Well, we're going to get started with today's career pathway user group meeting for Friday, the 13th in October. That one's always a fun one. I think when people are thinking about superstition and all the great holiday activities coming up for our agenda today, we are going to be talking about a few different topics. Really, the top 2 is that I was update that Heather lukin is going to provide for us on what is happening with I was and how that's going to impact your ability to be submitting your applications. We have an update on some of the endorsement data, and then we're going to be discussing today the intensive career exploration component of the career pathway endorsement. And so, as you're going through, at the end, you want to take that evaluation so that we have some feedback on that as well. So, with our welcome and introductions, my name is Bill Rose. I am with the Illinois project in collaboration with Izby. You'll notice a few of our team members are here as well. And so what we do is we collaborate with Izby on this work with the career pathway user group and multiple other. As needed directives from Izby. So, I'm going to send it over to Heather to give her introduction and then Jason. Good morning, everyone. Heather lukin with Illinois State Board of Education. I'm a principal consultant with CTE. I oversee school counselors across the state and I'm responsible for the arts and communications endorsement area. And let's say I've been at Izby for five years now, coming up to five years. And yeah, I pretty much do all things CCBE and CCRI. So, this user group has been fantastic for a way for us to keep tabs on everything in your needs and your requests and provide updates. So, looking forward to our meeting today. And good morning, everybody. My name is Jason Klein, Senior Director of Learning Partnerships at NIU. It is homecoming week at NIU and it is the 116th homecoming, which is the oldest of the universities in Illinois. And so I called out a different background today. I hope that's okay. It's going off script here for our normal career connected Illinois background. And just a call out to everybody on the call who's doing the work. I early this morning ran into a superintendent of a high school district while walking our dogs very early this morning in the dark and we had a whole conversation about the CCRIs. And so, again, it's really good work that's happening. And again, this is a district that historically would maybe not have been focused on some of some of the work that everybody in this room is doing now. And it's really exciting with the impact and the potential it has for all students and I see someone just popped in who has that district in her region. So there we go. Exciting stuff, Bill. Yeah, so we're going to talk real briefly on the purpose of the career pathway user group. And really what this is about is the user group is a group of people who are interested in the particular area or use of the same product who use the internet to share information about it. And kind of in plain term is it's a group where we are sharing information using the Google group app kind of from Google and interacting in a way that supports each other. And so we highly encourage people to ask questions in the group. If you have something that's coming up like a special event and you want to share that on how you're trying to implement that. If you have suggestions for people or just really kind of any information around the career pathways, we encourage people to really use that application and share that information within the group. And again, so that vision of the college and career pathway endorsement is of quality for individual students rather than quantity. And we really focus in on that quality component. You know, I think it was at one point we were talking with business leaders who were saying, you know, if I hire someone with the endorsement, I want to see a difference in that student or that graduate. So that whole component of quality is really important to this group. And we just really want to stress that importance of that authenticity as we get through those career pathway endorsement initiatives as we're implementing them in our programs. So we're going to get into some quick announcements. One is the is the career connected Illinois professional calendar is available for you to take a look at one, one quick call out in that calendar as there is a new professional development that is coming October 24. It's related to the business and finance pathway. And so this is one where they're assessing the essential skills in the business and finance services career pathway. And so we're going to be adding some new ones per pathway. So we wanted to give that specific call out as a way for if you have a specific pathway in your district or school. There will be some specific essential skills workshops that will be added to the calendar. So you you want to check in on that calendar and see if there's one that applies to your school. Also, we have a call for proposals coming up for the is be career connections conference. If you don't have this in your calendars. You want to add this to your calendar for June 18 at Tinley Park convocation or convention center, but we are going to be sending out call for proposals and so if you know anyone who does really something fantastic something interesting in their classroom. This connections conference is really teacher centric. It's a teacher focus. And so that call for proposals will be coming soon as a part of the conference. And so now we're going to get into our career pathway endorsement data and I'm going to turn it over to Heather to start that conversation. Thanks, Bill. So I'm very, very happy to give our final numbers for 2223. We had 1072 students that received endorsements and FY 23. And I think that if we if we move to that next slide. I think it's the next one. You can see a well okay, we'll do this one first. So there are currently and as of this morning actually it's now 223 school districts that have access to the PWR platform. Meaning that they're starting to build their plans and obviously they're all stages of when they're going to offer those or implement those. They just want their plans to be approved so they can have those and maybe they'll start implementing or offering those officially in a few years, but they want to make sure that they have all the required components. So that's very exciting. I still continue to get obviously new requests for access to the platform. So that's that's a new number for us. And this goes along with the FY 23 data. So we have 39 school districts that had students that received endorsements so I want to call something out on this too. So even though it may seem okay 39 districts, there were a lot more districts than that I want to say probably and I should have looked at that data this morning I apologize for that, probably 15 to 20 additional districts that had approved their plans. They just did not have students that were eligible to receive the endorsements. So that's a number so when you see the 39 school districts, those are the 39 that had students of those 1072 students that had students that that received endorsements last year. So that is still an increase from what we've had before I expect that number to rise even more so this year, based on the information that I've gotten and the request from the district saying hey we're ready for 24 so you know let's get the plan going. So just just again, there's that key word, even even in the House bill, it is offer that endorsement to the graduating students, fully recognizing that some years it's going to rise and fall based on the interest of the students and based on the criteria they may not meet all the criteria so that's just something to pay attention to when we're looking at the number of districts that actually have approved plans. Okay. And then this I know Jason was going to jump in a little bit on this one too, because I know he put this graph together for us, but this just shows you that disbursement across the years for how many endorsements and you can see that rise again that we have all seven career pathways and multi disciplinary this past year for students that received the endorsements. A couple of things yeah we we're following the same pattern. You know patterns kind of a funny word to use because it wasn't really until 22 and 23, and I say until and this is still, let me stress from a, for those that have studied educational policy implementation. This is happening very very quickly. And so it's happening even more quickly when we consider what school districts have been dealing with since the 2019 2020 school year so but but the pattern there is a pattern that is a has emerged at this point. Over the past couple years, I anticipate based on working with people by and large that in a lot of ways this pattern will stay the same. I have a couple of ideas in my own head of where I expect to see shifts in this pattern over the next three or four years. I'm going to keep those to myself at the moment but the other thing that that we've started doing is, and I know the agency will be also doing this separately together and and probably in parallel all three, but doing some additional analysis so I can tell everybody for example, last weekend I've already done an analysis of endorsements issued endorsements by school based on percentage of students whose families are considered low income and based on school district adequacy level in comparison to other districts around the state there's a lot more we can do with that. One of the things that well we're not sharing all that data today, maybe we will at some point there's some interesting stuff to look at there. One of the things I will call out is the range on both of those was extraordinary I mean the range on a percent adequacy level if you don't know part of the evidence based funding that's been in place last five or six years in Illinois is the state that has set an adequacy target based on a formula of who your community is and who your students are and how much money it would take to give them an effective education. Schools really don't have to be funded at 100% of that adequacy level even though 100% is what defines adequacy. I wrote a little paper on this about 20 years ago and so this is funny because the goal is to fund them at 90% of adequacy level which is actually inadequate. That's another story for an evidence based funding conversation. The, but the adequacy level shows the