Legislative Advocacy
By Mollie Smith, Past President

We are moving forward with our legislative advocacy efforts.  During the final quarter of this past academic year, we hired our legislative liaisons, Jonathan Lightman and Andrea York of the Faculty Association of California Community Colleges (FACCC) for the express purpose of participating in the budget advocacy efforts.  Jonathan and Andrea represented CCCAOE on behalf of Career and Technical Education (CTE) at budget hearings; included CCCAOE in the weekly Consultation Council budget conference committee; provided for the placement of a CCCAOE witness at an Assembly budget hearing; conferred on a weekly basis with the CCCAOE president; and scheduled nine visits in Sacramento with legislators, legislatives aides, and the legislative analysts office.

In June, the CCCAOE Board created a Legislative Advocacy Ad Hoc Committee, to be chaired by the immediate past president.  The committee, composed of Hazel Hill, Kim Schenck, John Means, Andrea York, Jonathan Lightman, and myself, met in August for the purpose of crafting short-term, intermediate, and long-term legislative advocacy goals.  The first of those short-term goals is to solicit your feedback on issues affecting the delivery of career and technical education on your campus.  A simple survey question was sent to you via the CCCAOE listserve early in September.  If you did not receive the survey, please e-mail Bobbie Edgin at boedgin@cccaoe.org and she will send you the survey.  It is important that our legislative advocacy agenda align with the delivery of career and technical education at each college campus.  The remainder of the short-term, intermediate, and long-term goals will be shared with you at your regional meetings this October at the CCCAOE conference in San Diego.

Our goal is to create the organizational structure for CCCAOE legislative advocacy to align and support ongoing activities, feedback and delivery of career and technical education programming.  The success of our efforts will involve not only the CCCAOE Board, but will include your engagement at the local level.  Please take the time to participate not only in the design of this endeavor, but to develop infrastructure and relationships with your legislators in your local communities.