001Uh first off the bat, thank you all very much for joining us today. Thank you guys for being here and being a part of this process. We're really excited to share this with you. Um my name is Jeff Heler. I am the one system director of special operations with Texas Education Agency. I'm joined by my colleague Melissa Casta, IDS team grants manager. Um and we're here today to talk to you about one plan. We have been working on this project for several months and we are really excited to be able to share this opportunity with some district and some ESC stakeholders. We're really excited to get this pilot off of the ground. So, we want to make sure everybody leaves here today with a clear understanding of one plan scope, its purpose, and the ability
002to really determine whether participation in this project would be a good fit for you and for your district or for the districts that you're working with. Um, we'll briefly lay a little bit of groundwork of the who is one plan, what is one plan, why is one plan um before we dive in and do a brief overview of the tool itself. Um, if you do have any questions that come up, please utilize the Q&A function and we will do our best to address every one of them. Um, so to start, we'll give a little bit of an overview of what is one plan. It's a buzzword that's been around for quite a long time and so we want to provide a little bit of detail here. Um, our current state as is in the state
003of Texas is that districts can be responsible for up to 24 unique district and/or campus plans that are disperate and siloed in terms of the platform they're on, in terms of submission requirements, in terms of compliance requirements, in terms of processes of completion. And we recognize that that creates a lot of administrative redundancies that facilitates a culture of cut and paste of value and compliance over that implementation simply because there's so much on the table. And so our goal and state is to develop this one plan to get rid of those siloed practices and consolidate and synthesize everything into a single submission that will meet the needs for numerous required plans, required needs assessments. that it is a single holistic process that really can focus on driving student outcomes that really can focus on setting
004strategies that will drive foundational and sustainable improvements. We've heard there's a big need for this in the field. Uh Melissa and I have been in dozens of different empathy interviews with both district and ESC stakeholders and almost to a person they've said there is a need for something like this in the field. There are a lot of requirements that don't necessarily play well with one another and having a single process would be a major benefit to our approach. Excuse me. Um so our one plan approach, our pilot approach really four foundational cornerstones here. We are looking at meeting compliance but not just compliance. We are looking at meeting compliance in a way that allows us to focus on strategic thinking and be able to focus on having those, you know, DIP needs met, those ESSA
005needs met, but really being able to focus on the strategy as opposed to simply checking off a bunch of boxes. Um, we are consolidating both federal and state programs into a single streamlined process. So we're getting rid of some of that duplication and some of that fragmentation that is currently in the field that is time consuming and not necessarily in a productive manner. Um we are also looking at this as an opportunity for collaboration. We recognize that a lot of our school districts have multiple people taking on different aspects of district operations of district management and a cooperative collaborative environment where the right people are working together is really going to help drive those outcomes. So making sure we get the right people to the right table and work together. Um, and finally, uh, we
006want to make sure to name this is a TEA program, but we still respect the autonomy of districts. We are not doing this to add oversight. We are not taking this approach to increase TEA supervision. We will ask for feedback via survey. We will ask for input from our districts, from our ESC's. This is not a backdoor compliance tool. This is not any kind of a gotcha. This is simply what feedback we're asking is to drive our own continuous growth and our own, you know, continuous improvement throughout this process. We recognize this is uncharted territory. This has not necessarily been done at the agency before. So, we are really hungry for some of that feedback. Um before we dive into the tool itself, we wanted to take a moment and just talk a little bit
007about the scope of what our phase one will be covering. So our phase one focuses on two foundational planning requirements. One is from the state, one is a federal requirement. So, our state requirement, the Texas Education Code 11, chapter 11 district improvement plan required annually by every district in the state of Texas in order to conduct a needs assessment, set measurable goals and objectives and align strategies to those goals. um we have aligned that with one of if not the largest uh federal requirement and that is planning requirements of the LEA program plan within ESSA the every student succeeds act. So please keep in mind uh we are building off of previous efforts from our GCU team led by Hay Huerta. They have already spent years working on consolidation efforts. So that we have currently
008an essay consolidated that incorporates title one parts A, C and D, title two part A, title three part A and title four part A. Um, we are building off of a lot of the work that they have already done in helping to take their efforts and synthesize them with some state requirements through the district improvement plan. As an organizational structure and as an alignment tool, we have aligned all of our materials within the effective district framework. I recognize there are a lot of Texas strategic leadership TSL folks on this call. um who may already be familiar with the EDF. We also recognize that the EDF is relatively new in the field and there may be a little bit of limited exposure to this currently. We want to make sure to name that this is not
