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Transcript of NTA Conference Call Presentation held on 03/28/00

School-to-Work Implementation and Transition Systems Change

Learning from eachother and building a system to serve all youth

Presented by

Colorado School-to-Career Office, Susan McAlonan
Colorado State University, Sandy Thomson

Sandy and Susan, I wonder if you might start by sharing a historical perspective of the efforts in Colorado. For instance, was there an obvious starting point where School-to-Career, Systems Change, and Special Education started working together

Susan McAlonan (Colorado School-to-Career Office): Teri, I'd like to begin answering this question. Firstly, I was glad that you talked about challenges as well as successes, because for every success we've had, we probably also had the same challenges that other states face in trying to get to the table and make a system that works. And from our perspective in working with the Systems Change project, one of the reasons that youth with disabilities have limited access to the system is because the system is usually created without the thought of youth with disabilities at the forefront. When we heard about School-to-Work and School-to-Career from the Governor's Office, we knew that that was a table we needed to be at to join the dialog. We tried to help get the job done with the Governor's Office by volunteering time and energy to staff some of their initiatives.

Initially, when the Governor's Office was starting to work on School-to-Work, we were not at the table, but were behind the scenes helping them set things up, learning how to use overhead projectors, learning how to set up public forums, etc. The first place that we were actually able to enter the dialog was in our six public forums we had around the state for School-to-Work. In these forums, six communities in the state were visited by the Governor, and small group meetings were facilitated at each site following his visit. Since the Systems Change Project had such a strong network with transition teams throughout the state, we used this network to provide the needed facilitators at each of those six sites. That was probably the first time we got our foot in the door. We had people staffing some of the events and from there we were able to recommend task forces and working groups, and also assist with the grant writing process. Our goal was to make a presence and be helpful so that we could later be at the table to have the dialog with how you set up the system. Sandy, do you have anything to add to that?

Sandy Thomson (Colorado State University): Well you're correct in saying that we saw that as a systemic approach and were cut out of the loop in the initial stages. We saw a need to get in the back door, so to speak, and did that by way of our expertise in facilitating, coming to the table, and offering our network to the Governor's Office when they were in the process of putting this whole initiative together. That was in the planning stage. When they went through the process of actually writing the grant, since we had already sat on task forces with them, Susan was able to become involved in writing the grant. It became a very dynamic process at that time, because they realized the strengths that we could add to their initiative.

Teri Wallace (NTA): So, Sandy, you used the capacity that you had even if it wasn't specific to disability at the time in order to get to the table and get in the door, right?

Sandy Thomson (CO University): Exactly. We found it was very important not to identify ourselves as a special interest group.

Teri Wallace (NTA): Right, in fact, that was a unique thing that I continued to hear from you. I think, Susan, you had told me that you didn't define yourself as a special educator necessarily, at first; that you used some of the language that was more aligned with School-to-Work.

Susan McAlonan (CO School-to-Career): Well, I had this horrifying experience early on. The Governor called a meeting on School-to-Work before we started the grant writing. I went with the Commissioner of Education, because that was my area of expertise in my agency. Everybody was talking about this school-to-work system in terms of program elements. I just thought about our Systems Change Project and I put on the table about four different things that I thought should be included in a good school-to-career or school-to-work system. The Governor said, "Oh, I really like that. Let's get it up on the board." And then he asked me what my background was and I told him that I had been connected with the Systems Change Project for Youth with Disabilities. I felt like the whole audience just kind of cringed with that. Not that they were against special education or the disabilities initiatives, but they were so used to people coming to the table as advocates, being angry and hostile, that that was sort of the expectation they had for me. And so, since my goal was to get at the table and create a good system that will work for youth with disabilities, I minimized my background in special education and started listing that background up as School-to-Work background, indicating my knowledge around work-based learning, school-based learning and connecting activities, as well as systemic change and how to look at systems and develop systems that work for all youth. That was really probably my biggest ah-ha in trying to get to the table and once I did that I had lots more access, because people didn't automatically put their shields up and think, "Oh here comes the Systems Change folks and they're just going to be upset about something or not happy with something or expecting special treatment." So, instead we highlight our skills within School-to-Career and use their lingo, and that's been very helpful for all of us that have been involved, including those at the local level as well.

