Senate Rules Committee

Thank you. All right, the Senate Rules Committee will come to order. Before we begin today's agenda, let's establish quorum. Can we please call the roll? Limon?

Grove?

Laird?

Ochoa Bog?

Reyes?

Quorum. A quorum has been established. If there are no objections, I'd like to take up first on today's agenda, Governor's appointments not required to appear, starting with item 2E, the appointment of Dorca Keene as member of the California Arts Council. Thank you. We have a motion. Did you say so moved? Oh, do we have a motion?

There you go. Thank you, Senator Reyes. We have a motion. Can we please call the roll? Limon.

Limon, aye. Grove.

Grove not voting. Laird?

Laird, aye. Ochoa Bog?

Reyes?

Reyes, aye. Three to zero. Thank you. That item is approved three to zero. Next item for governor's appointments not required to appear is item 2F, Luciana Profaca, PhD for the Commission on Disabilities. Do we have a motion?

Thank you, Vice Chair Grove. Can we please call the roll? Limon?

Limon, aye. Grove? Aye. Grove, aye. Laird? Aye. Laird, aye. Ochoa Bog? Aye. Ochoa Bog, aye. Reyes? Aye. Reyes, aye. 5-0. All right. The next item for governor's appointments not required to appear is item 2G, Sarah Han Shapiro, J.D., for the Commission on Disability Access. Thank you. We have a motion by Vice Chair Grove. Can we please call the roll? Limon? Aye. Limon, aye. Grove? Aye. Grove, aye. Laird, aye. Laird, aye. Ochoa Bogue, aye. Ochoa Bogue, aye. Reyes, aye. Reyes, aye. 5-0. That item is approved. 5-0. Next item for Governor's appointments not required to appear is item 2H, Robin Umberg for the California Veterans Board. I'll entertain a motion. Thank you, Vice Chair Grove. Can we please call the roll? Limon, aye. Limon, aye. Grove, aye. Grove aye. Laird? Aye. Laird aye. Ochoa Bogue? Aye. Ochoa Bogue aye. Reyes? Aye. Reyes aye. 5-0. All right. That item is approved. 5-0. Next item for governor's appointments not required to appear is item 2i. Veronica Zerrer for the California Veterans Board. Can I thank you? I have a motion by Vice Chair Grove. Can we please call the roll? Limon? Aye. Limon aye. Grove? Aye. Grove aye. Laird? Aye. Laird aye. Ochoa Bogue? Aye. Ochoa Bogues, aye. Reyes? Aye. Reyes, aye. 5-0. All right. That item is approved 5-0. Next item for Governor's appointments not required to appear is item 2-G. Sorry 2 Daniel Curtin for the California Water Commission Can I please get a motion for that I think we should talk about this one but no so moved I just teasing you All right Thank you We have a motion by Vice Chair Grove Can we please call the roll? Limon?

Limon, aye. Grove?

Grove, aye. Laird?

Laird, aye. Ochoa-Bogue?

Ochoa-Bogue, aye. Reyes?

Reyes, aye. 5-0. All right. That is 5-0. Next item for governor's appointments not required to appear is item 2K, Phil Ginsburg, J.D. for the State Park and Recreation Commission. Can I have a motion, please?

Thank you, Senator Laird. Can we please call the roll? Limon?

Limon, aye. Grove?

Grove, no. Laird?

Laird, aye. Ochoa Bog?

Ochoa Bog, no. Reyes?

Reyes, aye. Three to two. All right. The last item for governor's appointments not required to appear is item 2L, Francesca Vieter for the State Park and Recreation Commission. Can I please have a motion for that?

Can we please call the roll? Limon?

Limon, aye. Grove?

Grove, no. Laird?

Laird, aye. Ochoa-Bogue?

Ochoa-Bogue, no. Reyes?

Reyes, aye. 3 to 2. All right. That item is approved. 3 to 2. Next item I'd like to take up is item 3, reference of bills to committees. I'll entertain a motion. So. Thank you, Vice Chair Grove. Can we please call the roll? Limon?

Limon, aye. Grove?

Grove, aye. Laird? Aye. Laird, aye. Ochoa Bogue? Aye. Ochoa Bogue, aye. Reyes? Aye. Reyes, aye. 5-0. Thank you. We will now return to Governor's Appointees Required to Appear, Items 1A-1C, the appointments of Jesse Melgar, Tom Epstein, Joseph Williams, and members to the California Community College Board of Governors. You are welcome to come forward. Thank you for joining us. You will each have one to two minutes for your introduction. You're welcome to introduce anyone you may have in the room here with you today supporting you. And once you get near your time, we will let you know. We'll begin. Thank you.

