region. We well paying jobs and and have worked for many, for decades, but many years more recently around what is the environment as, as you bring on special workers college as we look at the data and it shows that. Apprentice complete apprenticeship completion rate for other huge disparities. If you're a black male or if you're a person of color versus a white male, you drill down and we started to see things like them. You know, some of the racial and sexual harassment on the job that because of the industry so really working at all levels as well as with apprenticeship. It comes in how they select what criteria they use to select apprentices. How do you bring in mentors that look like them to make journey level workers that support them and navigating this work. It really is kind of all levels of really understanding where all of those barriers and all of those kind of biases take place and and really make it difficult for folks to stay in especially people's color to stay in. It's really important but being so intentional because you don't want to I mean if you set someone that that's just going to really end up being kind of this negative market that could carry on to in terms of community, you know, response in their view of that industry. So we did a lot around working with employers on just kind of bias in the workplace. We provided actually through our regional local governments who have an apprenticeship utilization and targeted hiring requirement actually have acceptable work site standards. Because they have seen realize that there were more and more issues related to some of the hazing going on, but holding those contractors accountable for some of those, you know, making sure that their job sites, they were preventing them and really, you know, addressing those because they could then lose their contracts with local governments, but it's and that's been years and it has been years of recognizing it takes time, but it takes being very very bringing the voices and experiences of the actual apprentices to help inform kind of how you have to change what the issues are. Yeah, thank you. So I want to get for want to turn a little bit to what's programmatically some of the barriers that you may be seeing that the biggest barriers to equity that you're encountering in your own work. And on the programmatic side, first and then we can move to the policy side as well. On the programmatic side, we have two different contexts a little bit of this already where Marie you're you're in a more concentrated and urban context of King County. And Travis, you're in a much more rural context in your district and community that that may or may not play in, but it would be interesting for both of you to comment on what the major programmatic barriers are to equity that you've been seeing or you've been experiencing in your context. Travis, why don't you go ahead first. Well, obviously, working. We are a K 12 system and we have started a program just over the past three years, and have built that program one of our programmatic barriers is really funding and trying to make sure that we can continue to fund this program and get our students in the right place. In the K 12 world, getting something like this off the ground is significantly hard. We have tried to start apprenticeship programs and in North Carolina every state's a little different we had we have been successful and have to apprenticeship programs that are that are up and running so from a programmatic standpoint that that has been difficult. I will say we've had great success. I've got lots of great stories where we've brought all many, many students. We have we have one young lady who was undocumented. We were able to connect her with a local business. They have sponsored her and her college tuition is now in state and they are even in fact paying for her college tuition. That would not have happened. So we've got that young that young lady. I've got another young lady who is working in construction as a welder. So she's breaking down lots of barriers and our local community college has a great welding program but working with our employers as Marie pointed out there has been a paradigm shift locally because our students have stepped in and have changed some of the culture of our local businesses to the point that it's a positive. And I have local businesses coming to me asking for our students to make sure that there's not programmatic pieces that they're missing or gaps that they're missing. We had to have one state law changed in North Carolina. I could have students working in my shop classes with a nail gun but they couldn't go out into an advanced manufacturing area and use the same nail gun on the floor and get paid in an internship or an apprenticeship. So I along with one of our business partners advocated along with our career coach and we were able to get a state law changed with our local with state Senator Deanna Ballard. And so I was proud of that moment. And so now we have students placed in some of those roles. So this is hard work. If it was easy everybody be doing it. I mean we're talking about equity here and trying to get all kids in the right places. There's there are a lot of a lot of challenges but we can't give up. It's the right thing. We've got too many success stories. I feel like locally we're going to keep working very very hard to make this happen because there's just too much too much work yet to be done in Surrey County and beyond for our students. So we in King County we have 20 separate school districts and they're locally controlled. So I think that is a huge challenge. Seattle proper alone Seattle school district alone. You look at the kind of diversity we are increasingly becoming one of the the widest largest metropolitan areas because of the cost of housing. We are so we are seeing huge disparities just within the Seattle school district based on geography of schools the quality of you know schools the resources available to schools and increasingly seem like moving people's color lower income folks moving out into the inner suburbs right south south area. So just access to resources alone is huge disparity within our district they go to 20 