Maya Bendotoff
“For more than one hundred and fifty years, until 2008, California was an undisputed national leader in its commitment to adult education. The state’s investment in adult learners topped $750 million, a sum greater than the combined total of every other state in the nation. However, for the past several years recession and fiscal crisis have left adult education battered and underfunded.”
~ 2015 “Adult Education Regional Planning Report”
AB 86, passed in 2013, was an attempt to reexamine and improve the status of adult education in the state of California. Since the 1960s, adult learners in the state had been served by K-12 systems or community colleges. The governance structure provided little alignment and coordination from basic skills programs to postsecondary education. And then the recession devastated adult education programs statewide. After an initial post-recession attempt to reestablish adult education under community colleges, in AB 86 the state agreed to fund “regional consortia” to bring together at least one community college with K-12 districts and other stakeholders to assess their regions and develop shared plans. A major issue in the development of plans was the uncertainty of future funding.
In Santa Cruz County, our Adult Education Consortium developed the following report, “AB 86: Collaborating To Better Serve the Educational Needs of Adults” over the course of the 2013-14 academic year. Regional collaborators included various representatives from Cabrillo, Pajaro Valley and Santa Cruz schools, and members of various partner agencies including the Santa Cruz literacy project and the Workforce Investment Board.
Noncredit programs generally serve to improve educational and career opportunities for non-native English speakers, immigrant populations, the disabled, the working poor, and those underprepared for college-level coursework (a more specific listing of target areas of AB 86 is included at the end of this article). In the SC regional report, the main pathways for doing so have been broken down into three pathways: basic skills, English as a second language, and career technical education.
The Santa Cruz report reveals the depth of community need for adult education in the county: “Relevant data indicates a community need with 32% of Santa Cruz County households speaking a language other than English in 2012. Other data shows 14% of county residents age 25 and above have less than a high school diploma, with Watsonville and Pajaro having significantly higher percentages, at 48% and 68% respectively.”
While there is clearly immense need in our county (and the adult education programs previously provided through the K-12 Districts were decimated), the timing to bring all of the groups together was limited and the future funding is still largely unknown.
Complicating matters, although the general funding of adult education in the state has yet to be determined, community colleges have been provided with “enhanced noncredit” funding to start getting some classes for adult learners up and running.
For the part of the non-community college members of the Consortium, there has been concern about the impact of the college offering instruction that could potentially overlap with what the adult schools provide.
The Cabinet (or top administrative leadership) of the consortium, has agreed to the following three principles for moving forward:
- Design a county-wide system for providing adult education that best meets the needs of adult education students.
- Seek the engagement of a broad range of stakeholders in aligning, coordinating, and integrating adult education services with the goal of increasing student success.
- Design for a level of service that is effective in serving students, sustainable with the anticipated funding streams, and includes resources that support continuous improvement of student learning outcomes.
As our regional body continues to meet, some Cabrillo faculty members have already developed proposed courses for Cabrillo that will likely commence in fall 2016. So far, enhanced noncredit courses have been developed and approved in CABT, DMCP, ESL, Library, and Math. The next deadline for course proposals will be in March 2016. Most of these classes are aimed at preparing students for credit-level coursework.
CCFT is currently meeting with the District to negotiate compensation for these enhanced noncredit courses. We have been in contact with involved faculty and hope to have agreement in the near future.
CCFT strongly supports a county-wide system of adult education that meets the needs of adult learners in our community. While some faculty are starting to move forward with noncredit courses, faculty look forward to working in collaboration and partnership with our K-12 colleagues and other stakeholders to provide quality education for all.
The following Cabrillo faculty members participated in the AB 86 planning process: Eva Acosta, Zarmina Dastagir, Jason Malone, Nancy Phillips, Beth McKinnon, Michelle Morton, Diego Navarro, Beth Regards, Pam Sanborn
See the statewide Adult Education Regional Planning Process Report for 2014-15: http://aebg.cccco.edu/portals/1/docs/2015_AB86_AdultEducation%20Legislative%20Report.pdf