PETER DARLING: How was round one? It worked. Oh oh, I should not have asked. I will ask again at the end. Again, welcome and before we start, I just, I think you know who I am. I am Peter Darling from Granite State Independent Living. Maureen O'Donnell, this is Ken Duesing. Ken is our school representative from Manchester, New Hampshire. And on Skype, our large screen, Lisa Hatz, our state director. Real glad to welcome her here. What we found out very quickly is that you don't want to know a lot about our program. You kind of have heard that over the last days sessions. So, um, I am just going to give you a little quick background, just to sort of remind you of where our particular project came from. We were able to establish it in 2009 because of stimulus dollars that were available for a wide variety of activities and were intended to sort of jump start our economy. New Hampshires Department of Education through vocational rehabilitation had sent out RFPs looking to address some issues that were happening. What was going on in New Hampshire at that time was the governor had recently decided that allowing students to drop out at the age of 16, that means that the student could drop out if their parents signed that they could and leave school. His feeling was that that was not appropriate and was leading to personally bad outcomes, but certainly from just the states perspective, it was not a good idea to allow students to not finish high school. We are entering clearly a different age where education and specialization are becoming what is going to be necessary to be successful. Also, our state board of education was going through a very rigorous process of looking at itself and education within the state and undertook a project that was I think labeled "High School Redesign." And one of the things they were really struggling with was the realization that lots of students learn in lots of different ways. And that for some students, New Hampshire was failing because the traditional model which was based on seat time, you know you gotta have days. So it is, how many days in the school year, how many hours do you have to be in English, each year to get credit. If you don't have the seat time, then you can't pass the thing no matter how smart you are. Did not have anything really to do with the competencies, it was seat time. So um, they came up with what is a very unique thing which was the ELO, probably none of you have extended learning opportunities in your environment. But we do and we are thankful for that, but what that is it needs to take place outside of school, it is to help a student re-engage in education to discover the relevancy of education to their career or future hopes and dreams. And needs to be done though with rigor so that it is just not allowing somebody who said I don't want to take biology I am just gonna go look at this pond and watch frogs for a month and write that down. It needs to address those standards or those competencies that whatever course you are granting that credit in would require. And then it came to us through VR I think because VR is struggling and will continue to struggle with the issue of transition. The resources there to do it, the fact that many students with disabilities get to them at whether they are age 16 or even 25 and they are not prepared for work. They have not had the background either educationally or experientially, emotionally, and so on. So that was their interest. So we responded to the RFP, we were awarded it and had to move forward. There is more background to it, but I am not going to totally go into it at this time. I hope that sort of helps you do that, I think one of the things that you are interested in, how do you find partners. How do you get partners and what are some of the barriers that either you anticipate or you have experienced in the past. And I think one of the reasons we wanted to have school representation and state vr was to help us do that. First of all I am going to turn it over to Lisa and let her just tell you what their perspective was on Earn and Learn and then I will let Ken do the same. And then we will open it up. LISA HATZ: Great, um, well good morning everybody, thanks for attending the session and thanks for having me attend via Skype. It is pretty cool. You know, as I said in the last, are you guys getting feedback? No, yeah, I am. I don't know if it is just this, now maybe it is better. Could be the weather connection here to cause it is not great, but, um. You know one of the questions in the last session was around how did the partnership come about? And in New Hampshire, as I said in the first session, we are really fortunate to work very closely and have for a long time with Granite State Independent Living. And of course our schools. Granite State Independent Living is the only independent living center in New Hampshire, we consider ourselves small but mighty as a state. And I think we are really proud of a really rich history of working together to, you know, to meet the needs of our mutual customers. Whether they have independent living needs or whether they have vocational rehabilitation needs. As I said in the first session as well, I think our biggest challenge from a VR perspective is actually keeping staff, you know having consistency in the staff in the program. We, like most other VR agencies are experiencing a lot of turn over for various reasons and if you don't have that consistency with the staff it really does create problems because, you know, first of all, if they are new staff