Click each name to navigate between the different grants:

• Carl Perkins, ESU #1 Consortium
• Carl Perkins, ESU #1 Native American Consortium
• Carl Perkins Innovation Grant-Collaboration between ESU #1, #10 and #17
• CSPD: Learning Teams
• Project LIFE: Literacy Is For Everyone
• Rethinking the High School
• STARS Grant

The Carl Perkins Grant provides funding for professional development, software, equipment, etc. for those programs meeting standards in Nebraska Career Education (NCE).  Bev Newton, Nebraska Department of Education, serves as the ESU #1 monitor for this particular federal grant.

The ESU #1 Carl Perkins Consortium consists of 18 participating school districts. Districts whose programs meet standards are eligible for funding.  These programs include Agriculture, Business, Family & Consumer Sciences, Industrial Technology, and Guidance. 

School coordinators from each district meet each semester at ESU #1 to assist with the development of the grant proposal, discuss concerns, and become informed about NCE initiatives later to be relayed to their fellow colleagues back at the district.  In addition, the school coordinators are responsible for inputting student data into the Nebraska Department of Education website each spring.

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Carl Perkins, ESU #1 Native American Consortium

The ESU #1 Native American Carl Perkins Grant operates in the same manner as the other Carl Perkins consortium grant; however, this particular consortium serves four districts:  Santee, Walthill, Winnebago and Umo Ho Nation.

As with the other Carl Perkins grant, those programs meeting standards are eligible for funding.  This includes Business, Family & Consumer Sciences, Industrial Technology and Guidance. 

Each of the four Native American districts has a school coordinator who meets with Rhonda Jindra each semester to discuss the grant processes, offer insight for the grant proposal and determine goals for the annual Native American Curriculum Institute.    In addition, each coordinator inputs required student data into the Nebraska Department of Education website in the spring.

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Carl Perkins Innovation Grant-Collaboration between ESU 1, 10 and 17

NDE provides additional Carl Perkins funding via a competitive process, the Innovation grants.  ESU #1 has been fortunate enough to receive several Innovation grants since 2001.

ESU #1, 10 & 17 have collaborated on three Carl Perkins Innovation Grants.  The current Innovation Grant supports learning community participation at the district.  At ESU #1, two districts have created a K-12 learning community:  Laurel-Concord and Wausa (with one Niobrara attendee participating with the Wausa learning community). 

Each of the learning communities utilizes several professional resources (Educators as Learners, A Mind at a Time, Transforming Schools, etc.) to examine the role of teachers as leaders.  In addition, learning communities explore Career Fields/Clusters integration at the district and the role the professional literature plays within this process.

Continued collaboration occurs each fall and in January when learning communities from each participating ESU meet for further instruction, discussion and reflection.  At the June 2006 Nebraska Career Education (NCE) Conference, learning communities will share their K-12 district plan for Career Fields Integration (CFI).

Rhonda Jindra is the ESU #1 Carl Perkins Innovation grant coordinator.

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CSPD: Learning Teams

ESU #1 has been awarded several CSPD grants since 2001.  CSPD grants are federal grants designed to provide staff training for personnel development in special education, related services personnel, and regular educators serving special education students in inclusive settings.  Alice Senseney, NDE, serves as ESU #1’s contact.

Currently, Rhonda Jindra coordinates one of the ESU #1 CSPD grants.  Leah Moritz coordinates the other.  Rhonda’s 2005-06 grant organized eleven learning communities (each learning community has one facilitator and three members) to examine professional literature and its connection to Response to Intervention (RTI). 

Learning communities have been reading What Great Teachers Do Differently by Todd Whitaker and Qualities of Effective Teachers by James Stronge.  Additional ESU personnel (the SPED Director and three psychologists) have collaborated with Rhonda to help learning communities make the connections between what they are reading and its impact upon the classroom. 

Previous CSPD grants utilized the learning community process while exploring Rick Stiggins’ resource, Student-Centered Classroom Assessment, and Robert J. Marzano’s Classroom Instruction that Works.

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Project LIFE: Literacy is for Everyone

Project LIFE is supported by a grant from the Improving Teacher Quality: State Grants Program. The core partners include Wayne State College, Niobrara Public School, and the K-12 school districts served by Educational Service Unit #1. Project LIFE focuses on improving student achievement in reading by working with middle level (grades 5-8) teachers, specifically in the areas of analyzing nonfiction text, questioning and reading comprehension.

Teachers participate in small learning communities to provide support and expertise to one another. Each teacher designs reading strategy lessons, examines student work, videotapes lessons, observes peer teaching, engages in self-reflection and creates personal action plans.

A collaborative partnership between Niobrara Public School, Wayne State College, ESU 1 and additional school districts served by ESU 1 has been created.  This effort will include summer and school year training and follow-up that is aligned to the Nebraska Reading Standards and utilizes research based best teaching practices. Learning teams will be created to increase the level of educator implementation of instructional strategies in the classroom. Learning from experts, on-line communication, reading and discussion of professional materials, classroom teaching, assessment and observation, collaborative planning, analytic reflection and ongoing revision will constitute the majority of professional development.

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Rethinking the High School

A Carl Perkins grant provided necessary federal funds for the 2005-06 Rethinking the High School initiatives.  Rich Katt, NDE, was instrumental in assisting the Northeast Nebraska Networking Consortium (NNNC) with this particular grant.  Rhonda Jindra, ESU #1, coordinates the grant. 

Funding was used to support the October Rethinking the High School Conference at the Lifelong Learning Center, Northeast Community College.  Innovation Labs, LLC, with facilitation by Michael Kaufmann and Bryan Coffman, provided the direction for the conference (before, during and after the conference). 

The conference participants, affectionately coined the Nebraska 100, explored possibilities for “Rethinking the High School”, as well as created a district plan of action for the 2005-06 school year.  Additionally, participants attended a pre-conference sharing session at each ESU prior to the October event, to highlight the expedition (interview, professional reading, conference attendance, etc.) each individual had conducted.

After the conference, funding provided additional support for NNNC collaboration and networking. 

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STARS Grant

Shannon Collin (scollin@esu1.org)

Steps to STARS (Student-based, Teacher led, Assessment and Reporting Systems) is focused on helping schools develop criterion referenced assessments for the purpose of reporting student progress on state or local standards. The purpose of STAR grants is to support the goal of 100% of the staff in Nebraska’s schools implementing the STARS assessment system using assessments that are of high technical quality as reflected in ratings received on the assessment portfolios. The STAR grant has helped participating ESU #1 schools:

• build assessment literacy knowledge and skills
• align local district curriculum to Nebraska Standards
• use six quality indicators while developing and reviewing CRAs
• analyze and disaggregate data received from assessments
• determine and implement appropriate instructional strategies to increase student achievement

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