Good afternoon, Chair Limon, Vice Chair Grove, members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to appear. I also want to thank Governor Newsom for reappointing me to the board. And I'm up for my third term. I've been on the board for 12 years. And I have to admit I knew very little about the community colleges when I first joined, but it didn't take me long to become really passionate about it. I have served as president and vice president of the board and have visited more than 50 colleges during my tenure. And during that time, I learned the significance of colleges to communities throughout the state, particularly rural communities. And as it's been mentioned, it serves everyone from adults, foster youth, veterans, the disabled, immigrants, prisoners, and high school students as well. And while I'm still no expert on the education details, I leave that to the professionals, but I do bring an outsider political and management experience plus a sense of urgency to try and break through what is often a very cumbersome process. I think our most important role during my tenure on the board has been the hiring of chancellors. And I think we've done an excellent job with Eloy Oakley, Sonia Christian, and for Calbright, Ajita Menon. And why I wanted to be reappointed, because I feel like the job is still not done. Our priority is to make sure every single student achieves their educational goals as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, it takes too long now, and too many people never finish the journey. So our role is to continually make the colleges student-ready, meet students where they are. And I think with our Vision 2030 of student success with equity, we're well on the road to doing that. Thank you.

Thank you, members. We'll start with Vice Chair Grove.

Thank you. Yeah, I think the goal for any institution should be that fraud is at zero, and I think there's some work to do to improve kind of the system and where we're at. One promising note, we asked for recent data of staff in the last 48 hours in preparation for this committee hearing. We understand that from the first quarter of 2025 to the first quarter of this year that we've seen about a 79% reduction in fraudulent applications. I'm so happy to follow up with you and share the latest data there. So that's going from 600,000 to about 127,000 applications. So, again, I think the goal needs to be zero, but there has been improvement, and I think it's going to be an issue that we've talked about in the few meetings that I've been a part of so far in the last few months, something that we're going to continue to track. Thank you.

There we go. Yeah, it's hard to do much more than add to what Mr. Belgar said. We've done, you know, since I've been there and this issue emerged a couple years ago, we have focused very intently on it and have tried a number of different strategies and employed a variety of ways to verify identification. We've had some long discussions at our Board of Governors meeting, and we have adopted several different systems at different levels to address this. And as the results seem to be that it's really working well, I agree with Mr. Melgar that the goal should be close to zero. That's pretty hard in this day and age with the kind of IT attacks that you can get. But, you know, I think we've been very aggressive at addressing it, and we're Very pleased to see just now the fruits of those investments. Thank you.

I concur with my colleagues. I think the best that we can do is keep it on the agenda, keep monitoring the progress, and make sure that we're allocating resources to do better. Thank you.

My experience as a local trustee, local districts decide what their environmental scans are going to be and what courses they offer. I think the best that the Board of Governors can continue to do is to promote the jobs first, strategic sectors, and make sure that that data is available to districts and so that they know what the demands are. But through the grant making that we do, the grants that we give out for individual sector specific, we can do that. I serve on a subcommittee that is responsible for the CTE funding with K-12 and with the community colleges. So it's three Board of Education members and three BOG members. And this is a conversation that we constantly press for. We've been given feedback on the master plan for career technical education. One of the objectives that I'm pressing for is that high school students that want to, that are in a pathway, should get three hours of paid work experience by the time that they graduate and specifically related to the sectors that are available in their community. So to answer your question, again, is just really making sure that the data is clear, provide technical assistance where we can, the grant making, and just support our districts as they put their requests forward to us. Thank you.

Yeah, over the years, I mean, there are a variety of pots of money that go toward career technical education from the federal government, state government, et cetera. And at the board level, what we've tried to do is work to establish regional committees that evaluate the local needs. And it includes business, community groups, colleges, and employers. And it seems to be working reasonably well. Obviously, the economy is changing a lot right now with all this AI stuff. But we have focused on health care, as you mentioned. You know, we've won a bill that we've tried to have to allow community colleges to offer baccalaureates in nursing is one way we think we could help address the nursing issue. But we are devoting a lot of attention to it, and we're working very closely with the communities on the ground to try and make sure that the money that we receive and dole out to the various regions is spent well and we monitor that very carefully.

