Item 09 - Biennial Modification to the PY 2021-24 Regional and Local Workforce Plan

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Orange RPU 2023 Biennial Modification to PY 2021-24 Regional Plan 33 service delivery to English language learners and determine if other populations warrant different workforce development strategies to serve them more effectively. C. Equity and Ensuring Equal Access to Training and Services The RPU and regional partners will ensure historically unserved and underserved populations have equal access to regional sector career pathways and other services and support through sector partnerships. Through sector partnership work, the RPU and partners will have the opportunity to work with employers to create career pathways that help mitigate the many challenges vulnerable populations face in completing educational goals and moving into employment with family-sustaining wages. Workforce development programs and supports should not be designed as a one-size-fits-all solution. The populations we serve are diverse, and program designs should reflect this diversity if we are going to close the skills gap and combat economic inequality. Career pathways are also a service-delivery model that can close achievement gaps and advance racial equity by helping individuals build skills over time. Career pathways are a long-term approach to serving individuals with limited basic skills or other employment barriers that the local boards are committed to expanding. Sector partnership work will also provide an opportunity for the RPU to address issues such as degree inflation that tend to exclude minorities from jobs during the hiring process. According to Manjari Raman, director of Harvard Business School’s project on Managing the Future of Work, degree inflation refers to jobs that historically required more than a high school diploma or less than a college degree but now require a college degree29. Explicitly requiring degrees for positions instead of the jobs’ skills exacerbates the effect of racial disparities in educational achievement and eliminates workers who may have acquired the skills in other ways. Also, through sector partnership work, other hiring practices that disproportionately affect minorities, such as automatically excluding potential employees using criminal background checks and credit checks, can be discussed. Another strategy that the sector partnerships will address is creating work-based learning programs and pre-apprenticeship programs. Pre-apprenticeships can be valuable for people of color who are historically underrepresented in apprenticeships. Work-based learning programs can provide vital formal access to employers that the population may not have had when relying on their existing professional and social networks. Partners supporting the development of the PY 21-24 Plan and its biennial update consistently remarked on access issues, including how some lack access to nearby AJCC services and the lack of digital literacy and access to broadband services. The pandemic has exacerbated these issues. Partners describe how transportation and childcare needs, and a general lack of understanding of the services available, prevent a large percentage of those most in need of assistance from accessing them. The local boards recognize 29 Morgan, Kate. “'Degree Inflation': How the Four-Year Degree Became Required.” BBC Worklife, BBC, 28 Jan. 2021, www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20210126-degree-inflation-how-the-four-year-degree-became- required#:~:text=Cornett%20is%20a%20victim%20of,Managing%20the%20Future%20of%20Work. EXHIBIT 1