Younger Workers Committee Meeting

November 12, 2014: 1:30 PM
Frances Perkins Conference Room, Maine Department of Labor
45 Commerce Drive, Augusta ME 04330

Younger Workers Committee November 12, 2014

Present; Denise Smith, Mike Jordan, Janie Small, Jamie Grover, Meg Harvey Absent with notice; Lisa Hartnett, Scott Good Guests; Bill Hurwitch, Paul Leparulo, Victoria Ryan

Denise Smith opened the meeting with welcomes & introductions. Bill Hurwitch then spoke about the Student Longitudinal Data System (SLDS) that the Department of Education has been developing with grants from US Dept of Education. Bill said the SLDS tracks students from K to HS and currently has demographic and enrollment information. They are trying to expand the system to include early childhood data as well as a workforce component to track outcomes and graduate experience with various training programs. Bill said the gap is with HS graduates Social Security numbers that don?t align with the student identifier number that DOE uses. They can track students that go on to college but not to employment. Bill said there is a group working on overcoming the SS issue through data sharing agreements with state agencies that have relevant data, such as DMV. Paul Leparulo, new SWIB staff, will monitor the progress of the effort for needed actions or support of the SWIB. Paul Leparulo then spoke about wage records and the need to connect them to education records, possibly by expanding the Unemployment Insurance data base. Victoria Ryan agreed and spoke about future plans to include data from SNAP/TANF and CTE/Adult Education programs.

Next committee meeting will be in January 2015. Respectfully submitted by Garret Oswald.

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