SWIB Program Policy Committee

January 23, 2015: 1:00 AM
MDOL Central Office (Augusta)

Program Policy Committee Minutes of 01/23/15 Meeting

In attendance: Bill Burney, Ginny Carroll (Staff), Richard Freund, Paul Leparulo, Meg Harvey, Renee Kelly, Garret Oswald, Judy Plummer-Beale, Liz Ray, Gail Senese (Chair), Barbara Woodlee (Co-chair).
Absent: Laura Boyett, Yvonne Mickles, Dan Muth, Brian Whitney

Restart of the Program Policy Committee Garret initiated the discussion and introducing Richard Freund as the acting BES Director. Topics covered: ? Need to nominate and elect a new Chair for this committee (Gail Senese was nominated and accepted the role and Barbara Woodlee volunteered and accepted the role of Co-Chair). ? Ginny Carroll will replace Tim Sardano, as staff to the committee. ? Introduction of Paul Leparulo formerly of CWRI and now a SWIB staff member with expertise to conduct analysis for the SWIB and ability to add lots of new perspective to the work of the board. ? Lots of work for this committee going forward with new WIOA policy requirements ? Want to prioritize the work of this committee going forward.

Nomination of New Committee Chair: ? Bill Burney requested an atmosphere check regarding how policy gets disseminated and agreed upon.
? Also wanted clarification on the role and purpose of this committee ? Bill would like to avoid negative push back on policies generated by this committee to the SWIB ? Ginny mentioned that there is a new policy advisory group in place that allows SWIB policies affecting the field to be vetted at the front line level before they go before the board. ? In addition, Ginny stated policies that pertain only to specific field staff actions will not be brought before this committee, but will be handled at the Bureau level.

Review of the Mission and Purpose of the Committee ? Background: the SWIB needed to have a way to ensure that the requirements of the WIA got met and in order to do this the PPC was developed.
? Sometimes there would be policies that needed to be developed from the very beginning and sometimes older no longer relevant policies needed to be reviewed, revised, or if necessary, rescinded. ? Group does not want to limit the policy discussions to just prescribed WIOA requirements. There are things in the Act that allow us to do things that are meaningful to our state.
? Let?s make sure that what we are doing makes sense for Maine whether it is required by the ACT or not.

Discussion: Barbara: ?What role does this committee play in specific projects, like the manufacturing workforce academy?

Garret: ?Currently, there is a work group discussing a model that CT used and how to replicate this in Maine. A survey has gone out to industry members to identify the need for such training before next steps in implementation of a new workforce academy.

Renee: ?Should we focus on a target audience??

Garret: ?There is somewhat of a shift in target populations from WIA to WIOA. WIA required universal access to services, but the new focus of WIOA is circling back to JTPA days with a greater focus on unemployed and workers with barriers to employment.?

Gail: ?There is a state level WIOA steering committee that has begun working on the transition from WIA to WIOA, several work groups will be formed to get the work done.
Richard: ?We shouldn?t be limiting ourselves to the focus of WIA or WIOA. We need to put a system in place that will enable employers to get what they need. We need to respond to employers.?

Gail: ?Do we have discussion in response to SWIB priorities or is the SWIB the one that would generate what this committee needs to work on??

Garret: ?We think there may be other avenues for working on specific required policies and local level involvement. There may be things that have greater meaning to you as a committee. The new act requires greater alignment and functionality of all of our programs. But we are going to have to check the box of compliance so we can move onto those bigger opportunities.?

Gail: ?This group could take the view of helping to implement and remove barriers to Career Pathways and Industry Partnerships.?

Meg: ?If we are only the policy committee to WIOA then we might as well not do it, we need to be looking at the big picture level of the system; our work needs to be focused on Maine?s Workforce System and not just a specific ACT.?

Barbara: ?Another confusing factor is the five year Strategic Plan for Workforce Development & Higher Education that some of us have been working on for the legislature. How do these align and blend into this committee?s purview? Many of us were contributors to that report and that work should be blended into our work.?

Gail: ?I have learned to respect process and choice. There is important information in the process of that plan that is being developed and also in aligning the two committees that laid the groundwork. That committee is known as the Adult Workforce and Work Readiness Taskforce.?

Bill: ?What grade would you give us for where we are at on that initiative??

Barbara: ?We do a lot but lack of coordination for all of this.?

Bill: ?When Ginny was ticking off target populations, not clear on how many are part of corrections? or DHHS?? Judy: ?About 900 a year transition out of corrections.?

Richard: ?About four to five thousand transition off the TANF program, some going to work.?

Bill: ?HUD pays rent for most of these folks. How many total are still not employed

Richard: ?About 40,000 are not employed.?

