$2 Mil Grant Opportunity for N.O. Charters

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 hereApplications are due September 15, 2014.

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Critical BESE Elections this Saturday – Oct. 22, 2011

Educate Now! strongly encourages everyone to Vote this Saturday. Every vote counts – especially since voter turnout is expected to be light.

The BESE elections are critically important because they will impact the future of public schools in New Orleans.

Candidate Profiles

District 2: There are four candidates for District 2, which covers most of Orleans, parts of Jefferson, St. John, St. James, St. Charles and Assumption (incumbent Louella Givens).

The Times-Picayune Profiles District 2 Candidates

Council for a Better Louisiana: Meet the District 2 Candidates

District 1: There are three candidates for District 1, which covers parts of Orleans, most of Jefferson, and St. Tammany (incumbent Jim Garvey).

The Times-Picayune Profiles District 1 Candidates

Council for a Better Louisiana: Meet the District 1 Candidates Continue reading

Top 5 Stories of 2010, Top 5 Wishes for 2011

Top 5 Stories of 2010

1.  New Orleans public school students (RSD+OPSB) ranked #1 in the state for improved student achievement – both for the year and for the 2005-10 period!

2.  FEMA announces a $1.8 billion settlement for rebuilding and repairing New Orleans school facilities.

FEMA Awards $1.8 Billion to New Orleans Schools for Construction, Renovation Projects
Times-Picayune
– August 25, 2010

School Facilities Master Plan – Adopted August 2008

Latest Draft of RSD Building Assignment Recommendations – Revised December 2010

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Bold Gamble Transforming Schools

After Hurricane Katrina, state officials faced a choice: Take control of the schools in New Orleans or leave them in the care of the city’s notoriously troubled School Board.  A takeover was risky.  New Orleans Public Schools were among the worst in the nation. Most New Orleans legislators opposed state action. More daunting, any reasonable analysis would have put the state’s chance of success extremely low and of political embarrassment correspondingly high.  Nowhere else in the nation had a state department of education ever assumed direct responsibility for operating local schools.

Yet state leaders, led by Gov. Kathleen Blanco and then-Superintendent Cecil Picard, had the courage to take the gamble. With legislative blessing, they moved decisively to expand the state-run Recovery School District – initially created to handle just a handful of failing schools – to include all but 16 schools in the city.

Five years later, it’s clear that gamble has paid off in ways unimaginable even to the most ardent supporters of the takeover. Continue reading