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Transcript of Webinar

ApprenticeshipUSA State Apprenticeship Expansion Grants

Grantee Orientation

Tuesday, November 29, 2016

Transcript by Noble Transcription Services Murrieta, CA LAURA CASERTANO: Now I'm going to go ahead and move us right into today's presentation. Again, I want to welcome everyone to today's webinar and I'm going to turn things over to your moderator today, Chad Aleshire. He's the project lead for this initiative and he is from the Office of Apprenticeship. Chad?

CHAD ALESHIRE: Thanks, everybody for joining us today for the ApprenticeshipUSA State Apprenticeship Expansion Grants; Grantee Orientation. I will be your moderator today.

Again, my name is Chad Aleshire. I'm the project lead for the expansion grants. We have got a great team here today to present to you. I'm going to quickly run through our presenters. We're going to start with a kickoff from our Deputy Assistant Secretary Eric Seleznow.

We're also going to hear from John Ladd, our administrator for the Office of Apprenticeship. He'll give you some overview of the ApprenticeshipUSA initiative and how these state expansion grants tie into that.

We'll also hear from Mike Qualter, a division chief in the Office of Apprenticeship; Maria Brady, a multistate navigator for the Office of Apprenticeship; Diane Walton, another division chief for the Office of Apprenticeship out in region six; and then we'll also hear from our Office of Grants Management Serena Boyd and Andrea Hill and then my colleague and teammate Sasha Cooper-Morrison.

So again, we're glad to have you all. Today's objectives are going to include we want to make sure you're all orientated with sort of the who's who among you, the grantees and us here at DOL. We want to give you some basic info on the expectations and requirements and also, the communication protocols around this effort, let you know what's ahead and then get to as many of your questions as we can today.

I also want to quickly run over the agenda we're going to cover today. As I said, we're going to give a quick ApprenticeshipUSA overview, going to give you some more detail on who the grantees are out there across the nation, some contacts and support options for our grantees.

Again, we'll cover the expectations and requirements. I'll also have our Office of Grants Management go over the grant awards package, we'll cover next-steps and then again, most importantly, we'll start to gather your questions and do what we can to answer them today and throughout the coming days.

So with that, I want to turn it over to our Deputy Assistant Secretary Eric Seleznow for a quick welcome.

ERIC SELEZNOW: Chad, thank you very much. Hey, good afternoon or good morning, everybody. Eric Seleznow here from Employment and Training Administration. Chad, thanks for setting that stage so succinctly.

Hey folks, we're really excited about this. I have so much to say and Chad tells me I've only got a couple of minutes here. And so I'm going to warn Chad that I'm going to run over now, but

ApprenticeshipUSA State Apprenticeship Expansion Grants - Grantee Orientation Tuesday, November 29, 2016 Page 2 of 24 thanks for joining us today. Thanks for making the time to do it. Mostly, thanks for applying for these grants.

As a former state and local guy, I know it is never easy to apply for our department of labor grants. So I so much appreciate it. And look, this is yet another historic grant opportunity, it's $50.5 million, specifically to apprenticeship and very specifically to states.

And I think that's really important, as a former state guy myself, how important that is that as we were sort of thinking about how Congress wanted us to use the money and how we want to use the money, we were really committed to states, Secretary Perez was, our friends at the White House were very committed to getting states even more in the apprenticeship game if they're already involved in it and those that are not so much involved at the state level to get them a little bit more.

How do we get the leadership of the best and brightest of the state to be aligned about apprenticeship? How do we connect it to WIOA? How do we connect it to a variety of other workforce activities going on in the states? I think you all from the apprenticeship world know that the outcomes of apprenticeship are excellent. They probably exceed at many other of our workforce programs that we have here in terms of completions, in terms of wages, in terms of job retention.

We think states are uniquely positioned to do this work. For some of you, it's just continuing or expanding what you do and for others of you, it's going to be a lot of new and, I think, interesting work on apprenticeship, but I think we got the right people here today, both on our side of the call and both on your side of the call. I was going through the list of people who were on this and I see a lot of old – not old, but familiar faces and friends and colleagues who I've known for many years and some new ones.

So I really appreciate you doing this work. I think what's really important about this is the big M or momentum. We have a lot of momentum around apprenticeship in this country. I think a lot of you guys know it. We did a call last week, also, as state leaders as part National Apprenticeship Week. I guess it was almost two weeks ago. Many of you may have been on that call. If you were, I'm sorry to repeat myself, but we're really excited about this and keeping this momentum going.

We have done so much to change the vision of apprenticeship in this country in just a couple of short years. We've met the president's goal of increasing the number of apprentices. There's all sorts of new and diverse employers and occupations being involved. Just last week Hartford Insurance in Connecticut and Arizona signed their standards and now we have the insurance industry. That's two major insurance carriers, Zurich and Hartford that are in this space now.

We've got new and diverse industries and occupations that are participating. We've got an increased diversity of people participating and then we have some of the stalwarts and people who have been doing this well for 80 to 100 years and that's our friends in the joint apprenticeship programs and labor unions who have been doing some excellent work in the building trades and certainly in manufacturing and elsewhere.

ApprenticeshipUSA State Apprenticeship Expansion Grants - Grantee Orientation Tuesday, November 29, 2016 Page 3 of 24 Certainly, with the growth of the economy, there's more and more opportunities in more and more places to use this proven model of workforce training. So we're building – (inaudible). Just look at the last couple of years, we already put $175 million into this with our H-1B funds a couple of years ago, in many of your states, those programs are still operating. You know, we did a lot of investment in the tax programs.

A handful of them were on apprenticeship. We just released our American Promise Grants. It was over $100 million and a number of those are regional sector partnerships that focused on apprenticeships, some in IT, some in healthcare, some in manufacturing and some in the trades. So we'll just keep this momentum going, keep going on it. We have been chipping away at people's perception of apprenticeship, the industries and occupations.

So I think we're at a really important time. You know, this administration is getting to change over. We've got a lot of money out there that'll be going over the next couple of years. We believe there is some good bipartisan focus on apprenticeship. So we'll keep that going. If you guys are any example, your governors come from all walks of life and are still very supportive of apprenticeship. So we definitely want to keep that going in your state agencies.

So look, you have a unique opportunity here to integrate apprenticeship at the state level, integrate it with WIOA economic development and certainly, your employer and business engagement. We hope you can reach out to employers and industry sectors that you've never been into before. If you're a state that's already doing sector work or career pathways work, this is part of that continuum just a little bit more in taking that work with employer consultations to create standards and register them, both either in the state or with DOL.

So there's lots of opportunity to connect the dots with the existing workforce programs out there. These are not unique. Sectors, career pathways, apprenticeship are not unique siloed programs, but certainly all part of the same continuum. So we want to support your capacity to do outreach, to work with employers, to get new ideas. You know, there are so many opportunities out there, we're really excited about it and I think I've run out of my notes here.

On – you know, we talked to the state leaders last year. There's a lot of innovations going on. You know, Iowa has been embedding apprenticeship in their economic development, South Carolina uses the community college system, Alaska is doing some incredible work with workforce partnerships, Colorado is doing some really cutting-edge – I'll say bleeding-edge in youth apprenticeships with a goal of 20,000 youth over the next few years in Colorado.