percentage of a school district's targeted adequacy level based on students and communities and like our range there is we have school districts in the low 60s which is is very low you you do not have enough money to adequately support your students and their needs to school districts that were at 120% but if you think all of the districts that are issuing endorsements are in the 100 to 120% range that is is not the case at all as a matter of fact and so we have a very wide range and the average the mean among the 39 districts was 83% whereas the state's mean is about 71% so these districts do have more money. And so, so there's that I see there's a question about the multidisciplinary endorsement that's probably a whole nother conversation for another day. We have got a lot packed in that we know people need to know about so we, we may come back to that and as we talk about the rules in the next few minutes. Maybe I'll point to the fact that the rules will provide a lot more clarity on multidisciplinary so I'm going to kick it back to Heather now. Okay, thanks. So, updating on I was so I just wanted to let you know that yesterday and even last week last week was my first opportunity to go in and truly test the entire system. And yesterday, we had another meeting regarding that and, and we have some language changes in there to make sure that it was in alignment with the required components as well as ease of use for all of you. When it comes time to transfer your plan into I was so we are testing that we had some additional information that we wanted to have changed some things regarding the core sequence in particular a way to capture those. You know, it's the two, two years or four semesters, however, we have had allowances for those students that are going to a career center, and they may be taking two semesters worth of courses that are extended time extended periods. And so that would count towards the two years four semesters. So we're finding a way to make sure that that can be entered appropriately and validated. But it's functioning very well so I'm very happy with that. Okay, if you go on to the next one I think though. Yeah, so when, when it comes to I get this question a lot, especially with those like the past five or five to 10 districts that have signed up. They, before even sending in their application they'll send me an email say are you sure we should sign up because maybe we should wait for I was to open. I am going to say the same thing, do not wait. If you intend to especially if you intend to issue endorsements for FY 24 but even for 25 and beyond, please get access to the PWR plan, or the PWR platform, so that you can start to build your plans. I intend to for those submissions that plan approval form that has to come in by December 15 in order to issue endorsements for 24. And so I'm going to review those plans in the PWR system, because there is going to be some time to transfer that information. So I don't want to wait for it to transfer and so forth so please make sure that you're following that process as well and get and get that into the PWR platform. And I know that I have already already have some districts that have issued their approval form. And so my schedule next week, I literally have three days blocked off and that's all I'm doing is reviewing plans. So I'm getting that caught up because I know I'm going to have more coming in. So I just want you to know that the I know it's no later than February 28. I really would love to have everything done, especially for those that are coming in right at December 15 or close to that by the end of December so that you're starting off your new year with the plans approved or any, any changes that need to need to be made. But there'll be more training on I was once that opens up. The current users of the PWR platform will have access to I was before everyone else, because you will need to transfer your information into that. And then what we're looking at is for the 24 and 25 school year that will open up to everyone because they will have to make that decision within 24 25 school year, they'll have to make the decision as to whether or not they're going to issue pathway endorsements, or opt out. So that's just kind of an overview of that. And I think that's what I'm. Yeah. Okay, so yeah, I would I would say, January 1, 2024, that that would be at a proximate date for opening that again I want to make sure that it is functioning as best as it possibly can, knowing that there still could be access once it opens up and you guys all start to enter your information, but we're that's why we're testing it so thoroughly to hope that that's not going to be an issue at all. And as far as responsibility for putting that information into I was each district will need to put that in. I know we've had questions about the multiple accounts with one email, particularly for the CCP coordinators, and how that's going to look to be able to have access to. So we're working with the system on that and I was team on that to find out how that can be set up to see what the best option is for that. If you can create multiple accounts with that one email which would tie you to those particular districts, obviously superintendents are going to be the ones that have to give approval to anyone within the district to use the CCP application in I was. I'm going to just add one kind of expectation setting thing for everybody there. For those of you who are in that situation like a CCP coordinator or an EFE director for example area career center leader. Do not expect that and that to necessarily be resolved one way or the other. When the system opens, I would just say so it may be but that would be a bonus if it's resolved. If it's not the answer we want I would expect that to be after the system opens then that piece really can get unpacked and looked at so just trying to level set expectations because we know we have a lot of you you're very important in this work regionally. But that that is a hurdle and the system was built around school districts and and ultimately as the last item says each district will need to update its own information and I was. Thanks Jason. So advantages of moving this even though you may say to yourself and I'm probably you may have said it to me as well. But now we have to transfer everything that we built into this new system. I would say given given that I've been working over the past two weeks to clean up the pwr platform and get we've had some issues with access levels and so forth as far as the invites and districts inviting people and not getting the official invite from is being all that type of thing. This will eliminate all of that. So it'll be direct access to that the universities and colleges as you know in the system. If you don't go in and check to see if that's already been built. Then we have multiple examples and multiple entries of the same community college with a different name but then programs tied to it. And it's it's a bit of a headache. So this will eliminate a lot of that. So that you have dropdowns for a wide variety of these components where it's it's almost direct responses so it's forced response so to speak where you can only choose from what is there. And the key component to as well as that is that the data analysis will be streamlined so we can run reports from this. We can have all that information will be much easier to to function on that end. Heather did you see the question and then. Yes I did. I did. I'm not sure that the new the program a study approval Amy would be linked with the CCPE approvals. I mean if you're talking about having some type of way to enter that into I was that's something that we are exploring. But those are two different submissions and different requirements for that. And then districts without according outside. So can I can I jump in on that second part. So, Amy our position as the NIU Illinois CTE project team would be that we assume, because this is district level work that the college and career pathway endorsement application processes. And our assumption is that no one has a CCPE coordinator in how we try to provide information so these meetings p join network newsletters when there's like key updates, pointing people back to is be. And so, and now obviously when there are CCP coordinates they're also getting this information, and they can pay a little more attention to this so that's a big help. So we try to work from that standpoint of no one, no one knows anything about this unless we say it a whole lot of times, and then hopefully, hopefully people in a bunch of different ways, excuse me, and then hopefully people will know about it. And I will say to Jason on along with that. I do have a list and this is one of the things that I've sent out to the district contacts, which is why it's so important to make sure that those district contacts are correct. I've sent out to a few districts this year, when some of those emails have bounced back to me. So I send out messages to all of the district contacts whenever there is something new that is happening or updates to anything, including the information regarding the approval process and so forth that was an email that got sent out to all the district contacts so. I think that once this gets moved into I was again, then they'll have the opportunity to identify that district contact, and we will be able to then have that instead of me copying pasting everyone's 223 emails into into one, and we'll have that information Yep, there is going to be a webinar on how I was functions and how to access that and how to take a look at well actually it's going to be a walkthrough exactly like what we currently have on the on the website now with the walkthrough the pwr platform. So I'm going to go ahead and document that explains all the different components and a step by step process guide and a video and that is coming soon as soon as we have all the language changes done in the I was then I've already started to build that guidebook for everyone, but I just need it to be updated obviously so that it truly reflects what it's going to look like when once you pop into I was I mean Heather just so people are aware of those resources are available for the current system right now on the website so if you need a walkthrough or a guidebook or a video, those are available. And so, Heather wanted us to be sure that those same resources would be available for I was. So we're going to get into a deeper dive into the component of the career pathway