Kate Wright:
Good morning and good afternoon. My name is Kate Wright. I’m the Director of the Region 15 Comprehensive Center, and it is my pleasure to be joining you this morning or afternoon. I’m located in Phoenix. I’ll try to remember that not all of us are on the West Coast time zone, but I do, speaking of time, I want to acknowledge the lack of it you likely have during this current very busy month and start of the school year.
So, thank you for giving some of your very precious time to spend the next little bit of it with us to talk about the resource allocation review process. Before we get started and I hand it over to the teams that have done all the work for this, I want to just give you a high-level understanding of the Comprehensive Center Network.
As I mentioned, I’m speaking to you from Phoenix and I’m the Director of our Region 15 Comprehensive Center. The Department of Ed funds 19 Regional Centers. Fifteen is on the far west, Arizona, California, Nevada, and Utah. But you can see that there are 19 total centers nationally, and so lots of you are joining us from other parts of the country that are served by different various Regional Comprehensive Centers.
We are tasked with supporting state education agencies across the country and actually to cover our U.S. territories, as well as the Bureau of Indian Education, and these comprehensive centers do a tremendous amount of work for our state agency partners. But one of our sort of key priorities from the U.S. Department of Ed is helping state agencies to implement their federal requirements of ESEA.
And as you know, the resource allocation review process is one of those. We know that it is challenging, and it involves a cross-sector of your state education agency to implement effectively. So, we’re really thrilled to have this opportunity to learn from a few of our state partners who have made some headway in this process and will share with you their thoughts and their experiences, as well as the opportunity to network and learn from other state colleagues on today’s call in small breakout room sessions. Next slide.
As I said, it is my pleasure to introduce the teams, the two Regional Comprehensive Centers who have collaborated over the last several months to be, first, sharing their own insights with their five states or six states, but then, additionally, to be to really come to the table to say, we’d like to share what we’ve learned across the country to SEAs who are doing the same work nationally and give the opportunity for all of our state agencies to join together to learn from each other in the process.
So, Region 9 is joining us. Kevin Junk and Isabel Hernandez lead the Region 9 Comprehensive Center that serves Illinois and Iowa as well as my colleagues in the Region 15 Comprehensive Center, Alicia Bowman, Corey Cornett, and Tia Taylor. And I will pass it to Tia to get us started with today’s session.
Tia Taylor:
Great. Thank you so much, Kate. And thank you all again for being here today. I’m going to go quickly through these slides since most of you were here last time and to just do a brief overview of our discussion series. So, last time we talked a little bit about our state’s experience in both piloting and implementing the resource allocation review process. And today we’re going to be focusing on how that the resource allocation review process fits into the comprehensive school improvement planning process and the overall system of support.
And then our final session, we’re going to be talking about how the resource allocation review process can influence our technical assistance and supports that we provide to our districts and schools in addressing resource inequities in their districts and/or school areas. So, moving on, our session agenda today, we just had our welcome and right now doing our overview on purpose, and then we’ll dive into our panel discussion.
We have also a breakout activity which will be a longer set of time this time, and then we’ll close out with some final reflections. And today, we really just want you all to engage in discussion around how you are incorporating, or how you might think about incorporating, the resource allocation review process in your continuous improvement plans and process itself.
Provide those opportunities for collaboration and small-group discussion. And, then just really to share ideas and inspiration with each other. Moving on again to our feedback. So, last time you gave us some great feedback, and we just want you all to know that we take this feedback seriously and appreciate it every time. And, we had a couple of questions, one around usefulness and then also around suggestions for improvement.
So, these are just a few that resonated with us and that you all shared with us, really hearing from others and sharing your experiences and how far you are in your development, networking, general learning of others approaches and, again, sharing those resources. We know you guys feel isolated in this, and the purpose of this was to create this space where you don’t feel that way and, hopefully, moving forward no longer feel that way.
Suggestions you wanted to talk, have more time to talk with your colleagues and other participants, so you wanted to have the questions ahead of time or shared with them during the session. Sorry, excuse me. And then opportunities to connect with multiple breakout groups. So, hopefully, you will see some of these suggestions in the hour of the redesign of our breakout activity today.
And with that, I’m going to turn it over to my colleague Alicia Bowman to get us started in our panel discussion. So, Alicia, please take it away.