they don't necessarily know everything they need to know to be successful. So that has been a real, you know, challenge for us. And, but I think overall, this project, this program evolved from the initial concept of how do we help students that are looking at dropping out or have dropped out to re-engage in education and to have them start thinking about work to all of the really rich program components that GSIL has developed over time. So for instance, the budgeting piece, the health and sex ed pieces that come into it. That are really teaching kids a lot of the stuff that they need to know to move into the work world. Right down to how do you set up a checking account? I remember Peter and Maureen telling me with one of the first classes a student came to them and had their paycheck from their work experience and they said I don't know what to do with this. And it really, really brought us back to what are all the components that we need to have in the program so we are really proud of our partnership with GSIL. I know that there are states that have had more contentious relationships with their independent living centers. I think we are really fortunate that we have had a great relationship. If we do have issues, we sit down and we talk about them. And we say, all right, so how do we solve this? You know, and they are never really big things, usually they are around staffing. And how do we get back on track in terms of consistency. Also, the payment structure, you know just, in terms of the school districts were so proud that Manchester School District sees such value in this program for their particular educational attainment needs as well as that transition for students. And their willingness to partner with us, I think that another barrier is for folks that are thinking about starting a program like this, is how in your state are you going to get the school districts on board to understand how beneficial this program can be and I am sure Ken will talk a little bit more about that. But, in order for us to partner, everybody has a role and also has a funding decision in there, so I guess I will open it up to Ken and then we can take questions and things. KEN DUESING: Thanks Lisa. She touched on something that I think is really key, which is the barriers is everyone comes from their own perspective and competing expectations. VR wants youth to be employed, school districts wants youth to graduate and get a diploma and sometimes those end up being in conflict when we talk about the elements of a program. So I think that can be a big barrier if you don't plan accordingly. You know, these students, what is most important to me is that these students get a diploma. Getting a job is honestly secondary to me. Cause that is my reporting and what my expectations are. So I think one way we established or worked through that, is that we established an advisory group. The advisory group meets every month during the school year so that we talk about issues as they come up and that has been really fruitful. I will talk a bit more about this this afternoon but, you know we have representations from GSIL, from VR, from the school district, from the actual schools from district administration. And that advisory group so that we can problem solve and there are things as simple as a calendar and how things run. There are things more complex like funding. But those are kind of the big barriers that I think you need to, or one of the big barriers that I think you need to think about in planning for this if you are to approach the school district, or are to approach VR, you know what do you want to get out of it. What do they want to get out of it? Because it needs to be meaningful to the school district. You know I need to refer kids there with the expectation that they are going to make a leap forward towards earning a diploma. So I think I will leave it at that and we can open up to questions if people have any. AUDIENCE MEMBER: I heard you say yesterday that the students must have 12 credits, I am not exactly sure, something about the credits in order for them to be able to participate in the program. Tell me a little bit about the criteria and what all it entails. KEN DUESING: Sure, we have in Manchester, we have students need turn 20 credits to earn a diploma. So this program is specifically for, from school district perspective, for students who are not on track to do that. So if you have a 16 year old with 12 credits that is basically a junior in good standing, so we are looking at some of these older kids who have much less than that. Kids who might have 5 or 7 credits when they are 16 or 17 years old. One thing we talked about in the other session was for voc rehab, they, their target was to have students employed within 2 years and so, like one of our challenges was looking at that credit issue. Because if a student only had 5 credits and they are starting to work in this program, they might not graduate in 2 years. Might be, that is not enough time for that to happen. So, but VR would like to have students graduating in 2 years then to work on employment. So there is a conflict around that. We set up criteria and it is more of a guideline is kind of how we did it, and that was actually a lot of our discussions in our advisory group. Is there black and white criteria or not? And we decided there is not. Because you have to take the individual student into consideration and what their circumstances are, but you know, we look at basic guidelines are, yes, someone who is not on track for where they