Can California fix its redundant trade school and career ed system?

The town of Reedley has about 25,000 people — and five different public institutions that offer career education to its residents. There’s the high school, the adult school, the community college, the job center and the regional occupational program. In some cases, they work together to teach skills, such as welding. 

Other times, they compete for the same students.

In a hearing last month, California Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi, a Democrat from Torrance, said that he worries some workforce programs are becoming increasingly “Balkanized,” despite numerous efforts to promote collaboration. Gov. Gavin Newsom said he’ll help unify these programs by creating a Master Plan for Career Education. State agencies are required to create the plan by Oct. 1, though Newsom hasn’t said when he’ll release it. 

At Reedley College in rural Fresno County, Dean of Instruction David Clark acknowledged that some programs compete — in other parts of the state — but said that in this small town, that issue is less relevant. “In Fresno, you might flip someone off and never see them again, but here, that’s your neighbor,” said Clark. Instead, he said, local workforce leaders in Reedley have close personal relationships with one another and collaborate frequently. 

What’s more, he said that each institution serves a different population: Historically, community colleges focused on high school graduates, providing them with vocational training or a pathway to a four-year university. Adult schools offered short-term courses, such as English as a second language, often to immigrants and older adults. Regional occupational programs arose as a way to help high schools consolidate and coordinate expensive career training classes. Job centers were a place for adults to get help finding work. 

To some extent, that’s all still true, but over the past few decades, the lines have blurred. High school students are taking college-level classes at growing rates. More than 40% of community college students in California are 25 and older, according to data from the Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office, and the system is investing in short-term classes that rival the courses at many adult schools. While job centers once placed people directly in jobs, they’re now facing a push from state and federal leaders to send jobseekers back to school so they can earn better wages in the long-term.

The state’s existing higher education plan is from 1960 and “was designed to serve a very different California,” wrote Elana Ross, a spokesperson for the governor, in an emailed statement. She said the “current budgetary conditions” — namely, two years of multi-billion dollar deficits — “call us to work together more effectively.” The office refused to speak to CalMatters in an on-the-record interview.

In the hearing, Muratsuchi said he’s skeptical that the governor’s new plan will yield substantive changes to this convoluted system. “These are the same agencies that have failed to collaborate,” he said. “Why do we expect different results?”

‘Redundancy’ in Reedley

Clark has lived in Reedley for 35 years, and as he walks around the community college campus, he shares the town lore with pride. In 2002, the town voted against the construction of a Walmart. The town doesn’t have a movie theater or a mall either, he said. “People have tried to maintain that Norman Rockwell lifestyle.”

It doesn’t always reflect reality — Walmart, for instance, built a location just five miles away, in the town next door — but Clark said that Reedley is still more vibrant than some of the other rural towns in the Central Valley.

The reason is agriculture: It’s the “world’s fruit basket,” according to the town’s chamber of commerce. Reedley specializes in growing and shipping stone fruit such as peaches, plums and nectarines. 

For the roughly 7,500 Reedley College students taking a career technical education class, the most popular programs are in agriculture and manufacturing, which overlap considerably, said Clark. Classes in health care, such as those for nursing assistants, are another common path, especially for women. 

In a series of large classrooms, each one as big as a warehouse, college students learn how to repair tractor engines, how to weld the pieces of a truck bed, and how to create the metal pieces used in food packaging machines. Some equipment, such as machines for metal cutting, can cost the school over a million dollars per device. Most of the training for nursing assistants takes place at a retirement home. 

On certain days, the college shares these classrooms with the Valley Regional Occupational Program so it can run its own manufacturing courses for high school students. By using some of the same facilities, the high school saves money and helps introduce students to college, said Fabrizio Lofaro, superintendent of the occupational program.

But for welding courses, which are more popular, the high school has its own facilities and offers less advanced courses. 

At night, and on weekends, the regional occupational program works with a different institution, Kings Canyon Adult School, to offer another set of welding classes focused on working adults. 

Noe Mendoza, the learning director of the adult school, acknowledged some “redundancy,” especially with the community college. What makes adult schools different, he said, is that they’re accessible for adults who lack a high school degree or who need short-term, career-oriented training. 

