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Transcript of NTA Conference Call Presentation held 1/28/98

School to Work for Youth within the Juvenile Justice System

Presented by

Dom Garrison
Superintendent, Oklahoma Dept of Vo-Tech Education, Oklahoma Skill Center

Holley Woleber
Director, Upper Rio Grande STW/Tech Prep Consortium

Bill Witter
Labor Market Economist

PDF Format
9 pages

Each presenter will first provide a brief overview of their system, and then address three areas: (1) Eye-opening experiences they've had in providing school-to-work support to youth within the juvenile justice system; (2) Major obstacles they've experienced tying the two systems together; and (3) Successful strategies which others may emulate or replicate. The presentations will probably run forty minutes, followed by questions by the audience. If we get questions that can't be answered, we will be logging those questions so that we may try to find the answers somewhere else and get it out to you in the transcript.

With that, we can start with Dom. And, Dom, do you want to give us a little overview of your system, your background in this area?

Dom Garrison: Yes, I will. Thanks Nick. I'm the Superintendent of the Skills Center School System in Oklahoma. Our school system is a statewide school system operated by the Oklahoma Department of Vo-Tech Education. We provide skill training to individuals who are under the supervision of both the Department of Corrections and the Office of Juvenile Affairs in Oklahoma. Our Juvenile Skill Centers are designed to serve twelve to fourteen students at a time. These centers are staffed by treatment staff, both vocational and academic educators.

We've adopted school-to-work as our primary operational philosophy. We're the lead organization in implementing this transition system in a corrections environment in Oklahoma. School-to-work provides a framework for our delivery of services that helps ensure that these incarcerated individuals can be successful as they transition back to society. School-to-work is not a program in Oklahoma, it's an educational system. It has many interconnected components and in our environment, in particular, we go way beyond the traditional vocational and academic education that you would typically see in a system like this. This system recognizes that there is a specific set of skills necessary for any individual to succeed in further education or industry or in society.

Strong industry alignment is critical to the success of our juvenile skill center programs, which is our school-to-work model in Oklahoma for the juvenile offenders. We began with industry by partnering with industry throughout the process; we are able to initiate programs that are industry-focused. Industry tells us what jobs are available and what the specific training requirements are. And we customize our modular training to meet the needs of that specific business within the industry.

One unique aspect of our juvenile training programs is that they are modular and portable. You know, overnight, our specific occupational training might change. Our system is student-centered.

A big component in our school-to-work model in Oklahoma for all students is the early assessment of student need. In developing our plan for each individual student, we recognize that not all students need the same services. Our technical skills training is individualized, based on the student's ability, interest and aptitude. We recognize that each student has unique needs in the life skills area. We have to recognize that life skills are probably the biggest deficiencies these kids have.

The juvenile skill center programs are individualized and they are truly competency based. Our model is performance-driven. Technical skills training, if it's truly industry-focused, will change rapidly. We are able to change our technical skills training in the juvenile skill centers as industry changes, and that happens often.

Probably one of the most unique aspects of our juvenile skill centers in Oklahoma is the fact that all academic and vocational training and life skills development, as well as the treatment, takes place in an integrated system. We don't have different pockets or different silos for delivery of these services. It's delivered in an integrated system.

We also have a work-based learning component at the end of our training, which is sponsored by industry. This component supports incarcerated individuals in a unique way. As they finish the program, each child is guaranteed a $7.00 per hour work-based learning experience that is 320 hours in duration. All students that successfully complete the program are guaranteed to be hired by industry. Our industry partner in Oklahoma is the Associated General Contractors, which is comprised of some of the larger commercial contractors in our state. Thus far this year, we have graduated six students, all of whom are currently in their work-based learning experience with an AGC contractor doing meaningful work directly related to the specific occupational training they received while they were incarcerated.

