State Education Department Announces $60 Million In School Improvement Grant Awards To New York City And Greenburgh Eleven To Support Restart, Turnaround And Transformation In 45 Schools

State Education Commissioner John B. King, Jr. today announced that the New York City Department of Education (NYCDOE) will receive $58,569,883 in federal School Improvement Grant funds to support implementation of the Transformation, Turnaround, or Restart Model in 44 Persistently Lowest Achieving (PLA) schools during the 2011-12 school year.  Greenburgh Eleven Special Act School District will receive $999,919 to implement the Transformation Model in one of its schools. These funds are part of over $308 million made available to New York State in April 2010 through the United States Department of Education’s (USDE) School Improvement Grant (SIG) fund under Section 1003(g) of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), from money set aside in the 2009 budget and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

"These funds will give New York City additional resources to promote dramatic improvement in low performing schools. The contracts that New York City has entered into with Educational Partnership Organizations give New York City a promising mechanism by which to organize schooling in new ways for the betterment of students," said Merryl H. Tisch, Chancellor of the New York State Board of Regents.

"These grants will help lowest performing schools start to move forward on this critical component of the Regents Reform Agenda," King said.  “Our goal is to help every student graduate college and career ready.  Turning low performing schools around is a major first step toward that goal.”

• RESTART MODEL: Convert a school or close it and re-open it as a charter school or under an educational partnership 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 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.

Greenburgh Eleven was one of three Special Act districts with schools identified as Persistently Lowest Achieving by the Commissioner in December 2010.  The district is receiving funding to support implementation of the Transformation Model at Rafael Cordero Middle School during the 2011-12 school year.   Based on satisfactory implementation of the approved plans for the Cohort 2 schools, Greenburgh Eleven is eligible to receive two additional years of SIG funding for model implementation in these schools.

New York City is the first district in New York State approved to implement the Restart Model using an Educational Partnership Organization (EPO).  As required by law, the Chancellor of the New York City school district must enter into a contract under which the EPO assumes the authority of a superintendent, with the ability to take action regarding the school’s budget, staffing, student discipline decisions, curriculum, daily schedule and school calendar.  The contracts between the EPO and NYCDOE also include appropriate performance targets and defined sets of instructional and programmatic responsibilities. In addition to having a contract aligned to the law, NYCDOE also had to demonstrate that they had a strong system in place to recruit and oversee EPOs.

In addition to receiving over $41 million to implement the first year of the Transformation, Turnaround or Restart Model in 33 schools, NYCDOE has also been awarded $16,742,701 in SIG funds to support a second year of intervention efforts in 11 schools that began implementing the Transformation Model in the 2010-11 school year.

Attached is a list by cohort of NYCDOE schools that will receive funding to implement intervention models.

Based on satisfactory implementation of the approved plans for the Cohort 2 schools, NYCDOE is eligible to receive two additional years of SIG funding for model implementation in these schools.

NYCDOE did not submit a SIG application under Section 1003(g) for ten of their PLA schools. For these schools, NYCDOE will implement a Schools Under Registration Review (SURR) restructuring plan for the 2011-12 school year and by December 31, 2011 submit a plan describing how the district will fully implement closure, restart, transformation or turnaround in each of the schools not receiving SIG funds, beginning September 2012.  These plans must be consistent with the actions required within one of the four federal intervention models, which may include, but are not limited to changes in staff, comprehensive professional development, and extended learning opportunities for students. 

The funds made available to Greenburgh Eleven and NYCDOE were awarded based on a comprehensive review of their SIG applications, which included implementation plans for each school identified as Persistently Lowest Achieving, and required districts to demonstrate evidence that they had the capacity to support implementation of the models in these schools.  Information about this program can be found at: http://www.p12.nysed.gov/nclb/programs/titleia/sig1003g.

Including today's announcement, to date SED has awarded a total of $105,354,677 in SIG funding for the 2011-12 school year to 10 districts to implement 41 transformation, 17 turnaround, and 14 restart models.  Earlier this year, SED announced SIG awards to the following districts for 2011-12 school year:  Albany, $3,295,402 for two schools;  Buffalo, $9,279,358 for six schools; Poughkeepsie, $1,999,703 for one school; Rochester, $12,334,938 for seven schools; Roosevelt,  $1,875,468 for one school; Schenectady, $2,000,000 for one school; Syracuse, $11,500,000 for seven schools; and Yonkers,  $3,500,000 for two schools.

NYCDOE SCHOOLS RECEIVING SIG FUNDING