Special Note
The purpose of the SIG application is to have a clear and understandable picture of the implementation plan that the LEA intends to put into place and accomplish. In order to do this, an LEA may find it necessary to add more narrative to their plan to clearly articulate the ideas represented in the application. Please feel free to add such narrative.
LEA Application Part I
SIG GRANT--LEA Application
APPLICATION COVER SHEET
SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT GRANTS (SIG)
Legal Name of Applicant:Grant High School / Applicant’s Mailing Address:
331 E. State St.
Grant, MI 49327
LEA Contact for the School Improvement Grant
Name: Scott Bogner
Position and Office: Superintendent of Grant Public Schools
Contact’s Mailing Address: 148 S. Elder Ave
Grant, MI 49327
Telephone: (231) 834-5621
Fax: (231) 834-7146
Email address:
LEA School Superintendent/Director (Printed Name):
Scott Bogner / Telephone:
(231) 834-5621
Signature of the LEA School Superintendent/Director:
X_ / Date:
08/16/2010
LEA School LEA Board President (Printed Name):
David Robinson / Telephone:
(231) 834-5621
Signature of the LEA Board President:
X / Date:
08/16/2010
The LEA, through its authorized representative, agrees to comply with all requirements applicable to the School Improvement Grants program, including the assurances contained herein and the conditions that apply to any waivers that the State receives through this application.
GRANT SUMMARY
Grant Public Schools
ISD/RESA Name:
Newaygo County RESA / District Code: 62050
ISD Code:
FY 2010
School Improvement Grant – Section 1003(g)
District Proposal Abstract
For each of the models listed below, indicate the number of Schools within the District/LEA intends to implement one of the four models: attach the full listing using form below in Section A , Schools to be Served, and the criteria for selection as attachments to this grant.
Close/Consolidate Model: Closing the school and enrolling the students who attended the school in other, higher-performing schools in the district.
Transformation Model: Develops teacher and leader effectiveness, implements comprehensive instructional programs using student achievement data, provides extended learning time and creates community-oriented schools.
Turnaround Model: Replace principal and at least 50% of the staff, adopt new governance, and implement a new or revised instructional model. This model should incorporate interventions that take into account the recruitment, placement and development of staff to ensure they meet student needs; schedules that increase time for both students and staff; and appropriate social-emotional and community-oriented services/supports.
Restart Model: Close the school and restart it under the management of a charter school operator, a charter management organization (CMO) or an educational management organization (EMO). A restart school must admit, within the grades it serves, any former student who wishes to attend.
LEA Application Requirements
A. SCHOOLS TO BE SERVED: An LEA must include the following information with respect to the schools it will serve with a School Improvement Grant.From the list of eligible schools, an LEA must identify each Tier I, Tier II, and Tier III school the LEA commits to serve and identify the model that the LEA will use in each Tier I and Tier II school. Detailed descriptions of the requirements for each intervention are in Attachment II.
Note: Do not complete information about Tier III at this time.
SCHOOL
NAME / NCES ID # / TIER
I / TIER II / TIER III / INTERVENTION (TIER I AND II ONLY)
turnaround / restart / closure / transformation
Grant High School / X / X
Note: An LEA that has nine or more Tier I and Tier II schools may not implement the transformation model in more than 50 percent of those schools.
B. DESCRIPTIVE INFORMATION: An LEA must include the following information in its application for a School Improvement Grant. LEA’s are encouraged to refer to their Comprehensive Needs Assessment (CNA) and District Improvement Plan (DIP) to complete the following:
Provide a narrative description following each of the numbered items below for each school the LEA plans to serve with School Improvement Grant funds.
1. For each Tier I and Tier II school that the LEA commits to serve, the LEA must:
o Describe the process the LEA has used to analyze the needs of each school and how the intervention was selected for each school.
The process of deciding which model to use for the school improvement grant was a process of elimination. When looking at the model choices, the district was not looking to close the high school since it is the only high school in our district, so the Closure model was not the right choice. Although intriguing, the Restart model seemed too drastic a measure since a determination had been made previously that a plan to improve student achievement was needed and already started before the SIG plan was announced. In addition, knowing the demographics of our community, reopening as a charter school would not have necessarily produced the needed results. By eliminating the Closure model and then the Restart model, the two choices left were simply the Transformation and the Turnaround models. Looking at the requirements of both models, the Turnaround model was not feasible because we do not employ enough staff to be able to replace up to fifty percent of the staff. We are not large enough to meet this requirement and so the most feasible model for the district to use was the Transformational model. The rationale was simply that we had already begun to look at school reform measures that were included in the Transformation model. We had already replaced the principal the year before and had developed a detailed school improvement plan to address the curricular, instructional and assessment needs at Grant High School. The Transformational model seemed to best fit our needs and provide the framework the staff had already crafted to improve student performance.
o Describe how the LEA has the capacity to use school improvement funds to provide adequate resources and related support to each Tier I and Tier II school identified in the LEA’s application in order to implement, fully and effectively, the required activities of the school intervention model it has selected.
Grant High School has the capacity to successfully and adequately utilize available school improvement funds. The Transformation model will allow and guide our resourceful committee to plan, implement and evaluate educational reform and therefore improve our school’s student performance. Our committee consists of multiple Grant Public School professional personnel as well as several key specialists from our county’s RESA. This level of expertise will provide a great depth of knowledge in all areas of our Transformational plan in a continuous manner.
