Blog

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, … Read more

Federal Program monitoring visits are in full swing around the state.  It may be your turn next year if you weren’t monitored this year.  Even if you aren’t one of the chosen lucky ones (touch of sarcasm there), maintaining documentation for each indicator is always a good practice.  This is an excellent self-assessment for risk … Read more

The schoolwide plan (SWP) is the tool a Title I school uses to determine the school’s needs and develop a plan to improve the school’s academic achievement.   The schoolwide plan details the process used for planning, the data utilized to determine the school’s needs, the analysis of strengths and weaknesses, and the priorities established … Read more

One of the federal programs’ mandatory requirements is conducting an annual comprehensive needs assessment (CNA).  Many districts annually offer a survey to faculty, students, and parents and consider this their comprehensive needs assessment.  In reality, the CNA is more than a survey.  A good comprehensive needs assessment includes data that enables an efficient review of the … Read more

I just returned from the MDE School Improvement Convening held in Starkville.  There were a number of excellent sessions.  One of the sessions I found extremely helpful was led by Sandra Elliot, the MDE English Learner and Intervention Support Specialist.  The English Learner (EL) subgroup of students can either help your accountability, or they can … Read more

I hope everyone had a relaxing and restful Christmas break.  It’s hard to believe we are now in 2023 and in the second half of the school year!  Time flies when we are having fun, right? I had the great opportunity of attending the Brustein and Manasevit Fall Forum in early December, and I want … Read more

Many of us in Mississippi recently returned from the MDE-sponsored 2022 Equity for All…All for Equity conference.  The conference had several sessions I found helpful.  I want to share some information with you if you could not attend the conference or attended different sessions.  Many presentations can be found in the MDE document library in … Read more

Last month I discussed comparability.  I want to add a little to that conversation. As I stated previously, comparability is a federally mandated process that requires schools to attest that the Title schools are funded comparably to the non-Title schools, or if all schools are Title I, the higher-poverty schools are funded comparably to the … Read more

Last month I shared a few lessons learned from a monitoring visit.  In that blog, I discussed procedures and documentation that could prevent a monitoring finding on indicator H-1.  This month, I  want to continue that discussion since there has been a change in the procurement thresholds.  During this past legislative session, the Mississippi Senate … Read more

The Mississippi Department of Education (MDE) is finishing the FY22 monitoring on FY21 documentation.  After spending time with districts going through monitoring and working with them as they receive their reports, I would like to share some feedback that would better help the rest of us as we prepare for future monitoring visits from MDE. … Read more