 Good morning. So glad you could all join us for Building Partnerships to Support High-Quality P3 Teacher Preparation in California, hosted by the Learning Policy Institute and co-sponsored by the Association of California School Administrators, California Community College Early Childhood Educators, California County Superintendent, California Council on Teacher Education, and PEACH, which is an early childhood higher education collaborative. You can find links to all these organizations in the resource padlet. And planning for today's event incorporated feedback we received on our June 30th convening, Embry is going to add the link to that recording in the chat as well. This convening is supported by funding from the Balmer Group, Heising Simons Foundation, David and Lucille Packard Foundation, and the Silver Giving Foundation. Thank you to all our funders. And I just want to acknowledge that yesterday's elections are still on many of our minds. Thank you for being present here with us today. And we hope our awesome program will distract you from the uncertainty that many of us are feeling this morning, even if it's only for a couple of hours. Here's a quick look at our agenda for today. And there's a link to the agenda in the chat for you as well. Linda Darling-Hammond will start us off. And then we'll hear from Lupe Jaime-Milham from CVSS, Renee Marshall representing the CTC, and Sarah Neville-Morgan from CDE. Next, we'll share the stories of two early childhood teachers. After the break, we'll hear from Brianna Bruns from the California County Superintendent and the Sacramento County E3 team. And we've got a couple of breakout sessions to help you make connections, including an optional extended networking and debriefing session facilitated by Rachel Johnson after the two hour event. We hope today's event will help you reflect on what it will take to support and expand a well-prepared early childhood workforce and will also help you consider an actionable next step based on what we discussed and learned today. And now I'd like to welcome LPI President and CEO and President of the California State Board of Education, Linda Darling-Hammond for introductory remarks. Linda. Thank you, Kathy. It is such a pleasure to be here and to see so many folks who are leaning in on this exciting moment in our California history. As you all know, we've made a historic investment in California and early childhood education over the past two years that will expand access to childcare and preschool for young children. Somebody can move the slide to the next one. That's great. The early childhood budget has expanded by 51% since the onset of the pandemic. It is the fastest growing component of the budget other than wildfires, according to Assembly Budget Staffer Christian Griffith in his statement at the Water Cooler Conference. The changes include expansion of childcare and collective bargaining for the early learning workforce, universal preschool, which will expand access to all four-year-olds and more three-year-olds through TK, the California State Preschool Program Head Start and private providers, new expanded learning opportunities with 10 to 1 ratios for young children. Of course, this brings a lot of opportunity and a lot of change. So as our early childhood expands, so must the workforce. Teachers are needed throughout the workforce, including lead TK teachers with a teaching credential. We estimate we'll need 11,900 to 15,600 new TK teachers, depending on the uptake across the state by 2025-26. We'll also need many assistant TK teachers, approximately 16,000 to 20,000 total. We need to fill shortages that already exist in California State Preschool and Head Start, as well as preschool and childcare lead and assistant teachers and infant and toddler classrooms. We'll need expanded learning, learning staff to train, to training work with young children and with program and administrators with ECE expertise. So there's the whole workforce will be growing. And of course, we want to provide the kind of high quality training that allows them to do their best work with children. And it's not a zero-sum game because opening up TK opportunities will retain many people who would have left the early childhood workforce upgrading salaries and other ECE settings as well over time. So it's all interrelated. Early educators, of course, need a very unique skill set. Within the learning setting, that includes developmentally appropriate, multi-lingual and multicultural practices, which are a huge emphasis in California. They need to be able to use observation and assessment of children's development and learning to decide how to support them in their growing work, that we need to be able to put in place individualized supports and inclusion-based practices in classrooms and understand the foundations of early literacy and math. And you know, the early childhood educator also needs to be able to engage in family support and partnership and continuous improvement to build their professional knowledge. Recognizing the unique needs of young children, we can turn to the next slide. California is developing a new teaching credential for preschool to grade three with a focus on these essential competencies. The credential will be another option for TK and grades K through three. In addition to the multiple subject credential, it will not be required in other preschool programs. Getting the credential will require at least a BA, completing an accredited program and completing 600 hours of supervised clinical experience. And it will provide a bridge for early childhood educators with a child development permit and a BA who can apply prior coursework from their teacher permit and hours of teaching towards the credential. There'll also be a kind of bridge from the multiple subject teachers whose 24 hours of early childhood training should apply to the credential as well. The credential timeline is that we're moving through the regulation process. It's going to be in law as early as 2023. Well, the CTC will begin technical assistance for prospective program sponsors in November of 2022, which is now and continuing into next year. The programs may submit program proposals for review, but approval can't be granted until the Office of Administrative Law finishes its work. We hope that preparation programs will be developed for launch in fall of 2023. And we will need early adopter credential programs to offer this credential. Child development permits are also required for other ECE changes to teachers, but those have not changed. For example, the California State Preschool Program teachers must hold or be working toward a teacher permit. There are multiple ways to meet permit requirements at each level. In terms of pathways into the TK workforce, you can see here that there are different ways to get into this workforce. The green bubbles show pathways that allow candidates to be employed immediately as teacher of record. The yellow show pathways in which candidates could serve as an assistant TK teacher while working on their teaching credential. On the left are current credential holders who would need to take 24 units of early childhood coursework to be qualified to teach TK. In the middle are the experienced early educators who have a bachelor's degree, but not yet a credential. They could take a traditional postbaccalaureate future preparation program, but many will need to get paid while they're studying so they might do a teacher residency where the candidate can serve as an assistant TK teacher alongside a mentor while taking coursework or internship programs where an experienced candidate can serve as teacher of record while taking credentialing coursework. And then finally, on the right hand side, you have experienced early educators or other candidates who don't yet have a BA, and we're hoping to see more integrated teacher preparation programs where candidates can earn their credential while getting a BA. The CTC has funding to allocate for the development of such programs. Pathways to a child development permit or credential will also need to be built into other ECE positions, including pathways to degrees and permits. And these can include dual enrollment in high school. We're about to launch a Golden State Teacher Pathways program, which will be another career technical education pathway, like those in link learning pathways that you may be familiar with that focuses on teaching and that can, in fact, allow people to take credits while they're in high school towards their early permits. The apprenticeship programs, which are now coming online across the country, which can use state and federal