001All right, thank you all for being here. Good afternoon. Um, we are excited to share with you some information about the prep program aotment overview. We had the same webinar yesterday. So, if you happen to join yesterday, um, just wanted to let you all know that today will be uh the same information that we covered yesterday. Um, I've got uh several colleagues on the call today that support the work of the prep program lotment for uh residency grow your own mentorship. I'm Alli Freelander. Um, I'll kick us off today and then I'll be passing that off to some of my colleagues. We've got a packed agenda for the next hour. We'll start with a lasso cycle for overview. You may have heard of some of this um the information we'll share in the lasso overview
002webinars that were held in midepptember. After that, we'll dive into the prep program aotment um what it is and how it has evolved over uh time and its creation. Then we'll discuss the application overview and do a quick snapshot on two programs, Texas mentorship training and Texas strategic staffing for residencies grant and then wrap up with next steps. A couple FYIs before we dive in. Um please submit questions during the webinar using the Zoom Q&A. So if you toggle to the bottom, you should see a Q&A function. Um very simple questions around the lasso process we may answer live during this webinar. Most other questions related to the prep program aotment our team will take back and respond to through FAQs that we'll post to our website. Those FAQs will be updated on a rolling
003basis with a final document posted by November 3rd. Um and the reason we do that is we just want to make sure that we're getting consistent and clear information out to the field and that everyone has access to the answers to the questions that were asked. Also, our webinar slides and recordings are going to be posted to the lasso 4 uh cycle website uh after we complete this webinar today. And then general lasso questions you can share um you can uh email us at lassoa.t texas.gov and then towards the end I'll share some email addresses for um inboxes for different programs that make up the prep program a lotment. All right. So with that, let's dive in and do an overview of the lasso uh process. So what is lasso? It stands for the learning
004acceleration support opportunities and it's a single consolidated application that compi combines grants, allotments and inind supports. I'll talk a little bit in a moment around the difference uh between grants and aotments. Um, but this is the first time that we are including aotments in Alaso process. Overall, this opportunity represents $500 million in estimated services and supports across the state of Texas. It includes 15 initiatives to support learning acceleration and innovation and it is one application to access these funds. Uh the opportunities for lasso range across several different categories, curriculum and instruction, education and training, more time and innovative school models. Uh the work of the prep program a lotment fits under this education and training category and is really focused on talent pipeline supports. So I wanted to spend a bit of time talking about
005the difference between lasso grants and a lotments. This is a question we frequently get um as we're out talking to folks about the prep program aotment. On the left side of the screen, uh lasso grants, you'll see school systems are selected for funding based on a set of priority points or tiers. This might be familiar to a lot of you on the call that have applied for grants in the past. Often times we'll get more interest in a grant than awards available. So TEA will apply priority points or funding tiers to select a subset of applicants for the program. On the right side of the screen, you'll see the lasso prep program and a lotment prep program aotment. And with this aotment, all school systems are selected for funding that both meet eligibility criteria and
006commit to statutoily based requirements. So all of the districts and school systems charters that apply that meet the criteria and agree to the requirements will be funded and that's a big difference between the two. Couple key points to emphasize and kind of reiterate what I had just voiced over. Uh the prep program aotment is a non-competitive entitlement. In other words, all applicants that meet eligibility criteria and commit to the program requirements will be funded. And we'll talk a little more about what those requirements are um throughout our time together this morning. Uh next, school systems apply for prep program aotment funding through the lasso cycle 4 process. Even though it's an entitlement, it's an optional program. So we need to have a mechanism through through which we identify which school systems are interested. Um so
007we have decided to leverage the lasso grant given or the lasso cycle given uh it streamlines the processes for our school systems. A quick note, um, statute requires the commissioner to set performance standards and goals for partnership programs and to review performance periodically. So, we are drafting, we're in the process of drafting proposed rules and these proposed rules will include a couple provisions that we wanted to make sure to communicate um to you all at the start of this process. Um, first, once approved for a partnership program, school systems will not need to reapply for continued funding. the concept of an annual grant application does not exist in the way we are setting up this allotment. Uh so once approved um school systems will not need to to seek continual reapproval. Instead we will conduct
008periodic reviews uh to ensure that programs are meeting those performance standards and goals that are set in the rulemaking process. And we'll talk about rulemaking timelines um a little bit later this morning. All right. So this is a slide that many of you may have seen multiple times. This is considered this is called the lasso portfolio. Those 15 opportunities of grade out ones we're not talking about this morning. Uh in this green box in very small font you'll see uh three programs under the prep program aotment. Um and one thing I wanted to call your attention to here is this far right column. All el eligible districts may receive the allotment. So if you scan the far right column, you will see the estimated number of awards for other grids in lasso are less than
009the 1,200 school systems that we have across Texas. Um so those will institute priority points or funding tiers to determine who will be funded and that's a big difference between um those competitive grant processes and this a lotment. The last row in that green box says Texas strategic staffing for residencies grant. We'll provide a snapshot of what that work is and how it complements the prep residency program and then we'll have um full 1-hour webinars on that program later if that sparks your interest. So that one that last row is is technically a grant but it it's bundled together with this aotment given kind of the conceptual connections across programs. All right. Um, so we wanted to dive in now to talk about the prep program aotment and do a deep dive. But a quick
