 Hello, everybody. Thank you for joining us all today to hear from a very exciting panel of education leaders and partners who are deeply involved in the development and implementation of youth apprenticeship programs across the nation. We have a range of perspectives represented here today from school leaders to community college administrators and state agency partners. Before I introduce you to our panelists, I want to remind everyone to please submit your questions in the chat throughout the session and I will be addressing those questions at the end of the session. And hopefully we get to all of your questions. And so I want to introduce our panelists. The first panelist is Lisa Cook. She is the Dean of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences in Berkeley City College in California. She provides leadership for college initiatives to transform basic skills instruction, transition high school and adult learners to college programs, offer quality instructional support across the curriculum, develop a teacher preparation pipeline and implement an apprenticeship in a non-traditional sector. So welcome, Lisa. Our next panelist is Marquita Friday. She's the Director of Career Programs for the Maryland State Department of Education. She currently serves as the Director of Career Programs for the Division of Career and College Readiness at the Maryland State Department of Education where she has held progressively responsible positions since 1998. She oversees the department's youth apprenticeship initiative through the development and statewide expansion of apprenticeship Maryland. So welcome, Marquita. Sean Kelly, the Assistant Principal and Industry Liaison for Dennis Technical Education Center. Dennis, Sean is an experienced educator with a passion for school redesign, career technical education and work-based learning. A thought leader, instructional coach, mentor, career advisor, teacher, artist and craftsman with a proven record of creativity and design. Welcome, Sean. And Kristi Snyder, the LEAP Director of Project for Pride in Living, PPL. LEAP is the Learn and Earn to Achieve Potential Program. Kristi is the Director at Project for Pride in Living. She's been dedicated to serving students who do not have the access to the culture of power for some time. She currently partners with multiple schools and GED programs to support young people who have had county involvement, set their career dreams and make them happen. So welcome, Kristi, to the panel. Just another general reminder, if you have questions, please place them in the chat. We'll be documenting those questions and we'll be asking those at the end of the session. So I want to start with Sean by asking about the importance of expanding access to post-secondary education and training, as well as creating more good jobs for residents. We know that youth apprenticeship is designed to provide both at the same time so that high school students can earn dual credits and credentials while they're getting paid at the same time. How could this be a transformational model to expand opportunity in your region? How is youth apprenticeship important, or how do you think about educating and preparing our young people for the future to promote more equitable education and employment outcomes? Sean. Thank you, Pam. Again, I'm Sean Kelly. I'm sitting here in Boise, Idaho in my office at DTECH. We're called the Dennis Technical Education Center. We're a CTE high school here in Boise. We serve a variety of different high schools in Boise, as well as a couple of the surrounding areas. Students also, homeschool students, online school students come to us to take a variety of different CTE classes, as well as we're now getting students into registered apprenticeships. The simple answer to your question on what is the impact of apprenticeship, the simple answer is I feel it's everything. You know, work-based learning and that highest form of work-based learning, which is apprenticeships, is what I feel the future of education. I've been in education working as kind of trying to be a change agent for the last 25 years within the public school system. And just everything that I see what's gone on over especially the last two decades and now where we're at and where we're headed, there's a really bright future if we jump on this opportunity now. We have an election coming up and if I were running for president, my entire domestic agenda would be based around apprenticeship, because when you look at apprenticeship, it has the potential to possibly impact so many different areas. Everything from the economy to the jobs, unemployment rate, the skills gap, infrastructure, and the reason we're all here is also it can impact positively education and equity. With that power, we have the chance to reimagine what learning could or should look like in public schools. Apprenticeship and work-based learning in general, it's kind of the hot item right now. It's the new FAD in education. Hopefully we do this well so it's not just a FAD and it continues on because it's such a powerful options multiplier I think for students. When you look at what's going on right now because of COVID-19 and the amount of disengagement we're seeing from students around the country. We've started the year virtually. We're getting ready to start back coming in on a staggered schedule, but I've never seen so many students struggling academically and being disengaged right now. And I think we're seeing one of the causes of this, we're seeing the result of that is we've had almost two decades of no child left behind and what later became the Every Student Succeeds Act where the focus was on accountability and high-stakes testing instead of experiential project-based learning and career exploration. That's where it really needs to shift to. And when you are disengaged from that, what you have is what I like to call content without context. We're giving lots of content online. It limits what we're able to do right now. And so without that context, students are like, I don't really care about this right now. I've got so many other things going on at home. I have very limited access to food, parents are maybe unemployed right now, spotting the internet at best. And so that equity or that achievement gap is just getting broader. And so if we're not careful and we