Teri Wallace (NTA): That's good. Now I'm going to pose a second question to you, Sandy and Susan. What are some of the motivations or incentives for School-to-Work or School-to-Career staff to work with groups such as Special Education, Transition Systems Change, and Community-Based Organizations?

Sandy Thomson (CO University): Although this might be redundant for those of you who didn't hear some of the historical perspective that Susan was speaking to, this ties together with some of the motivational incentives for School-to-Work to become involved with Special Education transition efforts. The transition providers, special educators, and agency providers have vast experience in the components of School-to-Work (work-based learning, school based-learning, and connecting activities) and I think that we downplay that a lot of times. The other piece is that transition providers have experience in systems development and usually understand the complexities of education, the workforce, human service, and other systems that need to be integrated into the school-to-work system. I think if we stand outside that process (i.e., don't come to the table and get involved with school-to-work systems), we're not offering our expertise to them. Historically, we found we needed to participate and be at the table, and did that by way of example and by way of our own expertise. During the development grant phase, the interagency team members were very involved with the state staff helping to set up, facilitate public forums, participate on task forces, and so on. That is some of the historical perspective. Susan you had some other points you wanted to add on motivation.

Susan McAlonan (CO School-to-Career): I wanted to say something that our state School-to-Career Director, Marilyn Acres, said to me a while back. She said, "You know, every time I go into a successful partnership, I discover that the person who's in charge or has a leadership role usually has special education or transition background someplace in their career history." I think that's a nice testimony to what special educators and transition folks can offer School-to-Career and often it's not tapped into. I think the perception is, "Well, they're very narrow and they only know youth with disabilities." But in order to advocate for and work with youth with disabilities, to help them within the education and workforces, you have to know all the rules and regulations of the different systems that impact School-to-Work. If you're a special educator or human service provider, you're constantly working in how to navigate through and manipulate systems, so that they work for students with very significant challenges. If you can do that, that translates very well to all students. That's been another realization we've had.

The other interesting statistic is that around 50% of our state level School-to-Work staff have special education background of one kind or another. I believe that most special educators and transition staff downplay their skills and from the other side if you're coming into it from a School-to-Work side, they tend to think that people don't have as much to offer as the actually do. So we've just tried to always elevate those skills and I think that's been real motivational. We see leadership emerging in our local sites and it's often the people who have been involved in transition.

Teri Wallace (NTA): Good. Thank you.

Dennis Aiello (Pennsylvania): I just want to say that one of the approaches we took was that School-to-Work is just good transition programming for all students. I think people are buying into that.

Susan McAlonan: Exactly.

Teri Wallace (NTA): Susan and Sandy, can you talk a little bit about some of the activities that you do at the state or local level, for instance some of the local planning groups, communications marketing plans, cross training, resource demonstration, etc. How are you making some of those connections in those various areas?

Susan McAlonan: I will talk about Colorado's approach and what we've done to integrate youth with disabilities into the systems planning at the state level, and then we can talk about the local level. Our structure is similar to some states:

• The Lieutenant Governor chairs the school-to-work initiative in Colorado.
• Staff under the Lieutenant Governor includes the Director, a policy evaluation person, and a technical assistance person.
• An interagency team is made up of the agencies that are key stakeholders in school-to-work/school-to-career, including the Department of Education, Vocational Education and Community Colleges, Higher Education, Labor and Employment, and we also added Vocational Rehabilitation.

We have that disability focus all the time and that's our core state group. That was the first piece: to have people on the inner circle that had that disability focus. I represent Education, but my background is Special Education, so I had that as well.

At the local level, when people are applying for funding, they must have a stakeholder from the Systems Change Transition Project. It doesn't mean that they just sign off on the grant; it means that they have to be active participants and they have to show that within their application. We automatically have that loop in the grant applications where those people must be represented and must be part of the partnership. We have 69 partnerships which represent 124 school districts, so have lots of partnerships across our state. There's been a couple where people had trouble getting to the table, but we've been able to facilitate that because it's in the state structure.

