Hearing none. All five members voting nine. Recommendations adopted. And finally, GM586, GM698 for the confirmation for Jan Iwasi to expire 6:30 2025 and then 6:30 2029 respectively to advise and consent. Members, anybody voting no? Anyone voting with reservations?
Hearing none, all five members voting I on both resolutions, recommendations adopted. Chair Welcome. Thank you. Congratulations. Congratulations all. Members, um, for the deferred 3:01 p.m. agenda, the governor has withdrawn the GM775. Therefore, we will defer this measure. This concludes our hearing.
Uh good afternoon everybody. Uh I'm Steve Pon. I'm the transition specialist for workability here for this uh Mid Alama County Selpa. And I'm going to go through what we have for workability, what it looks like, what we do, and some of the partnerships that uh we have. And so uh we'll go through a presentation. It'll take uh probably 15 20 minutes and then we'll have time for question Q&A after that. All right.
Uh so if you do have any questions, write them down and we'll deal with them all at the end of the presentation. So here we go. Uh workability. Yes, it is dedicated to the mid Alama County Southwest. So my charge is for the four unified school districts, uh Caster Valley, San Leandro, San Lorenzo, and Hayward. and we're going to go through what what exactly is workability and this is a program that provides high school students that are already receiving the special aid uh special education services. Uh we want to bring instruction and fresh experiences to help them in their search for gainful employment. If it doesn't lead to gainful employment, then we also want to be able that we can facilitate um transition to post-secary opportunities or even um life after the adult transition program. What do we provide? We provide pre-employment skills training, employment placement.
We have a follow-up program for high school students a year after they've left the school district. And this follow-up program is also tracked by the CDE, California Department of Education. And those follow-ups we either do by phone call based on information that we have and or it can be done at uh through an e surervey uh with the assistance of guardians and parents. Sometimes we off also offer skills training in obtaining and retaining employment. We do a lot of things around interest and career awareness. And with the support of family, school, and community, we want to help the students so they can make that successful transition to the next part of their life, whatever that's going to be. Along the way here, we're going to look at some of the students in action where they're where they're working right now. These are the adult uh transition students, and our first business partner is Roundt Pizza.
uh two locations, Hayward and San Lorenzo. Our student workers there, they wipe tables, fold boxes, clean windows, sweep floors, and yes, they're always looking for a free slice of pizza for their hard work. Uh you cannot believe how much of a motivation that is. Uh so here are some of our students uh that are working. Um one of them is filling the the condiments for people to take. You know, you pick up your pizza, you got parmesan, cheese, and peppers. The other one is filling the napkin boxes. Uh here they are folding the boxes for the takeout pizzas. Um this seems like it would be very tedious, but it's actually very helpful uh to a lot of our students, but it it gives them a focus, something to work on. And then obviously being able to use their hands and see what the finished product is going to be with uh is actually a very good project for them uh to work.
Usually at the round table they're there uh between two to three hours uh a day uh well one day during the week that they're there with their classroom. So what does workability offer to our students? We talked about job search assistance and we talked about job application assistance. We also offer resumeé writing techniques, cover letter writing. We can do job interview coaching. Now, this would be for job interviews as they transition as some of these seniors or or people that are aging out in the adult transition. Uh there could be a business that's interested in hiring them. So, yes, we can help with the interview coaching. We do career interest assessments throughout the school year, usually two or three times. um have them look at and explore career preparation. We have also started self- advocacy tips which are very important for our students to be able to be their own advocates.
So we do have access to some online training that the teachers can utilize and I'll go through some of the the online systems that we use to help with that self- advocacy work site coaching and supervision. Um we use the classroom uh pair of professionals as as um work site coaches. Um I train them on what to do, what the expectation of a job coach is. Also train them on what to do in an emergency. Say one of the students gets hurt, uh what to do, how to fill out the accident form. and also to realize that through the uh the the grant the CDE we do have insurance coverage uh liability and individual coverage for the student workers. This is a big relief to our business partners because now they know that not only do they get great work basically for free but also that the student workers are covered by insurance.
um job retention techniques. We work on work rellated conflict resolution skills, meaning is that sometimes things get a little close on where they're working. So, how to calm down and reach out to the job coach if they're feeling a little um intimidated. We have work-based ling learning that goes on at the locations and then we have many transition resources that we'll go through. The work site place students receive pay at the set minimum rate per hour. Does anybody out there know what the minimum rate pay is right now for non-fast food? Anybody? It's $16.50 an hour. In January, it'll go up to 17. Now, it goes up 50 every year. So, at right now at $16.50 50 cents per hour. We have some students that are making a pretty good paycheck for the hours that they're working over a month. Some more of our students in action.
Walgreens. Walgreens has been very supportive. We actually had two locations. The location I'm going to show you is the one at Hesperion and Winton down by the Hayward airport. We had the second location in San Leandro at 136th. However, uh unfortunately, it was one of the Walgreens that Walgreens decided to close. Uh we were very sad to lose that resource because they were very supportive of our students and the work that they did. So, here's our here's our gang doing what they they love to do. Uh they will rotate the stock. They they they go through training in the classroom that I help facilitate so they can look for expired dates. So they know they recognize dates, how to take them off the shelf, make them as takebacks to the bathroom. Maybe they'll just rotate things, um, sweep the floors, clean the the shelves, and so forth.
The other part of this with the workability, it would be theu uh community- based training end of taking public transportation. So many of these students, if they can't walk to where they're working, then they need to take public transportation. AC Transit is the choice and workability does provide for the AC Transit bus tickets for these students to be able to do that. So, it's it's good for them to get out of the classroom. They're not only learning what to do at the work, but they're also taking the public transportation along with their job coaches. And some more of our students, excuse me, at Walgreens. And that's one of our our job coaches there u explaining to them what the dates are. Let's take a look a little deeper of what workability does offer our students. We have career vocational assessments. This is to help them identify their school and postcareer interests and goals.
