Youthbuild Webinar Series: Tens and Tegls

Workforce 3One

Transcript of Webinar

YouthBuild Webinar Series: TENs and TEGLs – The Policies That Matter Throughout the Life of Your DOL YouthBuild Grant

Tuesday, July 8, 2014

Transcript by Federal News Service Washington, D.C. MR. : And to address this question, may I introduce Toni Wilson.

TONI WILSON: Thank you so much, Eric (sp).

Hi, everyone. Before I introduce myself, I just want to point out once again (there’s ?) a slide that we were just kind of polling as we get started about what TENs and TEGLs do you find most helpful. So if you can start entering that information over there in your chat, we just want to kind of get a pulse of where – what people are using. Maybe you’re not familiar with any of them, or there might be one that you have glued to your desk, and we’ll take a look at that. We’ll revisit this toward the end of the webinar also. So that chat will be open for you to continue to type as we move forward.

So hi. I’m Toni Wilson, a workforce analyst here at the Department of Labor, and I will be your moderator and presenter today. Let’s see, next slide here. Just want to go over what you can expect for this webinar. We’re reviewing the YouthBuild program staff on what TENs and TEGLs are, and that includes a list of the key foundational TENs and TEGLs that relate to the DOL YouthBuild program. This review will include YouthBuild program timelines and where they correspond to key TENs and TEGLs that should be reviewed for program compliance and efficiency.

Let’s see, next slide. Discussions – I just want to note, as mentioned earlier, you can participate by entering information in the chat, but also, we will have – the phones will be unmuted towards the end. We’re going to have all Q-and-A at the end, so we ask that if you have questions along the way, if you can please type those, or you can hold them, and we will also have phones unmuted if anybody has a question they’d like to ask in that way. If you do, please be courteous and reduce any kind of background noise, and keep your phones muted when you are not speaking so that everyone can enjoy the webinar.

All right, so let’s just check for a second in reference to our poll. (Inaudible) – kind of pull up – where are we here? Let’s see, we’ve got a few things that have come in. It sounds like some – sounds like we have a little bit of a mix here. People are looking for direction. It sounds like we have some new staff here – hi, Latoye (ph) – some new staff that are just getting themselves familiar with TEGLs. So we’re going to be talking about that, and there’ll be some information in reference to the new TEGL that has come out in reference to enrollment. So we’ll be discussing that.

Let’s see, any other – not familiar – all right, well, sounds like this is going to be a 101 for some, and for others, it’ll be a refresher, and hopefully people will pick up some information that they can take back to their organizations. So let’s get started.

First I wanted to start out by talking about the definition of TEN. TENs mean Training and Employment Notice, and we call them TENs for short. And they basically communicate announcements of meetings, publications or general information. They’re issued on a program year, which is July 1st through June 30th, and they are set up with a set of numbers of how we

YouthBuild Webinar Series: TENs and TEGLs – Page 2 of 21 The Policies That Matter Throughout the Life of Your DOL YouthBuild Grant Tuesday, July 8, 2014 code them. The first set of numbers of a TEN indicate the publication order with the program year, and the second set of numbers indicates the program year of publication. These are used for notices that are informational, but they may still be beneficial regarding existing policies and practices of DOL.

And the definition of a TEGL – a TEGL means a Training and Employment Guidance Letter, and a TEGL – the purpose is to transmit policy and operational guidance to WIA state and local workforce systems and related grantees. Very – same as with the TEN, they are issued by program – (inaudible) – and same with the set of numbers. The publications are within the program year, and the second set of numbers indicates the program year of publication. TEGLs provide firm and descriptive policy guidance to the workforce system and the related grantees regarding official and formal directives and requirements. So that’s where there is a difference in reference to your TENs and your TEGLs.

So let’s get into the TENs and TEGLs that we wanted to make sure we highlight and that you have readily on your desktop. And to get us started, I’d like to introduce a colleague and a great lady, Jenn Smith, a management analyst for the U.S. Department of Labor. Jenn?

JENN SMITH: Thank you so much, Toni.

Let me just say briefly how glad we are to have Toni back, who just returned from leave. She has been greatly missed and was very game to jump on this webinar with not much warning. So thank you to her.

So again, one of the things that Toni mentioned to you is that, you know, we’re going to be reviewing a list of the foundational TENs and TEGLs and also the program timeline and how that corresponds to where you should be looking at these TENs and TEGLs. So we’re really just trying to frame for you what the life cycle – within the life cycle of a YouthBuild program, where these TENs and TEGLs may be most beneficial.

What you’ll really see with that is that – well, all right, I’ll get into that in the next slide, actually. I’m jumping ahead here. So basically, you know, as we all know, the YouthBuild programs are pretty long-term in nature, serving, you know, youth for up to three – well, up to two years, with a year of follow-up, so three years of program activities. So we wanted to kind of follow through with those TENs and TEGLs, and we’ve kind of grouped them based on those phases at which they should be considered and reviewed. And so we’re going to look briefly here at a timeline to kind of demonstrate this.

You know, nothing too complicated about this, obviously. Some of you may have seen a similar-looking timeline because we use this often with our MIS trainings to really kind of exemplify, you know, how important it is to really understand the life cycle of your program and to understand the quarters and to understand the distinction between active participation, exit and then the follow-up quarters.

So I mean, the interesting thing with most of the TENs and TEGLs that we’ve had to develop are that they fall within the active program timeline. This isn’t really a surprise because again, once

YouthBuild Webinar Series: TENs and TEGLs – Page 3 of 21 The Policies That Matter Throughout the Life of Your DOL YouthBuild Grant Tuesday, July 8, 2014 you’ve exited the youth, you really, you know, focused on just some small follow-up activities, keeping in touch with them and making sure that they’re keeping the placements and, you know, education that they were pursuing. So it makes sense that most of – you know, most of the money you spend is during the active life cycle, most of the heavy contact you have with youth is during that time, and most of the planning and implementation that you need to consider for how your program model will look happens during that time.

So the way that we broke these out was that we have – we have a few that really matter toward the very beginning of the program. You really need to think about them when you’re planning what your program model will look like. You know, this is good for those of you who may be new staff to really understand. Again, this may be helpful for any of you who get refunded with this next grant cycle that hopefully will be announced in a few months because you really need to be aware of these TENs and TEGLs early on so that you understand and don’t get yourself in trouble with, you know, spending money on things that you shouldn’t or having a mental toughness component that’s not allowable, making sure you’re enrolling eligible youth, setting up your outcome measures for success. A lot of these things are factors that you really need to focus on, beginning at the very beginning of your program, and of course revisiting throughout your program cycle. So you’ll see that the majority of the TENs and TEGLs fall during that time period.

