CCSPP Awards Are Coming—Are You Ready?

Did you apply for California Community Schools Partnership Program (CCSPP) implementation funding in the final round? Grant award announcements are coming out soon. We’re not advocating for counting your chickens before they’ve hatched, but there is value in planning in advance – and it’ll pay off, even if you don’t get the grant. Here are three ideas to help you get ahead.

Get people on the same page

It is critical that everyone understands that a community school strategy is NOT the same as a time-limited grant – it’s a way of doing school. Now is a good time to start making sure people all have a shared understanding of the community school strategy (the Community Schools Forward taskforce’s CS Essentials Framework is a great resource), and a shared vision for your CS work. At the LEA level, this might include presentations to district leadership, individual meetings with department heads and executive directors, principal and site team meetings, and connecting with community partners and other municipal agencies to get them on board, too. At the site level, present at staff meetings and during professional development days, facilitate conversations with different site teams around how their work will be supported by CS development, and connect with students, families and community partners about the roles they play in CS work.

Build out your team

In your grant applications, school sites and LEAs were asked to identify teams of interest holders to engage in CS development work as leadership teams or advisory councils. Take a look at the people you had on your original list and think about who might be missing. Do you have students involved? Families? What about teachers? How might you engage a larger group of interest holders in your work – what will they need to know to be a part of your work? How might you design for belonging?

Understand your system’s systems

Part of having a CCSPP implementation grant means managing the grant. Now is the time to do a refresher on your LEA’s requirements like accepting a grant, collecting data, reporting on activities, and producing budgets. If part of your plans for the CCSPP funding includes hiring Community School Coordinators or other/ similar positions, make sure you have a handle on the hiring process and requirements within your LEA, including who needs to be involved in the process, any considerations relative to your district and union’s collective bargaining agreements, salary bands, and similar parameters around recruiting and hiring protocols. Pro tip: think about how to communicate with principals about their involvement in hiring for the role and how they will partner with any new site leaders.

To recap, taking time to strategize now will help you hit the ground running when the formal grant announcements are made. Questions? Send us a note!

by Melissa Mitchell

Melissa Mitchell is a community school practitioner with more than fifteen years in the field. Her experiences range from Community School Coordinator to leading the Federation for Community Schools, a Illinois-wide capacity building and policy organization. Melissa has supported community school development in a variety of ways, from providing coaching and direct technical assistance to schools, districts, practitioners and community partners to working with legislators and policymakers to develop supportive-state level policies that advanced community school development across Illinois.