S2 EP12 Revolutionizing Computer Science Education: The Impact of WeLead CS and ILEAD Academy with Alicia Sells

PODCAST Season 2 EPISODE 12

 Alicia Sells

CEO, We Lead CS, Inc

Quote of the Podcast – 

"Nothing is impossible. The word itself says I'm possible" - Audrey Hepburn

Introduction of Guest BIO – 

Alicia Sells is the CEO of We Lead CS, Inc. She worked with the Kentucky General Assembly to establish the We Lead CS Virtual Computer Science Career Academy to increase Kentucky’s competitiveness in the tech economy and significantly expand Kentucky’s capacity to prepare high school students for the tech workforce. We Lead CS offers Kentucky high school students a jumpstart on computer science degrees and opportunity to prepare for the workforce with some of America’s leading tech employers. In 2014, Alicia founded iLEAD Academy - Kentucky's first regional high school serving students from five rural counties. iLEAD prepares students for careers in America’s highest demand STEM jobs. More than 75% of iLEAD’s graduates have earned an associate degree in high school and headed out into the world with industry certifications and the skills needed to succeed in the workplace. Alicia is a 36-year public policy veteran. She has served as the Vice President of Government Relations at the University of Louisville and the lead lobbyist for the Kentucky School Boards Association. She was the Press Secretary and Communications Director for the Mayor in Louisville, Kentucky. She is an alum of Stanford University's Design Thinking for Social Systems Fellowship Program and a proud graduate of Western Kentucky University.

Interview

Agents of Change: Leaders/Innovators

•  30,000 Ft. View – Why so we, as a society invest in education?
• What drew you to education?
• Why Kentucky should prepare students for the tech workforce.
• How virtual learning can increase access to Career and Technical Education and employers in students' areas of interest.
• What are the biggest challenges to you?
• What would you like decision makers to know?

Transcript

Liza Holland [00:00:02]:
Welcome to education perspectives. I am your host, Liza Holland. This is a podcast that explores the role of education in our society from a variety of lenses. Education needs to evolve to meet the needs of today and the future. Solving such huge issues requires understanding. Join me as we begin to explore the many perspectives of education. Alicia Sells is the CEO of WeLead CS Inc. She worked with the Kentucky General Assembly to establish the WeLeadCS Virtual Computer Science Career Academy to increase Kentucky's competitiveness in the tech economy and significantly expand Kentucky's capacity to prepare high school students for the tech workforce.

Liza Holland [00:00:51]:
WeLead CS offers Kentucky high school students a jump start on computer science degrees and opportunity to prepare for the workforce with some of America's leading tech employers. In 2014, Alicia founded ILEAD Academy, Kentucky's first regional high school serving students from 5 rural counties. ILEAD prepares the students for careers in America's highest demand STEM jobs. More than 75% of ILEAD's graduates have earned an associate's degree in high school and headed out into the world with industry certifications and the skills needed to succeed in the workplace. Alicia is a 36 year public policy veteran. She has served as the vice president of government relations at the University of Louisville and the lead lobbyist for the Kentucky School Boards Association. She was the press secretary and communications director for the mayor in Louisville, Kentucky, and she is an alum of Stanford University's Design Thinking for Social Systems Fellowship Program and a proud graduate of Western Kentucky University. So Alicia Sells, welcome to Education Perspectives.

Alicia Sells [00:02:02]:
Thank you. It's so good to see you again. It's been a long time.

Liza Holland [00:02:06]:
Same here. Same here. I'm gonna kick you off with the same question I ask every guest. Like a 30,000 foot view. Why do we, as a society, need to invest in education?

Alicia Sells [00:02:19]:
So to me, education is the great equalizer. I grew up in private school. So I went from Montessori school through 12th grade in Catholic education. And I left Catholic schools in Louisville, thought everyone was Catholic, went to Western and discovered very quickly that's not the case at all. And so I realized over a period of my life that the way that I thought people grew up, that where they had lots of educational opportunity and there were lots of there were lots of people in their lives investing in their education, that that's not always the case. Right? And so I went to work back in 1991 right after CARA passed the Kentucky Education Reform Act for for those people who don't know what CARA is. And I went to work for the School Administrators Association, and the guy that was the director then, Wayne Young, he was like, did you ever have any interest in going to Frankfurt? And I thought or, you know, when I was in Frankfurt, we're going to the capital. And I was like, well, I, you know, I don't know.