don't do this right, we could see the same thing happen with apprenticeships as well. Because again, without access and opportunity, that gap widens. And if we're not really intentional about how we implement apprenticeships and who we're recruiting and targeting, that gap can continue to widen or we can close that gap depending on how we implement it. But without education, what has done in the past is created this disconnect between what students are learning now in school versus what they need to know to be successful in the real world. And so I ask the question, shouldn't school in the real world be the same thing? We need to make that connection between what students are doing in the real world to what they're doing in the classroom to what is going on in the real world. That's the power of apprenticeship. We're getting students out and they're using that academic knowledge, combining it with high technical skills to create these opportunities for students that are going to send them on a trajectory that I don't think anything else can do. And finally, you know, when I'll pick on math as an example, how many of you, I know there's, we can't see you right now, but how many of you ever thought or set out loud to your teacher and your math class, when am I ever going to use this? Raise your hand. I know everybody out there. If you're not raising your hand, you're lying. And so that's the power of apprenticeship is we're bringing that context when you're going to use it. So we're a career and tech ed high school and so our students don't ask that question, when are we going to learn this and especially our students are now in paid internships and apprenticeships. The only time they ask the question, when am I ever going to use this is because they want to do more of it. And so I think there's a lot of power and opportunity that we have here, if we do it right in terms of equity in education, I think equity when you boil it down comes down to two things, access and opportunity. And if we do this right, and we provide more access for students are most disadvantaged students, and especially opportunities because that's where the gap broadens is, they don't have the experiences of maybe some another student who has more opportunity or resources. And so when you give those opportunities and you give that access, you close that gap down the story of Mark well yesterday really resonated with me. And he mentioned in there in his own words, he wasn't sure if he if it if his the decision for him to be able to be accepted to college was based solely on SAT and ACT scores. He wasn't sure that he would get into the school of choice that he wanted to do, but because of apprenticeship and those opportunities that were opened up for him, it sent him on a career path that is amazing. And so we need more of that. And I'm sure we'll talk about this a little more and other questions but one of the knocks on apprenticeship is tracking. And I would say to that that it's tracking based on your intention. If your intention is we have given these students lots of opportunity to explore different things and access to curriculum and technology and they choose that path. We're not tracking. And so we need to be intentional, intentional on how we give access to students and we need to really I think in my mind we need to push career expiration down into those primary school level. So we're giving opportunity and access and information. If a student doesn't know this occupation exists how are they going to choose that as a pathway. Before we can push career expiration, hands on activities project based learning. That's where we're going to make a difference in terms of equity and so yeah I would just end it with apprenticeship is everything in my mind it's the future. So I think Sean, there can never be enough said about apprenticeship and contextual learning and watching the light come on for students as they learn a theoretical concept and they're able to apply it in their day to day work. I'm really glad you brought up the suggestion that sometimes apprenticeship is perceived as tracking but nothing how often some of these young people end up in an apprenticeship program and it's life changing for them. And not otherwise had an opportunity to do so. So thank you for that. I want to ask more key to a question I know the fine folks in Maryland that work in the apprenticeship space with the Department of Labor there but you know in your state how does the State Department of Education facilitate you the apprenticeship growth across the state. I noticed the youth apprenticeship program in Maryland connect to your State Department of Education's career technical education system. And you're on me, Mark. My apologies. Good afternoon everyone. That question is one and the same because the way we deliver our apprenticeship Maryland program in Maryland is we deliver it as a CTE program. So in Maryland career technical education is graduation pathway. By offering by offering apprenticeship Maryland as a CTE program students can graduate by being an apprentice or being a youth apprentice. We work at elbow, should I say with our partners at the Maryland Department of Labor, along with the Maryland Department of Commerce and Maryland Chamber of Commerce to implement this program along with our local school system. So there's a wonderful team of people who are coming together to really put this initiative move this initiative forward. I think you may have heard in the previous panel session that Maryland has 16 school systems that are currently doing the apprenticeship Maryland program that might seem small for most states, because most states have hundreds of school systems in Maryland we only have 24. So really we have two thirds of our states that are implementing the apprenticeship Maryland program, which is very significant and we are seeing more school systems adopt program as we go along. And so what we're looking for in terms of expansion. We're looking to bring in more companies more businesses as I said we work very closely with the Maryland Department of Labor, and I have to thank, thank Jennifer Griffin who is my colleague and co worker on this initiative. She does a lot of the point work in terms of really working with school systems to come on board and make sure that they have an understanding of what