Grant Writing and Management
Grant funding and the corresponding federal programs work toward an equity of services and education for all scholars, regardless of socioeconomic level, needs and academic gaps, and subgroup. The job of the grants department straddles both programmatic, compliance, and back-office roles.
Key Responsibilities of the Team:
National School Lunch Program (NSLP):
The NSLP team, or food program, functions to gather information about the site demographics, determine school community need for both food services and FRL based entitlement funding, and serve students nutritious, hot meals at a price equitable to their FRL level. The food service staff distribute ESEA and NSLP indicator forms, process and reconcile them, enter info into SIS system for transmission to ADE, and maintain a database for meal distribution on a school day. They coordinate services between the food vendor, the site, and the ADE for payments and reimbursements. Counts are submitted weekly, reconciled with vendor amounts, and reimbursements are submitted monthly. Each site is also monitored each year, and a sample of forms is collected and reviewed.
The Grants Team:
The Grants side oversees entitlement and competitive funding for 4 LEAs at a level of $29.7 Million for FY 22. This funding supports Schoolwide academic programs, intervention, teacher retention, ESS student support, and support of the EL learners at AMS. A pivotal role of the department is to administer visits or whole staff discussions to assess site needs to move toward best practices, and most effective schools. When the areas of enhancements are acknowledged, funding is allocated to the most at risk students and items.
Funding:
The Grants Team completes compliance and planning documentation for the CNA, root cause analysis, and the school integrated action plan. The department leverages resources and positions to best meet each individual sites’ needs. The role of the grants staff is to identify available grant funding, write competitive applications, submit budget narrative and compliance, monitor expenditures, and submit reimbursement requests and completion reports. There are formulas are created to ensure that the school or entire network supports scholars and maintains that funding, so all grant funding is a supplement to already established programs.
Ancillary roles include submitting all monitoring documentation, attending reviews and visits, registering the LEA and contacts, and ensuring support for EL, schoolwide, and SPED programs.