Alicia Sells [00:03:18]:
I mean, I can watch Schoolhouse Rock again and figure out how a bill becomes a law. And so I quickly went from being a communications person to being a lobbyist. And what I realized at that time is I probably was in Frankfort at the most exciting time for public education where the whole general assembly was focused on what they had created in house bill 940 that became the Kentucky Education Reform Act. It was a very exciting time to be in Frankfort, and I I got bitten with the bug. Public education policy and starting to see the power of public education in rural Kentucky and in urban Kentucky too, and the fact that public education really is that great equalizer. It gives everybody the opportunity to learn something, to make something of themselves, to improve their lives, and to follow their dreams. And so I I got hooked, and I've been doing it off and on ever since.

Liza Holland [00:04:13]:
That's fantastic. That's an exciting background to bring to your work now. Let me just ask you a follow-up question about that. Mhmm. We've been hearing a lot about what's coming on the ballot as far as school choice is concerned, and there's so many pros and cons. But I'm just curious what your perspective is. Obviously, we wanna provide our students with new and interesting types of opportunities, but particularly in the funding for rural schools, I think that may be kinda dangerous. What do you think from a policy perspective?

Alicia Sells [00:04:49]:
You know, it's tough one for me because I'm a big believer in choice and education and kids having lots of different options. The thing that worries me the most is if you funnel away a lot of resources from public schools, then the kids who need the most significant level of services may not be able to obtain those services. Right? And so I think that worries me a little bit. School choice itself doesn't worry me a whole lot just because I think, you know, I've spent the past 10 years of my life working on school choice that I lead, academy, but I think the funding part of it is really the biggest challenge. And so do I you know, I have had the benefit of working over my career with the New Schools Venture Fund, which is based in California, and they fund new schools. I mean, literally, new charter schools mostly in the states, all 50 states. And so I've really seen some incredibly earnest people who have great ideas for small schools that can serve students, and so it's hard for me to be totally against what they do, but I do worry about the funding structure. And I also think that there are some members of the general assembly that think that if they create school choice in charter schools or vouchers, that it's gonna solve the problems that they find that are there in the public schools.

Alicia Sells [00:06:11]:
And I don't think we've seen that happen in any of the other states that have wide scale school choice. So I also I'm a little skeptical about that too. But I do think that change is inevitable. And one of the things I'm probably gonna talk about today a lot is that we've got to let go of the status quo in public education and really start to personalize options for kids. And if we don't do it, the general assembly is gonna do it for us.

Liza Holland [00:06:38]:
Well, I really appreciate your thoughts and perspective because I can see so many different things on both sides. And what I wind up coming back down to is the fundamental way that we look at education is probably gonna have to change. You know, the institutions that were developed in the 1900 are going to have to change to keep up with the the pace of what's going on today and, new funding models, new structures, new policies, new assessment systems, all that kind of good stuff. So one of the exciting things that happened with the assembly is that they have empowered you with this new effort. And so we'd love to hear a little bit more about your efforts that you are just beginning on.

Alicia Sells [00:07:19]:
Sure. Well, I'm excited to talk about it. So, the general assembly just funded to the tune of $3,000,000, the start up and operation of something called We Lead CS, which is was created in enabling legislation back in the 22 session to create a statewide virtual computer science career academy. And so what they want to try to do is improve Kentucky's tech talent pipeline and our competitive competitiveness for not only filling tech jobs that are open now, but also attracting more tech jobs to the state. And so they I'd I think back to 1991 when I first walked in the doors up there and and then walking out in this legislative session with a $3,000,000 appropriation to to go through this experiment. It's a pretty humbling experience, really, to think about what they've entrusted me to do. We started highlighting WeLeadCS at ILEAD Academy, which is Kentucky's first regional career academy. Ignite in Northern Kentucky followed suit after ILEAD.