010note here um, and I'll reinforce this throughout our time together this morning. Overall, there are five programs that um, comprise the prep program aotment. Three of those programs will be available um, for implementation in school year 2627. Those will be the focus of our time together this morning. Those three that are first available. Um, and each one of those programs has a full hourlong deep dive that gets into the specifics of those programs. So, some of the questions you have might be answered this morning and some uh will likely be addressed in those follow-up webinars. Um, and the purpose really of of this time together this morning is to provide a space to show how the pieces um really fit together. If you are a school system or an educator preparation program and you're like,
011how do these five programs and the prep aotment fit together? um which ones are we interested in that's really the purpose of of this time together say um so before diving into the specifics of what the prep program a lotment is I wanted to share kind of how we got here and the evolution and creation of the prep program a lotment and this is really rooted in some of the teacher pipeline challenges we've seen across the state of Texas um over the past several years first wanted to start off just acknowledging that quality prep when we're thinking about teachers coming into the classroom uh is linked to stronger outcomes s for students and teachers. In uh the space of educator preparation for teachers, there are some key research-based practices that we know accelerate their effectiveness
012and increase their retention once they become teachers of record. First is classroom practice. The more we can get teachers in classrooms practicing the craft with students before setting foot into a classroom day one with their own set of students, uh the more effective we know they will be. Uh second is content knowledge. We know that content knowledge is the strongest predictor of student achievement. And lastly, mentoring and coaching we know is really critical in the pre-ervice space and also during the first and or second year of teachers development. Um so preparations preparation pathways have varied greatly in implementation of these practices. Um and that has led to variance in student outcomes and teacher retention over time. So, uh, I wanted to share with you all some research that's come out of Epic, University of North
013Carolina, looking at Texas teacher residencies. And the outcomes are, you know, you might want to take a closer look at at this um at a at a later time, but really the outcomes show that firstear teachers who completed a paid residency perform comparably to other firstear teachers in math and are much more effective in reading. And you might be like, well, how much more effective in reading? This study shows that first year teachers who are paid residents were as effective as fifth year teachers in reading. So you think back to your time on campuses as a classroom teacher. This is really a phenomenal impact um both for that teacher development likelihood to stay in the classroom impact on students impact on colleagues that they work with um in their buildings. And uh also if we
014were to kind of extrapolate this number, if all first year teachers had the same retention rate as these paid residents, approximately 3600 fewer firstear teachers would have left Texas public schools between the 2223 and 2324 school year. So again, putting yourself back in the space of first year teachers, administrators supporting first year teachers, colleagues of first year teachers and knowing that turnover that can happen. Um this is really promising uh impact that we are seeing from paid teacher residencies. We also know that um the the pathway into the profession in the type of preparation that teachers have has shifted significantly over the past decade. If you're working on school systems prep programs in the Texas education K12 uh ecosystem, you have likely felt the shift. Um especially over these past 5 years or so. With
015our most recent data available at TEA in the 2425 school year, the majority of new teacher hires were uncertified. So that far right bar um that dark red section of that bar represents those 55% of uncertified teachers. Compare that to about a decade ago. On the left side of the screen, you'll see about 10% of the teachers entering Texas public schools were uncertified. Um, one other piece I wanted to call your attention to is the bottom right side of the screen. Um, we just talked about residencies and we're seeing because of some of the efforts through uh you all and partnerships across the state. We are seeing that uh this residency route into teaching has also been increasing and we're going to spend a bit of time talking also about the traditional and alternative routes
016into uh the teaching profession. So that's kind of where we've been. couple key data pieces that we've looked at um around teacher preparation, the quality of that preparation, uh the status of certification for folks coming into into the profession. Um the Texas uh the teacher vacancy task force uh came together several years ago led by Kyahu who's on this call. I'll share some more information later. Really examined this was a a task force led by 50 practitioners from across the state and looked at the issues related to teacher retention um across Texas and they came up with a set of comprehensive recommendations for the Texas legislature for TEA for school systems. Um several of these recommendations were introduced during the 88th legis legislative session. Um and then again in the 89th legislative session and um
017the Texas legislature actually adopted the vast majority of the recommendations um in in the task task forces report. One of those recommendations was around improving pipeline and pre-ervice preparation and there was another recommendation around expanding teacher mentorship and leadership opportunities. Um so this is tightly connected to what we saw in house bill 2 article 2 establishing the prep program a lot. Um and overall the prep program aotment really aims to address teacher retention and effectiveness by incentivizing high quality uh preparation pathways into teaching. On the left side of the screen you see kind of the reality today the percentage of uncertified teachers um coming into the profession in Texas. So just north of 50%. That's a lot. We've got 30,000 firstear teachers that were hired in the 23 24 school year. So this is a
018pretty large magnitude. On the right side you see the potential future state. Um a couple key differences. Uh at the bottom you'll see an increase in residency, traditional undergrad and then new pre-ervice alternative certification pathway. And these three pathways uh these new pathways were established by the prep program aotment in house bill 2 and include funding for these pathways. Um it's it's really a historical investment in in teacher prep. At the top you'll see because the kind of theory of action and future state is we're increasing these higher quality pathways into the profession. We're making it more accessible um for teacher candidates by removing barriers and providing funding. We hope to decrease the number of uncertified teachers that are entering the profession. And overall, if we're doing that, given the data we've seen, if those