There are a few that are really focused more on sort of the outcomes and the what you do during active training of your youth that impacts those outcomes, and you’ll see that there’s a few listed during that time, TEGL 15-10 and TEGL 35-12, which are really sort of our over-arching policies around credentials and some of those outcome measures.

And then you’ll see a few more that focus more on sort of that transition period when you’re going to be possibly getting close to exiting the youth and thinking about those next steps for them and what that might look like.

So OK, I’m just going to very briefly – we’re going to talk about each of these in a little more detail, but just to kind of highlight for you what TEGLs we – TEGLs and TENs we’re going to be discussing and where they kind of fall within that life cycle.

So the first grouping of foundational TENs and TEGLs, we call over-arching policy. These are the really big ones that can really impact all aspects of your program but are really the ones that you should be looking at right away and then revisiting throughout your program to make sure you’re kind of keeping with the policies contained in them.

So the first is TEGL 17-05. I consider this one sort of an oldie but a goodie, if you will. This is one that’s been around for a while, that really focuses on the common measures policy, because we’ve had the common measures for youth and adults since 2005, I guess it is, so that’s nine years now. But this is one of the core tenants (sic) of how we measure outcomes for our programs, and there’s a lot of really good information in here about that process.

The next one you’ll see is TEGL 15-10, which sort of builds on 17-05, and, again, we’ll talk about these in a little more detail later. And then, another overarching one: Make sure you don’t

YouthBuild Webinar Series: TENs and TEGLs – Page 4 of 21 The Policies That Matter Throughout the Life of Your DOL YouthBuild Grant Tuesday, July 8, 2014 get in trouble with money – match and allowable construction and other capital asset costs. Additional overarching ones: TEN 13-12 – that focuses on pre-apprenticeship programs and related tools and resources – very beneficial. And also, TEN 44-07 – that provides strategies to the One-Stop Career Center system on collaborating with YouthBuild specifically. That’s another great one to look at early. And then, finally, two other overarching policy ones are a very important clarification on the uses of YouthBuild funds provided by separate year funding appropriations. Again, we’ll explain a little bit more what that means, because that title isn’t the clearest. And, finally TEN 13-11: YouthBuild participant documentation.

OK. Next we get into some of our recruitment and eligibility TENs and TEGLs. Two important ones here, which I’ve already seen one of these – this first one, TEGL 11-09, popped up in the first round of question (here ?); TEGL 11-09, including Change 1 and 2, on expanded participant eligibility for YouthBuild; and TEGL 14-09 on mental toughness/orientation allowable costs in a YouthBuild program.

Finally, then we have outcomes TEGL 35-12, providing definition and guidance on allowable construction credentials specifically for the YouthBuild program.

And now I’m going to turn it over to Toni and she’s going to go into a little more detail about some of those TEGLs that we just highlighted for you.

TONI WILSON: Thank you, Jenn. So let’s start with TEGL 17-05. And this is the one that’s focused on common measures, and as Jenn had mentioned in the introduction, this is definitely an oldie but goodie. This is really where you want to make sure you start and know this one inside out. It provides background on these – (inaudible) – common measures and policies for both adults and youth. It does provide information on allowable data sources to document your common measure outcomes.

Please keep in mind that this TEGL is a good background information for the YouthBuild program, but YouthBuild has chosen to (divide ?) some of its (current ?) members differently – other than WIA programs.

So we encourage everyone to use this TEGL along with your performance goals memo. So make sure you kind of keep those together and make sure you are in line with what your performance goals are.

Change 1 and 2 provide further clarity of Attachment C, which is part of the attachment of this. It describes the educational functioning levels for the youth literacy-numeracy measure and how outcomes is measured, so this may be very beneficial to review. So keep that piece in mind.

All right, TEGL 15-10, which is around the credentials – increasing credentials, degree and certificate attainment. Definitely this provides additional context for TEGL 17-05, specifically around that credentialing. And it further defines credentials, information on how to improve your attainment and how to identify the industry-recognized credentials. Emphasis for these grantees should be on the Credential Resource Guide, which you’ll find in Attachment 2. That

YouthBuild Webinar Series: TENs and TEGLs – Page 5 of 21 The Policies That Matter Throughout the Life of Your DOL YouthBuild Grant Tuesday, July 8, 2014 gets to the very specific information on how to help grantees really make an informed decision on where their credentials may qualify.

Also there’s a lot of very good online tools in this attachment tool that could really link you to some really good information, both in reference to making these decisions and, once you’ve made a decision, kind of going a little deeper. So keep that in mind.

And always remember, with these credentials: industry-recognized, stackable, portable and, in reference to education, accredited.

So TEGL 15-10, which is focused on the match and allowable construction and other capital assets costs to the YouthBuild program. This – it definitely provides important information on what construction-related costs are allowable with grant or match funds for your worksite training. So this is very important to make sure you stay within compliance of your grant and especially around the money. It provides further explanation of the match funds under the YouthBuild, which is at the 25 percent grant requirement. And also, particular focus should be on the attachment, which is the YouthBuild-selected items’ cost, which provides very specific information on various construction activities and cost and whether they are allowable with grant match funds.

Remember match, if it’s not allowable to be charged to the grant, it is not allowable as a match requirement. So definitely want to keep that in mind as you are reviewing that information.

All right: TEN 13-12, the finding a quality pre-apprenticeship program and related tools and resources; so this TEN is very good to just really provide information on how a pre- apprenticeship program is defined and how to develop one. And as we know, YouthBuild is a pre-apprenticeship program. And as you review this document, there will be moments where you’ll say, well, I don’t know if YouthBuild does fit this definition. But if you look in the footnotes, YouthBuild has been declared by the Department of Labor as an official pre- apprenticeship program – so there are a few items that are in that TEGL – I mean in that TEN – but just noting that footnote.

This TEN provides very helpful strategies for grantees to better understand collaboration with their registered apprenticeship and pass the facilitated entry and articulation and it also provides information on resources to develop a pre-apprenticeship program and information on existing pre-apprenticeships for potential partnerships.