different districts and having separate you know processes for curriculum and I mean looking at how it's just it's a challenge right it's huge challenge. And you bring in industry trying to work within these 20 different districts. I mean it's just getting some of the curriculum approved. You have to go district by district and I mean it's just it's it's I just would say there are some opportunities to improve within our state and we're doing some things you know statewide around really promoting this work but if you don't get to some of those systems you're not going to get there. Absolutely transportation is huge as well. Yeah transportation keeps coming up every every time every time the conversation is raised it. I think it's already in the chat as well. Alan maybe you've you've been leading the PIA equity working group which which for folks who don't know is a working group of our grantees and network members. Over the past several months which it's more than 15 programs from around the country. And so a lot of that work has been looking at how policies and systems can improve access to these programs and to these pathways. Could you speak a little bit about what your maybe your biggest equity concerns are within that on the policy side but also what you think some of the most important policy or systemic barriers are that we would want to address and and how that how that might be possible. Sure. And I think that's a that's a good question. The I think the biggest the biggest barrier honestly that I think we found in the in the working group was sort of a meta barrier of how you identify the interconnected systems and policy level barriers that are actually at play. You know, the folks the sites we have participating the representatives are really just amazing people who are doing very challenging frontline work the post Marie and Travis have described of trying to knit these programs together with all the personalities and interests and conflicts that come with that and there was a deep commitment from the people in that group to address equity and the recognition that they were seeing pieces of it. But that at the at a higher level, it was sort of like that story of the people who are asked to go in to a circus tent that's completely dark and try to describe the animal that they see and they're just describing like it's an elephant right but one person's like it's a trunk. And the other says it's a tail. It's a head. We see different pieces of the puzzle from our own perspective, which is intensely important and valuable because we're able to extract them those different perspectives but it's challenging and to figure out what the whole puzzle looks like. And so I think what we found is that it's critical to have to provide scaffolding, whether it self assessment tools or checklists or discussions like we had that New America hosted over the summer around this to really help folks get a sense of what the different pieces of the puzzle are, and then what falls within their own spheres of authority. This idea of like the school district has a set of things that it can do and it can diagnose the problems within it. It's district, we're talking about K 12 here, right, that series of problems they can diagnose and that they can fix but they can't necessarily do or address the problems related to employers and I think Marie's point here is really, really important right and that you see in a situation where you have that many school districts and you have employers trying to figure out how to navigate all of them. Tackling the different pieces of the puzzle become challenging so providing scaffolding for the people on the ground doing the work to help them identify the systems level piece I think was the first big challenge and the first big step in terms of specifics. We've heard about transportation. Maybe we'll talk about that more later. There's an example in California where there was a recognition that the existing standards and thresholds that were used for the admissions process were not effective in terms of being able to bring in students who weren't able to succeed in the program but weren't even able to enter because of things like GPA and test scores and other standards that actually reflect at upstream racial disparities. We know that you know the literature is pretty clear at this point that the that a GPA reflects a lot of implicit bias, and that it can be a less than perfect method for getting for for assessing students. So we replaced test score as I understand it replaced the GPA and test scores with a competency based method of selection, and really allowed it broadens the pool of folks that they were able to engage bring into the program and it also was able to dial down some of the distorted distortion that happens when you have these metrics that disproportionately impact students of color. And so it's as it was described as it seems like really a great success, but they worked collaboratively among all the different partners involved to figure out what the right standards could be. There were policy elements that were involved in that as well so I think that the big message that I took away is that the challenge is big in terms of identifying the specific challenges but that the partners involved are really good at identifying solutions in their series of authority, and that we need to knit together partners as they do that in order to create sort of a seamless blanket of efforts to overcome equity challenges. No, I mean so that's the power of partnership that's why the partnership partnership just keeps coming up everywhere PIA partnership, because you've got more people at the table, which means you have more resources you got more people paying if they're all looking in the same direction. So that is that is the challenge right so making sure that you're speaking the same language that your systems are lying your data systems are lying that you're all approaching it the same way, or and with the same goal in mind is is what's key but but go back to your just larger point about how how how much potential partnership brings and I think that is a difference for young people. They don't have a lot at this a lot of