endorsement known as the intensive career exploration experience. And so we have some examples of those that we wanted to share and just kind of get a conversation going on what these look like. And what are some of the ones that are happening throughout the state so that they can be copied or reproduced or even made better in some instances. As we get to this so I'm going to allow. Heather to address the definition and rulemaking here because I think this is a real important component as as this moves forward. So when you look at the rules that again I know that Bill's got this outline done here. We're hoping that October 18 is when the board will approve those rules and then put them out for public comment. So as soon as that happens and we have that information we will get that out to you so that you know how to handle that process and where you need to go to make those comments and so forth. But when it comes to the career exploration. It specifically lists that you were to have two career exploration activities or one intensive career exploration. And there has been a little bit of well quite a few questions regarding clarifying that and what that actually means to be an intensive career exploration. I know that when talking to districts and they're they're putting in their plans and so forth. When we talk about intensive we're talking about a one day event or something along those lines that is specific to the career pathway. So we know that within the work based learning continuum you have your career awareness and then your career exploration and that takes it a step higher. So career awareness truly is even though we're allowing these four for career exploration is like a career fair where you're going around to multiple careers and you're you're you're having those interactions and that's fantastic and obviously as a counselor we encourage that we want them to have that. We have said within the career exploration activities. If you're going to use a career fair you need to ensure that the students are reflecting on those conversations they are. Discussing afterwards with someone or even you know writing it down which career appeal to them and so forth and you can use one of those as your career exploration. So we're allowing that but when we talk about an intensive opportunity it really needs to be specifically aligned to that career pathway. So, and we've got some examples, yep and definition so when we look at the definition of what that intensive career exploration would be. It's no less than three hours we're talking about like a booth fair so like manufacturing I know that they have these the manufacturers they they bring in teams for all the different manufacturing opportunities and that is the focus of that day. A college fair again that's career specific job shadowing or a mini internship and things that really wouldn't count would be. A job fair where you're playing for a job and it's not career specific or just a short experience that you would have mentoring experiences or classroom speaker that would not count as intensive. Is it going to count for a career exploration. Yes, it can mock interviews same thing. So that's just more explanation as to what that is. Yeah, and I think 1 way to kind of call these out when I think about these types of events is that, like, for example, you know, if I'm going to the job fair, is it specific to the career pathway that the students are in right. So I'm going to take health care students to a job fair that that in order for it to meet that intensive component. There should be some work ahead of time. There should be, you know, it should be medical related to the to the careers in that pathway. There would be a reflection component, you know, and so I think in these examples, it's really simple to kind of see how it has to really be linked to that career pathway. Correct. So we're going to give some more information to come as those rules are developed. Heather had mentioned that date here in October where is we will be meeting and as soon as we hear about what is the result of that meeting. We will be communicating the comments time for anyone who would like to make comments in regards to that to those decisions. And so we'll be putting that into the career pathway user group and some of our weekly messages and communicating that out so that if people want to participate in that comments portion of the work that they can do that. We also wanted to share a few examples of these and what they look like in practice right now, which I think is really important because these examples. While they're just examples that are currently occurring. They are ones that are really hitting that that point where they are connected to that career pathway and allow for students to really kind of think about, you know, is this the right career pathway for me? Or is this something that I need to, you know, kind of rethink that kind of. That job path that I that I want to take and so we had 3 examples for the health sciences and technology manufacturing engineering technology and trades and human and public service. So the 1st 1 was 1 that 1 that I've done in the past in my experience. We worked with UW health, which is formerly Swedish American hospital and essentially what the students would do in this. Example would they do a lot of pre work and really looking into the different careers that a hospital has. Sometimes we bring in speakers. Sometimes we would do some pre investigation work on the different careers. Before attending UW health, but the students would 1st get a tour of the hospital and I mean, this is a full on like we're going to multiple floors and checking out the different facilities that they have. This also includes behind the scenes with their, their biological lab, which was really interesting. The students almost in every case loved experiencing the lab because they could see kind of that behind the scenes. What are they doing? They're testing different diseases and viruses that they have and really those kind of conversations with the professionals at the lab. I always stood out with the students, but in that tour. They get to see a surgical room. They get to see the ER in various places throughout really experiencing the different careers that are going on throughout the hospital. They also got to experience the EMT wing where they do some of the training with their EMT employees. But after the tour portion of the experience is the students are kind of pre matched with 3 careers that they may have interest in. So they may include nursing surgery with the tax and the surgeons, some of the operations components of the hospital, the heart hospital, the ER, and they get to go to 3 of those different experiences. And so this is more of an intense kind of discussion with the people that work in those areas. What do they do on a day to day basis and really just that intense interaction with those individuals. And then finally, at the end of the experience, they bring in all those people together and host the panel. And that panel is where if I didn't get to go to the heart hospital or I didn't get to experience the lab in a way that I wanted, I could ask more specific questions. They also talk about a lot of the essential skills that are needed to work at a hospital, which I thought was really important because we were doing that work on essential skills with our students in class. And so when you have the professionals talking about that to the students on a face to face, it really lends them to the fact that this is what's expected in the industry. And so that's intensive career development experience was one that students really love doing. Now, a specific call out to this experience is that it was only for the health sciences students. The tour and the experience is sustained for multiple hours. There are multiple careers being investigated and a specific call out to some of the non traditional careers that we sometimes forget about in the healthcare field. Like working in the lab like, you know, testing for the biological components or the surgical tech position, which we felt was important because we know that all of our students aren't going to be doctors. All of our students aren't going to be at that highest tier. And so we wanted to give opportunities for students who maybe want to get started in the career as a CNA or a surgical tech or working in a biological lab. Just some recommendations. If you're looking at a similar occurrence in your community, we had to it requires an employee contact at the partner organization. We had to figure out that component. It took us a few months to figure out who was that really go to person who could organize something like this at a hospital. Some considerations were that you wanted to do this either early in the school year or sometime in the later spring due to flu season is that hospitals have those kind of restrictions that are more common now with what's happened with flu and COVID. We really had to take into account the HIPAA component and every student actually had to sign a HIPAA form through the hospital that we were working with. And so that also included them not being able to bring their phones on the actual experience. So we expected them to dress professionally, come prepared with questions and really follow up with them on a student driven reflection, which made the experience an intense experience for them. So I'm going to kick this over to Heather to talk to you about the human and public services experience. Sure, I know that there are quite a few around the state what they call like a future educator conference where the the students are going for the day to that university to a community college sometimes as well. And they are having sessions and opportunities to learn all about education and the multiple careers that are in education as well. I personally have taken some of the students to when I was counselor and Hannah I took them to ISU in order that I know that Jason has they have at NIU there are multiples coming up actually for those students to come in it is a day dedicated to education and the education careers. So you have presentation sessions what it means to be a teacher, and as well as panels and so forth where the students are are clearly, clearly having conversations regarding education. I know that, yep, there we go with that with the numerous avenues and entering education what it could lead to everything from the paraprofessional to the teachers to the professors to educational research