Dealing with this particular clientele, one of our biggest concerns was the ability to partner effectively with business and industry, in order to provide these kids with a chance when they reach the streets. We've been pleasantly surprised by business and industry's participation in this particular program.

So, that's pretty much an overview of what we do.

Nick Waldoch: Thanks, Dom. Holley, can you give us a brief overview of your area?

Holley Woleber: Yes. Good afternoon, I'm Holley Woleber. I'm the director of the Upper Rio Grande Tech Prep School-to-Work Consortium in far west Texas. Bill Witter, who is the third panelist, and I are working jointly on this statewide project that takes labor market information and the labor market information is filtered. Bill will get into more details about that component of the project.

In order to determine out-of-demand occupations, which occupations individuals use, particularly those who are incarcerated, can receive training in and have the best opportunity for competitive, full-time employment once they are released. It is the intent of the project as an outcome that the state prison school system, the alternative schools, the juvenile justice schools that are run by independent school districts will be able to use this information and redirect programs that are in existence or create new programs that lead to meaningful employment. In going through the labor market information, one of the pieces is to identify restrictions due to licensure, certification or other, perhaps it's a school board policy, that would eliminate that demand occupation from the list of potential training programs or potentially for employment for that individual.

The piece that I am more directly involved with is linking the training program to post-secondary education and/or registered apprenticeship programs. All the data in Texas suggests that if an individual who is incarcerated can attain or achieve a higher level of education, both academic and technical, or be linked to continuing education, their chances for staying out of prison and becoming productive citizens greatly increases. So, showing the linkages region by region: which post-secondary institutions offer training in those particular demand occupations, which registered apprenticeship programs are available, which ones could be created, or which ones could even be created within the prison school system that could be linked to registered apprenticeships and the major release points.

We are at the very beginning stages of actually going out and presenting this information throughout the state. The response at this point has been wonderful. It has been, "This is what we've been waiting for!" We're so glad that you compiled all this information into one place at one time. This is one component of the statewide school-to-work effort in serving this particular population of youth.

Now I'm going to ask Bill to elaborate on the labor market piece.

Bill Witter: Good afternoon, this is Bill Witter. I'm a labor market economist and former high school and university professor. And for over six years I've been doing workshops all over the country that use labor market information as the basis for career decision making. Labor market information is, for some people, a new experience. I find the only way that you can make a good career decision is to have some idea of what the labor market looks like and a sense of the direction that it's going.

Really, in comparison to what Dom is doing in Oklahoma, our approach is much more global. It is not industry-specific. Our workshops are not employer driven, they are labor market driven. What I've done is look at the overall Texas labor market, and each one of the twenty-four data regions of Texas. I use the $7.50 an hour targeted wage, which works out to slightly under $16,000 a year. In the materials that the participants receive is information on all twenty-four Texas regions, but we concentrate in our workshop on the national, state, and major incarcerated release points, as well as the particular region in which we are delivering the workshop.

In Texas, the major release points are the Dallas-Ft. Worth area, the Houston area, the San Antonio area, and the Austin area. So we talk about those particular areas, with the linkages to registered apprenticeships and post-secondary training in demand occupations.

I think we're really trying to provide a variety of options to deal with whatever interests a particular client might have and to give the counselors and teachers in the system a single place they can go to deal with whatever the particular individual's needs are. They then, in turn, may encourage particular program links with industry. My experience in dealing with the labor market is that the information concerning the entire labor market is, for our counselors, the kind of information that they are really looking for.

Nick Waldoch: Thank you Bill. At this stage, we are going to ask the presenters a couple of questions.

Question 1: Could you elaborate or talk about any eye-opening experiences you may have had when you started working with school-to-work in the juvenile system or the correctional system. Any surprises, either positive or negative, to forewarn others out there?