009this is not a prerequisite. This is more of a tool to help us. So if you are not familiar with the EDF, that is fine. you are still fully welcome to participate in this program. Um we also want to talk a little bit about some of the limitations of our scope. So currently ESSA for budgeting for funding sources operates through eGrants. At this time we are not replacing egrants. End state we are looking to build a comprehensive platform that will help support every aspect of this and make it as streamlined as possible. However, in our phase one pilot, we will not be doing anything that will replace egrants or that will, you know, take away any requirement to be able to get that ESSA funding. Um, we will be working, our tool works as a
010support for that egrant submission to be able to have information to fuel that egrant submission but not necessarily replace it at this time. Um we also recognize that as we said earlier there are a lot more than TEC and ESSA requirements. Um at this time we are not incorporating those into our pilot tool. We recognize there is a need for district to campus alignment. We are looking at adding that into a future state. Um but currently our focus is strictly at the district level. Um before we dive into the tool, I did just want to share a little bit about kind of our process of how we've gotten to this state of ready to release to LEA. So this has been um although Melissa and I have been the primary contacts, this has been a
011very collaborative process both inside and outside of the agency itself. So, it's been consistent collaboration with both our Texas strategic leadership teams, our EDF teams, as well as our grants compliance teams, um, who have been subject matter experts in organizing these materials. Um, additionally, we recognize that in terms of setting school and district improvement, our ESC folks really are the subject matter experts across the state and they are doing a lot of remarkable work directly with districts to provide those district improvement plan strategies and to be able to create some of those systems. So, we have relied heavily in partnership throughout this process. Um we shared over here just a little bit of data feedback we've received from ESC's uh based on their review of our tool. Um we have taken their materials and we
012have incorporated their feedback and we have iterated on their feedback so that we've developed a tool not just meets TEA's ideal of what this should be but also in partnership with ESC's so that we have alignment here. um working with you know most of the ESC's across the state. Um from here we're going to take just a moment and we're going to give just a little preview and then we'll dive into the tool itself. So as a part of our pilot um we will have three main materials that we will share out. we will have the DIP and ESSA unified planning tool. This is the primary document that completing this document will meet both federal and state requirements for planning. Um we will dive into that in just a moment here and go into some
013of the details of various parts of this how it is connected to the bigger picture. Um additionally we will provide a question reference and statute guide. This is if you feel like diving deep, this will provide, excuse me. Um, this will provide a direct link between questions and areas of our tool we've developed and what statute says as far as the requirement to just show that direct transparent crosswalk between what is needed and how it connects to the broader picture. Um, finally, we'll also include an FAQ document. Um we recognize that some of this right now um it's an ambitious process and so we want to make sure that we come at this with full transparency and we want to make sure we come at this and provide as much clarity as possible for this
014approach. So we will provide an FAQ document um likely some of the questions if you put them into their Q&A Q&A today uh this is where they will end up. All right. So, uh before we jump to the tool itself, I wanted to share out just a little piece of information here as far as just a quick um EDF overview for those who may not necessarily have that fluency. So, our tool, as we'll see in a moment, our tool begins with a needs assessment. We can't plan unless we understand where we're at. So our needs assessment drives just getting that understanding of where our district where our district sits at this point in time. Um and in order to do that we utilized the six levers of the EDF. Um first lever planning and performance
015management a little bit self-explanatory pretty much what we are doing with this process as a whole of setting effective goals and strategies to accomplish that. Um our lever two is our talent. This is making sure that our staff are being recruited effectively, are being trained effectively, are being retained effectively, and are being leveraged to the best of their ability. Our lever three is integrated student supports. This is all of the nonstrictly academic but still necessary supports that exist in a school. This includes mental health awareness and um family community engagement and some of the not strictly academic supports will fall under that ISS level three. Level four is the academic experience. This is strictly curriculum and instruction. This is ensuring proper alignment both vertically and horizontally so that students are getting a consistent academic experience
016and learning the right materials and receiving quality instruction within the classroom. Level five, instructional capacity build, instructional leadership and capacity building. Ensuring that there is clear alignment, that there are clear cycles of feedback to help develop both teacher and leader capacity throughout the process and continuing, iterating and growing throughout their tenure. Um, and finally, we have finance and operations. This can sometimes be a little bit siloed. This can sometimes be a little bit disconnected from other operations, but we recognize this is necessary to make the wheels turn in a district. Kids need transportation. Kids need technology. Kids need to be fed, especially if they're going to be at school for several hours a day. So, this finance and operations is a little bit more of some of the behindthe-scenes work that may not necessarily be
