CALRegional provides aid in building career pathways
Students at Oakland Adult and Career Education (OACE) are benefiting from high-quality healthcare training at low costs, thanks in part to the school’s partnership with CALRegional.
A for-profit company, CALRegional provides healthcare training to various institutions across the state. Nick Bence, CALRegional’s vice president of compliance and operations, said the company’s services benefit not only the schools, but their local communities.
“We’re gonna be training workers that are going to be working within the communities that they live,” Bence says.
Bence also notes that the programs CALRegional provides can give students an alternative path towards a medical career. A large part of partnering with adult schools is making sure these pathways are also affordable, with Bence saying the current price is set at $3,000.
“We don’t want somebody to have to take a loan out for $20,000 to take a phlebotomy or a medical assisting program,” Bence says. “We’ve never changed the price of the program, and there’s never going to be an intention to.”
Bence says that from day one CALRegional’s goal has been to make these healthcare training programs affordable and accessible. He says they want people to be able to start their careers without having to worry about debt for the next 10 or even 20 years.
Kim Jones, OACE’s director, says he’s been very happy with the partnership between the school and CALRegional.
“We wanted to find an opportunity to provide a low cost training program for our students,” Jones says. “CALRegional was a perfect fit for that.”
“We’re gonna be training workers that are going to be working within the communities that they live.”
Nick Bence, Vice President of Compliance and Operations, CALRegional
Courses currently being provided at the school as part of the partnership include phlebotomy, EKG and medical assisting. Jones says the programs, which range from eight to 10 weeks, are primarily being organized and run by CALRegional.
“It’s almost like a plug and play,” Jones says. “They have the administrators, the teachers, the outreach channels and the marketing channels to bring the students in.”
For the school’s part, Jones says they’ve worked to further streamline the overall experience by making sure the healthcare training programs and other courses offered are within close proximity to each other.
“They could be upstairs in our high school equivalency class and go right downstairs to our medical assisting class,” Jones says. “It just puts all those classes in those courses in one proximity.”
Bence says that their work with schools like OACE has led to them growing through word-of-mouth. Specifically, he says Jones has been important in recommending CALRegional to other programs.
“It’s really word-of-mouth,” Bence says. “Kim tells somebody, ‘Hey, we partner with CALRegional, and the relationship is great.’ It’s just about creating solid partnerships.”
For Bence, the most important thing is that the healthcare training programs CALRegional provides gives people a path to better futures.
“We’re getting students from the community into the programs,” Bence says. “We’re getting students from the programs into jobs—good paying jobs.”
To learn more about healthcare and other career training opportunities at Oakland Adult and Career
Education, visit www.ousd.org/adult-and-career-education. For more information on CALRegional and its services, visit www.calregional.com.
Written by Jacob Peterson
| Regions | Classes & Topics |
|---|---|
| Bay Area California | Careers in Health Care |