Alicia Sells [00:08:26]:
It was ILEAD was a model for Ignite and some other regional programs in the state. ILEAD's been open now 10 years. We just finished our 10th year, which is amazing, and I lead, serve students from Carroll, Gallatin, Henry, Owen, and Trumbull Counties. And we prepare kids for STEM careers, engineering, computer science, health care, some advanced manufacturing, like electrical and 3 d printing and those kinds of things. So in 2020, the US Department of Education issued a challenge in their rural tech project for innovative ideas to expand rural students' access to computer science ed. And I wrote a proposal during COVID that said we're gonna create a virtual Computer Science Career Academy. And the really funny part of that was COVID had not shut things down yet to the point that we even thought that virtual education would be a thing for very long. And so I've looked back at it now and I think, I wonder how I thought I was gonna get people to, like, have their kids learn virtually, but, you know So there was at least one good byproduct of COVID, which was that we got we all got pretty used to that.

Alicia Sells [00:09:36]:
Right? So we did a 3 year pilot at ILEAD, and what that pilot looks like is our computer science teacher teaching students who are not at ILEAD. They're in their home school districts, in those 5 districts that support ILEAD. So they're still in their home district, and they take their CTE class with the iLead computer science teacher in a Google Classroom. In the 1st 2 years, the kids were just really knocking it out of the park. I mean, we had 13 kids in the 2nd finished 2 years. They earned a combined 63 hours of college credit. They earned 7 industry certifications. And so as I was talking about that to our advisory board, senator David Givens is the senate president pro tem, and then representative Ed Massey were on our advisory board.

Alicia Sells [00:10:22]:
And they they were like, well, if this is gonna work for these 5 school districts, let's see if we can make this work for kids across the state. Because school districts have varying levels of computer science education, but not many of them have those accelerated dual credit pathways in computer science ed. So they passed legislation in 2022, and then they funded it this session. We just signed up our 1st district at Lawrence County, which does not have computer science education out in Eastern Kentucky, south of Ashland. So they're gonna enroll, like, 14 kids that are interested in taking computer science in the fall with us. And so they'll start with us in the 24, 25 school year. And for the kids who are freshmen, they'll have the opportunity to earn 18 hours of college credit in computer science toward computer science associate degrees or bachelor's degrees.

Liza Holland [00:11:15]:
That's so exciting. Which, higher ed groups are you working with to start out?

Alicia Sells [00:11:20]:
So we will partner with the community college in all of our districts. So not to the exclusion of any of the others, but one of the things that's worked really well for iLEAD students is they get an associate degree from Jefferson Community and Technical College while they're in high school with us. And so about 75% of our graduates have earned an associate degree while they're in high school, and that was designed in large part to increase educational attainment at postsecondary level in rural Kentucky, and it works really well. And so we've we've had great success partnering with KCTCS on that initiative. And so what the kids will earn their dual credit from the partner postsecondary institution in their district. And so in in Lawrence County's case, it'll be Ashland. In working with Rock Castle County, theirs would be Somerset. And so we'll have to go through some hoops to get those things approved, but we know what those are and KCTCS has been really helpful to us in figuring out how all that works.

Alicia Sells [00:12:19]:
And so what we'll counsel kids to do is to take those dual credits and any other dual credit they earn while they're in high school and gen ed, and they can and they'll leave high school with counseling from us, and we lead CS in our virtual classes with how they transfer those credits to finish an associate degree and then to transfer that associate degree as a block to finish a bachelor's.

Liza Holland [00:12:43]:
Excellent. And you've already had your first, first district sign on. That's

Alicia Sells [00:12:47]:
Yeah. I'm really excited about it. Yeah.

Liza Holland [00:12:50]:
Is that next steps through the summer to try to, to bring on some more districts? Are you going to kinda start small and build? Or

Alicia Sells [00:12:56]:
We're gonna try to start small. We anticipate that ILEAD will probably enroll their seventy some students that need computer science ed with us in the for the coming year, and then we'll have Rock Castle and Lawrence, and then Graves is gonna come on in the spring to do some dual credit with us. So far opposite end of the state. Right? And so what we'll do in the fall is really open this up statewide to superintendents and say, you know, this is an option that's available to your students. I have to tell you that it doesn't hurt that the Lawrence County superintendent is our incoming commissioner of education. So I think he'll probably be a pretty big advocate for us on that front, and Carrie Ballinger and Rockcastle is a strong leader in the superintendent community as is the superintendent in Graves. So I've been fortunate to know some of those superintendents in other work, and they've been listening to me talk about this for a long time. So we would like to have 250 kids enrolled in the 25, 26 school year.