The other thing we have is Regional Councils and Regional Centers, and again the Transition Project must have a person represented on those Regional Councils, and those are fairly high stakes, prestigious appointments by the Lieutenant Governor. We make sure that each council has somebody from the Systems Change Project on it .

The other thing that was sort of interesting is we've really been going down the road of all students. The first year, we decided that they had to submit specific strategies on how they were going to include all students, including youth with disabilities. The second year, we decided that they could integrate it into their application, and when we got the grant applications and reviewed them, we hardly had any concrete strategies for youth with disabilities. So this year and last year we had people follow up. Now the grant application has to specifically address strategies that will ensure youth with disabilities access to the whole range of school-to-career opportunities and how they're going to tie in and connect with transition and systems change.

The other thing that we try very hard to do is include in the partnerships, work groups, and everything at the local level, business partners that have also worked with transition and systems change, and also school administrators who have background in special education. They bring youth with disabilities to the table. That's the systems strategy that we've developed to make sure that those people are a legitimate part of the partnership and aren't just coming through the back door. Our latest effort is to develop an interagency policy forum for youth at risk. Sandy, maybe you can talk about where our ideas are there, since you're the one planning that.

Sandy Thomson (CO University): The purpose of the policy forum is to bring together agency directors and decision makers to develop a collaborative seamless system of service delivery, and we're looking specifically at youth at risk (i.e., out-of-school, disadvantaged youth, youth with disabilities). This effort is designed to support and sustain School-to-Career transition and interagency collaborative initiatives in the state. We're well connected in terms of who we're able to get to this, however, we're anxious to know what the outcomes are going to be from this, given that some people bring resources to align with policy and other people bring curiosity, want to dialog and continue that dialog. We're at the point, as are a lot of other states, that we really want to see some very concrete outcomes come out of this and then be able to go to implementation right away. We're sort of in the position of having either been involved with a systems change process with transition, or in the midst of that, and at the same time being on parallel tracks with School-to-Career.

Teri Wallace (NTA): In terms of the policy forum, NTA is involved with that in some ways. We'll be able to share information about the process that Sandy and Susan are using in coming up with their strategic plan for Colorado, and how they're going to try to serve youth at risk and align that with School-to-Career in Colorado. We'll be able to share some of the process that they use, as well some of the outcomes.

Richard Horne (AED): Teri, I have a related question to the policy and integration question. Susan or Sandy, can either one of you talk about the connections or bridges that you might be creating from a policy perspective to the Transition Service Requirements of Part B of IDEA and the state's capability to come into compliance with that?

Susan McAlonan (CO School-to-Career): Actually, I think we're coming at it two different ways. For the policy forum, if I can be trite, it's kind of a 'show me the money' kind of situation. That we have a really strong network and a pretty good system for youth with disabilities (i.e., that's interagency, collaborative, been rolled out to all the school districts). Now, is everybody in compliance? No. Most are, but we still have our pockets where its been a struggle.

Richard Horne (AED): I'm interested in how we're working with our state directors, and then building our partnerships with our Regional Resource Centers. My question is how can we create the linkages in technical assistance and information dissemination activities that help align our efforts. Do you see that opportunity within Colorado? Having such a great presence and involvement with dealing with students with disabilities, can you link that then to compliance with part B? Not only is School-to-Work great for all kids, but in terms of what we say to the special education community in terms of administrators and monitors, etc.

Susan McAlonan (CO School-to-Career): Oh yes, absolutely! Because if we have a school-to-career system that works for all kids, you have automatic compliance with transition, because it's the same components that we're asking for transition: individual planning, self determination, helping kids connect with agencies, having a plan for when they leave school, having curriculum and instruction that includes focus on employment. All those components of IDEA are what a good school-to-work system should be for all kids. I think that's why we're so interested in being involved.

Richard Horne (AED): Absolutely, I see it as part of that large message of helping states with their current corrective actions plans.