Once identified as a school performing in the bottom five percent of those in Michigan, our school leaders began to create the committee that would investigate each of the models and choose which would best fit our student needs. This committee is/was made up of administrators from various buildings in the district as well as the superintendent, several high school content instructors (some of which are were/are also leaders in our local teachers’ union), the Newaygo County RESA superintendent, the RESA curriculum specialist and the RESA director of student intervention. Many of these committee members were/are residents of the Grant Public Schools, and all members were/are residents of Newaygo County and therefore have a personal stake in Grant High School’s student success.
The Transformational Model Committee recognized that student achievement data was weak in several areas and supported the fact that Grant Public Schools noted this more than a year ago and released the principal from his contract. Grant Public Schools hired a new high school principal beginning with the 2009-10 school year with the expectation that he would call upon the School Improvement Team and the School Improvement Process to build sustainable, educationally research-based practices and enhance student learning. That same school year, the results labeling our high school as being a bottom performer were released.
This school reform committee systematically analyzed student data utilizing multiple sources over time and began to explore and commit to true reform. Our proposed plan organizes multiple ways of ensuring the effectiveness of leadership and teachers, utilizing student data efficiently and often and how best to plan on-going job-embedded professional development to support and evaluate our growth and the educational improvement for our students. The Grant High School Transformational plan encompasses valuable threads of community and parental involvement and detailed long-term commitments to extended learning opportunities.
2. If the LEA is not applying to serve each Tier I school, explain why it lacks capacity to serve each Tier I school.
If an LEA claims lack of sufficient capacity to serve each Tier I school, the LEA must submit written notification along with the School Improvement Grant application, that it cannot serve all Tier I schools. The notification must be signed by the District Superintendent or Public School Academy Administrator and the President of the local school board. Notifications must include both signatures to be considered.
The notification must include the following:
ü A completed online Michigan District Comprehensive Needs Assessment indicating that the district was able to attain only a “Getting Started” or “Partially Implemented” rating (link below) in at least 15 of the 19 areas with a description of efforts to improve.
ü (http://www.advanced.org/mde/school_improvement_tasks/docs/edyes_report_template.doc
ü Evidence that the district lacks personnel with the skills and knowledge to work with struggling schools. This includes a description of education levels and experience of all leadership positions as well as a listing of teachers who are teaching out of certification levels
ü A completed rubric (Attachment V) scored by the Process Mentor team detailing specific areas of lack of capacity
3. For each Tier I and II school in this application, the LEA must describe actions taken, or those that will be taken, to—
o Design and implement interventions consistent with the final requirements
o Select external providers from the state’s list of preferred providers;
o Align other resources with the interventions;
o Modify its practices or policies, if necessary, to enable its schools to implement the interventions fully and effectively (Attachment VI is a rubric for possible policy and practice changes); and
o Sustain the reforms after the funding period ends.
Interventions - The Transformational Plan requirements via the document have been delineated and strictly adhered to when constructing our proposed plan for the Transformational grant.
External Providers - The Grant Public School District and the Grant High School commit to utilizing preferred external providers as per the state of Michigan’s list. Central Michigan University and Grand Valley State University have already been contacted with regards to this requirement. We have already begun a deeper relationship with NCRESA as an external provider.
Other Resources - When one references the interventions within our proposed Transformational Plan we have included many already-existing resources from within our public school district. For instance we will be utilizing administrators and master teachers in addition to the high school principal for quality teacher evaluation to support professional improvement. In addition, we will commit to reorganizing our professional development in a manner that is on-going and embedded including content area coaches.
Policies & Practices - We have committed to work with our local union to meet current legislation and all requirements of our Transformational plan. We have begun bargaining/negotiating key elements of the Transformational plan such as evaluation tools, professional development, extended learning time and merit pay.
Sustainability & Internal Controls - During the funding period a number of internal controls will be applied to the project to ensure adequate progress monitoring and ongoing evaluation and programmatic adjustments when necessary.
1. Internally the Grant Public Schools project steering committee, chaired by the Grant Superintendent of Schools, will meet monthly with the Grant High School Secondary Reform Officer and Principal to review project activities and results.
2. The Principal and high school staff will be expected to maintain a current timeline of project activities that will serve as the basis for the project review at the monthly meetings.
3. The Steering Committee, including community members and students, will provide written feedback to the Principal and archive the feedback documents for MDE project reporting purposes.
4. The Grant Business Manager will provide a project financial report to the Steering Committee to ensure adequate oversight of project expenditures and guidance regarding any potential project modifications.
5. The Superintendent will provide an overview of the monthly meetings to the Grant Board of Education.
6. The Secondary Reform Officer will report directly to the Superintendent to ensure effective internal oversight and control of the project.
7. The project management team will be led by the Superintendent and include Business Manager, SRO, Principal, Assistant Principal, NCRESA Staff and others as deemed appropriate by the Superintendent.
Upon the completion of the funding period, Grant Public Schools and Grant High School anticipate marked positive results for our students; therefore sustainability of specific interventions will be expected and ensured.
The following factors will support efforts to sustain the reforms after the funding period ends.
1. Some of the expenses for project activities and expenses will cease at the end of the project period such as the Secondary Reform Officer, external provider support, the size and scope of the extensive professional development and consultant services, and data system development. Although some of these expenses will continue they will be absorbed as priorities in the high school and district operational budgets.
2. Sustaining the credit recovery, dual enrollment, accelerated learning and tutoring will be realized through the appropriation of high school and district discretionary funds based on the evaluation of these activities. It is anticipated that three years of programming experience will yield new insights into program design elements that will be implemented in the future.
3. The project component “Building Relationships and Bridging the Racial Divide” will be sustained through district discretionary funds and enrichment grant monies from the Fremont Area Community Foundation that are allocated to the district on an annual basis.