Wave Staff Report
WHITTIER — Whittier Union Adult School will receive nearly $1 million of a Round 3 English Language Learner Healthcare Pathways grant, which will go toward the continued expansion of the school’s health care pathways curriculum, reduced fees for bilingual students, automatic enrollment to Río Hondo College, and provide the opportunity for students to earn stackable credentials, which can lead to better pay.
The ELL Healthcare Pathways grant is part of a $4.1 million grant awarded to the Río Hondo Region Adult Education Consortium — which includes Whittier Union Adult School, Rio Hondo College, El Monte-Rosemead Adult School and El Rancho Adult School — to create more opportunities for bilingual speakers in the health care industry, where they are in great demand.
“The goal of the ELL Healthcare grant is to get more frontline people who are bilingual into the workforce,” Whittier Union Adult School Principal Margie Moriarty said. “More importantly, the grant will greatly reduce the financial burden for bilingual students, as the money will allow us, through our industry partners, to provide considerable financial assistance to our students.”
The ELL Healthcare Pathways grant will allow Whittier Union Adult School to continue offering its entry-level medical assistant and phlebotomy classes for an additional three years, and add a new advanced online class in EKG Tech to its course catalog. The medical assistant and phlebotomy courses serve as prerequisites for the EKG Tech course. Both prerequisite classes include externships.
The Río Hondo Region Adult Education Consortium applied for the grant to provide healthcare education and increased accessibility to a wider pool of potential students in the Whittier vicinity. For a healthcare pathways student, the schools are interchangeable, with students encouraged to complete classes on one campus, then switch to another campus to continue their schooling and add credentials.
“The consortium is set up to let students pick and choose what classes and schools they want to enroll in and attend. It’s a streamlined process that can get students into the workforce sooner,” Whittier Union Adult School Assistant Principal Juan Anzaldo said.
Each school in the consortium has its own healthcare pathways curriculum. If a student takes a medical assistant course at Rio Hondo College, El Monte-Rosemead Adult School or El Rancho Adult School, they can come to Whittier Union Adult School to take the EKG Tech course. Whittier Union Adult School students are also free to pursue additional classes at other schools.
The ELL Healthcare Pathways grant will allow Whittier Union Adult School to continue offering financial assistance, which covers most of the cost of taking the medical assistant course for bilingual speakers, and expand the assistance to cover up to 80% of the phlebotomy and EKG Tech courses.
“Completing each course can bring a student an additional $3 to $4 an hour,” Moriarty said. “With the financial assistance provided by the ELL grant, consortium students can plan their career in health care at a considerable savings.”
For Whittier Union Adult School healthcare pathways students who have completed their programs and want to continue at Rio Hondo College and enroll in the school’s registered nurse or paramedic programs, the ELL grant provides expedited enrollment.
“This is a huge part of the ELL grant,” Anzaldo said. “Not only are qualified students essentially receiving scholarships for taking a medical assistant or phlebotomy course, when they are finished at the adult school, they will already have a Río Hondo College ID number and can continue their schooling there.”
The California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office Workforce and Economic Development Division, which issues the ELL Healthcare Pathways grant, provided California schools more than $155 million in funds to be spent over the next three years.
The $4.1 million received by the Río Hondo Region Adult Education Consortium — of which the Whittier Union Adult School received approximately $950,000 — was the second most received by any school district or consortium in Los Angeles County, behind Los Angeles Unified.