Susan McAlonan (CO School-to-Career): Yes, because one of the frustrations, quite honestly, with transition, when we were trying to implement that, was that most of our kids are in general education and to try to do transition and then also have them be involved in general education and balance those two was very difficult, particularly for some of the mild-moderate kids that were in almost all regular education. So how would you get in the transition component? If school-to-career/school-to-work does what it should do, then that should happen in the science class, that should in the math class, and the social studies class. I think it's going to be richer and deeper for kids then trying to do a separate program of transition just focused on youth with disabilities.

Amy Bennett (STWO): I think that's an important point, because a lot of people might wonder what the advantage is of participating or wanting to be at the school-to-work table, as opposed to wanting to keep your energy focused on transition for youth with disabilities.

Susan McAlonan (CO School-to-Career): Right, and I believe that youth with disabilities within a school-to-career system are always going to need some additional support and strategies. However, it's going to be so much better for them and for their career development and personal development if this is something that everybody's doing. Then special education and transition still has a role, but it's not a separate program role, it's supporting the system and the kids within the system.

Richard Horne (AED): I think it's so critical in terms of our outreach efforts and working with our Regional Resource Center partners and with the State Directors of Special Education: to get them on board and help them think this way.

Susan McAlonan (CO School-to-Career): Right, I agree.

Anonymous (Texas): You also need to realize that for school-to-work to function properly, you have to get the employer thinking and functioning that way, too. Many of the programs, at least the ones they've spoken of in Texas, are designed with a heavy business input. Literally, the business industry is saying, "We want so many people who can do this," and yet they may not think in terms of an employment situation for a student with a disability. You've got to start and work there. You can't just say, "Oh boy! We've got the school thinking of our students!" You've got to get business thinking of our students.

Susan McAlonan (CO School-to-Career): Right. I think that's going to be another challenge. One of the things we've done in Colorado is we've tried to load our partnerships with business people who have involvement with youth with disabilities. I think that it's going to be a challenge though, as we have all general education students out in the community, to continue to have the high level of involvement for youth with disabilities, because quite honestly, it's going to be easier to work with some of those other kids. So we have to continue to train employers and use those employers that have been really successful with youth with disabilities on our partnerships. We have some examples locally and with our regional councils where the chair of those councils are employers, but they're ones that have come by way of transition and special education and that's been their experience and background. So they are setting the tone that those kids are part of the system and it's great to work with system, as well. But you're right, that's one of our big challenges, to help employers see that piece.

Amy Bennett (STWO): Susan, the other reason that I've heard that people are interested in being at the School-to-Work table to represent individuals with disabilities has to do with the School-to-Work focus both elementary and middle school, as well as secondary. Can you talk a little bit about what you're are doing in Colorado at the elementary and middle school level and how that impacts or could potentially impact youth with disabilities?

Susan McAlonan (CO School-to-Career): That's another important point. In Colorado our Transition Systems Change for Youth with Disabilities always had an elementary and middle school focus, but like everybody else, we got really focused on high school. Really by then, it's too late to do much with a kid who doesn't have awareness, doesn't have any career exploration, or doesn't have a sense of their abilities. With School-to-Career, we're looking at K-16 curriculum and instruction that embraces both academics and preparation for the workforce. We've had several publications in Colorado. Connections was an elementary special education curriculum for elementary transition, and we've re-framed that and it's out now as a School-to-Work Transition publication which elementary teachers are using. This gives us the opportunity now, through special education, to focus more on those younger grades, because I think that where it's at. As we work through our system of school-to-career, we all know change in high schools is really tough. Middle schools and elementary schools already do a lot of the things that we're asking them to do, and with a little [tweaking] we can have kids starting to look at that career piece really early. That's really exciting to me, I love the elementary / middle school piece of school-to-career and that really does broaden what we were trying to do in transition, because mostly that was focused at maybe middle school, but definitely high school.

