This week I’m in Washington D.C. for the Parental Options and Information Conference hosted by the Office of Innovation and Improvement of the USDE.  They’ve pulled together Program Directors for our grant (CSP) and other federal grants for either school choice programs or comprehensive school improvement programs.

This morning’s plenary was on parent and community engagement.  A couple of specific/programmatic take aways for me were:

• Texting!  We need to update our Intent to Enroll and eventual Enrollment forms to include permission to text families with updates/announcements.
• “Taste of _____ (school neighborhood” where we invite local restaurants and vendors to host a fair at our school for our families.

A longer, more substantial conversation about outreach to lower-income families echoed concerns voiced at our last school project group meeting.  Minutes from the meeting are forthcoming, but we need to move into the action phase.  We are getting an excellent response from HeadStart outreach, but it’s not yet overwhelming.  Phase II will be churches and radio programming.  Jade, the producer of Sunday Morning Live, e-mailed me and is interested in learning more about our schools.  Woohoo!  Send us your positive vibes.  More from the conference tomorrow.

The official press release from the state association:

Federal Grants Totaling $2,000,000 to New Charter School Programs

The Missouri Charter Public School Association (MCPSA) would like to announce that four new charter public school groups in Kansas City and St. Louis have been awarded Charter Schools Program (CSP) grants by the US Department of Education. Hope Academy, KIPP St. Louis, St. Louis Language Immersion Schools and Confluence Academy of the Arts have received grants totaling over $2 million for the planning, program design and initial implementation of their schools. These grants will be administered over a three-year period. CSP grants are competitive grants awarded to state education agencies and charter school developers.

Hope Academy is a dropout recovery school in Kansas City that is scheduled to open in the fall of 2009. The first of its kind in Missouri, Hope Academy will serve students ages 16-21 in grades 9-12. Hope Academy will be receiving $558,046 over three years.

KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program) St. Louis will be a charter public school modeled after the KIPP Academies that are currently operating in 65 locations in the nation which features an extended school day and year. KIPP will open in July 2009 with approximately 85 fifth-graders, and will add a new fifth grade class each year until reaching maturation with approximately 320 students in the fifth through eighth grades. KIPP St. Louis will receive a total of $662,620.

St. Louis Language Immersion Schools (SLLIS) will open in the fall of 2009 and will focus on total language immersion and the International Baccalaureate Primary Years Programme. The school will begin by serving kindergarten and first grade and grow its enrollment one grade per year, eventually serving grades K-5. SLLIS will open with both a French and Spanish track for students to follow. $781,200 will be administered to SLLIS in federal CSP grants.

Confluence Academy of the Arts (CAA), St. Louis, is scheduled to open in the fall of 2009 and will serve grades 6-12. CAA will have a strong focus on arts education while meeting the core-learning needs of its students. CAA is the newest addition to Confluence’s multi-campus network in St. Louis. CAA will receive $472, 750 over the three-year period. ###

About MCPSA

The Missouri Charter Public School Association is a non-profit organization that supports Missouri’s public charter schools. Charter schools are schools that are free and open to the public, operating with an independent school board and are accountable to a sponsoring entity for specific results. Missouri currently has 28 public charter schools, operating on 35 campuses. Public charter schools in Missouri are located within the Kansas City and St. Louis public school districts.

Posted in general info ]]> http://sllis.wordpress.com/2008/11/06/more-on-the-federal-grants/feed/ 0 sllis2009 http://sllis.wordpress.com/2008/09/30/sllis-awarded-3-year-federal-grant/ http://sllis.wordpress.com/2008/09/30/sllis-awarded-3-year-federal-grant/#comments Tue, 30 Sep 2008 18:16:43 +0000 sllis2009 http://sllis.wordpress.com/?p=161 ]]>

Woohoo!!!!!!!! I just spoke with the grant administrator who confirmed that we are one of the awardees of the Charter School Planning and Implementation (CSP) grant. The grant amount and budget details are forthcoming, and we’ll send out official press releases once we have the specifics. This grant makes all of our work thus far seem so much more real. See everyone for the school project group meetings next week.