017directly in front of the classroom instruction, but is still every bit as important. Um, we do want to name, we're given just a little bit of a heads up here about these materials today. Um, I believe I stated this a little bit earlier, but we do want to reiterate. Um, if you are not fluent with EDF practices, that is fine and there is still a welcome to be a part of this program. All of the EDF practices are best practices throughout a school district and they are explained in detail and in plain language throughout our tool. So there won't necessarily be any sort of insider terminology or you know specialized vocabulary terms that would be a barrier to any sort of participation here. Um, with that, I'll take a moment and I'm going to transfer
018over and dive into our tool itself. So, we will share this out via a Word document for people to be able to input on their own. Our version right now has a series of filledin district sample responses. Um, we'll talk about that more in just a little bit, but I did want to make sure to say that our district sample responses are for reference and not necessarily a mandate. Um, so our tool will start off with table of contents and with basically a written version of what I've spent the past 15 minutes discussing with you of why this tool exists, how this tool can operate, what this tool can support. Um, we have some instructions here as far as you making sure we get the right people to the table to participate in this and
019making sure we focus on that cross functionality and making sure that these are data-driven responses and data driven evaluations so that we are able to get the most accurate pictures. Um, we have designed this tool to work sequentially through. Um, however, we recognize that it may not be a first page to last page immediately through. Um, especially within our needs assessment section. Um, we have some key terms and terminology. Some of these we just talked about, especially with our EDF. And from here, we will jump into our needs assessment. So, our needs assessment again divided by those six levers. Um, we will have a series of questions here. You can see this first one here 1A. It will be followed by a brief reference. This will feature either ESSA statute, TEC statute or EDF references,
020be it an essential action, be it a key practice for the EDF. Um, this is simply a reference to show how they connect. Um, we have also included a set of recommended data sources. This is not a limitation and again this is not a mandate. These are recommended sources that would provide the best fuel to be able to answer this question. There may not necessarily be a oneto-one alignment with your district, but we do want to make sure that we provide we provide some starting points so that districts are able to know what they should be reviewing to particip uh to be able to answer this question fully. Um, from here you will see we have a sample response. This is a hypothetical response. Again, this does not need to be a onetoone match for
021your district. Uh the tool you will be receiving will have this as an empty field. We will also provide a PDF that can reference these standard responses. This is not to cut and paste the sample response in, but rather just to be able to give that reference as to how this question can be thoughtfully and fully and completely answered and some practices that will support um what's being looked for in these efforts. So you can see in our first question here, we're talking about strategic goals, data driven planning, feedback loops, progress monitoring, you know, and a culture of continuous improvement. from here. >> I'm so sorry to interrupt Jeff. Uh would you mind zooming in a little bit? We got a message text. No problem. >> Better. Great. Absolutely. And um to be clear, this
022document itself will be shared out at our launch on January 28th. So you will have a full version of this to be able to peruse and to be able to complete on your own. Um, but yes, so I'll back up just a little bit just in case we missed a couple of things here. So we have our question, we have our statutory reference, be it a combination of Texas Education Code, SS statute or EDF key practices or essential actions. Uh we have a list of recommended data sources for each question of what data sources would provide the appropriate fuel to be able to give an idealized response as well as sample school system responses. Here again naming these recommended data sources and the school system sample responses. These are here as resources. These are not
023here as strict mandates. This is not a direct onetoone match. We want to make sure that districts still have that autonomy and districts still have that independence of their own unique approaches that are going to best fit their own needs. From here we have several pages of these questions. Right now um with these sample responses each one is is there to give that guide to be able to give that support from our needs assessment. We will shift down. I'm going to scroll down just a little bit here. This is going to after we fill out the six levers of our needs assessment. And we can see it goes from lever 1 2 3 4 5 and six. We will continue through. We will hit a point following our needs assessment. We'll have a brief section
024that is reflecting on student performance data. So, this is making sure we're looking at direct academic performance with the intention of setting key priorities and setting clear goals. From here, we will move to a root cause analysis. Again, this is something we heard a lot from our ESC stakeholders that we want to reiterate here is that if we are looking for foundational and sustainable improvement, we want to make sure we are treating the root cause and not necessarily only addressing the symptoms. So we have a brief section here for districts to undergo their root cause analysis to be able to get a little bit deeper and then followed by some action steps here of taking those root causes and building them out into clear priorities and clear goals. Um now would be a great point