Alicia Sells [00:13:58]:
I'm starting to wonder if that's maybe not an underestimate. And so that's good. It's gonna be really interesting to see. When they threw this out in Lawrence County to students, they have about 740 kids in their high school and about 500 kids said, yeah. I'd like to do that. Right? Like, he's they're interested in technology. They're interested in gaming. And so, you know, once they learned a little bit more about it and the district, you know, worked with the students to help them make decisions, we ended up with a much smaller group.

Alicia Sells [00:14:27]:
But at that, it was an interesting phone call to get from their chief academic officer to say, yeah. We have more than 500 kids who've expressed interest in that. So it'll be interesting to see where it goes from here.

Liza Holland [00:14:37]:
That'll be an interesting challenge to figure out how to scale and how to fund that and all those kind of good things.

Alicia Sells [00:14:43]:
Yes. It will. It's a good problem to have to have to go back to the general assembly and say I need a lot more money. So we'll see. We'll see how that goes.

Liza Holland [00:14:50]:
Absolutely. No. That's so exciting, though.

Alicia Sells [00:14:54]:
It is. Yeah. And that's the kind of thing, I think I testified in front of the general assembly in the interim joint committee on education back in November when they were focusing on school choice. And we talked about ILEAD, but we also talked about the fact that course choice is really something that we can also do in education that diversifies education for kids that, in this particular case, it's a lot cheaper to enroll students in WeLeadCS. The seat fee per student is $500. So if you had 30 kids at $500, you know, that's a lot less than hiring a teacher. Right? And all our teachers are certified in Kentucky. They're all Kentucky teachers.

Alicia Sells [00:15:35]:
They're they're here in the state. So it's the opportunity to provide choice to students. Lawrence County being a perfect example, they didn't have that choice in any other way. Rockcastle is a little bit different in the sense that they had a computer science teacher, that computer science teacher is leaving, and so this is a way for them to continue on in that pathway without because it's hard to find computer science teachers. It's just really difficult. Hard to find all teachers right now. So providing options for students within the current structure is something that we definitely can do. We just have to get in the mindset as an education community that we're interested in doing it.

Liza Holland [00:16:16]:
Absolutely. I think that's phenomenal, especially with some of the new types of industries that are coming on board, like your cybersecurity and your AI and that sort of a thing. It's going to be I talked to a recruiter at Toyota, and the number one thing he's recruiting for right now is AI knowledge. And, of course, we've got education going, oh my god. No. We're not allowed we're not gonna let anybody use it. And you're like, oh, no. Can't do that.

Liza Holland [00:16:43]:
The reality is changing.

Alicia Sells [00:16:44]:
Yeah. One of the things that I learned in this process, and I think this made it compelling to the general assembly, is in 2021, there were 783 kids in Kentucky high school students who earned a computer science industry certification. So in and of itself, that's a very, very low number. But then 40% of those 783 industry certifications are aligned to the most negative growth job in tech. So it's aligned to an Adobe Photoshop and Adobe graphic design software. At a time, there was a time then that was great. Right? That was considered to be, you know, a cutting edge technology skill, but it's not anymore. And, you know, software like Canva and you know, where you can basically do your own graphic design work for, you know, a couple bucks a month or free, basically, has really changed that.

Alicia Sells [00:17:40]:
And so one of the real challenges that we've seen as we work with, like, the speed school at UofL and the College of Engineering at UK is kids really need to know how to code by the time they get to engineering school, and they don't know how to code. And so they're using a lot of, you know, chat GPT to figure it out. And so we wanna try to not only increase access to computer science, but really change what we're teaching in computer science in Kentucky. The other thing we're finding is that a lot of kids have access to computer science AP and it's a class, and then there's not any place else for them to go. And so that's the other thing that we really wanna do is work with the college board and districts that are teaching computer science AP classes, to help those students have some options to continue on into Python and Java and higher level skills in AI and cyber and data. And so we really wanna up the game in terms of what we're teaching and and try to turn around some of that data on those industry certs not being aligned to high demand jobs. Then when you get to the post secondary side in that same year, there were fewer than a 1000 students who graduated from Kentucky public post secondary institutions, both community college and 4 year institutions with a computer science degree.