Alicia Bowman:
Good morning or afternoon, everyone. We’re going to move right into our panel discussion. But first, I would like to introduce our panelists. Our panelists today are Susan Ulrey and Darryl Wyatt from the Nevada Department of Education, Luke Corey from the Illinois State Board of Education, and Holly Bell, James Martin, and Tracy Vandeventer from the Utah State Board of Education.
So, they will be joining us. We have three questions for them today. And so, they’ll be taking turns responding to the questions. And if you have any questions that you would like to share, please put them in the chat as we go along, and we will try to insert them in the most appropriate places so that they can be part of the discussion as well.
Luke Corey:
So, name is Luke Corey. I’m a supervisor for resource allocation at the Illinois State Board of Education, and I wanted to start first by expressing some gratitude to Kevin, Isabella, Aaron, and team. We’ve been working here at ISBE on the design of this resource allocation program in consultation with Region 9. So much of what I talk about today has been worked on in collaboration and I’m just really appreciative of their partnership.
So, I can give a little bit of context in terms of timelines and points of integration, the overall school improvement process here in Illinois. So, summative designations are released by ISBE each fall, and that’s timed with the release of the public report cards that’s distributed at the end of October. And around that same time, districts, and schools are notified of their summative designations.
Newly designated schools are onboarded by the school improvement team in the fall, and they engage in various planning-year activities such as identifying the school leadership teams, enacting needs assessments, and creating school improvement plans. And then ISBE’s school improvement team provides various forms of support along the way during that period. The resource allocation review program is situated within the planning year for these districts and schools.
And we envision it as one of the forms of support provided by ISBE for school improvement. When districts and schools are onboarded to the school improvement process in November, they’re provided with some general information about the resource allocation review program, and they’re informed that they may be selected by the state as one of the districts that will engage in the statewide resource allocation review based on specific criteria.
We apply a formula that considers the total percentage of schools in improvement status, as well as the percentage of newly identified schools within the current year. And we also wait on what we refer locally to as ISI Schools, or in terms of those schools that were in the initial cohort of schools identified as requiring comprehensive supports, and they still are in that status.
And if they want to allocate additional resources to provide additional support to schools. And so, we’re going to wait on the selection of those in terms of what districts should districts are identified and notified of this program in December.
And then that kind of initiates the resource allocation review program. So, we will hold intro calls with each district beginning in January. And prior to that call, districts will have already been assigned a school improvement coordinator. They’ll have started the needs assessment or have submitted a grant application for planning your funds, and they’ll have completed various trainings about the school improvement process and the support that is to be provided to them somewhere between the intro call and the actual resource allocation review discussion, we envision, or between those two points we envisioned, about six weeks.
So, these conversations are going to happen on a rolling basis. We intend to complete most of these resource allocation reviews within during the same period as these resource allocation reviews. Districts are developing smart goals, identifying resource inequities, and addressing those in their school improvement plans. They’re continuing to draft and refine those school improvements, and they’re beginning to identify potential learning.
So, this RAR program is designed as an inquiry-focused process that can support the district and schools in identifying and addressing resources inequities.
It can also be a source of evidence they consider as they draft their school improvement plans or select a learning partner. So again, it’s just one form of support that’s embedded within this broader system of support for those schools that have been identified as needing additional support.
Alicia Bowman:
Thank you, Luke. Would anyone else like to respond to this question?
Susan Ulrey:
I’m Susan Ulrey, and I’m with the Nevada Department of Education. I’ve been with the Department for about 9 years now, always working in the school improvement area. And this is my 27th year in education, always working in Title 1 or school improvement areas. As Illinois, we have a similar timeline for looking at the RAR reviews. I don’t think we are as far as Illinois, so it was great hearing that the processes we want to put in place are similar to those of another state, so we might be reaching out to you, Luke. But right now, our focus is on the school level for resource allocation reviews.
We have a section on the school performance plan that asks our student groups how our student groups are being supported through the goals, strategies, and action steps that they also have to indicate in the school performance plan. And, what we plan on doing is creating a rubric for that SPP that includes reviewing the resource allocations for the student groups.
And, then we plan on training our colleagues here at NDE with what to look for during the SPP reviews. That’s just a very small portion of a larger picture of where we need to be with our resource allocation reviews. So, we are also developing a RAR guidance protocol that will assist schools to ask questions and reflect on the achievement levels and wraparound services they’re offering to their student groups.