Brenda (Missouri): First of all, I just wanted to let everybody know how helpful Sandy and Susan were both when we went out there and visited them. Our project has just gotten rolling since the beginning of the first of this year, we're in our first year of our project year. We went out there and visited them, and the materials they gave us in February are just completely worn out, because we've been using them so much. One thing I wanted to add is that the School-to-Work implementation grant was awarded to Missouri about the same time that the Transition Systems Change grant was awarded. What that has allowed us to do is to truly create one unique system of service delivery. We have actually issued joint requests for proposals. When we set up our regional request for proposal, they were both for a regional school-to-work structure and a regional structure on transition for students with disabilities. In addition, we recently finished issuing our local request for proposals, also issued jointly with School-to-Work. It's like Part A is School-to-Work and Part B is Transition. To go back in line with what Susan was talking about, all of our guidelines and criteria for folks involved in activities for transition require a partnership with their regional and local school-to-work personnel. That's a requirement for all of the RFP and project activities that they're doing. We've been welcomed, of course we didn't have to go in the back door at all, since it's all been coming down the pike at the same time. I think that was a real advantage for us. We are at the same table, I am on the School-to-Work management team, however, I still feel that they look to me mainly whenever we're talking about issues with students with disabilities, but I think it's just kind of a process that were going to work toward.

Amy Bennett (STWO): As someone who came to the School-to-Work Office as the disability person, and who several years later feels very happy to have many other people who now own the issue, it does happen over time, but it can be frustrating in the beginning, whenever there's a disability question to have it directed at you. One other point I wanted to make is that Maryland was in the same situation as Missouri, where both grants were awarded at the same time. They have also done what Missouri has done, issued joint RFP's to have staff sitting on both advisory councils or management teams. Missouri may be interested in contacting the folks in Maryland, as well, because they feel as you do that is was great opportunity to start the same time. It might also be an interesting teleconference, Teri.

Teri Wallace (NTA): Yeah, that's a really good idea! Other questions?

Richard Horne (AED): In terms of my other policy interest, is the linkage to overall secondary education reform. Susan, can you also talk about your connections to improving All America's Schools Act or Goals 2000, and overall secondary education reform?

Susan McAlonan (CO School-to-Career): That's the other place that we've really focused our connection. How is School-to-Career framed as education reform and how do we link with all those other initiatives. We've had a very strong presence with Goals 2000 in both integrating School-to-Career within that, and also youth with disabilities. Those came from kind of two different players, but that's been a really heavy focus - to make sure this is part of education reform and that it's not seen as a program, that it's part of the system. Our goal, just like with the Systems Change project, we connected with everything we could connect with. We're doing the same thing with School-to-Career, and hopefully at some point it's not going to be called anything, it's just going to be part of good educational practice, and will be linked to everything we know that works well in schools with students. But every Goals 2000 publication addresses School-to-Career, and same with youth with disabilities. They really are the leaders in education reform, at least in our state, and we're right there with them, so that's been a nice connection. And we've done that with the other education reform initiatives, as well. Colorado has mandated and legislated academic content standards, so in your core academics - math, science, English, history, social studies - we've developed workplace competencies, like SCANS spell out but they're a little different, a little less controversial to the more conservative faction in our state. We have cross matrixed those with the academic content standards, and then given some teaching strategies. So people see how they can go into a classroom and not add School-to-Career on, but when I'm teaching Death of a Salesman, I can bring some business people in to talk about work ethic within my English class. And that's been helpful to teachers, and it's great for kids with disabilities, because if you have a class that's including that workplace information, then maybe the students won't get the breadth and depth of the novel and what that means philosophically, but they can get some work-related information. We're working really hard to make sure this is part of education reform and not a program or something you do every Friday or in a separate class. And that's a huge sell. So we'll see how it goes.

Judy (California): I have request for materials. Is it possible for us to get the books that the woman from Missouri was talking about that are so useful? And also I'm wondering if Sandy and Susan could maybe create for those of us who are not doing as well as Colorado, a slice of what it looks like for a student in your School-to-Career system, from the student perspective, then maybe someone from the school - what they're doing in participation in the partnership, and how they connect regionally and at the state level. I think real specific examples like that might help us a lot.

Sandy Thomson (CO State University): We have our project web page available and School-to-Career does, as well, in our state. I think this is what a lot of people are evolving to, to network information back and forth. The materials that the woman from Missouri was talking about can be ordered from the website through a resource center with all those curriculums and so on. They do, however, require cost recovery.

