Strong Workforce Program Overview and Regional Plan

To develop more workforce opportunities and lift low-wage workers into living-wage jobs, California took a bold step in 2016 to create one million more, middle-skill workers. At the recommendation of the California Community College Board of Governors, the Governor and Legislature approved the Strong Workforce Program, adding a new annual recurring investment of $250 million to spur career technical education (CTE) in the nation’s largest workforce development system of 114 colleges.

Grouped into seven areas targeting student success, career pathways, workforce data and outcomes, curriculum, CTE faculty, regional coordination and funding, this leading-edge state economic development program is driven by “more and better” CTE. The “more” is increasing the number of students enrolled in programs leading to high-demand, high-wage jobs. The “better” is improving program quality, as evidenced by more students completing or transferring programs, getting employed or improving their earnings.

One of the fundamental purposes of the regional consortia and the Strong Workforce Program (SWP) Regional Funds is to identify, prioritize and resource efforts to address workforce development challenges and opportunities that can be better addressed by the collaboration. The Bay Area has been evolving a set of practices that we call Regional Joint Ventures (RJVs)  that supports the formation and resourcing of collaborative efforts.

The SWP funds are divided into two streams: Local (60%) and Regional (40%). The Regional Funds are intended to support efforts to address regional workforce development needs and are required to be allocated by vote of our 28 member colleges. RJVs are primarily funded in two ways from this funding stream.

Announcements & News

SWP Expenditure Resources

Chancellor's Office

NOVA Reporting Resources

Request SWP Report Version 2.2

Use this form to request a report presenting Strong Workforce Program Local and Regional budget and expenditures by project from NOVA.

SWP Tracking

View your Local and Regional Allocations, Regional Fund disbursements, NOVA expenditures, and much more in Knack! Go to the Community College SWP tab, locate your institution, and select the Allocations link in your institution’s row.

Glance Report GoogleDoc

Use this form to request a PDF report that presents an overview of your institution’s SWP Local and Regional Fund Share budgets and expenditure data in NOVA for all projects, SWP metrics for your College and SWP Rounds allocations

Webinar Recording

Bay Region Fiscal Reporting Webinar Recording from Sept 9, 2020

SWP NOVA Complete Checklist

This checklist contains the main areas of activity for SWP Fiscal reporting in NOVA along with tools and step-by-step instructions for each.

Invoicing BACCC for Expenditure Reimbursement

help@baccc.net

Please contact the BACCC via email to help@baccc.net to have the invoice template emailed to you directly.

Cross-Reference Template

This easy template will help you customize your College’s G/L report to accompany an invoice and organize your G/L to cross-reference to NOVA projects for reimbursement of expenditures.

Every dollar of expenditure reported in your invoice should be tied to a GL account and a particular project in NOVA. That expense should be described in your NOVA project. We will ask you to certify this in your invoice.

Examples:

What we like to see
Your General Ledger shows that you have spent $20,000 in faculty salaries. Your latest quarterly NOVA reports show that you have spent $12,000 in faculty salaries for a project to redesign your Welding program curriculum and $8,000 in faculty salaries for professional development for your Early Childhood Education program.

What is a problem
Your general ledger shows $50,000 in expenditures in professional services in the 5000 category. In your latest quarterly NOVA reports, we see that you had reported the expenditure of $20,000 to a consultant to develop a new program in diesel mechanics and $10,000 to a consultant for project managing the development of pathway between the adult education programs and your Hospitality program. We can find no record in your NOVA reports of the expenditure of the remaining $30,000 in the 5000 category.

Specifically, documentation to reconcile the invoice with printouts of your General Ledger and with your quarterly report in NOVA. There are a number of ways in which this requirement may be met.

Examples:

What we like to see

Your General Ledger shows expenses by project in the same way they are reported in NOVA. This is easy – all we need is a printout of your detailed General Ledger. If the project names are different, you might need to provide us with a key or annotate the GL. Some colleges assign top codes as a project name, which is very useful for NOVA project cross-referencing.

Your general ledger doesn’t break out expenses by project, but you have a spreadsheet or other system that tracks expenses by project that is reconciled with the general ledger. Send us printouts of your GL and your spreadsheet with some direction about how the two are reconciled.

You aren’t so fortunate as to be able to do either of the above. Provide us with a printout of the general ledger that allows us to at least reconcile the total amounts reported by object code in the General Ledger with the total amounts by object code across all projects reported in NOVA. Ideally, you would annotate the GL so that we can track every expenditure to its project, but we know that for some of you that could take days of work. In this case, provide us with the level of detail that you are able to do without too much trouble. We may ask for more detail once we see what you send us.