019trends stick, we could expect to see um a decline in teacher turnover leading to less fewer teachers needed in Texas schools. Fewer be first year teachers needed uh in in Texas schools over time. All right. So, with that, that's kind of a backdrop of where the prep program a lotment came from. some of the challenges we're seeing in the state um and kind of the hope and path forward uh with this new policy. So at a high level, the prep program aotment really is a historic investment in teacher recruitment preparation and mentorship. It's a first time investment of this sort in Texas and think we will be leaders across across the nation in in terms of the work that we're doing here investing in teacher prep. Overall, this program represents a $400 million annual investment
020in recruitment, preparation, certification, and mentorship really available at scale. Secondly, this represents a reliable funding stream. We often get questions around like, well, what's going to happen? Like, is this money going to be there the next year? A lot of folks asking us, we've got grant programs that come and go. We hear that question a lot. And while I have no um way to predict what the future holds, this is an aotment. it's written into uh the foundation school program. It would take an act of the legislature to repeal this program for it to go away. So, it is a more reliable funding stream. And again, districts will not need to reapply every year for this funding. Thirdly, uh this program supports over 200 educators per LEA. We'll dig into a little more. We'll dig
021into the numbers a little bit more later in this in this conversation. Um but really, it has has the potential to impact at scale. um the vast majority of our districts across the state. And then lastly, the the ability to reach over the five and a half million students that um are part of our Texas public school system. So um you've heard me say several times now, this program is really focused at improving and strengthening um pathways into teaching or the pipeline. We really consider this a pipeline strategy that spans across early recruitment starting with high school students through preparation pathways into um become you know becoming certified highquality routes and then mentorship for those first couple years that a teacher's um employed on campus. And so the prep program aotment has five programs across
022these three phases that provide funding to support the work of school system and ed prep program partnerships. Um these are the five. So in the recruitment bucket we've got the prep grow your own program and then for preparation it establishes three new programs pre-ervice residency traditional and alternative programs and also establishes a prep mentorship program. Uh, I want to pause here and just say some of these names probably sound familiar. We've had a an enhanced teacher certificate in Texas for a while now. Um, some of you may have participated in our residency TTRPR or past TEA grow your own grant programs or the mentor program aotment. there. This work really is and this policy is built on the foundation of a lot of work you all have been doing across the state as educator preparation
023programs as school systems uh piloting work championing the work growing the work providing feedback on on um these new initiatives. The prep program aotment in House Bill 2 has several requirements that mirror past programs TEA has run and also some differences in these requirements. So, just want to mention that um as you dig in, if you've participated in some of these similar programs in the past that TEA has run, you will see a fair amount of similarities and you will also see some differences. So, our hope is through this overview webinar and then through our subsequent deep dives into each one of these programs that you can um start to link what looks the same and what might be different um for your school system or ed prep program. Uh okay. So, of those five,
024these three grow your own residency and mentorship are available in the lasso cycle for process. So, our applications are currently open. They close on December 3rd and those applications are for implementation in school year 26 27. So you can think of this school year as the application period and next school application per grade. Yeah. And next school year as an implementation period. For those of you that may have clicked around in the application already or looked at the PDF version of the application. Again, lasso is one single application, but there are different sections that you'll be filling out um for each of those 15 uh opportunities that are available. So each one of these programs will be a different section on the application. So you might be asking like what about those two other programs
025uh of the prep program a lotment pre-ervice traditional and pre-ervice alternative certification alternative programs will be available in lasso cycle 5 for school year 2728. Um so these two will be in lasso cycle 5. So think application next academic year with implementation the following academic year 2728. and we'll be sharing a lot more information about those programs over the course of the this year. A quick note on uh educator preparation programs for prep program eligibility. That's a mouthful. Um okay, so under the uh preparation bucket, pres-ervice preparation, we've got the residency program, traditional program, and alternative program. As I mentioned, HB2 has established some new requirements that are unique to each of these three programs. And included in that is a requirement that the state board of educator certification approve these preparation programs for eligibility
026for the prep program aotment partnership. So we will have more information on this in upcoming webinars. Um but just wanted to share with you all uh that that would be a step in the process. All right. So we will have upcoming webinars to dive deeply into each one of these programs. I'll give you just a second. And we've got this also posted on the Lassa 4 um web page. Just I'll give you a second just to scan this and see which ones may be of interest. All right, just a reminder that all these webinars, the um the PowerPoint decks and recordings of the webinars would be posted to our Lass of Forest Cycle page. And with that, we're about to dive into a little overview of each of these programs. But a quick reminder, um,
027each of these programs is going to have a deep dive. So, feel free put questions in our Q&A and we will post those on a rolling basis in our FAQs online. Or if you've got a notebook handy and you're really interested, say in the residency program, maybe drop them in the notebook, listen to join that webinar and see if the question gets answered there. Either way, but we'll have more information coming um down the line. And I think I'm going to pass it over to my colleague Melissa who's going to share a little bit about uh the residency pre-ervice and grow your own programs. >> Thank you, Ally. All right. Well, we'll kick things off um with a look at that residency pres-ervice program. As Ally has noted, it is the only um pres-ervice program