Dom Garrison: Probably, the biggest eye-opening experience for us in Oklahoma, Nick, was the level of buy-in and participation that was desired by business and industry. We were terribly concerned as we began the process of preparing these youths to reenter society. From our experiences with adults, we were a little bit worried that maybe business and industry wouldn't really accept these kids with open arms, and we found quite the opposite in Oklahoma. We visited with numerous trade groups and associations of employers, and what we find is that we have an aging workforce in America, especially in the trades area. And they are more than willing to participate, but they also have tremendous demands. They won't just give carte blanche buy-in to what you are doing, but they certainly will go to the table with you. And just as any customer, you have to be willing to sit down and negotiate specifications of the product you are building. I don't care if you're building cars or preparing these youth to go to the world of work. There are specific specifications that have to be met by these groups.

So, probably the most eye-opening experience for us has been business and industry, as well as the general public's receptiveness to participating in a true school-to-work system in our state.

Nick Waldoch: Thank you. Holley, do you have anything to add to that?

Holley Woleber: I think that we've found that certainly the information - participants who have come to the workshops are very excited to have this information, whether they are from the rehabilitation commission or the school system that operates within the state prison system, or the alternative school principal or counselor. That the demand occupations have been filtered at a $7.50 per hour wage level - there's not any occupation listed that is below that - helps to ensure that if the training and the programs do occur in those occupations, that at least the individual is not at a minimum wage level, which it's hard to compete minimum wage and not go back, perhaps, into old habits that put them into the prison system in the first place.

We are encountering statewide, from some individuals, a little bit of resistance. I think it's easier for people to take a hard line that everybody that's committed a crime should be locked up and not be served. We've had to fight some of that in the state to help convince people that, my goodness, if we can go out and provide this information and provide the handbook that lists the demand occupations and comprehensive job descriptions with the certifications and the restrictions in it, and we just keep one person out of the prison system, these workshops will have more than paid for themselves many, many times over.

So, it's shifting some paradigms and asking people to look at a topic that many are not comfortable looking at and would just assume went away. They don't want to acknowledge it. But our state school-to-work team has been extremely supportive and has assisted us greatly in trying to take down some of these barriers that have come up from other agencies or other areas.

Nick Waldoch: Good. Bill, do you have anything to add in this area?

Bill Witter: Well, I think that my position is as the resident economist in all of this. I've been very surprised - and pleasantly surprised I must say - at the wide variety of occupational choices that are still on the table once you sift by the restrictions and wage rates. That's not universally true throughout the entire state. There are some places where the economy is just not very good for anybody. But in many cases, and particularly in the large urban areas, there are still lots of choices for lots of different individuals. I'm of the opinion that different people have different desires. And if you're going to be successful in getting someone reintegrated into society, you're going to have to get them into an area that they love. Otherwise, wages or job is going to become meaningless to them and they are going to find other things.

So, the fact that there is a wide variety of choices, there's something for everybody still on the table, doesn't mean that there aren't a lot of things that are off of the table. I think that the thing that the participants have said to me repeatedly is this is so valuable because now we know what's on and what's off. I think that's a real empowerment, not just to the counselors and the teachers and the people that are providing this information. Being a recipient of the real realities of what the world is going to look like is an empowerment to the client. So, that's been a real important point for me.

Nick Waldoch: Thank you.

Question 2: Have you run into any major obstacles along the way, whether you anticipated these obstacles or didn't. And along with the obstacles, what methods are you using or would you suggest being used to overcome them.

Dom, should we start with you again?

Dom Garrison: Probably the biggest obstacle that we've had in both designing and implementing our system in Oklahoma for the juvenile offender has been all of the various groups that have a piece of the responsibility for success in preparing these youth to reenter society. In Oklahoma, we have a system where the education of that youth, no matter whether he's in a detention center or not, is the local public school's responsibility for the academic education for that child. And if this center is located in Tipton, Oklahoma, then the Tipton Public School is responsible for all of the education programs within that school, even though those kids are, for the most part, not from that area of the state. Then you've got the Office of Juvenile Affairs that has a piece of the action. And you've got private vendors that have a part of the mental health delivery, the substance abuse and things like that. Then you get the Oklahoma Department of Vo-Tech involved through our Skill Center School System. I guess our biggest obstacle has been finding that common ground for everyone to work from. We've learned that you can put each of these components of a reintegration system in a silo and deliver it separate and apart from everything else and it has very little impact on the individual student. You can integrate it all together, and it has tremendous impact, because the student can start seeing the relevance of all of the different components to real life.

