2025 Call for Presentations

Each year, McKinney-Vento liaisons and school district personnel attend the California Statewide Homeless Education Conference to learn from one another, seek solutions, and share resources to support their student population experiencing homelessness.

We want to hear from you!

Transform your ideas, best practices, and research into a presentation for the 2025 California Statewide Homeless Education Conference (CALHEC).

Sessions are scheduled for May 8-9, 2025.
 

Submit Now

Submission Deadline: 5:00 pm PT on Friday, January 3, 2025
 


Jump To: 
Three Easy Steps to Submit Your Proposal
Interested in sharing your knowledge, experience, and vision for the future?
What are we looking for?
Focus Areas for 2025
What are the education session formats?
How are education sessions selected?
What are our guidelines?
When will I know if I have been selected?
 

Three Easy Steps to Submit Your Proposal

  1. Review the guidelines and proposal criteria on this Call for Presentations page.
  2. Start preparing your session proposal (title, abstract, learning objectives, and speaker information for yourself and any co-presenters, panelists or moderators).
  3. Submit a Session proposal for review by our conference committee.

Back to top
 

Interested in sharing your knowledge, experience, and vision for the future?

The California Statewide Homeless Education Conference 2025 will be held May 7-9 in sunny San Diego, CA.  We are currently seeking proposals to present a concurrent breakout session at the conference. This highly anticipated annual conference offers more than 25 educational sessions and a variety of opportunities for collaboration and networking. The education program provides a dynamic forum for information exchange, problem-solving, and collaboration. We invite you to share your expertise, implementation ideas, frameworks for engagement, best practices, research and data, or programs that address this population of children and young people experiencing homelessness in California.

Back to top
 

What are we looking for?

We are looking for a wide array of topics that are innovative, engaging, inspiring, and informative for educators and McKinney-Vento liaisons.  Our goal is to offer relevant, timely education and training to help attendees do their jobs more effectively and make their agencies more successful. Presentations are meant to spark imagination, encourage dialogue, and drive new solutions that allow educators and liaisons to better support their homeless students and students in foster care. 

Back to top
 

Focus Areas for 2025

DATA: Topics such as LCAP, Dashboard, CALPADS, DataQuest, and more...

SPECIAL POPULATIONS: Topics such as Parenting & Pregnant, LGBTQ, Tribal, Unaccompanied Youth, Special Education/Disabilities, Migrant, Refugees, and more...

EARLY EDUCATION: Topics such as Head Start, Accessibility, Transportation, and more.

COLLEGE/CAREER: Topics such as Access to Higher Education, Career/Technical Schools, FAFSA, and more...

LEGISLATION: Topics such as Federal & State Laws

ACCESSIBILITY & RESOURCES: Topics such as Transportation, Housing, Identification, Mental Health, Medical, Food, etc.

TRAUMA/RESILIENCY that focuses on Children, Youth and Families experiencing homelessness

TRAUMA/RESILIENCY that focuses on School Personnel (Liaisons, Teachers, Counselors, etc.)

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT: Training for Various Entities such as Certificated & Classified Staff, Community Agencies, etc.

FUNDING & SUSTAINABILITY: ARP Funding, Title I, General/Local Funds and Donations for Homeless Education

Back to top
 

What are the education session formats?

CALHEC offers six different formats to ensure dynamic education sessions. Select the session format that is best for your presentation content. Each educational session is 75 minutes. This time should be divided to allow for at least 15 minutes of audience participation/Q&A.

  • Solo Presenter with PowerPoint presentation
  • Co-Presenters (myself and a colleague) with PowerPoint presentation
  • Workshop-Solo Presenter: A workshop is a training session where the presenter works directly with participants to teach them a new skill or concept. Workshops are usually small, so the group can participate in the learning and interact with the presenter.
  • Workshop-Co-Presenters (myself and a colleague): A workshop is a training session where the presenters work directly with participants to teach them a new skill or concept. Workshops are usually small, so the group can participate in the learning and interact with the presenters.
  • Panel Presentation: Panel presentations include a group of people discussing one topic. Each panelist speaks on a distinct topic relating to the session theme. These sessions include a chair and three to five panelists with a PowerPoint Presentation (no more than 5 people).
  • Roundtable Discussion: Roundtable discussions include a group of experts discussing a topic. A moderator leads the discussion, but all participants speak equally about the topic, with no distinct topic assigned to each participant. These sessions include a chair, three to five participants and NO PowerPoint Presentation.

