Public Agency Educational Benefits Working Group – from Achieve60AZ

Public sector employees are a critical step to closing the attainment gap, and their education has a large return on investment for the public.

In this concept, Achieve60AZ wants to research, partner and support the implementation of employee-employer agreements, in which city and county employers actively use tuition reimbursement to engage employees in earning their credentials. Many city and county employees are only high-school diploma holders – sanitation and construction employees, corrections officers and custodial staff - and another large portion are in the category of having attended college, but never earned a degree.

It is also the hypothesis of Achieve60AZ that governmental agencies can work intentionally with community colleges and public universities to create a unique funding system between two governmental agencies. While the private-sector model is tuition reimbursement to meet their profit and shareholder needs, government is not subject to these kinds of financial metrics. Instead, if an inter-governmental agreement where cities and counties used their established financial standing to “front” the tuition for employees so that low--wage-earning employees were not required to pay upfront costs could be conceptualized, we believe the barriers to access would be dramatically reduced.

In this project, we will work with cities and towns to understand barriers to access, fully review existing policies and explore what kinds of barriers are implied, actual, or unintended. We will also create a body of research and economic savings arguments that can serve as a handbook for governmental agencies across the United States to use as a starting point for their own programs. We hope that other local governmental agencies will learn that there is a great value to their citizens (both those who engage in more learning, and the greater tax-paying base), that they learn how to create more open and welcoming policies, and that a new model of employee learning -- one that requires no tuition reimbursement, but rather an exchange of funds between local governmental agencies – is created, therefore taking the financial burden off individual adult learners.

Achieve60AZ will facilitate that learning across states by hosting other state leaders who are interested in this work, by sharing our reports and findings widely (and making them easy for Lumina to use and share as well), and by being an ambassador for the work when visiting other states.

In an 18-month timeframe, Achieve60AZ proposes to:

• Conduct a tuition reimbursement audit of local governmental agencies. In this audit, we will review Arizona’s largest 25 cities and towns (at a minimum), all county policies, and to the extent available, Tribal Community policies. Completed by January 2020
• Conduct a “best in class” audit of government agency tuition reimbursement programs, both within Arizona, and across America. Completed by April 2020
• Create a minimum of two Issue Briefs to outline key findings and opportunities to advance tuition reimbursement best practices. Completed by December 2019 and December 2020
• Partner with an economic policy research institution to create a policy paper on the economic benefit or “taxpayer ROI” for investing in pathways to education for governmental employees. Completed by December 2020
• Identify at least five communities to conduct qualitative research conversations with employee groups around barriers (actual and perceived) to using tuition reimbursement programs. In every community, a specific conversation will be held with employees of non-white backgrounds to ensure those perspectives are elevated. Completed by December 2019
• Based on the research, audits, and community conversations, Achieve60AZ will partner with a design expert to create a pilot model for increasing attainment. Completed by May 2020
• With at least three communities (at least one rural, ideally at all levels of local government) pilot the designed program. Completed by December 2020
• Create a metric system to evaluate and report on the success of the pilot program. On-going throughout the program

For more information, visit https://achieve60az.com/