A New Opportunity? Community Colleges in Times of Disaster

California’s 116 community colleges (CCCs) comprise the largest collaborative education system in the country. They serve over two million learners each year. Their alumni are responsible for over $100 billion in annual income generation, as well as over 1.3 million jobs. As the State focuses on recovery following years of wildfires, drought, social unrest, and other calamities, schools are considering assuming an additional role: serving as disaster response and recovery centers. The benefits offered by the cooperative are many – their collective presence across the State and their individual proximity within each community can each be leveraged to accomplish two parallel goals:

• As individual schools, they can target specific supports relevant to the particular concerns that arise within their region, and
• Together, they can also be the foundation for a state-wide, reliable, and strategic system of responses and resources to whatever is next on the disaster calendar.

The Economic and Workforce Division of Pasadena City College (PCC EWD) is focusing on this prospect as it plans its 7th annual Future of Work Conference, scheduled for Tuesday, October 28, 2025. On that day and in conjunction with regional leaders, agency partners, and community collaborators, PCC EWD leadership will explore how community colleges can drive recovery and economic renewal after the worst-case scenario occurs.

The California Community Colleges and Economic Development

The Office of the Chancellor of the CCCs (the CCCCO) is responsible for coordinating and reporting on the efforts undertaken both across its school system and in alliance with state law and policy. It launched its Economic and Workforce Development program in 1991 to ensure that its programs and opportunities tied into the State’s vision for global competitiveness and economic growth. With its focus on training, job-related education, and support services that meet every student’s needs, the CCC system collaborates with labor, business, and industry groups to connect coursework to careers and learners to lifelong occupational success. To date, the organization has seen significant success with more than 70% of its graduates finding work in their chosen field of study.

Over the years, the CCC EWD program has evolved to meet even more civic and academic needs as social, political, and educational demands required. In 2021, the CCCCO restructured its EWD program to align its schools with regional goals and local needs, thereby tailoring their academic offerings to supply close-to-home businesses with the trained workforce they need. The project created eight regions within the State, each populated with the colleges that fell within those boundaries. Each region then generated a ‘Regional Consortia’ – an ‘RC’ – of its CCC members, which is tasked with developing the most advantageous and optimal workforce development capacities needed within their geographical footprint. Each RC is responsible for determining its area priorities, managing state and federal funds, and partnering with the industries and entities that make up the regional economic backbone. By combining the assets and capacities of schools, businesses, industry leaders, and governmental entities, the RCs can structure local and regional educational resources to address specific industry and community demands as they arise. Because of their size and complex individual economies, Los Angeles (LA) and Orange Counties (OC) are separate regions in and of themselves. The LA Regional Consortium – LARC – is one of the entities housed within PCC EWD.

Further, each region was evaluated to establish its ‘Top Priority Sectors,’ those business and industry hubs that are most prevalent in their area and that are designed to maximize the assets specific to the region. LA and OC share the same six Priority Sectors:

• Advanced Transportation,
• Business and Entrepreneurship,
• Construction and Utilities,
• Energy,
• Health, and
• Information and Communication Technologies.

The RC funding received by the CCCs is used to develop and implement training programs and initiatives that support their priority sectors.

The depth, breadth, and connectivity of the CCC network make it, as a whole, one of the State’s most valuable assets. With its educational, occupational, and industrial framework in place, the network is uniquely suited to pivot – as it did because of COVID-19 – in response to California’s most pressing current concern, which, at this moment in time, is coordinating its disaster recovery (DR) efforts across the State.

The CCCs DR Capacities

While still emerging, the strategy of coordinating the CCCs into regional DR centers will follow standards set out by California’s emergency management system. This system is built on four foundational concepts: communication, coordination, continuity, and collaboration. As has been noted, the CCC system is already adept at these activities. Adding ‘DR-based’ capabilities to each of the schools will deepen the connection between each school and its neighbors, as well as provide California with a state-wide network of DR operators and resources. For the students, the DR-focused curricula will offer new occupational choices, most (if not all) of which will be in high demand as political and environmental issues continue to roil.

As a starting point for these new educational pathways, the CCCCO and its schools might focus on developing four priority trajectories, each of which addresses a single element of the DR process:

• Disruption assessment – Every calamity causes a unique set of damages and threats, all of which require assessment and measurement to determine appropriate responses.
• Role identification – The LA region has 10,000,000 people and 88 cities, so there is already an abundance of resources (probably) available to choose from in terms of who’s going to do what. The challenge will be determining who is best suited to assume responsibility for each task and obligation.
• Objective prioritization – The size of each region’s population and geographical footprint, combined with the specific disaster at hand, will determine which actions should occur first, get the most funding, or receive the most resources. Each school can host a panel of experts to make these decisions based on its locality.
• Relief programming – The people at risk during a disaster are in immediate need of resources, including shelter, food, safety, and healthcare support. The local community college can serve as a physical hub for these resources, as well as a place to find other, less imperative services.

California has suffered through decades of natural and man-made disasters, so it already has resources and assets aligned to respond quickly regardless of the nature of the threat. Integrating DR coursework and programming into each Community College’s curricula and across the network of CCCs can only enhance its ability to mitigate loss and achieve a faster, more comprehensive recovery, regardless of where, how, and when the threat arises.