Amy Bennett (STWO): I would be remised if I didn't also talk about the School-to-Work Learning and Information Center, which also has its own home page at http://www. stw.ed.gov. Their toll free number is 1-800-251-7236. We are in the process of collecting information from School-to-Work grantees, contractors such as the NTA, and technical assistance providers to assess exactly what products are out there. That's all being compiled into a notebook that will then be available to each of the School-to-Work State Implementation Grantees, as well as the School-to-Work Learning and Information Center.

Richard Horne (AED).

Amy Bennett (STWO): One of the things we certainly try to do through the teleconferences is to share what's working. I guess I would be interested in knowing from everybody's perspective, what are the one or two issues that are extremely difficult to deal with when trying to integrate youth with disabilities into the larger school-to-work system? What do see your challenges to be?

Valerie McNinch (South Carolina): I'm the State Transition Coordinator in South Carolina and I sit on the School-to-Work Advisory Council, all the members of which are appointed by the Governor, however, in our state we have a very conservative republican governor, and School-to-Work is not seen as positive, because it's gotten a lot of bad press. So we have a real difficulty in integrating students with disabilities, because the whole School-to-Work concept is seen as a negative concept in our state. So it's sort a politically negative issue, and I would say the challenges are the political barriers.

Amy Bennett (STWO): OK. Can I just give you a resource person in our office that may be able to help you with that? Her name is Sarah Zach, phone number is 202-401-6222. She's right now working on a series of information packets that help to address some of the myths that are out there related to School-to-Work. Although it's not a solved problem now, just like in the early days of working with youth with disabilities, there were lots of myths that were out there. Until we worked to dispel those myths, we had a lot of problems. I think that the myths that exist out there around School-to-Work have to be popped, and those are the kinds of things that she's working on and I'd be anxious to know if, after you talked to her, she was helpful or not.

Susan McAlonan (CO School-to-Career): We're also having some of those issues in Colorado and are trying to be proactive in developing information to get out to people that dispel those myths, so we may have some information. The other state that we worked a lot with to develop some of our things was Oklahoma, because they've experienced a lot of School-to-Career backlash, as well. We had a really interesting meeting a couple of days ago. We brought somebody in who was from the conservative right, and we had him dialog with us about how to help people get correct information, and he gave a list of tips on how to go about that. That's something that we're going to put together, because it was incredibly helpful to hear somebody who represents a large group of people that could be opposed to School-to-Career, giving us strategies on how to work with them in a more effective way. And it was one of the most interesting and very eye opening meetings that I have been in. I can see where we can change our strategies a little be to be more effective, because we definitely have that issue here. It's not everywhere, but it's present enough to make it difficult. We have representatives on the State Board of Education that are not supportive, and a packet went to every legislature at the beginning of the session talking about the ills of School-to-Career. The strategy we used is we had business people, who by nature had to be more conservative politically, respond to their legislators saying this is something we support and here's why support it. And that was a pretty nice strategy, but Amy I would echo that that's probably something that is having impact in our state, as well.

Amy Bennett (STWO):Right, and it's certainly affecting us nationally, as well. That's why over the last two months we've worked to develop some of the materials that I'm talking about.

Sandy Hall (Wisconsin): I think another issue, and maybe it's our school-to-work system, but we have the youth apprenticeships and youth coops in our system, both of which are competency based to exit. Particularly with youth apprenticeship, there has been eligibility criteria, established often times by local business, and in some instances they have over sold the program and lost sight of the fact that it's an educational program rather than a program to create a labor force for local business. So many times kids with disabilities do not meet the eligibility criteria. So that's been something we've had to work on, and we're not done with it yet.

Susan McAlonan (CO School-to-Career): And I think that's happening in Colorado to some extent too. Assessment systems that employers use to determine levels of what somebody needs to have to enter the workforce (and Work Keys comes to mind, but they're by far not the only ones) could be used as a barrier to say, well, you don't have this score, so you can't work at this company. I haven't seen it go that far yet, but there is the potential, particularly when there's more youth to choose from, where persons with disabilities will not have access because of their academic or physical limitations.

Sandy Hall (WI): The other thing is that essentially we've developed a parallel system with work experience and the special education teacher going out and identifying work experience sites and trying to meld those two systems together.