Yeah, not much more to add from what my colleagues mentioned other than that in the few months I been on the board we chatted with local districts to hear about innovations that they using to tackle the issue particularly College of the Desert comes to mind There was a massive nursing shortage in the region the Coachella Valley and they created a consortium of folks that included philanthropy some local education leaders the community college of course and then local hospitals and were able to create a program in partnership with the system to produce, and I forget the number, but it was hundreds of new nurses for the Coachella Valley, which goes a long way considering the population. So I think that that's the type of innovation we should be looking for and where it works, think about how we might scale it up. Thank you.

Well, we had a bowling league that was a lot of fun. It was a staff bowling league, and so we had fun with the shirt designs. I learned from the best.

Thank you. Senator Laird?

Thank you for the question. I could give you a local example in my district, and one of our vice chancellors is here. We partner with the county on CalFresh and making sure that students understand their eligibility and getting access to fresh foods and vegetables. We have different centers on our campuses where students can take advantage of hot meals. but partnering with our counties to make sure that students are accessing the resources and making sure that they do understand the eligibility and job opportunities. If we can help our students get to work faster so that they can have income in their pockets, partnering with our workforce development departments, one of the things that I'm really interested in seeing is how we can work with America's job centers to help those students get access to employment and even business opportunities. So again, we have a partnership with our county where students are being made aware of the CalFresh eligibility that they have And that gets them access to hot meals, fruits and vegetables And then we have a basic needs center on campus And so across the state other campuses have similar initiatives And so I think scaling that across the state so that folks do know what they do have access into their community is one thing that we can continue to push. Thank you. It's a good question because we did a survey

Yeah, just piggybacking on what my colleague said, I think I opened up with citing some stats about half of students within the system surveyed so that they're experiencing food insecurity. More than half, almost 60%, are experiencing housing insecurity, and about 20% are experiencing homelessness. So I think making sure that our basic needs centers at each campus are actually providing the services that they can for students. Another, I think that housing is an emerging conversation for the community college system. We visited recently as part of a delegation that Chancellor Christian organized an innovative model with UC Riverside and Riverside City College, whereby they built a new housing facility where half the students or so, don't quote me on the numbers there, are community college students who get to live and experience living within a University of California campus. And so the idea there is that you're exposing them to the campus culture, giving them an opportunity to see that. And so I think I'd like to see more of that. I think it's several hundred students who are benefiting from that particular issue. But when we look at more urban areas where cost of living is a lot higher, I think exploring better options there for students, particularly those with families, might be of interest. Thank you.

And maybe we'll start in the middle. You've been lucky. You've been getting to go second. Right. I've been dodging it. It's been great. Party's over. I think there's a lot of things we can do to increase enrollment, and we've been trying those. I think first and foremost is dual enrollment, trying to identify high school students. And our goal is to make sure that every high school student is taking community college courses while they're still in high school. And we also have been improving the CCC Apply portal, which has been a mess, frankly, over many years. And we've been very impatient about it getting fixed. But it seems to be up and running now, at least as a pilot, and should make enrollment much simpler. We know we're competing with for-profit colleges that make it really, really easy to enroll. And that's something that we've been focused on. And then we also have been marketing, perhaps not as effectively we should do, but to older, well, to young adults or older than typical students where there's a huge need. Obviously, Calbright College is one of our ways to reach those students, but we also, all of the other colleges are also focused on trying to do that. We can make it easier for students if we give them credit for prior learning through work in the military or in other jobs where they can get college credits for having the experience that they've already received. And as Joseph mentioned, we can provide zero textbook costs to make it easier for students to see their way through affording college. And finally, I think it's really important for us to continue to expand our online programs because there's a lot of students that simply can't leave their house for hours at a time, pay for child care, commute, park, and go to classes. We need to make it easier for them to access it online and then make sure we surround them with the right services that they're missing because they're not on campus and make sure that they stay engaged and complete their studies. Thank you.

I think my colleagues covered most of it. But one thing I'll just add, I'm also a data person. I think I read the Vision 2030 report in the intro. They talk about how there's like 6.8 million Californians between the age of 25 and 54 who do not have a post-secondary degree. So just thinking about like how we're being creative with our outreach, I think it's something we need to revisit, especially as the world is changing. And to the chancellor's office's credit and their staff's credit, we have seen an increase in enrollment since COVID. So I think the good news is like enrollment is on the rise, maybe not where we need it to be, but there is a positive kind of trajectory. Great. Thank you very much. I

we're going to go with Senator Reyes or Senator Ochoa whichever whoever wants to go so thank you

I believe that there is. So we're going through an era of looking at bias in testing, and AB 705 was implemented to increase access. Now, when you talk about using assessments to determine where students best need support so that we can accelerate their learning and try to address some of their deficiencies, I think that that's appropriate because when we start talking about guided pathways, guided pathways was designed to have multiple places where students can get into college but then receive strong student support. So assessments can help us really figure out where students need the most support. Whether it's tutoring, whether it could be mentorship, whether it could just be some type of work experience. So if it's done in that kind of way so that you can provide support for students, I would just hope that it wouldn't be done in a way that it decreases access. Okay.