the program entails. So as I said you heard from the previous panel how important this initiative is to the state and as Sean just said, I truly believe that is a, it can be a life changing experience for many of our students who otherwise might now have had the opportunity or not maybe had the interest into pursuing a post secondary education I think sometimes this can be the impetus for them to not just do an apprenticeship but also doing apprenticeship and career future career opportunities. That's a great example of that. And so he talked about his dream of going to Clemson so we have students who are coming into an apprenticeship and realize and realizing through their apprenticeship program that they are capable of doing college level work that they can be successful in college. They're not only doing the apprenticeship but they're doing the apprenticeship plus they're going to school. So they're coming out with multiple credentials and I think that is really the benefit so I hate to think, hate to say or think that is one or the other. And I really think the benefit of CTE and general apprenticeship and specifically is that there are ways to make it both as apprenticeship and as college. I think the language I've used with parents of young people who say, but I want my kids to go away to college and get a four year degree. I just say this is a non traditional way for them to do that and get it paid for so exactly really gets parents attention when you start talking about that. Maryland currently has about 11,000 apprentices across the state, but they have several very large initiatives around advancing use high school to youth apprenticeship programs. And so I really admire the work of the team there in Maryland and all the great work they can do. Thank you. The next question is for Christie. So Christie, you represent a community organization implementing youth apprenticeship. How did you begin to integrate education pathways into the youth apprenticeship program you are developing. And what are the important educational elements that you need to consider. And who do you tap as partners to collaborate with you on building this pathway. That's a lot. So hi everyone I'm Christie Snyder. I'm grateful to be on the panel. I think for us it's, we are a little bit of an odd duck here in Minnesota. And that we have a primary population which is youth that are systems involved so foster care young people in juvenile justice young people experiencing homelessness. And with that primary population and with everything that we do we start with youth voice youth power and understanding what young people need in order to get their secondary credential and then move into the next phase of their careers. So with that, like, I think we buck a little bit of a trend we of course like lean on career and technical education. And for a lot of our young people that are over age and under credit. They don't need electives. And I think that when you look at evidence across the system. You see that young people that are in career and technical education are doing so much better because they have more time in their schedule to take career and technical education credits. And once we have embedded our career exploration course in an English 1112 course. So they're able to get English credits and then also we dashed in a little econ there so that they are able to get that because everyone seems to fail economics at some point in their life. So we we really do want to make sure that the first thing that we start is with those young people what they will actually be able to take as they are moving towards their secondary credential and so like I said we are a critical component of that for opportunity youth. They are focused on their time they are they don't have time to spend. And so they really need to be thoughtful of that they are thoughtful about their power and choice. And so I think about the graphic that Brent shared earlier, and those three components and the I would push us to the outside and have young people in the center because young people need to be the ones that are articulating their power their voice their skills their strengths and adults need to be around them lifting them up into their next opportunity. So for us to think about integrating educational pathways. I was a former teacher in Baltimore City for eight years so let's give it up to Maryland. But I do like to think about like the standards that are required, and how we can knit those together so that young people can get their core subjects. They can take their career seminar class that enables them to get into the work based learning credits, and then move that forward we have a huge issue here in Minnesota with getting CTE teachers licensed. There's only actually one place to get certified as a work based learning instructor instructor in the state of Minnesota, and it's at a very expensive private college so hooray for that. And so, you know, I think that that that is becomes an issue and so thinking about working in the alternative space of how you layer in credits. So if you have an English licensed teacher, you can get a waiver for a work based learning teacher for a certain number of years and then how we think about collaborating with other partners to pay for that education. And that is a core component of thinking about how we leverage our relationship with the city of Minneapolis, Hennepin County, which is the county that Minneapolis is in, and then additionally the state dollars, so that we can really make sure that whatever we're doing we're leaning into what young people need for the secondary credential because they won't take it unless it gets them to high school graduation, and then they can from there ease them into that larger pathway. In the intermediary we know we can't do everything, but we know that we can raise the issues, what need to happen and so we are able to bring a big tent, knitting in the social support so thinking about MFIP and other snap ENT and other sources that young people have access to and making sure we're able to leverage some of those dollars for them to stay on path and on course towards their ultimate career and certainly we are thoughtful of leveraging the early middle college dollars that Brent mentioned earlier. We are unique in Minnesota in that if you're at an alternative