When they find a gap, they can revise their SPPs to include action steps that support the needs of that student group. But again, that’s just a very small portion of where we need to be, and the timeline is similar to Illinois in we are trying to release this information at the same time that our state assessment information is released, which is September 15th of every year.
I don’t know if my colleague Darryl would like to add anything to that or —
Darryl Wyatt:
Susan, I would, but I’d like to I defer to Tracy first, and then I’ll come back, and I’ll follow up.
Susan Ulrey:
Great. Thank you. All right, Tracy, it’s all yours.
Tracy Vandeventer:
Thanks, Darryl. I hope I say some things that are worth the wait. I’m just going to say that we have been embedding the RAR question process into the planning starting this year. Last spring, James Martin, part of our team, actually went and led the discussion of the LEA level for a few of our districts that were willing to be part of the discussion and piloting of our process.
But then we, as we’ve been moving forward now, are starting to take this RAR system and asking people to really look at resources, not just money, but right people, time, schedules, all the other ways that we provide support for schools and embedding that process of review and conversation and discussion into that planning process. We’re starting that this year and then we have divided up our schools into different tiers of support.
So, some simply have sort of a report that they provide for us about that discussion all the way up to, again, that LEA level for those LEAs that have more than 20 percent of the eligible student groups that are identified for TSI, that would require that district or the LEA to participate in a discussion, and we would help facilitate that conversation.
But James can kind of fill in about those tiers. But, Darryl, you’re on.
Darryl Wyatt:
All right. Thank you, Tracy. I appreciate that. And, just to kind of piggyback a little bit off of what Susan was talking about, you know, when I when I look at this question, you know, something that really stands out to me is bit into your comprehensive planning process. And that is what we’ve been working on pretty diligently for the past at least six months or so, trying to ensure that this is a blend that’s not something in addition to. You know, having been a principal for quite a few years.
You know, few people like it when the state department or the feds or anybody comes in and says, okay, we’ve got this extra project for you, but we’re going to be there to support you through it. What we’re trying to do is we’re trying to accomplish this in a unified process so that it blends into the SPP. We did have the resource allocation review as a piece of school performance plans last year.
And just, you know, just for foundation, our school performance plans, we do operate with the current continuous improvement plan, but typically it’s in the fall that they’re asked to be turning in their first draft, if you will. So, what we’d like to do is make sure that we are not burdening them with something else, but making sure that we have a comprehensive understanding of how they’re allocating their resources.
You know, and it’s like Tracy said, it’s not just the money. You know, people are huge; curriculum is huge. Extra materials and things like that are extremely important for us. It’s been really important to ensure that communication is hitting the place where it’s needed the most, which is at the site level, that it’s not something that we’re just feeding information to the LEAs and then the LEAs are interpreting it and providing it to the site level.
But we want to make sure that they’re hearing directly from us. So, we’re trying to get as much as possible by any means possible. It’s been a little bit, you know, challenging the last couple of years because we’re not able to go on site. So, and everything has had virtual or some kind of webinars or some kind of special session.
So again, you know, just to kind of sum up what to really stands out when I look at this question, because we’re trying to make this a very serious process.
Alicia Bowman:
Okay, James or Holly, do you have anything to add?
James Martin:
Sure. I’m James Martin from the Center for Continuous School Improvement, the Utah State Board of Education. And I work primarily with TSI schools, but I’ve taken on the task of doing resource allocation reviews with our TSI and at ATSI schools. And right now, the process is sort of landing at the end of the continuous improvement cycle. And we are using 2022 data because we don’t yet have 2023 data available.
But we wanted to dive in on our resource allocation process and get that going. And for some folks, it’s also they’re using it as a pre. So, they have never thought about resource reallocations. Maybe they don’t even have complete goals or a complete needs assessment or a plan like Tracy was mentioning. And so, they’re using it as an opportunity to reflect on their practices in moving forward and set some goals moving forward.
So, depending on where schools are, it’s very tailored to what they need. So, some of them are reflecting on their past year and what they did for those student groups. Already, some of them are looking forward to what they can do in setting some goals for the coming year.
Holly Bell:
I wanted Jim to go first. I’m like the plus one of this group. I’m sort of in a unique position. I’m the, I guess, what you call an equity specialist for the State Board of Education. So, I move around during different projects with different groups, and I’ll probably talk a little bit more about one of the initiatives, but I thought I’d throw in here that’s a little different, is that this has been embedded into one of our strategies in our agency’s strategic plan.