Yeah, I mean, I basically agree with what Mr. Williams said. And this whole AB 705 sequence of events when I first got to the board I didn realize how many students were shuttled into remedial classes from which they rarely emerged to attain a degree and so I was very supportive of the legislation that the legislature passed that made it much easier for students to avoid being placed in remedial classes And I think it's been a big success. The data shows that a lot more students who had been put into remedial classes are able to succeed when they're put into regular classes and surrounded by support. And the data shows that that's been helpful. We've also had comments in some of our recent board meetings where some math professors and students believe that students would benefit from having a pre-calculus course because they aren't quite ready for the regular calculus. And, you know, I'm open-minded about hearing how that plays out. You know, we are doing an analysis of that, and we have, I think, another nine months of evaluating before we make a decision about whether or not we should enable greater access to pre-calculus courses. And I think, you know, and with the idea, I'm not sure if you mean an assessment in the same way that they do in K-12, but, you know, our faculty has a lot of influence and deservedly so over that kind of, over the assessments. And so we certainly work with them and defer to their expertise on how they feel about those kind of things.

So full disclosure is an area I'm learning a lot more about, and I appreciate the background that your staff shared after we chatted. So I think that's an area where I don't know that I fully understand how the system is tackling some of those questions at the moment, but I do think that there are ways we can get at solutions to, I think, some of the challenges that you've raised. One of those, I think, is growing dual enrollment. I think if we work with our K-12 counterparts in a more meaningful way, we might find opportunities for students to get exposed to college-level courses earlier so that when the transition happens, it's more seamless than when they just go from a high school setup to jumping right into a college setup, which can be a shock for some students depending on their background and exposure to higher education. That would be great.

I'll take that since I've been here longest. When I first came, we were doing assessments for math and English. And as I mentioned earlier, something in the neighborhood of 70% of students were being shuttled into remedial classes because their skills weren't considered high enough to take the four-credit courses. And the problem with that is that the data showed that most students who felt like they had passed something in high school and then all of a sudden were put in remedial classes that they weren't earning credits for gave up and rarely completed their studies.

I have to say, I love what you just said because I absolutely agree. I think there's a great need to ensure that we are partnering and ensuring that the parents are considered co-educators of their students. And I'm just going to put a shout out at my school district, the Yukaipa-Calamese Joint Unified School District. What we had there early on was literally it was called an effective parenting class. And it was through the adult school component in our district in which we, I, because I participated in the program, was the student. And it was a preschool program where I attended with my children. It was open to any of the kids that the parent had. And in that classroom, the activities were run by the parents with the students in there. And then once a week, they had parenting classes where they learned about positive discipline. They learned about nutrition. They learned about brain development, child development. So all of these things were. And what I loved about it is that your child was in your lap doing the activities. So education was a family endeavor. It wasn't a child or a student, you know, you're learning, and I'm the parent, I know everything, but it was literally a teamwork of, and I've been trying, I tried my first couple of years here in the Senate trying to ensure that we had funding for that particular program, because I think it's an excellent program to ensure that we have that partnership and that understanding in the family that it's a family endeavor. So I love what you just said.

I am concerned about where our students are because, as I mentioned to both of you, it was that when we look at the grades, and this is where I'm also concerned, the grades that we're assigning our students, where these students are coming out of our high schools with a 4.0, 4.7 GPA, and then they get into the university, especially, you know, when they're out of state, and they're realizing that they're not where they are. think they are academically and the impact that it has on their psyche and whether or not they're successful or, you know, up to par to compete with the rest of the nation and worldwide, right, because you have students coming from all over the world. And my point that I just want you to take away from here is that we can't lie to our students. We can't lie to our kids, letting them think that they are doing better than they really, really are. That is the biggest disservice that we can do to our students is to basically lie to them about where they are. We really need to work on how we're assessing those students. I think assessment is a positive thing. To me, assessment is literally an opportunity, a tool to see what that student has mastered and where they still need help in. And it should guide school districts and our teachers to be able to do that. So we shouldn't be afraid. I really want to start talking about removing that negative connotation and that fear that we have for assessments. And I just wanted to leave it at that. It was a pleasure, and I will be supporting all of you today. So thank you for being here today and for your willingness to serve our kids, our students. I shouldn't say kids. It's students in general. Thank you.

