Advisory Committee Minutes August 20, 2024

Advisory Committee on Before and After School Programs

August 20, 2023—9:30 a.m. to Noon

Members Present

• Sandy McBrayer—Chair
• Samuel Buenrostro
• Jennifer Cisneros
• Tiffany Gipson
• Tony Brown
• Brad Lupien
• Cindy Haase
• Chris Meza
• Tia Dwyer
  

Members Absent

• Olivia Kernen

Others Present

• Michael Funk, California Department of Education (CDE), Expanded Learning Division (EXLD) Director
• Fred Buggs, CDE, EXLD Consultant

Commencement

The meeting was called to order at 9:40 a.m. by Sandy McBrayer, Chair.

Member Updates

Sandy welcomed everyone and asked everyone to introduce themselves.

Review of Meeting Materials

The meeting materials were reviewed by members.

Approval of Minutes

Sandy asked for a motion to accept the minutes. Brad made a motion to approve the minutes and Tony seconded the motion. All members were in favor of accepting the April 18th, 2023, Before and After School Advisory Committee minutes.

Legislative Report

Sandy McBrayer, Chair, gave the legislative report.

Special Presentations - California Afterschool Network (CAN)

Jeff Davis gives the CAN presentation. Questions and comments for Jeff.

• School mental health resources for all students.
• “Increased number of students with special needs, any guidance?” Increase awareness and understanding of how to create inclusive environments for all students.
• Great work that CAN is doing. Students with special needs – Who pays for that? A grey area there. How do we think about that in the meantime?
• Once we have the data, identify workforce trends. How do we influence how long folks stay? Early stages of becoming a state-wide internship/ apprenticeship. All school districts have different capacities.
• Starting in January, pre-assessment self-assessment for partners to see if they have the capacity to do these programs. Have CAN do as much or as little as needed. Our workforce is in the 10,000. How do we create the infrastructure?
• Another great and successful example of the system of support. We want to continue this partnership.

Expanded Learning Division Report

Michael Funk - History and context to set our vision for this committee. Never asked if this program or committee should exist - how can we make it stronger? Expanded learning resources have been fully provided to the field. Four positions were cut permanently from EXLD – hiring freezes—difficult time in the state.

Fred Buggs - After School Education and Safety (ASES) universal funding statistics: Questions for Josh – how many ASES sites were disqualified?

ASES Frontier funding statistics: This is significant; we didn’t have enough applicants in previous years. It is great, we had 7 applications. For 6 sites, what was the average awarded per school? Does it seem below average? – This is supplemental to help with transportation to these programs. Made it as flexible as possible for funding. This funding is super important for rural areas.

Cohort 15 stats: What priority points did they get to? You can go to the website where they show the funding lists.

Emerging Issues

Sandra, now is a good opportunity to bring up issues we are seeing in our districts/regions:

• How do we educate districts about students'/parents' rights? How do we include them in activities and make sure they are safe?
• Hearing from our parents of students with special needs.
• Legal recommends districts go through a 504 process with Expanded Learning – We should encourage others to do that.
• Working with Special Education Division (SED), only a certain amount of programs have access to Instructional Aide (IA)/ 504 programs. Families are being juggled because we do not have the resources/staff. Not a good feeling.
• The Transitional Kindergarten/Kindergarten (TKK) age requirement is getting lower and lower, and being responsible for diapering is becoming a real issue to discuss.
• Michael: We have reinforced an incorrect mental model. ASES requires children to go “all day, every day.” Expanded Learning Opportunities Program (ELOP) attendance is based on the law. The Education (ED) Code says it is the intent of the legislature for children to attend every day. That is not a mandate; it is an intent—equity issue. The revised FAQ says that the early release policy should be an exception. ED Code says the district must follow its own attendance policy. We can’t force anyone to change to make the attendance policy not run all day, every day.
• Districts that went through Federal Program Monitoring (FPM) and ELOP audits. Are there any reports? – FY 23-24 are now being audited this fall.
• How will the field be impacted by the division being cut 10% and eliminating positions? What are you anticipating and how do we advocate for the division?
  • Michael: For full transparency, I've currently got six open positions, and I had to eliminate four. I chose to eliminate Sterling’s position. The field is most impacted by our division when there is a delay or a mistake in getting funding out. We did not have adequate support to build the capacity, so we created a new management position, staff service manager II. Today, after this meeting, I have a final interview with one of the final candidates for a new staff service manager II position that will strengthen the capacity of our division fiscal matters and in matters of districts in their fiscal conditions. I've been told that there's a freeze on my ability to hire that position even though it's one of the positions I chose not to cut I think that's going to be a temporary freeze so maybe 3 weeks to feel might see improve in the service because of the way we prioritize the staffing capacity.
• We're constantly well this year having to adjust to the $20 minimum wage that will be coming. It has been hard to be intentional when we're starting new staff because of our $20 in competition with other fields that we're losing staff or even retraining staff, so I just need some guidance on how we could be more intentional in training new staff rather than the good old-fashioned show me for a week. -Behavior management was huge for our district.
• The IA Testing is hard. There are higher instruction rates, and certain titles have higher levels of requirement for some districts. Some required instruction is paid by expanded learning you could create a different instructional paid requirement. The ED code says that the staff must meet the IA requirements of the district. It doesn't say with the district that instruction high school you're talking about someone's going to be the ratio. There are some minor things that are required so as a concrete example, Long Beach Unified.
• Attendance recovery: How would you put money into the existing program the way you're currently doing, and we can get back millions of dollars for recovery. I feel like the timeline so that we can start piloting these things this year so then in six months from now and nine months from now we can say we're already doing all the things that are the requirements for attendance recovery. We already have certificated teachers define that is overseeing whatever the word is overseeing supervised by a certificated instructor. I'd really like to see a definition for supervised by.
• In November, can we have a more in-depth meeting and a better understanding of the timeline? Michael/Fred: There are three different dates in the next within this fiscal year. Work groups have been formed, so I will be able to provide more details in November.

Next Meeting Date

The next meeting will be held on November 19, 2024.

Adjournment

The meeting was adjourned at 11:35 a.m. by Sandra McBrayer.