Division of Adult Education Bimonthly Update Webinar

Transcription

1 Division of Adult Education Bimonthly Update Webinar May21, 2018 u DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION I 1

2 Agenda Division staff updates Important dates FERs Professional development High school equivalency TABE family literacy grants u DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION 2 Today s agenda 2

3 Division staff updates Cindy Rice took a promotion in another department Anna Maurer doing fiscal officer work Open advisor position to be posted u DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION We have a couple updates on division staff: 1. Our fiscal officer, Cindy Rice took a promotion to another department in April. 2. Anna Maurer is currently acting in the fiscal officer position. 3. We have an open advisor position. WE anticipate that the position will be posted sometime in the next couple of months. It will be posted to the commonwealth s employment webpage at the link provided. The commonwealth recently implemented a new job posting and hiring process that allows people to apply for specific vacancies. If you are interested, keep an eye out on this page. 3

4 Important dates Deadlines edata closes: July 31 - Data Quality Validation form: August 7 - EL/Civics Final Narrative Report: August 15 - FER: August Kickoff meetings: PaTTAN -August 7: Family literacy grantee specific -August 8: All -August 9: IELCE grantee specific u DEPARTMENT Of EDUCATION "/2V Here is a reminder of upcoming deadlines: 1. All data must be entered by July 31. Note that ALL agencies that received funding in PY MUST enter ALL data regardless of whether they are receiving funds in PY Failure to submit required reports is non-compliance with a commonwealth contract. Such non-compliance will be noted and shared with legal and comptroller s offices. There will be three kickoff meetings in August at PaTTAN. Details will be provided later. 4

5 FERs Activity Summary - Budgeted amount: from grant budget - Expenditure amount: should show actual expenditures for each category PA Careerlink infrastructure Costs - Paid from the grant - NOT shared staffing costs u DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION ' We plan to open the FERs in late June. Many agencies do not complete the Activity Summary correctly. The Budgeted Amount column must match the amounts in the Agency Activity Summary for the approved grant. The amounts in the Expenditure amount column, should reflect the true ACTUAL expenditures for each category. It is highly unlikely that the amount you actually expended for services provided in the ABE community category exactly matches what you budgeted. The Division of Adult Education is required to report to the federal government in our federal fiscal report the amount of funds (federal and non-federal) that are expended for services at the ABE level and those expended on services at the ASE/HSE level. We get that information from you through the Activity Summary. Please make sure it is accurate. Agencies must report the amount of grant funds used to pay PA CareerLink infrastructure costs. You only report funds expended on infrastructure costs. Do not include the amount spent on shared personnel, such as the administrator or a receptionist. Also, do not include the cost of your program staff working at the PA CareerLink. It is only infrastructure costs. 5

6 FERs (continued) Occupational Training Portion of IET - Only cost of occupational training and only if paid from the adult education grant - NOT workforce preparation activities Career Services - Calculate amount spent on the five activities for all adult ed participants in your program "/2V2018 u DEPARTMENT Of EDUCATION 6 Programs that used either federal 064 or 061 grant funds to pay for the occupational training portion of an integrated education and training program must report the amount. You are only reporting the use of federal 064 or 061 grant funds. If the occupational training costs were paid by another funding source, do not report those costs. Also, you are only reporting the cost of occupational training. Do NOT report the costs of the workforce preparation activities or adult basic education activities that are part of the IET. Career services We have received clarification on what Pennsylvania needs to report as relates to the provision of career services with federal adult education funds. Therefore, this part of the FER has been significantly revised since last year. First, you will NOT have to determine the number of participants who received these services. OCTAE has determined that states will report all participants as receiving career services through Title II funds, because all participants have to have an intake and initial assessment. Second, you will not have to select which of the 5 allowable career services were provided, because as a full service program with case management and student support services, you should be providing all five career services to all or most of your students. Third, you MUST calculate and report to us the amount of the grant funds your program used to provide those five 6

7 career services. You will need to work with your fiscal staff to determine the amount. The Division is not able to pull that information from the budget sections of the FER. When calculating the amount, exclude all costs associated with grant administration, data entry, and instruction. However, that does not mean that you exclude all costs in FC 1691 and FC For example, one of the career services is Outreach, intake and orientation which would include outreach costs reported in FC 2900 as well as the costs of intake and orientation for your students. Only include costs associated with initial assessment of student also called pretesting. DO not include costs associated with any posttesting. A portion of case management and student support service cost will be included, specifically those associated with providing information and referrals to support services to help students attend class and costs associated with transition activities such as referring students to other WIOA core programs and giving students information about providers of education, training and other workforce services. In general, be conservative with determining the costs. 6

8 Professional Development No assessment courses in June TABE offered in July u DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION 7 7