Liza Holland [00:19:08]:
Wow.

Alicia Sells [00:19:08]:
And when you peel that data down even more, the number of females is around 6%, and the number of African Americans is below 1%. And so one of the things that we're gonna do this fall is go out to interested districts and do family engagement activities in the evening for parents to come to school and have some hands on experiences with their students to teach them, you know, just a little fun coding game or, you know, here's how you move a drone or here's how you move this dog, you know, across the desk or the computer screen. Because one of the things that we know is that parents getting involved in their children's decision making about what they can do are really the most important decision maker in that process and the the most important support system for them. So we're really gonna focus on students who are underrepresented in tech in that process, women or girls, children of color. And we've been doing some of that work in another grant program that I work on, and it has been hugely successful with parents. They feel more empowered about what their students are learning, and they, you know, they like to hear information about the computer science jobs that are available in Kentucky. On any given day, there's about 3,000 open computer science jobs on indeed.com. So somebody's hiring for them right then and that minute.

Alicia Sells [00:20:35]:
And the average salary is usually around 70 to $75,000. So when you talk to parents about that, it doesn't really take long to get their attention. I mean, they're like, oh, yeah. Okay. You know? And it also helps to hear them to hear, you know, your kid loves to play video games. That's a really good thing. That's a that's a great skill set for them to have. And so that also is something that we really wanna tap into as kids, you know, kids love technology and they've they're totally native in technology now.

Alicia Sells [00:21:06]:
I mean, they, you know, practically born with a phone in their hand. So we really wanna make a difference on those numbers, the number of computer science degrees that students are earning in Kentucky, and we really wanna change that data on industry certifications in high school.

Liza Holland [00:21:22]:
I heard the same types of wants and needs echoed at the Chambers Workforce Summit last week because they're literally in Kentucky. There are 2 jobs open for every job seeker at this point, but the vast majority of them don't have the skill set that they need to jump into those jobs. And that's particularly that's a lot about why Kentucky needs to prepare students for the real tech workforce.

Alicia Sells [00:21:48]:
That's right. We're gonna we have been blessed in the piloting of WeLeadCS. I got I went to a presentation by a guy named Tim Ferguson. He's the chief information officer at Northern Kentucky University, and it was in, like, the Owen County Library. He's an Owen County guy, and he had come back to speak to folks in the district, and he was talking about this group that he was involved with called the Inner Alliance of Greater Cincinnati. And so a group of employers in the Cincinnati region that came together now about 14 years ago to start working on building their tech talent pipeline by working with high school students. And that group includes Procter and Gamble, 5th Third Bank, Great American Insurance, Kroger, a 451, I mean, all the big tech giants in Cincinnati. And so he introduced me to them, their executive director at the time, a lady named Heather Ackles, and they were part of our application to the US Department of Ed in the rural tech project.

Alicia Sells [00:22:46]:
And I honestly think it's probably why they chose our idea for a virtual academy as one of the 5 most innovative ideas in the country. And I think it I have no doubt it was because of what we said we could do with the inner alliance. And so a huge part of what we proposed was virtual work based learning, virtual job shadowing, virtual mentoring, virtual learning challenges, those kinds of things. And so we've piloted all that with the inner alliance, and we have been really fortunate work with the Northern Kentucky Chamber. And we're gonna announce here in a couple weeks, so I I feel fairly safe going on to say this now, but we're gonna offer a series of $5,200,000 grants to local chambers in Kentucky in the 25 fiscal year, asking those local chambers to identify among their membership who's hiring tech talent, and what kind of tech talent do they need, and getting them to bring those employers to the table to tell us, what do you want? Right? Is it AI? Is it cyber? Is it a combination of all of those things? Is it I didn't know what data science was until I started talking to employers in at at Procter and Gamble and Kroger about how they make sense of all their data about their soap and groceries and all those things. So I'm really excited about that. I think we will have a an interesting experience learning about and engaging Kentucky employers and talking about what they want their tech talent pipeline to look like. We know what the Cincinnati employers want their tech talent pipeline to be, but now we need to spread that out into Kentucky.

Alicia Sells [00:24:18]:
And the inner alliance will be our partner in that. And so it will be just the inner alliance in Kentucky, and and they're gonna drop that of Greater Cincinnati part as they come across the river and help us really put this together.