Susan McAlonan (CO School-to-Career): Yes. So you have 25,000 people knocking on the door of the same employer. Because we just have more people out there. And we're trying to approach that on a community level and regional level by developing some databases and contact people, because otherwise we're going to burn employers out and nobody's going to get in the door.

Amy Bennett (STWO): That's a really important point, Susan.

Shirley Chandler (Florida): I'm the State Director in Florida and I think the same problem is occurring here. What's happening with our School-to-Work is that people are perceiving it as continuation of the Tech Prep model, which means high tech / high wage jobs, and they're ruling out students with disabilities as being competent enough to enter school-to-work apprenticeships, internships, and job shadowing.

Amy Bennett (STWO): Right. At the national level, related to the apprenticeship issue, we've been working with The Bureau of Apprenticeship and Training to make sure criteria are not exclusionary. They also have a number of efforts going on where youth with disabilities are included in various apprenticeship programs. I think that just as stories are extremely helpful to us, ones that target young people who are participating in apprenticeship programs will also help you in Florida. And I know that Lynn Mingerelli from our office is the Project Officer for Florida State Implementation. She comes out of organized labor and has been working very hard on this issue, you may want to touch base with her.

Eric (Oregon): We're curious as to how Colorado is dealing with incarcerated youth. How are you serving your incarcerated youth in your school-to-career program?

Susan McAlonan (CO School-to-Career): I think that's one of the major reasons we're doing the policy forum that Sandy talked about, because I don't think we've done a good job of looking at incarcerated youth. We're trying to pull decision makers together and focusing on adjudicated youth as one of our major focuses, because we really haven't done a lot with that population. So we're hoping that we can put an interagency piece together of policy, resources, and funding to start looking at that in a more systemic way. Right now we do have some of our facilities connected with partnerships, we've done a lot of work around transition for youth with disabilities with corrections, and now it's time to bring those two together. I don't have any great ideas, you probably are further ahead in Oregon than we are. What do are you doing?

Eric (OR): We're the only youth incarceration facility in the state that's doing anything with School-to-Work and so we're pretty much making it up as we go along. We have a lot of obstacles to deal with, such a confidentiality and students not being able to leave this facility for things as simple as jobshadows. And we find that the Department of Education, our school board, and most of the people who work there are unaware of us as a school. We're trying to get some public acknowledgment of our facility, in the first place, then trying to build positive public perceptions. We were able to do a career fair just over a month ago where we brought in 34 different presenters from the community in a variety of occupations and employment services for students with disabilities, as well as post secondary education institutions. We had a positive effect on each one of those presenters who said they'd be willing to come back and we figure we can use each one of those people as a contact to get a hold of other people out in community. Right now I'm trying to get on the speaking docket of service clubs and chambers of commerce to take our message out there and tell them what we're doing in the area of work experience, and trying to remind the community that our students are eventually going to be coming back into the community and they can either try to have a positive effect on them now or they can just figure the students as part of their recidivism statistic that we're trying to decrease. So we're just curious if any other states are doing stuff, what kind of challenges they have, and how they're overcoming them, so we can so see if that's something that we're facing, as well, instead of having to pretty much make up everything on our own.

Teri Wallace (NTA): Am I hearing another teleconference topic, Eric?

Eric (OR): Yes definitely.

Teri Wallace (NTA): I want to make all of you aware that we just had a workshop in North Carolina that focused on marketing and including kids with disabilities in school-to-work marketing and communication efforts. There will be a lot of information coming your way within the next couple of weeks. It seems to me that a lot of the issues we've been talking about today, or many of the issues, have to do with how it is that kids with disabilities are included in some of those efforts.

Thank you all for joining us today. Thank you Sandy and Susan, this was just a wonderful conversation and I appreciate your time.

National Transition Alliance for Youth with Disabilities (NTA) conference call presentations are sponsored by the NTA and coordinated by the National Transition Network. For a copy of this or other transcripts, contact us at:

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URL: http://ici1.umn.edu/ntn/audio/1997/may.html
Posted January 20, 1998
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