025to discuss as we get into some of our planning approach as a whole. We some of you have a strategic plan have a five-year outline and that is working for you that is wonderful. We are not looking to reinvent the wheel here. So when we are saying you know set clear goals if your district has set those clear goals through your strategic planning we don't want to replace those goals. We want to use those goals and use this as a tool to help divide those into measurable annual objectives and strategies that will help be able to show and demonstrate some clear measurable progress towards those longerterm goals. So you will see some division here from goals to those measurable annual objectives. We have a couple of samples here. Um, from here we will be moving
026towards our I'm going to zoom out for this one a little bit here because it's a little bit bigger on the page. Um, but this ta these tables here really outline the whole planning process. So, we are taking our priorities, our goals. Again, these may have already been set by your district. If not, our tool has a process to help develop these goals for you. However, if you have these goals already, great. Um, as well as potentially if they are duplicative to your House Bill 3 goals, fantastic. If they're not, that's okay, too. We want to make sure to have an option if there is that connection, but it is not required. From here, we break down to a lot of the requirements for both ESSA and DIP for these objectives to make sure that
027they are aligned in a way that supports both federal and state needs. So when we set our annual objectives, for instance, this increase middle school meets masters by 5 percentage points. Um we have a brief section here called the ESSA crosswalk that allows us to name if we are using ESSA funding to support these particular objectives. It allows us to be able to explicitly name that. From here, we dive down into individual strategies, connections with individual initiatives that may already be in place or may be starting. This could be something like a lasso grant. I know many districts just submitted their lasso application about a month ago now. Um, so if there are connections to various initiatives that are taking part, this is how we can help build that alignment and that connection. um as
028well as just some of the who, what, when, where of each strategy. So, what staffing will be accountable for this implementation? How will this be paid for? What resources will be utilized to support this strategy? um the timeline for implementation as well as a brief performance management of how will we know this strategy is working? What are we checking in on? What are we developing here? Yeah. What are we um what are we using along the way to be able to measure this implementation to be able to measure is this strategy working? Do we need a course correction or should we continue as intended? We have developed this for up to five unique priorities and goals. Um if you would like more that's not necessarily recommended by the agency, but there is an opportunity um
029to be able to add to this a little bit further. Um our next section we do have an area [clears throat] designated specifically for performance objectives and student group alignment. Some [snorts] of these may already be captured in some previous sections. However, we wanted to provide that opportunity if there are specific student groups that need to be addressed. If there are specific grade levels, subjects, student areas that require specific addressing and specific strategy, we have left this area open. Again, we have included some several hypotheticals here. For those when you receive this table, this table will be blank and this table will feature, you know, drop- down menus to be able to select. Um, there is an other option. So if there is h if there happens to be we have to address something that
030was not specifically named in either a student group area or a subject area um there is an option for that manual entry but we did provide a variety of both student groups and subject areas for um just for ease of access here. Um this will allow you to set an annual performance target. This will allow you to set differentiated strategies for how are we going to meet this annual performance targeted and also how are we going to monitor as this goes. So a lot of similarities to the above section but keeping this as its own unique section so that if there are any specifics that weren't necessarily addressed in the planning table there's an opportunity to include them here if they're included above. Um the whole goal of this is to reduce redundancy. So we're
031not necessarily encouraging copy pasting from one table to the other but wanted to give this as an additional opportunity. From here in our final stage, we'll have a brief review section to just make sure that every section has been completed with fidelity and a brief closing section to, you know, really tie a bow on the overall planning process. Um, additionally, we have two appendic sections. These are resources that have been named as especially helpful. This is not explicitly mandatory to complete in and of themselves, but more additional supports to be able to provide. Um, one thing we heard from a lot of stakeholders we discussed was just that there wasn't necessarily an understanding of what stakeholders were needed for what parts. And as you can see by this, you know, boggleboard looking chart here, there
032there's a lot of differentiation between programs. And so we want to make sure that folks understand who is required to be a part of this process. We want to recognize this is not a limitation. You are not limited to these folks who are a part of this but rather these are the folks who need to be. We do want to promote a culture of inclusivity. We do want to promote allowing a lot of people to come to the table, a lot of people to be a part of the process. So it's not as if some people are necessarily restricted from it, but more these are the minimums who need to be a part of this process. Um, we followed this up with a little bit more robust alignment to our ESSA practices here. So, uh,
