STRATEGIES FOR LEVERAGING RESOURCES
Stretching Resources

Coordinating services helps stretch limited resources, including, but not exclusively, funds. This allows providers to increase their service capacity, invest in program improvement, increase client access, and tackle a range of obstacles to learner success. The partners readily share such resources as instructors, technology support, professional development, classroom and office space, and computer equipment. They also promote services provided by other agencies, exchange client referrals, and serve on each other's advisory boards. Examples from some of the partnerships follow.

• In a partnership with the Division of Public Assistance (DPA), Nine Star Enterprises provides case management for families receiving public assistance, providing services to all long-term clients needing English literacy (EL) instruction and specializing in working with the Hmong, a hard-to-serve segment of Anchorage's immigrant population. To serve this population effectively, Nine Star hires junior case managers who are trained by DPA, speak the Hmong language, and understand the culture. They work directly with clients on job searches and provide referrals to job training and English literacy instruction, all under the oversight of senior case managers at DPA.
  
  
• South Arkansas Community College provides space for the WAGE program. The downtown campus is home to the local One-Stop Center and some WAGE classes. WAGE relies on the One-Stop for referrals, support services, classroom space, and job search and placement services and provides the Test of Adult Basic Education (TABE) and basic skills training for One-Stop clients.
  
  
• READ/San Diego collaborates with faith-based organizations, private companies, community-based organizations, and government agencies to extend literacy services beyond the libraries. One of its many partners, the 31st Street Learning Center, a community center at the 31st Street Adventist Church, works with READ to offer literacy services to the neighborhood. The church provides the facility, tutors, and childcare, and READ trains tutors and provides the materials, including computers.
  
  
• In Louisville, 85 percent of incoming students at Jefferson Community College (JCC) need remediation in math, and more than 40 percent need it in reading. To help the college meet the needs of these learners, JCPSAE makes the district's PLATO remediation software available to JCC students, since the college doesn't have a license to use the software.² Now remedial classes using PLATO are team-taught by JCC and JCPSAE teachers at the adult education center's computer lab.
  
  
• In Holyoke, the Juntos partners have expanded the formal and informal professional development opportunities available to their staff by sharing expertise and instructional materials. Teachers are given opportunities to learn from others who teach similar classes or who specialize in different areas. They meet to discuss instructional strategies, and they share ideas by e-mail. Sometimes they teach each other's classes.
  
  
• At the Decker Family Development Center, the three partners share resources. The school system serves as the main fiscal agent for the partnership and provides adult education instructors, while the university provides early childhood instructors, and the hospital contributes social services, medical care, and supplies.
  
  
• The Donald H. Londer Center collaborated with other Department of Community Justice staff and Worksystems, Inc., the workforce development board, to develop a One-Stop Resource Center in Portland's Inverness Jail. Through the Center, inmates can investigate employment listings and training opportunities, participate in adult education courses, and use computers to develop a résumé.