Renee: ?How will we manage to reign in our work as a committee, there are lots of populations that need work and how can we identify and prioritize??

Barbara: ?Communities in CT are creating a similar model, we need something like that, that all our work can feed into.?

Ginny stated that ?Gail had identified two themes that the committee could tie all its work too, the first being Career Pathways and the second Industry Partnerships. WIOA requires broad system coordination and alignment of all of our programs and strongly promotes Career Pathways and Industry Partnerships as the methods to accomplish this.?

Meg: ?How can we be sure that we are all speaking the same language? For example, what I understand the term ?career pathway? to mean may be different from the way that Adult Ed or the community college would define it. Ginny: ?Yes, the WIOA steering committee discussion also identified the need for a common language so that when discussing a topic everyone has the same understanding of that topic.?

Gail defined the meaning as tied to the process for assisting participants in understanding the opportunities, such as career counseling, work readiness, etc.

Meg defined the meaning as it pertains to CTE students, in that it is tied to specific occupations and the education steps one takes for preparedness in a specific occupation or training program offered by the CTEs.

Ginny defined it as a series of industry based occupations and education opportunities, and described a chart that showed the skill attainment at every level of education to prepare an individual for employment in the finance industry, from bank teller to international market fund expert.

Paul: ?There is a task force studying the long term outcomes of Maine college students and other populations, we need some recommendations on what could make the use of that platform more successful if used in the future. The system could be useful for prospective students or could be used by programs to get feedback on programs, or for workforce development investment decisions. Dependent on whom the tool is to be used for, what should be added? If for policy analysis, should we look at establishing linkages with high schools? If for investing in post-secondary, should we add more colleges? If looking at wage outcomes, should we add more state wage data? There is a strong need and desire for this data but where will we get the resources or wherewithal to get what we need to put it all together??

Judy: ?The challenges for ex-offenders transitioning back into the labor force have to do with housing, and transportation, and transferring skills used form being a drug dealer to getting good, self-sustaining employment.?

Barbara: ?There?s lots of opportunity to work that population in to all of the initiatives represented in the system.?

Bill: ?What?s the profile of the incarcerated??

Judy: ?About 40% are high school drop-outs in need of academic and occupational training.?

Garret: ?Assistant Secretary of ETA created the first CareerCenter in a prison. In a tight labor market we need to tap all the untapped labor pools, ex-offenders are one of those pools. Many employers express an affinity for a specific population such as veterans; some may be open to employing this population.?

Ginny: ?Identifying opportunities for this group could be as easy as getting every partner that conducts outreach to employers, to simply ask if they are willing or open to employing this population.?

Gail: ?In the southern Maine region, employers open to hiring this population have been identified.?

More discussion ensued on how to determine what the resources and what are the barriers to accessing the resources.

Paul: ?How will the work of this committee fit with the whole big picture??

Garret: ?We may not need to focus on minutia. We may have to change the name of this committee because we don?t want be confined to just compliance policy issues.?

Gail: ?We may not need to bring everything this committee works on to the SWIB every time; it may be that we work to bring issues to the legislature.?

Conversation was rerouted to the need to select a new committee Chair

Renee Kelly nominated Gail as Chair and Barbara Woodlee offered to assist as co-chair.

Garret mentioned that the committee chairs meet once a quarter and that the committee should also meet once a quarter. The committee chairs tee up what goes on the agenda for the SWIB meeting. We are looking to schedule these meetings so that they are complementary and not prohibitive.

Renee initiated a motion to establish Gail Senese as the new chair and Barbara Woodlee as the co- chair, Richard seconded. It was a unanimous vote.

Renee wanted to remind the group that although she represents the UMaine system on this committee her area of expertise is economic development and as such there is a lot that she can bring to the table.

Discussion on dates and times for committee meetings resulted in a decision to meet immediately after the SWIB meetings conclude, have a working lunch from noon to one and finish business from one to three.

One member inquired about the Apprenticeship Grant Announcement, Ginny stated that Joan Dolan, Director of the Apprenticeship Program, was leading that charge and would be calling stakeholders together for input.

Bill reiterated the need to support staff of the committee when they are presenting items to the SWIB. Bill would like to see a pie-chart of the populations served by the workforce investment system, i.e.: youth, TANF recipients, Low Income, Unemployed etc. It was agreed a Pie Chart of populations served and their associated educational levels would be a quick way to inform the committee.

Garret stated we would put something together before the next meeting, and asked Ginny to go over some of the immediate policies that would have to be worked on in regard to WIOA.

Bill expressed concern that the work of the committee as just discussed should not be focused on WIOA policy review.

Ginny stated that some component of the WIOA state board will have to be focused on this aspect as that is what is required of the Act and that the Act includes the broad umbrella of systems as well as specific policy requirements for formula funding etc.

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