which is one that is often overlooked and what type of research you may have in that. So, it's just a wonderful, wonderful opportunity for the students to find out everything there is to know about education something that we are all very passionate about. Okay. Yeah, not every post secondary partner has the capacity to offer the same experience. So, I echo this slide very much so start small find a contact and someone that's able to work with your district. So, with area districts to create this you can have a regional approach on this. I think that that's very important or with an EFE, especially when moving some of these other areas as well I'm seeing a lot of that happening with with regional approaches to to offering the same experience for the students that are very career specific. Yeah, I've done one of these also with a local university and actually we had two colleges that offer two kind of different experiences but I think what is really great was that each one of them kind of focused in on their programs as well, which I think was nice because the students that attended both of them could see, hey, like, I really liked this experience, because this was the one that focused more on the type of education I wanted to work on and so I think that was something that was especially awesome for them to experience because it helped their decision in choosing a college that they wanted to go to that had a special focus area for them. So, our third experience is one that I know is currently happening around the state in multiple regions. And the reason I know that is because I've had people reach out and talk about the ones that they're doing I've seen some on Facebook from from different people I'm following throughout the state. And so this one is really based on the manufacturing engineering and technology and trades pathway. And this one is known as like the annual building trades expo. And so really this is where multiple labor organizations and contractors partner with the school to produce a more in depth experience for their students. It meets those requirements that we talked about it's multiple hours long. It's specific to the manufacturing engineering technology trades career pathway. And it allows students to have that intense interaction with the workers in those fields. So some examples that come up is, we had our local painters who were who were doing sessions of, you know, what do they actually have to do pre painting lines, but also what do they have to do while they're painting and some of the strokes that they're doing. And so they're literally taking the kids, you know, handing them a paint brush and saying, Hey, practice these certain strokes on how you would, you know, take on this project. And so the kids are getting kind of their hands dirty in this work. They're experiencing it. You know, same thing with the cement Mason guys in the unions is they're sitting down showing the kids how they're using the trials. The steel workers are actually getting the kids up onto a steel beam. And it's kind of like, you know, like they would be in a skyscraper setting, right? Except for they're only a few feet above the ground that they could step off of it. But they're practicing their balance and also being put into their, their protection as they're, you know, being strapped in and they're working on some steel work, putting some beams together. And so it's really a great experience for them because, you know, having the understanding of like, this is what I'm going to do every single day and be working with my hands and continuously being up at a height that, you know, maybe this is only two feet high and it's safe here. But in the real world, we're going to be hundreds of feet in the air. And so these are some of the common practices that take place at these annual building trades expos. And how do we know they're intensive?  They have the hard hats. They're getting their hands into the work. They're having the intense conversations with these guys, you know, and these guys, you know, they talk like they do while they're on the job. And so for some students, it's eye-opening to see how they even talk to each other because that's just how they are on those jobs and really being focusing on safety as well. And so anytime something that is like kind of quote-unquote unsafe, the guys are very quick to take on that issue because obviously safety is their number one issue on these types of careers. And so some of the accomplishments of the manufacturing engineering technology and trades experience are it connects students to the local unions and the contractors who are in desperate need of these workers. It also exposes them to a host of careers collectively. And so here you might have 30 different careers that you're exposing students to that maybe they just weren't thinking about in the trades. And then when done intentionally, they oftentimes have women and minorities represented at these experiences. I know from a perspective of some of the kids that we bring, you know, seeing someone of the same gender or race and like interacting with them and saying, oh, like I didn't know, like, you know, women were in this kind of feel. That experience for some of the young women is one that you just see them smiling afterwards and saying, I want to do that too. And so it really addresses that need for minority groups to be in the trades as well. So it looks like we're getting some questions in the chat also. But if you have questions or comments on the intensive career exploration development, it looks here, Brian says, how are the future educator conferences being promoted? Jason, I'm going to give you that one for the NIU one. Yeah, and the NIU site, as I just put in the chat, we don't promote them as like, hey, here's a day sign up for this day. We develop them in partnership with, again, either EFE's or ROEs, both actually. So if there's an interest in the part of an EFE region of setting one up, that's actually something that you could reach out to me and my team on the College of Ed. I will try and drop in a couple of email addresses on that in just a moment when I'm done talking. We'd be happy to do that. And then like ISU, of course, has a different approach as Heather said, and as Dan put in the chat, they, you know, they say, hey, here's our future educators conference day. Here's the link sign up. And so hopefully this mix of options. If you want to call it, Heather did also bring up, we know community colleges are doing this kind of work as well. And so, and with our student schedules, our high school students are busy. It may be a mix. I mean, I could see a school district participating in, in two different things potentially is certainly an at least in our education space. Well, and, and in other spaces, I mean, bills got he had in the slide, what's happening regionally, for example, in manufacturing engineering technology and trades, you may have multiple intensive exploration experiences that you're offering students during the year. You may have a handful of students who are able to participate in multiple of those but in many cases it may be these are these are the students going to this one versus these are the students going to this one. And sometimes that could be just because of like what the day looks like like I can't go in the fall because I play export, and I can't be late coming back, potentially for that so anyhow hopefully that helps answer that. And your question that says what type of documentation from these events need to be added to a student portfolio. I think really that that's kind of up to your district. In a sense is that that's not a requirement as I've seen and so really kind of figuring out, you know, what, what do you have as a component of your portfolio in district is something that you guys would have to discuss within your, your own team. Correct, and I will say that when building the plans when it comes to the description of the career exploration activities, especially for those that are focused on a career fair. I ask that you include that type of information as far as the opportunities for the students to have that reflection. So is that coming beforehand or afterwards and where that's going to take place just to provide additional evidence that those conversations are not just limited to the career fair, especially if it's one where there's multiple careers there, but they are truly then guided towards narrowing down what that field is, which then could lead to that specific career pathway. And another great question from and Anna Marie is can anyone join the educators conference. If we have interested students. I think it depends on the actual conference. And I see that Dan put the information in regarding the one issue. Yeah. So you could if you just search for those, you can find them and then the links and how to register and all of that and what the requirements parameters are for all of those. All right. Let's see Heather says I issue is is full of this year. Yeah, just FYI. So, so this also for the education one. I think this is something that as you are investigating this, this one example right this education one is see what some of the local community colleges are offering. I know through a local community college where I was at, they wanted to do something where students got an experience to sit down with some of the professors. They got to attend an actual education classroom. They got to have lunch with the educator professionals. And so I think each one is a little bit different on how on depending on what the actual college can offer and what kind of programs that they have as well. And so, keeping that cognizant of the work is that, you know, you may have a local community college or college or community college that you're going to have to work with to to develop what that looks like for your kids. But it could also be looking to the or some of the larger universities to reach out to them directly and see how you can participate in one in the future. All right. So we're getting to the end here. We just wanted to share some additional resources with you. The college and career pathway endorsement website is up. Heather's done a fantastic job of getting those resources up onto the website. One of the two specific call outs is the CCP academic readiness resources that are over on the side tab. If you're looking at it, it would be over on this side of the webpage. If you click on that, you will you will see them. She also has the added list for the CCP coordinators. I'm not aware if you need to have questions for Heather. She has the office hours listed. And so we just wanted to continue to talk about that. Heather, was there anything that I missed as a part of that component to the updates to the website? No. No, I don't think so. Okay. If you're going today, if you could fill out the evaluation form, you can click on that. I'm going to copy the link and throw it in here into the chat. But please go ahead and take the evaluation if you can before you leave and we'll stay on and and just allow you to have time to finish that evaluation form. But if you have more specific questions, we could stay on and possibly answer some of those as well.