Probably our biggest challenge has been to pull all of these groups together and lose the turf and look at the student from a holistic standpoint instead of from our little corner of the world. Business and industry has driven this thing for us. Business and industry identified all of the competencies. I don't care if the competency had to do with treatment, cognitive behavioral skills, academic knowledge, or whether it was occupational skills. There is a set of skills that are required to be successful in the workplace that have something to do with each of those different components. Getting industry to the table to start talking about just what is it that we expect out of these young people as they enter the real world of work has been one of the most beneficial strategies to us in helping all of the service providers actually loose their turf in all of these issues.

Nick Waldoch: Thank you. Holley or Bill?

Bill Witter: Well, I think the biggest problem is money. And I know that comes as no great surprise to anybody. Texas is a big state and the geography is really against us. We have prison system personnel in all twenty-four data regions all the way across the state. A project of this magnitude to be dispersed statewide is certainly not free. In a time of scarce resources and with Texas really just [began] getting involved in school-to-work - there has been some reluctance on some parts of the community to get on board.

Quite frankly, our criminal justice system is contributing nothing to this project. And we tried to get funding from a variety of different sources. So at least in this attempt, the initial attempt, trying to get the resources together to do the kind of quality job in an environment, a geographically restricted environment, has been a challenge for us. Whether we will be able to continue and expand and update, because the information is constantly changing, is going to be a real challenge for us. I hope that if we talk about this in another year, that we'll be able to say that we were up to the challenges and that the state came through when the chips were down. But at this moment, I'm not sure exactly.

It goes back to what Holley said earlier, there are individuals who do not detect a need to serve this population under school-to-work. They obviously haven't read the legislation, but they don't feel that they are a population that needs to be served.

So, I think it's still out as to exactly how successful we can be. I believe that the people that we are coming in contact with believe that this is the finest thing that they have ever seen. They are telling us that and they are very grateful for the information. Whether that translates into action for funding to continue the project over the long term, remains to be seen.

Nick Waldoch: Thank you for those good responses, issues that I think all states are going to run into and need to watch out for.

Question 3: Before we open the airways to some questions, I'd like to give each group an opportunity to do a little bragging. Tell us what is working - not only well, but better than you anticipated. Dom, you want to start with that?

Dom Garrison: Sure. I'll first say that our most significant success has been our ability to secure industry partnerships and sponsorships. That's a big one. If you can get that one down, half the battle I think is done in creating a school-to-work system for this particular clientele that we are dealing with. There has to be something, that pot at the end of the rainbow, or that reward at the end of all the hard work and the change that these kids have to go through in order to be successful citizens. So, if you have industry playing ball with you, if they are an active participant in your process, or development of your processes, half the battle is won.

Beyond that, our biggest success has been our students. We've taken some tough kids, some kids that were in the juvenile detention centers for some pretty serious crimes. They were substance abusers, they were very self-centered, manipulative-type kids. They came from broken homes. These are tough kids that dropped out of school and got into a lot of trouble and we had to go through the process of recovering them. They were very angry kids. And, today, those kids are actually in their work-based learning experience, and industry is tickled to death with them. Some big contractors - I mean, folks that are doing commercial buildings in the Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, area - have these kids employed and they're tickled to death with them.