“They’re field workers or they’re working in the warehouses, the cold storages, and they want something different,” said Mendoza. “If it’s given here, it seems more attainable, even though it’s the same class.” 

Community college leaders, however, insist that their courses are accessible too. In June, state leaders announced a policy change meant to draw adults without high school degrees toward college. Since the start of the pandemic, community colleges have spent millions of dollars recruiting older adults by offering shorter classes and career-oriented programs — sometimes reaching out directly to farmworkers.

Five different entities competing for students and money

Community colleges and adult schools have long competed for students. In the 1990s, the issue came to the fore when six Southern California school districts sued their local community colleges, saying that the colleges had overstepped their boundaries by teaching certain classes, such as high school equivalency courses or English as a second language. The judge found that both systems had a right to teach these classes. 

The lawsuit is emblematic of long-standing duplication and conflict in adult education: A 2012 report by California’s Legislative Analyst’s Office found “inconsistent state-level policies” and a “widespread lack of coordination.” 

Similar competition exists between K-12 schools districts and regional occupational programs. California created the regional occupational programs in the 1970s as a way to consolidate career training across school districts. But the school districts aren’t required to collaborate with the occupational programs, and in some cases, districts launch their own career technical classes instead.

The federal government also invests in career education. Some of the money goes directly to community colleges and K-12 school districts, but the largest allocation goes toward California’s 45 workforce development boards, which operate the state’s nearly 180 job centers. For years, these centers helped low-income adults, unemployed adults, and certain youth find jobs, but research shows that sending a person back to school can yield better long-term results. 

Now, job centers provide many students with tuition subsidies or cash to help cover daily expenses, such as rent and transportation, during school. Last month, a CalMatters investigation of job centers across the state found that roughly half of those subsidies went to for-profit trade schools, even when community colleges offered free or low-cost courses nearby. In some cases, graduates of these trade schools earned less than $30,000 a year.

In the eastern half of Fresno County, which includes Reedley, 16 students received a tuition subsidy in the past year to study agriculture, either through a welding or heavy equipment program, according to the Fresno Regional Workforce Development Board. Some attended Lofaro’s regional occupational programs, while others attended Advanced Career Institute and the Institute of Technology, two local for-profit institutions. 

Fernanda Mendoza, a program coordinator at the job center closest to Reedley, said she recommends the private programs over the public ones because the for-profit schools provide students with “more of that one-on-one interaction.” 

A hodgepodge of job training options create barriers for students

Over the past decade, state leaders have tried to revamp the career training system to foster collaboration. But critics say the interventions have created more bureaucracy and made few real changes.

In 2015, California created the Adult Education Program, which today sends out over $650 million a year on the condition that each region administers the money through a consortium of local adult schools, community colleges, and regional occupational programs.

The following year, the state created the Strong Workforce Program, which sends over $100 million a year to 72 community college districts.

Then, in 2018, California launched the K-12 Strong Workforce Program, but to ensure that high schools and colleges work together, the money flows through another regional network — which is different from the adult education consortia. 

These three programs are just a fraction of the billions California taxpayers spent on career education in the past five years. Many agencies — including the state’s Education Department, Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office, Labor and Workforce Development Agency, and Rehabilitation Department — all have additional pots of money for similar programs. 

In Reedley, Lofaro said he applies for many of these grants. One of his competitors is another regional occupational program, which works with a different set of K-12 school districts in Fresno County.

Last year, Assemblymember Muratsuchi unsuccessfully proposed a bill that would merge the K-12 Strong Workforce Program with another, existing program run by the state’s Education Department.

The governor’s office hasn’t made any of its recommendations public, but it’s led forums across the state about the new plan. Kathy Booth is the director of the Center for Economic Mobility at WestEd, a nonprofit organization, and she helped the governor’s office engage with the public. In the hearing with Muratsuchi, she shared feedback from local leaders, who said the state’s workforce systems have created barriers for students. 

“If you are a person who gets a partial training in one area, and then you need to get to a different area, it’s almost impossible to make that jump,” she told lawmakers. “And that is really underscored by this incredible lack of coordination between funding and underlying data.”

Adam Echelman covers California’s community colleges in partnership with Open Campus, a nonprofit newsroom focused on higher education.

Financial support for this story was provided by the Smidt and Irvine foundations.