Liza Holland [00:24:32]:
Oh, man. That's fantastic. That was gonna be my next question was, you know, what what opportunities do we have for partners and whatnot? Because one of the other interesting statistics that they threw out was talking about college graduates, and this is overall. But that, close to half of them after a year out were not employed in a in a job that would be life sustaining. You know, they were underemployed. And so but the the the real trigger with those that were employed at a collegiate type of a level were those that had done some sort of an internship apprenticeship Yes. Etcetera.

Alicia Sells [00:25:08]:
Yeah. Absolutely.

Liza Holland [00:25:10]:
I keep seeing these parallels of career and technical education. And for so many years, it was kinda dissed. You know? You could do that if you don't get into college. And that's the reality of today is we need to to connect careers with every type of student. So why do you think that it's important for us to continue to lean in on this virtual learning to be able to make that happen?

Alicia Sells [00:25:33]:
Well, you know, it's hard to move kids to where jobs are. Right? So back, I don't know, probably now 7, 8 years ago, the Kentucky Department of Education got one of the JPMorgan Chase new skills for youth grants, and they were pretty big grants. I can't remember how many 1,000,000 of dollars came to the state with that. It was a lot. And the used ad lead is something of a model. Like, could we do regional collaboration and and expand options for kids? And I worked with them on that in terms of implementation, and one of the school districts that was interested in participating was Owsley County. And I went down to Owsley County and I met with their team, and they were trying to figure out, like, of the neighboring districts, who could they partner with? And those superintendents were all at the table, and they were very earnest about it. But what it came down to is there are no jobs there.

Alicia Sells [00:26:22]:
Right? And so as they were talking about what kinds of careers they could prepare their students for, what they realized is they were preparing their students for jobs that were gonna take them out of the community. And so for me, the virtual world presents an opportunity for us to to bring employers to students without having to move anyone. So we've been experimenting now for several years with virtual job shadowing. So I've got kids sitting in their home high school and at iLead in a Google Classroom with people in Cincinnati, in Texas, in Northern Kentucky who they're learning from these employers, and they're having an opportunity to interact with these employers, but But we didn't have to put them on a bus. We didn't have to take them out of school. We didn't have to ask the employers to take a whole day to have our kids descend upon them in a in a virtual in a in person visit. It takes you know, Procter and Gamble has been fantastic about having young talented employees do this virtual job shadowing with us, and it takes their folks 45 minutes. You know? They can log into the Google Classroom, talk to our kids, answer some questions, and they're done.

Alicia Sells [00:27:34]:
And so

Liza Holland [00:27:35]:
And they don't have to commute or go anywhere or take huge times. Yeah.

Alicia Sells [00:27:39]:
That's awesome. You know, so we're gonna do that in Lawrence County. I mean, those kids are gonna get to meet employers from all over the state. They're gonna get to start to build relationships with employers in in a network. The work based learning that we offer in WeLeadCS will be embedded into the curriculum of the computer science classes. So as a part of what your experience will be is that you will have daily synchronous instruction from a computer science teacher in Google Classroom, but you will also meet with a college and career readiness coach from time to time who will help you understand how to transfer your credits and what your credits mean and what kind of computer science degree you might wanna choose. And then you'll also have virtual job shadowing. We're gonna do career camps as a part of We Lead CS, and we have been working with the Inter Alliance on this.

Alicia Sells [00:28:30]:
You'll learn to write a resume. You'll learn to prepare you'll learn to interview for a job. You'll have mock job interviews. You'll learn about professionalism in the workforce and what's expected when you, you know, need to send an email to your boss and those kinds of things. There are some specific skills that students need in the computer science world. You need to know how to collaborate in GitHub. You need to know scrum project management. And so we'll work on all of those things with students and introduce them to those concepts and give them some experience.

Alicia Sells [00:29:00]:
And then if they're still with us in their 3rd year in a 3rd year, we are gonna build a program with employers that's challenge based learning. So one of the things we've been talking about with Procter and Gamble is, you know, data is obviously their big thing. And so how we could work with some of the data scientists to come in and help students in rural communities figure out how to apply data gathering and data storytelling in a community like Lawrence County, you know, where there's a lot of stories to tell in Appalachia about those kinds of things. So that will be year 3. And then year 4, the students will have the ability to apply for paid internship with employers that are involved with us. Some of those will be virtual, some of them will be in person. We have 2 students from ILEAD this summer who are interning with Procter and Gamble, and it's all virtual. So one of the things that we know about these jobs, particularly since COVID, but it's always been sort of like this in the tech industry, A lot of these 70,000, $75,000 a year jobs can be done remotely.

