Amanda's Testimony

“In the two years that I worked at One Million Degrees, nothing caused as much of a barrier to my work as caseload sizes that were too large and inconsistently sized....OMD leadership needs to change their pattern of behavior and listen to its current and former staff by agreeing to a caseload cap of 45 Scholars. This is the only way to ensure that every Scholar that is accepted into OMD gets the quality of program they were promised and deserve.”

Amanda Abraham, Former Scholar Recruitment Coordinator

In the two years that I worked at One Million Degrees (OMD) as both a Program Coordinator (PC) and a Recruitment Coordinator, nothing caused as much of a barrier to my work as caseload sizes that were too large and inconsistently sized. These negative effects trickle down into every department at OMD and decrease the quality of support that OMD is able to provide for its students.

On the program side, caseloads that are too large negatively impact the quality of service that program coordinators are able to provide for students. The level of attention and support that the OMD model currently requires PCs to give students simply isn't feasible with a caseload above 45. Mathematically speaking, working with 65 Scholars (the current caseload cap) itself is barely doable. While you might be able to squeeze all your required meetings into a week, this does not allow nearly enough time for the hours of work that goes into meeting preparation, coordinating with the OMD coaching/tutoring team, researching student requests, and following up with said requests.

This becomes an even larger problem when you consider the fact that OMD’s own research with the University of Chicago Urban labs has found that one of the most impactful supports that OMD Scholars receive is their PC. By continuing to increase caseload sizes - thereby decreasing the amount of time PC’s are actually able to meet with students - they are effectively decreasing the quality of their own program. The idea that technology can somehow replace these interactions, as OMD leadership has suggested,  is simply flawed. Regardless of if a meeting is happening over the phone, the personalized and targeted support that OMD Scholars currently receive takes time to provide. Replacing that with text messages or another digital list for students to check off will simply not be as impactful.

On the recruitment side, OMD leadership's refusal to set a caseload cap made my job extremely difficult. The student targets consistently fluctuated throughout the year. There was rarely a one month time span that I had the same recruitment targets per campus. This caused both under and over recruiting at campuses every year. On numerous occasions I saw my colleagues' caseload sizes climb well over what had been the promised cap, getting to be as large as 76. With increased caseload sizes, I also saw a push in recruitment. OMD adopted an indiscriminate recruitment approach of simply getting as many students to apply to the program as possible, often regardless of fit. With a very small recruitment team of no more than 2 full-time employees for the entire City of Chicago, handling thousands of applications and on-boarding hundreds of students was nearly impossible. Newly accepted students slipped through the cracks and the on boarding process was an incredibly painful experience for everyone involved. If OMD were to institute a caseload cap of 45, then the recruitment team could effectively plan ahead for and manage the recruiting and on-boarding of students.

As an organization committed to providing comprehensive wrap around services for community college students, OMD needs to be sure that scaling up their program is not going to decrease the quality of their support. It concerns me that OMD refuses to agree to a caseload cap for the duration of a two year contract in the name of remaining ‘flexible’. This reminds me of a phrase I used to hear from OMD leadership – “We are building the plane as we are flying it”. I can understand the want to be able to make adjustments as they are needed. However, what OMD has consistently failed to do is to actually take into consideration the negative impacts that this type of decision making has had on its staff and students. No one wants to be on a plane that is half built. OMD leadership needs to change their pattern of behavior and listen to its current and former staff by agreeing to a caseload cap of 45 Scholars. This is the only way to ensure that every Scholar that is accepted into OMD gets the quality of program they were promised and deserve.

Please consider signing our petition to support UWOMD's campaign for a fair contract and caseload: bit.ly/UWOMDcaseloadcap