Yes, thank you, Madam Chair. I want to begin with our attorney, my fellow attorney. Although you are from UCLA as a Trojan, I still support you. You said that you've been on the board for 12 years. You came in as an outsider. You're no longer an outsider. You can no longer claim that. But I wanted to ask you about the Bachelor of Science programs. More and more we're hearing about community colleges wanting to offer bachelor degrees to students. And you have a lot of pushback from CSU especially, but also from the UCs. How do you manage that, and how do you propose certain programs without stepping on others' toes? Well we been trying to do that from the beginning the legislature has passed several bills outlining what the program can be And there been a cooperative process with the CSUs much more so far fewer with the UCs And slowly but surely, the baccalaureate programs have been getting approved. But we have had some conflicts, particularly with CSU. and a lot of them seem to revolve around whether or not a program that's 100 or 200 miles away is duplicative. We believe, knowing our student population, that most of our students can't travel that far to get a baccalaureate degree. And they also, many of them can't afford to even go to CSU, even though it's obviously much less expensive than some other places. So we feel that for place-bound students who are low income, the community college baccalaureate is a real opportunity that they need and deserve. And I know there's legislation kicking around right now. My personal belief, and I'm not speaking for the whole board here, is that we shouldn't have individual colleges going to the legislature and asking to authorize baccalaureate degrees just for their college. I think there needs to be a global statewide solution that has a process that everybody buys into and that we can with some certainty know which programs are going to be approved and which ones aren't. And that it take into account the perspective of students, not so much the perspective of the institutions, of the colleges and the CSUs and so forth, but look at what do students need, how do they get it. And I think that if we do that, we will see that there's quite a population of students that go to community colleges that really need to go to, if they want to get a baccalaureate, a community college is their best avenue to get there. The pushback, the greatest pushback I hear from the CSUs is that we have a master plan. Community colleges do this, CSUs do this, and our UCs do this. and we should just look at the entire master plan. We do have some legislation coming through. Senator Cabaldon, Senator Perez, today we heard a bill from Assemblymember Fong about those students who already have a bachelor's degree want to now be able to teach and the problems that are associated with now being able to get your teaching credential after your baccalaureate. But just trying to find a way to work with CSUs and the UCs to make sure that if you can provide a baccalaureate, the bachelor's degree, to then work with your local CSU or UC. But any additional comments from Mr. Williams or Mr. Malgar?

I've had the second is the fact that 2200 students I think is the latest data have currently received a community college bachelor's degree so I like to think about like who are we serving and if 2200 students found that useful to them then I think we should be working collaboratively with our system partners to figure out like hey how can we like it's clearly working for a lot of folks in the state how are we able to like continue to offer those those options for students who the points my colleagues made aren't wanting to travel you know 60 miles or 80 miles or don't have the option to go live on a campus if they're taking care of their families at home and I heard anecdotally of an example you know with college in the College of the Desert and some you know programs that they're trying to explore but they're being blocked I believe or at least challenged on the duplicative chat point by a system that's like up north and so it's like well our the College of the Desert students aren't going to travel up north to get a bachelor's degree probably and so are we completely cutting them out of their opportunity or pathway or are we like exploring other ways to make that possible for them so it's I don't have the right answer yet I think it's but it is a fascinating conversation I don't think there's a right answer I do think that there's a way to get to like a collaborative solution for the students who want to seek opportunities and different pathways for their own unique experiences.

Thank you. I also wanted to say, Mr. Epstein, you mentioned SB 271 on basic needs. I am proud to say that I was the author of that bill and the Student Aid Commission were the sponsors of the bill A very important bill, and we're seeing more and more come from that. Basic needs, child care, resources, it's so important to provide those to the students. We want them to succeed. if they don't know where to take care of their basic needs, housing, food, it's very difficult for them to succeed in whatever it is they choose to go into. And now my next question for, I want to start with Mr. Williams, a great friend, a trustee, San Bernardino Community College District, great representative of the community. You have done a magnificent job making sure that the services that are provided are inclusive. You make sure that you bring in the students that need the most need. And I'd like the conversation regarding the tutoring and finding the student where they are and then making sure that that student is going to succeed. I'm glad you're able to now take it to the state level and to bring your voice, having been a student and having used the services of a community college, and now knowing what was missing and making sure that that's included for the other students is extremely important. I want to ask you about career passports. Something new, right? The governor said it's going to be a pilot project. In fact, my team just brought this to me. California's career passport to connect qualified workers to employment with or without a four-year degree. I know that all three of you provided lots of in-depth information in your written responses, but I want to ask if you can elaborate on how you see the students, especially those who don't necessarily see themselves as traditional students, how they're benefiting from this career passport.

