GRANT OPPORTUNITY FOR CHARTER SCHOOLS
LOCATED IN ORLEANS PARISH AND PARTICIPATING IN ONEAPP*
BREAKTHROUGH SCHOOLS: NEW ORLEANS PERSONALIZED LEARNING
$2 MILLION IN GRANTS AVAILABLE THIS SCHOOL YEAR
Round One Proposals are due September 15, 2014. Winners will be announced in October.
Personalized Learning (PL) seeks to accelerate student learning by tailoring the instructional environment – what, when, how, and where students learn – to address the individual needs, skills, and interests of each student. Students take ownership of their own learning, while also developing deep personal connections to each other, their teachers, and other adults. Between 2014 and 2017, Breakthrough Schools: New Orleans will distribute approximately $6 million to support the robust integration of personalized learning in schools and classrooms in New Orleans.
This year’s funding will entail two rounds:
Round 1
Grant opportunities ranging from $10,000 to $66,000 will be available in Fall 2014 to prepare schools that are interested in further exploration or in whole-school implementation. Grant funding will be issued to schools interested in any of the following:
- Further EXPLORATION of Personalized Learning;
- The development and implementation of a yearlong Personalized Learning PILOT; or
- The creation of a WHOLE-SCHOOL MODEL PL PLAN.
Free technical assistance will be provided to all grantees.
A Request for Proposals has just been released for the exploration, pilot, and planning grants, and can be accessed here. Applications are due September 15, 2014.
Round 2
Four Implementation Grants of up to $300,000 will be issued in early 2015 to schools ready to transition their current academic model to a fully personalized design.
A Request for Proposals will be released in the fall for these first implementation grants.
* Both Round 1 and Round 2 grant opportunities are available for all Orleans Parish charter schools participating in the OneApp enrollment system within one year of grant award.
Background
In January 2013, Educate Now!, in collaboration with the Booth-Bricker Fund and Baptist Community Ministries, launched the New Orleans Blended Learning Proof Points Strategy to support the seeding and scaling of personalized learning in schools across New Orleans. These organizations and New Schools for New Orleans (NSNO) have now partnered with Next Generation Learning Challenges (NGLC) to launch the Breakthrough Schools: New Orleans challenge.
Breakthrough Schools: New Orleans builds on the Proof Points Strategy and incorporates key elements of the highly successful NGLC national competition that has supported more than 70 new or redesigned schools since its launch in 2011. Breakthrough Schools: New Orleans joins five other regional competitions in: Chicago, IL; Colorado; New England; Oakland, CA; and Washington, D.C. This national initiative of breakthrough schools is supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Eli & Edythe Broad Foundation, and the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation.
Contact
For more information about this opportunity, please do not hesitate to reach out to Josh McCarty of New Schools for New Orleans, josh@nsno.org, or Cate Swinburn of Educate Now!, cate@educatenow.net.