Berkeley Adult School blog

A message from Dawn Koepke, CCAE & CAAEAA Legislative Advocate, regarding legislative and budget activities:

Over the last few months CAEAA and CCAE have made great strides in educating the Legislature and Administration about adult education and the devastating impacts of flexibility. We're continuing to garner support for adult education that will help us in the fight against permanent categorical consolidation as proposed by the Governor. In this regard, we've identified AB 18 (Brownley) as an alternative to the Governor's plan in that it addresses a number of the Governor's goals, but acknowledges the need to treat adult education differently and set it apart from other categoricals. That said, much work remains to be done to ensure that this differentiation ultimately translates to removal from flexibility. As we've discussed with the Department of Education, Legislature and Administration, merely recognizing it as separate is not sufficient to ensure it continues to exist and necessitate the differentiation. This is a good first step, but we continue to have our work cut out for us.

In working on the budget and consolidation front, we've also been working to keep adult education at the forefront through legislation. As you know, we introduced AB 2240 with our dear friend and champion Assemblyman Mike Eng as a means to keep adult education in the spotlight. We had hoped to move forward with a bill that would not be controversial, but provide benefit for the field. This turned out to be far from easy and in the end Assemblyman Eng was concerned about the ability to move our proposal that would have codified best practices for collaborative partnerships between adult education programs, Workforce Investment Boards (WIB), and Community Colleges – partnerships that are already happening in many localities throughout the state and helping to minimize duplication of effort, provide clearer pathways for students and more. It became clear that such an approach would be an uphill battle with possible referral to three separate policy committees. Furthermore, the time and effort that would be necessary from Assemblyman Eng, his staff and from CAEAA and CCAE’s lobbyist would ultimate detract from the time and resources necessary to be spent impacting the budget, flexibility and consolidation discussions. It was ultimately decided that this wasn’t the best time or approach for this year with so much on the line relative to flexibility.

Despite the setback with AB 2240, we have identified a number of additional legislative vehicles introduced this year with which to continue to promote adult education and further our efforts in the field. Vehicles include bills such as SB 1401 (Lieu) focusing on workforce development, many English as a Second Language proposals, career technical education vehicles and many more. We’ve already begun to engage on these bills and are looking forward to supporting members’ efforts in these areas.

The legislative process can be a daunting process and nothing is ever a sure bet; however, CAEAA and CCAE are doing all they can to impact the budget discussions and address flexibility. We will continue to keep you apprised of developments. Stay tuned….

Dawn Koepke