So, in addition to the work for the Center for Continuous School Improvement and what they’re doing to support CSI/TSI schools, it’s an agencywide effort that we’ve incorporated into our strategic goals.
Alicia Bowman:
Thank you. So, we do have a question from the audience. So, Utah, you shared that you embed this work within the continuous improvement plan. How do you follow up on and what are your findings during the monitoring process? And does the follow-up differ based on CSI or ATSI?
Tracy Vandeventer:
I’ll answer in regards to our CSI. And James, I’m going to have you step in on the TSI, but we are just now moving this into that planning process. And we have two specialists, one focusing on graduation growth and one focusing on academic growth.
And those two individuals will be working closely with those CSI school leaders and have already worked with them on beginning this dialog about resource allocation. But we see this as a continual process through their CSI designation and encouraging them to as they continue to return to their plan, to measure their progress, to highlight what resources do we have, how can we adjust those.
And we’re really trying to focus on the idea of building some resilience so that one, CSI funding stops at the school, and the school has been thoughtful about how they can try to make sure that they have those resources that they’ve been using set up so that they can continue. James, I’ll let you jump in about the TSI work and the planning collections that you’ve been working on.
James Martin:
I’m sure, so thanks, Tracy. So, we have tiers, as Tracy mentioned, and Tier 1 schools or those schools that have one student group. And so, we’ve just asked them to once every 3 years submit a written documentation of the ways that they’re utilizing their resources or realigning their resources. And then Tier 2 schools, we’re expecting a response annually. Those are schools with two student groups, ATSI student groups.
And so those schools will submit the same plan, basically the same accountability documentation as Tier 1 but just will do that annually. And then Tier 3 schools are those schools that have three or more student groups, and we are asking them to meet with us in a virtual session for 2 hours on September 15th and during that time will help them compose their resource allocation use. Tier 3 districts we’ve identified as well.
Those are districts that have 20 percent or more of their student groups identified for ATSI and TSI. And so, we are reaching out to those 11 districts in Utah and having face-to-face interviews for 90 minutes each where we’ll go, and we have a protocol that we’ll follow and just try to get them to reflect on their practices and maybe to arrive at some ideas for ways that they can better use their resources to support their student groups.
Alicia Bowman:
Thank you. And one other question is that there was some mention of the process being throughout your agency and part of the strategic plan. But what other groups in the SEA are involved in this work? So, who else have you what other teams or that you have had communication with?
Tracy Vandeventer:
Within Utah, we have a larger scope of our assessment and accountability section, and they have been creating a LEA—kind of a comprehensive improvement plan protocol.
And it’s being kind of programed right now. So, it’s an online tool that will put all the data together about everything and have your results. The number of, you know, teachers who have the certifications for the area they teach, you know, all the way to attendance and behavior and everything. So, it’s like a pulling together of all the resources and data that the state has been able to collect and then presenting that followed and in coherence with the four domains for rapid school improvement.
That is a that’s the framework we use for school improvement. But the LEAs will then need to go in and look at this data. And as an LEA, they’ll be creating their, so to speak, plan, their improvement plan for the next 3 to 5 years. And in there we have embedded the resource allocation questions that they’ll be asked to do.
So eventually when that system is online and running, that this will be part of a regular process for everybody at the LEA level as they look at those schools within their district; some that are designated but others that are not, that also need to have some of their needs addressed. And looking at the specific groups within their district and the performance as they have all these other data sets.
So that’s one particular section within our area. Go ahead, Holly.
Holly Bell:
So, for Tier 2 interventions, one of the things that we’ve decided to do is incorporate this work into what we call equity labs. And this is something that we’ve done for several years taking LEAs from different groups from our districts and charter schools to do a data deep-dive and do some design thinking and action planning and really getting to a root cause analysis.
And so, we’re going to use this and we’re dividing the groups up into we’re going to do a series of statewide labs. So, some of them are in person; some will be virtual, looking at resource allocation for our English learners. And then we’re also going to do a series of equity labs for focusing on students with disabilities and looking at how that’s divided and which schools have been identified as that, you know, those particular student groups needing more focus and attention on resource allocation.
And so, as we’re doing this project, as we’re working on this process, we’re looping in, bringing in the Special Education Department, bringing in our Title 3 programs, our specialists to assist with this process and bringing their expertise to the table. It’s really become a silo-breaking opportunity for the agency. And hopefully, we’ll continue to bring in different expertise from other areas in the agency.