I also want to add to this particular slide that – and I don’t have it up as a slide, but the team here is going to help put some things up there – to check out TEN 18-13 and that TEN is on the century registered apprenticeship, which is a shared vision for increasing opportunities, innovation and competitiveness for American workers and employees. So this will be a – this will be a good test, by the end of this webinar, for you to see if you’ve learned how to quickly find TENs and TEGLs. So remember that that’s TEN 18-13. This’ll be one you want to check out. It also includes a pre-apprenticeship toolkit and Gary has just put up the web address to that toolkit, which you will also find in the TEN, so that’ll give you some really good information in reference to a 21st century apprenticeship.

YouthBuild Webinar Series: TENs and TEGLs – Page 6 of 21 The Policies That Matter Throughout the Life of Your DOL YouthBuild Grant Tuesday, July 8, 2014 And one last point on this particular TEN is that – just as a – as a note or a side-note – on Monday, July 14th, the secretary of labor is going to be having a webinar on registered apprenticeship and I believe that’s at – from 2 to 3.

Thank you – Gary has posted up – that’s the name of the webinar. Unfortunately, it is at capacity right now, and so there is just a waiting list, but if you are interested I still encourage you to get on the waiting list. There is usually a lot of opportunities to still get on, even if you’re on a waiting list.

If for some reason you’re not able to get on, we do always have the archives, so you’ll be able to view the archives on this webinar.

But, just real quick: The webinar itself will highlight some new things that are happening around pre-apprenticeship – I mean, around a registered apprenticeship – and also some partnerships that we have with our federal partners, including HUD. So I encourage everybody to check that out, and, as I said, it’ll be a good exercise to check out that 10-18 before you go on the webinar.

All right, so TEN 44, which is providing strategy to the One-Stop Career Center system on collaborating with YouthBuild program. And this particular TEN provides information on the YouthBuild program and opportunities for partnering or collaborating with the One-Stop Career Center System, which we are – which we – now is known as the American Job Center.

So it provides examples of existing YouthBuilds and agency partnerships and it can be very useful in approaching area agencies for collaboration. So it is a really good – especially as you begin your programs and you kind of revisit your relationships, this is a very good resource to start with.

All right, I’m going to hand this over to Jenn, who’s going to walk us through a few more of our TEGLs and TENs.

JENN SMITH: Thanks, Toni.

Really briefly before we do that, a few slides back, you mentioned about the construction costs for match, and somebody wanted clarity about what you’ve mentioned about the rules pertaining to match funds. You want to reiterate that?

MS. WILSON: Let’s see if I understand. Could you repeat the match funds, which is 25 percent, is that the –

MS. SMITH: No, I think it’s the part about how if it’s not allowable as grants – if it’s not allowable costs for the grant funds, it’s not allowable costs for the match.

MS. WILSON: Yeah, so with – right, with match, I was just noting that kind of a rule of thumb is that if it’s not allowable to your grant itself, it’s not allowable for match funds, meaning that you may need to look at your leverage funds for that.

YouthBuild Webinar Series: TENs and TEGLs – Page 7 of 21 The Policies That Matter Throughout the Life of Your DOL YouthBuild Grant Tuesday, July 8, 2014 So let me try to think of an example. If you’re – we’ll use food: If you’re not allowed to use – food is allowable cost under the grant, then you would not be able to use match funds to pay for food because the same rules would apply. So it’s that type of a rule of thumb.

And you can get more details of that through your – if you have very specific questions on something that you’re not sure if it’s allowable or not, I would encourage you to talk with your FTO. That’s just more kind of a general guidance, the kind that that help you kind of check in if you’re doing something that, you know, you know you wouldn’t be able to use in any of the other funds. So hopefully, that helps you – (inaudible) – and it sounds like it is. Good.

All right. Jenn?

MS. SMITH: All right. Good example.

OK. So TEGL 2-10, Clarification on the Use of YouthBuild Funds Provided by Separate Year Funding Appropriations. This TEGL was created back in 2010 because we started noticing an issue with – once YouthBuild grants were originally funded in 2007. But we started noticing that the (universe ?) had a lot of replication, if you will, from the fact that we had a lot of grants who were awarded funds in one year and then were awarded in a later grant competition as well.

And we wanted to make sure that because the life cycle of the grant funds is so long because it has (longer-serving ?) youths, that it made clear to grantees that each grant must be considered as a separate program cycle and you can’t mingle grant funds between different youths who enrolled in, say, your 2007 grant couldn’t then be served with funds from your 2009 grant. You have to fully serve a youth under each of the, you know, separate grant cycles, unless, for instance, they were an unsuccessful exiter in one grant cycle, in which case you could then re- enroll. And there’s a new grantee, because they’d be counting twice with the new grant funds.

So this is the policy that we’ve created in response to realizing that that was a confusion out there about how those grant funds and how to independently track on them. So we made sure that grantees through this TEGL understood that each grant were to be separate and it had to be treated as such as though it was, you know, funded by totally different entities, if you will. So that one’s pretty easy, very short two-pager, but very important to understand that policy.

TEN 13-11. This is just a – provides information to help grantees understand the importance of documenting in our YouthBuild case records. It tries to help provide resources for ensuring proper documentation that’s used by providing examples of what some allowable documentation is for various eligibility types as well as other areas where you might need documentation, and it just really reminds grantees of your responsibility to confirm eligibility prior to enrollment in services through the use of those acceptable forms of documentation and making sure that you keep copies and files of all that documentation in the case record. You know, again, we ask that grantees enter all this data into the MIS, but all that MIS information has to be then backed up with a lot of background documentation.

YouthBuild Webinar Series: TENs and TEGLs – Page 8 of 21 The Policies That Matter Throughout the Life of Your DOL YouthBuild Grant Tuesday, July 8, 2014 Next we have TEGL 11-09, including change one and two, expanded participant eligibility for the YouthBuild program. I almost thing we could probably do a webinar on just this TEGL. This one we know has been very complicated for people to understand. It’s a very complicated and in no way easy-to-understand policy. I saw that LaToye (ph) already mentioned this in her chat response to the question about, you know, what TENs and TEGLs are most helpful.

