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  • Campaign for College Opportunity’s new president on tackling the transfer process 

    Campaign for College Opportunity’s new president on tackling the transfer process 


    Jessie Ryan, president of the Campaign for College Opportunity

    Courtesy of the Campaign for College Opportunity

    One of California’s top higher education advocacy groups, the Campaign for College Opportunity, has a new leader.

    Jessie Ryan, who took over as president of the organization on July 1, has worked at the campaign for 19 years, most recently as an executive vice president. 

    Under Ryan’s predecessor, Michele Siqueiros, the campaign sponsored legislation making it easier for community college students to skip remedial math and English classes and enroll immediately in transfer-level courses. The organization has also advocated for reforming the state’s financial aid program and backed legislation intended to make it easier for students to transfer from a community college to a four-year university. 

    Ryan, who is a product of the Los Rios Community College District and San Francisco State University, recently spoke with EdSource about her priorities and how she plans to build on the campaign’s work around remedial education, improving transfer and expanding financial aid, among other topics.

    The following conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

    What are your main priorities as the campaign’s new president?

    I’d love to share with you a little bit about my journey because I think it connects to my priorities as well. 

    I was raised by a single mother who always dreamed of going to college, and she did not succeed in reaching her college dream. We moved around a lot and struggled with homelessness and food insecurity. She really instilled in me from the time I was 4 or 5 years old that a college education was going to be my pathway out of poverty. 

    When I went to a community college, I had no clue as to how to access financial aid, how to develop an education plan so that I could transfer — all of these key things that would be building blocks to lifetime success. And just by luck, I ended up finding a counselor who really changed my life. Because of her, instead of going into remedial math, I had access to statistics. Because of her, I got an education plan to transfer and worked 35 hours a week and went to three campuses simultaneously to transfer. 

    When I did transfer, my mother became homeless again, and I was faced with this question of, do I drop out? And I did not have an associate’s degree to show for my work because the requirements to transfer did not align with the requirements to get an associate’s degree.

    And years later, I would find out that these were the experiences of millions of community college students across the state. Students being put into remedial sequences from which they could never recover based on one high-stakes test. Or having to repeat coursework because the requirements to transfer didn’t align with the requirements to get an associate degree, and sometimes dropping out and having nothing to show for their work.

    Those have been two of the bedrock policies that we have worked on at the campaign over the years, alongside a host of other issues. The campaign is going to continue to be at the forefront of policy transformation. 

    The Campaign for College Opportunity previously sponsored Assembly Bill 705 and co-sponsored Assembly Bill 1705, bills meant to make it easier for community college students to skip remedial math and English classes and access transfer-level coursework right away. How do you assess the implementation of those bills, and do you expect there could be additional legislation?

    We are not currently looking at additional legislation, but I wouldn’t say it is off the table, should it be necessary moving forward. AB 705 was one of most significant equity levers in ensuring that students are completing college-level math and English, accessing college-level math and English. There is significant data that has supported why this reform was necessary. But despite that, what we have marveled at is the level of continued opposition. 

    We’ve been really lucky to have, through former (California Community Colleges) Chancellor Eloy Oakley and now Chancellor Sonya Christian, champions who are committed to this issue. But it has been a fight year after year, more recently with the pandemic. A lot of people want to say that because of the pandemic, students are less prepared than ever before. And yet what we have seen from the most recent data is that students who access transfer-level math and English have done as well as in the prior years or even slightly better. 

    I think that the next iteration of this work is going to be, how do we implement equitable access to college-level math and English for our STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) students and for our ESL (English as a second language) students? Because those are the last two pieces of 705 and 1705 that need to be addressed and built out. The chancellor’s office is already talking with us at the campaign about helping to guide what the successful ESL implementation would look like for our multilingual learners.

    Where I think there’s potential for additional legislation and potential for additional budget investment is around co-requisite. Students who take co-requisite courses alongside transfer-level math and English succeed at higher rates. And so I think where we are is, how do we analyze evidence-based high quality co-requisite and resource it at scale? Because then it allows us to celebrate not just a 100% access to transfer-level math and English, but stronger throughput, stronger completion rates.

