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In mid January, CFT Local 4681 of San Mateo Adult School wrote and passed a resolution about Adult Education.  You can the Local 4681 resolution in full here .   Local 4681 then took their resolution, titled, "Resolution to Ensure that Adult Education Exists in Best and Fullest Capacity" to the CFT Adult Education Commission on January 23rd.   The Adult Education Commission considered it, made some alterations to it - primarily shortening it - kept the same title, and then passed it. CFT Adult Education Commission members at their January 23rd, 2016 meeting. Chair Jack Carroll is in the center bac.  Lily Adlawan, center front, is the Local 4681 member who brought the resolution to the meeting. Kathy Jasper, in the red Adult Education Matters t-shirt, is an AEC member and also a CFT Vice President in the CFT State Executive Council. Both resolutions - different with the same name and the same intention - were submitted to the CFT 2016 State Convention ...

The following piece was written by San Mateo Adult School student Lucy Ochoa.  Ms. Ochoa wrote the piece for a journalism class at U.C. Berkeley.  In her home country of Ecuador, she is a journalist. Adult Education, Why does it matter?   By Lucy Ochoa It's 6:30 pm on Thursday, the last day of school before the weekend. About twenty students rush into a room at the main campus of San Mateo Adult School, greeting each other in different languages. After signing the attendance sheet they choose seats behind of one of the long wooden tables that face the whiteboard. Click  the "read more" link to learn more. Learning English is the challenge that brings these students together whenever their schedule allows it. Despite their different origins, all of them share two characteristics: they are adults and their native language is not English. According to the Public Policy Institute of California and data from the U.S Census Bureau, this state has over 10 million immigrant...

CFT Local 4681, out of San Mateo Adult School , passed the following resolution: Resolution to Ensure that Adult Education  Exists in Best and Fullest Capacity Whereas education is a human right for people of all ages, and Whereas Adult Schools have been serving the people of California from every community, including those with the greatest needs and least resources, for over 150 years, and Whereas, during the last recession, Adult Education was the only branch of public education in California which was nearly eliminated through a combination of funding cuts and allowing districts to take any and all adult school funds for other purposes (Categorial Flexibility), and Whereas K-12 adult schools were saved only through the determined action of teachers, students, administrators, and their allies, and Click the "read more" link to learn more. Whereas it was only as a result of this activism that the state recognized the need to fund adult education, which Governor Brown and th...

This is a Perspective piece.  Mine - Cynthia Eagleton's. Too often, the conditions out of which bad things happen, never get examined. Poor health, economic collapse, the devastation of Adult Education, or any other bad thing - you can always trace them back to conditions. In a diabetic coma?  Did you check your blood sugar levels this morning?  Take your meds?  Exercise?  Over exercise?  Fail to exercise?  How did you get diabetes in the first place?  Were you overweight and inactive for decades?  At risk due to a family history?  Look hard and ask the right questions, and you'll understand why you have diabetes and why you're in a coma. The cuts and closures of Adult Schools in 2009 and the years following came as a result of an economic collapse that was felt worldwide. How did that collapse happen? Click the "read more" link to learn more. You can read the book, "The Big Short" to understand - which would be good....

What happens when funding is threatened, reduced, removed, and destabilized for programs paid by the public and designed to serve it? Click on the "read more" link to find out. That's what we can learn from what happened to Adult Schools and Adult Education these last six years, and stretching back further than that, from the last one hundred and fifty. Acalanes, as did so many Adult Schools since funding was flexed by Governor Schwarzenegger in 2009, went through tremendous turmoil and at one point, was slated for closure .    The LaMorinda Weekly story, " Adult Students Wanted at Del Valle, " provided in full below, tells one version of the story. George Porter, in his Perspective piece on Acalanes' Older Adult Program , tells another. Putting those two pieces together, the question comes to mind, "Which adults are wanted at Del Valle - and why?" Adult Schools and Adult Education have gone through many changes in the past 150 years, as we can lea...

From left to right, Bruce Neuberger, George & Kristen Pursley Cynthia Eagleton At the 2015 Network for Public Education Conference in Chicago , Kristen Pursley, Bruce Neuberger, and I presented a panel entitled, "The Battle for Adult Education." The Conference was deep and powerful. An AEM post on the conference is coming soon.  Cuts and reform in California Adult Education are part of a larger puzzle affecting every piece of Public Education in the US.  To understand what is happening in Adult Education in California - and to influence it in a positive direction - we need to understand what is happening elsewhere - and we need historical context. Historical context is what Kristen provided at our panel discussion.  Kristen is a lead ESL teacher at West Contra Costa Adult School.  She is a founding member of COSAS - Communities Organized to Support Adult Schools, a group that formed in response to the cuts six years ago and has met w...