So, we think it's working. All indications are that this is working. You know, we've integrated all of our curriculum from the four major areas [treatment life skills, academics and voc ed] into one. We've delivered it in an integrated fashion, and the kids are showing that this is sinking in. So, the kids are making the change. I guess that's the success of any system like this, or the measure of success, is can these kids truly make the change and be productive citizens and productive workers out in society? I've dealt with adult offenders for a lot of years. And many of you on the line probably have, too. You've seen programs where offenders get certain special credits for going through programs. And they can play just about any game you want to play. So, the true measure to us is what happens when they go home. It's not what happens while they're in prison or in a detention center. What's their reaction to all of this when they go home. These kids are still in custody while they're on their work-based learning experience. They are actually in an independent living center, and they don't have a guard standing next to them out at the work site. They are actually supervised by an industry mentor that was trained by us. So, we're pretty pleased with the actual results, the performance of these kids, once they've reached the streets.

Nick Waldoch: Thank you. Holley?

Holley Woleber: I think in addition too, as Bill said, just the participants being grateful that finally there's a list of demand occupations that has the restrictions, requirements, the educational level. You know, a very positive thing is that there are a whole lot of demand occupations that require training between the three-month and two-year area. And that, in Texas, tends to be where we find the slightly higher wages.

So, we're looking at areas that would at least improve the quality of life that an individual can look forward to. One of the real things that has happened that we hoped would happen, but until we actually started doing the workshops and interacting with the participants we weren't sure would occur, is the networking. We have people sitting in the same room that should have been talking to one another, should have known what their agency or their school did and how it interacted with the next agency or the next part of the prison system that the youth would go through. And they didn't know each other.

We do an exercise at the beginning where people have to interview the person sitting next to them and then introduce them to the group. And it's amazing to see people writing other people's names down and then during the break searching them out and saying, oh, you know, you're the person I've been looking for. You're the person that I needed to talk to and, you know, can you help me with this, or we're doing this. And if we get nothing more from this first year than to have put out the labor market information that helps them redirect programs and identify for the individuals where those jobs are and the training that goes with them and the networking piece, we will have accomplished a great deal. It's a very positive feeling and statement to see people walking away with other people's cards and there being this great satisfaction that I've found the link that I need to help me do my job and serve these individuals.

Nick Waldoch: Bill, do you have anything to add to that?

Bill Witter: Well, I think Holley covered really the basics of what we've found. One additional thing that's been really encouraging to me is the people are saying, "When will you be back? When will you be back in this area? Well, my colleagues should have been here and they aren't and where are you going to be next and how can we get them in attendance?" We already have people driving hundreds of miles and staying overnight to be able to attend and get this information. And that's very flattering and very encouraging.

The problem with labor market information is it's not static; it's constantly changing. And so, that's why when I talked earlier I mentioned the continuing need for updating the individuals with the materials. I don't think that you can do our approach in a one-shot, here it is and this is good for the next twenty years. I don't think that that's going to be effective.

Nick Waldoch: Great, thank you for your presentations. Now we'd like to open up the field to some questions. We've got approximately twenty minutes where we can take questions and have our panelists give a shot at responding. If we can't find specific answers, we'll try to research it and get back to you.

So, does anyone have a question of the panelists or other general questions that we may be able to address? If someone asks a question and another one of the listeners has an answer, we encourage you to let us know.

Participant: I have a question. I'm Carol Ann Breyer in Florida. I'm working with the Florida Transition Blueprint Program, which is a school-to-community, but it works with special needs individuals. And none of the speakers mentioned - and I wondered - the extent to which the students or the young people with whom you are working in the system are severely emotionally disturbed, because we have a lot of those children here in Florida. And the vocational rehabilitation area has had to come in and work with that, as well as here at the Department of Education, the Special Education Department has a whole program of support in cooperation with the juvenile justice, because so many of those individuals are emotionally disturbed, which is how they get into a crime to begin with. And most of them are severe dropouts from their problems, which they incurred as part of the system.

So, I would like to ask the panelists if any of you are addressing that particular population within your programs.