    Last year, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed AB 1291 to create a pilot program in which students seeking to transfer to UCLA will get priority admission if they complete an associate degree for transfer starting in 2026-27. The campaign at the time said it appreciated the legislation but called it only a first step. Do you have plans to try to further improve transfer to the University of California?

    We have over the years struggled with the reality that UC, while they’ve made some significant progress in meeting the needs of transfer students, can and should do more. They have had transfer admission guarantees, but they’re not at all campuses. And for community college students who are trying to prepare, they want to be able to use the associate degree for transfer, not just for admissions consideration, but for an admissions guarantee, if not to the campus of choice, to the system at large. 

    With 1291, the original bill was not a pilot. But it was amended to a pilot in the final stages of the legislative cycle. It is a first step. I appreciate that it’s a first step and that UCLA would be an important campus. 

    But at the end of the day, that pilot should be used to take the associate degree for transfer to scale. It should not live in isolation. How do we make sure that with UCLA’s new leadership, this is prioritized in such a way that sets it up for success and applicability for other campuses across the state? I hope that that will be the case. 

    Lawmakers and advocacy groups for years have said they want to reform the Cal Grant to make it simpler and make more students eligible for aid, but it hasn’t happened yet because of the state’s fiscal woes. Is Cal Grant reform still a goal of the campaign?

    We’ve been in touch, me and the new head of the California Student Aid Commission, Daisy Gonzales. She brought together a small group of partners to talk about how we can begin looking ahead to do what we need to so that we don’t find ourselves in this position again. Recognizing that there’s not going to be the kind of funding we need to actualize the Cal Grant Equity Framework this year, how do we start thinking about alternative funding sources and a multi-year approach that might allow us to take on pieces of the Cal Grant Equity Framework until we get to a place of full funding?

    What kinds of alternate funding have been discussed?

    We’re very early in conversations about alternative funding sources, but right now I’m encouraged because Daisy and the California Student Aid Commission are saying we need to think big. Is there the possibility of going after new dollars? Could we even be talking about seeing if there could be a tax that would be able to fund the kind of financial aid that would drastically expand access for students across the state? 

    But they’re early conversations. Nothing is moving yet. What I will say, though, is, for me, having done this work for nearly 20 years, sometimes the greatest innovation comes at a moment of desperation. Or a moment of budget malaise. And so instead of just standing on the sidelines, I really think there is power in folks in the education equity community, our higher ed institutional partners and our Student Aid Commission saying, ‘Here are the suite of options that we’re looking at,’ recognizing that this is going to take a few years to be able to see into fruition.

    Do you have any specific goals or priorities related to the California State University system?

    At the CSU system, we are seeing that there have been some really strong practices adopted around inclusive hiring, cluster hiring to ensure that faculty and leadership reflect the diversity of the state. There has been some really good work that has happened to support Black learner excellence and innovation. I would say an example of that right now is what we’re seeing with Sac State developing the first Black Honors College in the nation and what is going to be the house to a dedicated $2 million fund to support Black learner success systemwide. We want to really work with the system and accelerate those efforts because I think the challenge here is we know that some campuses have done well and others have not. And really the key to equity moving forward is going to be to ensure that all CSU campuses offer the same type of quality experience for our Black and Latinx students that some leaders on campuses are prioritizing. I think it becomes even more important that we elevate those high-impact practices like cluster hiring and dedicating funding to ensure welcoming campuses right now than ever before, because students and families are questioning the value of college. 

    In response to the Supreme Court ban on race-conscious admissions, California people have said, ‘Well, we’ve had Proposition 209 for quite some time. So does this really affect us?’ But the reality is we have seen that there is a chilling effect often after these types of decisions. Students and families are questioning the value of college. Students and families are wondering whether or not college is affordable, accessible, worth enrolling in at this time. And so I do believe that given the size, the significance of the CSU system, we have a huge opportunity to say we’re going to do more than ever before in the Graduation Initiative, to make sure that those gains are actually resulting in not just real number gains for all student populations and racial and ethnic subgroups, but closing of equity gaps.





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  • Tackling the student mental health crisis in rural Central Valley

    Tackling the student mental health crisis in rural Central Valley


    Credit: Pexels / RDNE Stock project

    Este artículo está disponible en Español. Léelo en español.