So there's a lot of great incubations out there. Secretary Perez says we're trying to scale this up and this is happening with these grants. What's really critical is that Congress recognized this and we got that $90 million. I think $60 million of it went to you all and another $20 million went to doing contracts, national intermediary contracts and national diversity contracts. I think you'll see our theme through all of the ApprenticeshipUSA that John's going to talk about as diversity, diversity of industries and occupations and diversity of people who are engaged and involved in apprenticeship.

ApprenticeshipUSA State Apprenticeship Expansion Grants - Grantee Orientation Tuesday, November 29, 2016 Page 4 of 24 So thanks for being part of changing the country's mind on apprenticeship. I think more and more school systems are interested in it, more and more political leaders are interested in it, but most importantly, more and more employers are interested in it. So we have opportunities that we've never had before. We've got to – I think what's critical about this and what we'd like your help with is changing minds of people about apprenticeship, that it's not just in one occupations or one trade or one place, but can happen anywhere.

And so like I said, we made a lot of progress, we've still got a lot of progress to do. We hope this work continues. So good luck in aligning your strategies. You know, in many states out there, the Secretary would often say, yeah, apprenticeship in some states is just like one or two guys or one or two people out there sort of working on their own and a lot of the state apprenticeship agencies out there have often struggled with no funding from the department of labor.

We've been trying – and if you haven't noticed, we've been trying really hard to change that the last couple years working with NASTAD, working with the state apprenticeship agencies and working with the state apprenticeship advisory councils. So we've been listening, we've been learning, we've been trying to change the entire – provide more opportunities for all states out there to do well and to progress in apprenticeship.

So as you can probably tell, I could talk about this for another 20 minutes. Chad is kicking me under the table to move it on, but I want to wish you luck. You know, this is a very important session. You're going to get some more sort of table setting here, but you're also going to hear from our grant management folks with some really critical and important details on the grants and that was always the part, when I was in your shoes, where I started to get a little tired, my eyes would roll up in my head.

Let me tell you, when our grant management staff start talking, really important for you to listen. We've got our federal project officers on the line, we've got you on the line, we've got other DOL staff. We're all there to be a resource and support you, but I think it's really important you understand how the mechanics of all this works so you can do the great work that you do. So with that, thanks, everyone. Good luck in your states.

You know, I hope you're aligned with a lot of other really good partners and we hope your governors are engaged, involved and very supportive of your efforts. So with that, good luck and I'll turn it back to Chad. Chad?

MR. ALESHIRE: Thank you, Mr. Seleznow. We really appreciate it. I'm going to keep things moving. I'm going to turn it over to our administrator for the Office of Apprenticeship, John Ladd, to give you a little bit more background on this effort and the larger ApprenticeshipUSA initiative. John.

JOHN LADD: Thanks, Chad and thanks, Eric. That was fantastic, a great opening to this important webinar today. Hi, everybody. I also want to add my congratulations to all of you on the phone. This was a new grant competition for us this year, as Eric mentioned. We are incredibly fortunate to receive funding in the FY16 budget that we hope to continue moving

ApprenticeshipUSA State Apprenticeship Expansion Grants - Grantee Orientation Tuesday, November 29, 2016 Page 5 of 24 forward. And this was a new approach and a new strategy for us and I know, for many of you all, it was a new approach as well.

So I just want to congratulate all the successful winners of the ApprenticeshipUSA State Expansion grants. So congratulations to you all. What I'm going to do really quickly so that we can get into the important work of the grants management team is just real briefly kind of highlight some of the broader efforts that we're undertaking here at the U.S. Department of Labor and hopefully these are things that you al can leverage at the state level or potentially replicate at the state level.

And so we want to make sure that you're familiar with some of these efforts and can take advantage of them as appropriate. So as you'll see, we're branding this broader initiative under the ApprenticeshipUSA banner, which really is our broad banner for a whole range of initiatives and goes to what Eric was mentioning before about really trying to reposition apprenticeship branded as an employer-driven modernized workforce development strategy.

So we want to talk about what apprenticeship today looks like, how it's adaptable and flexible and as Eric mentioned, gets tremendous results. So these grants are part of that broader strategy and we'll talk about a few more of the things that fall under that as well. So next slide. As Eric also mentioned, we have been on this path to try to double the number of apprenticeships over the next five years.

So our goal would be to reach 750,000 active apprenticeships by 2019 and as you can see, we hit a really important milestone just this past September 30th when the system as a whole reached over 500,000 or half a million active apprentices across the country today. So that's an important milestone, it reflects a lot of different things, particularly the hard work of many of the people on this call, but also really kind of recovery of the system to where the system had been in its height prior to the Great Recession.

So we have seen a full recovery and in some cases, more of the system, but we still have a tremendous – a lot of growth yet to come if we are to reach this goal in the next couple years. So we do have a goal of this year of reaching 600,000 active apprentices. That is a big, big leap for the system to add 100,000 active apprentices, which would take probably over 200,000 new apprentices coming into the system this year to reach that goal.

And we're not going to be able to do that and we certainly never thought we could. We really do need the leadership and the active participation of every state and every program in terms of growing and expanding their existing apprenticeship. So that's where we are and that's a little bit of where we are and that's a little bit of where we're hoping to go in the next year. Next slide. Just a quick overview of the investments that fall under this broad banner.

So again, the important point here to highlight is historically we have not seen federal investment in apprenticeship, as Eric mentioned, but in just the past two years, we're looking at over a quarter of a billion dollars having been invested in registered apprenticeship in just two years. The first wave of that funding was in the American Apprenticeship grants at $175 million and then we had the $90 million that was available from last year of which $60 million went to states

ApprenticeshipUSA State Apprenticeship Expansion Grants - Grantee Orientation Tuesday, November 29, 2016 Page 6 of 24 in the form of accelerator grants back in the spring and then just the recent state expansion grants announced this fall.

There also is another bucket of funding of about $20 million that has been set aside for national partnerships, either industry partnerships or equity partnerships. We have 14 active national partners that are seeking to grow apprenticeship in targeted industries or to help diversify apprenticeship and reach those underrepresented populations. So you see those breakouts here and again, these are all potential resources for you to access and to think about how you might leverage in your state.

And lastly, there's been some other work that we've been doing over the past few years to help really build up some of the infrastructure in the system. Some of the things that particularly when we look abroad and overseas, some of the activities or functions that we see in other places that we felt would be helpful here in the United States.

So we thought about different kinds of functions for the system and you'll see three of them here. The first is our sectors of excellence in apprenticeship, which are really like our industry councils, our sector councils, places where an industry can come together, help us talk about how do we expand apprenticeship in this industry, how do we speak to that industry, what are the technical assistance needs, what are the particular models or partnerships that are important in those particular industries?

We felt it was really important to have that industry voice and we are really excited to see some of that coming together through these sectors of excellence in apprenticeship of which we have six or seven across the country. Another important effort is our leaders' initiative. This is something we borrowed from the UK that they had a trailblazers' initiative.