028available for the 2627 school year. Um fortunately statute allows for us to um implement part implement the program um in that first year um with the residency teacher residency programs who have already previously been ESPC approved. So that's super helpful. Um but um going forward in 2728 all of these statutory requirements that Alli has already referenced um previously um will be requirements um for for implementation of those programs. Um and really like at the core of these requirements, you can see here that these really um set up the parameters to ensure that um the district and their AP partner are able to implement a high quality year-long teacher residency program um for those aspiring teachers. So, I'm just going to walk us briefly through um some of these core requirements. Um um with the first
029being that the candidate has access to the practice-based preparation in a year-long residency model. Um this requirement is actually consistent with what is already in um in current ESPEC chapter 228 and chapter 230 rule um for the teacher residency route. So, um, teacher candidates will have access to, um, that year-long clinical teaching experience with 750 hours, um, of co-eing under the sheltered practice of a high quality cooperating teacher who we we also call a host teacher. um throughout that entire year um prior to becoming a teacher. Um they will also uh be trained and prepared by their educator preparation program with state developed content. Um and we'll provide more information about this as well in the residency webinar. Um for candidates who are prepared in EC3 or EC6 um there is a statutory requirement that
030those candidates are prepared um with the reading and mathmies and then there will be additional um commissioner of education designate designated content such as classroom management and training to use um effectively use blue bonnet learning um as one of the open education resource high quality instructional materials um for example. So we'll provide more information about that in upcoming sessions. But again um this is a requirement for the 2728 school year. It is not a requirement for the 2627 school year where programs who are already prep um who are already approved to offer the residency route are going to be approved partners and that will be very abundantly clear in the program guidelines and application. Um the third thing on here um is the requirement to establish formal partnerships um between the district and the um
031educator preparation program or programs. Um so there may be more than one that a district is partnering with and that is just fine. But that district should have a formal written agreement with the programs that they are partnering with to make sure that that candidate is one getting prepared and the program is meeting all of the requirements um of the program but also truly like at the core of it through these written agreements able to prepare candidates to truly meet the needs of um of of of the district um and that LEA's vision for instructions for for instruction for example Um, so we'll talk more about that in a bit as well. And then the final thing is that this enables highquality year-long preparation that is also paid. Right? So um in the aotment it
032will enable um success and needs-based funding. And I'm going to actually have uh Ally shift to the next slide where I'll explain um this this final criteria for sake of time here. Um, so when it comes to the funding, wanted to take a look at this funding snapshot for the prep residency pre-ervice partnership. Um, I'm going to do my best to break this down and we will break this down even further in the residency webinar session, but um, this snapshot in front of you, um, shows the funding um, that may be generated by each of the up to 40 residents per year um, in a district. So, a district can um can have up to 40 paid residents through this aotment per year. Um so, we're going to walk through this. Again, funding is generated
033to flow to the LEA through our um through our foundational school program and it will also be generated to flow to the EBP directly. So, there'll be two direct funding flows. It's first thing to know up top. Um all right. So, we're going to walk through this now though. When it comes to the initial funding that's generated by each teacher resident, um there is this set of initial funding that is $12,000 per resident. That when that's generated, there are requirements for how that funding is used. So the first requirement is that $10,000 of that $12,000 will flow directly to the teacher resident and that will be utilized for the teacher resident's pay. that $10,000 is one half of the minimum amount that that resident must be paid for that year of their teacher residency. So,
034the LEA would need to figure out how to at least match $10,000. We're not limiting it to 20. You could pay them more. Um, but there's a minimum $10,000 match for that um alongside that initial initially generated set of funding. The remaining $2,000 is meant to flow directly to that cooperating or host teacher who will be supporting that resident in that year-long practice. Again, this is a minimum amount the district and EP partnership may choose to pay that um cooperating teacher host teacher more than just the 2,000, but this is meant to support. So from there, the resident participates and completes all their residency um program requirements and they successfully attain the enhanced standard certification. Um at the end of that year, at this point, a second set of funding would flow to the district
035or LEA. This is the success-based funding because they've completed that enhanced standard certificate. um this amount is up to $16,000 with a $2,000 base that would flow regardless of um regardless of any other factor. So every single candidate will generate $2,000 of success based funding. And then dependent upon the rural and high needs factor that pertains to where the candidate is placed and we'll go deeper into this in the next webinar session. Um, the candidate may also generate anywhere between zero to $12,000 more dollars depending on the needs of that campus where they're placed. And then finally, if that candidate is getting certified in special education or bilingual, they could also generate an additional $2,000 to reach that up to $16,000 threshold. All right, so the candidates's been successfully enhanced uh has successfully attained that
036enhanced standard certificate. The next step is the candidate will work in a Texas district as a teacher for an entire year. Once the candidate has also attained that additional milestone, the next set of funding will flow directly to the EP. So it is not going to the district to the EP, it is going directly to the EP. um and that amount is 10,000 per candidate and then an additional 1.5,000 um if that candidate has completed the math or readingmies. It's a lot of information, y'all. Oh, I have one more final thought. Ally probably noticed this and didn't move on. um we have an asterisk next to the 40 residents um up top and that is because if a district is seeking to fund more than 40, they can fund up to an additional 40 more