    Born and raised in the agricultural foothills of Tulare County in California’s Central Valley, Greg Salcedo attended the only K-8 school and high school serving his rural town of about 3,000 people, where everything seemed out of reach — backpacks and notebooks, teachers and administrators and, in particular, school counselors and social workers. 

    Friends and family, Salcedo said, never spoke about adolescent depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress or suicide, issues that have, for decades, disproportionately affected rural, high-poverty communities in the United States. 

    But after the Covid-19 pandemic exacerbated a decades-long mental health problem in Tulare County — with psychiatric hospitalization rates for students 9 to 13 years old climbing 23% during the first year of the pandemic — Salcedo decided to pursue a master’s degree in social work. In his first year as a graduate student, he helped shape the county’s emergency response through Rural Access to Mental Health Professionals, a program that placed him as a student mental health support worker in schools serving his community. 

    “I was able to talk to students and set them up with resources, call parents to set them up for therapy referrals or services with outside agencies [and] do a lot of outreach to promote mental health,” Salcedo said. “Being in this community for so long has helped me have a better sense of empathy and understanding of these kids and what they’re going through.” 

    The program places early-career mental health workers in 33 of Tulare County’s high-poverty school districts. Through the program, Salcedo served a one-year unpaid internship at an elementary and high school in Tulare, after which he was hired full time as a social worker at a high school in the Tulare Joint Union High School District.

    Participants are first- and second-year graduate students in social work who provide education-related services such as interim therapy and student group services, according to Marvin Lopez, executive director at the California Center on Teaching Careers, which helps coordinate the program. Since 2019, the center has supported 50 candidates through a $2.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education. 

    “In our district alone, we started out with three social workers last year, and now, we have seven new social workers that came on through the grant,” Salcedo said. 

    In 2019, Tulare County had a student-to-counselor ratio of about 870:1 — one of the highest in the state and well exceeding the recommended ratio of 250:1. 

    Since then, the state has embarked on a historic, five-year, $4.6 billion initiative to expand school-based mental health support through programs such as the Certified Wellness Coach workforce and the CalHOPE Student Support and Schools Initiative. 

    Districts in Tulare County have improved shortages of mental health providers using funds from the state. Tulare Joint Union High School District, for example, reported that the district’s student-to-counselor ratio improved significantly from 300 students per counselor in 2019 to 268 students per counselor in 2021. 

    But, few participants could afford to stay in the school-based mental health field after completing their unpaid placements, said Lopez. 

    “It became evident that we needed to support candidates to make sure we retain them,” Lopez said. “We began looking at resources like clinical supervision and additional training, but also financial incentives that can allow them to continue working at school sites.”

    Last year, the center secured a $15 million federal grant to develop Preparing Rural Inclusive Mental Health Educators, a program that pays final-year graduate students a $45,000 stipend for a yearlong internship and a three-year commitment to remain in the field of school-based mental health care. To date, the center has sponsored 23 interns.

    According to Lopez, these candidates are able to offer more long-term, advanced care, such as individual student therapy, group therapy, parent and family consultation and school faculty support. The center intentionally recruits from partner universities closest to Tulare County, such as California State University Bakersfield and Fresno State, whose students largely come from the rural communities they will serve. 

    Jeovany Martin, who completed his master’s in social work at CSU Bakersfield, was an intern in the program at a local elementary school.  Martin was raised in neighboring Kings County by his Mexican immigrant parents, and he applied for the program to serve families whose needs have been shortchanged by language barriers. 

    “I’m able to relate to these students. I speak their language, and I’m able to communicate with parents in their language, which goes a very long way in creating a working relationship with them,” Martin said. 

    Martin said that the program was also his most realistic path to the field of education-based mental health care. Most providers are overworked and underpaid — with nearly 59% of school counselors leaving their positions in their first two years — and non-white, low-income candidates have much less financial and professional support to enter the field. 

    Nationally, most school counselors are overwhelmingly white, and they do not represent the backgrounds of the students they serve. For Tulare County’s student population — where nearly 80% of students are Latino — the two programs address a shortage of cultural competence in mental health support available to students, according to program supervisor Rosie Hernandez. 