Before I move on, the dual enrollment is something you've talked a lot about. This last 100th anniversary, you graduated a number of dual enrollment students, and it's exciting to see that, to see the students also leave with the college credits when they graduate from high school.

Absolutely. And that's just a cost saving. That's a car. It could be a down payment on a condo. It could be a lot of things for a family. So it's a great option for folks. Wonderful. Thank you. Thank you.

Yeah, I know. Brand new programs, so I don't fault anybody for not knowing about it.

Yeah, not much more to add other than I think it's a great idea, just talking again about how the world is changing. If you have informal experience like apprenticeships, industry certification, if you served in the military, just like finding new ways for you to capture that experience as an opportunity for you to secure a job. I think that's a brilliant idea.

Thank you, Senator.

one, I think, you know, the cost of education is prohibited, like housing is prohibitive to a lot of students. So when you calculate what that actually looks like, a lot of folks aren't able to afford where they live, which is why having local options is important. I don't know that we have a direct role in like the local housing discussion per se, but I think we can uplift examples like we did with the UC Riverside and Riverside City College example. And I'll pass it to Trustee Williams to talk about the great work that's happening, I know, in his district.

We're trying.

Thank you. In response to earlier questions regarding assessment tests, and it's something that has come up on a number of occasions with the state school board members. But, Mr. Williams, something that you said I think is extremely important is that we found that many of those standardized tests did have a bias, and the studies were clear, and something needed to be done to correct that. And at some point, if assessment tests are reinstated, there's a place for them, without a doubt, in trying to assess where the student is, but making sure that when we reintroduce this, that those studies that found the biases and the tests that were being given to our students are something that are dealt with and removed. so that when we do an assessment test, it is not for the purpose of holding a student down. It's for the purpose of finding out where they are and then meeting the student where they are so that you help them with the tutoring and everything else that you all have mentioned because that is in the end what we need to do is find our students find where they are and then help them to succeed whether it straight with workforce training whether it certificate programs whether it an AA whether it's an AA with a transfer, a nursing program, whatever it is that you're finding the way to have them succeed, because when they succeed, it's beneficial to all of us. So thank you for that. And I yield back to you, Madam PT and acting governor.

Thank you. It should be noted, if I may say, that our Madam PT today is the acting governor for the state of California with our governor and our lieutenant governor being out of state. Thank you. Signed bills. I signed four earlier today, but thank you.

I'm happy to kick us off. So I think affordability, again, I think tuition is accessible, but I think other portions of attending a college, like housing like we talked about today, I think emerging technologies and artificial intelligence and how that's changing how jobs look today, how jobs are changing in real time, and then how we're preparing our students with updated curriculum and relevant curriculum I think is a big question that we talk every board meeting about in the last few that I've attended. And I think supporting students once they're in to making sure that we help them complete or get to where they want to go once they enter the door. So it's either associates or helping them transfer. I think making sure we support them once they enter the system. Those will be my three.

I like everything that they said. And there's so much that I would want to do, but, you know, continue to promote education as a tool in economic development. And so for me, we do talk a lot about AI. But what I'm what I'm pressing for is that I want to get off of the consumer side of AI and just our students need to be the owners of it. We need them to be the programmers of it. We need them to have ownership in this AI conversation because we talk a lot about how to keep them from cheating and, you know, all of the things. And that's important. We want to continue to press for the ethical use of AI. But if we get behind in certain communities about how to use it as a tool and how you should be using it to be able to have a side hustle or whatever they need, I want to move beyond just students using it as a consumer. I get marketed by Kellogg, Columbia. So many programs are promoting AI certificates to me. I think community college could be a better valedictine. They're really expensive. We should be able to be a validator of what AI certificates are legit and which ones are actually going to give you real good skills that will help you be able to participate in the economy in a way that makes sense. So I want to press for that. You know, workforce development, I want to see greater coordination with our workforce development boards and America's job centers. You know, when I was on the state board, community college was mentioned in the state workforce plan 55 times. And it was a point to where it almost sounded like you would be able to go into a job center and enroll for a community college class, but we're not there yet. counties put their employment specialists on our campuses and, you know, see those kind of things happen is really what I really want to see greater coordination between those two systems. And then the last thing is, of course, affordability. I want to continue to monitor the zero cost textbook initiatives, you know, anything related to dual enrollment, because I think that that increases affordability. And then the burden free instructional materials,

Hello, good afternoon, Madam Chair and members. My name is Vincent Rosso. I serve as the Director of Government Relations for the University of California Student Association. Just wanted to extend our congratulations and our strong support to former UCSA alumni, former board chair, Mr. Melgar, who was nominated by the governor. Congratulations and just really emphasize and highlight all of his work and his legacy and also extend our support to the reappointment of Mr. Epstein and Mr. Williams.

