State Education Department Announces $36,505,511 In School Improvement Grant Awards To 7 School Districts To Support Turnaround And Transformation Efforts In 24 Schools

State Education Commissioner John B. King, Jr. today announced that seven school districts will receive $36,505,511 in School Improvement Grant (SIG) awards to support turnaround and transformation efforts in 24 of their schools during the 2011-12 school year. The following districts will receive grant awards: the Albany City School District will receive $3,295,402; the Poughkeepsie City School District will receive $1,999,703; the Rochester City School District will receive $12,334,938; the Roosevelt Union Free School District will receive $1,875,468; the Schenectady City School District will receive $2,000,000; the Syracuse City School District will receive $11,500,000; and the Yonkers City School District will receive $3,500,000. The grants will be used to help turn around schools identified as "persistently lowest achieving" through the federal SIG program. These funds are part of over $308 million that the United States Department of Education (USDE) made available to New York State in April 2010 through the School Improvement Grant Fund, under Section 1003(g) of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA).

States can award School Improvement Grants under Section 1003(g) to districts that have schools identified as persistently lowest achieving (PLA) in order to support implementation of one of four intervention models prescribed by the USDE. To receive funding, districts with identified schools must implement one of the following prescribed intervention models:  

• RESTART MODEL: Convert a school or close it and re-open it as a charter school or under an education management organization.
• TURNAROUND MODEL: Replace the principal, screen existing school staff, and rehire no more than half the teachers; adopt a new governance structure; and improve the school through curriculum reform, professional development, extending learning time, and other strategies. 
• TRANSFORMATION MODEL: Replace the principal and improve the school through comprehensive curriculum reform, professional development, extending learning time and, by the end of the 2011-12 school year, amend any existing collective bargaining agreement as necessary to require that teachers (or building principals where applicable) assigned to these schools be evaluated in the 2011-12 school year and thereafter in accordance with recently enacted legislation pertaining to principal and teacher evaluation.
• SCHOOL CLOSURE: Close the school and send the students to higher-achieving schools in the district.

During the 2010-11 school year, the New York State Education Department awarded School Improvement Grants to 5 school districts to implement either the transformation or turnaround model in 28 schools.  New York City received funds to support model implementation in 11 schools, Rochester in 8 schools, Buffalo in 4 schools, Syracuse in 3 schools, and Yonkers in 2 schools.

Earlier this year the State Education Department identified an additional 68 schools in 12 districts as persistently lowest achieving and eligible to receive funds beginning in the 2011-12 school year to implement one of the four federally approved school intervention models.

Today’s announcement means that New York has awarded $16,638,827 to Syracuse, Rochester and Yonkers in order to support  a second year of intervention efforts in their schools that began implementation of the transformation or turnaround models in the 2010-11 school year.  In addition, Syracuse has received funding to implement intervention models in four additional schools and Rochester in two additional schools.  The Albany school district has been newly funded to implement the transformation model in two schools, and the Poughkeepsie, Roosevelt and Schenectady school districts are implementing the transformation model in one school each.

"These funds continue New York’s commitment to provide districts with substantial resources to make dramatic changes in their lowest performing schools.  Combined with funding we have received from the United States Department of Education under our Race to the Top grant to create a School Innovation Fund and a recently awarded grant of over $113 million to replicate and open successful charter schools, New York has a robust continuum of programs to create new high quality seats for our most at risk students so that they will be prepared to graduate from school college and career ready," said Merryl H. Tisch, Chancellor of the New York State Board of Regents.

"The work of raising achievement in our lowest performing schools is incredibly urgent and central to the Regents Reform Agenda," Education Commissioner John B. King, Jr., said.

Summary of the 2011 district awards:

Based on satisfactory implementation of the approved plans for these schools, districts are eligible to receive up to three years of School Improvement Grant funding for model implementation.

New York State awarded funding based on a comprehensive review of School Improvement Grant applications that required districts to demonstrate evidence that they had the capacity to support full and effective implementation of the models in these schools.  Applications that have been funded can be found here: http://www.p12.nysed.gov/nclb/programs/titleia/sig1003g/1112/1112sig1003g.html. 

New York has been given an extension by the United States Department of Education on the original deadline of July 31 to complete the SIG application process so that New York can carefully consider applications from districts that support nontraditional schools or that are proposing to implement the Restart model, as is the case for Buffalo and New York City. The Department will announce later in August decisions regarding the remaining applications currently under review.