Back to top
 

How are education sessions selected?

Review Criteria:  All submissions are reviewed and evaluated by the CALHEC Conference Education Committee comprised of experts from the California Homeless Education Technical Assistance Centers (HETACs), SchoolHouse Connection (SHC), the Los Angeles County Office of Education (LACOE), and the California Department of Education (CDE).

Presentations will be selected based on their relevance to the field and target audience, ability to address policy/program areas, engaging format, interactive design, and originality.

Your success in the selection process depends on how well your proposal supports these primary criteria:

  • The submitted proposal is thoughtfully and thoroughly completed.
  • Speaker(s) demonstrates relevant experience and expertise.
  • Practical application: Provides information that participants in their day-to-day work settings can use, offers lessons-learned and how-to-do-it strategies, and offers solutions for sustainability and resiliency of youth homelessness operations.
  • Leading-edge: Addresses emerging trends and technologies, innovative concepts and approaches, and solutions to improve the provision of children and youth homelessness.
  • Relevance and clarity: Content is interesting and useful to a significant number of expected attendees. Participant takeaways are clearly stated using active verbs that indicate how they will benefit from the information presented. (A maximum of three clearly defined learning objectives is preferred.)
  • Participant takeaways: All proposals must include learner objectives and learner takeaways. Indicate how the attendee will benefit from the presentation. The participant takeaways must be worded in response to the phrase: “At the conclusion of this session, participants will be better able to________.”
  • Avoids promotion of company products and services: Our audience is seeking a rich educational experience, so proposals that promote or sell products or services are discouraged. 

Back to top
 

What are our guidelines?

No sales pitches! Direct promotion of a speaker’s/company’s products, services, or monetary self-interest is not appropriate for education sessions. Our audience appreciates learning about technologies, services, concepts, and new approaches; but is sensitive to the sales promotion approach.

Speaker registration and travel expenses: CALHEC does not pay speakers of a concurrent education session. Speakers are responsible for making arrangements and paying for travel and other expenses associated with attending the conference. If your proposal is accepted, all speakers listed will be asked to register for the conference and complete a Speaker Agreement in order to confirm your participation in the program. Speakers attending the full conference are expected to register and pay the appropriate Speaker registration fee.

Scheduling: The educational programing for the conference takes place Thursday, May 8 through Friday, May 9, 2025*.  You must be available to present during this two-day period.  *Breakout sessions end on Friday by noon.

Presentation handouts from sessions will be posted on the CALHEC website and in the CALHEC Events mobile app. They will be offered free to registered attendees. Handouts will not be posted without your express permission. Handouts will be posted in a PDF format, thus preventing individuals from tampering with or altering your original in any way.

Back to top
 

When will I know if I have been selected?

Please ensure each presenter reads the submission requirements prior to submitting a presentation.

The contact on each proposal submitted will be notified of the pending-acceptance/decline status in mid- to late-January 2025. This communication will be via email from the Education Team (education@cahomelesseducation.com). Please note: emails will not come from CDE Staff or HETAC Staff but from the email EDUCATION TEAM.

If you receive a “pending acceptance,” it is the proposal submitter’s responsibility to ensure that each session participant, regardless of role, completes their Speaker Agreement and registers for the conference by the stated deadline. Once ALL Speaker Agreements and conference registrations have been completed, only then will the session be officially accepted. If the agreements and registrations are not received by the deadline, the pending acceptance is void.

Important FYI: All correspondence sent to you about your submission(s) will be to the email address you listed in the form. If you have a highly restrictive work email account, please consider using a personal email address. You will receive notification of submission via email from the Education Team (education@cahomelesseducation.com).

Back to top