are, where they should be with their same age peers. LISA HATZ: Yeah, I was just going to say you know, Ken is mostly right. The one thing I just want to clarify is that we don't necessarily need the students to become employed within in 2 years. What we are really looking for is that referral happens around 2 years before they are going to graduate. Obviously we would love every students to become employed, but some of them might not, their career path, or their goal, it may take a longer time. They may have post-secondary ed after they graduate. So our referral time is essentially 2 years prior to graduation. And I think where the conflict is and what Kens really referencing too is, where they are with credits at that point in time. In terms of being, sort of eligible for the program, not for VR but for the Earn and Learn program at that time. What I think our counselors were responding to along the way was when they have students that came to them, or came into the program with very few credits and they were not showing up. And they were not really participating in the VR program, it was problematic for the counselors because they were setting aside time for those students, and they just were not participating. So we were hoping to get students that were a bit farther along that were also at a different point in looking towards graduation so that we really have students that were invested in the program. You know, that is tough, I mean, everyone knows that working with transitioning youth is a complicated situation. None of us knew what we wanted to be when we were 18. I wanted to be a geneticist. Now Peter knows me really well, and knows that me being in a lab coat in a lab 8 hours a day would never happen. So I think that, it is that journey, kind of working with the students, so I am not sure I answered that question totally, but obviously we are passionate about the program and how it can really help the students. One of the things that I mentioned in the last session too, was what we have heard at nearly every graduation, I think I heard it at every graduation is the students really felt like they were treated like adults and they were treated like employees and really treated with a lot of respect from the GSIL staff and the school staff in this program. And the confidence that they built up. I mean the speeches that students have given, the songs that they have sung, the presentations that they have developed. It has been amazing. You know transformation for them in a really short period of time. AUDIENCE MEMBER: I was thinking of in the district where I live, one of the barriers and maybe you have some suggestions. The curriculum that we use in our state you know like leaving now currently common core, we are hearing a lot of teachers say we don't have time to implement or structure around this. How will we get them to see that this is a program that could really be utilized and effective for the students that are at risk. kEN DUESING: one thing that I guess that we look at is through our extended learning opportunities, we look at the competency based model of that so that if that is their curriculum, what are, in looking at the curriculum, what's the competencies out of that and so that you don't have to follow that specific curriculum as long as you meet those competencies. And I think that is an advantage that we have that we are able to do that, we can do it through extended learning opportunities, we have at our vocational high school multi track classes that might touch on English, math and science all at the same time and so I guess a way to approach it would be to say these are, we can meet the competencies of this course. So for an English course, we know English 3 these are the competencies that the student needs to meet so how would you prove that they met those competencies without sitting through that curriculum. And I think that's, Lisa was talking about checking so as part of a math course where you have to learn for example, using a checkbook and balancing and you know anything that goes along with that they can do that through a real world perfect banking example of what do I do when I get a paycheck and how do I figure out where my money goes and so I think that is the way that you can address that. Other questions? PETER DARLING: I just want to go back cause I don't want people to misunderstand and think that VR is being exclusionary in any way. I think that Lisa was trying to articulate at least in part, that what they were trying to do was create a little bit of efficiency within their counselor population. What happened initially was the funding was going to be, and still is, spread across the 2 partners. Voc rehab was going to be in it post grant one third. Their one third was justified on the idea that each student would get work focused, would have work experiences, would have formalized career assessment, things take place, and that would justify their participation. As Ken said, the school really is only interested in moving those kids toward graduation. Everyone in the room is about both of those things. Don't for a minute think they are not. And what Lisa was finding in some of the issues around staff turnover and ability to be in 3 schools as often as they needed to be was difficult for them to manage. So one of the things they did was they, lets look at having VR fund the same one third, the same dollar amount, it is all math, it is one third of something. So they chose to say, let us help be more selective with six of these students. And that is where