037candidates at the rate of funding that pertains to um candidates who are being prepared in the traditional or the pre-ervice alter. Um it's a lower funding allocation between 10 to $21.5,000. For the sake of time today, we're not digging into that, but we will get provide a visual of that in the residency session. Excellent. All right. So, we're gonna move back um along the pipeline and take a look at um our grow your own program um which really supports those recruitment efforts of of districts as they seek to develop their uh a local locally sourced talent pipeline um with their IG partner. Um so in this in this particular program um there are several again several statutory requirements that I'm just going to highlight here today um and we'll have a chance to go deeper
038soon. Um so the first component here within this program is to ensure that these candidates in their in the um sorry these employees within the grow your own program um are able to earn a bachelor's degree pro bachelor's degree um so during the course of the implementation of the program the district alongside the support of their IG partner will ensure that the employee pair professional professional or pair professional, it could be a different employee as well. Um, is able to one enroll in a bachelor's degree program, but also that structures are in place to ensure that they can actually complete the coursework while still working full-time as, for example, a paraprofessional. um during this time to make sure that that that par profofessional also gets to completion of that bachelor's degree and at least enrolls
039in an EP. They'll want to al they'll also need to make sure that there is appropriate transition supports provided for for that um individual. So this may look like advising um and other supports to keep them moving along the way um to attain those goals. Um the second piece here, so I've spoken to the employee and the requirements for that employee to get that bachelor's degree and enroll in that educator preparation program. During this time, it's also critical that that employee is gaining access to early teacher training. So they'll need to have opportunities for on the job training that minimally include opport the opportunity to work under a mentor teacher or excuse me a cooperating teacher um and to practice teaching. Um and then there's of course other ways in which that employee can also
040gain um that on the job learning and training um to develop those competencies, those key competencies as a teacher such as high impact tutoring models for example. Um districts who are participating in the grow your own program ha must um must have a set of employees who are going through the program. But they will also be able to prioritize growing future educators through the implementation of a high school education and training um and C and our CTE pathway. um that really starts to motivate um those high school students to build interest in the profession and hopefully um enter into those employee roles. And then finally, we'll take a look at funding for this program. All right, so green's a little simpler than residency. Thank goodness, huh? Um so we've got here um again it will
041fund um up to 40 pair of professionals per year. All funding for the grow program flows directly to the LEA as the only receiving individual or pro um entity of that funding. Um when it comes to use the funding streams again there's initial funding and then there is that set of success-based funding. So we're going to walk through these briefly. Um each Grow your own employee annually will generate initial funding of $4,000. That's the base to up to 2,000 additional. So up to 6,000 um if if for example they are placed on a campus that that generates um additional funds for that rural and high needs factor. um when the employee completes their bachelor's degree and at least enrolls in an EP, they would generate 50 the second 50% of that total amount. So between
0424 to 6K. So in this model 50% up front, 50% um upon completion of those success success of those key milestones. Um one thing I will name here all funds received and gener or generated by the um grow your own employees um should be must be used to implement the program but there is a lot of discretion for that district to make some really critical decisions to support the program's implementation. So, for example, the district may allocate decide to use those funds to um fund tuition wraparound supports for that those specific um aspiring teachers, but it may also um consider how do we reinvest this into the development of our high school um pathway or um consider using those funds for um district level support to manage oversight of the growing room program. There's a
043lot of opportunity here um to think about how how to use these funds and we'll provide more examples in the grow your own webinar as well. Turn it over to my colleague Ricky for this one. >> Thanks Melissa. I appreciate it. Um before we hop into information about the prep mentorship program, I just wanted to remind everybody I see some awesome questions coming in through the Q&A. Keep them rolling. Um, we are going to answer each and every one of those uh questions in the Q&A through an FAQ that should be posted around the beginning of November. Um, so just a reminder there. And now we'll hop into a little bit of information about the prep mentorship program. So we have looked at programs revolving around recruitment, around preparation, and now we're looking at the
044support of new teachers in the classroom. So the prep mentorship program focuses on supporting beginning teachers and so those are teachers in their first or second years of teaching in their own classrooms and the program supports three key areas. So the first is providing those first and second year teachers with trained mentor teachers um and they'll be providing coaching and support that's aligned with the classroom pedigogy standards. Um the second piece is that uh prep mentorship program will provide those mentor teachers that we mentioned just a second ago with high quality researchbased training through the agency required Texas mentorship training and my director of the mentorship team Kylo will be talking just a little bit more about uh TMT in a little while and we'll go into a deeper dive during our prep mentorship webinar
045that'll be taking place tomorrow. And the third piece is that the prep mentorship program will provide school systems with the financial support to implement strong mentorship programs including funding for training and also mentor teacher stipens. All right. So now the prep mentorship funding snapshot. We're going to talk a little bit about what that looks like. So you can see up in the top left corner that there is a statutory cap of 40 beginning teachers per school system per year. So the prep mentorship program provides $3,000 per beginning teacher in the school system. So the number of new teachers in their first and second year is what generates the allotment for prep mentorship program. And of that $3,000 per beginning teacher, the mentor teacher will receive $1,000 per beginning teacher assigned and that comes from the
