HIGH SCHOOL REDESIGN 9TH GRADE INITIATIVE
Proposal Preparation
Q&A
Below are responses to questions received regarding preparation of
proposals for High School Redesign 9th Grade Initiative grants.
Q1. Can you recommend a vendor or consultant to assist us with 9th grade redesign efforts?
Because of procurement issues, we cannot recommend a specific vendor or consultant.
However, we urge you to be careful when selecting a vendor or consultant. There are a
number of vendors/organizations with products and services for “freshman transitions” and
“9th grade redesign”, but not all of these products and services are of equal quality. If you
need suggestions, you may want to contact schools that have already successfully engaged
in 9th grade redesign efforts (such as schools that presented at the High School Summit on
March 2.) Or you may want to contact professional organizations (such as NASSP or SEDL)
for recommendations. Another strategy would be to ask any potential vendors/consultants to
provide you with “hard data” from schools they have worked with, and follow up by contacting
such schools.
Q2. Under Program Overview (p.2), it reads that we are to contract with a consultant. If we
received a High School Redesign Support grant which provides money for us to become a
member of the Successful Practices Network, and a benefit of membership is provision of
technical assistance from a consultant, do we have to contract with someone else for this
grant? If so, do you have any recommendations?
You may decide to expand the services provided by the Successful Practices Network
consultant(s) in order to use them to provide additional days of technical assistance or to
conduct faculty professional development, or you may use other consultants. It is a
requirement of the proposal that a consultant be used and this is one of the criteria upon
which the proposal will be based. If you feel that the consultant services you have included
in your High School Redesign Support grant are sufficient, then you need to describe these
services and explain that funds from the 9th Grade grant are not being requested since these
services will be paid for by the HS Redesign Support grant.
Q3. In Focus Area 2, a study by the LDE is mentioned. How can we use the study if it is not out
before the deadline?
You would agree to set up an Early Warning System that will be based on the dropout
indicators identified by the study we are currently conducting, the results of which will be
available in early July.
Q4. Where can we get more information about Louisiana E-portal and about how it should be
used in the school setting?
You should first check with your school counselor about the LA ePortal as it is our
understanding that ALL middle and high school counselors in the state have been trained in
using the ePortal (and all schools should now have access to the ePortal.) The website is
www.LAePortal.com. If someone from your district attended the High School Redesign
Summit on March 2, there is a presentation on the ePortal in the Summit notebook under the
section “Education and Career Planning”. A final option would be to contact Dr. Lisa SmithVosper at the Louisiana Board of Regents who is in charge of the LA ePortal statewide.
Q5. The needs assessment mentioned on p. 4 of the application--does it have to be done prior to
submission of the proposal or can it be a part of the proposal activities?
The needs assessment MUST be done prior to submission, and data from the needs
assessment must be used in the application to justify the need for the project as well as the
selection of project focus areas and activities. It is not necessary that the needs assessment
be from the current year, but it should be recent.
Q6. Our school is not going through LANA this year. However, in preparation for future LANAs,
we printed the student, teacher, administrator, and parent surveys. We distributed the
surveys to the complete student body and to all of the teachers and administrators. They
answered on scantron survey forms. We are planning to distribute the questionnaires to
parents next week. We added a few questions pertaining to our specific school to the end of
the survey. Can we use this survey as our needs assessment for the grant?
Your plan to use LANA surveys as a needs assessment for your High School Redesign 9 th
Grade initiative proposal is perfectly acceptable. It is not necessary to provide complete
survey results with your proposal, but to simply use relevant data gleaned from the surveys
to support the need for the project, the selection of focus area(s), and the specific activities
you have planned.
Q7.
All of our needs assessment data was lost as a result of Katrina, and we have not since
conducted another assessment. What should we do?
At this point, it is suggested that you cull questions from LANA instruments that are pertinent
to 9th grade redesign and use these to prepare and administer “mini-LANA” surveys. You
might even add some questions to these surveys to make sure you gather all the information
you need to inform your 9th grade redesign plan. Also, you may choose to administer these
surveys to subsets of your population (such as to 9th grade students rather than all the
students in the school.)
Q8. Our district’s accountability department has developed an instrument to be used by its
Quality Support Teams. This instrument includes data from the LANA modules along with
additional survey questions pertinent to our district. Is it permissible to use the current data
from the instrument developed by our district since it is a combination of LANA and districtdeveloped items? Also, our most recent SACS data is over four years old. May we still use
some of this data as a supplement?
Since the assessment you describe includes LANA modules, it is perfectly acceptable for
you to use it. While it is important to use recent data, you may use the data from SACS as
supplementary information. Be sure that the needs assessment considers input from all
stakeholders.