Alicia Bowman:
So, I just wanted to share that those last couple of questions were a great transition to our question number two. How do you see the RAR process fitting into the work of other departments or programs in your SEA? So, I’d like to open it up for you all to respond to that, as well. Thank you.
Susan Ulrey:
So, I’ll just add a little bit for that question. It’s great to hear how the other states have already established some type. I like the equity lab, so I think we might be using that idea to help us as well. But in Nevada, again, we are just starting to really put all of these systems in place. And so, this is one of the larger next steps in our agency is to work with our colleagues in other offices about RAR and determine what type of services and technical assistance our colleagues are currently providing and would be able to provide for federally designated schools.
And then, of course, going out from there. But we do see our McKinney Vento colleagues, our lead for the Native American programs assisting us with some of our MRI schools and CSI schools. We also see how we can collaborate with our special education colleagues, our EL colleagues. We have a read-by-grade-three program here that we know we can bring.
We can bring them into this resource allocation review as well. But we just right now, we are working on the protocols in order to put the system in place here at the agency so everyone has a vision of how we can all work together on the resource allocation review. It’s just putting the protocols in place in order to have a systematic approach to helping and assisting our schools.
Darryl Wyatt:
And Susan, I can just add. Again, communication seems to be a huge component here. I think, to steal Holly’s word, we have been siloed within our agency. It’s been the RAR belongs to the school improvement team or focused intervention team. And I think there’s been very little in the sense of collaboration. So is going to have to start with us. We are going to have to reach out to the other teams to let them see how they can be a part of it. And quite honestly, you know, listening to the comments and the conversations that we’re hearing today is, is this great insight and opportunities to be able to reach out to some of our colleagues within our agency. Much of the work is done in isolation. And fortunately, we really need to breakdown many of those walls. And something as simple as just obtaining the data with respect to different demographics and sub-student groups is something that we have to continue to evolve with because there’s such a process. So, it is a mountain that we have to climb, but it’s a mountain that we will willingly climb because we understand how important it is to get to that other side. So again, you know, as we speak here today, it seems like it’s just been a very small unit that’s been doing the lifting. But we’re looking forward to bringing in our colleagues, like Susan said, from a variety of different areas and more so that we can all make this a better situation for our students. Okay.
Alicia Bowman:
Would anyone else like to respond to this question?
Luke Corey:
I would just echo what Susan and Darryl are saying in terms of I really see that there is tremendous opportunity to coordinate support services with other departments across the agency. So, as we build out this program, that’s certainly something we want to pay attention to in terms of the primary responsibility for the building of the program in ISBE it falls to me.
And so, I said within the finance department, and I have, of course, collaborated closely with the school improvement team and leadership of their office. And then outside of the connection to school improvement, and I already discussed one of the more direct connections here we see as to the budget process for districts. So, depending on local contexts and timelines, the district’s budgeting process may be underway during the resource allocation review, or they may just be getting started. So, Illinois School Code requires that districts adopt budgets in the first 90 days of the fiscal year or by the end of September. And the timeline we’ve established for resource allocation reviews lends itself to, I guess I would say, some gentle nudging for the districts to explicitly consider certain factors in the budget process, which they might not be explicitly considering now.
And so specifically, we want to encourage some level of focus on comprehensive and targeted schools in their resource allocation processes. But even more broadly, our resource allocation review is designed to assess for certain research-based and generalizable effective practices when it comes to resource allocations. And so, there’s that properties of effective resource allocation systems document that we shared in the last session. That’s a document that Region 9 crafted after a lit review looking for, again, research-based, generalizable effective practices with regard to effective resourced allocation. So, we are looking for and assessing for in this program transparency and whether the district has clear and accessible documentation of its method for how it distributes resources to schools.
That’s kind of like a basic building block for stakeholder engagement. Is it transparent in the first place? We are looking at equity along several dimensions. Is there a formula or process that is explicitly designed to differentiate resources based on need? And then what is actual spending look like in relation to the stated intent in terms of distributing the resources? And then what about other resources like teacher quality or access to special programs within the district? We’re also looking for evidence of effective stakeholder engagement. And then finally, we look at spending and outcomes disaggregated by demographic information. What are the district’s stated goals? How are they strategically leveraging their resources to push for improvement relative to areas of the schools? So, when you consider those kinds of buckets of inquiry, we think there’s a lot of opportunity for cross-department collaboration. So, for instance, with Title 1 Part A supplement to supplant, LEAs have to have a documented resource allocation methodology that is Title 1 neutral.