We liked that idea, the idea being that industry would help lead the expansion of apprenticeship into these new industries in that particular organizations would sign up and agree to be the leaders and help promote to their peers, to others in their industry, within their communities, whatever that might be and the leaders have been a tremendous force in raising their voice and helping to expand apprenticeship over the past two years.

And lastly and hopefully most folks are familiar with the registered apprenticeship college consortia. We now have close to 300 community colleges that have joined the consortia and this is an effort to really help build what had already been happening, but it is a consortium of community colleges that have agreed to make it easier for apprentices to earn college credit. And so they have agreed to join the rack and provide that credit to apprentices.

And again, it's a tremendous opportunity to talk about apprenticeship as post-secondary education and as a pathway to post-secondary education. So again, these are pieces of some of the efforts that we've been helping to try to seed and we hope that they can be components of your strategy or resources for you as you begin to move forward in thinking about how you want to move forward in your state.

ApprenticeshipUSA State Apprenticeship Expansion Grants - Grantee Orientation Tuesday, November 29, 2016 Page 7 of 24 We're happy to share these resources, share those contacts and to figure out ways that we could help you to leverage any of these efforts as you move forward. So with that, that's really kind of a quick thumbnail of some of the efforts that we've been doing here at the department of labor, but now we're going to get much more into the grants themselves and for that, I'm going to turn it over to one of my division chiefs, Mike Qualter. Mike, take it away.

MIKE QUALTER: Hey, thanks, John and thanks to everyone for being on the call today. We're grateful to have you and to really jumpstart this work and this conversation about how to integrate apprenticeship into your state workforce system and to align those systems in support of apprenticeship. You know, John mentioned that we have this big goal to double and diversify registered apprenticeships across the country and clearly, states can play a really huge role in making that a reality.

So we want ultimately for you to be able to start to see registered apprenticeship as a key workforce strategy in your workforce toolkit. It's still something where we have a lot of good best practices and we have pockets where this strategy is being implemented really well. In other cases, the work is just starting. So all of those things that you've imagined that you wanted to do in building registered apprenticeship up in the state, this is the opportunity to do that.

These funds make that much more easy to do. And among the kind of key expectations for these grants, we want these funds to assist states in advancing apprenticeship as a post-secondary education career pathway to support the integration of apprenticeship as a key workforce strategy in the state, to build up that capacity. As we know, in many cases, states only have one or two people doing the work of apprenticeship in the way of promotion and registering new programs, especially as we're now building from this base in the traditional industries construction and manufacturing.

We have this real opportunity to expand our programs into IT, healthcare, cyber security and business services and we saw that in many cases, the proposals reflected this expansion into new industries and that's something that we definitely want to see come to fruition and we'll be supporting you in that work through technical assistance and support that we can provide here from the national level.

We also want these funds to catalyze state innovations to increase opportunities for everybody, to make apprenticeship opportunities more accessible to underrepresented populations. So that remains a key policy goal of this administration of these grants. Just a quick overview, John got a little bit into the funds that are available through the ApprenticeshipUSA appropriation.

Two-thirds of the funding was made available to support state strategies. So we have $50 million for these expansion grants, which covers 37 states. When we cover – we'll show a map here in just a moment, but you'll see that it covers all of the key regions of the country and really, we touch on many of the states. Most states now either have these expansion grant funds or American Apprenticeship grants that we awarded last year.

We also awarded some planning grants earlier in the year, these accelerator grants of $200,000 apiece, which we've been able to touch just about every state in the country. So we have

ApprenticeshipUSA State Apprenticeship Expansion Grants - Grantee Orientation Tuesday, November 29, 2016 Page 8 of 24 resources now at the disposal of the states to really advance their strategies. I just want to mention quickly we have eight equity cap breaker innovation pilots that are part of this project. So eight states received funding for equity cap breaker pilots and six states received some additional funds to do some specialized work to accelerate industry expansion.

Many of the states applied. We only had resources to award a smaller number of those, but we hope to see some really great best practices come out of that that we can share more broadly with all of the states. Key metrics for this proposal will include, of course, making sure we measure the number in growth and the number of new apprentices added to the system.

The number of businesses engaged in kind of the new industries were able to touch the expansion programs and – which can include existing programs and expanding from there and then also adding new apprenticeship programs. As I mentioned, this slide does a really good job of just showing you all of the different areas of the country where these investments have been made and we're really excited, because there's just a great variety in terms of the proposals we saw of how you will utilize these funds, different state agencies that are the lead for this particular project.

I think many of the proposals did a good job of talking about how – (inaudible) – systems would be aligned in support of this work, but as you can see, we really do touch many of the states and all the kind of key regions of the country. And we're excited to see what these investments will yield. Both of those states were a little bit more further along in terms of the development of their registered apprenticeship system as well as those who were kind of just starting out from scratch more or less and really have a good game plan for how they can make quick strides and really integrate apprenticeship into their work.

In the last couple slides here, I thought the proposals also did a good job of talking about pipeline and career apprenticeship strategies that would make opportunities more available to underrepresented populations and I think the proposals did a great job of talking about specific target populations that we would be serving with these resources. In particular, expanding opportunities for women, people of color, immigrants, individuals with disabilities, youth apprenticeship and Native Americans.

So depending on which state and the region of the country, different grant proposals, obviously, emphasized different populations, but it was good to see that there was a clear strategy in each proposal to make sure that underrepresented populations were key strategy in terms of how we would increase inclusion in apprenticeship. And then lastly, as you can see, the industry makeup proposals did a good job of really kind of spreading this out.

Advanced manufacturing was definitely an industry we saw many of the states interested in doing more work in that space followed by healthcare and IT. Construction clearly has good existing footprint of programs in many of the states. So there's a good place to build from there and a number of these other industries were touched upon by many of the other states.

But I think the idea is we want to continue to see us develop and expand the model into these different industries and in different occupations to see what this looks like and develop more and

ApprenticeshipUSA State Apprenticeship Expansion Grants - Grantee Orientation Tuesday, November 29, 2016 Page 9 of 24 more best practices that we can go to and share those with states who are interested in moving that work along in those key industries. So with that, I'm going to kick it back to Chad.

MR. ALESHIRE: Thank you, Mike, I appreciate it. All right. We're going to keep things moving. I'm going to turn it over to our multistate navigator out of our Office of Apprenticeship in region four, Maria Brady. Maria has taken each of the 37 grants, done some initial analysis. She's got some feedback that I think will be really helpful for everyone on the line. So Maria, I'd like to give it to you and take it away.

MARIA BRADY: Thanks a lot, Chad. Good afternoon or good morning, everyone. And let's go ahead and get started.

First off, the applications, the proposals were somewhat disparate in terms of referencing apprenticeship or referencing registered apprenticeship. Most of the applications refer to both apprenticeship and Registered Apprenticeship or apprenticeship and RA, but we wanted to be clear from the outset that grant funds are only to support registered apprenticeship programs, not non-registered apprenticeship programs.

So the only non-registered programs that would be supported by this grant would be pre- apprenticeship programs. Now, there's a caveat there, because for many of our states, our SAA states, some states actually register pre-apprenticeship programs. So I'm not taking anything away from those states, but from a federal perspective, we do not registered pre-apprenticeship programs. So this is going to be noted moving forward.