school you can take developmental education at the college so that if you don't test college ready you can still have access to that. So that is a game changer for us, but it also means having young people believe that that is something that they are meant to do, and having that as a possibility for them in the future so there is a lot that we do to braid things together to make sure that youth with the most barriers are able to be successful in their apprenticeships. I answered your question, Pam. It was a really good answer I just think about, you know the foster care population the former justice involved and all the obstacles that they face along the way and how oftentimes it takes an intense amount of wrap around services to help these youth be successful, especially in an apprenticeship program when it comes to things like transportation, even, you know, food security, clothing, all of those things, and so community organizations are really a critical partner to help these young people. So thank you. That's right. Thanks. Our next question is for Lisa. Lisa, if you could explain why your public institution of higher education was willing to step up and place a pivotal role in developing youth apprenticeship in the region, and facilitating this partnership how did Berkeley City College incorporate youth apprenticeship into existing programs and pathways at the post secondary level. Good morning everyone. Hello from the Bay Area. California Community Colleges have shifted their focus from expanding access to increasing student equity and success and BCC Berkeley City College where I'm the Dean. We have limited partnerships with high schools with limited success like maybe the student will pass a college level class, maybe. And limited partnerships with employers with limited success, maybe a student will land an internship. Youth, the youth apprenticeship model requires the strong partnership between the college high school and employer, and a commitment on the part of each to the success of each apprentice. So now the possibilities are that students complete college credits and earn credentials, credentials, and they attain meaningful work experience along a pathway to a career. So, in recent years, and especially during COVID, there's a severe shortage in two sectors of the workforce in which Berkeley City College has academic programs, teacher preparation and social work and human services. At the same time, our local high schools have created academies or small learning communities around interest areas and begun to partner with Berkeley City College specifically to build pathways for students interested in careers that impact the health and education of the members of their communities, teacher prep and social work and human services. So now we have an opportunity to come together into nontraditional sectors from a workforce driven perspective to transform what used to be long academic pathways with barriers between institutions to reach the credential and barriers between employers to advance. And now we can create an earn and learn program with seamless transitions for students. So I really love that, you know, career Academy model to pre apprenticeship to full apprenticeship I think if you can give students dual credit and give them early exposure through a career career Academy model that it really sets the student up for success. I've seen some really remarkable programs that were modeled after that and, you know, where young people have a seamless pathway from high school into their use apprenticeship program and they're getting dual credit at the same time so that's a remarkable example. I'm going to ask all of you to answer this Sean we'll start with you. I mean we all know from working in this space for a long time that youth apprenticeship is new for many and it challenges really the traditional idea of education. When you say the word apprenticeship people typically think it's just for trades occupations. You know we're seeing a lot of really cool models that are in nontraditional nontraditional sectors like it and health care. And so really trying to break that paradigm of that traditional idea in a rigid separation between school and work so what do you think has been the most challenging for you and partnering with your education partners, and really helping them to see the benefits of youth apprenticeship. And have you met more resistance from high school districts or college partners and why do you think that is. That's an interesting question because for us, we are fortunate in that it's really take apprenticeship, the idea of apprenticeship and work based learning is really taken hold here in Idaho. And from, you know, the secondary level to post secondary our workforce development council is pushing it hard and up to our governor who is all all in on apprenticeship and work based learning. So, from our end it's really for me as kind of the industry liaison the barriers have been the employers, not wanting to convincing them to take a youth apprentice, but sticking with your question, in terms of post secondary some of the cool things that Idaho has done is around equity and access is we have what's called advanced opportunities so every high school student has access to for over $4,000 that they can use for overload credits dual credit and certification testing. And so that money can be used for that so those classes and those certifications are free for students and so that has opened up the doors for access there. And we have just recently are technical all of our technical technical colleges have developed a new associates of science degree that incorporates and will take apprenticeship experience so people who have gone and got an apprenticeship and want to come back and get an apprenticeship degree that work experience will be credited. And so really all they have to do is take a couple general classes and now they have their associates and science. And then something that we're doing here at D tech that I'm really proud of and excited about is where we've developed. We're piloting the first high school cybersecurity program in the state. And so in conjunction with that we're on a workforce development grant with Boise State University, and they're building up their cybersecurity program. And so it's kind of cool because we're going together