funding to support stipends while people are training to teach programs for expanded learning staff who have been in the afterschool space, for example, AA and BA cohort programs, which can use funding from the classified school employee teacher credentialing program, among other sources. There are many sources of funding through the Golden State Teacher Scholarships, the classified school employee teacher credentialing program and the residency models. Over $600 million are also available for early educator teacher development grants and UPK planning and implementation grants can be used for all of these pathways. And then some may end up getting along this path through residencies, as I noted. We want to maintain the diversity of the early education workforce. We have a racially ethnically, culturally and linguistically diverse group of mostly women who are women of color and nearly half speak a language other than English. Very important for us to build these kind of multi-lingual multicultural programs that are going to be pathways of affirmation and support for children. It's an asset to our children and families that we keep at the forefront of our planning for these initiatives. And then in terms of expansion and an equitable expansion, we need multifaceted supports. Those will have to provide clear advising and navigation, cohorts of learners who can rely on each other as well as their instructors progressing together, financial support that minimizes those upfront costs. And I named a number of the sources of that support and flexible coursework at accessible times and locations. We want to leverage all the expertise that is in this conference and beyond. We're all responsible for building this workforce, the community-based early childhood programs, LEAs and county offices, early childhood child development and teacher preparation programs at community colleges, at CSUs, at UCs and private colleges, state agencies and networks. We will indeed want to partner together to build cohesion around these workforce initiatives and support multiple pathways to a credential. Today, we're going to hear from multiple state agencies about the opportunities ahead and how they plan to work together and how we can all benefit from that. And after a break, we'll hear from California county superintendents and the Sacramento County office about how they are working across agencies to support the early childhood education workforce. So with that, I want to introduce our panelists, a wonderful group of leaders in our state. Lupi Jaime-Milham, who is the deputy director for the child care and development division in the California Department of Social Services. Renee Marshall, who is the administrator in the professional services division of the CCTC, the Commission on Teacher Credentialing. And Sarah Neville Morgan, who is deputy superintendent of instruction in the California Department of Education. And so I'm going to invite our panelists, maybe take the slides down so we can see each other and begin this conversation. Welcome, welcome. We're so delighted to have you here to launch this conference. I'd love to start with each of you from your own vantage point, talking about what is the vision for an equitable early childhood system from your perspective. And I'll ask Renee to start us off. Thank you so much, Linda. I appreciate the opportunity to be here today. And especially to represent the Commission on Teacher Credentialing. For those of you who don't know me, I actually am just one month or one day shy of one month at the Commission. I spent the last 15 years in the community college system. But I'm thrilled today to be here to be working on this initiative. But when we're talking about this first question in terms of like, how are we going? What's the vision for early childhood education? And how are we going to serve children and families in culturally and linguistically affirming ways? Well, it really has to come from an asset based approach. And that is something that we are all really working on and really talking about even in the terminology that we're using and that we're sharing with the field. We want to make sure that we're encouraging and supporting the cultural linguistic practices of the children and the families that are in our schools. We also want to make sure that we're respecting the home spaces and the cultures that the children and families come from. In addition to that, we also want to value the experience and the assets that our teachers bring into the classroom. That is such an essential piece. And encourage professionals, our teacher professionals to really examine their own perspectives and their own beliefs and really learn how to consider all the various backgrounds and cultures that our children are coming from. Most importantly, though, we believe in a system that encourages institutions to embed culturally and linguistically sustaining practices within coursework, helping candidates to better understand what the best practices are in terms of interacting with parents, interacting with families, interacting with children and really understanding people from a variety of backgrounds. And lastly, we want to make sure that teachers have the tools in their bag to make sure they can support every single child that's in their classroom. Awesome. Thank you so much. Lupe, can you share your vision? Yeah, thank you. And thank you again, Dr. Darman Hammond, for your opening remarks. And Renee, diddle, diddle, diddle, diddle, makes kind of compresses my talking points a bit more. If I can just add a little bit more in regards to this is one of the pieces that prior to the transition of these child development programs to CDSS that we were looking at is the importance of making sure that we're co-creating and building together. And so therefore, really lifting up what we heard during that one year of stakeholder feedback in regards to ASCAS, we will also tell you and be able to fill in so much of that information. So we know that based on what Dr. Linda Harman, Darman Harman had highlighted, there is a lot going on in the field already. But we also recognize that under CDSS, we need to continue to also be inclusive of the entire mixed delivery system that includes both our family friend and neighbor, as well as our licensed family child care home settings, and our non-LDA sites that perhaps are not part of the existing pipeline for one reason or another. And thinking about how they're serving three and four year olds through these wraparound many times of these programs, and ensuring that as we are looking at a cohesive approach, that those investments that as us being the CCDF lead, can also be able to fulfill to ensure that we are making sure that children at all different settings have the same type of opportunities and outcomes. Thank you. Awesome. And you know, I can't watch everything in the chat because there's so much good chat going on, but I'm seeing a lot of information about various pipelines for, you know, early childhood educators who are currently working in home settings. And somebody just pinged that they had a bachelor's and a master's degree. And, you know, that environment is, you know, an important part of the system and also the pipeline, people who may have bachelor's degrees from other countries who have worked in child care and early childhood, that we also need to be thinking about and including. So we're going to need a very broad way of considering how to take advantage of the talents and the knowledge base and the expertise that is available, both in our state and beyond its borders. Sarah and Neville Morgan, can you please share your vision? Sarah, and thank you so much. So I'm going to build off what both you set up Linda and then Renee and Lou Bay were able to build on and bring in sort of the educational spice part of it in that we're in this rare opportunity to really transform California's school system to best support the needs of families today. So all of those investments from community schools, expanded learning opportunities, dual language immersion programs, better supports for students with disabilities included in that is access to high quality early education through Universal pre-kindergarten or UPK. So we if you see my slide, you'll see the UPK background and what we're calling California's great start building off of our master plan for early learning in care. But that vision is that by engaging and supporting educational communities and families across the state, California's great start will provide all children high quality, developmentally informed, rigorous and joyful pre-k to third grade learning opportunities, starting