that sort of what they would like is that they had 8-10 or maybe more credits and a couple other, you know, associated things, but that was not to the exclusionary. I can tell you that since that has been in place, they have funded students with much lower things. What it is really about is, is that student, can we project that they will be focused enough to find advantage in this experience to move forward. So again, it is not in any way exclusionary, I think it was a way also to cut down the counselor case load. Instead of having to follow 15 students, they only had to follow 6 which just made it more manageable, allowed for a more intense and meaningful experience from the VR counselor. Is that fair Lisa? LISA HATZ: Yeah, thanks Peter. And I think it is very fair and I think what it really does speak to more so, was the, we wanted them to have a really intense experience in the program. But we were running up as a barrier, we were running up against a big concern over case load size. Because we have, if folks can do the math, we have 3 programs per year. We have one in the fall, one in the spring, and one in the summer. And so you can imagine that could be 30, 45 a year. Now the average case load size in New Hampshire is about 150, which is higher than a lot of states. And our transitioning youth, our transition counselors rather, tend to have a little bit more than that. So that was a real concern and they were really piling up. And you know, some students were leaving the program, which at some level is their choice, if they are not interested, but we really did want to help create more efficiency and also more, you know, a deeper relationship and I do think the reality of the schools have a different goal than we do in terms of some of our metrics. And that is important and the cool thing, the coolest thing about it though is the program meets both. So we both kind of win. And I think that is why it works for these students that really take advantage of it. KEN DUESING: and I would absolutely echo what Lisa just said. I think we do come from different perspectives, but it is a program that really works for each of our needs and that is the key thing and I will say that my school staff have a much better sense of which students would be successful in this program now, than they did when we started 4 years ago. And so we are seeing students that kind of better match both our criteria because we have a better sense of what works and what doesn't and what students a key part is having students that are motivated and that is a hard thing to judge when they have not been motivated in their traditional school program and that is why we are referring them in the first place. But, I think because of the VR counselor coming into school to meeting with us because of GSIL staff coming in to school to meeting with the students, because of our advisory group which meets monthly and talking with each other, together it is synergy that works much better for our students. And so we see students, Maureen talked about this yesterday with very high attendance rate. Students who are earning a lot of credits and then coming back to school and being more successful in a more traditional approach for most of our students. Or some students who continue and do, you know, working on a computer lab to earn credits rather than coming back in. But, they are engaged in their education more so and I think that is the benefit of knowing it is going back to what Lisa just said, we have different metrics but, it is a program that addresses both of those and so they are getting clients who when they are referred are making more sense for them. We are students who are earning more credits and heading towards a diploma which is great. AUDIENCE MEMBER: in North Carolina we have an occupational course of study for students, you are smiling, so you were anticipating this question? We, those are the students that our transitional program supports. We don't currently have a program to assist kids with disabilities in the regular classroom and we would like to expand into that. But, how do you address those students? Do you have that in your state? How do you address those kids, how do you support those kids. KEN DUESING: We were talking about this, we had, they did a great job of typing up all your questions on your post it notes yesterday and this is one of the questions so we were talking about that this morning and just trying to understand better what you mean by occupational course of study. Okay, all right, certificate rather than a diploma. So we have in Manchester, we have a diploma or a certificate of attendance. And certificate of attendance is generally speaking for kids with more severe disabilities, cognitive disabilities who are not able to meet the criteria for diploma. The big stumbling block is algebra as a requirement. Are you able to meet that and so are there ways around that or not. I will say probably this program does not serve students with severe disabilities with significant cognitive disabilities. It is more for kids with learning disabilities, our category in New Hampshire is called other health impairment which a majority of those are students with ADHD attentional disabilities. With emotional behavioral disabilities, so it is a, I am not sure that this would really address what you are talking about because there is still very much an academic component to this in meeting those course competencies and we want students to meet that English credit and civics credits. Did I have that right, yeah, okay. Amongst