and locks up we just had a meeting yesterday, where the director shared their new bachelor's degree with us and what that's going to look like so we've been working together as we're building a high school program you have the local four year university building their program in collaboration with us. And so what he's able to do is take into account what our students are doing so that they can seamlessly jump into their program. And not only will the certifications that they earn will be credited and that will take care of many of their 400 level classes that they won't have to take depending on what certifications they pass. If they have an apprenticeship or an internship they can earn up to 15 university credits as well, counting towards that degree. So it's, it's as far as I know it's kind of the first time I've heard of anyway where high school program and a college program are working in conjunction and developing a program at the post secondary level. Taking into account how can they, our students go straight into their program without losing a step and continue to be in that apprenticeship. It's all asynchronous mostly online so it allows them to continue working in that apprenticeship, as well as moving on and getting that degree in cybersecurity so it's pretty cool. We're excited about it. So I really think these two plus two models from you know community college to university are critical to these non traditional sector apprenticeship positions. We don't want to put a student into a degree program and it and just let them finish with a two year degree it's likely that they would not be able to land a career job. And so giving them the opportunity to go on and earn that, you know, four year degree and to encourage them along that completion pathway I think is, is really, really important. Thank you shown Christie could you take that question. I mean I think that there are a lot of things that play I mean probably core to it is mindset, both for employers and for young people themselves. I think when you hear that I get to work with young people that are quote unquote opportunity youth people have a particular mindset. I like to challenge that in that it is honestly these are the youth that I get to work with are the most resilient, they're the most loyal and passionate but it is definitely something that we have to continually talk through. Currently after following the murder of George Floyd. There is a lack of hope in the community and we're seeing a lot of people disengaged so I think that that is something that we're is a new thing that we're focusing on. We have a lot of like bonkers policies here in Minnesota. So it's hard to follow Sean with all that positivity but there is like for us, we pay into a UI system and what employers pay into a UI system and so they do not want to pay for wages so we have to get very creative. We are blending with the on job on the job training funds with youth WA away. We are working with the city of Minneapolis to figure out like how we can pay for employer wages in that direction. Because there, there has to be a lot more blending because employers feel like they've done their due diligence by paying into that fund. So a lot of braiding is necessary and then policies around dual enrollment. We have it, which we're very excited about but it takes away from the average daily attendance metrics for the in the alternative schools, and it doesn't give enough money for the colleges to cover their costs so unlike the great state of Texas and North Carolina which I feel like our leaders in that dual enrollment where they pay for both Minnesota we kind of lose for both. So there's a robust policy agenda that we are working on and are grateful that our intermediate or intermediate status gives us the ability to just like use our elbows. So that's that's what I got to say. So I think that it's important, you know that people know about the braided funding opportunities and how you can take multiple funding streams and you know put them toward a program. There are also I know in my work here in North Carolina we have private funders approach us pretty often about philanthropic funding and so, you know for people that are listening in today don't forget about those people because they're always looking for great opportunities, especially for opportunity use. So Marquita, could you take that question as well. Yes, so just like everyone else Maryland has its challenges in terms of youth apprenticeship. Sometimes it's with employers in terms of getting employers to not worry about insurance, especially when we have companies like manufacturing and so forth. I think that since we have started the Maryland's apprenticeship Maryland program. One of our goals has been to look for apprenticeship and non traditional non traditional apprenticeship areas such as the construction trade areas. In the construction trade areas we've been doing apprenticeship much longer than we've actually had the apprenticeship Maryland program. But now we're looking to go into manufacturing into stem into banking or finance just all different types of areas and so to get employers that are not accustomed to doing apprenticeship or not thinking about hiring youth. Having this a mindset change I think I heard that before I think Christie said it was a mindset change so for some of our employees as a mindset. What we do is whenever a school system says that they want to implement an apprenticeship implement a program. We start off with the technical systems visit where we say get your school system people to leadership get your post secondary people together. Get your local chamber get some of your some of your employer partners to come in and let's all have a conversation let's everyone here how to implement this program and everyone here the information at the same time. We also have the Maryland Department of Labor they've assigned navigators to certain regions of the state and so they work on both the adult side as well as the youth apprentice side and so they will bring employers to the school systems. We have someone designated in all of our school systems that are doing the program to specifically work with the navigators and talk to the employers about bring getting students to interview for those positions and so and sometimes we even have employers that come