The key things to understand with this TEGL, it tries to accomplish a few things, which is why there were several changes to the TEGL. The original TEGL was really trying to document the fact that the definition of a high school job out for YouthBuild is slightly different from Workforce Investment Act definition. The reason for this all stems from what is called the sequential service strategy approach. I find it helpful for people if I give background on it. Because the YouthBuild had been previously funded by Housing and Urban Development because it was a pre-existing fully formed program before the Department of Labor took it over and started funding it, we made a series of adaptions to the way that we would probably normally run a program in consideration of the way that things were already being done so as not to harm the program model as it currently stood.

(Inaudible) – that we had a strong group of YouthBuild grantees who had created their own charter schools. And those charter schools were feeder schools, if you will, for the YouthBuild program. So first they would bring them into the charter school and begin serving them through that YouthBuild charter school to try and get their folks on the education and whatnot before they then moved them through the charter school into the YouthBuild program proper, if you will.

So the fact was, because these charter schools were built because of the YouthBuild program, we didn’t want to create a policy that would – or enforce a policy that already existed in WIA which would make it impossible to have those charter schools, because the YouthBuild Transfer Act made it clear that this program is supposed to serve dropouts. However, the WIA Workforce Investment Act definition of a dropout is a youth who is not currently in school. If we followed that definition for a high school dropout – sorry, I should say, someone who is not currently in school and does not have a degree – if we followed that definition, it would mean that none of the youth coming through that YouthBuild charter school could then be enrolled in the YouthBuild program because they weren’t at school. So that’s what makes this policy a little bit complicated. So the first thing we did with the original TEGL was to explain why the definition for a high school dropout was different with YouthBuild then it was with WIA, and that change meant that we stated that with YouthBuild, a high school dropout is anyone who has been a dropout. They may currently be a dropout, or they could have, in the past, been a dropout of a traditional school and still did not have their diploma. This allows for the very specific sequential service strategy, in which only those programs that have this pre-existing YouthBuild-owned and operated charter school would be able to still enroll their youth in the program because those youths had dropped out at some point before they had been recruited into this more comprehensive YouthBuild model prior to the actual YouthBuild construction and training program.

YouthBuild Webinar Series: TENs and TEGLs – Page 9 of 21 The Policies That Matter Throughout the Life of Your DOL YouthBuild Grant Tuesday, July 8, 2014 So because that policy wasn’t made all that clear, the reasons for that sequential service strategy with the original TEGL, we chose to create – change one, to try and further explain that sequential service strategy, and we did, but I think we still kind of realized that it wasn’t getting to the point that we wanted it to of really explaining why the sequential service strategy was so limited. So we created change two, in which we further try to clarify why only YouthBuild owned and operated charter schools can use the sequential service strategy, and anyone else should, as Latoya (sp) correctly said, should not be recruiting from a YouthBuild – you know – or excuse me – from another alternative school; certainly not from a traditional secondary school. And, you know, I – we know that some programs do have partnerships with secondary school systems or may even be a part of a secondary school system, so, you know, this is a very, very, very important foundational TEGL for all of the programs to really understand how that partnership can work and what the limitations are of your partnership with a traditional school. There is the 25 percent exemption that allows for youth who may currently be in a traditional school environment but that is not working for them that can be referred over to the YouthBuild program, as well – you do want to have a partnership with the secondary school, because you may need that documentation that the youth has dropped out of that traditional school to help support their eligibility in your program. There are many ways that having a partnership with that school can help you, but you do need to understand that fine line of the youth having needed to already drop out, because the program is really trying to serve those youth who are truly most at risk, OK? All right. TEGL 14-09. This one pops up very recently for us again; we actually originally created this TEGL in program year 2009 to focus on concerns related to mental toughness or (indicational ?) allowable costs in YouthBuild. Mental toughness is a rather unique component to YouthBuild, and again, this was another one of those concessions we made where mental toughness was a pre-existing component of the YouthBuild program when the Department of Labor took it on. We didn’t want to disallow mental toughness, but it still had to fall within the lines of what the Workforce Investment Act, our, you know, legislating body said was allowable in terms of costs. So this TEGL seeks to make very clear the limitation on spending funds prior to enrollment of a youth, which really means that the only costs that can be spent are costs directly related to staff time and other administrative costs. So part of the policy was making clear that mental toughness is a not a time when you can pay stipends or wages to be used. It is not a time where you can, you know, provide gifts to the youth or incentive payments or anything of that type. You cannot pay for, you know, any sort of direct cost to the youth, because they have not yet been enrolled. And the only time at which cost can be spent on participants is once they are actually enrolled into a WIA program. So that was the first clarification of this TEGL, but the second was also to provide guidance in how to design and implement a mental toughness component. We don’t want the mental toughness to become so onerous that it’s hard for youth to make it through it and then be enrolled in a program that could be very beneficial to them. We do see that there are benefits to having mental toughness – to see about the emotional preparedness of youth to succeed in the program, but we want to make sure that there are limitations on it. And we’ll talk a little bit more about an example that has happened in the field related to this, but we did find that it was necessary to send out a reminder about this particular TEGL just recently.

YouthBuild Webinar Series: TENs and TEGLs – Page 10 of 21 The Policies That Matter Throughout the Life of Your DOL YouthBuild Grant Tuesday, July 8, 2014 OK. And, finally, the last TEGL we have here is TEGL 35-12 – definition and guidance on allowable construction credentials for YouthBuild programs. This is another one of our YouthBuild-specific TEGLs, and the most-recently published one. This one was published in June of 2013, actually, which was the very end of program year 2012. So this one’s only about a year old. The focus of this one was really to provide guidance on the minimum level of certification that’s needed with each of the three nationally industry-recognized construction certifications. What this means is that we were learning that a lot of people were marking as an outcome for youth who have completed any of the modules within one of these construction certifications, even though that module alone does not mean that they have attained the actual certification. Many of these certifications have multiple modules that must be completed in order to be considered certified. So we wanted to make sure that it was clear to grantees that they should not be marking as an outcome an (EMIS ?) – some of those interim certifications – but rather, only once the true level of certification had been – had been depleted. And this also encapsulates the same explanation from TEGL 15-10 about how to determine other credentials that may qualify for your program – and going back to what Toni said about stackable and portable and being clear pathways – and really just focuses on some of that clarification, but makes it mostly specific to those construction credentials that we know all of our programs are utilizing, OK?