And again, grant funds are intended to increase the number of registered apprenticeship programs and registered apprentices. So we want to be perfectly clear on that. The period of performance for these grants is 18 months. So that's beginning November 1st. Now, you see some page references here and that would be the FOA, the Funding Opportunity Announcement where it said, for instance, on Page 14, that the performance period includes all necessary implementation and start-up activities.

Now, there was some confusion based on reviewing the 37 grant narratives insofar as the 2nd and 3rd periods of performance, whether they were 12 months, whether they were 18 months, whether the full period would be 3 1/2 years or 4 1/2 years. We are only concerned with the 18- month period of performance for this grant that begins November 1st. So that is our focus. Our expectation is that for states that are SAA states or State Apprenticeship Agencies –

Actually, let's move that. The expectation is that the state director of the SAA must be included as a partner. In some cases, the SAA did apply, but the state director was not even referenced. Also, in some cases where we have federally operated states, our Office of Apprenticeship staff were not mentioned in the grant and we wanted to be clear that OA staff – Office of Apprenticeship staff are going to be involved, to some extent, in all of the grants.

And for example, the provision of technical assistance. So we do expect to see heavy involvement from the Office of Apprenticeship and in SAA states, from SAA directors and their staff. Let's talk about some numbers. Well, in some cases, as you can see from the first bullet,

ApprenticeshipUSA State Apprenticeship Expansion Grants - Grantee Orientation Tuesday, November 29, 2016 Page 10 of 24 we found some inconsistencies within the grant narrative where it said one thing on one page and something different on another page or there was an inconsistency between the grant narrative and the separate appendix that was a performance table.

And I'll talk about those inconsistencies momentarily. The number of new registered apprenticeship programs, as Mike indicated, one of the key metrics is the number of the new programs. Well, we certainly expect more than at least one new program and the reason why that is in quotes is because that comes directly from a grant narrative. So we definitely expect more than at least one new program with these grant funds.

Now, the number of participants receiving services is going to include pre-apprentices. In a couple of grant narratives, the numbers were separated and we're looking for a specific number that includes pre-apprentices and that number should be equal to or larger than the expected number of new apprentices. Now, we also asked for data on 16 to 24-year-olds, the number of youths and that's how we're defining it, 16 to 24.

Now, some states, in their grant narrative, only gave data on 16 to 18-year-olds stating that they do not, at this time, collect data on 16 to 24-year-olds, but they do collect data on 16 to 18-year- olds. Well, we aren't – we need to collect data on 16 to 24-year-olds for all youth. So that is a requirement of this grant. In terms of non-WIOA numbers, what we meant by underrepresented populations really needs to be clarified and does this overlap with other counts.

First off, underrepresented populations is a term of art relative to this grant. What we mean by that is that we meant something very specific in the FOA. We meant women, communities of color, individuals with disabilities and youth 16 to 24. Those are the underrepresented populations in these grants. Now, that is not to say that, for instance, veterans are not an underrepresented population in registered apprenticeship, but for the purpose of this grant, these are the underrepresented populations, the first bullets on your screen.

And as you can tell, with respect to communities of color, because that was specifically a phrase referenced in the FOA, we're going to use ethnicity, Hispanic, non-Hispanic and race to calculate that. So basically, if we have somebody who is Hispanic or any race other than white, that individual would be included in terms of a community of color. Now, just because we do not consider veterans an underrepresented population for the purposes of these grants, that doesn't mean priority of service for veterans doesn't apply.

In other words, priority of service for veterans applies to all department of labor funded grants and not even just ETA, but any agency within the department of labor, veterans have priority of service. So we wanted to make that clarification up front. We talked a little bit about non- WIOA numbers. Now, let's talk about the WIOA-related numbers and I'd like to draw your attention to the right side of your screen where there are four metrics noted.

And let me just go over them quickly. The first is the number of registered apprentices receiving any WIOA funding and that's from any of the first four titles in WIOA. The second item is the percent of registered apprentices receiving WIOA funding relative to all apprentices statewide

ApprenticeshipUSA State Apprenticeship Expansion Grants - Grantee Orientation Tuesday, November 29, 2016 Page 11 of 24 and we got a variety of responses to that metric, which is one of the reasons why moving forward we will be calculating percentages at the federal level.

Now, as for number three, we're looking for the number of sponsors receiving support from the public workforce system, but it's support of the programs, screening, referrals, assessments, not specifically individual apprentices. Now, number four would be the number of sponsors receiving support for their apprentices and that would be the three big pieces of a registered apprenticeship program from the perspective of the workforce, which would be the classroom training, what we call the RTI or related instruction, the on-the-job training and supportive services.

So that's what we're looking for with those metrics. Now, let's take each title at a time beginning with Title I of WIOA. As the first bullet on your slide indicates, engagement with Title I is captured on the new PIRL, the Participants Information Record Layout. There are data elements that specifically pertain to registered apprenticeship and the PIRL now requires, for anyone who is in training, the local area or the state would have to click whether or not the individual is in a registered apprenticeship program.

So if somebody is in training, that button has to be checked, in other words, for either yes in a registered apprenticeship or no, not in a registered apprenticeship. So we will be looking at the PIRL on a quarterly basis. Now, if no data is available for the PIRL, we are going to start from the baseline of zero. Now, we have quarterly data that is published by ETA on its performance website on a quarterly basis and for most states, the baseline is going to be zero.

In other words, there's no engagement with Title I that is being reported. Again, forget the percentage of WIOA-funded apprentices. We're going to calculate that at the federal level in addition to other percentages. Now, engagement with Title II, which is adult ed., Title III, which is Wagner-Peyser and Title IV, which is vocational rehabilitation. Most of the grant narratives said N/A, Not Applicable or it was blank and that's going to be insufficient moving forward.

We do need a baseline and in most cases – actually, in all cases, for these, the baseline is going to be zero unless we are told otherwise and I'll say more about that shortly. But moving forward, however that's calculated, engagement with Title II, Title II, Title IV, grantees will have to report the data source moving forward. So what happens now? Well, each grantee is going to receive a one-page, very simple baseline document.

It's going to have those key metrics in there, no percentages. Now, there were two data sources. It was actually three. Your narratives, if the metrics were not included in your narrative, it was the performance table in addition to RAPIDS, our database, the Registered Apprenticeship Partners Information Database System. Now, that one-page baseline document that every grantee is going to get is going to go to your key contact and that's the contact noted in your abstract.

So grantees are going to work with our national office and basically confirm that the information is correct or make changes and add the data source, but the bottom line is that we all need to be on the same page from the get-go and that one-page document, however it's revised or

ApprenticeshipUSA State Apprenticeship Expansion Grants - Grantee Orientation Tuesday, November 29, 2016 Page 12 of 24 confirmed, will be part of the official grant file. Now, I know you can't see it very clearly, but on the right side of your screen is a simple copy of the baseline document.

This is a blank baseline document with one slight change and I know you probably can't see it, but the third line from the top it says, baseline document, it's the FOA number and then it says, information from proposal. That will say, information from proposal and RAPIDS, because in many cases, we got no baseline information. So we needed to go to our RAPIDS database. So we have to have something.