Dom Garrison: I'll start. This is Dom Garrison in Oklahoma. The programs that we are currently operating are actually in group homes, which act as transition facilities, prior to the actual offender going home. Our next move is into the hard core juvenile detention centers, which are state operated, state owned, where the majority of the clientele or the population that you're describing is currently housed. So, that will be our next move. We will be working with our state department of education, working with them on developing IEPs for each of these kids and starting to deal with all the various components of that population. I must say, though, that the majority of that particular population in our state that are severely emotionally disturbed are in our maximum security housing facilities. And I don't know how Florida is, but that's - that's the trend right now.

Now, I will tell you that each of these children that we're dealing with has some level of emotional problem. But they are not what I think you are talking about, the really emotionally disturbed.

Nick Waldoch: Holley, you want to go with that one?

Holley Woleber: Yeah. We have coupled these workshops. There is another workshop that we do either the day before or the day after the incarcerated one; and that is, for youth with disabilities. And it is broad in the scope in that we do not identify the particular type of disability, but we take the same labor market information, and it is not filtered for wage, but the linkage piece very strongly emphasizes those registered apprenticeship and post-secondary programs that are adaptive for varying disabilities. And we go through a job carving explanation and exercise to help identify, or to help the transition people identify clustering of occupations and the creation of an occupation that an individual would have the interest, ability, and aptitude to perform.

It's specifically for the severe emotionally disturbed that you've described. We don't even get into, as I said, the specific disabilities. That's for the experts to do. What we provide is the basic information and tools for them to use to assist them in serving these clients.

Bill Witter: It's been somewhat surprising, but we've had a lot of people attend both workshops. Part of the reason that we paired them up was to save costs, but the reality turned out to be that we have people that have driven and spent the night.

In fact, your questions are very interesting because it's really the first time, I guess, Nick, that we have discussed the other project that Holley and I are doing. We've seen a lot of the people out of the incarcerated arena stay for the disabled workshop also. The interesting thing in Texas, we understand that although they recognize that there are a lot of handicapped individuals of one kind or another, that they have not completely tested and explored to know hard numbers. They just know intuitively that they have a large portion of the population that falls into that category. So they are attending both, because they see both.

We have the special ed people out of the public schools, and we have the counselors out of the prison system that are working with basically the same kinds of problems, but as Holley said, until they sit in the workshops together they don't even know each other. And they may work in the same town. So, it's been a real interesting experience to watch.

Participant (Carol Ann Breyer): Thank you.

Nick Waldoch: Okay. Do we have any other questions?

Participant: This is Tom Heck (phonetic) from the State of Wisconsin Department of Corrections, Division of Juvenile Corrections. I actually have two questions, one for Dom; and then if Bill and Holley could answer the second question. I think what I will do is I will ask both questions and then get off the line.

Dom, you mentioned that you have an integrated service delivery system. And research demonstrates the positive results that integrated instruction provides. Would you expand on your integrated process?

And, then, my second question for Holley and Bill are these workshops, you spoke of these workshops and the information that's distributed. Could you expand on the structure, the who, the what, the where, the when, and the how, the format that you use to get these people together to come to these workshops. And I am off the line.

Dom Garrison: I'll talk about our integrated process. The easiest way for me to describe that is to try to paint a mental picture of what a - what our classroom would look like. We would have a (approximately) 5,000 square foot facility that is occupied by twelve kids. There would be - and sometimes up to fourteen kids. We would have an academic educator, a vocational educator, and three treatment staff all housed - and when I say housed, actually working inside this one huge room. We believe very much, that, to compress the time frames - you know, these kids have missed out on so much of their formative development, and we've got somewhere between ten and twelve months to prepare this child to enter the real world again.

In order to compress time frames, we have taken on the philosophy that we have to center all delivery toward a common point. That common point becomes the career. If we're teaching math, we teach math as it relates to the career. If we teach language arts, we're teaching it as it relates to the career. We believe that this helps the kids to begin to understand the relationship between all the things that's occurring to him while he is incarcerated....