OK. Finally, we just wanted to highlight for you a few coming features, if you will. We have a few TEGLs and TENs that are in various states of design. We have a TEGL on Construction Plus, which is the new addition to our program model starting with 2012 grant awards, in which we do now allow grantees who have been previously funded by us to choose to expand into additional in-demand industries – just trying to reflect the – you know, the changing labor market and making sure that there are opportunities that are diverse and, you know, more opportunities for youth in fields that may be of more interest to them than construction, without removing the importance of the construction component, both for its focus on increasing low-income housing and, also, the community service and the teamwork components of construction. And that has a very helpful Considerations attachment that is considerations around what certification programs might be best when working with the populations in YouthBuild.

So that TEGL we expect to be published pretty shortly. It’s mostly through our very rigorous internal review and clearance process, so look for that shortly. We also have coming down the pike soon after that a training and employment notice on the new high school equivalency degrees. For example, these are the three very specific degree equivalency diplomas that have replaced the GED. One, of course, is still called the GED, but then you also have HiSET and one other that I can never remember offhand. But, really, this is just – again, this is not – this is the difference between a TEGL and a TEN – right? – that we discussed earlier. This TEN is really just notification, pointing out that, you know, the Department of Labor’s aware of these new degrees, and how this may impact our programs and what to do to make sure you’re working within the confines of that new structure.

And then finally, hopefully coming in later this year – I’m working on it currently – is the TEGL on qualified worksites. We’ve definitely seen that a lot of our programs have struggled with what is probably one of the most complex part of the YouthBuild program model, which is

YouthBuild Webinar Series: TENs and TEGLs – Page 11 of 21 The Policies That Matter Throughout the Life of Your DOL YouthBuild Grant Tuesday, July 8, 2014 securing qualifying worksites, worksites that are, you know, both truly low-income development and also that allow for a diverse enough and intensive enough hands-on training experience for the youth to truly qualify as a construction worksite. So that TEGL will be providing more guidance on that.

OK, the last thing, this is what – you know, hopefully as soon as this webinar is over you will rush out and test this particular slide to try and find that TEGL 18-13 that Toni – or is it a TEN, I believe, actually, right –

MR. : Yes.

MS. SMITH: – 1018-13 on the 21st century apprenticeship. So this is where you’ll be able to go to look it up. If you go to www.doleta.gov – those of you who have been on it previously will see that we’ve recently redesigned this home page, so what you need to do now is go to “resource library” – it’s written across the top toward the right side – and click down to “policy and guidance.” And then you’ll see this system where it has a bunch of different options, because there’s many, many different types of policy and guidance documents that we use. All of the ones that employment and training delivers will be either TEGLs or TENs.

So based on what you’re looking for and whether it’s a TEGL or TEN, you would want to select TEGL or TEN from the advisories list. You would then select the guidance year, which is the second part. You do it in kind of reverse order because what you’re going to do is look at that second part of the number. You know, 1705 you’d be looking for ’05, which is the program year. And then select “list” and it will bring up all of the ’05 TEGLs. And you would scroll down until you find TEGL 1705.

So you definitely want to practice this and make sure you can understand where to find all these. I mean, again, we also have them on our community of practice, but if course we’re sort of between communities of practice right now. So, you know, we will update you, I’m sure, as soon as the new community – new and improved community of practice is up and running to where you can find these resources again pooled.

But in the meantime, you may also just want to explore the TEGLs and TENs because, you know, this is our comprehensive list of what TEGLs and TENs we think matter most for YouthBuild. You’ll see that many of them were designed specifically for YouthBuild, as sometimes happens, but these may not be the only TEGLs and TENs that are informative or helpful for you in designing your program model, so please keep that in mind. It’s not the only TEGLs and TENs out there. YouthBuild Webinar Series: TENs and TEGLs – Page 12 of 21 The Policies That Matter Throughout the Life of Your DOL YouthBuild Grant Tuesday, July 8, 2014 OK, finally, just to give you guys a little more, you know, explanation of, you know, how TEGLs and TENs factor into the management process for us and for you, some highlights of how the Department of Labor Employment and Training Administration uses TEGLs and TENs for compliance and program improvement.

First, you know, we’d issue TEGLs whenever we see an issue of policy concern that’s brought to our attention. This can happen because of questions or concerns that are raised from grantees. I often find we get requests from regional federal project officers for clarification or reiteration of policies, you know, because of things that they’re seeing in the fields. One example of this would be the qualifying work – the TEGL that I’m currently working on we’ve seen – we’ve just seen a lot of issues coming out of the field from our federal project officers and our technical assistance coaches related to not really understanding what it means to have a qualifying worksite. So because of that we’re going to create a TEGL to tray and, you know, make that clearer.

It also allows us to quickly get guidance out that’s – you know, particularly in the case of TEGLs it’s codified, if you will. I mean, it is – it is creating policy with our TEGLs. Again, TENs are more just information and notices, but our TEGLs are policies. So it’s a quick way for us to get information out to you guys that creates policy areas for you that you can use as guidance. Going forward it will be cited by federal project officers when they do monitoring reviews and the like.

Again, TENs we use more to share general policy issues. It can raise awareness of considerations but it may or may not directly impact you. An example of this would be the TEN on the new high school equivalency diplomas that will be coming out soon. Another example is this 24th century apprenticeship TEN that Toni mentioned. Obviously we are very focused on creating more apprenticeship opportunities between YouthBuild programs and Registered Apprenticeship, so we certainly think that considerations in that document can be very helpful, but it is not formal policy that, you know, your program must follow.

And then finally, I mean, the reason we use TEGLs and TENs is because it gives us more flexibility and a faster response to policy issues than regulation amendments, which can probably – often take, you know, at least a year, if not several, and they’re more prescriptive than just general Q’s and A’s because, as I said, TEGLs are true policy guidance documents.

OK, at this point I’m going to turn it over to Toni, and she’s going to tell us about an example of how this has helped in the field.

MS. WILSON: Thank you, Jenn.

YouthBuild Webinar Series: TENs and TEGLs – Page 13 of 21 The Policies That Matter Throughout the Life of Your DOL YouthBuild Grant Tuesday, July 8, 2014 So there’s an example that we wanted to highlight. This one comes from Region 1, and a YouthBuild was using the TEGL 14-09, which was the mental toughness orientation allowable cost in a YouthBuild program that you heard Jenn mention that in an earlier slide. And this particular grantee did review the – did review the TEGL – sorry – and revised their mental toughness policy to be more in line with the TEGL itself. So the TEGL mentions that your – that your mental toughness should be no more than about three weeks because at the time before this TEGL came out, there range was very wide, and some were going, you know, a few months. And in this case, they revised their policy.

