District Title Planning

It’s the time of year that districts are planning for the 2024 school year.  If a district receives federal funds, the district must have a planning process for spending the funds, including stakeholder input.  As I plan my spring planning meeting, I invite various stakeholders, including district representatives from departments such as the business office, technology, special education, curriculum and instruction, CTE, and English Learners.  In addition, I include a representative group of principals, teachers, and paraprofessionals.  The superintendent, parents, community representatives, and students round out the committee.  The goal is to have a representative group but not such a large group, so input and planning can’t occur.

This planning committee and its work will help meet several monitoring indicators.  If the planning agenda and minutes address the topics, this committee and the planning documents can provide documentation toward meeting the following Mississippi indicators:

• J-2: input from the school during the budget preparation process and how that input is incorporated before submission to MDE
• J-3: coordinate efforts and implement activities across programs featuring similar goals, objectives, or action steps
• J-4: ensure that the development of programs with federal funds is seamless with the process used to develop programs with State and local funds.
• BB-4:  process for engaging stakeholders in the planning of the LEA plan

The planning process involves all federal grants, including ESSER, that the district receives.  Each grant is listed on the agenda.  This allows the district to hold one planning meeting rather than a planning meeting for each grant.

In my role as Federal Programs, I collect the data from various sources: student enrollment, comprehensive needs assessment survey, academic achievement/accountability data, discipline data, attendance data, EL data, etc.  This information is put into chart and graph form for a PowerPoint.  The data is usually displayed showing data over two or three years.  Once the data is shared with the planning committee, the committee reviews the data, identifies strengths and weaknesses, and develops priorities.  In addition, the district Parent and Family Engagement Policy is shared with the committee.  The participants are asked to review the policy and provide any recommendations for changes.  The information provided by the committee is then discussed with a federal program leadership team, and decisions are made on how to budget the funds and revise the policy.

The schools should also follow the same process for planning for their schoolwide plan.  However, the schools must also include documentation for reviewing and revising the school parent and family engagement plan and compact.  If several parents are included on the planning team, this would be a good time to do that.

Happy planning for the 2023-2024 school year.  It will be here quickly.