We find this very much needed to do and it changes through the school year. So, normally I would start do the first one uh sometimes at towards the end of August while the teachers have their classes classrooms set. Then we'll come back again and do it before holiday break. And then by the end of the school year at in May, which is always a busy month, we'll do it again because their interest changes. And for those that are aging out or graduating or moving on, it's interesting to see how their interest assessments have changed. We also help the students understand that the decisions that they're making um they will add up and help them with their life after their school right now. So there is life after Royal Sunset. There is life after Roy Johnson. That's where we want to make sure that they get the skill set and the mental set as well.
Career preparation, we do activities, learning experience um to increase their career awareness. It be workbased either on site using the store managers, store owners or excuse me the job coaches or myself or we'll do it in classroom. Um the old term for it is role play. I like to call it practice sessions so we can uh get them used to doing things. We used the practice session of uh bagging groceries which then led to success at one of the work sites that we'll talk about. I mentioned interest assessments and these are two of the interest assessments that we use and they're really fun to go through with the students. Um I conduct them uh with the classrooms. The teachers um are kind enough to put these assessments up on the big TV screens and and I must say it's really nice to go to these classrooms where they have a nice big touchscreen TV screen.
it makes it really easy for everyone to see and for me to work through it. But what this is is simply we work through a set of pictures. Um the one on the bottom is about 18 pages long and we'll go through and discuss the pictures and really what the students are doing are placing an X under the task that they choose. Meaning I like that task. I can see that task. We'll do that one. And by doing it as a class and discussing each picture, the input that we get from all the students in the classroom actually helps clarify to some, oh, that's what that is. Oh, I didn't know that. So, it's a good way to do both of these by facilitating it as a a cooperative effort from the room. After these are done, I take them and I have a scoring rubric that I use.
I scan them and keep them for audit purposes for the C CDE and then the teachers get the originals back and then um they'll either review them with the students on their own or we'll review them together and and this way it fulfills any any requirements that might be needed as far as interest assessment for the students. Also gives us an idea of who might be looking for what type of business partner we want to look for in the future. Okay, so we're looking at some of these skill assessment tools and we use um quite a few. Um one big one that we use is prietts u which is a series of um notebooks that we have assessments, we have um conversations, we have scenarios. So depending on the level of the class, we can I can bring this and sit down with the teachers and we can decide what is going to be good to go with the class.
Um some of the times I can run these. A lot of the times the teachers I'm coaching the teachers on how to do this and then they're going to run it with their class later and then fill out feedback so I know how that goes. Sometimes it's hard to get the exact time to get those done. We also have online quite a few um uh career sources. We have my next move which is actually part of one here. There are assessments. There are also uh syllabuses that the teachers can download and work their students through. We have a site called teacher pays teachers which it works like a padlet. Uh so there's a lot of input in there. Some of it you have to pay for, but um if you can be resourceful enough, you can find some really great free downloadable features in here that I've used with the classrooms.
We also use career onetop. They use that in the classroom. Again, that's a nice resource from the um Department of Labor that they can go in and even look at uh sample videos of what it looks like to um gather shopping carts in the park parking lot or even what it likes to what it's like to be a teacher. One of the ones that we pay for and the workability budget takes care of uh providing this to the teachers would be conover online. And this is a great tool. The teachers, they get their own, excuse me, uh, login information and through this site, they can download anything from, uh, community based training to soft skills to, um, self- advocacy, which is the one that, uh, a few of the teachers are working on right now. And it's an online, they can either run it themselves for the teachers, and or they can assign it individually to students.
and then a paric uh can work with the student in the classroom in order to get through it. So, it's one of the better tools. We do pay for it and it is part of the budget, but the teachers really do appreciate having this available to them. Well, what else does workability offer the students? Well, we have awareness and exploration and activity. So we can provide opportunities and again like I said we can do this either on-site somewhere or we can do it as practice roleplay sessions in the classroom. We do help prep for job search. Uh we've been using a lot of soft uh skill sets. Some of the 21st century skills which would be like uh collaboration, communication, creativity, the the big three C's right there. And then we also use some other skill sets uh based for child and adolescent needs skills uh with the students and with the teachers.
And then we have uh based learning which it includes participation in classroom and community- based experience. And that could be just as far as maybe somebody's interested in working at a library. We don't have any jobs at a library, but we can uh give them the opportunity to take AC Transit to a library and talk to the librarians ahead of time so they can work with the students so they can see what goes on. Um that's actually one of the um favorite locations for these based learnings. More students in action. So we have two grocery outlet locations, San Lorenzo and San Leandro. They'll clean the shelves, stock shelves, collect the carts, return goat bags, and sweep floors. Both grocery outlet locations are very supportive of our students being there. Uh they have been for um a while. Uh one of them we've had for five years as a partner.
Um that's the one in San Lorenzo and the one in San Leandro came on board three years ago. So, they're very very excited about helping our students um working in their stores. Let's take a look at what the eligibility requirements are for, excuse me, paid placement in the adult transition program. The first and foremost is safe, sanitary, and appropriate behavior. It's a must for a workability students. If you think of what um the qualities that employers want from students, it's really the same for um our workability students. So to be eligible for subsidy uh subsidized placement, not only the appropriate behavior, but they must do the following. They must have a current and active IEP. Be uh 18 to 22 years of age enrolled in school. Understand and press and practice basic safety skills. Uh presenting no major safety concerns and exhibit an ability to complete specific tasks, being able to do what they've been told and be able to focus.