Oakland Adult and Career Education partnerships with local job centers help build workforce
Building a successful workforce takes a lot of time, effort and funding, but thanks to a partnership with the Oakland Workforce Development Board, the Oakland Adult and Career Education (OACE) is doing its part to put people on that path.
This partnership primarily takes the form of the adult school having better access to the various job centers run by other board partners. Kim Jones, the school’s director, notes this access is a key part in being able to provide various English as a second language (ESL) and career technical education (CTE) programs to students.
“We partner with them as a way to leverage our resources so that it costs us a little bit less to operate in terms of space and, whenever possible, financial resources,” Jones says.
“In terms of who we need to talk to and make things happen, who we need to talk to get things done, those things are a well-oiled machine at this point,”
Kim Jones, Director, Oakland Adult and Career Education
Jones says these partnerships allow the adult school to provide better training in more areas at a lesser cost. He also said the partners helped students in getting through various costs.
“The workforce development dollars and the workforce development partners are able to support our students by helping them with union fees, tools and necessary equipment … the protective wear for construction jobs, on-the-job training dollars and that kind of thing,” he says.
One of these workforce development partners is the Unity Council, a non-profit social equity group that has been operating in Oakland for 60 years and runs the Fruitvale Neighborhood Career & Resource Center. Gabriela Pingarron, the council’s associate director of economic development, provides a prime example of this financial assistance.
“We have the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act funds that allows participants to look for training in different industries,” Pingarron says. “We pay them up to $6,000 for training that they don’t have to pay us back as long as they find a job in the industry that they trained.”
The Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act is a federal law enacted in 2014 designed to help job seekers access employment, education, training, and support services, with funding that supports adult schools in providing workforce-related programs.
Pingarron says people looking to join the healthcare industry often look to the Unity Council for aid in seeking training as medical assistants, EKG specialists and more. Both Pingarron and Jones noted a big part of the partnership’s success is the close relationship both parties have with the development board.
“We always go to the Oakland Workforce Development Board to ask questions about funding,” Pingarron says. “As long as the career center has been open, the Workforce Development Board has been supporting our center.”
Jones notes this close relationship also makes it easier to assist veteran students and displaced workers by guiding them to the kind of aid the board can provide.
“Understanding how the bureaucracy works and getting through the system is difficult for anybody,” Jones says. “Having those long standing relationships, we’re able to mitigate some of it.”
OACE has also worked closely with the West Oakland Job Resource Center, with Jones praising how smooth the process of working with them was. Specifically, he remembers when the latter went above and beyond to help get students special work shoes.
“I sent an email to one of our job centers,” Jones remembers, “Ms. Joy Sky, the director of the job center, drove over, got their sizes, went to the store, purchased the boots and brought them all to the students.”
This proactive approach left a strong impression on Jones, who said he believes this interaction should be how these kinds of partnerships work.
“In terms of who we need to talk to and make things happen, who we need to talk to get things done, those things are a well-oiled machine at this point,” Jones says.
For more information about Oakland Adult and Career Education, visit ousd.org/adult-and-career-education. More about the Unity Council can be found at unitycouncil.org, and information about the Oakland Workforce Development Board can be found on the city’s website (oaklandca.gov).
Written by Jacob Peterson
| Regions | Classes |
|---|---|
| Bay Area California | Careers in Business-Technology – Careers in Education – Careers in Health Care – Careers in Manufacturing-Construction |
