Menu
Menu
If you can’t find the answer within the FAQ section below or through the Chancellor’s Office website, send an email us at help@baccc.net.
The Student Fee Handbook, available on the Chancellor’s Office website.
With questions about paying for instructional materials it’s always a good idea to reference the Student Fee Handbook, available on the Chancellor’s Office website. Generally, colleges are required to provide students with any materials required to successfully complete a class. According to the handbook colleges may require students to bear these costs if the materials have value beyond the duration of the class. So clearly the college may pay for these materials out of its own resources, rather than require the students to bear this cost.
The next question is whether SWP funds may be used to cover this cost. The few guidelines and restrictions are spelled out in Guidelines, Definitions and Reasonable Standards for Strong Workforce Funding. The one restriction that may be applicable to this question is the prohibition of supplanting. If a college had been covering this cost from another source, say the general fund, it could not pay for these materials with Strong Workforce funds and then redirect the general fund to non-CTE purposes. The goal of SWP is to supplement what colleges are spending on CTE. This redirection of the general fund would result in no net increase for CTE and would be considered supplanting.
All of the above leads to the conclusion that a college could use SWP funds to purchase a required cosmetology kit for every students in a class.
A question that should be asked with every SWP investment is whether it is the best and most effective investment for improving the college’s performance at meeting the Strong Workforce Program goals as measured by the SWP Metrics. Are there other investments that would have a higher probability of improving student outcomes? For example, depending on the number of students and the cost of the kit it might be possible to hire a full-time instructional aide for the same amount of money. Which investment would produce better outcomes? Consideration might also be given to placing conditions upon students ownership of the kits. For example, requiring that the kits be returned if a student leaves the program before a certain milestone.
Local certificates are certificates issued by the college that have not been approved by the Chancellor’s Office that are between 6-18 units. Your college can report these awards to MIS in the SP02 field, by flagging the awards as E:
Certificate requiring 6 to fewer than 18 semester units (not approved by Chancellor’s Office)
These would be certifications issues by an entity other than the college, such as a state licensing board (such as LVN) or a corporate certification (like a Cisco certificate). These types of awards are NOT part of the funding formula because data is not available for all colleges.
Licensure data is not currently included in the funding calculation. At the point that the Chancellor’s Office is able to get licensure data from the Department of Consumer Affairs, this information will be included in the funding formula as a possible form of completion.
Entities like Sector Navigators, DSNs, Regional Consortia Chairs, and Centers of Excellence Directors are all poised to provide planning support. You can find their contact information here: http://doingwhatmatters.cccco.edu/Contact.aspx
For support on using data, there is an extensive resource library available here: http://doingwhatmatters.cccco.edu/LaunchBoard/Resources.aspx
We are aware of this issue and working on a fix. It seems to happen with Safari and Internet Explorer. Try using Chrome or Firefox as your browser.
Send an email to kate@baccc.net
Enter your plan into NOVA. You can invite participating colleges to enter labor market information, workplan activities and outcomes, and budget as appropriate.
You can send email with the exact Program Name to kate@baccc.net and she will delete it for you.
Double check the sections which are highlighted in red, often it is a simple item to complete such as a contact name. If you are stumped, email kate@baccc.net
Double check the sections which are highlighted in red, often it is a simple item to complete such as a contact name. If you are stumped, email kate@baccc.net
You may want to change your search method using the filters. On the NOVA SWP Projects page, you can use the filters to refine or widen your project search. If you do not know the funding year, leave the Year filter to “Select Year”. This will include all years of SWP funding. If you do not know which fund, SWP Local or SWP Regional, set the Fund filter to “All SWP Funds”, which will show projects funded from each. It would also be very helpful to know the project name, or a key word in the project name so that can be entered in the Name Filter. If you are unable to locate your project using these approaches, send email to kate@baccc.net
How funds are distributed within a district is entirely up to the district. CTE FTES is one way. Other potential allocation criteria include, but are not limited to:
Some questions on metrics
– how many should each college have? (other than Enrollments)
– do all the colleges need to have the same metrics for a proposal?
– Some of these are going to be easier to measure (and more accurate) than others. (e.g., certificates vs. living wage, etc.). Any recommendations on how to approach this?
In general, we recommend choosing the metrics that will best measure the outcomes you seek and motivate the efforts you will make to seek those outcomes. For example, if the goal of the program is to get students into jobs you might want to select metrics that reflect job placement.
If you have a program that is developing skills that are only a part of the skill set a student needs for employment, you might want to focus on enrollments and perhaps completion of small unit certificates. For example, a program that teaches computer application skills, may be utilized by students from multiple majors. Those majors may be greater determinants of the student’s success, so it would make more sense to track job placement in those programs than in the computer applications program.
If the goal of the program is job placement, and there isn’t a strong link between program completion and job placement, you may wish to focus on job placement rather than completions.
It isn’t necessary for all colleges to use the same metrics. In some cases different colleges may need to focus on different aspects of their program. There can be an advantage to having at least a subset of the metrics be the same, so that you can observe and learn from differences in program outcomes.
