Students & Families Adult Education Adult & Community Learning Services
Adult and Community Learning Services

MA Economic Stimulus Information
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Program (ARRP)

This document is meant to provide a general overview of the ARRP to ABE Directors. The document also submits for your consideration some ideas and talking points about collaborating with the workforce development system and school districts.

Opportunities to Collaborate

Workforce Development System

While ABE (WIA Title II) is not explicitly discussed in the Economic Stimulus bill, there are provisions under which ABE and ESOL services can be offered to assist unemployed workers. $56M will be sent to MA from the federal government through the Workforce Development system. $25M of that amount is dedicated for youth employment initiatives, and the rest is targeted for the adult system to serve low-income and dislocated workers. Additional funds will come to the state for competitive processes in Health Care and Green Jobs, as well as for technical enhancements to the data system.

The funds for employment and training have a SHORT window for use; the system (i.e. regional workforce systems) will need to develop initiatives that can be implemented within 60 days. The Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development (EOLWD) has indicated that adult basic education services (including ESOL) are a priority for the state and that partnering with providers is critical.

ABE programs have the experience, expertise and skills needed to assist low skilled adults. Programs have a history of collaborating with workforce partners, providing contextualized curriculum in classrooms at workplaces and in the community, and programs have developed and offered work-readiness components. We encourage you to contact your Local Workforce Investment Board (LWIB) and Career Center Directors to discuss ways that you can help craft these education and training initiatives. Keep in mind that the workforce system will be looking for employment outcomes upon completion of programs. Programs will likely need to be short-term and intensive - perhaps an intensive fast-track GED with occupational training is a model that would meet the needs of unemployed workers.

In FY10, Adult and Community Learning Services (ACLS) will provide Community Adult Learning Centers with increased latitude around program design for the purpose of increasing intensity. The continuation application will be released shortly and will provide specific guidance about which policies will be relaxed in FY10. In order to maximize the use of both ESE funds and funds from the Economic Stimulus Bill, consider how you might use both funding streams together. For example, the LWIB may want to support a higher level intensive ESOL class. If that's case, consider using ACLS funds to support the lower level ESOL classes.

Local Education Agency (School Districts)

Massachusetts' Planning Process

To learn more about the Economic Stimulus bill and how services will be implemented in Massachusetts, go to www.mass.gov/recovery. Governor Patrick has outlined the strategies the administration is pursuing in the "Massachusetts Recovery and Reinvestment Plan" (the plan is almost 500 pages long). In November, Governor Patrick convened leaders of his staff, directing them to form task forces dedicated to addressing key issues - members and reports of each Task Force are presented on this website and include the following: Energy, Education Facilities, Transportation, Information Technology, Private Development, State Facilities and Courts, Municipal Facilities. In addition to these areas, three additional areas are included: Workforce, Permitting, and Procurement.

Specific principles are identified in the Recovery Plan that should guide all strategies:

• Invest for the Long Term.
• Limit Impact on Operating Budgets.
• Follow Existing Infrastructure Priorities.
• Diversify (across industries and geographic areas).
• Buy Massachusetts.

The Disbursement of Workforce Development Related Funds

• Education and training efforts will be delivered largely under the auspices of the Local Workforce Investment Board. Contact your WIB Director (or REB or PIC Director) to learn about the strategies that will be pursued in your region. Flexibility exists to allow the regions to design contracted services with specific organizations, rather than fund such programs through allocations to individuals for their specific training needs (Individual Training Accounts/ITAs).

• Funds for dispersal at the state level are limited and will be dispersed through the Workforce Competitiveness Trust Fund (Commonwealth Corporation).

• Education and training initiatives related to needs within a specific industry area may be identified and offered through the state agency overseeing that that area (example: construction jobs may fall under the Mass Highway Department). The MA workforce system is charged March 12, 2009 with tracking all education and training initiatives, and a data collection system/process will be implemented to do this.

• Local WIB Directors and One-Stop Career Center Directors will be engaged in developing strategies on the local/regional levels. Unemployment claims across the state have risen dramatically; at the last Mass WIB meeting, increases from 200% to 600% over last year were reported. Clearly, these increases put significant strains on the system. Contact your local workforce leaders about how your program might help, and please recognize the pressures of the current economy on their service delivery capacity.

• Union jobs and apprentice opportunities are prioritized. Consider developing contacts among union representatives who sit on your local Workforce Board. Talk to your WIB staff about how this will be implemented in your region.

Tips for Working with Workforce Development Partners

• Contact Your Local Workforce Board (WIB) Director and Your Local One-Stop Career Center Director to learn about your region's status. (www.massworkforce.com - from the state map, you can connect to your local WIB).

• Remember that employment outcomes will be the goal of education and training initiatives. Short-term and intensive services will be prioritized.

