Oakland Community After School Alliance

The Institute will take place August 6-8 at the Napa Co. Office of Education in Napa, CA.

Register On-line at:  http://calserves.org/rlc/

Please register as soon as possible as space is filling quickly.

Thank you.

Freddie Hendrix

Program Assistant

Alameda County Office of Education

313 West Winton Avenue

Hayward, California 94544

Voice: (510) 670-4175

Fax: (510) 670-3175

fhendrix at acoe.org

Hello OCASA members!

Laney College is applying for an Afterschool Career Advancement Academy grant and has asked for OCASA to participate.

Please send me (lizj@urbanstrategies.org) job descriptions for positions at your organization. In order to come up with a curriculum that prepares students for careers in afterschool, Laney College faculty would like to review job descriptions for current posts (filled and unfilled) at afterschool programs in Oakland. Any job descriptions that you have on file for positions within your organization (filled positions, unfilled positions, and potential positions) would be MOST helpful to this effort.

David Kakishiba and Geri Murphy will sit on the bridge program’s steering committee to represent OCASA. Edward and myself have been attending the grant application preparation meetings.

Thanks!

Liz Johnson, MS

Program Associate

Urban Strategies Council

672 Thirteenth Street

Oakland, CA 94612

(510) 893-1377

lizj@urbanstrategies.org

More information….

The Afterschool Career Advancement Academy would include the following 4 elements:

1. The creation of a bridge semester in youth development or education. A bridge program provides contextualized core curriculum to students to prepare them to begin taking college level courses in a particular subject.
2. A strong link to afterschool employment that’s connected to a career pathway (e.g. students placed in afternoon work positions that they receive college credit for while they take courses that further prepare them for the field).
3. Strong links to further courses at Laney and further study at area colleges and universities.
4. Test preparation courses to allow students to prepare adequately for any certification exams necessary.
5. Wrap around services for students.

Other participants include Rebecca Goldberg from CalSAC, Linda Collins from the Career Ladders Project, Dean Linda Sanford from Laney and William Hansen from Laney.

They would like OCASA’s help:

1. Envisioning the proposed program.
2. Providing employment, volunteer and internship opportunities to students in the program.

For more information, please contact me or see the description below of the proposed program from the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office:

The intent of this RFA specification is to fund projects that focus on adapting effective components of the Career Advancement Academies (CAAs) model at five sites, focusing on linking after-school employment to longer career pathways and building needed connections between local employers, community colleges and after-school providers.

These sites will build on or link community colleges to established partnerships with employers, local workforce investment boards, social service agencies and community organizations for outreach, recruitment and support services. In addition, the sites will work closely with their local County Offices of Education and after-school providers in program development and implementation, as well as training and job placement. Colleges will partner with local California State University campuses and employers in developing the ongoing pathway programs.

Colleges receiving these grants will establish “bridge” programs addressing foundational reading, writing and math skills contextualized and linked to regionally identified career pathways. As students transition from the bridge program to subsequent career training, eligible students will be prepared for and placed in part-time after-school employment, providing them invaluable, hands-on, paid work-experience. The after-school employment component will be integrated in college programming as work-experience or service-learning. At each site, attention will be paid to the subsequent transition of students to the regionally identified career pathways available. Students may also elect to transition to other certificate or degree programs at a college.

The primary partners for these grants are a community college and secondary schools, participating employers, and County Offices of Education, in conjunction with project related service providers. Funded projects must have evidence of a partnership with key stakeholders. In addition, local CSU’s, ROCPs, middle schools, public employers, business/industry and labor are suitable partners. The partnership must include an advisory committee made up of key stakeholders who meet and affirm that the activities are relevant to the region’s employer needs, link to a career opportunity, the project is meeting its goals and objectives and provide feedback on execution and effectiveness of the project activities.

Applicants must demonstrate a strong capacity to implement highly visible, high impact projects that can provide a model for career preparation for post secondary students and career exploration and awareness for secondary students.

From CalSAC’s newsletter

Clarification of Staff Requirements for ASES/21st CCLC Programs  

ASES and 21^st CCLC programs are required by law to hire staff that meet “the minimum qualifications of an instructional aide, as defined by the local school district.”  The California Department of Education recently released a document to clarify that every district may set its own minimum qualifications for instructional aides that apply to staff working in the afterschool program, and that these qualifications do not have to be the same as the instructional aide qualifications under No Child Left Behind.

For more information about these requirements, click here.