And you'll see from the baseline document that where we don't have information, for instance, the number of individuals with disabilities in a registered apprenticeship program, that baseline is going to be zero. So again, if we have no baseline, we'll use zero as the starting point unless we hear otherwise. And with that, I'll turn it back over to Chad.

MR. ALESHIRE: Thank you, Maria. I cannot thank you enough for the initial analysis and the feedback to the grantees. You all will continue to have Maria as a resource moving forward. So we really appreciate it. I want to keep moving and I want to turn it over to our division chief for the Office of Apprenticeship out of region six, Ms. Diane Walton. Diane's going to give you some information on contacts and support available for our grantees. Diane. And I'm happy to move your slides for you, Diane.

DIANE WALTON: Oh cool, full service operation. Hi, everybody. This is Diane Walton out in San Francisco. I want to take just a minute to thank Eric and John and everybody at the Office of Apprenticeship. This has been a remarkable adventure and seeing apprenticeship come alive in communities across the country has been a remarkable experience for me and I just wanted to be appropriately grateful this morning.

The reason I'm on the presentation is to tell all of the grantees that there's a huge amount of support. We've learned a lot over the past year about what kind of support is needed as we work with different systems and the help will come from every direction. That's a promise and a warning. So what you see on the screen right now is a little bit of a drawing, but we can go to the next slide, it's the – we're trying to do this as a team.

So the federal project officers from the regional office, the technical assistance coach from Maher & Maher, the apprenticeship consultants who work out in the field, everybody's going to come together to help meet your needs in this team approach. And so we've learned a little bit about how the people who worked for me, the federal project officers here in San Francisco, an extraordinary group of people and have gained huge skill about how you start a grant, how you make sure everybody has all the stuff that they need.

What we didn't have was information about really how do you make apprenticeship work? And so then the apprenticeship consultants, on the other side of the equation, beautiful and brilliant about how to pull that off, but no idea really how to make sure everybody was staying street legal. So that's the team approach. We've spent a lot of time getting better at it. We're going to keep getting better at it, but the thing for the grantees to know is you're going to have questions and I think the wisest course of action is –

ApprenticeshipUSA State Apprenticeship Expansion Grants - Grantee Orientation Tuesday, November 29, 2016 Page 13 of 24 And it's not just because I have a bias or because of where I work, but I think in the structure that we have set up, Chad, if you go to the next slide, the federal project officer is your first line of help. So there's a lot of responsibilities that have been assigned to the federal project officers. Those are up on the screen. But they also, over this period of time, have started to become more sensitive to seeing what's going to happen next.

And so there's – as they work with the apprenticeship consultants, they'll be able to not just answer your questions, but also, I think that last piece about being a resource to get you where you want to go. And we could tell you mildly amusing stories about paths that needed to be diverted, some better ideas that people had as they went through time. It's good to try to really figure out what you want out of this and have us help you get there.

The apprenticeship consultant roles are on the next slide. This whole thing – a lot of the people on the call, a lot of the grantees in this particular batch, of course, have experience with this in terms of program standards and registering programs and whatever those hurdles might be, but if you don't – really, there's a group of people across the country, Maria's one of them, who really just know their stuff up one side and down the other.

So you do have the support that you're going to need to make it happen. The next slide goes into a little bit about the technical assistance role. We knew that the federal staff couldn't do it all much as we might like to sometimes. We are fortunate to have Maher & Maher and a big crew out of there trying to work the apprenticeship agenda across the country. From the get-go, that whole notion that John talked about, the doubling of the numbers, the diversity, they have people in play who can help you and there will be a coach assigned to each grantee who can help you.

And they're going to work together so that they can – you know, you don't just get the benefit of whoever's card you draw. You know, if it's Gina, if it's – whoever it is they're going to know how to get you what you need. So the three people are going to work together. If you want to go to the next slide, Chad, the – you just call your federal project office and say, I just need some help and the federal project officer will help figure out how to get you where you need to go.

It's easiest if you always connect through that way, but you can also go for your financial reporting system to another. Sorry, there's people who are crawling around with cameras and things. I don't know what's going on in the office today. So the – just know that your federal project officer, your apprenticeship consultant and your TA person are waiting to help you and that's going to be a huge lift that you're not going to –

You just have support. I don't know how to say it 18 more ways, but really, really, we're there for you. There's an expectation slide that comes next. Really, there's a huge team of people with different colored hats on outside and cameras and things. So the grantee point of contact who you have identified is who gets all the information from us and all the communication. So if you ever want that to change or if you're not getting what you think you need to get, you just need to let us all know and we'll figure out how to get that changed. And with that, Chad, I think I've made up some time for you.

ApprenticeshipUSA State Apprenticeship Expansion Grants - Grantee Orientation Tuesday, November 29, 2016 Page 14 of 24 MR. ALESHIRE: You did, indeed, Diane. You did a great job, I really appreciate it. And again, to keep things moving, I'm going to turn it over to my colleague, Sasha Cooper-Morrison. Sasha's going to go over some of our expectations around reporting requirements.

SASHA COOPER-MORRISON: Thank you, Chad. So those familiar with ETA grants from previous grant programs have probably seen a slide like this, but it's important that we lay out key expectations for these expansion grants. So we expect you to adhere to a couple of points. First and foremost, we want you to meet the – we expect you to meet the registered apprenticeship goals that you committed to in your SOW.

This includes embedding registered apprenticeship as a workforce development strategy as well as a post-secondary educational career pathway. We expect you to improve the state's capacity to engage with industry stakeholders and also increase registered apprenticeship opportunities for all, including the target populations that you saw on the previous slide. Next slide, Chad. State apprenticeship agency involvement is a critical element of these grants' success.

And so we absolutely expect and want to convey that the SAA staff, whether it's the director – including the director must be involved in SAA state grants. Quarterly progress reports, so this is how we'll make sure that you all are adhering and meeting the goals in the statement of work, but it's also – they're also an important tool for us to better target the technical assistance that you'll be receiving, which I'll talk more about in the next slide.

They're due no later than 45 days after the end of a quarter. Here on the slide, there's some upcoming QPR due dates. We will provide more details regarding how you're expected to collect and track participant level data. I saw a question come up in the chat box about that. However, the – what we'll be collecting will be definitely what – for [inaudible] federal states, what you're collecting on the Form 671 state – for the SAA states.

That would be what you're collecting on the apprentices in the apprentice agreement. So we're not asking that you – we're not going to ask you to duplicate that information, but we'll certainly be providing another template for you to essentially transfer that information. And we may also include some additional key ETA indicators. So just as you start to prepare those systems. Also, while they're – while not required, social security numbers are necessary to track employment outcomes.

So to the degree that you can obtain social security numbers for participants, that will help us track the employment outcomes and then provide that information to you. Additionally, we also want to insure that you're – make sure that you're following the PII protocol. And there – ETA has provided some additional guidance about that. FPOs would be a good resource to help – to provide that info. to you, if needed.

I imagine that the – all of the grantees, since your states probably have some PII protocols in place already, but again, we're happy to provide that additional information when necessary. Next slide, please. We can't stress this enough, it's important that you report accurately and on time. I mentioned the quarterly progress, of course. So in addition to the numbers we'll be looking for, we'll be getting a narrative report from you.