And what this ended up meaning was that the youth that were enrolled – they were – well, the youth that were participating were enrolled sooner, so they were able to start their spending, in reference to youth – (inaudible) – and they were able to reach their required total grant enrollment and other performance measures sooner. And so this is an example of where the TEGL actually was something that someone took this piece and then put – was able to implement that and really see some results from that. I know that mental toughness one, there were a lot of changes once people were able to get that.

And we would love to hear, for those that are on the line, if others have some examples of where they’ve used a TEN or a TEGL and made a change within their organization or, you know, was just – really helped clarify a piece. So if you had something like that you’d like to share, you can put that information in the chat, or you can also call in, unmute your line if you actually want to say that on the phone. And we can – when we get to Q-and-A, we can pull some of those up. So please continue to enter that information. We’d love to hear that, those examples.

In the meantime, our poll question is just revisiting what we asked at the beginning, what TENs and TEGLs do you find most helpful. And as you’ve been kind of reminded of some of the TENs and TEGLs that are very specific around the YouthBuild program, we wanted to just get a sense of what – or some of the TEGLs that you guys are finding to be the most helpful in your program. So you can enter that in the chat, or you can unmute your line here – what is the passcode so I can dial – it sounds like someone is trying to call in.

The – (inaudible) – that we’re seeing – these are from – are these from earlier? OK. That makes sense.

All right, well, people can still continue to enter that information in the chat. Thank you, Gary, for anybody who didn’t want to dial in, on what some of the TENs and TEGLs are helpful. I would just note here that the slide, which was slide 11, which is the chart that Jenn started out with, to make sure that all these TENs and TEGLs are helpful to you in your program. If you do nothing else, I would make sure that you have that slide on your desktop, and you can pull as you go through different phases of your YouthBuild grant cycle. So that would be very important.

I don’t see anything, so we’ll maybe go back, but continue to enter that if there’s something that comes up.

YouthBuild Webinar Series: TENs and TEGLs – Page 14 of 21 The Policies That Matter Throughout the Life of Your DOL YouthBuild Grant Tuesday, July 8, 2014 So let’s open it to some Q-and-A, and once again any comments, in reference to our webinar. So let’s see, some of the questions that we have – does the TEGL 11-09, which is the mental toughness – is that – I’m sorry.

MS. : That’s the sequential service.

MS. WILSON: Oh, sorry, sequential service. My apology. TEGL 11-09 apply to cohorts that were inducted before the TEGL was issued?

MS. SMITH: That is a great question, and I’m actually really, really glad that someone asked that because that’s an important distinction that we actually didn’t get into, and I’m impressed that you thought about this, because in general, what we would say is that, you know, before there was policy guidance, obviously – you know, in the absence of guidance, nobody can be penalized for what they didn’t know. However, the interesting thing about 11-09 is that the sequential service strategy and the eligibility criteria are actually codified in our YouthBuild Transfer Act, which was the – (inaudible) – the law that passed YouthBuild program from HUD to the Department of Labor.

So therefore this rule was in place before TEGL 11-09. We just were trying to make it clear – more clearly understood. So this is sort of one of those rare examples where because this is, you know, really just kind of a better explanation of the law as it existed in our transfer act, it’s always been the case with YouthBuild. So what’s contained in 11-09 has always been the rule for YouthBuild from the beginning of the program as it’s been run by DOL. In general, though, when it comes to TEGLs, before the policy existed, you know, nobody would be penalized, if you will, for what they – you know, where there was no policy.

MS. WILSON: All right. Thank you. All right, before we go to the next question, a reminder, please type any questions that you may have in the chat line. (Gives phone queuing instructions.) Thank you.

MR. : (Gives phone queuing instructions.)

MS. WILSON: Yeah, I don’t want to send you into the operation – operator cycle there. (Gives phone queuing instructions.)

All right, so our next question is – so for 14-09, which is the mental toughness – sorry about that earlier – can we not give youth bus passes during mental toughness? Many of them don’t have transportation.

That’s a very good question. In reference to that – so mental toughness, you know, as said in the – as said earlier, is – cannot start incurring costs until they’re actually enrolled. So you can do kind of recruitment things. Pretty much what we would encourage you to do is use your leverage funds, so if you’re using bus passes as part of your method in reference to recruitment, we would suggest that you use that as your leverage funds. Anything that’s kind of before that during that mental toughness – there are a few items, but buses – transportation under recruitment is kind of iffy. It depends on your location and stuff, and I would advise using the leverage funds for that.

YouthBuild Webinar Series: TENs and TEGLs – Page 15 of 21 The Policies That Matter Throughout the Life of Your DOL YouthBuild Grant Tuesday, July 8, 2014 MS. SMITH: I mean, another suggestion there is, I mean, a lot of our programs do get donated bus passes. Another thought would be co-enrollment with the Workforce Investment Act, you know, American Job Center programs for youth is allowable. So it might be that, you know, you’re still doing mental toughness with them through YouthBuild, but you have them enrolled in One-Stop, and the One-Stop may be a way that you can get them those bus passes because they are technically enrolled in that program. It’s just that the – you know, the One-Stops aren’t nearly as comprehensive as the YouthBuild program model.

But co-enrollment, again, as you’ll see from the – which one is it? I wish I had these all memorized. From 10-44-07, about how you can collaborate with One-Stop centers, that may be yet another one to add to the list there. So yeah, you have to get a little bit strategic because you can’t spend, you know, those kind of costs on the participant before enrollment.

MS. WILSON: All right. Thank you.

OK, our next question: Will there be an upgrades or revisions to the DOL MIS system in the near future?

MS. SMITH: I guess that’s a question for me. That’s a loaded question. I don’t know how to answer that. I mean, I guess what I would say is I’m curious if you’re looking for any particular revisions or enhancements. What I can tell you is that there are constant revisions and enhancements happening in the system. I meet weekly with the programmers, and we have a list of five or six that we’re currently working on for YouthBuild. I mean, some of these are really kind of fixes to glitches that we’ve discovered in the system, as opposed to out-and-out enhancement.

