Presentation by Dr. Joi Lin Blake, College of Alameda President, on the College of Alameda Promise.
Thank you for providing me with this opportunity to preserve this evening on the College of Alameda a promise. So I want to thank the Mayor Spencer and the City Council for providing me with 5 minutes to give our pitch and promote our program. I've provided a packet for each one of you that outlines a description of the Promise Initiative, the National Promise Initiative. And President Obama has a college for all campaign where he guarantee he wants to guarantee that all graduating seniors have two years of free college upon their completion of high school. And so that College of Alameda promise is borne out of that initiative. The purpose of the initiative is to ensure that we have a better educated America. And so the College of Alameda wants to be a part of that process and that movement. In your packet, you have the promise, the national promise campaign initiatives that are going on in the state of California, and then an outline and background and scope of the College of Alameda Promise program. To date we have at the College of Alameda promise our framework is going to be that all graduating seniors from Alameda High Schools will attend the College of alameda free for their first year. We're going to pilot this fall with Encino High School. We will scale up in at Island next year and then Alameda High School the following year. And then there's charter schools or whatever in Alameda that we'll bring them on board as we go along. Our promise will include not only payment of fees, but it will also include a $300 book grant. And then we have some organizations that are willing to provide each student with a refurbished laptop to bridge that technology divide. One of the. One of our concerns in Alameda, especially on the west side of the college, is when we look at the Alameda Point Collaborative and the transitional housing and the level of poverty in that area, is that one way for those communities to get out of that? Poverty is through education. And so the College of Alameda, we want to be responsive to that and support individuals in Alameda to ensure that they have a higher education. To date, some of our partners are Alameda Unified School District Assemblyman Rob Bond, his office supervisor Roma chan's office. CSU East Bay has guaranteed admissions for students as long as they meet the requirements. I met with the president there. UC Berkeley has a transfer admission pipeline, and so we will work with them to prep to make sure that students are prepared to participate. We're also Pur Force Foundation is providing funding for the initiative tenacity ten Lacrosse, which is one of our new partners at College of Alameda, gave us $500,000 seed money. So we're able to launch and kick off the initiative. Other interested parties are the Jack London soccer group, so they have expressed an interest to partner with us. Mills College wants to do a two plus two plus one where they spend two years at College of Alameda, two years at Mills, and then they will guarantee them admission into their first year of graduate school, which is a really nice opportunity. And then San Jose State is waiting for the new president to get on board and then we will work with them and their team to bring folks on. And so we have a we have right now we're at the beginning the infancy of the partnership, but we have enough to launch and get students started in participating in our program, and we're just really excited about it. When I first started here at the College of Alameda last year, this was kind of one of my visions or dreams for the college. And to show that we are committed to Alameda because folks have told me that we've been an island unto ourselves. And so I want to say I want the community to know that we're committed to them and their students. The students in the program will get intrusive counseling and support services. They will meet with a counselor twice a semester. If they're qualify for financial aid, they will be awarded that as well, and they will have an education plan to make sure they don't take empty units and that they're on track to transfer, get an associate degree or whatever their professional goals are. But we're there to support the students and the citizens of Alameda and their children. And we've prepared a video for your review. And we also have in your packet connecting with community, a brochure about our college and the programs and our student profile. And we're asking you this evening that the city would support the College of Alameda. Promise. Thank you. Thank you. A promise of education in next step to the future for Alameda High School, students starts with College of Alameda and Youth with a host of associate degree and certificate programs. College of Alameda provides high quality instruction in job relevant career training. Right here on the Island College of Alameda is offerings including our career. Technical education programs are unique with many of the programs offered few other places in the Bay Area College of Alameda offers education on a global scale. And to accomplish this, we joined a powerful initiative called the College Promise Campaign. The Promise program was inspired by President Obama's America's College Promise Plan with a vision to make the first two years of higher education free for all students who went to community college. The College of Alameda Promise models this program asserting that students success is greatly improved when financial barriers and the associated stress are removed. The College of Alameda Promise will provide priority registration one year of college without fees and a book stipend to graduates of Alameda High Schools who enroll full time at College of Alameda. The College of Alameda Promise was designed to serve Alameda residents with the most need of the nearly 10,000 students served by the Alameda School District. Many are English language learners, special education or low income. The promise will begin in fall 2016. Serving graduates of internal high in the Alameda Science and Technology Institute, the two schools that serve the highest need students on the island. It will expand to Island High in year two. In Alameda High near three. We anticipate that as many as 667 Alameda High School graduates will attend College of Alameda via the Promise program in the first three years. What kind of results do we expect up to? 20% more students attending college and a 30% increase in retention and graduation rates, specifically among at risk students. More students will transfer to further their educational goals. The promise will also strengthen students access to career pathways, helping prepare them to join the workforce in Alameda and surrounding areas. Funding for the promise is being generously provided by individual, corporate and foundation donors, and we're asking for local and state support as well. How can you help? We ask you to get involved, adopt the promise and support it in every way you can. We invite you to the campus, your campus, and look forward to achieving success together. We promise at College of Alameda. I know my 5 minutes are up, but I wouldn't invite the City Council and Alameda City to participate in our Promise initiative and I look forward to working closely with you. We have a meeting this Friday, the kind of finalize our launch. We're looking at our launch on either May 12th or May 30th, and we'll have the appropriate folks there to help kick it off, all of our partners, etc.. So again, thank you. Are there any questions or anything? Thank you. At this point, I think it's for us to move along because as opposed to be announcements. Okay. So thank you. And regards to us joining the College of Media that will come back to us at a later time. Okay. All right. Thank you very much. And I just want to say thank you. And that was it's really inspiring to hear how you're looking at the neediest of our students and and partnering with with the school district in this way. So thank you for continuing to be a valuable resource in our community. Hey, remember days. Out, I'll have you know that back in 1984, when I was a senior in high school at Encino, I did attend classes at College of Alameda with Miss Wise. Thank you very much. Now I'm going to proceed with item three Bee. Proclamation Declaring April 23rd, 2016 as Earth Day in Alameda. And Kathleen Carney of the Library Board will be accepting this and the proclamation. Whereas, April 23rd, 2016 marks the 46th anniversary of the first celebrated Earth Day, a day in which events worldwide are held to demonstrate support for environmental protection.