ApprenticeshipUSA State Apprenticeship Expansion Grants - Grantee Orientation Tuesday, November 29, 2016 Page 15 of 24 Again, we'll provide that template and then you'll also be submitting the financial report, the ETA Form 9130. At the end of the period of performance, you'll be submitting a final report and that's a final QPR that's modified to – in addition to including the quarterly data for that particular quarter, you'll also be providing cumulative information on the grant activities in progress. And again, we'll be providing more information as well as training on our performance reporting expectations.

Next slide. So we're asking you to collect the data. We're asking you to submit it to us, but we also want you to use the data to drive decisions about your grant. It's really about managing a continuous improvement cycle given the changing economy. The customer expectations are always changing. Continuous, if you go to the definition, means forming an unbroken hole without interruption.

So we're – we'll constantly be looking for ways to streamline our processes and get better results and we want to work with you all to do that as well in your grants. So all across our system we'll be finding new ways to engage underrepresented populations and expand apprenticeship into new industries. You saw in the previous slides information about the new industry intermediary and equity partner contracts.

Those are some other tools that we have that we'll be using to help you increase your engagement and help your expansion activities. So we're going to be looking for those things that work and look to share those things with each other so we can learn and build on our successes. Next slide. So we've heard mention of our TA provider, Maher & Maher.

So that's who ETA has contracted with to deliver TA to all of the grantees and they'll be providing it in the following four forms, individualized coaching to the grantees, peer learning communities at events, the identification, collection and sharing of best practices and tools and then we'll also be organizing a state apprenticeship expansion grantee conference in 2017. Days are to be determined, but look out for that as well. So with that, I will pass it back to Chad and we'll hear from OGM on the grant award package.

MR. ALESHIRE: Thank you – I almost Serena. Thank you, Sasha, we really appreciate it. I am now going to hand it off to two of the most important folks to this project out of the office of grants management. We'll start with Serena Boyd and Serena will be joined by Andrea Hill. Serena.

SERENA BOYD: Thank you, Chad. Hello, everyone. I'm Serena Boyd, I'm the grant officer for the ApprenticeshipUSA State Apprenticeship Expansion grants. Along with me is Andrea Hill who is the lead grant specialist for these particular grants. So doing a little overview today of the grant award package that you should have received by now. So let's go to the next slide, please, Chad. So this slide shows what your package should have included, which is the grant agreement, the grant award letter and the ETA grantee handbook for your reference.

Next slide. So let's start with the grant award letter. The award letter informs you of your awarded grant. It acknowledges your award. It outlines how to set up your grant in the payment

ApprenticeshipUSA State Apprenticeship Expansion Grants - Grantee Orientation Tuesday, November 29, 2016 Page 16 of 24 management system. This system allows you to draw funds to operate your program. This letter also outlines our financial reporting system that allows you to submit your 91 [inaudible] financial report that is due quarterly.

As indicated on the slide, your password and pin is vital. So please keep that close to you and in a safe place for reference. Next slide, please. Your grant agreement also includes your Notice of Award known as NOA. This notice provides a basic overview of your award component. First, we have the project title, which is your apprenticeship – state apprenticeship expansion grant. I'm sorry, ApprenticeshipUSA State Apprenticeship Expansion grants.

You have your grant awardees identifying information, which is your name, your address and so forth. Then you have your grant agreement number. It's how we identify you when you submit modifications or correspondence regarding your grant. You have your POP, which is your Period of Performance, which states your start date and your end date. Then we have the total amount of funds available for your particular grant.

We also state the requirements of overall program requirements of your grant. Your FPO contact information is also noted. Your signatures, the only signature of the NOA is my signature of the grant officer. By accepting this award, the grantee has agreed to all the program requirements outlining your grant agreement. Please note, if [inaudible] is responsibility under this grant, the awardee hereby certifies and assures that it will fully comply with all applicable statutes and the following regulations and cost principles, including any subsequent amendments will be adhered to.

Many of your statements of work indicated the intention to award sub-grants and will have significant portions of the programmatic work conducted by contractors. Please be aware these are discretionary grants, not formula funds and as such, the recipient indicated on the SM424 and NOA is fully responsible for all expenditures of sales and sub-recipients of any type. Next slide, please. And here we state the regulations and the cost principles.

These are the overall program requirements of your grant. Also, in your grant agreement is the FOA. It is also incorporated in there for your review as well. So please take your time and review these requirements and become very familiar with them. And at the end, if you have any questions about it, we're here to help you. So on that note, I'm going to pass it to Andrea Hill. She's going to be talking about the condition of the award and the terms and conditions of the award. Andrea.

ANDREA HILL: Thanks, Serena. Hi, everybody. So if you look at the grant agreement packages that everybody should've received by now, directly under the NOA page is another page, the special conditions. There are a number of different special conditions that you may or may not have on your award, but one that everybody is subject to is the compliance review that Maria and Sasha both referred to earlier.

We'll talk a little bit about that more in a minute. There are other two conditions that are on there that are standard where we identified, through your budget narrative, that you intend to spend funds in any way on IT development. We want to make sure that everyone's aware that if you're

ApprenticeshipUSA State Apprenticeship Expansion Grants - Grantee Orientation Tuesday, November 29, 2016 Page 17 of 24 expending funds on IT development that you're in contact with your OA person, to make sure that all the specs and all the developments that you are undertaking are in compliance with the PIRL system and any other DOL regulations.

It'd really be a shame to spend some big money and have to go back and have to redo everything. So we want to make sure at the front end that everybody's talking. The other thing that we have on there is if we identified monies being spent on marketing or outreach publication materials is that you are in consultation also with your OA contact. There are oodles of information that have already been developed and there are print sheets to go to printers, which are here for your use.

We don't want to go back through and reinvent the wheel if we don't have to. So that's another way to make sure that these monies are being expended judiciously. Through the budget review, some of you may find that there are some budgetary conditions that are on your award. They vary in different ways. Most of them are that we need a little more clarification within your budget narratives.

You work with your FPO to get those done and then you will submit them as a formal modification to your award. Additionally, there are statement of work conditions that are on there. Again, we're going to talk a little bit more about compliance review, but some few awards have already undergone their compliance review. And so the statement of work modification requests are already incorporated within your grant agreement as a special condition.

So those you need to work with both your OA contact and your FPO to develop those to come up with a revised statement of work so that it adheres to all the elements that Maria and Sasha have spoken about already. Then again, once those are done, that'll be submitted through your FPO as a formal modification to your statement of work. Next slide, please. Some other terms that we just want to point out, some standard terms, in the terms and conditions of your grant award, please be sure and check out term number seven and eight.

Number eight is your FPO contact information. We put that in several different places in the agreement so that you don't lose it. Number seven is your indirect cost rate. Many of you submitted budgets with requested indirect costs and we didn't get either a current indirect cost rate agreement or a few other situations there. So make sure that you check that term to read what it is we need to do about that.

Equipment requirements, we're going to talk a little bit more about that one in a minute too. Pre- award costs, we're not – the period of performance on these began the 1st of November and then we would not have costs prior to that that we would expect to see. Reporting requirements, again, Maria and Sasha have talked about the particulars about that a little bit, but the actual legal requirement that you do submit those quarterly reports is included in the grant agreement.

