US Conference of
Mayors – Workforce Development Council Meeting
September 29th
and 30th – Washington, DC
Monday
I have just returned to Tallahassee from a marvelous meeting
of 2 days in Washington DC. The subject matter for this meeting was to gain
additional insight and training on the new Workforce Innovation and Opportunity
Act (WIOA) that passed this summer.
Our Monday morning briefing was provided by Rochelle Daniels,
Assistant County Attorney, CareerSource Broward on the pluses and minuses of
the new law and what implications from her point of view were in the law. For
the most part, Florida is already aligned well with this law and so there will
not be a lot of changes to the way we are operating currently at CareerSource
Capital Region (CSCR). Probably the largest change is in the youth services
where 70% of our money will be required to go to out of school youth where in
the past that was about what we would spend on in-school youth. These youth
will be required to accomplish their goals and be closed out of the system over
the next two years in a way that will not hurt our performance.
There will be additional performance measures that have yet
to be defined and will probably take some feedback from the system before DOL
arrives at a final definition.
The rest of the day was a business meeting for the Council and
committee reports.
Tuesday
In the presentations on this day we found out what the
vision of this new law was and the concepts and expectations of the writers of
the law. This was clarified for us by Scott
Cheney who was the lead on the Senate budget committee for WIOA. Here is a synopsis
of his comments.
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The underlying initiative for the new law is to
make the boards at the local level more flexibility in how they manage the
system.
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It also gives the boards more authority and they are required to sign off of other
plans of related federal partners. That means the boards will need to be aware
of an overall regional strategy and how the partners fit into that strategy.
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In addition vocational rehabilitation will become
a full partner and a required partner in the one stops.
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The writers envisioned a combined planning
effort with economic development, partners, Chamber of Commerce, and those with
an interest overall in the workforce system which includes job seekers and
employers.
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Scott pointed out that some of the training that
has already been provided at the national level mistakenly infers that
universal service has somehow gone away. That is not true. There is a
realignment of priority of service with attention being given to those with
disabilities, the long-term unemployed, and the opportunities for apprenticeships
being the focus, however, all customers that walk into the Career Centers must
be served in some way.
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Draft regulations will be coming out beginning
of the year and open to feedback and discussion by the practitioners in the
system. This will give the Department of Labor quality feedback as they draft
regulations that are meaningful and helpful to the system.
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It is really going to be incumbent upon the Board
of the workforce region to think regionally, to think across state lines, to
think how to engage all the partners that have invested interest in the talent
and human resources of our region.
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The bill continues to stress sector strategies,
and in Tallahassee we already have our sector roundtables that the chamber and
EDC have organized and supported. This tool should be adequate for us to
perform the career ladder engagement and mapping that we will need to do under
this new law.
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There will continue to be a focus for the next 2
years on apprenticeships in sectors where apprenticeships have not been the
usual method of hiring new employees. Look for grants coming out of the
Department of Labor that will encourage best practice experiments so that the
system can learn and become better at apprenticeships.
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The Boards will be required to have a
conversation as to what do partnerships mean both in the literal sense and in
the mutual relationship responsibilities that that brings them to the table.
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Adult literacy is also now included in our law
and a plan will be required by the adult literacy folks that must be signed off
on by the local workforce board.
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Scott was very clear that this law is to
encourage creative ways of approaching problems, root cause analysis, and
defining in kind services that are reasonable and acceptable.
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This law encourages Boards to take an
entrepreneurial approach to how they operate.
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The system is meant to engage and be focused on
credentialing because that is the monetary currency of our businesses.
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The law also introduces the idea of business
engagement in the fact that the demand side plays a very important role in the
system.
Under Secretary of
Labor – ETA – Portia Wu
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Following Scott Cheney, the under Sec. of labor,
Portia Wu gave a presentation on how the Department of Labor sees WIOA and the
accountability that goes with the new law.
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Data that is coordinated and verifiable will be
important to the system strategic
planning by the local workforce board is at the core of the expectation of
the new law.