046school system. So the funds go to the school system. School system provides the 1,000 per beginning teacher to the mentor teacher um right at the beginning of the um process. So uh or you know throughout the process a portion of funds must be used on that agency required Texas mentorship training. So it's important to note that and if funds remain after the stipens to the mentor teachers or the required Texas mentorship training those funds may then be used on mentor training and or strategic staffing training and or additional mentor teacher stipens. Ellie, you're muted. >> Thanks, Ricky. We've got a set of uh webinars coming up for the program a lotment starting uh with mentorship. We've got we had one yesterday, another one tomorrow, and then uh starting on the 15th, we'll have residency and
047grow your own webinars. Um both options have the same information, so feel free to tune in to either one of those. Right. So with that we've kind of walked through what is lasso, where did the prep program a lotment uh come from, how how did it evolve? Um I got into a little bit about uh information about each of the programs involved in the prep program aotment and now want to talk spend some time talking through application specifics because you might be interested in accessing this this funding or participating. So first we'll start with eligibility. Um who is eligible and who will be applying? Uh we use the term school systems throughout this webinar and in our program guidelines and posted materials for the prep program aotment. And this term when you see school systems
048it refers to districts and charter schools. So it encompasses both. Um we have a definition here of charter schools. Um and I'll give you just a second to read through those four uh bullet points below. All right. And we're going to dig in just a little bit more into um the second and third bullet points as it impacts eligibility. Um so, Senate Bill operating partners that have a charter granted under chapter 12 subchapter C of the Texas Education Code are eligible uh applicants for the PREP program a lotment. couple specifics around how funding and applications and written agreements will work. Um so first with funding SB uh 1882 operating partners are subject to the statutoily base funding caps described in each of the prep programs guidelines. So you just heard uh Melissa and Ricky walk
049through how many participants um could generate an aotment for each of the programs. So overall operating partners would be subject to those caps. Um SB182 operating partner leaders will receive links to their applications. If uh you're on this call or listening to the recording and have not received a link, uh you may request one through a form on the lasso website. Um and then also written agreements as it pertains to operating partners and partnered districts. The money for this program will fund flow through FSP, the foundation school program. And because of that uh SB182 operating partners must have a written agreement with the partner district to document how fund aotment funds generated through the partnership will be spent. So if there is money that will be moving to a campus for a dedicated purpose that
050an SB182 partner operates that should be uh written out in an agreement between the operating partner and the partner district. A note on adult charter schools. Um, so charters that have a a charter granted under uh these sections of the education code and human resources code on the screen may participate in the prep mentorship program only. Um, adult charter schools are not eligible for the pre-ervice and therefore the grow your own programs. I'll unpack this a little bit. Um, next to that little gavvel, you'll see a note in the Texas education code for the prep program aotment uh written into statute is that prep pres-ervice programs must place teacher candidates in pre kindergarten through 12th grade classrooms. Additionally, we'll talk about this a little bit more in the upcoming webinars, but to qualify for a
051prep grow your own uh program, a district or a school system must also apply to a pre-ervice program and therefore grow your own um adult charters would therefore be ineligible also for prep grow your own programs. Uh here are for any of you any of you looking for light reading. Um, no. But in seriousness, there's a the requirements. We've gotten a lot of questions about what is required for each of the different programs. Uh, HB2 article 2 established uh several new sections of the Texas Education Code uh related to the PREP program aotment. So, you'll see there uh a list of definitions and those will be further defined there. There will be additional definitions in uh the Texas Administrative Code. We're going through that rulemaking process. So, you'll see the different sections for each of
052the prep programs. uh new Texas Education Code 21909 provides a high level overview of those uh program standards and performance goals. And then uh chapter 48 48157 that includes the funding formula um for each one of the five programs. Um so we encourage all applicants to read the relevant sections of the education code for the the programs to which they'll be applying. Uh note at the bottom, we anticipate posting rules for the prep program aotment during this school year. We actually anticipate that the commissioner of education rules will be posted for public comment in December. Um and looking for a late spring effective date with those um uh state board of educator certification rules. We had a discussion on some proposed rules at our last ESP meeting in September and those will be moving through
053the SPEC and uh subsequent SBOE processes. Um and again both those sets of rules on the commission of education and uh prep side aspect aspect side uh we hope to be effective before the beginning of the 2627 school year. Uh a huge thanks to those of you on this on this call or listening to the recording that have engaged in stakeholder feedback. Uh this legislation was signed into law in June and our team uh started working on engaging with stakeholders uh right then in June actually to gather feedback on these proposed rules and and have gotten several rounds of feedback over the past several months. So thank you for all of you all of you that uh participated in that. A quick note on reporting and program monitoring. Um to calculate aotments, TEA is going
054to need to gather some information. Also to engage in the periodic reviews that are a requirement of statute. We will not need to have access to some information as well. I will say our commitment as a team is to try to streamline the process as much as possible for ed prep programs and school systems. So we are really trying to limit the amount of additional collections but some will be necessary um per the requirements in statute and to implement this program effectively. Um in our current plans as uh we are mapping things out we know that school systems must at minimum submit identification information of prep program participants for example residents and we're setting this up in eco we're starting to build the IT side of this reason there is that um the a lotments