Thank you. Next.

Thank you. Thank you. All right. Seeing no one. Do we have anybody else? This is the moment. All right. Thank you.

Thank you. All right.

Thank you so much. Thank you. So we did a little special exception. We let folks speak on the mic a little more than we usually do. But if there are any individuals here in opposition, this is the time to come forward. All right. Seeing none, we're going to bring it back to the dais members. We're going to take these up one at a time. We are going to begin. I will entertain a motion for the appointment of Jessie Milgar as a member to the California Community College's Board of Governors.

Limon? Aye. Limon, aye. Grove? Aye. Grove, aye. Laird? Aye. Laird, aye. Ochoa Bogue? Aye. Ochoa Bogue, aye. Reyes? Aye. Reyes, aye. 5-0. All right. The appointment has been approved to move to the full Senate for confirmation. Next, I will entertain a motion for Tom Epstein. J.D. as member to the California Community College's Board of Governors. I will entertain a motion.

Thank you.

Limon?

Limon, aye. Grove?

Grove, aye. Laird?

Laird, aye. Ochoa-Bogue?

Ochoa-Bogue, aye. Reyes?

Reyes, aye. 5-0. The appointment has been approved to move to the full Senate for confirmation. Next, I'll entertain a motion for Joseph Williams as a member to the California Community College's Board of Governors.

Thank you so much. Senator Reyes, for that motion, can we please call the roll?

Aye. Limon, aye.

Aye. Grove, aye.

Aye. Laird, aye.

Aye. Ochoa, Bogue, aye.

Aye. Reyes, aye. Five to zero. All right, that motion is approved, 5-0. Congratulations to the three of you. Thank you for being here. Can we have a picture with them standing right here? Maybe at the end? Yeah. Congratulations. Yeah, okay. We have one more. Yes, folks, we do. So we will now return to governor's appointees. required to appear item 1D, the appointment of Mark Beckley as Chief Deputy Director Operations Department of State Hospitals. Mr. Beckley, welcome and you will have the opportunity to provide one to two minutes for your opening testimony to the committee. In your opening, you are welcome to introduce any guests that you may have with you here today.

Thank you. Members, questions or comments? We're going to start with Senator Laird.

Yeah, thank you so much for that question, Senator. And that's very much frequently a question that I receive. Even when I was deputy director for administrative services at state hospitals 10 years ago, that was an ongoing challenge. How do you effectively recruit and retain especially essential clinical staff, nursing staff, hospital police officers? And, you know, there's lots of competition. I mean, you look at, you know, private sector hospitals, nonprofits, other state agencies. And I'd like to share with you some strategies that we've implemented that have actually been very effective. So I think the first, and this really gives you an opportunity to lift up the work of our recruitment unit and of our hospital human resources staff who just do such a great job at recruiting and retaining their staff. So one of the key strategies that we've employed, I'll say that there's kind of like tangible and intangible factors that we look at. For the tangible, we find that state employment is attractive to people. It's just that, one, and I think we're competitive in areas of, to some extent, salary, especially health benefits, things like, you know, the state's defined pension plan. And there's several differentials that we've implemented over the years to try to help, like, create pay equity between our staff and the staff of other communities. but the two key initiatives that we've really launched is one called rapid hiring events. So part of the issue is people just don't know about us. They don't know who we are so we really have to inform them more about the work that we do. So we've worked with our communications team and our recruitment team to create flyers and they do these flyers in combination with our clinical and nursing and hospital police officer staff. Truly how do you sell the jobs in terms of you know people who are looking for these positions would look for so I think we've done a really good job at kind of like promoting the jobs and really getting greater interest in fact our hospital police officers. Three years ago we only received 290 applications just last year we received over 4000 applications for hospital police officer positions so I think that just publicizing our jobs helps we go to. different conferences. We host career fairs just to get people attuned to the work that we do. But I think rabbit hiring is really, really important because it can take anywhere from two to three months to actually get hired on a job and who's going to wait that long, especially if you've got a private sector organization that can hire you faster. So with rabbit hiring, we basically host a virtual career fair. We walk somebody through the application process. How do you apply for a job? You know, holding mock interviews. How do you write an effective statement of qualifications. After they walk them through that process, they help them fill out applications on the spot. We then set up an actual hiring fair like two to three weeks out from that date. And then we have candidates come and actually interview for the jobs on site with our staff. And we can have anywhere from 50 to over 100 people at one time that we're actually interviewing for these positions. We just did a rapid hiring event for psychiatric techs at Patton State Hospital, and we were able to fill 65 of those positions, leaving only four vacancies. And I'll just kind of like give you some examples of how effective these rapid hiring events have been. We have done them for psychologists, psychiatrists. We've seen anywhere from a 4% reduction in vacancy rate to 17%. So we think that these have been highly effective. We've also been doing a lot of joint partnerships with universities and colleges to have psychiatric fellows, psychologists, residencies at our hospitals so that they can really understand and learn what we do. Also, we have, like, a lot of great programs with Cuesta College, for instance, Kowalinga College, Napa Valley College for psychiatric-type programs. And we find that we get a lot of candidates through these programs, and we have conversion rates of like 50%. So we think rapid hiring, doing a lot of these joint ventures with colleges and universities, have really been an additional progression.