Alicia Sells [00:30:04]:
And so that's another reason why it is so important for us to invest in this. Because making $70,000 a year in Clay County, Kentucky and investing that back into your community is vastly different than getting a degree in computer science and moving to Cincinnati and coming home occasionally. And that's what we really wanna try to focus on is learning from employers, what they're looking for, what jobs are remote, then that changes that conversation in Owsley County. Right? Where 10 years ago, I'm talking to the people in Oweslie County, and they're like, there are no jobs. Well, if there are jobs that students can do virtually, then that's a whole other endeavor. Right? And so that's what I'm really hoping we learn about virtual education. And I'll be really honest with you, Liza. One of the challenges that we've had with ILEAD is people are resistant to change, and it has been a struggle for me to keep it open.

Alicia Sells [00:31:00]:
Because cyclically, over the years, we will have a new superintendent come in, a new chief academic officer come in. And because those kids are not physically in the high school building, it is concerning and and it causes some a lot of friction, you know, in terms of this is different. We're sending kids somewhere else. What if they miss their high school experience? You know, all of those kinds of things that make it tough. It makes innovation really hard. And so one of the things that became clear to me after about the 3rd go round of that in operating ILEAD is maybe there's another way that we do it and maybe virtually is the way to do it, where kids have, you know, pathway choice, they have course choice, but they're still in the same building. Because I've one of the things that I've learned in this past 10 years with iLEAD is chipping away at that is really hard. And there is just a huge resistance to change and innovation, and so maybe there's another way to do it.

Alicia Sells [00:32:01]:
Maybe it's not physically moving the students out of a building, maybe it's bringing it to the students. And so we're gonna try it that way and see how that works, you know.

Liza Holland [00:32:09]:
You know, that's really exciting because as you were talking about this innovation and I'm going, yes, this is what we need, I also know how challenging the structure, the traditional structure, is. And are they gonna be willing to be flexible with you about what types of courses you offer and not try to fit, you know, a round peg into a square hole as it were. Right.

Alicia Sells [00:32:31]:
Yeah. So the way that WeLead CS is set up, the threat comes out because the school district has to contract with WeLead CS. So the school district enters into an MOA with WeLead CS and says, we're gonna pay you x amount of money for x number of kids. Right? And so it is there is control from the beginning for the school district in terms of making the choice to provide something innovative. We're they're gonna pay for something innovative, and they're gonna you know, and there are some things that we ask them to agree to in the MOA that they provide the students a a decent learning environment, that we have a contact that we can communicate with on a regular basis, that we have access to communicating with the student's parents. So, you know, those kinds of things. And so I think that one of the challenges, and we've seen this with a virtual academy that popped up in the past couple of years in Kentucky and Cloverport, which is if a student the big challenge for school districts in innovation is when students leave their building and in this particular case with virtual academies, like virtual schools, they the seat leaves the building with the kid. And so what we wanted to be sure is that that doesn't have anything to do with WeLeadCS.

Alicia Sells [00:33:47]:
You can you pick WeLeadCS to basically teach a CTE class for your students, and you're in control of it from the very beginning. Your board is voting on it and your superintendent's deciding to do it. Both have to sign the board chair and the superintendent, and I assign the contract together. So I think that that will help some of the concern that's out there about I'm losing money. Right? And in terms of because it's nothing we lead CSS, nothing to do with per pupil funding. It also doesn't necessitate that the students leave. Right? Like, they're still in the class in the school every day. They're just going in the library or wherever they're gonna go and sit and take their virtual class.

Alicia Sells [00:34:26]:
So I think that, you know, after the years of experience that I've had with Allied, that takes away a couple of the barriers in terms of, you know, it's not a huge investment and it is and the students are still in the building. And I think, you know, that hopefully will help people be more receptive to it and less threatened by it in the sense that they still can see their kids and interact with their kids, and the kids still have the high school experience that they want them to have, but they're just having a little bit something different during the day.