055are calculate calculated based on um who the teachers are and where they are placed. So that second bullet is campus placements. Again, there's for the pres-ervice programs, grow your own. Um the amount of funding is dependent upon the campus. So we will try to streamline that through an ECOS collection and we'll be sharing more information um at a later date. Uh thirdly, report spending of the prep program aotment um in a format that we will share um down the road. We will um likely model some of this off of uh reporting on spending uh for like the teacher incentive aotment. Um and then ensure program participants such as residents, beginning teachers, and mentors complete annual program perception surveys uh administered by TEA. Just a note at the bottom uh around uh adopting rules and uh
056verification of participation forms which we'll talk about in just a moment. Um there are you know partnership is part uh a word in the acronym prep. It's preparing and uh preparing and retain preparing educators uh through partnership programs. Um so preparing and retaining educators through partnership programs. Uh so what are those partnerships for grow your own? A written agreement must be established between a school system and an institution of higher education or an ed prep program for implementation in the 2620 school 27 school year. The same is true for residency. a partnership between the school system and and prep program which may be an ICE. Um and then for both residency and the prep mentorship program uh cooperating teachers for residency um these are often times also referred to as host teachers. Uh and then
057uh mentor teachers for the mentorship program must complete the Texas mentorship training and we'll share a little bit of information on that in just a moment. Um online we have several resources available. One of them is a role and responsibilities insight tool. It breaks it down by superintendent, board, kind of seauite individuals, campus leaders, teachers, what some of their responsibilities may look like. It's not an exhaustive list, but it's it's intended to bring a little bit more um clarity to the types of responsibilities and time commitments for those individuals. So, we encourage you to check that out online. Um, in terms of the application process, we, you know, your school system or ed prep program might go through several steps before applying, but at a high level, we encourage you all to look at this
058overview document that we have online. Read the program guidelines for each of these programs. Engage stakeholders in conversations before submitting an application. Um, quick on application reviews. Um, there will be no interviews. uh with a prep program aotment and uh our teams will be reviewing applications to ensure they meet um the eligibility requirements and agree to the statutoily based asurances. Um we also have standard contract language in alignment with recent executive orders. So if you are um engaging in you know drafting an MOU a contract uh these uh partnerships must include this language in their contracts and this will be posted to our website. All right, with that, um, I'm going to pass it over to my colleague, Kyla, who's going to share a little bit about the Texas mentorship training. Um, so Kyla, I'll
059pass it over to you. Thanks, Ollie. Um, before I jump in, just want to name that we're going to be real quick on the Texas mentorship training today, and we'll go much more in depth tomorrow in our prep mentorship um, webinar. Um, but just to rename what my colleagues have shared earlier, the Texas mentorship training is required for the prep preservice residency and prep mentorship program. And again, we'll talk more in both of those webinars. I'll share a little bit about what the Texas mentorship training is. Um but I do want to note that before this um mentorship training has even gone to pilot, it has been shared with a number of stakeholders who have provided feedback including EPS um campus and district leaders and teacher leaders. And this Texas mentorship training that is a
060centralized mentorship training. It meets policy requirements for the training of all mentoring educator roles including mentors, mentor teachers, cooperating teachers, and host teachers including those requirements for the prep mentorship and residency program. This Texas mentorship training aligns with key TEA initiatives such as the leadership and instructional foundations for Texas Lyft program which is also an opportunity through the Lasso application. Um, this training aligns to the classroom teacher pedigogy standards as well as the TESS system and it is delivered by certified Texas mentorship training providers including all 20 education service centers as well as a few additional providers which we'll share more about in our mentorship webinar. Again, on this slide you can see when those mentorship um webinars are. Our next one is tomorrow at 12:30 um as well as when the prep residency pre-ervice
061program webinars are. Thanks Kyla for um sharing that snapshot and also wanted to share a little plug for a grant program that we run. This is not part of the a lotments. So thinking back to grants um there is a Texas strategic staffing for residency grant that will be available in uh the lasso cycle 4 process. So, as a quick reminder, um the prep program aotment, all districts that meet eligibility uh criteria and commit to requirements are funded. Um that includes the prep preservice residency program that provides funding for several things including partial funding for a residency salary, a resident salary that uh school systems must match um to meet that match. Or if districts hit the cap of funding, have more than say 40 residents, they might be interested in the Texas strategic staffing
062for residency grant that can help districts think about how to reinvest, reallocate, identify additional sources of funds um to meet those match requirements or potentially bring on more than 40 residents. It does not provide funding that can go directly to the resident, but can help districts as a technical assistance service help think through um some of those shifts. So, the Texas Strategic Staffing Grant, there are 50 awards available. This is considered a competitive grant process and selection will be based on tiers that are explained in the program guidelines. Um, given that the Texas strategic staffing for residency grant is intended to support residency implementation, to apply for that strategic staffing grant, school systems must also apply to the prep free service residency program. On October 15th and 23rd, um my colleague Corus Bunkley will be
063leading an hour-ong webinar on this grant opportunity. So if you are interested, if this has piqued your interest and you think you'll be applying also for the residency uh program, please tune in at that time. All right, a couple notes wrapping up here on path forward and next steps. Again, uh please join our webinars for more information. We'll be doing a deep dive into each of these opportunities. Um given that this is not a grant, however, there are some differences in the steps and timelines after a school system submits an application. And those differences are um in the areas of awarding, verifying, and funding a school systems participation. Uh so on the left side here, if you joined any of our other lasso webinars on grant programs specifically, you will see the same timeline for