Oh, I'm sorry. If somebody is like a psychiatric fellow with us and they decide to accept employment with us, that's what we consider a conversion rate. So we're converting them from a non-state employee to a state employee.

Yeah, sometimes our hiring experiences can be quite religious experiences, especially when we get a lot of new hires in. But, yes, we've been just, you know, having a lot of great success with those. Now, I will say that, you know, Atascadero, Colinga, those have been more challenging. You know, they're more remote locations. We did hold some rapid hiring events. At Colinga, we just recently hired six new social workers. at Atascadero, we made conditional offers to three social workers and three rehab therapists. So, I mean, I think that there's still work to do there. I think additional promotion and advertising, especially of the amenities of those communities can help. But that's something as Chief Deputy Director for Operations that I really passionate about I want to see how we can reduce the vacancy rate and really increase permanent state civil service in those areas And I just note on the use of contract staff we only like only about 3 of our positions are filled with contract staff The vast majority of our positions are held by permanent state civil service staff.

Thank you. Thank you. Any additional questions? All right. Seeing no additional questions, and I don't know if other members we're going to bring forward. Anything, you know, I asked the last panel just a question about their priorities, and I'm wondering if you can speak to your priorities, given the ample needs of our state and in this particular area. I know that over the last few months, the issue of hospitals, health care, mental health, you know, access within an institution, outside of institution, have been part of the conversations for the legislature. And I'm just curious if you can share your priorities for the agency and also in light of a lot that we're seeing happening and also shifts in how we care.

Yes, Senator Reyes.

So we absolutely work very closely with OALAS. So we do report patient deaths, and there's kind of two categories of patient deaths, you know, unexpected and unexpected. So we do have an aging, you know, patient population as they age. You know, they're going to be more prone to chronic conditions, and sometimes they'll pass away naturally, right? And then you've got unexpected deaths. So something might happen, and it could be from natural causes, you know, once we do our investigation or it could be due to other reasons. And so all of those do get looked at and investigated. So when we have an unexpected passing. So we do have an Office of Special Investigations that would, you know, conduct an investigation, kind of look into the circumstances around that death, see if there's anything that causes or, you know, creates concerns. All of these deaths also get reported out to our Office of Law Enforcement Services. They also take a look at these. And, you know, I think that when we're looking at those, things that we're really concerned in looking at are things like, were contraband substances brought into the hospital? Could that have contributed to a death? Is there some sort of, like, patient injury that we weren't aware of that wasn't, you know, treated? And, you know, that would also be looked at as part of an investigation. So I guess to answer your question, yes, we work very closely with our Office of Law Enforcement Services and if there's anything that's cause for concern, those do get investigated.

Hospital Operations Chief, Brandon Price, but I will share with you what I know, and then we'd be happy to share additional information afterwards. But in terms of the data, so the OLS does prepare reports on data investigations that we've reported to them. So it's a list of things. It includes things like, you know, staff on staff assaults or staff on patient or patient on staff assaults, use of force, unexpected deaths. So there's a whole sort of like list of data and reports that they do on us as part of their oversight responsibility. And if there's any clarifications or misrepresentations, you know, we review the report with them. But, yeah, we work very closely to publish that data and make sure that it's publicly transparent. Wonderful. Thank you.

Limon? Aye. Limon, aye. Grove? Laird? Aye. Laird, aye. Ochoa Bogue? Aye. Ochoa Bogue, aye. Reyes? Aye. Reyes, aye. Four votes.

Grove?