with affordable access to effective universal pre-k, thereby supporting enhanced academic high health and life achievements. And so in that as we move forward with those historic transformations around our educational system and implement UPK we have everyone would mute. We have this bridge created and we actually in a slide deck we just released as part of the UPK piece shows this bridge between our early learning and care over to TK012. And so part of that vision really is working better as partners in that partnership. So from what Lupe said on the family, friend and neighbor and really where are our babies and how do we support our littles and what about three and four year olds who may not be in a pre-k part of our system, making sure that we're still all together with professional learning opportunities, different pipelines and pathways and making sure investments starting with our babies are prenatal and in pre-k are sustained and actually enhanced so that as you go into that P3 system you're building off of those assets versus repeating or losing some of those gains that might have been made. So a lot in there we obviously deeply believe in a culturally and linguistically diverse both workforce and children in program. So knowing that investments have been made in dual language immersion programs but always wanting to highlight the bilingualism, multilingualism of California and how in our early childhood world we support home language and build into a really deep part of English language acquisition, multiple languages. So California continues to lead the way. I think we're the fourth largest rural economy and we want to keep that and really be part of that strong piece around it and I think I'll close around that need for families having clear and authentic choice but making sure that choice is authentic across UPK and early childhood which means access to high quality programs in a variety of settings in a variety of ways across multiple communities to support children on that educational journey and recent research coming out of Oklahoma and through Georgetown's research with them that showed lasting gains and in social emotional so children attending high quality UPK having lasting social emotional gains and civic engagement. So some sectors may not be as pleased by that but that means we have more voters because of high quality UPK and whoever thought that would be an outcome. Very appropriate to call that to our attention today. I don't know if what I'm about to say is going to be technologically possible but I see notes in the chat saying that people are trying to copy the conversation in the chat and one helpful person has said that you can right click on one of the chats and select all should pop up and then you could do that but I know there's a lot of eagerness to see what everybody is saying. There's a huge amount of information being shared which is exactly what we want this kind of a gathering to allow us to do. I'm going to come back to you Sarah to pick off the next question. Can you describe the way in which your agency works in supporting the early childhood education workforce and Sarah we know that CDE is overseeing the rollout of universal TK and universal pre-K across the state. So can you share a little about how you're supporting the UPK workforce development? Yeah thanks again Linda so we're obviously doing this in partnership so even though CDE has that role there are bigger roles beyond us so I really want to say this is not CDE on their own but obviously with investing through partnerships with CTC. So Renee thank you for your team and all the work that happens there as well as the state board of education. So our state superintendent Tony Thurman has been addressing our education workforce pipeline and our needs especially around a need for teachers of color and male teachers of color since he took office nearly four years ago. So this is a high priority but I will say a lot of the responsibility around the pipeline or higher ed doesn't exist within CDE. So we're more in a partnership role in a lifting up and really supporting people either locally or through other agencies to address it but we do have some authority. So in those spaces we have worked and launched a UPK workforce accelerated pathways constellation and so some of the things that I saw in the chat around well what about I already have this degree or what about credit for learning those are all pieces that we're really addressing so that as we look at a robust pipeline into early learning programs we can focus on accelerated pathways for those with child development permits. We also have a lot of workforce investments through the UPK planning and implementation and have a hundred million that went specifically for workforce activities to support TK our California state preschool program our CSPP and kindergarten teachers and through our partnership with CTC created a resource guide for UPK implementers called the UPK teacher resource compendium that really looks at a lot of this and before I pass mine on I just want to shout out from our UPK planning and implementation grants we actually have a little bit of data that's starting to help us understand more. So 61% of LEAs have stated they're offering TK at all of their sites so creating greater access but also obviously creating greater need for teachers as you look at all of those TK programs rolling out and 80% of them said they need additional steps to recruit more educators to TK classrooms but that their most common step has been partnering with institutes of higher ed to complete the outstanding TK requirements. So lots in that space as we look at that our county offices of ed 96% replied in our survey that they are partnering with local institutes of higher ed to offer eligible early childhood education or that coursework. So Lindenwall CDE may not have a direct role I think through some of our funds and our partnerships we're able to both elevate and provide guidance support webinars all these partnerships including with LPI to make sure that we can still lean in and help get more of our workforce and a more culturally and linguistically robust workforce. Terrific. Lupe, CDSS oversees several workforce initiatives for birth through school-aged children including quality counts California and the child care licensing processes. How do you see your role in supporting the early learning workforce? Thank you so much for the question. So the child care and development division is the lead administrator for the federal child care and development fund CCDF. With this includes the quality funding that supports the entire continuum of the workforce within the mixed delivery system. So there are several projects that I want to highlight that CDSS is investing that directly impacts the workforce and you caught out a few of those too which is the QCC workforce pathways grant the California early childhood mentor program the child care development training consortium as part as and these are just a couple I could probably go for a while but just to mention that these are part of the system that supports degrees attainment or permit advancements as well as providing a pipeline for professional development and coaching too. And so it's well contributes to the goal of retention and recruitment of the workforce. During the pandemics the family and children experience significant loss and it just was it has been such difficult times during these past couple years and so we heard from the workforce how important it was to have investments around infant and family mental health that is core and so as part of that core work then we had some targeted investments that we enhanced out of our quality dollars and had some additional pandemic funds at 10.6 million for infant early and childhood mental health consultation that the network and it provided a couple pieces. One is targeting new individuals that can come out so building that workforce that can come out and support our workforce that are providing both culturally and linguistically development care but also informing to through trauma-informed practices and then the last piece I would want to add also was that through the pandemic we also have had numerous conversations with the child care provider united ccpu and as part of that we have a 40 million training fund that was as part of that agreement through those conversations and the training fund specifically really supports inclusion training equity language access apprenticeship and a portal to support the sharing of resources so as you notice with just this brief menu there's a little bit of for everyone where we the whole