We think the resource allocation reviews can assess for this or connect the LEA to technical assistance if that’s needed. Many categorical grants have required consultation. Meaningful consultation requirements are areas can support LEAs in examining the quality of their stakeholder engagement. So, we’re thinking about opportunities like those to help LEAs make connections between the resource allocation reviews that we’re supporting them in and the work that they do that is also administered by other departments at the state. Thank you.
Alicia Bowman:
Holly, did you have something to share?
Holly Bell:
Yeah, I wanted to follow up on what Luke just said. He made a very important point and something that a lot of people might miss when we’re talking about resource allocation. Are our teachers are effective teachers? They are a critical resource for our students to have access to, especially our student groups that are most under-represented.
Kate Wright:
And this is how the equity lab work originated because access to effective educators is one of the assurances, we have to provide under ESEA. So that is where it is built, into our strategic plan is under access to effective educators and leaders.
Alicia Bowman:
Thank you. So, we did have one question that was a has the RAR led to any changes in approving section 1003 funds for an LEA to address inequities?
Tracy Vandeventer:
At this time in Utah, it is not directly connected to that funding. It may grow into that, but at this point they are not connected. And our title federal programs is following through with the same formula and the same system they’ve had in place.
Alicia Bowman:
So, we’re going to go ahead and move on to question number three. How are you thinking about engaging other departments around resource allocation and reviews?
So many of you have already answered that question. But you know, you mentioned the need and some of you have mentioned that that’s the next step. But what are some of the things that you’re thinking about doing or ways that you’re thinking about engaging the departments?
Tracy Vandeventer:
Well, in Utah, we’ve already mentioned that our assessment and accountability section is creating this pretty significant system where districts will be kind of cycling through this full data review and making kind of a 3-to-5-year plan.
But within it internally, what we’d love to see is that we, as the Center for Continuous School Improvement, have a chance to partner with other sections in continually prompting and asking these questions. So, for instance, within our teaching and learning department, we have an early literacy emphasis right now taking place and they’re providing some change management training for our leaders at our schools that have K–3 grades.
And we would love to move into a place where we’re able to partner more on bringing in these questions into that work that’s taking place. We have created a system that we call silo-busting, and James actually is kind of our superstar around this where he is and the rest of us are, but not as well as he is, showing up in all these other meetings around the agency and listening in on those team meetings and then participating and hearing more about it.
And then bringing it back to our school improvement initiatives so that we know what these other programs are that are taking place. But the best part of it is also that James is developing these relationships with these other sections and departments. And as that relationship continues to build, I see that that makes it so much easier for us to broaden our discussion about, Hey, could you consider adding this as you’re doing your work?
And every time we have brought that up, whether it’s about RAR or about other areas of priority for us, everyone has been very open and very willing and in fact, they’re grateful to be able to support us. And then it helps us also reduce some of our duplication of services. So those are some of the strategies we have in each other.
We’re trying to, as I said, do some of that silo-busting.
Susan Ulrey:
So, I can talk about one of the documents that we have been developing and working on with WestEd called our MRI Essentials document. And that document is for the CSI schools that have moved past the three-year mark, which will be this year for Nevada. And we have on there six essentials that must be implemented at all of the schools.
And within each of those essentials there are tiers as to what level of support the school will need. They can they’ll have a self-reflection tool to accompany the MRI Essentials document so they can ask questions and reflect where are we at with this particular essential. Depending on how they answer, is whether or not they will continue to work with their LEA independently or the second tier is working with an evidence-based provider.
Or they could also work with one of our colleagues here and the NDE, either in the Standards and Instruction Office or maybe the Special Education Office, and then the third tier is to receive one-to-one coaching, if that’s what they feel they need, as well. And that could be anywhere from working with their evidence-based provider that they’ve already contract did with.
And they will have a one-to-one coach or again they can reach out to our RPDP which is our regional professional development services here at NDE one of the offices. And so, we think by having that those different tiers will help engage our colleagues with our lower performing schools to assist them in the technical assistance they need with their student groups or even their curriculum and instruction, just different areas that they see where they need that need.
So that’s one way that we are going to be engaging other offices here at NDE and breaking down those silos.