So I am back covering even more news and findings in the world of Cyberpunk 2077 from the past few days. Today we cover photo mode, ray tracing gameplay, memories of Night City being wiped out, a matrix easter egg or reference, the burger guy, Xbox Series X bundle leak and much more, so a big one today people. But before we go any further, I can't tell you how much hitting that like button truly helps me out. So what are you waiting for? Also subscribe if you are new around here and want to see more daily Cyberpunk. So let's get into this and let's start with the Xbox Series X Cyberpunk bundle which was spied a Polish retailer. Okay so this bundle is supposed to launch on release day of Cyberpunk which is December 10th, but this has not been confirmed by either CDPR nor Microsoft at this time, but it's highly likely we will see it announced very soon indeed. And on many parts of the world people are struggling still even to get their hands on an Xbox Series X, but with this coming soon it might be your chance. Okay so moving on, now with a few different trailers we have seen, a scene within a diner, one scene we are talking to this dude seeking revenge, then in another scene we are speaking to Johnny Silverhand. Now the guy in the background is nose deep in his burger in both scenes, yes absolutely hilarious and the memes we are seeing already are quite funny. Now many people picked up on this and although I do think this is relatively around the same time in game, that is kind of thrown off when you notice all the other customers here within this diner are different, but yet the NCP who is playing the part of the diner worker is in the same place, either way that dude is still munching his nose deep within that burger. In my opinion this dude needs to be a mascot for the game, but hey. Okay so moving on and a while back I speculated that we would see through the eyes of Johnny Silverhand, either through playing Brain Dance or through his memories. It seems though it will be memories but we will still be playing through them according to Phil Hornshaw who said that these gameplay sequences are reliving Silverhand's memories from his perspective. Well in the video from my while back which I mentioned this, I spotted what looked like a nuke going off in the background and I speculated that it was that of Night City and we were seeing it burning to the ground, lore folks will know what I mean here. Well within the latest trailers we see this scene and get a better look of what seems to be Night City in flames and well again I could speculate here but I think my theory the first time was right and we are seeing and playing this through the eyes of Johnny Silverhand who is within our heads obviously. Okay so moving on and although I confirmed this a while back people were on my case stating the source wasn't legit although it was from a work at CDPR. But again guys it has been confirmed that photo mode will be a part of this game as this question was asked on Twitter and Marcy Moment confirmed it as you can see on the screen now. He's by the way the global community lead for the people wondering. So yes guys photo mode will be in the game and it seems as though when we're playing with this mode we'll be able to pose as Vee taking shots of you at the same time so pretty cool. Okay so let's move on to that Matrix reference. So there's a snippet within the Johnny Silverhand trailer where we get a quick glimpse of Johnny swallowing both a red pill and a blue pill at the same time. People who have watched the Matrix will know of this straight away wherein the Matrix indicates Neo's choice of staying either in the Matrix or learning the truth. Within the Matrix though he has to take one or the other. Within this cyberpunk trailer Keanu Reeves aka Johnny Silverhand aka Neo takes both. A great little reference in my opinion. Okay so let's move on and two more things we've learned from the past few days and they are. You can no longer complete the game in the attire you start with although this was believed to be possible at the start. It's been confirmed now that you can't upgrade that standard gear and you have to use upgraded stuff you acquire for increased stats and so much more. Now initially I do believe you could have upgraded your standard gear but it's been confirmed either way now that is not the case. And also guys going on to the subject of ray tracing. It's been confirmed ray tracing will reflect everything within Night City except you as V as the player as this was said to be causing performance issues and this was according to Miles Toast. Okay so let's end the video with that PC ray tracing gameplay which you are seeing in the background now. I will state if you want to see this in that glorious 4k the link will be found below but as you can imagine it looks beautiful for sure. And while on the subject we're right here of PCs system requirements have also been released which you can see on screen now. So for you PC wizards out there on said platforms being your gameplay choice for Cyberpunk 2077 I hope this helps you out. And yes guys we have come to the end of the video just a quick news round up for you guys covering stuff I've missed from the past few days which I haven't mentioned already. If you guys enjoyed the video leaving a like really helps out. If you're new around here and want to see more Cyberpunk be sure to subscribe and if you never want to miss a video I upload you can turn notifications on by hitting that bell button but I will leave you now to watch the rest of this PC RTX ray tracing gameplay for those who haven't seen it already. Don't think there's much new here if I'm honest but it's still beautiful to look at. Again thanks as always for stopping by and hopefully I will see you on that next one.


t on the area of sort of before I close out, the transition of the homeless service office. Most of this is a summary of kind of what's gonna be coming last day. But in addition, I do want to highlight some, what I hope is good news and hope that your board will agree with. So there are sort of three groupings here. So the first, we have two staff. This is the two staff who are working under Alisa Benson's leadership in the county administrator's office. This is Tatiana Rainey, who your offices have worked with, who will be transferred over to the human services department as the work transitions to us. Second, your board has already approved in a previous board action, the hiring of a new director for what we're calling the housing for health office. And we're in the process of hiring and anticipating new directors starting in the fall. But in red, the emphasis is to highlight for you that we are actually gonna be bringing forward last day a request for two additional full-time positions and the good news is we have been able to find funding for the next fiscal year within the human services department budget that does not require any general fund nor does it have any adverse impact on any staffing or any services. Very good news. In addition, we are in active conversations with the health services agency and the county administrator's office about a one to five year trajectory of how to move this office to a place that it has minimal general fund costs. And that's based on a combination of two actions. One is we historically have never taken any administrative overhead off of any state and federal grants we receive that we will thoughtfully do so to be able to keep this office running. But most importantly, and as has been spoken to at this board when the health office has just spoken, we are working to move the unit to a law claiming unit, the Medi-Cal administrative office. And by the volume of county funding and public funding we are having this program already, we're able to begin a trajectory to move this unit over the next few years to something that is then claiming the federal Medicaid dollar because of the population served. So this will be a last day item, but I just wanted to give you that preview and certainly can ask any questions now or on last day about this. The systems, the second bucket, the homeless management information system, which is a required program to use to track data of the clients being served and some data dashboards that are being run in the county administrator's office. Those will all be moved over to human services and sort of woven into the very effective data analytics team in human services. And finally, the funding, a number of months ago, the county administrator's office brought forward a list of all those different funding streams and all those different COC grants and all the different activities. All that moves over to us in a budget index last day as well. So to close, I don't wanna repeat what has been said the county administrator talked about this in his budget and Christina and her follow-up presentation as did Mimi, federal and state landscape is profoundly difficult to predict. We are predominantly almost 90% funded by federal and state activities and actions. So being able to keep up with our lobbying and activity and advocacy at the state and federal level, the unknown future of the pandemic is certainly very profound. The impact on the economy, which has that inverse relationship that Mimi spoke to in her presentation when the budget is good, when the economy is good, we have more resources, when it gets worse, we have less, and that's when the community needs us most. So it's a very delicate time. And then finally, with the transition of housing and homeless services, this is where I just want to end with a little bit of opportunity. You know, as this county has described to me in my six months, it's very similar to my experience in Alameda where I worked for 25 years, lots of finger pointing, lots of frustration, lots of who's doing what and who's not gonna do what. My