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RPDAC Directory | Work Plan | Meetings | Upcoming Calendar | Homework Assignments | Mailing List Contact Person: Cyndi Godbey (clg5723@garnet.acns.fsu.edu) REGION 26 - 28 - 99 Meeting Minutes
Chairman Lyndarae Martin called the meeting to order at 10:15 a.m. in the Fellowship Hall. Housekeeping Issues/Announcements Dr. Bruce Jones, with Memorial United Methodist Church welcomed the group and announced that lunch would be served at 12:30. Dr. Martin asked that the Project Team distribute the travel reimbursement requests. Renew Introductions Chairman Martin asked those present to introduce themselves: COUNCIL MEMBERS PRESENT:
COUNCIL MEMBERS ABSENT:
GUESTS PRESENT:
FSU TEAM MEMBERS PRESENT:
DOE TEAM MEMBERS PRESENT:
Review/Adoption of Agenda The agenda was adopted as presented. II. Old Business Review/Adoption of Meeting Minutes for 5/24/99 There were a number of corrections to the minutes from the May 24 meeting: Page 1, Paragraph 3, the third sentence should read "About three miles away is the North Florida reception center where all new North Florida admissions to the prison system are taken for assessment prior to placement." Also, Paragraph 5 should read "She uses a management system called Cooperative Discipline in the classroom. This teaches social and emotional skills. She is also involved with a ministry which seeks out support for the program." Page 2, GUESTS PRESENT should be corrected to read "Barbara Elzie, Career Development, DOE." Page 3, Paragraph 2, the second sentence should be deleted. Page 4, Paragraph 2, the last sentence should read "She added that each partnering institution is small and doesn't really have the staff that they could free up to carry out this work, but teamwork with shared responsibilities would help get the job done." Page 7, Set Next Meeting should include a sentence in parenthesis at the end: "(This was subsequently changed to June 28.)" The minutes from May 24 were adopted with these changes. Review of Deliverables/Expectations Cyndi Godbey facilitated a discussion of the progress to date in Region 2 in accordance with the deliverables expected from each regional Council. She explained that these deliverables need to be met in order to demonstrate the success of the project and the viability of the regional councils in instituting a shift to more regionally driven planning and delivery of professional development for adult education practitioners. She began by addressing the task of organizational development. She pointed out that the Council has been established, has been meeting regularly and attendance has generally been good. However, there are a couple of members that have not been participating and, of course, Ray Fleck had to resign, leaving the need to revisit the issue of representativity of the Council. Cyndi Godbey asked the group to consider the representation of the Council by geographic areas. After listing out the counties in the region and dialoging with the Council about the areas that each member represents, the group agreed that the following counties are currently unrepresented: Dixie, Gilchrist and Marion (which also serves Citrus and Levy counties).
Cyndi Godbey also asked the group to identify the various types of
providers that are currently represented through Council membership. The
Council identified representation of: The group also identified representation of the following student populations in Council membership: ABE/GED, Adult High School, ESOL, Incarcerated students, Adults with Disabilities, Family Literacy, Workforce Development and WAGES.
Other groups that the Council members indicated representation of
included: There was extensive discussion about how to handle getting adequate representation on the Council. It was pointed out that the Council had not yet adopted bylaws and so, technically did not have a procedure for addressing the absences of Council members. In addition, the group agreed that it was important to have representation from Marion County's programs, since it's a sizeable provider. Dr. Martin volunteered to contact Sam Lauff from Marion County and ask him if he will be able to participate or send someone to represent him. Dr. Martin indicated she would work on the bylaws for consideration by the Council at the next regular business meeting. In addition, Dr. Martin made a motion that the Council maintain Ray Fleck's seat as a rotating chair that would allow them to invite representatives of currently under represented groups to visit the Council meetings; she added that they could be asked to come prepared to share information about their special interest areas, program or other relevant information. This would also be an opportunity for the Council to share information with them about what the Council does. It was pointed out that such visitors should probably be asked to come a little after the official meeting start time to allow the Council to deal with Council business. In addition, any presentations at Council meetings by guests should be scheduled early on the agenda. The Council agreed to reserve Ray Fleck's seat for rotating visitors but to revisit that in six months if its doesn't appear to be working. Cyndi Godbey then pointed out that there are some other areas that Region 2 still needs to address, including the Needs, Resources, Trends and Barriers assessment which will be done at the trainings. Another task for the Council will be to develop strategies to address policy/system reform issues. Ms. Godbey reminded them that one issue this Council had identified early on was the need for legislators to be better educated about the population served in adult education. She added that looking at needed policy/system reform will be easier following the collection of additional information through the needs assessment. Regionally Based Training Dr. Lyndarae Martin introduced Julie Kelly as the Regional Facilitator for the training sessions. She shared copies of the flyers that had been sent to recruit trainees. Ms. Kelly reported that the number of trainees registered for each session were as follows:
June 8 - 31 registrants There was concern expressed that a lot of teachers are not even around to attend training in the summer. However, it was pointed out that we can pay stipends for people to attend. The group was collectively concerned about the low number of registrants for the last two trainings. However, Ms. Godbey pointed out that she has not yet sent targeted mailings to the areas surrounding the last two training sites. After they go out, there will probably be an increase in participants. Ms. Kelly explained that the training will be done as round table discussions and each trainee will have the opportunity to sit in on four round tables. It was explained that the primary goal of the training is to stimulate interest in addressing workforce readiness in the adult education area. Ms. Godbey presented sample needs assessment instruments for review by the Council. Council members offered a number of suggestions for making it a friendlier survey to respond to. In addition, Dr. Kyker agreed to work with the Project Team prior to the first training to make the tool as succinct as possible. Ms. Godbey indicated that what has been worked out on the agenda for the workshops is that the needs assessment be done as the last activity of the day. It will start with a brief background questionnaire and focus groups will follow to address trends, resources and barriers. Ms. Kelly presented a draft of a workshop evaluation form for consideration by the Council. There were no comments on the evaluation format. Regional Support Consortium Dr. Martin briefly discussed the fact that it is unlikely that any one institution within Region 1 would be in a position to take on all of the ongoing regional support responsibilities given that most are so small and there is so little money available this first year to contract for these services. Therefore, she has conceptualized a regional support consortium of agencies that can perform those responsibilities. She proposed that the responsibilities be segregated into clusters of responsibilities:
There was some discussion about the role of the needs assessment in the context of this Council's planning for training within Region 2. Dianne Westcott pointed out that she s somewhat restricted in what she does in staff development. Each of her staff has to have an individual professional development plan. Dr. Martin stressed that she was striving for flexibility within this conceptualization. Though the needs assessment may identify certain needs, there needs to be flexibility within this structure/organization to allow for training to be offered in areas that may be particularly critical at any given point in time, e.g., changes in funding requirements for deliverables. Dr. Martin clarified that what she is proposing is a team effort. She envisions that institutions assuming the responsibilities under these clusters is provided a budget for carrying out those functions; in addition, institutions wishing to host a training would be give a budget to carry out that particular training. She asked that each Council member consider this conceptualization in the context of functions that could be relatively readily assumed by their agency, with or without proposed modifications and come to the next meeting prepared to discuss the role(s) their institution would be willing to assume. Transfer Appraisal Fredrika Flakes presented an overview of what is meant by transfer assessment. She began by pointing out that training evaluation can be carried out at four different levels:
She added that evaluation should be driven by the objectives of the training. Was workforce readiness incorporated into the curriculum? The evaluation should demonstrate why the funding source should continue to fund the training. Ms. Godbey stressed that the time frame this year will make it difficult to do a comprehensive transfer appraisal, however, the project is intended to help the regional councils plan for this type of assessment for future trainings. With regard to the upcoming workforce readiness training, Council members pointed out that the workshop is intended to stimulate interest in implementing workforce readiness curricula. Currently, delivering this curricula is not a top priority. Ms. Flakes facilitated members in identifying ways in which transfer could be facilitated:
Ms. Flakes pointed out that these strategies must be accompanied by some type of objective evaluation of whether trainees actually transferred the content. Ms. Godbey pointed out that the project could fund travel reimbursements for trainees to visit implementation sites. In addition, project staff can prepare a newsletter for dissemination to trainees in follow-up to the training. Also, she will incorporate some of these strategies into the evaluation and project staff will then do the follow-up objective evaluation. Ms. Kelly will get in touch with the presenters to see if they can incorporate strategies into their training. III. New Business Training for Building Collaborative Boards Jill Dotts was introduced as a guest to discuss a project being carried out by the Florida Literacy Coalition. They offer training to groups on how to build collaborative partnerships. This is timely since collaboration is being required by so many funding sources. She pointed out that most people don't really understand what is meant by collaboration. She said they begin the training with an overview of collaboration - sharing your budget and resources. They also address coordination or working to share the resources. After that, they work on team building. This training is not intended to be a one shot activity; it needs to be ongoing. She said the shortest workshop they could offer and cover everything would be 1 and ½ hours. She announced one training that is scheduled in Panama City. Ms. Dotts pointed out that the Literacy Coalition has a pretty good database which they are willing to share with this Council to assist then in promoting training events. IV Wrap Up Next Meeting The next meeting for this group will be held following the training in Fernandina Beach on July 29, from 3 to 5 p.m. at the same location. This meeting will focus on the negotiation of the regional support consortium.
The next regular business meeting of the Council will be held on August 18
or 19 in Marion County or at Florida Community College in Jacksonville.
Details will be announced at the July 29 meeting.
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