to us for more of a statewide initiative a good example of that is the NSA national security agency they were looking for people for they wanted us to do a CTE program specifically for in foreign language or world languages and we said well not sure we could do it in terms of our traditional CTE program but I'm pretty sure we can do it as an apprenticeship program. And so they went before the Maryland apprenticeship and training council that's what all of our employers have to do they were approved by the Maryland apprenticeship and training council and really what they want to do is they want to bring on students and this and I'm so proud of this they want to bring in students to train them or grow them to be world language analysts starting in high school so they'll come in on a government pay scale. They'll start working while they're in high school. They will pay for about 80% of the students college tuition. The students will continue to work while they're in college and then they will have employment after they graduate and they'll go higher on the GS scale. And so typically most of our youth apprentices make about 1215 an hour that's just an average they have to be paid at least a minimum wage in order for the employers have to agree to pay our youth apprentices at least minimum wage but in terms of challenges I would say or just getting some employers getting them trying to change that mindset although we do have some that are just very eager to come on board and if they're eager to come on board will say will help you will help bring them on board so we're very eager to expand our program to I would say the areas that are not traditionally they have not traditionally done apprenticeship programs in terms of dual credit Maryland back in 2013 law was passed the longest name so I may not say it correctly but the college in career readiness college completion act of 2013 and basically what that says for it allows students to take up to four courses at their local community college. And so that's that's played paid for and depending on the students income and so forth that there might be some fees that have to be paid but the base tuition is available to them to take up to four courses prior to leave prior to leaving high school and so those courses are on the credit side of the house and they can be used to meet the classroom related instruction for apprenticeship if the employer says that's what they're looking for that's the key thing so if we have a student that's currently in our CTE program and employer says okay based on what they're taking that CTE program will fulfill the classroom related instruction well then we work with the employer to make that happen I think the hardest thing for school systems sometimes is trying to get out the way and when I say that meaning we have to take down all of the barriers that keeps students from being able to participate in apprenticeships is different from our CTE program so just trying to really be creative and thinking of all the ways to take down barriers now there are some that will always exist and they've been said earlier such as transportation that's a barrier and we still have not cracked that nut yet but we are but we continue to work and really look for ways to expand our program to all students and make sure that they can have this opportunity and I think I hope I answered your question you did a great job so I just want to point out that I wrote a blog for New America last year on the importance of community collaboration especially in youth apprenticeship programs you know how you'd have to have partners like Christie's organization your K-12 your public schools sometimes a community foundation but it really takes a lot of you know additional wraparound services if anybody figures out how to solve the transportation issue you probably want to know about Peace Prize so I think I hear that so often from so many partners is how do we get the kids to and from school and work thank you Markita Lisa could you take that question sure well as I mentioned earlier so yeah dual credit is strong you know the strong opportunity in California and like I mentioned we had partnerships with high schools in non-traditional sectors but again it was just to get students so maybe the high school objective was just to get students early college credit like one course and for us I think the challenge is probably greatest with employers because in these areas of teacher preparation and in human services and social work typically the model for getting work experience while studying is an internship or volunteer and so you know I would argue that a rigid separation between school and work just increases equity gaps for under-resourced and under-opportunized youth because the highly resourced advantage kids they have the social capital and support to take courses that give them depth of study in their area of interest like AP courses or college courses and they also get jobs and internships through connections and or if they when there are internship opportunities they're competitive and when high school kids apply for them those who are better resourced and therefore have you know more to throw at that application will be selected and so it's interesting because so this separation between you know work and and school is more often imposed then on the students that we deem as underprepared and in reality they're underprepared because we haven't given them the opportunities for depth of study and work experience to be prepared so so yeah so along those lines you know if we're committed to student equity we have to be committed to providing all students especially those that are under resourced and opportunized the opportunity and support to do to get college courses that provide depth in their area of interest as well as the work experience so now we have a strong we developed these strong partnerships with high schools I think that the equity issue and the understanding of this is strong but we have we're encouraged by one and we have an apprenticeship partnership with a with the Head Start YMCA program that gives us some courage to go into the education side but like for example we've been approached by another school district that wants to do a grow your own teacher program and the model all the way is that students you know volunteer and