What I always tell people is if you have some ideas for things you would like to see in the system, it’s all dependent on funding and the timeline. I can’t promise, you know, it will happen or that it’ll happen quickly, but I would strongly encourage you to email me directly at smith, S-M-I-T-H, .jenn, J-E-N-N, @dol.gov – and you’ll see my email at the end of the slides – and let me know your thoughts on anything that you’re particularly looking for or things that you think could be done better, and we’ll consider it.

Thanks, Gary (sp).

MS. WILSON: Thank you.

All right. Our next question. Is there a list of TENs and TEGLs in order to allow for easy search of topics?

So – I will start, in reference to answering that, so as part of our CoP we did try to list our TENs and TEGLs to make them a little easier for you to locate. As it’s been kind of hinted, our CoP is down, and because we are in the process of transferring over to the new Workforce GPS, which should be going live hopefully within this summer, so the current answer is no, you still have to kind of use the format that Jenn described in reference to going on the site and kind of putting

YouthBuild Webinar Series: TENs and TEGLs – Page 16 of 21 The Policies That Matter Throughout the Life of Your DOL YouthBuild Grant Tuesday, July 8, 2014 TEN and TEGL and the name of it, which is why we tried to use this webinar. And I would encourage you to use that slide, Slide11, if you want to pull that up again, let that little chart, that little cheat sheet – that’ll at least give you a quick reference of the numbers, to find things quicker.

Once our CoP is back up and running, we do have a section on TENs and TEGLs that at least relate to YouthBuild, to make those a little easier for you to find.

And there’s that chart. So this – (audio break) – is a reminder. You want to kind of keep that – at least you can get a quick reference of the numbers to help you find those things a little easier.

MS. SMITH: And to save you guys the frustration of discovering this yourself, if you go to that – you know, the page where I told you how to find the TEGLs and TENs, when you get to the advisory list, or I think it might even be the page before that, you’ll see that there’s somewhere where you can search for them. Just to save you the frustration of figuring this out, for whatever reason, it does not work. It never has. It’s one of my biggest frustrations, because the ideal thing would be if you’d be able to type in a search topic and pull up any relevant TEGLs and TENs. As far as I can see, since I’ve worked here – and that’s been 11 years now – that has never worked. (Chuckles.)

MS. WILSON: (Chuckles.)

MS. SMITH: So you know, I apologize for that. I don’t know why, but that’s why we try and just make sure that you guys have the ones that are most important to you. We know you guys have only a limited amount time to sit there and, you know, wade through years and years of TEGLs and TENs. But even if you just go to like, say, the TEGLs and you pull up, you know, different program years, you get the full list there, and you know, the titles kind of tell you what you need to know. So you can figure out if there are any others that might be of interest to you.

But we’ve really, like Toni said, tried to encapsulate the important ones here, between this webinar and what you’ll see on the CoP when it comes back. So –

MS. WILSON: Good thing. Thank you, Kathy (sp).

All right. Our next question: During the slide presentation on TEGL 17-05, there was a mention of a performance goals menu – memo, and what is that?

MS. SMITH: You want me to take that?

MS. WILSON: Sure. If you want to – because you – I know you’ve written.

MS. SMITH: Yeah. So the performance goals memo is a document that – every grant class we send out the internal goals that we expect for the program. It includes your enrollment goals and then it includes your outcome goals for the – for the common performance measures.

YouthBuild Webinar Series: TENs and TEGLs – Page 17 of 21 The Policies That Matter Throughout the Life of Your DOL YouthBuild Grant Tuesday, July 8, 2014 So this is different from what you guys wrote in your grant applications as what you said would be the goals you would meet, because, as we put into this (list stage ?) for grant applications, we reserve the right to negotiate those performance measures, and we try to hold everybody to a consistent level. You know, the measures that everybody says they’re going to meet are very different across every program. So it’s sort of the internal measure we use to document whether you guys are being successful.

Another part of the rationale behind that is there’s what’s called the Government Performance and Results Act, or GPRA. Every year those targets go up, and they’re what we as the agency are held against in terms of demonstrating that YouthBuild is successful. So we set performance goals for you guys that make sure that you’re a step ahead of what the GPRA goals are, so that we make sure that the YouthBuild program continues to be successful whenever we put the budget forward and have to compare it to those internal GPRA goals, because that’s how we make sure that we keep getting funding to support this program.

So at the beginning of every grant cycle, the primary point of contact for the grants is sent that performance goals memo. What we encourage them to do is make sure to share it with their staff, so that – because every one of you should know what your performance goals are with each grant cycle. You know, there’s often a lot of staff turnover, so it may be that, you know, that’s not being shared as it should. I always suggest, when we do our MIS webinars, it’s something that should be presented at regular staff meetings and measured against, so that you guys know where you are on an ongoing basis in meeting those targets.

So if you’re not familiar with it, I would certainly ask your project director, and if they aren’t familiar, your federal project officer can definitely direct you to the performance goals memo, because every one of you should be aware of what the performance goals are that your program is being measured against.

MS. WILSON: All right. Our next question or – let’s see. A little off topic, but it’s in reference to the CoP. So it sounds like someone’s just trying to get some information. There was a (peer- to-peer ?) in Chicago, which I heard went really well, and just trying to get those resources. For now, if there is a particular resource that you would like from the CoP, you can email [email protected] and request that information. We hope to have the CoP up by the end of the summer, if not earlier than that. So in the meantime, we’re not sending out kind of a mass email on the resources. We’ll just do them by request, but then all of that information will be up when we meet the new CoP. But we can have individuals saying it’s pulled for you if you are looking for a particular workshop you are in or something of that sort. Now, we do apologize for this transition time, but we are really excited about the new CoP, so look out for new information for that. All right. So let’s just see. Our last question is around TEGL 5, allowable construction. Do all construction projects have to be residential-based, or can they include construction projects such green houses, community gardens or picnic/playground areas at parks?