goal is that everyone can see themselves and these investments which are really centered around supporting our workforce. Awesome thank you so much Lupe and Renee the ctc oversees the both child development permits and the new ece credential and then the multiple subjects credential with the extra 24 units which are all the pathways into the various parts of this system so can you give us an update on the work as it relates to early childhood credentials? Absolutely and I'm excited that we have a lot coming up as everybody knows the commission our responsibility is to make sure that every child is taught by a highly qualified teacher that includes program standards certification process regulations everybody knows all the bits and pieces that goes into it it can be quite complicated but it's also really exciting as we know the pk3 credential was voted in september excuse me in october at the commission meeting tpes and standards have been developed now we're waiting for regulations to go through which we anticipate in early 2023 I'm excited to say that we have an introduction webinar coming up I believe it's just next week oh my goodness it's like one week from today at 11 o'clock so everybody save the date save the time if you haven't seen the announcement either in the psd news or the ec news shoot me an email I'm happy to help get you connected and if you aren't signed up for those the psd news or the ec news please highly suggest getting signed up with those but linda one of the pieces that I think is so essential right now that I feel like is a huge part of our role and responsibility is to listen to the expertise in the field you know we have research coming out showing that on average our ec professionals have 15 plus years of experience we know that it's a highly skilled group of people that we get the opportunity to work with and so and I love to talk everybody who knows me knows I love to talk and guess what it's my turn to listen and I cannot wait I'm going on listening tours I'm trying to get into as many spaces as people will allow me to just yesterday I had the opportunity to be face-to-face at the ventura county office of education and just what oh also cde everybody just so you know it was so exciting to be in a space with all these leaders in early care education and then at the end seeing all this collaboration and just beautiful expertise just you know just being able to just soak it all in and then at the end of the meeting they literally shared every single announcement from department of education that you could ever imagine and just seeing that collaboration and that you know coming together linda like that's a part a huge part of this and so there's all sorts of places that people can be like included if they want to like right now there's a field test that's happening for the teacher level permit we have 17 colleges that are already signed up 14 of those are community colleges two are prior ones private institution and two are leas i'd love to see a much more diverse group and that work doesn't start right away so hopefully more people will jump in in addition to that the design team is meeting soon i mean there's just there's so many pieces that if anyone's interest and i shouldn't say if anybody's interested i know you're interested in being involved because you're here today i want to guarantee to everybody ctc we are here to work together as this rollout happens this is not going to be two or three days this is going to be years of all of us coming and working together to make sure we do what's right for the early childhood workforce which we know is already highly qualified and we just need to see who's interested in going on these different pathways but also most importantly for the child for california's children thank you linda and i think we lost linda right at the end there but i want to just thank you so much loupe rene and sarah for providing that framing and context around supporting the early childhood teacher workforce and for reminding us that your three agencies are constantly communicating and working together and so we thank you for for engaging together in that work um so we're now going to hear from two early childhood teachers who are at different points in their preparation tre- trajectories who are going to share a little bit about themselves and some of the barriers and challenges they've had along the way um first we'll hear from linda jackson who is a state preschool teacher in central unified and then we'll hear from karen sanchez who is a pair educator working in a tk classroom in san diego unified hi my name is linda jackson i work for central unified um as a preschool teacher i have been at my site uh for over 16 years i currently hold a site supervisor permit last winter i decided to go back to school because i wanted to transition from preschool to tk and so i signed up at national university i took three classes over the summer and due to help reasons i had to put it on hold i then was advised by one of the counselors at national university to take a class at city college that way it's not as fast as national and it would be less stressful for me so next year um in the next year i will be starting a special ed class which i feel that will really benefit from me since i work in a preschool classroom um it was very hard for me to decide to go back to school because there was a lot of things that i had to really think about how i was going to um uh how i was going to have time to study um the cost of my books um also it was i was thinking about that when i started the credential program program that i might have to move to a different school um so i can put in my hours um and like i said last year before i started thinking about going back to school i um started looking around for support like family support that can help me with my own children i have two children that are um are um elementary age and i needed to also have time to spend with them so i asked my family for help um i also um rented my books i rented my books through amazon that way there would be a little cheaper for me um that was a little hard because i wasn't able to take my notes um or you know write in my books so that was a little hard but i was able to return the books back in good condition um then i like i said i asked my family for help so that way i had time to study and i can have time to um be with my children as well hi my name is Karen Sanchez i am working in transitional kindergarten classroom in San Diego Unified i've been doing this for just six weeks and before that i was a para educator for eight years who had considered becoming a teacher but was really just overwhelmed even by the thought because um i didn't know how i'd pay for it i didn't i had a lot of self-doubt i didn't know if i could really follow through beginning to end and also i didn't know how to navigate and just even where to begin um but recently through this partnership with the University of Laverne and San Diego Unified i joined the University of Laverne's Early Childhood Education program working towards an ECE permit and it is fully funded which is incredible it is allowing me to do the schooling online and then implement basically what i'm learning right away it's all happening at the same time which i think is so valuable and um there's a roadmap that's been laid out for me so that i can easily see where i'm at where i'm going and how i'm gonna get there and that's just really one of the main things that gave me the confidence to know that i can do this and that um i'm gonna have this guidance throughout the way throughout the whole way which is just so important to me and it's really what's keeping me enthused and motivated and confident i wish more programs like this were made available to people that are interested in becoming educators i feel it would make all the difference because it is it is hard it is hard for many reasons everybody has their own personal reasons but when there's an employer or a university that's backing you and giving you all these supports it is easier to see yourself at that finish line and easier to think of yourself as that teacher so i my hope is that more people are able to take advantage of programs like this and that more teachers come out of it and um so yeah i'm just really grateful and excited and i can't wait to to complete my program and maybe take it further from there we'll see so inspiring um i was really inspired when i talked with both linda and karen um but the barriers and challenges that they named um are limiting the opportunities to enter and move along the teacher prep pipeline for many many potential candidates