064each one of those other 12 grant programs that are not in aotment. Um so this is a screenshot of what you would have seen or will see in those um webinar presentations. On the right side here, we've put the backdrop of this timeline uh in green color to distinguish it because there are some key differences and we want to walk through those. Okay. So, what is the same? I said uh everything up until the award announcement is going to be the same regardless of your regardless of if your school is applying for a grant or a webinar. I'll give you just a second to read through that text on the left side of the screen. And I know many people listening today likely wear several hats at their uh district or charter and might be
065applying uh for several programs. So wanted to stamp that these these steps and these timelines are the same. Um one difference is that we're going to be doing application reviews for grants. You'll see scoring the dates are the same but the action that TEA will take is different. We are not scoring and prioritizing based on priority points and we are reviewing to make sure uh school system applications meet eligibility requirements and are agreeing to the statutoily based assurances. Um the award announcement will be the same for grants um and the prep program aotment. We anticipate around February 2nd um sharing award announcements with school systems across the state. An additional step for the prep program aotment is this verification of participation um form and submission of written agreements. We anticipate that to be in the
066April, May, potentially even June time frame. I have a slide to talk through some of that. What won't be part of the allotment process is egrants and NOAs. We often get questions about this for other pro aotment programs we run. Since this is not a grant, there will be no egrants. And since this is funded out of foundation school programs, we'll share more information about that in the coming months. Quick note on verification of participation forms. So we mentioned that this is an additional step for prep program a lotments that will happen in the late spring early summer time frame. When we send um award announcements on February 2nd to school systems across the state, we will have a lot more specific information around these verification and participation forms and written agreements, but wanted to
067preview what the step is and why it exists at a high level. Um given that we are still going through the rulemaking process, we want to make sure that all school systems that receive their preliminary preliminary award have a chance to review the commissioner of education and ESPback rules related to the prep program aotment and agree to those guidelines and policy in um the Texas administrative code. Um a couple key points, school systems must submit these participation forms by the dates that we share and we'll share those dates on February 2nd. You also may decline your participation through that verification of participation form if you see some provisions um that you feel like would not be the best fit for your school system. We'll also ask for the uh estimated number of prep program participants
068um in that verification of participation form. A couple of quick points about written agreements. So, as mentioned, pre-ervice and grow your own programs will need to submit written agreements to TEA. We'll share more information on February 2nd when we send out those guidelines. Um, but the written agreement of partnership must at a high level articulate how the partnership will implement all requirements participating to residency or grow your own and articulate that the partnership has read uh the proposed commission of education rules and applicable prep program guidelines and describes how it is going to implement all of those requirements. a couple supports. We get a lot of questions of will you be providing verbiage or templates or models? The answer is yes. Um once you've been approved to participate, our staff will provide guidance on the
069submission of those written agreements and provide templates and several examples for folks to complete those agreements. As we wrap up, a quick reminder, uh, applications are due on December 3rd by 5:00 pm. Um, there's a, uh, request for application link form on our website if, um, someone in your school system has not uh, been able to access that yet. We really encourage folks to look at the PDF of the application. Um, Qualrix, you can click around, but there's a PDF that just shows you all of the questions in one spot. So you can even print that or use it as a form and work as a team to answer the questions and compile on all the information before you get into the actual Qualrix submission. Um applications also must be signed by the superintendent or
070operating partner official for SB182 partnerships. So just build that into your timelines as you're thinking about that December 3rd submission timeline. If you're looking for a quick one pager, we have a to the administrator address correspondence that we posted I think back on September 18th that provides an overview of the prep program a lotment. So feel free to circulate that with any team members. And lastly, we've got some upcoming office hours. Um we'll be updating FAQs kind of on a rolling basis until February 3rd. And February 3rd will be the kind of deadline for our team to respond to all of the FAQs that we we've received through these webinars. Um at the beginning, I mentioned that we'd have uh email in email addresses for each of the programs to share at the end of
071today. These are managed sometimes when I send them to, you know, request to to an email that doesn't have a name on it. I'm like, this where is this going to? But this will go directly to folks that you heard from today. On the screen, um, we monitor that inbox. You'll likely receive an automated response that says, because we're in the application window, we will not respond to questions oneoff. We will take all the questions we receive from the field and add those to our FAQ document to really ensure that we have clear and consistent communication out to the field and we also u kind of like bundle like questions together for just clarity um for the field. Um, a couple additional notes. We've got some upcoming webinars, application windows. Encourage you all to visit
072the Lasso website, register for those additional webinars, and then peruse the resources available on the Lasso4 uh website. And thanks so much to our Lasso team for posting all of that. I thank you so much. We're a few minutes over today. We had a lot of information to cover. Thanks for hanging with us uh for those of you that did. And um please feel free to reach out to our team or drop in the chat any questions. And again, we will not be responding individually, but we'll we will be incorporating answers into our FAQs. We'll keep the webinar open for an additional 3 minutes. So if you have any lingering questions, please feel free to use that uh Q&A feature and we'll be sure to get those those questions answered through our FAQs. Thank you
073all and have a great afternoon.