SWIB Program Policy Committee

July 31, 2015: 12:30 PM
Marion Martin Rm, Commerce Drive, Augusta

Program Policy Committee Minutes of 07-31-15 Meeting

In attendance: Bill Burney, Ginny Carroll (Staff), Meg Harvey, Renee Kelly, Paul Leparulo, Garret Oswald, Judy Plummer-Beale, Liz Ray, Gail Senese (Chair), Barbara Woodlee (Co-Chair)

Absent: Laura Boyett, Richard Freund, Denise Garland, Yvonne Mickles, Dan Muth, Barbara Woodlee (Co-chair)

? Committee members provided updates of important activities within their agencies. o Joanna ? need for a data group for connecting students to the workforce o Meg ? groups and education providers don?t have the data we need o Bill ? This is a complex business, we have a clutter of regulations that cloud us. Bill brought up an instance where individuals referred to the CareerCenter may not get the specific help they need if they don?t fit a specific category, like Adult or Dislocated Worker o Ginny added that referral need to be specific and probably should occur more formally between providers behind the scenes. o It is hard to coordinate resources if we don?t have the full understanding of what services are being provided. o Judy ? will we all still be on the SWIB? o Gail ? if the function of this group is to focus on policy we need to meet more frequently o All ? there are so many committees, we don?t know them all o All ? there is need to have a basic WIA or WIOA 101 for this committee and a shared language so that all can understand what is meant by the system. o Meg, Judy, Bill we don?t even know what?s in the CareerCenters o Gail ? we have to establish the purview of this committee because clearly there are some who don?t understand. o Meg, Gail ? this week in a DOE meeting commissioners stated we need to protect student privacy o We really need an MOU about both internal and external communications. o Liz ? an MOU sound ominous but there are already some out there in action and we don?t need to recreate the wheel. o Liz ? ASPIRE program is in trouble and facing huge federal penalties ? we need to clean things up. o Bill asked ?how do we grade ourselves ? a C+? o Meg says we don?t all know what others are doing. o Liz ? believes a lot of what we are doing fits the goals of WIOA o Gail ?instead of providing remedial support in a linear fashion the Integrated Education and Training model provides both academic and job skills simultaneously. Through the incentive grant they have been able to identify specific employer-based projects and even though the grant won?t be able to fund all of them she hopes that other WIOA funds will be able to. o Renee announced that through the Innovate Maine program they have been able to place Maine Fellows who have learned the basic skills of innovation, into existing businesses to assist with business innovation needs. This is a best practice for UMaine.

? Committee members discussed the purpose of the committee and whether or not it was to review WIOA policy or take on broader scope. Paul Leparulo read his notes from the last meeting regarding what had been discussed as the newly defined role of the committee: ? Bill heard that this committee would still be tasked with reviewing policy for the SWIB and that this group must identify standards training providers must meet.

? During the meeting Garret had stated that he would be developing a new WIOA advisory group that would look at specific workforce program policies and that this group?s purview would be to review and recommend broader scope policies. Ginny agreed that standard threshold for eligible training providers would be something that would fall to this group and that more info was needed for us to identify specific performance thresholds.

? Career Pathways discussion was put on hold. Meg reiterated the need for a common understanding of the differing definitions of Career Pathways and what it means has a whole.

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