others. We have other programs for kids who are in a similar type of, you know, might get a certificate rather than a diploma. But this program really does not address that. AUDIENCE MEMBER: is the CIL involved in the other program that you are just talking about? KEN DUESING: no, they are not, we do that all within our own school staff and whether it be a self-contained classroom or we have some vocational programs that is run by the school district separate from this. We have classes like an occupational prep class which does a similar thing with lower functioning students but will have them get some job experiences through that also. PETER DARLING: and the smile was because we Googled it. And you know what comes up? North Carolina. AUDIENCE MEMBER: You said you had 4 pathways, I guess towards education and that was one of them. Because I just want to make sure I understood your question with occupational course of study, that is why I was smiling. AUDIENCE MEMBER: Well in regard to what she is talking about, I think we can all, you know, your program is not gonna be our program, but we can take ideas from your program, tweak it, and make it our own. And I think that is the whole goal of this seminar, so none of us should ever be discouraged at any point thinking, oh that will never work for us, because we have a whole different scenario however, take some ideas from yours, tweak it to ours, make it our own. KEN DUESING: Yeah, I think that is really key. Some of the questions last night, one of the questions was talking about how do you implement this in a rural community as opposed to an urban one. And I think part of it is saying you know your communities and so you need to find out what the school district needs. You need to find out what VR needs. For us, we are in a city, it is the largest city in New Hampshire, 100,000 / 110,000 people so not a large city, but as Lisa said, small but mighty. But you know, we need to have our kids be able to get around the city so that's. And we do have public transportation so that is one thing they offer through this program. So it meets our needs for our youth and families. So I would absolutely agree with what you just said, that you take it back and you know your community and you say, you know, here is an aspect I see it worked here, but how do I adapt that to my community? AUDIENCE MEMBER: So I was just wondering, do you guys have a state test that the students have to pass to graduate other than just the 20 credits? KEN DUESING: we have state testing but it is not tied to graduation. So unlike Massachusetts which they have the MCATH, so we don't. We have, well it is changing, balance assessment now. But it is not tied to graduation at all. PETER DARLING: not sure if this continues that thought of how can we look at this differently, but between sessions at one point I was talking to someone out in the hall and they said we don't have ELO, how can we get ELO and obviously that is huge. One of the things though that we have incorporated and it is not ELO it becomes a credit recovery piece, is that there are so many now online, academic courses that are accepted. Now they may not be in your state, but it is hard for me to believe that most states don't have some electronic way to connect with course work, that somehow you might be able to make part of yours. One of the things when Maureen was describing our program, she talked about depending on the time of year, the students are either there until noon or 1 o'clock and what we realized was that we had a room with computers in it. There was capacity, oh my God, they are just sitting there, we know how expensive technology is and it was sitting there all afternoon, just sitting there. So we said what can we do and that is when we just said well wait a minute, if we can get access to the software that the district allows students to get credits, we can incorporate that so that some students for instance stay. And what is interesting is and I will let Maureen talk about the lab a little bit, they come. It is not a requirement, they come. They come on their own. And part of what I think the success of anything that is outside of what they failed at, is you have got to have those unique features that somehow created an environment that is different enough that they can feel success and when they feel a little success then they feel a little more success. I will let Maureen talk about the lab. MAUREEN O'DONNELL: I would like to talk to you about a success story about someone who came to GSIL really high anxiety. She was at one of the high schools for about a year, year and a half and just was not attending, just could not sit in the classroom. So she came to the Earn and Learn program and was able to get the 4 1/2 credits because one of the ones that Lisa just mentioned was a health class and it was reproductive health. So she was able to get the 4 11/2 credits and she did go back to school and she was successful probably 3 or 4 months or so and then the high anxiety level would, it was a large school and you know as we were saying a couple thousand kids and she was in the hall and the anxiety would just, it was too much for her. So we met with the staff at the school and decided well how about if you come back and you take some of those online classes. And she did. And she was very successful. So what she ended up doing, she came to us with maybe 5 or 6 credits or so, got the 4 1/2 credits and then continued on with her education through these online classes and ended up graduating this year, actually