Q9. As we come up with a plan for monitoring and assessing program activities, is it expected
that we use results from things like GEE21, iLEAP, EOC tests, Edusoft (our district's
benchmark assessment program), formal observations, and report cards? Would any of
these items NOT be permissible?
Any of these would be good to use for program monitoring and assessment. Be sure to
include instruments/procedures (such as formal observations) that provide ongoing formative
assessment data so you don’t need to wait until the end of the year to find out how well
things are working.
Q10. We would like to send a team to the Model Schools Conference THIS summer as opposed to
putting off attendance until next summer (this conference was recommended to me by a
LADOE spokesperson at the grant meeting on March 2nd). If we indeed are awarded the
grant, can the new grant funds be used to pay/reimburse us for the conference fees and
related travel expenses even though it would've already taken place prior to us knowing if we
received the grant or not?
Unfortunately, because the Model Schools Conference begins on June 30, prior to the start
date of the grant awards, you could not use grant funds for this purpose. It would be possible
to attend the post-conference session on July 3-4, Model of Leadership for Change, for a
registration fee of $150. The International Center for Leadership in Education (which
sponsors the Model Schools Conference) will also be conducting a smaller “working”
conference for school leadership teams on November 3-5, 2007, in Atlanta, but we do not yet
know the specific focus area of this conference. The registration fee will probably be $400500.
Q11. Has the July date been set yet for the required full-day orientation meeting for grant
recipients? No specific date was listed in the grant application...it just mentions some time in
July.
The date has not yet been set.
Q12. Our school was devastated by Hurricane Katrina and did not reopen until December 2005.
How do I satisfy the requirements of the RFP to provide 05-06 SPS and dropout statistics?
You may use your school’s 2005 baseline SPS and dropout data. Make sure to boldly
indicate on your application that the data is from 2005. This data will be used to determine if
your school receives bonus points on the scoring rubric. Newly created schools that have no
prior SPS or other data will not be able to receive bonus points.
Q13. After we fill out the Long-Term Project Goals chart in Part 4, are we supposed to supply
narrative to go along with it?
No.
Q14. In Part 3, under section 1 Focus Areas there is a checklist. Do we just check the areas we
have selected or does it need to be in narrative form?
Just check.
Q15. In Part 3, under section 2 Redesign Strategies, I am not sure how detailed this has to be.
The example on page 10 of the application packet is very brief. Do we need to explain
exactly what we are going to do here?
Try to be concise, but provide as clear a picture as possible about what you plan to do. For
example, if you plan to have 9th graders begin school a week before upperclassmen, explain
WHY this strategy was selected, tell HOW it meets the requirements of Focus Area I,
describe WHAT you generally plan to have 9th graders do during this week (learn about
school rules and procedures? meet faculty and other school personnel? learn how to use
resources available in library? find out about school organizations? engage in team building
activities?) and identify WHO will be involved (9th grade faculty only? 12th graders who might
serve as peer mentors? Parents?) We would not expect that you would be able to provide a
detailed daily schedule.
Q16. Are we allowed to use our school name, or district name in the proposal narrative? I didn't
see anywhere in the directions if we would be penalized by including the name of our school
or district in the proposal narrative.
Yes. It is fine to include your school name. These are not "blind proposals" as are the 8(g)
proposals with which you may be familiar.
Q17. Can grant funds be used to pay for substitute teachers?
Grant funds can be used to pay for substitutes for teachers to participate in relevant
professional development.
Q18. Can grant funds be used to pay stipends to teachers to work in after-school tutoring
programs?
Funds cannot be used for annually recurring costs which are necessary to sustain new or
existing programs. Paying teachers to work in after-school tutoring programs and paying for
bus transportation for students attending such programs are both costs that will recur yearafter-year, and thus are not allowable uses of grant monies. It is expected that
districts/schools will cover such costs as evidence of their commitment and ability to sustain
such activities after expiration of the grant. Grant funds MAY be used to review and select
curriculum materials to use in after-school programs, to purchase non-consumable
curriculum materials and other permanent resources necessary to implement such
programs, to provide professional development to train teachers to effectively use selected
curriculum materials, or to even pay stipends to groups of faculty to design and work out
logistics for a new after-school program.
Q19. Can grant funds be used to pay for student field trips to see demonstrations of various
careers?
Use of grant funds to pay for student field trips to see demonstrations of various careers is
not allowable, because this is an activity that you would want to repeat in future years with
subsequent 9th grade classes.
Q20. Can grant funds be used to support a district-wide Career Expo?
Use of grant funds to pay for a Career Expo would also be disallowed, for the same reason
as indicated in the response to the question above. Additionally, the intent of the program is
to focus efforts at the school level to support the sustainable redesign of the school’s 9 th
grade.
Q21. If we can acquire computers for less than $1,000 each, would this be considered equipment
or supplies?
If the computers cost less than $1,000, they are considered as “supplies” and should appear
as such on the budget.