um and other higher education faculty students teachers district leaders that we've spoken with echo a lot of what linda and karen just talked about so we'd like to just pause and provide some space for reflecting on what could your organization do to help address some of these barriers and which barrier and try to be like real specific in your reflection um so we'll go into breakouts uh the breakout will be very quick you're going to be put into random groups of four or five and you'll have about six minutes so do do some brief intros um name and organization and then discuss your reflections on what your organization could do to help address some of these barriers and we'll see you back here in a few minutes of policy and advocacy for the california county superintendents rihanna hi thank you so much for for having me today uh i'll be giving a very brief uh a presentation on some promising practices that uh that are going on county office level please if you could go to the next slide please so i love this slide i think it's a really helpful reminder cde has put out the following epk guiding principles specifically for county offices and i think it's a really great reminder for the conversation today so first and foremost and all things that we are doing is we're implementing epk there should be a focus on equity focus on our littlest learners who are supporting uh second we should be approaching epk planning and implementation with a learning mindset so being open minded having conversations like we're having today bringing folks together is incredibly important uh which leads right into the the third guiding principle here to connect partners and implementers to make sure that we are creating a very coherent and um comprehensive system for our littlest learners uh fourth we should approach epk planning and implementation um as an informer and capacity builders all levels so again this is a great uh great example of that in practice and five respect and leverage the knowledge and expertise of early learning and care and expanded learning communities so i'm really excited that that we have this event today we're bringing together experts uh to help to support epk implementation next slide please so this is an example of what a career lattice could look like in the early learning space there should be an there should be an emphasis and opportunities for folks to enter in uh to the system in multiple places and also move through the career lattice um with with ease so this is um just one example uh of the different steps that could be included in a career lattice at any given um at any given county next slide please so this is an example um from santa claire county office of education so thank you to them for for providing this example um but essentially this is this is uh what can how you can create a pipeline within your own county so first and foremost is a need uh the you need to assess what the need is in your county um so all of the the details and mechanics that that go into that assessment uh second would be to map the assets of the county so what currently exists and then what are the gaps that you will need to to fill in as you're filling out what the pipeline should look like uh third finding partnerships as we know especially in the upk space partners are incredibly important especially as we're we're moving into this mix delivery system where we have different partners who are experts at different things partnerships are incredibly important fourth again identifying gaps so where do the gaps exist and then five planning so how do you plan to uh to implement a system that that best supports the the specific needs of your own community next slide please so again this comes from um santa claire county office of education and it's what their what their plan looks like what their collaborative looks like within their county so this will look very different um from from region to region um but essentially you have the county office of education partnering with leas higher education institutions and other early learning providers and organizations in order to create a comprehensive system uh that best fits the needs of your specific community in your community's needs and that's it for my presentation um i've included my my contact information in this slide but i would love to uh to uh the opportunity to introduce julie montally and the team with sacramento county office of education who'll be giving um some more examples of promising practices thank you thank you brianna we are really excited to be here um as the executive director for our uh lead agency for the sac e3 and that's the sacramento consortium for empowering early educators it's really my pleasure to be here and to be joined by some and you're going to see it's quite actually a large group but it's still only some of our partners in our collective goal to build a diverse and highly qualified group of educators across the full early learning continuum and that's through our the grant funding that you are all aware of i'm sure the eetd the early educator teacher development grant we're also really fortunate in sacramento to be building upon a really rich history of collaboration here partnerships and relationships are are just really key to making this comprehensive pipeline work and you're going to see that each organization brings really a special aspect and area of expertise and truly a willingness to both enhance existing structures as well as create new approaches and particularly when it comes to recruitment practices i want us to kind of pause for a second on that and say i mean for recruiting of all early learning educator roles one segment we all know is supporting really developmental pk programs and the qualifications that are needed but we're really committed to a larger goal and that's to continue and really increase the ec workforce across all avenues by offering financial supports career navigation supports coursework help through permits and degrees and training opportunities and that includes our leaders our school leaders through our early learning principles academy and district leaders that we can't forget about those those folks i'm excited to share the zoom stage today with representatives from charters community college district our four-year university here sacramento state we've got one of our two school of educations with us we also have one of our larger private providers and in addition a leader for expanded learning in sacramento and of course a regular close partner on many fronts our resource and referral agency here in sacramento so you're going to have an opportunity to hear just a little bit from each of these perspectives and i'm so happy to welcome joy to koi from gateway charters to kick us off thank you julie i agree with you it's been really nice to participate today i enjoy all the conversation and the suggestions in the chat thank you everyone so i'm representing gateway community charters which manages five leas offering multi-lingual pk and early admittance pk programs in sacramento and yolo counties and we're thrilled that dr montalie envisioned a collaboration between a wide range of providers and included charter schools she understands that it will take all of us coming together to get families the options and choices they need and deserve and this is very much in line with the work of charter schools but as we can tell from the chat bringing together such a broad group often presents challenges of competing interests and sometimes uncertainty but dr montalie did an excellent job mitigating that by centering our group around the common upk vision as already mentioned by mrs neville morgan that we are to provide joyful early childhood experiences to all children and that is a common goal that we can all agree on she also made site visits to determine the needs of programs to determine the needs of staff of students and to make personal connections with those with whom she wanted to partner the sac e3 consortium for teacher professional development has already been very helpful for us in reviewing teacher transcripts determining which of those courses are applicable for the ec or child development course requirement and the sac e3 recognizes a need to backfill staffing gaps as the workforce shifts a bit and in doing so is supporting all program options and the individual teachers and the para educators and gateway charters is thankful and happy to participate in the fact e3 consortium thank you joy and yes everybody i i pay her well to say those things so joy uh thank you so much for being with us you represent a really important group and next i want to talk a little