Liza Holland [00:34:58]:
Well, let's hope this turns out to be the best of both worlds. And I have to do a major shout out to the general assembly because they catch a lot of flack for some of the high profile discussions that were happening around education. But this is super substantive and really could make a difference not only in the kids' lives, but in the workforce development for the whole state of Kentucky. So

Alicia Sells [00:35:22]:
I think so. I mean, you know, I know that, you know, some of them would really like to see this, you know, succeed so that we can look at it for, you know, other pathways, not just computer science. Right? And to make sure that that we kids have access to things. And so I know they're really they're really looking to us for that to succeed. Senator David Giddens has been an advocate for this from the minute that he sat down on that advisory board because computer science is so important to him. But, really, honestly, the house leadership got super enthusiastic about it in the past year, and speaker Osborne and floor leader Rudy really pushed it over the edge in the house. And so I know they're very excited about, you know, linking education to workforce development, and can we really make a difference in this tech talent pipeline. And if the pilot that we've done for the past 3 years, you know, those same results hold true, the answer is yes.

Alicia Sells [00:36:17]:
We can. I mean, we there's no question about it.

Liza Holland [00:36:20]:
Gosh. How exciting. That is just great.

Alicia Sells [00:36:23]:
I'm very excited about it.

Liza Holland [00:36:25]:
As you are now embarking upon this, what would you like decision makers out there that maybe have not been involved in the process so far to know?

Alicia Sells [00:36:34]:
Well, first of all, it is you know, the general assembly invested in WeLead CS to the betterment of all kids in Kentucky. And so it is the door's open. Right? We're looking for partners and and excited to work with districts and to work with districts to meet their needs and whatever that might look like. I mean, I'll give Augie's Grace County as an example. They have a lot of computer science education, but they can only go so far with the dual credit. And so what they're looking for us to do is help them go even a little bit further with the dual credit. So it might just be a class or 2, right? And that's okay. And so an important thing to know about it is you can enroll as few as one student, you know, as little as one or you can enroll a whole bunch.

Alicia Sells [00:37:14]:
And so we'll, you know, we'll just work with districts where we are. So from the WeLead CS standpoint, that's the door's open, and we're happy to to talk to folks about whatever it is that they might need for kids. It's also important to know that 8th grade students can start in the pathway, and that would enable those kids if they started with us as in in 8th grade and finish as seniors to earn 21 hours of college credit. So it's an important opportunity for students. So that's the WeLead TS offer. Offer. Let us know what you need, and and we'll be happy to help you would be what I'd say to educators on that. As educators go into this election cycle on school choice, I think one of the things that I find as a lobbyist is the importance of being at the sitting down with legislators and just talking about what do you hope to get out of this.

Alicia Sells [00:38:03]:
Right? Like, help me understand what it is that you don't think is working because I think that dialogue is really important. I don't know if it'll pass. I'm not sure if it will or not. I I don't know. I think there will be a whole lot of effort to keep it from passing. I don't know yet what the effort to pass it is gonna look like. But I think what I would encourage educators to do is not use it as a reason to stop talking to policymakers because at the end of the day, they're still gonna fund education whether they you know, whether it passes or not. And so I think that's a really important thing.

Alicia Sells [00:38:36]:
And then I think the third thing I would just say to education decision makers and districts and teachers and counselors and principals is we're gonna have to change. It's inevitable. And COVID forced a lot of that, I think, on us in ways that we didn't see coming, but change is inevitable at this point. The world moves too fast for a model of especially high school education that was created for the 1st industrial revolution to last a whole lot longer. And so I think if people could just take a step back and maybe just let go a little bit of the status quo, that's gonna help everybody in the long run, and it's especially gonna help kids.

Liza Holland [00:39:17]:
That is an excellent point to end this all too short conversation on. I was looking at the time going, okay. I could talk to you all day. But thanks so much for being a part with Education Perspectives.

Alicia Sells [00:39:29]:
Inviting me, and keep me posted about what you're doing in Lexington. That's so exciting. I I did not know you all bought that build.

Liza Holland [00:39:37]:
Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Education Perspectives. Feel free to share your thoughts on our Facebook page. Let us know which education perspectives you would like to hear or share. Please subscribe and share with your friends.