Whereas, Practices for establishing and working with career technical education (CTE) advisory committees, including the recruitment of members and the use of advisory committee recommendations in program development and improvement, vary between colleges and districts; and
Whereas, As a condition for receiving funding from the Strong Workforce Program, as defined in Education Code §§88820-88826, regional consortia must develop plans that enact the requirements of the Strong Workforce Program, including the establishment of governance models;
Whereas, The role of faculty in governance is an academic and professional matter under the purview of local senates, and thus local senates must be centrally involved in identifying faculty to serve on regional consortia governance bodies;
Whereas, Many career technical education (CTE) certificates consisting of 18 or more units may take two to three years for students to complete, a significant delay to students’ entry into the workforce;
Whereas, Many certificates can be modularized into meaningful subsequences of courses that have both a focused set of learning objectives and are connected to desired skill sets; and
Whereas, The Senate’s adopted 2002 paper Toward A Perspective On Workforce Preparation and Economic Development provides an overview of career technical education (CTE) in California and makes recommendations for CTE, but it does not provide guidance about how to implement them; and
Whereas, Resolution 21.01 S10, “Career Technical Faculty Participation,” called for strategies to ensure CTE faculty participation in local governance and increase awareness of CTE issues in local representation;
Whereas, Perkins IV has new requirements that are to be implemented in 2008, and these new requirements change how programs will qualify for funding;
Whereas, Program review and development, curriculum, and student success are under local academic senate purview, and the Perkins IV accountability measures on student success impact these; and
Whereas, At some colleges the administrators are setting the accountability targets to qualify for Perkins funding without conversations with their occupational faculty;
Whereas, As the foremost sources of training for nurses in California, the California community colleges responded to the severe nursing shortage by increasing the number of students accepted into nursing programs statewide;
Whereas, The System Office and the Governor have funded this effort recently with specialized grants that allow for a specific increase in nursing student admissions; and
Whereas, Career technical education programs are required to seek advisory input from their respective community, industry, and governmental partners and must do so by holding formal meetings at least twice per year;
Whereas, Participating in these meetings is often difficult, particularly for those sectors or regions where community and industry individuals are being called on to advise multiple programs at multiple campuses;
Whereas, In addition to completing the local program review cycle, career and technical education (CTE) programs must complete additional program reviews every two years;
Whereas, Many CTE programs have minimal or no full-time faculty and thus have severe time constraint issues; and
Whereas, Many CTE programs are subject to external reviews and discipline-specific accreditation reviews;
Whereas, The United States has been in a prolonged economic crisis resulting in record unemployment, and despite this record unemployment, a serious shortage of skilled technical workers exists, a shortage that will increase over the coming years as older workers retire;
Whereas, Numerous studies show the areas of greatest job growth over the next decade are jobs requiring two-year technical degrees and certificates;
Whereas, Career technical education programs often have students that who lack the practical skills necessary for employment, such as basic skills and the Secretary’s Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS) competencies; and
Whereas, Employers* report that entry-level employees are having difficulties with the basic reading, writing, mathematics, and oral communication skills necessary to adequately perform their jobs; and