In Attendance: Carolyn Blanks (Mass. Extended Care Federation); Angela Brown (Hyams Foundation); Bruce Dahlquist (Central Mass. REB); Cathy Gannon, (Central SABES); Maria Grace (Greater New Bedford Career Center); Paul Hyry (Juntos Collaborative); Lisa Jochim (Worker Education Program, U. Mass. Dartmouth); Eleni Papadakis (CommCorp); Dawna Perez (Lawrence Literacy Works); Andrea Perrault (DOE/ACLS); Deborah Schwartz (SABES/ALRI); Laurie Sheridan (SABES CRC); Juanita Zerda (CommCorp).

Announcements:
Hyams is about to launch a new three-year cycle of grant-giving for capacity building for a cohort of ABE/ESOL organizations, which will however mean no funding for new groups between FY'06 and '08. They would like to partner with an intermediary or technical assistance provider.

SABES has several upcoming workshops and mini-conferences around workforce development topics, focusing on promising practices, integrating ABE and workforce development, career ladders, and contextualizing curriculum.

What emerged from the last Advisory Committee Meeting?

• The need to bring workforce development into the ABE classroom
• Employability credentialing mechanisms
• Creating more access to Career Centers for ABE students
• Developing more ABE-employer partnerships (community- and workplace-based)

Workforce Training Fund Is Now Highlighting ESOL/ABE
The Workforce Training Fund (WTF) is focusing this year on ABE and ESOL programming. The WTF is getting the word out to the business community, but many don't know about it. Only employers can be applicants, but ABE programs can partner. ABE programs need to connect with employers about it, as they might not think of applying unless approached by an ABE or ESOL provider.

It would be a good role for SABES to help get the word out to ABE programs, so that they can approach employers and assist them with applications. Good venues for helping promote employers' partnering with ABE/ESOL providers include local Chambers of Commerce, business breakfasts, human resource associations, AIM. Most WTF funding has typically gone to small manufacturing companies, who are usually nervous to commit to the costs of training. What is new about targeting ABE/ESOL this year? It's always been a possibility, but this time they are prioritizing it. It's clear that employers don't always "get" what is needed for sound educational practices around ESOL and basic skills—they just don't know what's needed, what constitutes a sound approach. It's up to us to do that education, and provide assistance and consultation in educational program design.

Can DOE identify small pilot projects? Six-to-eight smaller programs could share a grant. Need someone to help outreach to companies about WTF. There needs to be DOE funding and policies for this while we build. We could create a "circuit" of consultants similar to those at BCC. How can SABES help? SABES can promote collaboration, but DOE-funded ABE programs don't have the capacity to support employer-driven programs that must demonstrate job placement. It might be important to train ABE directors about the Workforce Training Fund. Some programs have workforce education grants every year, have to document lots of things. This could be shared.

SABES could make presentations to promote applications for the WTF, help employers and local ABE programs put together proposals for workplace education and Workforce Training Fund grants. The ABE system is not ready to handle setting up programs, administration, a lot of this work is up-front. But, the Workforce Training Fund is an untapped resource. You can use a WTF grant as a planning grant, build towards a DOE workplace education grant, which come out every year.

How can SABES help the field build this capacity?
SABES can put together a marketing piece for the Workforce Training Fund, for employers. ABE practitioners who have worked with employers could meet with other ABE programs in a mentoring capacity. e.g., from the Mass. Worker Education Roundtable. SABES could get ABE providers to do a business seminar, or do this with others with ABE providers. Ideas included:

• Chamber breakfasts
• PowerPoint presentations for employers with handouts
• Set a benchmark—how many presentations will be made?
• Use research?proven cases
• Target providers with experience with this, e.g., MWER

Employers want to see bottom-line impact, ROI. Documentation that exists is on outcomes, not impact. Behaviorally what changes? We've always looked at employee impact, now we also need to use business measures. Measuring productivity is very difficult (self-selective). But you can measure bottom-line $$ as the key term, employee turnover, retention pre- and post-program. You need good comparison groups: if the economy changes, that could be responsible for changes in workplace behavior or employee retention. It's hard to come up with hard numbers. We could also look at regional impact, modeling the process for ABE.

Ask an employer how they would "sell" the need for basic ESOL/ABE programming to another employer. Not always interested in the entry-level worker, more interested in training supervisors. Unions bring partners. Employers value increased confidence in trained workers and we can use that argument. Large amounts of data have not been as effective, we need to learn to tell the story.