experience has been there is certainly some tensions, certainly some confusion, but there is a tremendous amount of teamwork being done under COVID and all the work we've done as I've been described to the board. And I was here last week with Alisa. There's a lot of opportunity to build upon the teamwork that's been done. There's a lot of opportunity to work with the state and the federal government to look at how communities can do better by those experiencing homelessness when we have resources and support. And I feel very cautiously optimistic that we will be able to be in a much better position over the next year and beyond, given what this crisis has surfaced. So I end with the formal request of your board to adopt the recommendations that are outlined on this slide in great detail. I'm not gonna read through it. And I just wanna end with a thank you to your board. You've been very supportive and very candid in my tenure, including chair Caput, reminder and supervisor Leopold, your question if I started all this COVID stuff. But I also do wanna end with just making a comment. The human service department employees are unbelievably resilient. And I don't know, you know, chair Caput, when you asked me at the beginning, how are you doing? The answer to that is I'm actually doing okay because of how enjoyable it is to work with Emily, the deputy and the human service staff who just always find a way to keep going. It has not been easy. There's been some tensions. We're a little overwhelmed. But this budget presentation is just a small piece of what we're doing. And I just wanna thank the human services staff. It's a real honor to be their director. So thank you. And I opened up to any questions or comments. Okay. Let's go with supervisor Kunates. Thank you. Thank you, Randy, for your work and your whole department's work, helping people not only navigate this health crisis, but obviously this economic crisis. So first, let me just say on the homeless front, you know, in a normal year, this would probably be the headline coming out of budgets. This is the county really increasing its role in looking at the system to support people experiencing homelessness in the community. And so I look forward to working with you over the coming years to do some system changes and to improve systems and services for people in need. I want to ask you, and you and I talk about this, I'm hesitant to add something to the HSD plate, but, you know, as a parent of young kids, I know how difficult the online learning experience is going to be in a few days, but I know that CalWorks families that are really managing a number of crises will also struggle with that online learning. I'd like to ask that maybe for the last day reports that you work with the parks department on how we can support pods or other support activities for CalWorks families and online education. Thank you for the comments and Supervisor Coonerty, as I've shared with you privately and want to say publicly, we will do better by those experiencing homelessness with active partnership with all of your board members and I welcome your interest in having much more conversation publicly and in our discussions about that. And yes, we're happy to follow there is board discretion as to how to act upon that CalWorks allocation when we mentioned as long as it's within the allocation and it's audit proof, we'll take your directive to work with Public Works and I just need a minute after this hearing to figure out what we can present at last day versus what we'll bring back to you in the fall in terms of a formal contract, but we'll work with you and the full board on that request. Great, and it's okay if you can't get a plan at Tuesday, that online pool starts to be, anything can do that sooner or later would be appreciated. I've heard and we'll reach out to Parks right away. Supervisor Friend. Thank you Chair, thank you Randy for your work and also for just your general accessibility, I feel like I don't have a lot of questions because you're always available for me to ask them at any other time, but I recognize that we don't get an opportunity to thank your team enough and a lot of them work in remote locations that don't necessarily interface with the board as much as I would like to be able to do, but there's no greater need than what your department and health are doing right now. The net couldn't be more essential and unfortunately I wish I could say that there will be the rule above us from the federal side would be coming down with a great relief, but I just haven't seen that happen but yet you and your team on the ground are really making sure that people within our community have some of these stresses alleviated a little bit. It really speaks to the importance of the safety net which I know the board is always valued and this community is always valued but it needs people on a date basis making those contributions to ensure that human touches actually occur. So please do pass on to your team that their work is not just value we recognize how essential it is and we recognize how stressful it is working in those frontline positions right now when people are taking a lot of incomeings a lot of stress about the inability to get certain benefits at the lazy times and things that are outside of routine control but we hear nothing but compliments about the end product and I want people to recognize that that role is essential and your team's role is essential. I just want to thank you for that. Supervisor McPherson. Thank you chair and thank you Mr. Morris for your presentation on a self described complicated dance. You know that happens when you depend on 90% of your funding from state and federal sources. You're dealing with it in a remarkable way. You and the whole staff. So I couldn't give you more accolades than say thank you for a job well done and this was one place where I might even get better especially in these times of immense needs for jobless benefits shelter and food assistance and other services created by COVID in the shelter in place. We know that as you said when you need it the most we have less funding overall and we know this is disproportionately affected low income folks and I'm really pleased to see I know we all are to what you how you've been able to get ahead of the game and actually produce more services for some of these folks. There's one question I might have better asked it in the consent agenda on homeless services but can you tell me the status of the heat and cash funds? Are they are there unallocated awards and what is our timeline for redirecting the balance of these funds which I think has to be done by the end of the year. So Supervisor McPherson if you watch me talk slowly it is because Rainey Perez from the homeless service office let me know if there's any questions technically about and here she materializes that she would be available to answer these technical questions. So here she is. Thank you Rainey. Hi Rainey Perez, homeless services coordinator. Yes, there are unallocated heat funds. I believe they are in excess of approximately 2 million and we have just finished all of the fiscal 1920 invoicing and the liquidations and figuring out how much to transfer from the trust fund. So I am updating the tracker on that and we'll have that information probably within the week. On Friday the 21st, the HAP board and executive committee will be meeting and reviewing how much of the funding is still available and what our immediate needs are. And what I would say is that we now have 11 months remaining to spend down the heat funds in particular. So the priority will be to get those funds to work as rapidly as possible on something that's an unmet need. And we're looking at things like the armory and poly loft and ongoing salvation, army operations, et cetera. So we were going to prioritize the heat funds for rapidest, the most rapid spending. If there are questions, input or concerns ahead of that HAP meeting on the 21st, please contact me and let me know. And I'm happy to answer any other questions about it. Thank you for that update. You're welcome. Supervisor Leopold. Thank you, Chair. Thank you for the presentation. It's a great example of one of our deep benches here in the county. The human services department has always been able to give us good, clear, accurate information.  And I just want to express my appreciation. The department made a decision a couple of years ago to really try to increase access to SNAP services. It was a conscious effort and it took a lot of work. And we're seeing the benefits of it now. And especially during this very tough time economically for so many people in our community, having a good program where it's easy for people to access these services really makes a difference in the lives of so many people. So I just want to, all that, what I call the spade work, which is all that work you have to do to put in so it's ready when times, when it's needed, really makes a big difference. So thank you for doing that. I also appreciate just the spirit to try to figure out new ways to not only help within the county family, but within, obviously within the community. My colleague brought up the issue of technology and CalWorks. And I've spent a lot of time talking with the superintendents of school districts and at least in the first district. And they've done a lot of good work getting computers out to the families, setting up hotspots, getting them connected. And so I would recommend also just reaching out to the COE or school districts to leverage what they've already got going on. It could be a good opportunity to partner with the schools on something that we all care about, which is breaking down that digital divide that separates so many families from the access to services. On the homeless coordination, I'm gonna look forward to the additional information that we get and also just the reconstituting of that effort. I think that we've shown during this time of crisis that we've been able to really increase shelter capacity. And we have to keep that drive so we can provide good housing opportunities, a variety of housing opportunities to really make a dent in the number of homeless that we have here in Santa Cruz. So I appreciate the effort and I know that we're counting on your department to both provide services to people in need to help with employment as they will work their way back into the workforce as jobs become available, as they need to retrain for those jobs. And I wanna express my appreciation to all your