people, particularly high school who are focused on them paying attention to them and not just sort of pushing them aside. That is sort of the nature of high school youth and that stage, unfortunately that stage of life. We have we're going to turn to questions in just a minute but I want to give each one of you a chance to provide with just advice that you might have with what advice would you share, either to folks who are running programs or those who have a role in shaping policy about what should be prioritized to ensure that you the friendship programs are actually delivering on this equity promise that we're talking about. If you could each go let's go Travis first and then Marie and then Alan. So my message is don't give up. We were told over and over that youth apprentices. They won't work in rural in rural counties that businesses won't buy into it. That there's no money how can you get this started. We kept running into roadblocks but I do believe where there's a wheel there's a way and our my team. We have worked really hard to to find the money. We were sponsored with a grant. I feel good about that moving forward. We're looking at sustainability from our local county commissioners our government source because I believe education. Government and business have to work together like a triangle. I believe that is the future. I believe we've got to continue to help our rural America. I'm right here and if I don't provide this connection. My students are moving away. They're moving to places like Seattle Winston Salem Greensboro Charlotte if I don't connect them and I feel like I have. I'm like the last cog in the community colleges between me and that last cog of life. If I don't provide that for our students I feel like I'm letting our businesses down. I feel like I'm letting our community down because our students may never come back and for rural North Carolina and for rural America. We've got to be the great connector to all things and it starts locally and I believe policy. You can't wait for a policy. The perfect policy does not exist. What it takes is everybody working together elbow to elbow. Now it's six feet, six feet. But we've got to have people with the same goal in mind and that's putting our youth valuing our youth and seeing the value they can bring to their area of businesses. We've had to really reeducate a lot of our local businesses and they've done great. They've stepped up and now they're asking us for our students to be a part of their culture and I've seen some of their cultures even change because of our students. I've said that to me and even one local businessman was willing to pay the salary or part of the salary of our career coach. I mean, imagine that. I have local people wanting this program. Don't give up. Don't wait on the perfect policy. Get the right people in the room and work through every situation and sometimes it's individual one by one. And you've got to really make a great relationship with the HR managers in your businesses in order to overcome the barriers because I can promise you there are more barriers than there are solutions, but it really takes everybody working together. That would be my advice. Thank you Travis Marie and then Alan and then I'll move to questions that we'll have time for a few. So I would say we have this opportunity to really think about youth apprenticeships as narrowing that you know equity gap, but thinking about it in a way I'm going to go back to not just about kind of vocational types of trades. I mean, it's really about competencies and how we know that in the secondary and even in the post secondary systems. There is an achievement gap. Right. And part of it. It's a great way to actually teach within contextual learning ways that there is this, you know, understanding, but students can have an opportunity to demonstrate their competencies versus kind of that. Taking the test that is not really applied to I didn't do math well until I had to see the budgets right. I mean, really understanding kind of the application of it. And it's about really creating those strong partnerships. I would say having the structure in place. More, you know, what are in the healthcare sector, we're looking at apprenticeship programs and part of it is providing kind of the technical assistance to the employers on how do they start and what, you know, within their, their companies, what are the systems they need employees on HR and all of that. We simplify that process, remind that process work with our, you know, our state labor and industries to actually start looking at supporting the expansion of apprenticeships. And then also we have built in in the construction trades in particular pre apprenticeship program that should provide some of the on ramping and which is great. But I will also say it to be the challenge and the caution is making sure that you're not just automatically tracking folks of color into pre apprenticeship programs, assuming that they need that to be successful. So, you know, I just, it's, it's exciting. I think that right now, I mean, pre COVID, there was this huge, you know, talent pipeline issue and this, you know, tsunami. I mean, it's just like, now we're kind of in a little bit of a different situation, but it's going to come back. So how do we actually start working now to prepare kind of the system and that when people come back, there are those opportunities. Alan, what's your, you know, you want to briefly comment and I have a couple, there's a, there's being a tsunami there are a lot of questions, but I'll try to be brief, go ahead. I think that for me, the big takeaway from this would be be intentional about engaging students of color and recognizing there are either special barriers they experienced because of who they are. Or there are barriers that everybody else experiences that they experienced it in a more acute way, or they experienced it disproportionately because of historical legacies. Transportation is an example. You know, we know that that students of color, particularly black students have lower access to cars, they have longer commute times to school. And that's true for school we know it's going to be dialed up even more for