Luke Corey:
We’re still in a building and designing phase here, but I am definitely considering how to explore opportunities to coordinate with other grants departments here specifically. So, once I think we have better documentation of the program, I’d like to just present to some of the department leaders and make sure there is agencywide knowledge of the program and what it’s designed to do and get some feedback. And I’d be curious to hear what patterns they see when it comes to the LEA and allocation of grants and whether there are opportunities within our program to address some of those patterns or problems. And so, I think if we frame it that way, here’s a program that has some overlap with what you do. What are some things that you want to get feedback to districts on and how can we support that?
I think that’ll create some buy in with other departments. So, I think there’s an opportunity and I think we can also make some connections to the state funding here. So the way our funding formula works is that districts are eligible to receive additional funding each year If the General Assembly appropriates that funding and those dollars are directed primarily to the districts that are the furthest away from something versus so finding a way to kind of connect this program to the use of those dollars to your district that is allocated, you know, over and above what other districts are, that’s new money.
It’s not earmarked for something right now. How explicitly are we designing ways to use those dollars there as well?
Alicia Bowman:
All right. We’re going to go ahead and move on then to our breakout. Wait, there’s another question. From the initial work with the LEAs or schools, have there been any questions regarding finance or budgeting that the school improvement team was unable to answer?
Tracy Vandeventer:
I’m going to give a short answer and then pass it off to James. So, James, you’re on notice here. Okay. So just saying that we really focus about all kinds of resources. So, we haven’t really been focusing on budgets and how budgets are used, and the system that James has been following and the protocols for our LEA-level discussions have been very open-ended and very supportive and very, very much in a discussion manner instead of trying to be directive.
But James, maybe you can speak to that about your own experiences , especially in those pilot LEA conversations. I don’t believe those questions came up, but, partly, I was assuming that was because of your openness about having and leading those discussions. What would you say, James?
James Martin:
I mean, it all sort of goes back to finance and budgeting eventually. I mean, like a lot of the things that come up, the ideas that come up have ties to, you know, how people are spending their money, who they’re investing in, or what roles they’re investing in, programs and that sort of thing, but sort of indirectly.
So, I have found that a lot of our schools and LEAs are already thinking about resource. They’re already thinking about resource allocation in terms of finances. But we’re really trying to prompt them and encourage them to think more broadly than that to some of the things that we’ve already been discussing here today. And so, I think that that’s been the real eye opener of sitting down together and thinking through resources in a different way is that LEAs have started to consider things that they’ve never considered before and to really think about, okay, so if we’re reconsidering our resources, how do finances play into that?
So that’s been our goal. And with the pilot conversations that we’ve had, we’re starting those conversations again on September 11th with the 11 LEAs in Utah that we’re going to be meeting face-to-face with. So, I’m excited to see how they how they go with that. But yeah, there would probably be a lot related to financial issues that I wouldn’t be able to answer, although we always say we can find that out for you and get back to you and then do a little bit of digging at the agency.
But I’m not an expert on finances or budgets or anything of the sort. I’m, you know, I’m a school improvement specialist, and so I’m just trying to get them to reflect on their own practices and think beyond just the financial aspect of resource review.
Alicia Bowman:
Thank you. Okay, so I’m going to pass it over to my colleague to my colleague Kevin to get us started for small group discussions.
Kevin Junk:
Awesome. Thank you so much. And thank you panelists for a great discussion around our questions we had today. So, let’s dig into those a little bit as a group now and kind of getting to what Tia was mentioned earlier. Hopefully, now we will have a little more robust breakout room for you all to go into and have discussions.
Next slide, please. Welcome back, everyone. Hopefully you all had great breakout rooms with that. Who? We had three total groups out there. I think it was group one, group four, and group nine, I think is where we had people at or two, four, nine, something like that. But did you all pick your leader to come back and talk about your discussions and what was discussed in there?
A Padlet is up there now. Thank you very much. And who would like to go first?
April:
So, I’ll go first.
Kevin Junk:
Hey, would you like to go ahead and just tell us who you are real quick and where you’re from? And that way we’re all on the same page and you can talk about your group. Thank you.
April:
Absolutely. Hey, I’m April and I’m from the state of Virginia. And so, we really did appreciate these questions. And it was it was really helpful to see that we were all pretty much in the same place. We were thinking about, you know, that cross-agency piece. And we were all we all feel like we’re still in that brainstorming phase right now.