staff for their ongoing commitment to get that done, to meet the needs, as the governor says, to meet the moment of which we're in. So thank you for the work. Thank you. Thanks a lot for everything you guys are doing. Appreciate all your work and getting back to the staff and supervisors and answering all the questions. You got a lot of pressure on you. I'm okay. Maybe it's just the wording, but on packet page 71, item number nine, the agenda item. It says the following staffing changes were made to accommodate the expected increase in caseloads and result in a budgeted increase of two full-time positions. Then right below it says delete two full-time positions and unfund, I guess those are openings that are not gonna be funded, three full-time positions. So you were expecting an increase of two positions, but actually we're gonna eliminate two? Yeah, there is a very complicated set of machinations that to simplify what is, to be quite honest, taken us three or four times to walk through with our budget office, it's all very clean. The 10% net county cost reduction target we had, we made a choice to unfund two management positions. On top of that, due to a different action, we had one employee that asked for the retirement incentive, which requires us to freeze that position for two years, which we also accepted because that was the one position in our department that was in a unit that was being consolidated. Those actions were one set of actions. On the other hand, the opposite of what child support just talked to you about where the state underfunded Santa Cruz child support, we got a dramatic increase in our CalWORKS and somewhat our CalFresh allocations that deliver services to those populations which allowed us to add positions. So the end result of those kind of moving parts are the addition of two positions in our budget. Okay, so it's an actual loss of two positions? We have unfunded two management positions, but because of the increased CalWORKS allocations, we're able to add more than that in the math and landed on two new positions in our budget. So some deletions, but more additions than deletions. So the sum total is two additional positions in our budget. All funded by the increased allocations. On the unfunded positions, this is probably true with all the other departments. Did we actually tell anybody, hey, you've got a job right before the pandemic.  And then when the pandemic became very, very real, that we actually then called them back and said, well, we're not gonna hire you. We are very fortunate that that did not happen. The two positions I just mentioned that we unfunded were both vacant. So when the pandemic hit and the recession hit, as our County Administrator Vasa said, they put a hiring freeze in place. And once that happened, we paused on all hiring. Then we got the 10% net county cost reduction target. And we'd went ahead and looked at two management positions that we realized we could function without. So no human beings were offered jobs and then delayed or impacted because they were in a job. Yeah, that's just a question, the human impact. Did it happen at any of the departments where we said you got the job and then we called them back and said, sorry, you're out of luck? Not that I'm aware of. Okay, thank you. Okay, we'll open it up to the public for public comment. Anyone here in the chambers, none? Anyone downstairs? We have one web comment. Okay. This is from Leah Samuels. Thank you for your hard work of your staff in creating this budget. And now your work in a difficult budget year. This comment is being submitted by Leah Samuels, Executive Director of the Human Care Alliance. On behalf of one of our members, there is, on behalf of one of our members, there is a $224,000 slated to go to Salinas Yellow Cab. Would you consider using courtesy cab to keep the dollars in the county? Can't some of these trips go to lift line? Are these 5150 trips? Our understanding is that budget may need to be reexamined through the year for the county to give the uncertainty of federal funding sources. We hope to be part of the conversation as to how you could spend less money managing core funding so more than the money for the direct non-profits providing essential services. This comment was apparently put under the wrong agenda number. So when I missed that, I apologize, but for the next meeting, the next item. I'll open it up for a motion. I would move approval of the recommended actions. Okay. I'll second that. This is good. This is right. If you want to add the additional directions that you just come back with the, with the potential programming for the forming of pods for online schools for CalArts families. Yeah, happy to do that. Sorry for leaving it out. Yeah, that's fine. And I'll do the roll call vote. Supervisor Leopold. Aye. Cooner, or excuse me, friend. Aye. Coonerty. Aye, did you, did you hear my additional direction? Yes. We got your additional direction. Right, thank you. Okay. McPherson. Aye. Chair Caput. Aye. Passes unanimously. We now go to the last item on today's agenda, number 10, the core investments. And consider the 2020-2021 supplemental budgets for a collective of results and evidence-based investments and take related action as outlined in the reference budget, the documents and memorandum of the human, of the director of human services. Okay. Okay. So the reason this is a separate presentation is though the human services department administers this budget, this is your board and the county administrators general fund money that way before my time and for many, many years has been funding to help support the safety net and it lines with the work we do in human services. And we have our contract team to help administer it. So this is a standalone separate budget index in the human services department, but we need your board's direction in order to execute whatever decision you make. So that's why this particular budget item is separate and it's also deserving of its own attention. The agenda is really just to take a minute. Everyone is so very busy with so many things going on. This has been such a complicated and controversial program before my time to put in context a couple of board decisions and things that kind of set up where we are today. Because in June, I was not asked to present on core. I did not have the opportunity to talk about our operational plan impact. So I'm just briefly touch on that. But really that leads to the decision in front of your board today, which is the proposed budget revision, which was shared publicly, which is a 10% cut to the general fund core contracts. So here's the context. In November of 2019, your board had directed the human service department to align its procurement process, which my understanding before my time was separate, which says there was the core base funding. And then there was these set aside programs to align them together. And that was gearing up before COVID to put out an RFP for all of that and one big procurement. Second context setting point is that then your board, since I got here because of COVID and the struggle for us administrative really for our nonprofits with everything they were going through to remove them from having to deal with the procurement process with the precarious budget challenge, you're approved in May, a delay of the RFP. So therefore in front of you today is nothing about procurement that will be put forward another year where we have ample opportunity to talk about what to do and what to procure in the process given the history of this program. And then finally, the purpose of putting this last one up here is to let you know unless your board requests, we're not planning to sort of talk a lot about the policy and the status of the program because we are slated to come back to you in October for our yearly report, at which point we fully expect there'll be lots of policy discussion. So just wanted to make sure these reminders were in place. The operational plan impacts, we do have three operational objectives. And again, because we're coming back in October, if your board agrees, we would plan to walk through these in more detail so we could spend our time focusing on the budget discussion. But we did want to just let you know of these three, we are pleased to report that all of the objectives are actually on target. So anybody who is listening to this on archiver live, you can go to the Santa Cruz website to see the specifics, but we'll plan to talk about them in more detail when we come back for the annual report in October. Okay, so the budget revision. The core budget, which has been your board's general fund budget that we administer as of this fiscal year and as was executed at the beginning of this fiscal year sits at 4,405,000. As the county administrator announced, there was a proposal to cut that by 10%. So our job as administrators of the program was to walk through how to do that. The first two budget items are just a 10% cut to the base, a 10% cut to the Meals on Wheels program. And then there were 7,000 in carry forward. And then I wanted to just highlight for a minute, set aside, because set aside actually had two programs that stopped functioning. And those two programs totaled $10,500, which turns out to be about 9.8% of the set aside budget. So rather than cutting all the set aside programs, we're just cutting that, which wasn't gonna go forward anyways. And so the grand total, if you see 436,000 in core reduction and you do the math, it's slightly under 10%. And that was to make sure that we didn't just apply that 10% to the set aside, given those are the small programs that are kind of the smaller operations. So what's in front of you is a proposal to reduce the core budget as listed above by $436,000. I wanna take a minute to recognize that this is a very interesting program that I actually heard about in Alameda that has a long history and I'm very humble in understanding that I have not had an opportunity to understand the interest your board has, the interest the community-based partners have, the advocates have.  