• Contact Your ABE Representative to your local WIB; perhaps work with your representative to set up a meeting of ABE providers with the LWIB Director and the Career Center Director. (See attached)

• Seek information on and attend regional Workforce Board meetings. In some regions, special meetings will be established (in Boston on March 23rd, a public hearing will be held at the Boston Public Library in Rabb Hall to discuss this funding.

• Investigate the information on the website of your local WIB.

• Identify the members on the Local Workforce Investment Board (or REB or PIC). Are there people you know with whom you can learn more about regional initiatives?

• Identify the labor representatives to your WIB; find out about union-led initiatives, especially apprentice training opportunities.

• Learn about your local WIB Youth Council; funds from the stimulus bill are available for Summer Youth Jobs Programs (and the funds may carry over to support school-year programs), BUT severe income eligibility requirements exist.

• Review regional labor market information from the website, or go to www.commcorp.org to find the results of the recent Paul Harrington data (under Regional Workforce Strategies Initiative). Also, learn about the Workforce Competitiveness Trust Fund and the Extended Care Career Ladder Initiative (ECCLI) operated under Commonwealth Corporation (especially learn about grants from these initiatives in your region.).

• Understand the workforce-related services you provide; understand the workforce goals and backgrounds of your students. Understand the impact on your students of the current economic downturn. Be able to articulate these to your workforce partners. Be prepared to describe your experience and expertise in ways that compliment the workforce system.

• As businesses plan for layoffs (especially large employers), they may work with the workforce system to help prepare workers for job loss (Rapid Response program). Federal funds exist through the workforce system to deliver services for workers in such circumstances. Be alert to such needs in your community.

• Section 30 of the Massachusetts Unemployment Insurance Law allows the Division of Unemployment Assistance (DUA) to waive an active work search by claimants who meet certain eligibility requirements. This means that claimants can continue to collect their UI benefits while in approved training. Find out about becoming a Section 30 approved training at the EOLWD website. In order for a program to be eligible for Section 30 approval the training must:

  • Prepare the claimant for marketable skills in a demand occupation;
  • Show reasonable expectation of achieving an average placement rate in full or part-time (20 hours per week or more) training related employment of 70 percent during the most recent period for which data is available;
  • Be a full-time program, providing a minimum of at least 20 hours of supervised classroom training per week;
  • Be completed within one year, except that this time limit may be extended to a maximum of one and a half years if the program includes a combination of basic skills and vocational training. The basic skill component, (i.e. Adult Basic Education (ABE), General Equivalency Diploma (GED), and English as A Second Language (ESL)) may not exceed a total of six months

• The Workforce Development section in the ACLS monthly e-mailing will provide updates on the Economic Stimulus Bill.

• If you have questions, contact ACLS; speak with Andrea Perrault at 781-338-3852 or e-mail aperrault@doe.mass.edu.

Tips for Working with Local School Districts

• Learn about key aspects of your local school district. The School and District Profiles on the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education's website provide data and information on MCAS performance, drop-out rates, demographic information such as the number of English Language Learners, etc.

• Learn about your students' children. You might want to know numbers, ages, and schools attended. Include children in preschool programs which may be housed in the school district or in a community based location.

• Find out from your students what information they need and want in order to support their children's education. (For example: understanding report cards and MCAS scores)

• Contact district administrators such as the Title I Director, Early Childhood Director, English Language Learner Administrator and/or the principals of schools in your community.

• Focus on the schools that serve the same families and neighborhoods that you serve.

• Share what you know about the needs of your adult learners and their children with school district staff - the information could help illustrate the connection between the adult education program and the school district.

• Identify the common concerns of your students and the school district leaders. Propose ABE and family literacy programs/activities that can help address these issues through partnerships.

Talking Points for Approaching School Districts

• Teach the mother and reach the child. Research has shown that the most reliable predictor of a child's success in school is the educational level of that child's mother.

• All parents want their children to succeed in school however many are unable to support their children's learning because they themselves lack basic skills.

• Parents can play a vital role in helping their children meet our state's performance standards.

• Family literacy programs help break the intergenerational cycle of poverty and low literacy and provide another method for helping all children, especially our most in need children, achieve to high standards

• Family Literacy provides parents an opportunity to develop their skills and to be equipped better to be partners in their child's education and support their children's success in school.

• Family literacy services are a viable strategy to close the achievement gap both for children and their parents.

• The family literacy concept recognizes the family as an institution for education and learning and the role of parents as their children's first teachers. The family literacy concept also is based on the premise that an investment in the education of adults is, simultaneously, an investment in improving the educability and school success of all children in a family.

• In FY 08, 8,000 of our adult learners were parents with children ages 18 and under. In my ABE program, .. (include a profile of your adult learners' children)

• If you have questions, contact ACLS; speak with Arlene Dale at 781-338-3858 or e-mail adale@doe.mass.edu.

More information is available at:

• http://recovery.org/
• http://www.policylink.org/
• http://www.learningpt.org/recovery/