And then some of us had a couple of resources that we that others didn’t have, and then there was one that was shared. So, it was really, really helpful. And then as far as what we would apply from the panel, we felt like we needed more examples to really be able to do that. But then, you know, another thing was that when we were listening to the panel, it was as if, like, we really do need to have this intentional process in place, right?
And it’s not just about funding. That was a big take away, right? That it wasn’t just about that and not one office can do this work. It really is larger than that. And then the questions we had some great questions in our group that still have, you know, and it really is about the fact that we’re still brainstorming and still trying to figure out like, how is this going to work for our context.
And so, you know, like, what is it that we want to have, right? What is the product? And then, you know, how do we even know if we’re done? And then what information do we need to be successful? And then also there is New York has a self-assessment that they already have out there. And but what you know, they’re trying to figure out is like, how do we support the divisions in utilizing some of the data that they already have to be able to maybe guide them in looking at this resource allocation review, some guiding questions to support the schools.
And then I heard this loud and clear, and I feel like this is probably across the United States is, you know, the need for us is really to have this as the work. This is the work that we do and not an act of compliance. And then we had some conversations around, you know, the capacity we could become an issue for us even when we get to the point where we have a process. The capacity may become an issue for us.
So that may be something that we can look at in a later session, you know, like how do we make sure that we have the capacity to really do the work the way it’s supposed to be done?
Kevin Junk:
I can see some of my colleagues taking notes very, very quickly as you speak in there April. But we’re going to keep this Padlet open. Please, please, please make sure that if whatever you’re looking for write this in the Padlet. We want to make sure that we can be very responsive. If there needs to be more sessions after session three, we can do that.
So, but with that, thank you, April, for sharing that. And then in the other group, which was Andrea, Brittney, Martha, Latrice, and Mark, who would like to speak for your breakout room?
Mark Jennings:
I don’t mind speaking, but I was hoping somebody wasn’t from Virginia because I don’t want Virginia to dominate this conversation. But we did have a great conversation talking with the other states and some of the same themes that April shared came up there.
And really just we were talking about from the panel, you know, the approach of like Illinois shared very much kind of the LEA approach. And then we heard from Utah, really that school approach. And so, we talked about those and kind of where we are in the process and where we might start and go from there.
And we just were sharing resources, really, the capacity piece, you know, what does this look like? How are we organized within our SEA? How are we going to connect with other offices to deliver this? And then we talked about really making sure that it to make it coherent with the continuous school improvement process. When is our identification year? And then how does this fit within that?
So, it does I think Nevada use the word how does it blend? And so, it doesn’t just become a measure of compliance that April spoke about as well. So really appreciate this and the panel and sharing where they are being very transparent with us is very helpful.
Kevin Junk:
Mark, thank you so much for sharing. Now our panelists was in another breakout room.
I’ll give one of you about 30 or 45 seconds for a bumper sticker from whatever you guys ended up discussing in your room or just an overall parting thoughts. And then I’ll turn it back over to Alicia to close us out for the day.
Tracy Vandeventer:
Kevin I’m going to jump in and just say in the Padlet we added a resource that came out in our conversation that a few of us had already started looking at, and we had a conversation about how to embed this. So, as you look in that middle section of the Padlet, let how you might you be able to apply what you heard in the panel and that’s the CC Network online tool to be able to do a kind of a review of the snapshot about equity school improvement in spending, school spending.
So, it’s a nice visual that you can share with schools or LEAs about where they fall, at least according to these guidelines. On the left, you can kind of change the view and that could be a really interesting and a quick when I’m being able to show data as it’s listed in the report card. So.
Kevin Junk:
Tracy, thank you so much. Appreciate everyone speaking there. Alicia, I’ll let you close us out for the day. Thank you so much.
Alicia Bowman:
All right. So just for our final reflections for the day, we have, we are at the two-minute mark, so we have just a little bit of time. We just want to remind you to keep students at the center. And so just thinking about the complexity and the number of initiatives and the number of different teams and just all of the different work requirements in our context, that the resource allocation review process is an opportunity to design a process that provides that throughline, that keeps the students at the center of all of our work.
And so, we have included all of the resources that we shared last time in the Padlet. And as resources become available from the teams that we’re working with we’ll include them in the in the Padlet. And we encourage you to go ahead and share things that you’re willing to share with others on the Padlet as well. And hopefully at some point we’ll find a more permanent home for things that we are going to keep that Padlet open as a resource for all of you.
Thank you so much for your time today and hope you have. Yes, bring friends from other states now. Have a great rest of your day.