or have lori perry from our los rios community college district talk a little bit about um a couple of things but joy you brought up the um assistance with the transcript preview and so thank you to lori for just jumping right in with that so i'm going to go ahead and turn it over to you uh take it away lori thank you julie um i represent the los rios community college district in this collaboration and the los rios community college district is a second largest community college district in the state only after la so there's a large number of students in all of our different early childhood education programs at both sacrament of the college american river some of this info from college we're excited to partner with back e3 because we see it as an opportunity for our students to move through any through the field through the career lattice into professional level jobs and so i think that's going to be really important for them and we feel we can support them by having first of all the ability for them to take classes across this huge large district at any college um and then the career navigator and a career navigator will be someone who they know they can go to who will put them in the right direction now we have wonderful websites we have a district wide website that we have almost much information out about the community colleges so what we're going to try and do is have a career navigator who can help them pinpoint their needs and then point them in the right direction not necessarily do it for them but empower them to find the information that they need and then i'm always happy to help students i've been helping them get permits through the child development training consortium for many years and so reading transcripts seeing what classes people need to take advanced first maybe associate permit then a teacher permit and then transfer i want them to know they can go all the way and i really appreciate the support that i think this grant will give them so many thanks in that area thank you so much lori and lori mentions the fact that this is a comprehensive pathway to really be able to have people on ramp and off ramp as they need to and as they would like to when we want that to be accessible and the opportunities to be there so they can pick and choose what area of early learning of the early learning continuum they'd like to you know either tread on for a while maybe change to a different um maybe not so part of that pathway then is to actually have the opportunity if they would like to to go on to part of our partnership with Sacramento State so we have Dr Anna Garcia Navarra is here to talk a little bit about some building on some existing structures and we're so excited to have you with us Anna thank you julie happy to be here um just like julie said i represent Sacramento State University i'm a faculty member and also the program coordinator for the cohort and blended program that i'm going to be talking about and part of this program which is the child and adolescent development is to offer our cohort and blended program to the ec workforce students earned their batches of arts degree offered tuition assistance with this collaboration with set e3 and just to share about the structure of this program the child development batches of arts degree is based on a learning community model so we place students in cohorts with a combination of video and web-based delivery this is coupled with the local face-to-face cohort discussion and facilitation the web-based instruction modules are taught by our faculty and are designed and implemented to support and extend the video stream content delivery so the on-campus instructor delivers the the lectures video stream and then we have a cohort facilitator who views the content with the students at their local site the video stream content is then discussed with the cohort facilitators and this model allows for students to interact and discuss course content at their satellite location we started this program 15 years ago and it was due primarily because of the teacher shortage in early childhood education and the purpose was to increase the workforce and helping students earn their batches degree and now we're faced with the same shortage so now this program again is being revived so ECE providers were challenged at that time with completing their bachelor's degree so because of the limited access to a university for scheduling and either social or psychological barriers so the blended approach offers students who may not benefit from a fully online program with the opportunity for a traditional face-to-face teaching and the online instruction this is a three-year program students take two courses per semester and this includes summer so the majority of our students are working adults who are not able to attend a university on campus or the traditional schedule that universities offer and the program structure offers the following the location of where the students live and work that's where they meet to take their classes the courses that they take are offered in the evenings and the class sizes are usually roughly between 20 to 25 per cohort and the students are together with their cohort facilitators for the three years so this builds a sense of community and support each other along the process thank you thank you so much Anna for sharing a great model that again we want to build on those existing structures that we have as well as create new and part of the the the wonderful partnership with Sacramento State is that we are able to support students candidates with a fair amount of tuition assistance through the EETD grant money and we know that of course financial barriers can be what really holds folks back and and we want to remove as many of those barriers as we can so financial barriers as well as those more human supports that career navigation that Laurie mentioned and so so thank you for to both of our IHEs for being with us today now I do want to turn to the schools of education we are so blessed to have two schools of education that work with us on this grant one is housed here with me at our county office of education and then the the intern program that will be partially funding tuition for is in that program we have here today with us Dr. Margaret Fortune from the Fortune School of Education again so blessed to have her and her team as partners in the SAC E3 consortium she has a very unique way of providing an intern program in particular with this ECE focus so Dr. Fortune take it away Julie thanks so much we're excited to be a part of the SAC E3 consortium and Fortune School of Education is a part of a regional initiative in partnership with the Sacramento County Office of Education to close the African-American achievement gap by getting kids ready for college now starting in preschool so through this partnership we also credential teachers and administrators for 60 school systems largely in Sacramento in the Bay Area but also throughout the California and we're credited by the California Commission on teacher credentialing to offer district intern programs so what this particular partnership has allowed us to do is to start a regio-inspired lab school that will be a part of how teachers earning their multiple subject credentials get their early childhood experience they'll have their classroom experience at Fortune Pre-School which will open up an elk grove in January and so this partnership is helping to fund those activities but also helping with tuition assistance for teachers who will earn their credentials through this program in partnership with the SAC E3 we're really excited that most of the preschoolers that these teachers will be teaching are African-American they will also most likely be low-income students who are eligible for the subsidies through our resource and referral agency so for those in this space that are interested in the equity work these teachers are going to have that experience front and center with our youngest learners in a model that is regio-inspired that oftentimes kids of color don't get to have access to but really centers on the child and their abilities so we're so excited to be starting this partnership and to provide this setting for our early childhood educators to be to get their professional development and for our K-12 classroom teachers in the region to have the opportunity to earn their credentials as the state puts its focus on early childhood education. Thank you Dr. Fortune we're so excited to be kind of on this journey with and alongside you and I look forward to the opening of the preschool lab school that's just really a phenomenal piece so thank you so much