Consultant fees in conjunction with the uniform guidance, their publicity procurement, you – most everybody in the state. So you would follow your own procurement policies here. Audit requirements and then there's some stuff in there about intellectual policy. But please do be sure

ApprenticeshipUSA State Apprenticeship Expansion Grants - Grantee Orientation Tuesday, November 29, 2016 Page 18 of 24 and read your entire grant agreement. And the next slide, please. At the bottom of the bulk of the agreement itself, there are six attachments.

You've got your 424, 424A, which are the documents that are standard forms and your budget narratives. If you're awarded a CAP, your CAP 424, 424A and budget narrative are also included in that section, your statement of work, which includes a number of elements, your narratives, your abstract, your governor's letter and then the big one is your baseline documentation. Once that baseline documentation –

Once you go through with the Office of Apprenticeship and you figure out what your actual baseline documentation is going to be, that also needs to be submitted as a statement of work modification. Attachment E is your letters of commitment and then F is your indirect cost rate agreement if you have one. This award is a little different, again, because you all are mostly states. I think we've got one that's not a state.

Everybody else is the official state agency. So normally you don't see equipment terms in this one, however, because it is discretionary. We needed to put an equipment term in. Basically, what it says is you adhere to your own procurement principles and that you do not need our DOL OGM prior approval to purchasing equipment. However, you may not purchase equipment in the last year of the grant and you would also be expected, on a monitoring visit, to produce evidence that you've had, in fact, gotten approval up your own chain.

Budget and statement of work on our next slide, we've got a 424A and a budget narrative. We talked about that a little bit more, just a standard form and then whatever form you put your budget narrative in. Again, there may be special conditions at the first part of the grant there where you need to submit some revisions. And then the statement of work includes a technical proposal, again, the abstract, the governor's letter, the org chart, very important.

If you did not submit one with your application, that will be part of the compliance review process probably and be – will need one at that time. Your work plan and again, your performance outcomes table. Number 11, please. Indirect cost rate. The indirect cost rate is only applicable to those who are claiming indirect costs. I guess that makes sense; right? Again, we're on a 90-day temporary rate if we don't have a current cost rate agreement in hand.

And so until that agreement is negotiated and submitted to the FPO for a formal modification, everybody is on – anybody who is in that situation is on that 90-day limit and their indirect costs are limited to 10 percent of their personnel or 10 percent of the indirect costs, if that's lesser. DOL no longer puts administrative cost caps in our funding announcements. There was a lot of confusion generally about that.

And so because of that, DOL now expects to see all administrative costs either proportioned to either an indirect or an – or a direct line item. In some cases where the indirect cost rate was capped already, we still saw a number of instances where there were administrative costs elsewhere within the agreement and that's really not in line with the uniform guidance, which is now completely in effect.

ApprenticeshipUSA State Apprenticeship Expansion Grants - Grantee Orientation Tuesday, November 29, 2016 Page 19 of 24 So there may be a special condition or if you have a budget modification later on down the line, we want to make sure that you're aware that your indirect cost rate is the limit on your indirect costs. We want to prevent any situations from happening any later on down the line with your grants. That would be not -- (inaudible). Next slide, please.

Now, compliance review. We talked a little bit about this program office perspective, but the compliance review, the detailed review of the statement of work as submitted and the attachments there will be assistance from the FPO, from – but primarily through the Office of Apprenticeship and OGM.

Once the compliance review is complete, you'll receive a letter from the Office of Apprenticeship outlining items that need to be tweaked a little bit. That is in accordance with that first condition that we already talked about so that you would need to comply with that and submit a statement of work modification request. You'll have 30 days to respond to that after the – after you receive it and we anticipate that you'll start receiving those letters somewhere around the beginning of the year. And I'm throwing it back to Chad.

MR. ALESHIRE: All right. Thank you, Serena and Andrea. We'll continue to lean on them heavily as a resource moving forward. I hope everybody found that information helpful and we'll continue to work with you there and provide more information as [inaudible]. I want to cover next-steps. A quick few immediate next-steps. The FPOs will be onboarding new grantees through introductory phone calls and meetings throughout December.

As part of the compliance review -- (inaudible) -- will also review the new grant statements of work, identify issues of concern, including the cost compliance review. And as Andrea stated, as issues are identified in the SOW, OA will work with the FPO and OGM to discuss with the grantee to attempt to make those necessary changes. And then also, Andrea, I believe, mentioned this, but your redacted technical proposal or your redaction waiver is due immediately.

So if you can get those in as quickly as possible. If you've not already submitted them, please do so to the apprenticeship.grants email – I'm sorry, I didn't move the slide – that email address there on your slide with a copy to your FPO. Also, provide any updated POC information to the FPO, again, with a CC to the apprenticeship.grants email address on your screen. And then we'll be getting started on our fiscal and administrative online training series.

And then a couple due dates coming up, over the next week for the week of December 5th, each grantee will receive the one-page baseline document that Maria Brady mentioned earlier that'll contain your key metrics and then followed by that we'll have a kickoff webinar this coming Monday to introduce you to our TA team through Maher & Maher and they'll provide – you'll have an opportunity to meet your TA coach, learn about upcoming learning opportunities and hear about additional steps for getting started.

So with that, we are wrapping up the content portion of this session. We want to get to your questions. So I know many of you have been providing your questions through the chat. At this

ApprenticeshipUSA State Apprenticeship Expansion Grants - Grantee Orientation Tuesday, November 29, 2016 Page 20 of 24 point, I'm going to turn it back over to the webinar team for a little bit of mechanics on how we do that.

MS. CASERTANO: All right. So we did have a bunch of questions come in. So presenters, you can take any questions that you'd like. I'll move into this question being answered – being addressed box and we can go from there.

MR. ALESHIRE: And thanks, everybody. I am just looking over the questions that are coming in "Is the data that we collect and report duplicative of the data that sponsors inter-directly into RAPIDS?"

MS. COOPER-MORRISON: So no, the data that we'll be collecting and reporting will be the same data that's being reported into RAPIDS. So whenever possible, we'll be pulling that on our end directly from RAPIDS and then we'll be working with the SAA space who don't report into RAPIDS on collecting that information from their respective system. So we'll provide more details on that, but we – but indeed we are looking to get the same data that's in RAPIDS and we don't want to duplicate those common efforts.

MR. ALESHIRE: Thanks, Sasha. Another question came in, "[inaudible] the two cap breaker activities into our base proposal?" The question is, "Are we able to modify our SOW and work plan to remove the activities that were specific to that cap breaker, which weren't funded?" I'm going to reach over to Andrea here for the answer to that from OGM.

MS. HILL: So the short answer is yes. The longer answer is, again, through the compliance review, that will be brought out to some degree, but you also want to be in contact with your FPO when you get that first initial phone call. The FPO can relay the information then to the OA team and ultimately will come around and the statement of work revision modification that will be submitted will be a little different than what was originally submitted.

MR. ALESHIRE: Thanks, Andrea. We had another question come in that one of our slides indicated the first cumulative report covers October 1 to December 31, 2016, I'm guessing that meant – the question says 2026. We're not going to make you report that far into the future. But the question was it covers October 1 to December 31. Should this be November 1? For the points of these grants, yes.

