Welcome to the monthly Continuous Improvement and State & Federal Programs communication. The purpose is to contextualize School Improvement into our daily work, to efficiently complete all State and Federal Program tasks, and to promote moving these tasks past simple compliance.

2020 AERs are due to be posted by January 31st. As a reminder, there is a district AER letter and a school AER letter. All districts and schools are required to use these letters and they must be posted on their websites by 1/31/20.

• Here is an MDE Memo with details
• Here is some additional guidance from SITimeline

Please consider presenting at one of the MASFPS Institutes next year in the fall or winter. The MASFPS Conference Committee is soliciting Requests for Proposals for keynote and breakout sessions for the 20/21 school year. Presenters get free conference registration for the day of their presentation! Each proposal can have up to 3 presenters.

• Link to RFP form

The next Regional Title I Meeting is being held at the MAISD on January 22nd from 9:00 to 11:00. Intended audience are state and federal program supervisors, business officials, and principals of Title I buildings.

Agenda:

• MDE Updates
• Consolidated App
• "Title I Admin" (free web-based product offered by MDE)
• New processes and written procedures

Please be sure to register if you are planning to attend. The meetings are free.

You may have recently received this memo talking about census poverty. This is your first indication if your Title IA and IIA allocation may be up or down next year. Compare Column H in the 2017 Data and Column G in the 2018 Data. While there are many factors that go into our allocations, if the percent in Column G is higher this year than Column H last year, this is a "good thing" (and vice versa).
Background - Part of our allocation is based off of census poverty in our district boundaries as if the Feds did the Census this year. Since they haven't done the Census since 2010, they use an algorithm to estimate ("guess") what poverty exists in our districts each year. This changes every year and effects our allocation. The memo talks about how to challenge the data with the feds if you think it's wrong, but you can't challenge the calculation or the methodology.
Action - Have your transportation director look at your district map to ensure it is accurate. This is about the only thing that can be realistically challenged if it is incorrect.

Districts may receive a small bump in Title II and IV due to an allocation error at MDE. If you have already completed your TISS and private school consultations, there is no need to re-do your consolidated app. You can choose to do nothing with these additional funds and it will become carryover for next year.

Again - no need to re-do the TISS, Private School Consultations, and Consolidated App! The amount will be relatively small.

Please note that the deadline to submit amendments has been extended to January 31st, 2020.

MDE Memo