so next we want to kind of sort of turn our attention to a few other partners that represent various agencies and groups that support many aspects of the workforce development including the recruitment aspects and working with these folks I have found that we're they're really great for creating access and opportunities for targeted audiences and some of those are audiences that we haven't typically or traditionally really invested in looking at and so we are doing that now and we encourage really everyone to kind of think about the tried and true but then also think about outreach strategies to build the early educator workforce in some new and different ways so first we have Shayla Williams Barnes from Catalyst Kids and Shayla what great stuff can you tell us today? Hi everyone my name is Shayla I am with Catalyst Kids we operate over 160 sites up and down California we care for infants, toddlers all the way up until school age and so our our offerings specifically for teachers is that like Julie mentioned we're probably often the forgot about grouping we highlight mostly before and after school programs specifically in my cluster of Sacramento area we have teachers right now who we're getting at the assistant level with not a lot of experience and maybe a little bit of schooling and so we use that opportunity to kind of build on that that foundation of those green teachers we've been able to work and collaborate with Dr. Montale and making sure that grants are provided to teachers who want to continue to do schooling and that has been super helpful in our field as an agency we really hone in on those teachers who are coming into us as green as they are because as we all know staffing has been an issue in our field lately and so we're just really trying to focus on making sure they want to see this see this industry through with us and through the ages of our children and so in many cases we pair our assistant teachers up with maybe mentor teachers who've been around a long time it can offer that in addition to in classroom experience but also those things that are kind of outside of the box you may not learn from a textbook that has been super helpful to us in addition our our cluster with Dr. Montale has been just really helpful in allowing us to collaborate with community partners who we normally wouldn't collaborate with as much I think Joy touched on it early on our industry can be slightly competitive but being able to come together as a county and decide you know what we our focus is families children and subsequently obviously our teachers too and supporting them and so she's created quite a great space for us to kind of bounce ideas off of one another and build partnerships that we probably wouldn't have had before so thank you Dr. Montale that has been super helpful yeah so I think our building of our partnerships has been probably the biggest strength that we could offer from this and any advice that we would give is just like Dr. Montale said kind of think outside of the box of who your core stakeholders would be and think of the others too. Thank you Shayla and sort of just we're going to have Mark Drew's piggyback a little bit on on this recruitment aspect Mark overseas he's our director of expanded learning here at the county office of education and Mark and I started having conversations last year and he became part of our UPK team and so we've had a chance to really work closely on a number of things so Mark thank you so much for being here and sharing your perspective. No thank you Dr. Montale so my name is Mark Drew's regional lead for Region 3 expanded learning programs here in Sacramento County we roughly have 336 expanded learning programs in Sacramento the nine surrounding counties that we provide technical assistance and support to and we're currently growing in our expanded learning ecosystem in Region 3 we're practicing and growing our expanded learning opportunities programs which are welcoming on TK and K youth for the first time ever and roughly by July 1st 2023 we'll be welcoming TK youth onto 143 elementary sites if we're just looking at Sacramento County alone and so what can we do to help prepare that workforce as they welcome in this new demographic so that's why we we're excited with this collaboration with Saki 3 Consortium and our early learning partners to help build and grow the capacity of our expanded learning early learning workforce we're especially targeting the expanded learning opportunity practitioners because they're diverse and they speak multiple languages and we're helping to build their capacity and advance them up the workforce ladder if that's a pathway they so choose and many of them have gone on to careers in education but it's taken them longer because of certain barriers that existed that we saw in the chats economics maybe not even knowing the pathways that are available to them so just this is a great opportunity for us to highlight those pathways those opportunities and that's what we're doing in the Saki 3 Consortium recently we partnered with Dr. Montauli Stacy Suo out of the Sacramento County Office of Education Early Learning Department to go ahead and help build start that foundational piece of building competencies and development developmentally informed practices for expanded learning workforce as they slowly welcome on a TK students into their programs for the first time so just want to highlight that you know if you are in the state of California and you haven't reached out to your expanded learning regional lead team I highly encourage you to do so we can't do this work alone we need help of all partners to build and diversify the workforce and just want to leave you with this fact we'll put in the chat the link to the contacts if you're not familiar with who your contacts are in expanded learning in your particular area but roughly on average each academic year there are over 800 to 1200 clinical experience hours that exist in expanded learning that we could help develop and grow that workforce so I just want to thank Dr. Montauli for inviting us and welcoming us into the Saki 3 Consortium thank you so much Mark you know Mark and I have talked a lot about how we have this incredible group Mark correct me if I'm wrong but I believe it's around 760 or 80 some odd staff members across the county and what a great group to tap into in terms of workforce recruitment they've basically already stepped into it saying you know maybe education is is my future certainly they're present and so working with Mark has really truly been a delight so thank you so much so our last panel member is Anthony Garcia from child action incorporated which is our resource and referral agency we partner on many things and this is just but one of them but such an important group in terms of working in the mixed delivery space and again recruitment for the workforce in pockets where we may not have had as great a connection so thank you Anthony for joining us today sir thank you Dr. Montauli thank you to the other panelists from Saki 3 I really appreciate the opportunity to say a little bit about what we're doing here locally I am from child action I represent the alternative payment program and the resource and referral program here our agency known as child action on the alternative payment program side we support roughly about 5,000 families at any given point that fluctuates a bit that represents about maybe 92 to 9,400 children often coming from our most challenged communities in Sacramento County on the resource and referral side we're charged with connecting with all licensed providers in Sacramento County currently that count is somewhere around 1800 about 485 licensed program licensed center programs this will include both public and private and then the difference maker is a family child care side which can hover somewhere around 1300 to 1350 so that's quite a large pool of providers that we work with in addition to that we work with the family friend and neighbor communities that are both hooked up to our alternative payment program as a provider receiving a subsidy for an eligible family or those family friend and neighbors that are interested in continuing or deepening their own professional development because they recognize they're caring for children especially very young children and can use some support in that space as a participant in SAC E3 we think it's very important for us to continue to assume a space that recognizes both the opportunity that the resource and referral program like a child care initiative project which is building the capacity and family child care to support families recruit train retain family