The quarter covers October 1 to December 1. Obviously, you'll be required to report on activities related to the grant from November 1 through December 31. Just bear with us here as we rack up more questions. All right. I see one. "We need to change our point of contact. Does this request to the national office" – "does this request", I'm assuming it's, "come to the national office of FPO in order to do so or does it need to come from the current POC?" I'm just going to turn it over to OGM on POC changes.

MS. BOYD: When you have a POC change, your authorized representative that signed the SF- 424 should submit on letterhead to the FPO a change for the POC who in turn was submitted to us for modification to the grant to take place.

ApprenticeshipUSA State Apprenticeship Expansion Grants - Grantee Orientation Tuesday, November 29, 2016 Page 21 of 24 MR. ALESHIRE: OK. Thank you. And just bear with us here as we rack up another round of questions. Another question came in on equipment. "Since equipment can't be purchased in the past year – in last year of the grant, does that mean that equipment has to be purchased prior to April 30, 2017?" They're asking for clarification. It's a great question. OGM.

MS. HILL: So if there was equipment included on your original budget, you would have until the end of April, 2017 to purchase. If equipment was not included on your original budget, you would have to submit a budget modification request first and have that approved before you could actually purchase that equipment, which would still need to be purchased prior to 4/30/2017.

MR. ALESHIRE: All right. Thank you, Andrea. And then I'm seeing a question, I can take this two ways. "How do we access TA from the national contractors for this grant related to diversification?" If you were talking about the TA provider that – the TA resource Maher & Maher we're providing for our grantees, next Monday, December 5th you should've all had an invite, but we will make sure to send out a reminder on that invite to make sure everyone's got it.

But they will be covering how to access them, what kind of TA will be available, what resources will be available to you. So December 5th, Monday, is an important day for you all to have somebody there to attend that online webinar event. So look forward to that. "Also, when will we know when changes have been made in RAPIDS to receive individual level data and what we'll need to collect?"

I'm not sure I've got the gist of that question. I'll tell you what, the ones that we don't have a quick answer for we are logging. So I would say stay tuned and we will get information out to folks around that. And I can also say that reporting instructions will be coming soon. So stay tuned, we'll definitely be providing you more guidance there. Bear with us here, we're just continuing to rack up questions.

And can we ask, do we have the ability to take questions over the phone if anyone has any over the phone?

MS. CASERTANO: Sure. For anyone who is dialed into the teleconference, to ask your question verbally you just need to hit *6. That will unmute your line and you can introduce yourself, ask your question and then when your answer is – when your question has been answered, just hit *6 again to re-mute your line.

MR. ALESHIRE: All right. We're going to give everybody an opportunity to see if we do have any questions coming over the phone line. We are still going through the chat questions. We don't seem to have any new chat questions coming through.

MS. BRADY: There is one new question.

MR. ALESHIRE: Oh, yeah. Here it is, it popped up on my screen. "Can grant funds be utilized to develop and support pre-apprentice programs or other programs of lead to becoming a registered apprenticeship? There were two slides that contradicted this."

ApprenticeshipUSA State Apprenticeship Expansion Grants - Grantee Orientation Tuesday, November 29, 2016 Page 22 of 24 MS. BRADY: It wasn't intended to be a contradiction.

MR. ALESHIRE: OK. Maria, do you want to respond to this?

MS. BRADY: Sure. The answer to the question is yes. And I think the questioner was referring to slide 20 and slide 23. They were not meant to be contradictory, but actually mutually supportive. So yes, you can develop pre-apprentice programs with grant money. In fact, that's the only non-registered program that you can develop with these funds. OK, Chad, thanks.

MR. ALESHIRE: Thank -- (inaudible). And the one caveat we would add here, my division chief, Mike Qualter just mentioned and I think it's an important note that the pre-apprenticeship, they can be supported, but they do need to be tied to a registered apprenticeship program. That program is either an existing program or a program in development to be started up as part of this project. So thanks to Mike and Maria there.

And, "Going back to the equipment purchase, equipment purchased by April, 2017, does that deadline also apply to equipment under $5,000, which is the state definition of equipment?" OGM is nodding their head yes, that that is – that requirement still holds. Yes.

OK. We do have another question that came in. "When will we get information about DOL's third party evaluation activities?" I'm going to hand that over to Mike Qualter.

MR. QUALTER: All right. Thanks, Chad. So in terms of the evaluation, it's typical for most ETA grants to have an evaluation component attached to them. For the most part, we're going to have a smaller scaled-down kind of implementation evaluation. A little bit more information will come probably in the – over the next six weeks or so when we get that contract awarded. We're getting pretty close.

But the idea would be to study the process by which states are implementing these funds clearly with an 18-month period of performance. We're talking a relatively short period of time that we'd be looking at implementation and sort of the key outcomes of the grant. For the most part, we'd be looking at data that are collected through the quarterly report.

So there probably wouldn't be too much in addition to the data reported on quarterly reports outside of probably a few surveys where we would talk to the grantee as well as maybe key partners. So more to come on that. Right now we're still kind of locking in the details.

MR. ALESHIRE: Thanks, Mike. Maria, I'm going to lean on you. There's a follow up to the pre-apprenticeship.

MS. BRADY: The answer is yes.

MR. ALESHIRE: OK. "For pre-apprenticeship related technical instruction, does it need to be tied to apprenticeship sponsored via MOA, MOU or a contract?" Correct. And the answer is we affirm, yes, that is true.

ApprenticeshipUSA State Apprenticeship Expansion Grants - Grantee Orientation Tuesday, November 29, 2016 Page 23 of 24 MS. BRADY: Yes. And that's basically what Mike was saying when he was talking about a quality pre-apprenticeship program consistent with Training and Employment Notice 13-12.

MR. ALESHIRE: All right. And I'm seeing a thank you to you, Maria from Todd Berch [ph] out there. So great question. Thanks, Maria. Do we have any questions coming over the phone, Laura?

MS. CASERTANO: Not yet, but there are several people dialed to the teleconference. So again, if you do have a question that you want to verbalize, just hit *6 and ask your question.

MR. ALESHIRE: All right. We appreciate it. I don't see any other questions coming in over chat. We've got a couple minutes left. Unless I hear otherwise, I would like to thank all of our speakers today. I know we had a large group here, all of them a real important piece of this project and I promise you will be a great resource to you, to us, to – you know, this team is really going to lean on each other.

So I can't thank you all enough for joining us today. We hope the information has been helpful. Again, to our grantees, I encourage you to make sure you are registered for our December 5th TA, Technical Assistance, webinar. Again, that's Monday, December 5. The invites are out. We hope you are registered for that. We will get out a reminder of that and then look for additional guidance and information from us on QPRs, performance reporting and other data elements.

We saw some questions around the data elements that we'll be sure to provide more guidance on. So with that, again, I'm going to give one last thank you to all of our speakers. Thank you to all the participants. We are really excited about this effort to just expand apprenticeship through the really innovative state strategies we've seen come in. So we're looking forward to working with you guys and getting started.

With that, everybody have a great afternoon. Thanks and we will talk to you soon.

(END)

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