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Community
colleges are recognized as key partners in this system and need to be
engaged in the determination of strategies for the region.
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Ready-to-Work partnership grants will be coming
out soon as will a registered apprenticeship grant (usually called learn and
earn) which will be out in the next week or two.
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Additional strategies by the Department of Labor
include continuing Youth Build and strengthen in the employer connections to
that program, integration of ex-offenders strategies at the local level, and
how the American Job Centers fit into the justice system. The Board must work more closely with
education providers so that ex-offenders coming out of the jails have skill
sets that are recognized and certified and shows they are ready to be employed.
I suggested with this cohort that there also be an effort to use a program
similar to start up quest because many of those in jail are very
entrepreneurial and may be far more successful as small business owners then
trying to maintain a job.
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We also discussed the idea of don’t check the
box, which most employment applications have on past criminal history because
it serves as a deterrent for the business community to hire someone with a
blemished past.
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This Secretary was very clear that the Congress
was pleased the fact that during 2008 to 2009 Great Recession our system served 20 million jobseekers.
Gerri Fiala- Deputy Assistant Secretary ETA
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Ms. Fiala, who has been with the Department of
Labor for quite some time made a presentation from the working group’s point of
view and the Department of Labor and she included for strategies that she feels
are most important for success.
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The 1st is a shared strategic
planning which is a four-year strategy. Department of Labor will be looking for
fundamental analysis and each workforce region’s organization in order to
achieve common goals. July 1, 2015.
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The next pillar is shared governance
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the boards will be more agile
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a lot better positions them to meet the local
needs
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New activities will include the local elected
officials and their engagement in the system in a more productive way
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There will be career pathways and sector
strategies that need to be embraced in the plan
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There is an expectation that the local elected
officials County commissioners and Mayor would be committed to make sure that
the workforce investment boards are successful.
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The 3rd pillar is integrated
performance management. The federal government is moving forward more and more
to develop evidenced-based programs that show results and that have measures
that can be compared across state lines and regional lines.
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The final pillar is customer focus service
delivery – it will take an assessment of the indirect intake and management
systems that are currently in place an expectation is that new and better ways
of tracking and measuring performance will be developed over the next few
years.
Commissioner Janet
LaBreck and Deputy Assistant Secretary Jennifer Sheehy – Vocational Rehabilitation
– DOL
Vocational Rehabilitation is another mandated partner in the
new WIOA law. In the past here in Tallahassee vocational rehabilitation has had
a presence in our 1 stops in an intermittent way. With this new law that are
now mandated to become a full partner in the career center system. It was
suggested and I will follow up on reaching out to the vocational rehabilitation
person here in Tallahassee to discuss how we might integrate their services in
a more uniform fashion. About 3 weeks ago, the governor sent his disabilities
task force to tour our S. Monroe Career Ctr. I suspect that this tour was
because of this change in the law. I know from the feedback, that the people
who came through our one-stop were very pleased to see that we were pretty
accessible to anyone with a disability. The key in the future is how we raise
the awareness of the business community so that the disabled (or other abled as
my priest friend would say) are competitive and are accepted to positions that
best utilize their skills. That’s really the question that I posed to
Commissioner LaBreck. At the federal level it would be helpful if DOL/VR put
together PSA’s that show the success stories that dot the country where people
with disabilities have been hired and businesses have thrived with the quality
of work provided by these folks.
This meeting was one of the best meetings and best attended
meetings by 45 different workforce professionals and an excellent networking
event. I sat next to the city of Chicago workforce executive as well as Orlando’s
executive. I also was part of the presentation on startup quest to the entire
group is a peer-to-peer best practice and continue to suggest that the
entrepreneurial training is something that the workforce system needs to do
more.
The discussions were rich
with questions on the new law and how we will carry it out as a system.
The Congress of the United States has put into place a challenge
to our ever evolving system to get better at what we do, to have more business
engagement, and to create the data points to show progress and success that we
have every day.
I would appreciate any comments you may have. - Jim
