Workforce Network of Kansas

Kansas Workforce Investment Partnership Council
Leadership Team
February 23, 2001
Minutes

Members in attendance in Wichita for this meeting were Allen Bell (for Bob Knight), Val DeFever, Steve Jack, Marie Mareda, Shirley Martin-Smith, Maureen Toll (for Gerald Cook) and Chair Ken Bell. Staff Barb Reavis was present.

Bell called the meeting to order at 1:40 p.m. Self-introductions were deemed unnecessary.

Minutes from January 25 were approved following a Jack/Allen motion.

Lt. Governor Gary Sherrer shared with the members his views of the Vision 21st Century Task Force's Workforce Development Subcommittee work and how he perceives KWIP can assist workforce investment in Kansas.

The vision may be a little high to think one group can get its arms around the whole workforce issue when you consider that might include K-12 education and even pre-K.
We don't have coordination and find agencies repeating what others are doing.
Technical education is an area where a real system doesn't exist.
Universities are pretty good about business linkages; lower down the chain there are isolated incidents of success.
For example, there is a refrigeration course in Garden City that draws students from around the nation; there can't be any inherent problem with technical schools.
Perhaps what we need are Kansas Centers of Excellence.
Other issues with technical schools are tuition and funding. Colorado students attend Northwest Kansas Technical School for the same tuition Kansas residents pay. Vo-tech schools are funded through EDIF (lottery money).
Really need to study technical education, inside and out.
Technical schools complain of not enough revenue and waiting lists but offer no night classes for credit and no Saturday classes. There are complaints about governance and funding. Consolidation should be explored.
Ninety-four percent of technical education students are post-secondary.
Is technical education governance structured wrong?
Lt. Governor has visited with the Governor about a Commission on Technical Education to thoroughly study the system and recommend any necessary changes.
KWIP could serve as advocates for policies. It could assess models for excellence. Perhaps KWIP should select a few specific issues to tackle each year and focus on resolving those, making certain to measure outcomes to be able to report successes.
Chair Bell led a discussion on the issues brought to the KWIP Council by Local Area leadership, specifically the concerns raised about mandatory partners not being willing to sign Memorandums of Understanding. Reavis shared she had raised the concern with the US DOL regional office in a meeting she and Jack had just attended. The national partners were to meet that afternoon and work toward resolution of that and other issues raised. KWIP Leadership Team members agreed we should pursue learning the status of all mandated one-stop partners. Reavis will prepare a survey to distribute to local areas, one-stops and state agencies to gather that information.

Reavis and Jack reported on the work of the Marketing Task Force. After the last KWIP Council meeting, the Task Force is preparing to implement the brand Workforce Network of Kansas. Some funds have been identified for marketing efforts. Specifically, $50,000 is available at KDHR from US DOL which needs to be obligated by the end of the fiscal year, 6/30/01. In order to meet that deadline, KDHR is preparing an RFP to secure an ad agency. In the interest of time and to be able to work within the end-of-fiscal-year deadline, KWIP Leadership Team members empowered the Marketing Task Force to select the ad agency.

Jack gave an update on KDHR's TARGET Initiative. He explained the concept of keeping a portion of Unemployment Insurance Tax in Kansas to build a fund from which the interest would be used for a variety of employment and training related activities. Beyond KDHR's work on such a bill, a bi-partisan effort has started within the House to support the funding concept but use part of the money to assist technical education and student loan forgiveness. Chair Bell distributed copies of testimony on SB 307, the original bill on TARGET, by KDHR and the Kansas Chamber of Commerce and Industry. He also reported that within Boeing and the Wichita Business Roundtable he had heard a number of questions about the initiative, including

appropriateness of taking money from business to fund state programs
wanting to see the deliverables first from the amount of money already being spent
wanting to know how more money will help
what will happen when administration in Topeka changes

Bell felt most of the concerns are about trust and about how the solutions are structured.

Since the meeting was running late, Bell and Reavis will draft an agenda for the March 23 KWIP meeting, circulate it to Leadership Team members and set a conference call date to solidify the agenda.

The meeting adjourned at 4:00 p.m.

Respectfully submitted,

Barb Reavis