Workforce - Workplace Literacy

Workforce Collaboration at
Education Service Center (ESC), Region VI

Education Service Center Region VI has been providing Adult Education to surrounding counties for over 30 years. Throughout this time, Adult Education has changed and taken many turns. Some of these changes have made a positive impact on the system, but the most recent surge for collaboration makes more sense than all of them put together. The Adult Education Department at Region VI is always looking for ways to better their services and one tool that aids in this process is the dissemination of information found in student surveys. The data that is collected reflects the input of the students. One area that proves to be of interest is the fact that the majority of undereducated adults all seem to share the ultimate goal of obtaining employment. So, what better way to meet that need than to partner with the workforce centers?

Education Service Center, Region VI provides services for 15 counties. Within this area there are seven workforce centers. The Adult Education Department has a history of working with all of these centers through many different ways. Some workforce sites provide rooms for the adult education classes, Workforce Board members are representatives on Region VI Adult Education Advisory Boards, referrals from these centers are important in the identification of clients, and the workforce personnel are aware of the adult education classes in their area. This collaboration has been in existence for many years now, so when the opportunity arose to implement a grant from the Texas Workforce Commission, the provision for services was easy to explain.

The Adult Education Department at Region VI was awarded a Self Sufficient grant in 2001 and it has been extremely successful. Through this grant, known as SWAT (Self Sufficient Workers Achievement Training), qualified participants are placed in training with the ultimate goal of obtaining employment. There are fifteen different areas identified in the grant for training and employment. Since this is an education service center, the main goal was to provide the 58 school districts found in Region VI with trained employees. This grant would help by alleviating their training costs of certain employee positions and stress job retention. Fortunately the program was successful in this endeavor. However, through the course of the first grant period, so many candidates were identified that the school districts did not have enough available employment opportunities. So, with the appropriate research and data, the renewal grant was expanded to include a wider variety of employment areas. The changed grant was awarded in December of 2003, and at this time a high percentage of the grant requirements have already been met and the grant will continue until August of 2005. This progress is possible through the collaboration with the workforce centers and their personnel. Through this partnership, the SWAT program is able to identify and serve a larger population.

With workforce help, the specific needs and skills of SWAT participants are identified and utilized to guide them into a training that will hopefully be conducive to their situation. One area of the workforce that threw up a roadblock was the ability of adult education personnel to understand workforce lingo. When someone outside the loop of workforce operations first encounters a partnership with them, one might think that the workforce center staff is speaking some kind of new foreign language. This barrier seemed to be a common problem. The more collaboration that was needed between adult education and the workforce, the more prevalent the lack of knowledge became. Those in adult education have a tendency to restrict themselves to only those things that they are familiar with, as is human nature. But, throughout the three-year span of this grant, the project director has been able to grasp the information needed to implement a better understanding for those who are involved with this program. And from this, it has become ultimately clear that for this union to work both entities have to share more than just clients.

This is where the success of SWAT took a new turn. Relationships have been established with multiple workforce centers and the new found knowledge of them is being shared in the adult education arena. More participants are being trained and placed because both partners are now more aware of what each other has to offer.

Along with the workforce connection, the Adult Education department at Region VI has had to stretch their boundaries and work closely with an array of employers. This networking has enabled the program to open the ears and eyes of businesses that before had no substantial knowledge of adult education. This project has gained new supporters and obtained new partners, just through the outreach of informed individuals. Through the SWAT grant, it has proven that with the proper communication tools, the collaboration between adult education and the workforce can be successful. It only makes sense that these efforts are combined because ultimately both of these organizations are working towards the same goal. Both partners, adult education and workforce, have known for years that they are serving the same clientele. There simply was no direction to follow in order to push them into a shared partnership. Through this project, the need for this collaboration is quite evident and ultimately can be successful.

In this campaign year, employment and education have shared the limelight for reform, as it seems they always do. There is no doubt that the personnel in both adult education and the workforce are well aware of the unwritten ties between education and employment. It is a necessity for these two qualities to run hand-in-hand. Hopefully, the words that are being used by these political entities will result in much needed attention and maybe, just maybe, more programs will benefit from them in some way or another.

Kristi Currie received her B.S. degree from Sam Houston State University in 1996. Her education career began as a teacher of Ag Science at Huntsville High School where she taught for six years. She is currently in her third year as an Instructional Coordinator with ESC, Region VI in the Adult Education and Safety Department. Kristi is the supervisor of adult education classes in four counties.She also is project director of the existing workforce grant, as well as, a grant writer for multiple projects within Region VI.