child care providers often we're working with monolingual providers to use that as an opportunity for a pipeline if those interested in that space want to pursue a career into this space that we're talking about the UPK UTK world but also to remember there are a number of providers in that space that won't choose to move in that path and if they don't choose that path what are we offering to those providers in the way of support we hear we hear the mention of it in the public conversations or the conversations in that public space of pay parity pay equity how do we support professional development career development permit development school units how do so the the bigger question for us as a resource and referral agency in that space is how do we do exactly that for this private community of providers who has chosen not to pursue that career path but whose support for young children is just as important and often the young children that they're supporting are coming from those marginalized communities those communities that are monolingual communities so how do we continue to recognize that and create those pause spaces in the conversation to recognize this challenge and try to develop something that might be a parallel process to support that space in addition to that as we think about the family friend and neighbor providers they're even maybe a bit farther separated or they have a bit more of a gap in connecting to a formalized system of providing care even though they're providing care to families often and what we heard earlier one of the speakers that was talking about their story on how they were trying to attain the educational units and get into the college base was she had to rely on a family friend and neighbor to give her the time to get through the coursework in the classes that is always going to be a true story for anyone who has children that is going to work or going to school and if they're using these other providers if they're using family friend and neighbor providers how do we like with family child care providers consider to continue to offer support to this population of the early learning workforce so that they are recognized for their commitment to young children and not just in words or commentary but also in that idea of parity in pay equity professional development opportunities and I think one of the more important parts of our participation in SAC E3 as we continue to develop out these programs is to bring the stories of what we have learned over the years in running different professional development programs going back to AB 212 the staff retention workforce development that program that used to be in existence and a few number of others going back a little bit farther but to bring the stories of where the challenge came up and to think about why how we might be making promises or carving out a pathway for somebody who may not be able to get there and more specifically if you just think in terms of an Arabic or Farsi speaking family child care provider who's encouraged to participate and go down this career path where will their struggles be real how much of the education that's offered through community college or the state school is offered in Farsi or Arabic what would be the expectation around their English competency to continue along that path and if that becomes too much of a challenge how do we continue to celebrate them and provide them with the support while they can continue to serve the children and families that we work with so we're excited to continue in the conversations and see how this can develop even more in Sacramento County thank you Dr. Waddala. Anthony you uh you bring up so many incredible points and everyone hopefully you can see that this is why it's so important to bring different voices to the table which is not always easy right and sometimes there are things that are not easy to to grapple with and I appreciate you very much Anthony for being that that voice that we all need to hear so we hope that you take away that it's kind of like we hear you know it takes a village to raise a child well clearly it takes a village to raise a comprehensive early educator pipeline with various ways to on ramp and off ramp for uh an individual's you know selected career path whatever that might be building on existing structures you know take a look do do uh an inventory of what what's out there bring the folks together and then expand on ideas so that uh different people can really come come together our collective advice is start the conversation be okay with surfacing these kinds of challenges that aren't really easy but they are important and they are there and so rather than deny it let's let's you know let's put our heads together let's identify these these issues these challenges and what are the potential solutions that we can come up with I think for me and and hopefully I speak for our team is that appreciating and honoring what each of us bring to the table is is so important clearly not one person not one entity can can do all of this um you know my my career experience has really been from the lea side so I really um I think it's very important for us to say okay so yes that the what a tk looks like on a school campus being incredibly developed developmentally appropriate and how do we address that with leaders who are so impactful in that space I'm looking at some of the pieces that were put into the chat and I wholeheartedly agree with those of you who talked about that so one way that we're trying to work on that is through our early learning academy right now I've got 40 site school and district leaders with me learning about play-based instruction but that's only one segment right there's so many other partners that bring a different type of expertise and I'm so grateful to each and every one of them um I hope this has been helpful to those of you who are trying to figure out how to start um and really the the honest to God's truth is in a nutshell just start so thank you so much for having the Sacramento uh consortium SAC E3 with you today thank you so much Julie and Sacramento County E3 um what an awesome example of coordinated regional collaboration um your your organization might already be part of a regional group like this or partnering with one other organization or maybe you're just starting to think about more partners um but we're going to give you a little bit of time right now to network with others from your region um like I said you may already be working together um and you can use this time to get some work done um or you might be making some new connections um when Nicole opens the breakout rooms you will self-select one of the rooms based on your region um some regions not all of them some of them will have multiple rooms and that's because we want to keep the rooms to about 15 or fewer people so if you notice for example you're in region 11 and you'll choose from four different groups um 11 a b c and d and just try to distribute yourselves evenly across the group so if you notice one of the groups has a bunch of people and another group only has a few people you might want to join the smaller group. We'll have a little bit over 20 minutes in the breakout and each room should have an assigned facilitator facilitators you should also self select into your assigned breakout room at this time. If you're in a room with no facilitator please chat me or the host and we'll help get a facilitator in there with you um so when Nicole opens the rooms you'll see a breakout room button pop up on the zoom toolbar at the you're muted Kathy you're muted Kathy sorry um when you click it the list of rooms should pop up and you just click on the join button to the right of the name of the room that you want to join okay so go ahead and click on that for me it's the more button with the three dots um you're gonna click on breakout rooms and there's a list of breakout rooms there you're just gonna scroll down and find a room based on your region and click join all right I see people going into their rooms and we'll see you on the other side a special thank you to our presenters our panelists and facilitators and all the people behind the scenes who helped make this event happen a big shout out to our event manager Nicole Wilbon and Brea Henderson who's been helping behind the scenes today with the chat and all of the tech issues thank you again for bearing with us as we uh experienced a few tech snafus but um I hope that you were able to learn something today and that you met a new person and that you were able to make some connections today so thank you all for joining us we hope you have a great rest of your day