Given that in the future 17% of the funds will be allocated on the basis of performance, you may wish to ensure that you are including those metrics that will count in the allocation formula. That formula hasn’t been developed yet and won’t be before 1/31/17. The Chancellor’s Office will allow modifications of proposals through the end of March. The allocation formula will be made available in time for colleges to revise their metrics.
For tips on developing outcome projections from the SWP homepage on the DWM website, follow this link to Tips for Developing Outcomes Projections for Strong Workforce Program Funding.
Both the Local Share and Regional Share applications are to be used to budget this year’s allocation only. The funds may be expended through December 31, 2018, so a college may choose to spread the expenditure of these funds over the three fiscal years: 2016-17; 2017-18; 2018-19. The Regional Share platform allows a college to indicate when they expect to expend the funds. So yes, your budget for this plan, should add up to the total amount you are allocated from this year’s funding cycle, regardless of which fiscal years you anticipate it will be spent within.
We have a request in to the Chancellor’s Office for guidance on this. The answer may depend on the nature of the work being done. If student interns were assisting in a computer lab it should certainly be permissible as the work itself would be eligible if it were being done by a regular employee. It is less clear if the work itself (apart from the experience it is providing the student) is not directly serving CTE. Most questionable would be if the work were for a private employer. We will post an answer here when we hear from the Chancellor’s Office.
NOVA was designed to accommodate entering one plan for multiple colleges. One college, a DSN, or other project champion can begin entry of the plan. Other colleges can then add in information such as the CTE programs they will be targeting, labor market information for those programs, their contributions to the workplan, and of course, the budget they will be committing to the project.
Yes. You can let us know before the Regional Funds contract is written that subgrants the funds. If you let us know afterwards we can do a simple contract amendment, or you can create a contract and invoice between your two colleges.
Yes, you can certainly budget funds for local expenses. In fact, in many cases, most of the funds spent in an RJV/Regional Project will be spent at the participating colleges. The idea of the RJV isn’t that money go elsewhere, but that there be coordination and alignment of effort across multiple stakeholders.
The entire amount of your allocation of the 40% fund will go to you unless you tell us differently. So let’s say you decided to participate in an RJV that was focused on underwater welding. (There is such a thing!). And let’s say that the budget included acquiring equipment, developing curriculum, providing professional development for faculty, marketing the program, and paying faculty salaries until the FTES grew to the point where the program could be supported by the apportionment it generated.
Most of these expenses would occur on your campus. Some such as marketing and perhaps professional development might be provided by another entity. It might make sense for the marketing and professional development to be provided by the same entities for all the RJV participants. One college might take the lead in contracting for the services with the other entities, with the participating colleges agreeing to split the costs. Colleges could pay their share to the lead college, or they could ask that their allocation be reduced by the amount to be shared and the lead college’s allocation to be increased. This might reduce the paperwork and overhead for the participating colleges. Either way could work, and it can be worked out at a later date. No need to do that now.
The SWP metrics projections for the local and regional share applications should be values not % changes. Look on the SWP tab in Launchboard for the metric that you want to project. Take the latest available data point given (2014-15 for enrollments but two year lag for employment and transfer data) as your baseline number to project from. If you see 2,000 enrollments in 2014-15 in the sector or program that you want to invest in, then you would input something like 2,020 for 2016/17, 2040 for 2017/18 and 2060 for 2018/19. The amount or % change is entirely up to you. There is a guide on the DWM SWP homepage with tips for developing outcomes projections.
If you choose All Programs, you are then prompted to choose Strong Workforce Task Force Recommendations that are most applicable to how you are spending the money. Please note that you will need to click on the recommendations to expand them. Click through the recommendations until you can see check boxes. You are free to choose as many as you would like in each category.
The All Programs Top Code does populate. However, you have to scroll further down so you can see it. A quick work around is entering TOP 6 – All Programs – (All)
Due to confusion and low user interaction, we have removed this feature.
The statute 88824 (e) specifically says “Funds appropriated to community college districts for the program shall supplement, and NOT SUPPLANT, existing funding of community college career technical education programs.”
888824 (5) states that districts must certify that the use of Local Share meets the following:
Successful workforce outcomes are limited to these multiple measures:
INCREASE QUANTITY (“more”) – required
IMPROVE QUALITY (“better”) – choose at least one
Shifting existing salaries to this pot is supplanting. And, is out of compliance with the law as allowable use for the dollars.
As with all CTE investments, colleges should judge the appropriateness of an investment by assessing the extent to which it supports the Strong Workforce Program goals. As 888824(5) states, districts must certify that the use of Strong Workforce Program funds meets the following requirements:
Colleges should also take into consideration the requirement that these funds not supplant. Assuming that there is a documented strong labor market demand for the program and that the program is the sole beneficiary of the renovation, then this could be a very appropriate expenditure. If the building renovation would also benefit programs that are not CTE or are serving occupations that are not demand, it would be appropriate to fund the renovation with SWP funds in proportion to the in-demand CTE program’s share of the overall costs and benefits of the renovation.
Approved by CO: 4/6/17