9 High School Equivalency GED Testing Centers - Required VUE software upgrade Review s sent beginning January 2018 If you did not receive an , contact Mary Kay Peters If you received the , fol low the instructions in the to process the upgrade Need agency IT support to upgrade the software For help during upgrading process, call Test Center Support at and press 3 for technical support u DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Beginning January 2018, GED Testing Centers began receiving notice of a required software upgrade. If your testing centers has not upgraded yet, you will need internal IT support to process the upgrade because of site authorization requirements. Keep in mind, since the upgrade takes several hours, it should be performed at non-testing times. If you have issues during the upgrade, contact GED Test Center Support at and press 3 at the prompt. If you did not receive an , please contact me at The software upgrade provides more fiscal security. 8

10 High School Equivalency GED - New website - GED and GED Testing Service websites will be merged - Name changes on diploma/transcripts are approved by the High School Equivalency Office. PA does not change names for marriages and divorces after credentialing. - GED nationally will no longer process name changes for marriages and divorces. u DEPARTMENT Of EDUCATION "/2V The GED and GED Testing Service websites will merge and GED is planning on launching the new website at the end of May Nationally GED will no longer process name change requests for marriages and divorces after credentialing. Since PA does not change names for marriages and divorces after credentialing, PA residence will not see a change with this policy. 9

11 TABE Assessments Revised Policy D.100 -TABE 9/10 Allowable for program year for all students Unallowable after June 30, TABE 11/12 Allowable as of January 1, 2019 Required for program year u DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION " The draft of Policy D.100, Adult Learner Assessments, has been revised for program year Programs planning to use the TABE assessment in program year must use the following guidelines: TABE 9/10 must be used in program year until January 1, As of January 1, 2019 programs may begin using TABE 11/12 but are not required to use TABE 11/12 until July 1, 2019 for program year Just to review: TABE 9/10 is allowable for the entire program year. TABE 11/12 is unallowable until January 1, TABE 11/12 is required for program year

12 TABE Assessments Reminders - TABE 9/1 O pretest cannot be matched with TABE 11/12 posttest - TABE 11 /12 Training - Plan to transition from TABE 9/1 Oto TABE 11/12 during TABE 9/10 unallowable after June 30, 2019 u DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION 11 A student with a TABE 9/10 pretest cannot have a TABE 11/12 posttest. The division will have training available for TABE 11/12. Programs will be notified when it becomes available. Programs may not use the TABE 11/12 without training. By February 2019, programs should begin to review TABE 9/10 inventories to determine the appropriate time to transition from TABE 9/10 to TABE 11/12. Being fiscally responsible and the number of carryover students should be part of transition planning. Programs will not be allowed to roll-over TABE 9/10 assessments for carryover students in program year

13 Family Literacy renewal grants Three renewal options depending on number of enrolled families in edata as of May 1: all level funding 1. No conditions 2. Action plan: must be submitted and approved as part of grant process 3. Action plan plus possible hold on payments after six months - Options 2 & 3: if don't meet contracted enrollment in , no grant for rest of cycle u DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION 12 WE are finishing up the first year of the new family literacy grants. There have been very mixed results. Therefore, the Division has three different renewal options for family literacy grantees based on the agency s success or failure to demonstrate sufficient progress toward meeting contracted enrollment. We used data entered in edata as of May 1. All grantees will get an allocation of level funding. Those agencies that have demonstrated good progress toward meeting contracted enrollment by enrolling at least 70% of contracted families will be allocated level funding with no conditions. Those agencies that have demonstrated fair progress toward meeting contracted enrollment by enrolling 50-60% of contracted families will be required to submit a detailed action plan with specific steps and timeline as part of the renewal grant application. The plan must uploaded as a PDF into the grant before submission. The division will review the action plan as part of the grant review and approval process. The grant application with not be approved by the division and forwarded onto the rest of the approval process until the action plan is acceptable. Those agencies that have failed to enroll at least 50% of the contracted families as of May 1 will be required to submit an action plan as just described. These agencies will receive full grant payments up to 50% of the grant amount. At that point, a hold will be put on payments. If the agency reaches 50% of contracted enrollment by January 1, 2019, the hold will be removed and payments will continue as normal. Agencies that do not meet 50% 12

14 enrollment by January 1, 2019 will continue to have a hold on funds. The division will authorize release of payments only as commensurate with the actual number of families enrolled. The Division of Adult Education will not consider any requests from family literacy programs for a reduction in contracted enrollment. You submitted applications to serve a certain number of families. You were responsible determining the number of families and that is what you will be held to. From the agencies receiving the second two renewal options, those that fail to enroll the contracted number of families in PY will not be invited to renew their grants for the remainder of the four-year grant cycle. 12