(End of Side A of tape.)

Dom Garrison: ... It's a matter of the vocational educator, the academic educator, the treatment staff all working with that kid as a team trying to deal with him from a holistic standpoint. You know, there is no one set of skills that is independent of the other. And that's where industry comes in.

As industry helped us define all of the different competencies that were required to be successful in the world of work and in a specific occupation, we related life skills and employability skills, academic skills, treatment needs. All of those can be fit right into that common set of skills.

Participant: May I ask a question? This is Joan McArthur from the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development, our school-to-work area and our career centers area. In reference to the comments that you just made of the program you have, are these young people given information on specific careers or is this general career information; and, number two, are they given an opportunity to develop work-related skills, that is, anything that would be specific that they could use in a work environment? There. I'm off the line.

Dom Garrison: Okay. There -Your question is, are they trained in a specific occupation? Is that really what we're - what we're getting at there?

Participant (Joan McArthur): When you're talking about career, they are receiving some training on careers. Is that just in general on career?

Dom Garrison: Absolutely not. It is very industry-specific, occupationally specific. These kids go through a comprehensive assessment. They are also taken through career awareness and career exploration, and we determine their aptitude, interest and ability for a specific occupation. Kids are put in training programs based on their needs, their aptitude, interests and ability. So, the information that - the occupational training they receive is very specific to that child. You will walk into a classroom and you might see eight or ten or maybe even twelve different occupations being trained for within that one facility.

Participant (Joan McArthur): Okay. Thank you.

Nick Waldoch: Okay. And, Holley, do you want to pick up the second half of Tom's question?

Holley Woleber: Sure. The who, what, when, where, and how, in looking for money to support these projects, we wrote to foundations, we went to every state agency there was and we could not find any money. And so I undertook this out of my consortium, with my board's approval, using some of our regional school-to-work money and then went out to the twenty-three other tech prep directors in the state - each one of us has a region - and asked them if they would support offering this type of professional development for the people that they serve in their region. And we had eighteen of the twenty-four sign on and agree to sponsor the workshops, which basically pays for the material and the travel, printing, postage, that type of stuff.

We developed a brochure out of my office and it listed all of the dates and all of the locations over the entire state. We mailed out to - from my office - the state agency people and then each region received a certain number, and they were to mail their brochures out, specifically to targeted groups within their region. They got the location for us, which was published in the brochure, and Bill and I coordinated the dates to try to make it as cost-effective as possible, trying to put like locations geographically close together so we weren't - I'm way off at one end of the state and Bill's kind of in the middle. So, we tried to coordinate that little bit better.

The actual workshop itself, we take registration in my office, and so we have an idea of the number of individuals to expect. We have put together a specific document that lists the demand and emerging and evolving occupations for the state and then the specific regional demand occupations. Each one of those occupations has a very comprehensive job description, along with math, reasoning, language, and physical requirements for the job. The certification, licensure, whether they are restricted or not and why, who has restricted them, and then a description of the work environment for that specific occupation. All of the charts that Bill goes through for the national and state and regional labor market information are put in the back, along with a resource list of the school-to-work and tech prep directors throughout the state, with phone numbers, fax numbers, addresses, some maps that show the geographic regions so that they can identify their key point of contact from the information that's provided in that book.

We also provide three other documents. One is a brief, small booklet that my region put together on registered apprenticeships and how you set them up and how you link to them. The other document is a list of all of the proprietary or career schools in the state of Texas with the programs that they offer, you know, location, just general background information. And then there is one from our higher education coordinating board that lists all of the community and technical colleges in the state of Texas by program, and then it's cross-referenced in the back, specifically programs and then the institutions that offer training and whether it's associate or certificate programs throughout the state of Texas.