    “We’re also having folks who are bilingual be part of our program because it allows families to be a bit more open to services because of that simple fact that they speak their native tongue,” Hernandez said. 

    Most children living in rural, low-income households, Lopez said, are also more likely to experience higher rates of anxiety, depression and behavioral problems, often due to stressors such as food insecurity, parental job loss and geographic isolation. 

    “We’re recruiting, preparing and supporting candidates from our own communities who represent our student population,” Lopez said. “That, in itself, allows our students to connect at a much higher level with our interns to bring them comfort, a space where they can interact and feel safe.”

    A legacy of bias and neglect 

    Martin and Salcedo’s internships in Tulare County also provided the opportunity to tackle a decades-long legacy of mistrust between social workers and immigrant families. 

    “A lot of our families, especially from the Hispanic culture, think of social workers as ‘the people that take away my kids,’” Salcedo said. In his first year, Salcedo felt stifled by the number of permission slips that would have allowed him to help more students, but were returned unsigned. “Our job is also about breaking down that barrier and [explaining] our role for them to understand, ‘This person is here to help my kid with anxiety. They’re not here to judge me as a parent.’” 

    The National Center for Youth Law found that across the country’s child welfare, education and mental health systems, providers and educators have routinely over-referred Latino students for behavioral issues and subjected them to harsher disciplinary measures than white children. Black and Latino children were also found to be removed from their families and into out-of-home care at higher rates, while receiving fewer mental health services, such as psychotherapy and counseling, than white children.

    Families that include at least one undocumented member or non-citizen — 14.3% of Tulare County’s overall population — are also less likely to opt into care if they rely on citizen children to receive basic benefits like food stamps and housing subsidies, which can be jeopardized by family separation. In a county where more than a quarter of residents receive SNAP food assistance, and two-thirds of these recipients are children, signing a permission slip could come down to what some parents feel is a calculation between their child’s mental health and access to basic services. 

    To address fears of bias and neglect, which remain the highest barrier for underserved communities to access to mental health care, program interns adapt a traditionally siloed approach in school counseling to work more directly with parents, caretakers and community support systems. 

    Salcedo, for example, partnered with the local Boys and Girls Club to run a regular backpack drive for students in the neighborhood. He also helped set up a resource closet at his school, where students frequently stop by for necessities such as food, school supplies and personal hygiene products. Most recently, he partnered with a local church to serve boxed meals to students at the end of the school day and to parents on back-to-school nights. 

    “We have this daily check-in routine with our students, where we say, ‘Whether you’re needing to talk to a counselor, or you just need some deodorant, a snack, or pencils, we can provide it,’” Salcedo said. “‘If you’re looking for housing, or babysitting, or transportation to get to an appointment, we can try to help.’”

    Broader post-pandemic challenges

    Martin, who was hired as a social worker after completing his placement, said that the need for broader support has especially spiked for K-8 students in Tulare County, many of whom lost crucial social and cognitive development to remote learning during the Covid-19 pandemic. Many of Salcedo’s high school students, he said, withdrew from their counseling sessions online — some did not have reliable Wi-Fi or could not turn on microphones due to chaotic environments at home, for example. 

    Many also experienced life-altering trauma as a result of the pandemic. They grieved family members, experienced debilitating illness and lost access to basic needs like shelter and food. 

    “That’s why it’s important for us to take a holistic approach,” Martin said. “We might be doing an intervention here at the school for the student, but there might be something going on at home that the family needs extra resources for. We’re able to help bridge those gaps, wherever they might be, for the students and their families.”





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  • From Chaos to Control, Tackling Device Tracking with IT Asset Management In K-12 Schools

    From Chaos to Control, Tackling Device Tracking with IT Asset Management In K-12 Schools


    Aug 25
    2023

    From Chaos to Control, Tackling Device Tracking with IT Asset Management In K-12 Schools

    Syed Ali

    By Syed Ali, founder and CEO, EZO.