033one of the foundational cornerstone pieces of, um, the ESSA LEA program plan are the 13 descriptions. These are directly addressed as a part of our needs assessment. So, completing the needs assessment will support these 13 descriptions. However, um we offered this um we recognize sometimes for districts that may be a part of program monitoring or may be under some sort of a review that rather than handing an entire plan and a little bit you know needle in a hay stack approach this allows that direct correlation. So we share the first description. We share the specific requirement of that first of that description one as well as the one plan connection. So these will be bookmarked out so that the description links directly to where that question is answered in our needs assessment or in our
034tool itself. Additionally here um there is an option to include additional details. So if this is something where there are additional materials you would like to add to be able to support this uh we have included that space to be able to do so. Again completing the one plan tool will answer all of these 13 descriptions. However, we wanted to offer an area that is explicitly organized in that description 1 through 13 format. Um, we've done so through these bookmarks here. Um, with that, I'm going to take just a moment and transition back to our presentation here. Again, if you have any questions, please go ahead and throw them into our Q&A and uh Melissa and Nisha will be happy to answer those as I wrap up um with a few different next steps. Um
035one thing I'll name, we'll share out a copy of this presentation later. I'm going to skip through a couple of slides here. These are screenshots of our tool and redundant to some explanations from just a moment ago. Um from now we'll go ahead and transition to some of our implementation and our next steps. So as far as our timeline coming up here uh today and tomorrow we will be hostingformational webinars. Tomorrow's will be identical to today's. So if you attend today you do not need to attend both. If you would really like to hear my voice for another 45 minutes you are welcome to join. We will not prevent you from doing so, but there will not be any new information provided tomorrow. And our tool and our pilot is scheduled to launch on January,
036that is Wednesday, January 28th. That will be 2 weeks from today. We will be releasing this toolkit to all interested parties. We'll talk in a little bit more detail here in just a moment about how that will be shared uh with participating districts. Um throughout this process, we recognize this may need some technical support. We recognize this is new. This is a little bit different. And so we will be hosting a weekly office hour sessions with Melissa and I on Zoom for whatever is needed. That is your time to ask questions. that is your time to provide us feedback. That is your time to be able to give technical support in support of this one plan implementation. Uh we will be running that through uh it looks like we have through November 19th, but really
037we will run that as long as we need to um in order to be able to provide whatever technical support is needed. Um and then yes with the with the intention of implementing this pilot through both 26 and 2027. Um we will be collecting feedback on these materials throughout the process. But we will definitely have some kind of a post-mortem where we will be collecting feedback from everyone in order to be able to iterate in order to be able to connect with our districts and iterate on a future product on a phase two that is an improvement from phase one and an expansion so we can continue to approach that one plan endstate goal of a single streamlined process for all planning. Um, we would like you to join us. We would very much like
038for your districts to be a part of our program. And this really provides y'all an opportunity to help shape what this might look like and to be able to help shape our vision of what efficient, dedicated, consistent planning can look like without it taking up all of the time that all of the time of just administrative redundancy. And so we will be providing an interest form. We will email you out by end of day tomorrow at the conclusion of our second webinar. We will share out a copy of this deck so that you're able to be able to review these materials and make a decision of if you would like to participate. Um please understand again I'm going to say this seven eight times today. This is not additional compliance requirements to participate in this
039program. We will not be using this as any sort of a gotcha or of any sort of a we'll be reviewing your plans, you know, for alignment or for compliance. Um, we are excited about this and we are excited about creating tools that are going to make y'all's lives easier. Um, so these will all be available in a SharePoint on that Wednesday, January 28th. We will set up each participating district with their own unique Microsoft SharePoint. If you are not necessarily a Microsoft user, um there is no barrier to this. There will be a um free accounts are available. So there will be no cost for anything involved in this. Um but each district will have a unique link and um all that will be needed on your end is some kind of a Microsoft
040login. If you do not have that, um, it is free to sign up and we're happy to provide more details. Again, we'll be offering weekly office hours, Thursday 10:00 a.m. And if you have any questions, please feel free to reach out uh to one plan at tea.t texas.gov. We are really excited about this work. We are really excited to partner with you. So, we are happy, you know, to answer any and all questions you may have or connect with you in a way that, you know, may help us drive this work into something that can be a real major solution for districts across the state. Um, thank you very much for coming. Before I wrap up, I do just want to check in. Melissa, is there anything I missed that I should highlight? I think
041I just answered the last open question in the Q&A. >> Okay, excellent. Yes. Um, if you are interested, we will be sending out an email from one plan tea tomorrow. We would love to have you be a part of this.