do all these extra things until they get their credential and then you're welcome back where we're trying to build a pathway a turn and learn pathway for students that has the credentials along the way at each point of each completion of units of study or work experience there's another opportunity for the student to move up in their work experience get a higher get a wage bump and also attain another certificate or degree that gives them more gives them another credential so in the I think the challenge right now for us with the social work and human services is finding a partner partners our first idea was that we would work with community based organizations but they're again used to this kind of volunteer like maybe we'll take your person kind of model but then now we've we've started talking to the Berkeley Department of Parks and Recreation where they have a youth works program which seems like a natural natural partner for us that our our youth apprentices could do their summer job experience with the youth works program and it would serve us and them because the city of Berkeley constantly comes to the college and says you know we need people and we have jobs we need a diverse workforce we need your students ability to have lived experience out here making a difference in the community and it's like yeah great but then make that easy for them take away all those barriers where they had like they go here and apply or go over here and you know did you hear about that opportunity or you didn't hear about it you're not in I really think what cemented this for me was I the at Berkeley High School has their amps program it's like a for medicine and public service interests that's their academy and they invited me to do mock interviews with their students and this is a very diverse group of students of many of them low income and when I talked to the students they would tell me like about how they're these efforts they're making to get all these different pieces for themselves so like you know I have an internship at Children's Hospital I work there six hours a week I need to help support my family so I have a job in the restaurant over here and then I'm taking this AP course why that course well it's the one I could get into okay not related to what you want to study and just hearing how fragmented that experience was and even in our own work with high school partners if we offer the apprenticeship program at the high school the issue is the high school schedule and trying to fit it into the day even though you can get dual credit and identifying a group in one high school of students that are particularly interested in this nontraditional sector as well can be challenging who really want to do the who commit to the apprenticeship program so that's why we thought well if we move the program to the to the college first of all Berkeley Berkeley high school is across the street from us so that's easy the transfer on that one is golden although our partners in Oakland Castlemont high school we have to deal with that transportation issue unless there's some way we do now have the possibility of offering a better the better shot is serving the students online with all the new tools we've gotten during COVID in online instruction so that's another possibility to have sort of a hybrid online experience at least for the college courses but again apprenticeship about they are developing apprentices apprenticeships online it's not you know there are people that are serving their community in online support but that's not that's not what what we had imagined so yeah there's an opportunity to to open up to all of our high schools and then to really select you know the students from those high schools who are the targeted group of low income under operated students that we would like to bring into the program and support the heck out of them at the college you know in we have all of our we have health services and health and wellness and learning support and all of that and and make it like one evening a week well a lot of high school students are looking for something to do outside and then do the the job the work experience during the summer so that they're not trying to juggle high school maybe play a play a sport they like have this you know work in their family restaurant and then you know try to do their apprenticeship hours at the same time and for high school students you know it is competitive around here to get high to get jobs for the summer and a lot of students are left out of those opportunities anyway so we've kind of come around to that hopeful model that we can bring all of this together but we do need to get the employers on board with these wage increases and you know commitment to hiring our students and I guess kind of hold them accountable for saying to us all the time we want your students we need this diverse workforce it's like we'll then commit to it commit to the support commit to the equity issue like to you know to deal it really dealing with these equity issues that our students face and helping us to remove these barriers for students that do need even in high school to contribute to their family income and ambitious yeah I think so often from employers we hear more about the risk factors with youth apprenticeship and you know they want to know like is this going to make my insurance liability increase because I'm going to have a young person in my facility so you know having a good answer for them and an employer to employer discussion is always helpful so an employer that already has a youth program can sell that idea to another employer much easier than the rest of us in the community partnerships so I want to go to a couple of the questions that we have in the chat we only have you know 10 minutes left so I would say you know keep your answers brief if you would but one of the questions is is your youth apprenticeship pathway ran by a K-12 or post secondary partner as a CTE program would anybody like to address that I will that's the easy one so it's run and the secondary level and we work with our partners but apprenticeship Maryland is run out of the Maryland State Department of Education which oversees our K through 12 education system and this is a question particularly for Christie are you aware of any college or university programs who have students