The Race to the Top (R2T) participation agreement and appeal letter sent to districts is now public. The appeal comes from Washington’s team, lead by Gov. Chris Gregoire, Superintendent of Public Instruction Randy Dorn and State Board of Education Chair Jeff Vincent. Together, they are asking all 295 school districts to sign participation agreements by May 17th.
Many parts of the participation agreements are required of any districts signing on (i.e. phase-in of common core standards, implement new four-tier teacher and principal evaluation systems). Other pieces are optional and grouped into “Innovation Clusters.” So-called clusters will focus on one of four areas: Teacher & Leader Development and Effectiveness; Persistently Lowest-Achieving Schools; Improving College and Career Readiness and Closing the Achievement Gap; and Improving Science, Technology, Engineering and Math Performance.
The R2T team is presuming a $250 million award at most, with 50 percent going directly to districts (per the grant requirements). The team promises all districts will receive at least $22/FTE student per year; and small districts will receive at least $50/FTE student per year (or $4,000 total, whichever is less). To give districts an idea of the funding they can expect, the last four pages include estimated per-student funding, total annual funding and four-year funding for each district. Seattle, the state’s largest district, is estimated to receive about $2.4 million per year, or $9.5 million over the four-year grant. Tacoma could expect $1.8 million per year, and $7.3 million over the four years. On the other end, tiny Benge could expect $350 per year, and $1,400 over the four years.
What will be interesting to see is which districts are willing to sign on in hopes of fairly significant funding, and which may pass because they don’t see it as fiscally appealing enough (or opt out for other reasons). Of course even more worth watching will be which districts vy for one of the Innovation Clusters.
Stay tuned.