    In today’s digital age, technology has become an integral part of the education landscape. K-12 schools are increasingly relying on technology to enhance teaching methods, improve student engagement, and streamline administrative processes. Although the investment is necessary, the rapid pace of technological advancements brings with it significant challenges.

    During the COVID pandemic, millions of K-12 students across the US relied on borrowed devices from their school districts, with Chromebooks being the most common for remote learning. Schools rapidly adopted Chromebooks in 2020, as the demand surged during the transition to remote or hybrid learning models, resulting in millions of students receiving laptops, tablets, and Chromebooks from school districts nationwide.

    Fast forward a few years, and now, many K-12 districts are still scrambling to account for all those devices, year after year. This includes not only locating and recovering missing devices, but also making sure clear policies and procedures are in place for future distribution, collection, liability, and insurance claim filings for those devices that can’t be found, as well as budgeting time and staff to inspect and repair any tablets that do come back before they’re redistributed.

    Take for example the 77,000-student Greenville County, S.C., school system which made headlines during the summer of 2020 when it revealed that it had been trying to recover nearly 5,000 of the more than 58,000 Chromebooks that were distributed to students during that school year.

    Another example comes from the Chicago Public School District. The district reported that computers and other devices that amount to at least 8% of the Chicago Public Schools’ “technology assets” had been listed as “lost” during the pandemic. Also, the district said it had depended on its schools in the district to take a regular inventory, but that the process continues to be time-consuming and inconsistent as only 35% of Chicago’s 500 district-run schools have a technology coordinator on staff.

    Similarly, St. Francis Independent School District located in Minneapolis, which encompasses more than 700 employees and 4000 students from kindergarten to senior high had relied completely on Excel spreadsheets for IT asset management processes. This manual asset tracking system was creating a lot of holes: things were getting missed, and the data was far from accurate. If a Chromebook was checked out of the school by a student or teacher, someone from the IT team had to update spreadsheet-based records with the person’s name, their ID number, the device number, and the school location. This was all done manually, and as a result the team wasn’t able to consistently track the devices they managed.

    This is where an effective IT Asset Management (ITAM) solution becomes indispensable and why an ITAM in K-12 schools should be highly considered.

    Unlocking the Power of IT Asset Management

    IT Asset Management in K-12 schools is not merely about tracking and cataloging hardware and software components (although this certainly helps). It is a strategic approach that empowers educational institutions to maximize the potential of their technology investments and drive positive outcomes. Here’s why ITAM should be a priority for every forward-thinking school:

    Cost Optimization

    An effective ITAM solution enables schools to streamline their technology budget by accurately tracking hardware and software assets. By identifying underutilized resources and avoiding unnecessary purchases, schools can allocate their limited funds more efficiently and invest in areas that directly impact students’ learning experiences.

    Enhanced Learning Experiences

    ITAM plays a pivotal role in ensuring that educational institutions have the necessary tools and software licenses to support innovative teaching methods. By maintaining an up-to-date inventory of IT assets, schools can ensure seamless access to educational resources, empowering educators to deliver immersive and personalized learning experiences.

    Efficiency in Operations

    Managing a vast array of IT assets is a complex undertaking. An ITAM solution simplifies the process by automating asset discovery, tracking warranties, and managing software licenses. This streamlines administrative tasks, reduces manual errors, and frees up valuable staff time to focus on core educational objectives.

    Scalability

    An ITAM solution should be scalable to accommodate the evolving needs of a growing school. It should offer flexible licensing models that align with budgetary constraints and provide options for expansion as technology demands increase.

    Customization and Reporting

    An ideal ITAM solution for K-12 schools should offer customizable reporting capabilities, allowing educational institutions to generate insights that align with their specific goals and requirements. The ability to create detailed reports on asset utilization, maintenance history, and license compliance is crucial for effective decision-making.

    Conclusion

    As technology continues to revolutionize education, K-12 schools must harness the power of IT Asset Management to optimize their digital resources. By implementing a comprehensive ITAM solution tailored to the needs of educational institutions, schools can unlock cost efficiencies, enhance learning experiences, ensure data security, and streamline operations. And, most importantly, schools and their IT staff can keep track of all those Chromebooks and other devices so there is no need to put out an All Points Bulletin (APB) on missing devices every year.



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