interested in unpaid internships with workforce development programs yeah I mean in Minnesota we do there's the there's a lot of unpaid internships available we never offer them to our young people without having them paid so either we use philanthropic dollars or other sources but our young people could never do an unpaid internship and so even later today we have a meeting where we're trying to extend K-12 funding up to age 24 in Minnesota we're working on a pilot and we're building in a community health worker certificate apprenticeship and we would want that to be paid so I think that that yeah unpaid never works for our population so Sean a question for you what are some ways you were able to build a connection with your employer partners I'm using utilizing first off our instructors and through CTE we're required to have advisory committees and so reaching out with industry partners through that some of our most active partners were starting with them in order to engage with them and get them on board with taking one of our apprentices it's that's been our biggest challenges as others have mentioned you know specifically the liability piece and so one of the things that we're doing is we're starting to track with the employers who say yes we're starting to track with them who's their insurance carrier so when an employer says oh I can't hire 18 my insurance won't allow me oh yeah we've got somebody who will do that and so trying to think of what are the excuses and have an answer for them before or right away when they give that excuse they'll say oh we can't hire 18 under 18 have you asked your HR department no okay go ask them and then the HR might say oh our insurance carrier won't allow that have you asked them oh no so get them to ask and ask questions and and you have to be I get you got to be a little bit of a bulldog I guess and and in a kind way and push and and continue to revisit and hey just want to check in with you have we've got a great student I think would really be a good fit for you guys what have you got more about taking on apprentice those are the kind of things that we're starting to see have an impact and I jump in real quickly to yeah um I would also recommend doing state and local government as internships because what happens there is that they become the champions and with the whips and other structures they're able to become your trailblazer and so we have a lot of like our very first successful apprenticeship was with the Minnesota Department of Transportation and that really opened us up to really thinking about it and state employment is so good they have such good benefits it's a structure there's union jobs and so I really just would encourage people to look at state and local government and I add after that I just wanted to say that what some school systems are doing they're actually looking for at positions within the school system for example one school system realize that many of their buildings are I'll use the word ancient and that the workforce that they had their industrial maintenance people who were doing taking care of the buildings they were much older well not much older but they were in their 50s near retirement so they saw that there was a CTE program and existence for industrial maintenance so why not offer why not offer apprenticeships to these students to actually bring them into and have them work for the school system and they could start while they're there so that kind of took care of part of the transportation problem as well because they were working with a population that was already there that was learning how to do that work anyway so that's just another creative way and what a school system because they do hire people beyond teachers they have it staff they have public relations and staff and so what we find that some of our school systems are doing they're actually becoming apprentices they're offering apprenticeships to students to come in and do the work that the school system does outside of teaching so that's just another way of going about it. So a couple of things we have questions about things like third party staffing agencies we have questions about if you're starting a brand new apprenticeship programs and scratch so there there is guidance from the ETA at the USDOL on hiring young students through third party agencies I've done it myself they were under 18 students so it is allowable in the right situation. And for a brand new program the apprenticeship USA toolkit on the ETA website is a really quite amazing resource so and of course any of us are available to help along the way the things that we've created and and I think absolutely Christy just provided her email address to Christina Locke so you can make that connection after the session so I just want to take a minute to thank all of you for participating I'm going to just take a few minutes to close out the session. Um, can I share one just real quick we didn't get to talk about tracking really and one cautionary thing I would like to say in relation to that I talked a little bit about intention it's all about your intention and how you're placing that student, but I would caution everybody that's involved in apprenticeship I'm really getting nervous when I hear people when we I think it's it's we're excited about apprenticeship but we're almost creating this hierarchy of non traditional versus traditional apprenticeships. And if we're not careful we're going to have that create a hierarchy and then you're going to see tracking and so we need to talk about both on the same level. Um, so that we don't have this reef we need to rethink what it means to go on and going on to college is a higher level than apprenticeship well don't do that in terms of apprenticeship itself with traditional and non traditional apprenticeships, it would be my parting thought. I'll make sure that New America shares a study that I participated in last year on equity and intentional recruiting and to use apprenticeship programs. We could make that available to you but we actually learned some great strategies for intentional recruiting for underserved populations of young people and I think people who has tried some of those recruiting strategies have been very successful. So thanks to all of you. I really appreciate your participation was a great session today.