YouthBuild Webinar Series: TENs and TEGLs – Page 18 of 21 The Policies That Matter Throughout the Life of Your DOL YouthBuild Grant Tuesday, July 8, 2014 All right. So to answer that, so allowable construction, you do have to have – you do want to work on your approved worksite, which is in your what your grant was approved for so that’s usually some sort of construction project that might be residential-based. Construction projects such as picnics or playground areas sound more like they would go under kind of that 25 percent rule in reference to – I’m sorry, I’m sorry, say it again? MS. SMITH: Well, there’s a 10 percent that are allowed to – MS. WILSON: Ten percent. I’m sorry. I thought you said 25 percent. MS. SMITH: Yeah, yeah, yeah. MS. WILSON: Ten percent. My apologies. Ten percent rule – and let me stress that, 10 percent, 10. I apologize. I was thinking of – (inaudible) – 25. So, 10, 10 percent rule in reference to the picnic or playground area. That type of thing kind of goes more under that community type of a project, so it’s kind of keeping that piece in mind. Do you have something you want to add to that, Jenn? MS. SMITH: No, I mean, just the – 10 percent of your total grant funds – so whatever community project you choose to undertake that are not residential in nature have to be within 10 percent of your total grant amount. It cannot go over that in terms of all of the affiliated costs. That means whatever participant stipends or wages, whatever construction costs that you use for that development. So you have to keep a very tight track of your spending to make sure that you don’t go over that. And just to add to that a little bit, because this is something we’ve discovered with the work sites, we had some – we’ve had a lot of programs to – I wish I could name – they worked with certain communities organization. I’m trying – they’re going to be in the TEGL, but I can’t think of the name of it. There’s a couple of organizations that really sort of do this light-touch renovation with low-income local communities, and we’ve had a lot of grantees who’ve tried to partner with some of them. Something rebuild – Rebuild Together I think might be the name of one of them. That might be familiar to some of you, and there’s another one. But these projects really are not substantial enough to rise to the level of being, you know, substantial construction for the qualifying work sites, but it’s because they’re small enough in expenditures, they could fall under that 10 percent as well. So it’s more of the community service side of things than it is the actual expanding low-income housing stocks. So it’s something to keep in mind. But again, you have to keep really close track of it, because it’s all the affiliated costs that go into that cannot be above 10 percent of your total amount. MS. WILSON: All right. Thank you. Thank you so much, Jenn and – (inaudible). It sounds like we answered your question here – (inaudible). I just wanted to – because we’re reaching our hour here – (audio break) – I just wanted to highlight some top recommendations. For one, I can’t stress enough about the chart that we showed earlier. If you do nothing else, I’d have that at your desktop. It will help remind you in reference to the YouthBuild-specific TENS and TEGLs you’ll want to focus on, and also where you should be checking in kind of in the life of your grant cycle.

YouthBuild Webinar Series: TENs and TEGLs – Page 19 of 21 The Policies That Matter Throughout the Life of Your DOL YouthBuild Grant Tuesday, July 8, 2014 Other things you can do is, you might want to print them out, including your staff handbook – you know, review relevant guidance with staff. Everybody should be familiar with the TENs and TEGLs as they relate to the work of your program. You want to check the resource libraries for additional guidance. That’s in reference to the – checking out the community of practice for additional guidance on other resources. So we’ve mentioned already about the COP. So they will – when the new site goes up, there will continue to be another section on resources and resource guidance. Also, when you – when you do log on to get these TENs and TEGLs, you can also actually get alerts. So you can sign up on that DOL site. Make sure you get alerts from the new TENs and TEGLs that are up. But we also – anything related to YouthBuild, we make sure that those are on the COP.

Just a few housekeeping items. I just want to remind people to save the date. We have a – save the date for the post-program placement and retention, which is happening August 5th. There is a – and then in September, education, in October, counseling and case management. And for the August one, and hopefully not September but maybe September, you will receive information through email while our COP is down. So you’ll still be getting information updates on these.

Contact information – so if you do have additional questions around TENs and TEGLs – I know as you think about this webinar some other questions may come up – you can contact Jenn or I. Our contact information is up here. And you can just email us or give us a call and we can help guide you in reference to that.

MS. SMITH: OK, so I just wanted to really quickly – you know, because we – you know, we got so into the questions. But while we were doing the questions I saw that at least one person did actually highlight for us the TENs and TEGLs that they thought were helpful, which I thought was kind of nice. And I definitely wanted to give them credit for that and just again remind you guys, because we – you know we have until 3:30 and of course we don’t want to keep you guys here if you’re just, you know, chomping at the bit to get onto the resource library and look at, you know, 10, 18, 13 or any of the other ones we highlighted.

But I did see that one person at least wrote in and said that they really found very helpful to them 17-05, which is the – you know, our original common measures policy TEGL, as well as the training and employment notice, 13-11, on YouthBuild participant documentation, and also that they found TEGL 1409, the one on mental toughness orientation, to be really helpful. So I thought that was very nice of them to highlight, you know, the policies that they’ve seen.

Is there anybody else who has any that they want to – they want to highlight for us before we do let you all go? And again, you know, our hope is that after this presentation you now feel a lot more of them are helpful, but you know, we know we need to give you a little bit of time to digest them as well. But I did want to highlight at least the ones who did tell us what they thought was really helpful.

Not seeing any others.

MS. WILSON: Well, we – as we’ve said, 149 and others as well are always good to reinforce policy. And as Jenn mentioned in previous slides, we have some new TENs and TEGLs that will YouthBuild Webinar Series: TENs and TEGLs – Page 20 of 21 The Policies That Matter Throughout the Life of Your DOL YouthBuild Grant Tuesday, July 8, 2014 be coming down the pike. So hopefully those will help – sort of be helpful to you in your program. There’ll be some new ones. And we definitely – you know, if you have any feedback or comments on something you may think of after the webinar, you know, feel free to email that information also.

MS. SMITH: Yeah.

MS. WILSON: All right.

MS. SMITH: We’ll definitely let you know when they all come out and, you know –

MS. WILSON: And we’ll keep you – definitely keep you posted.

MS. SMITH: Yeah.

MS. WILSON: Well, we can’t thank everybody enough who has joined this webinar today. We are going to still keep this up for a moment. So if you think of anything you want to add, you know, please include that. This webinar will also be in archive form, so that’s something that you can kind of refer to. Or a staff member who hasn’t been able to attend, this will be a really good kind of training for them to get themselves familiar with their TENs and TEGLS. So it’s kind of a really good part of your staff training piece. So we encourage that.

So without further ado, let’s say thank you and we will pass this over to Eric (sp) to close us out.

YouthBuild Webinar Series: TENs and TEGLs – Page 21 of 21 The Policies That Matter Throughout the Life of Your DOL YouthBuild Grant Tuesday, July 8, 2014