SABES could hold a workshop for employers, train ABE directors to go to employers. SABES needs to train ABE programs and directors to present to businesses, learn the language of employers, and have a polished presentation to approach them with. ABE directors can learn to talk to employers, present a package (that SABES develops) to make the argument to employers, pull that info. together. We need to be very clear about what SABES can do, and what practitioners need from SABES. The role of this Advisory Committee is to provide this direction for SABES, to meet the needs from the field.

SABES FY06 Workplan for Workforce Development
What do the RFP responses to DOE (from ABE programs) say about workforce development? Andrea Perrault indicated that most ABE proposals to DOE referenced some in workforce development, but did not propose full partnerships with employers. Most proposed to do information sharing and building relationships with the local workforce development system, and in some cases integrating workforce development into the classroom and curriculum.

In addition to workplace education, how do we go forward, with non-incumbent workers? ABE "buy-in"—how do we introduce this kind of thinking? Where is ACLS's priority for workforce development? We need to assess where the field is now, build on work we've done this year. This year, there have been successes in building relationships between ABE programs and career centers, and community planning/community partnerships. Is it an expectation that the career centers could and should serve all ABE students? The WIBs want everyone to come into contact with career centers. But typically they send low-literacy clients to ABE programs, which then have waiting lists, so the clients don't get served. When a student is job-ready, they are ready to come to a One Stop. The CBO world is key: support systems, wrap-around services. ABE programs would like to see:

1. ABE program have an articulation plan for where they want to go with workforce development, a real measure of success, and then self-assess.
2. Linkage to the Career Centers—a smooth transition for ABE to work using the One Stop Career Centers.
3. More workplace education.

1. facilitating partnerships and maintenance
2. assessment of assets and needs
3. a look at the community through the lens of literacy
4. 5-year process
5. It could incorporate workforce development needs Basic Resource mapping—do a map from the perspective of clients, a 3-year strategy for DOE. We want to do this in community planning and workforce development--they overlap. We need to build the pathways rather than mapping. Community assessments have been part of the community partnership-strategic planning process. Community needs assessments were done through ABE, with partnership and maintenance putting in some resources. Which community planning groups reference workforce development?

Next Steps
Build on foundation of what's been done, rather than re-invent the wheel. Take the programs who are already doing it. Do an "ethnography" of where programs are, in their strategic plans, missions of partnerships. Start with where they are now. Have DOE fund a professional development coordinator in each program?use this position. WIBs, career centers have plans?we should use them. It would be good to get a better relationship of SABES to the WIBs. Help SABES engage with the field. The Advisory would like the SABES team to send out a draft, with goals from the field's point of view. This would be more helpful than goals for SABES.

Shaping the SABES Workforce Development Initiative
SABES needs to articulate goals and vision for the field, re workforce development. We need to have programs specify, "this is what I need in order to get here." In Year 1, we need to have ABE programs buy in?as an overall goal. How to introduce this? How can workforce development be supportive of this? Programs are doing a lot, at all of the three levels. They feel defensive, are nervous about committing to workforce development for fear that they will be accountable for workforce development outcomes (e.g., job placements). Use the carrot, not the stick, approach. Use the SABES WFD survey to query the field and to build buy-in and promote discussion. Ask them, "how can we help you do workforce development?" The majority of ABE programs buy into the concept. But there are structural barriers and they need to be addressed. We should "water the behavior we want to grow," and be realistic.

In the upcoming workplan, we need to:

• Move away from one-shot workshops
• ID programs' needs
• Teach job readiness
• Do organizing
  • In a month, concrete examples of what we will do
  • % of priorities
  • Bring those projects with success to date, to be part of our job, as allies
  • Develop peer-to-peer learning
  • Promote one workforce development specialist per ABE program
• Develop evaluative measures
  • business impact measures
  • How measure the success of this initiative? How is DOE measuring it?
  • No one size fits all—a range, e.g., relationships between ABE programs and Career Centers
• Overlap community planning and workforce development
  • Plans for the WIBs?
  • Utilize and build on existing community plans

We need goals and direction from the SABES team. We need to survey the field and listen to its needs, but also to provide leadership. If SABES provides that leadership, and a clear direction and purpose, the field will follow and get on board.

Next Meeting
The Advisory Committee will continue to have input into the workplan as it develops, and the SABES workforce development team will incorporate these suggestions into planning the work, and draft materials as requested above. SABES staff will develop and articulate a plan for how to build capacity in the field, and where it should be going, in regard to workforce development. This vision and planning will also be embodied in the concrete activities included in the workplan, to the extent possible.