The actual workshop delivery is kind of a tag team between Bill and I, where I primarily cover the linkages piece and Bill covers the labor market piece, with questions and answers at the end. We also are doing a pre- and a post-survey of the participants, trying to ascertain whether they have gained any information, knowledge, general comments concerning the presentation, in an effort for us to continue to improve it and to do some statistical analysis when we're through with the project in about mid-May.

Participant: This is Frances Koehler in Virginia with Unite the Systems Change Grant with the Department of Education and the Department of Rehabilitative Services. And I am wondering, of the individuals involved in school-to-work when incarcerated, how many of the individuals who did not receive a diploma ended up returning to the local education agency for further education? And were there any indications of more success in school after involvement in the school-to-work program?

Dom Garrison: That's a great question. One of the panaceas that we were under in Oklahoma was that kids would go through the juvenile justice system and then return to the formal education environment back in their home town after they had been incarcerated. We found that to be so untrue. We've come to the reality that for the most part, these kids, because of the environment from which they come, most likely - and this is not a blanket statement - but the majority of these kids will not return to the formal education environment once they are released from custody. Most of these kids are going to age out. And that's where they're going to be released from the juvenile justice system in Oklahoma.

We came to the realization early that we have to prepare these kids for life. These kids are going to leave this environment, and whatever skills, whatever tools they leave us with is what they progress on to life with. And us doing a great job keeps them from progressing on to the adult correctional environment. Us doing a lousy job, we can expect to see them in our adult programs in a year or two.

So, the answer in Oklahoma is, most of the kids that are incarcerated today will never enter - reenter their sending high school that they came from.

Participant (Frances Koehler): Thanks.

Dom Garrison: Yes.

Holley Woleber: One of the pieces - and we won't know this for another year or two - is we talk a lot about articulated credit. And what we are trying to do is work within the incarcerated youth systems, wherever that is, whether it's the state or the one that's run by the ISD, and develop articulation agreements between registered apprenticeship programs and post-secondary institutions because our hope is that if a student sees or an individual sees that they have earned college credit for the technical training that they have taken while they are incarcerated and we get them placed in employment, the chance of them going to that participating community college or proprietary school and asking for that credit and continuing on their education may have increased.

As I said, we do not know that yet, but we hope within a year or two we will have some data.

Dom Garrison: And that's a great point, Holley, if I might interject on top of that. One of the things that we realized in Oklahoma was that the credential for that particular individual that was going to go straight to the streets or straight to society, straight to work, once released is important. Our system in Oklahoma was designed such that they were required to prepare this kid for a high school diploma and the reality was the majority of the kids were leaving the system prior to every completing a high school diploma. There was no mechanism to prepare that child and actually put him through the testing to receive a GED. That was one of the moves that we made when we linked up with the Office of Juvenile Affairs. We said, let's give this kid a meaningful, appropriate education that results in the highest level of credentials that we can possibly get him while he's still incarcerated.

Nick Waldoch: Okay. I hate to do this, but we've got the line for one hour, which by my clock says we've got about forty-five seconds left.

Dom Garrison: Oh, Nick.

Nick Waldoch: We're out of time, and I want to thank Dom and Holley and Bill very much for their time. And I want to thank all the callers for their time and their input. We will be preparing a transcript. Our goal is to have this transcript turned around, it will be reviewed by Dom, Holley and Bill and myself before it's published. But we hope to have it published within about two months. It will be sent to all states' school-to-work directors and contacts. If you want a list, wherever you found out about this conference has the information on how to call us to get it. Our next teleconference will be on February 11, entitled, "Strategies for Achieving Gender Equity in School-to-work Systems." And with that, we are out of time. So, thank you all and good-bye.

National Transition Alliance audio teleconferences are coordinated by the National Transition Network. This transcript is copyright free. For a copy of this or other transcripts, contact us at:

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URL: http://www.ici.umn.edu/ntn/tele/1998/jan.html
Posted October 29, 1998
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