an employer where there isn't a regular transportation system there. So it's, it's be intentional and then be intentional about who you're bringing to the table one all the relevant institutional partners should be there, preferably, you know, there's an argument to have employers be in a leadership role in that. Part of that also means when you're building that table, it's be intentional about the types of representatives that you know communities of color would respect and listen to when hearing about apprenticeship and technical and non technical apprenticeship opportunities and careers, making sure that you have, whether it's pastors or leaders of community centers, but thinking broadly about who the partners are at the table and recognizing that certain leaders have more credibility than others in communities of color. And the last is that I know it's not popular to say I mean we all did our budgets in the summer and everything for the next fiscal year but money really does make a difference. Transportation is the type of problem that is embedded in our nation's built environment right if you live in rural America if you live in suburban America you can't walk to your job. So you have to find a way to connect a student to the to the work site, and that just takes money, whether it's carpools or gas Uber cards or gas funds or you know they're examples of districts that are providing fleets of vans to overcome the yellow school bus problem. But it does take money, but going back to the first point about employer leadership is that there are examples playing examples across the country of where employers paid for these things. And in some places it may be a challenge to convince employers that it's worth their time but as part of that conversation, you know there are North Carolina as an example of where, you know employers saw immediate added value to when their employees could show up on time, because they bought the employer bought the student a Uber card, and the student was able to get to work on time. So money does matter but leadership matters as well with it. So that that would be my recommendation. Thank you thank you all so we're running out of time I'm going to. First I wanted to a huge shout out to all the folks who are writing in the chat because people are asking questions and they're answering questions and there's all sorts of wonderful things happening in chat. And we also have a lot of questions so I'm going to pose just just one or two and quickly and then I will end with just a transition which might also answer a couple of these questions about tools and strategies we have at least a few people asking about tools and strategies and I will say a note about that at the very end of this. In the meantime, with the few minutes that we have one of the questions is around the definition of youth apprenticeship that we show that PIA put up earlier, being high school aged youth. Now, but not necessarily high school enroll you. So the question is, how can youth apprenticeship support out of school youth who are still at that same age, obviously some are disconnected or they're out of the system. So before they're involved in, in, in different ways. How might programs look different than those that support in school use so this is a question actually that PIA has grappled with quite a bit. The definition that we used is high school aged youth we, we envision to PIA as connecting these systems. So we want to serve high school aged youth, which are high school, which are youth that are both in high schools and outside of high school they may not be connected to the system, but in, in general we wanted the systems to be connected of higher ed K12 and employer business and that's why we talk about them as high school aged youth it's not just that we care about the youth that are in high schools, but I'll pose the question quickly and let the panelists respond. How can you the apprenticeship support both school both students who are enrolled and those who may not be any thoughts. We have a, we have a homeschool partnership. We try to, we try to make these opportunities available for all of our students and community members. We, I mentioned our local county government. So we are going to be starting a new initiative that's a regional partnership between us and another county and multiple school systems to promote this whole idea of youth apprenticeships, pre apprenticeships, apprenticeships, and we'll make that available for all. But we have also, you know, have an individual meetings with our local minority groups to discuss all of these opportunities for our students so it, it's an ongoing process for us in Surrey County. I absolutely think it's important to provide them for youth that are not in school currently enrolled in school. And so an example is in our high school summer internship programs we've been able to get some employers on board to expand their definition of the students that they would take, including those that were, you know, not formally enrolled in school, but they had some community supports behind them that really helped connect them to and kind of support their, you know, their, their journey that we just have to really consider. And I will say, I'm really concerned now just because our schools are not open, and we are going virtual, and, you know, we've got to really be creative in how we reach students who may have been at risk of being disconnected from school anyways. So really thinking intentionally about what those strategies are to re-engage them. And this could be a great opportunity rather than just taking a class on Zoom, actually having some apprenticeship program that they can participate in. Thank you, Marie. Alan, just 30 seconds or so. I need to unfortunately transition us over. I think I said enough. I think they, they said it all. I thought it was great. I want to thank you all. I wish we had more time. I could go on and on. And I know I had calls with you all earlier and we had such great, rich conversations. So I look forward to talking with you further. Thank you all for being here for a terrific discussion. We just scratched the surface here, but it's a start and plenty more to come.