I consider my responsibility to just put some information on the table so you have the information that as I was preparing for this seemed very meaningful and relevant to the context in front of you. So I hope it lands that way that this is a neutral presentation about some facts that I became aware of. So number one, it does look as if this has been a program that as the budget got better in Santa Cruz County, this board has made increases to the program over time. And when we look back in 1415, the general fund that your board put forward was 3.875 million. And today, even with the proposed reduction to 436, that's still over 17% increase. So there's been some meaningful investment in advancements over the years. Second is that when your board spoke very early on when the recession hit and the budget was getting bad and there were statements about making sure everybody took their share, that's when the 10% proposal was put forward to cut core programs. At the same time, county departments were asked to take two cuts. One is furloughs, which landed at 7.5% and the other for health and human services was 10% net county cost reduction that I spoke to earlier. The last one I wanna speak to is health and human services recognize that the ability of our clients to manage a difficult time like this is somewhat dependent upon the health of our nonprofit community. And nonprofits are under a tremendous amount of stress right now. They have a lot of revenue streams that have dried up philanthropy donors. It's a very tough time for them. So as we were looking at making a statement to the nonprofits to take their share of cut when the corona relief funds, coronavirus relief funds came forward, we felt it was important if we were gonna ask the nonprofits to take a cut that we should make it an opportunity for them to benefit from the relief funds. So you have in front of you today one very specific action and that is to deliberate on this proposed 10% cut. I wanna tell you have a separate action which is gonna come forward the county administrator as I understand the dates, they will talk about it on Wednesday and it's a last day action. And that is that health and human services proposed that there be money set aside for nonprofits, including core to apply for those relief funds in recognition of the challenge that they are facing. So they are independent actions but we do wanna recognize it does benefit the clients we serve to have a healthy nonprofit community. So with that, I hope that overview was helpful and I would just ask that your board consider adopting the recommendations as outlined on this slide and open it up to any questions or comments. Okay, let me, I'll get right to you. Supervisor Friend. Chair, I actually don't have questions right now to bring from the community on this. I think some of my colleagues might, I have a different opinion. He's done. Yeah, okay, Supervisor Leopold. Thank you, Chair. I know we're not gonna get a deep into this today. I look forward to our conversation in October and some might describe that the core program is controversial. Some might consider it as an appropriate reset after 40 years to look at how and why we funded everything. And I think it's something that the county can be proud of. I'm grateful when I saw the list of those that could receive care fundings and what's is gonna be proposed by the CAO is that we can keep our community-based partners or in the core investment program whole. Because my experience in having gone through this before at the county is these are the time when we need these organizations. They are our partners helping people who are vulnerable and at risk maybe seeking services for the first time. So I understand that today we would be, if we accept the recommended actions, it looks like a 10% cut, but we're coming back on Wednesday to make everybody whole again. And so I'll be supporting that effort and I appreciate the work. And I think that Mr. Morris says as things return to whatever normal will look like in the future and you have more time to spend with these community-based organizations, you will also see the good work, a great effort and deep commitment that they have towards meeting the needs of the most vulnerable here in Santa Cruz County. And may I just say, Supervisor Leopold, just in full disclosure, the Human Care Alliance did give me the courtesy of a meet and greet, which got rescheduled or scheduled because of corona and we actually have a second scheduled in a couple of weeks. And as I shared with them the first time, I am a humble set of open ears. I'm a new set of eyes. And I think the looking forward is the part, how to continue to partner with them. They do a lot of good work into some community. Here, here. You bet. Supervisor McPherson. Yeah, again, the need is greatest when the time is tough as before. So I just want to say thank you to all of our community service partners and what they've provided for so many thousands of county residents. And I know that the 10% cuts are gonna have a very big impact on the services they provide. But we've also asked for cuts for employees and furloughs and layoffs. And I also recognize the effort to restore some of those cuts through our CARES Act money. And I look forward to that in the previous discussions. But I want to thank the hundreds of nonprofits that we do have here in Santa Cruz County for providing the services they do. They're invaluable and they really do provide services for thousands of our county residents. Thank you for the presentation. And Supervisor Coonerty. Hey, Mr. Chair. Yeah, just a recognition that I think our core funding is a real effort to try to get resources in the most effective way possible to those in need. And I look forward to our conversation on Wednesday. I'm gonna look at how we can allocate CARES Act money to help reduce the impacts on both these organizations and those in need here on community. Okay, that's fine. And I guess that's me, right? Okay, yeah, this is a tough one. At the time, we're having a hard time providing all the services that we need to do. And at the same time, we're cutting people that are helping us that they do a lot of work that reduces the load that we have with the county, reduces the amount of money we would have to spend in order to provide the services they do. So, and just something that sort of stood out there, meals on wheels, we didn't mention any others as far as, as far as this one was specific, 8,500. What gets me, the reason it jumped off the page is, with elderly people that are either in a rest home or they're holed up in their houses and they're asked not to leave, they're, it seems to me that meals on wheels for 8,500 dollars to be cut. It seems like we're punishing a certain group of people, the older people in the community. I know we don't intend that, of course, but it almost looks that way. We're shutting them off from going out.  I think we should be doing all we can to keep them in their homes without forcing them out. And if they don't have those meals and that personal contact that comes with it, just seems like a too heavy of a burden we're putting on them. I'm gonna turn this over to Emily to talk about the technical, there's a technical reason why meals on wheels is separated in terms of how we organize the budget. And I would just say this is why your board used to deliberate about what to do, whether right now as proposed every program, but for the set-asides for the reason I describe is equally taking a 10% cut. But I'll let Emily speak to why the Meals on Wheels program stands alone. It's a technical issue. Yes, because they received the $85,000 augmentation specifically for Meals on Wheels. Are you on? Okay. I just need to adjust. That's why the $8,500 was called out in as part of how that we came about the, how we got to the reduction is because of this, they specifically got that $85,000 augmentation originally. It's 10%. It's 10% of the $85,000. But I mean, if we have to vote on this all or nothing, for $8,500, we could take care of them. At least keep them out even, okay. Well, we, if I could interrupt, we are proposing to come back with CARES Act funding on Wednesday to make those departments whole. So we're saving general fund money, replacing it with federal money, but to keeping the nonprofits whole so that they won't actually take overall reduction in funding. We're doing this because by saving general fund money, we're reducing the number of layoffs we have of employees. So we're using that CARES Act fund, we're leveraging it, and we're saving general fund employees. So on Wednesday, we are proposing to come back and restore some of this funding or supplement it so that there's a net no loss to these agencies. It's just struck me, I agree. We're gonna come and look at it, but it struck me with the pandemic. We're talking about mostly people that are in that vulnerable age group, like myself. Older, and a lot of them are in their 80s or 90s or shut off at home. And we're telling them, don't go out, but at the same time, we're depriving them of a meal that if they don't get that, they're gonna have to go out and get something to eat or whatever. So they got the pressure from both sides. Yeah. I also add due to the hard work of human services through the great plates delivered program, over 500 people who weren't previously in any of our programs are now receiving three meals a day delivered to their home. So what they're coming to us is with this cut that they are being asked to by the County Administrative Officer to deal with our financial situation. We are fortunate that we are gonna be able to fully fund all these programs if we vote for this CARACS resolution on Wednesday. So the action we take today should not be seen by itself. It should be seen as concert with this action we're gonna take on Wednesday. And I share with you the interest of not cutting off funding for organizations like this during our greatest time of need. But there is a plan in place that we're not gonna have to do that. Yeah, no, that's fine. And we'll look at it. It was just, it was set aside. It was one of the many that were helping that was specifically mentioned in the report. And that's the only reason I brought it up now rather than Wednesday. Thank you. Thanks a lot for everything you're doing. We appreciate everything. And you're in a tough spot. We need you and thank you. We love you. We'll take it. All right. We'll open it up to public comment. Any public comment here? Any public comment downstairs? No, there's not. Done online either. Okay. Open it up for a motion. I would move the recommended actions and look forward to the vote on Wednesday as well. Okay. Have a second. Second. Okay. Okay. The roll call vote. Supervisor Leopold. Aye. Friend. Aye. Community. McPherson. Aye. Chair Caput. Aye. Passes unanimously. And we will return tomorrow at 9 a.m. right here on the board chambers on Tuesday, nine o'clock in the morning. Thank you. And that closes the session.