a year early and is now off to the Manchester Community College in the fall. So it does work, as I mentioned, school as Ken was saying as well, is not for everyone, she just needed to be outside of the traditional classroom. So that was one of our successes. So it does work, we, as I mentioned yesterday, had 97 credits that were earned in our computer lab over the past couple of years. So on average, students if they are here in the morning will get 4 and typically have lunch with us and then in the afternoon are with us for a couple hours and maybe 2 or 3 more credits. So they go back to school with maybe 7, 6, 7, 8 up to 10 credits. It depends on how quickly they can get through some of these online classes. Any questions around that? PETER DARLING: Is no one anticipating a VR struggle? As Lisa I think very appropriately said, we are fortunate to not have that. But we are also not naïve and we know that there are environments that is difficult, just an opportunity to tap Lisa with. Do you want to Lisa talk a little bit about what you think this reauthorizataion might bring for transition? I don't think we did that too much in this session. LISA HATZ: No, I definitely will, thanks for reminding me. You know, I think the new Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act that President Obama signed on July 22, so it is very new, is really going to change the way VR agencies will be working with transitioning youth. I think the biggest impact will probably be that VR overall will be working with youth much earlier. There has even been talk about working groups of students, not necessarily individual students, but groups as early as the sixth grade. And I, although I think that is a personnel challenge, we have not heard about additional appropriations at this point. But I think it is a real opportunity to start as the schools are impacting students understanding of the world of work much earlier and what that means. And then also providing the resources on what VR can do along the way. I think some of the ways, I think many of the ways honestly, that we work with students is going to change. You know I am excited about having the partnership that we have like with Ken and his team to talk about how can we more effectively collaboratively serve students. I have had quite a few ideas already I think our biggest challenge to that is staff capacity. It, I know that I sound like a broken record but, our counselors serve 77 schools in New Hampshire and a lot of those schools are big populations. Particularly in the Manchester, Nashua area, Concord, Portsmith, you know, so I think overall the two big changes that are going to come out of WIOA are working with transitioning youth earlier. Our metrics, our performance accountabilities are going to change where we are following customers a lot longer after they are technically closed in our program and employed. And the number of customers that are getting into post-secondary education or apprenticeship or obtaining different credentials if you will. You know the president and the administration are looking for a lot more of that in this new law. So you know, thinking ahead Peter, I think we are probably going to have some talks about how we connect more with the community colleges and with UNH in southern New Hampshire and a lot of the college programs that we have as a true transition so that there is a kind of a continuum for a lot of those students. I think it is a really exciting time. We have got a lot going on in education, we have also got a lot going on in VR and whereas staff see it as, I think we don't know everything we need to know right now. The Department of Education federally is putting the regulations. Our national organization CSAVR which is the Council of State Administrators of Vocational Rehabilitation is working collectively with the rehab services administration and our federal partners to make sure that we have some input into what those regulations look like so that VR is not set up to fail. In terms of what we can provide with the limited funding that we have. To put it in perspective, the VR program in New Hampshire has an annual budget of about $15,000,000. A little over half of that is directly for client services. The rest is to pay staff and our fixed costs and those kinds of things. And so we have to serve approximately 87,000 customers about 30-35 per cent of those are students with disabilities. With our budget, we are kind of a drop in the bucket compared to education and health and human service funding in our state. But, as I said in our other session, we are small but mighty and I think our partnership, we really try and make it work for the students and for the partners. PETER DARLING: I think that is it for our time unless we have one more question. AUDIENCE MEMBER: Anything you need to tell us about liability issues related to the students moving from the school setting to your setting, yada yada? KEN DUESING: We have releases of information so information is shared and that is how we agreed to do it with VR and GSIL in terms of, they need to follow school district rules in terms of structure and things like that, they have in terms, that is why we encourage kids to use transportation or we provide transportation if needed to work sites. But, if they use public transportation then that is how they would get to their work sites. So I think that is kind of how we address it, we work with GSIL to make sure they understand our regulations as a school districts since it is still the students school program.