001Welcome. I will be sharing from the federal program compliance division the program monitoring validation for the title 4 part A subp part one program. The consultation requirement which is the input of stakeholders, focus groups, advisory committees and improvement teams. This presentation is intended solely to provide general information and guidance to Texas school systems, education service centers, nonprofit subgrantees, and participating private schools receiving equitable services. The content in this presentation reflects the Texas Education AY's current understanding of statute and applicable federal guidance. The content of this presentation is subject to change as a result of future guidance and/or other updates provided by federal agencies within regulatory oversight of these programs. This presentation does not constitute legal advice and entities are therefore advised to seek legal counsel regarding the information and guidance provided in this presentation before
002acting upon the information provided. Artificial intelligence disclaimer recording or use of artificial intelligence. The Texas Education Agency or TEA does not permit third-party recording or the use of artificial intelligence AI summary services during its grants related trainings. Attendees of the TEA's grants related trainings may not use AI services, language models, applications, interfaces, or assistance to attend, review, or record the trainings. TEA further prohibits any person or entity from using the information included in its grants related trainings to train AI technologies. Any attendees of TEA's grant related trainings who violate this prohibition may be removed from the trainings and may be barred from attending future grants related trainings. Please note that documentation for viral meetings is an acceptable form of documentation given the increased of virtual meeting environments. Participant rosters that include the meeting title, meeting
003date, and stakeholder names and roles would be acceptable substitutes for the more traditional signin sheets. This eliminates the need of a participant signature. Documentation requested. Take note of these items. Documenting overall compliance for a program requirement may require several forms of documentation to be maintained locally and available upon request by TEA andor an auditor to ensure overall compliance with program requirements. School systems should refer to the program guide and/or other program related resources that reference the multiple forms of documentation required to be maintained locally. The documentation requested for submission during the validation process may not include all forms of documentation that are required to be maintained locally. I want to share a brief reminder on the title 4 part A programs intent and purpose. The program intent and purpose is to provide all students with
004access to a well-rounded education to improve school conditions for a safe and healthy student learning environment and to improve technology for the enhancement of academic outcomes and digital literacy of all students. The program monitoring validation items are aligned with the title 4 part A program intent and purpose. The school systems program monitoring validation this year for title 4 part A will focus on consultation and the inclusion of required stakeholders to determine how funds are spent on applicable programs and activities. The title 4 part A statute provides specific guidance on the required ongoing consultation and stakeholders. The school system must provide evidence that consultation occurred and included all title 4 part A required stakeholders such as parents, teachers, principles, other school leaders, students, community-based organizations, government officials, and more. The statute defines the government government officials
005as local law enforcement. That could be your first responders. That could be your uh fire department, police department, uh any of your local law enforcement, local juvenile court, local child welfare agency staff, or a local public housing agency. District should also include when applicable Indian tribes, charter school staff, and others with expertise in programs and activities divi designed to meet the purposes of title 4 part A. One of the things to remember is to ensure that if you do not have one or more of the required stakeholders within your school system boundaries that you document that and you submit that documentation for your program monitoring validation requirement. Throughout the school year, the district must continue in consultation with those required stakeholders and ensure that the focus is on improving the local activities, meeting the intent
006and purposes of the title 4 part A program and also coordinating and collaborating um program implementation with other community strategies, programs and activities. And be sure to document the ongoing consultation meetings that you have with stakeholders throughout the year. It should be documented by way of meeting notes, agendas, uh emails, zoom meeting notes including the date and the participants in those ongoing consultation meetings as well as the role that each individual is serving in that consultation. The school system engaged in meaningful and continued consultation with a broad range of stakeholders including but not limited to the following groups and individuals served by the school system. And again, if the district does not have some of these different stakeholders that are required within its school boundaries, it needs to ensure that it has documented those stakeholders
007that are not located within its boundaries for the program monitoring validation as well as documenting it in your files for that particular ular school year that you do not have a particular role that is represented within district boundaries. When it comes to required stakeholder roles, not every school system has Indian tribes or charter school leaders if that if they are supporting the charter schools located within their boundaries. And if that is the case, if you are asked to to meet a program monitoring requirement for this particular area, then you need to ensure that you write on the documentation that there is no Indian tribe or organizations or charter school leaders located within your district boundaries and that is why they were not included as a stakeholder on your documented meeting notes. agendas and the list
008of stakeholders. Also ensure that as you are meeting with these stakeholders and you are having them to sign in or put their information in on Zoom, you need to ensure that they're also indicating what role they're representing. And as a reminder, school staff may not represent other roles that are outside of the school. For example, they could not represent a community-based organization even if they had a business outside of school. They could not represent a parent even if they are a parent because you need to get a parent that is not on the school's payroll. Overall compliance with program requirements. The school system should refer to the program guide and or other program related resources that reference the multiple forms of documentation required to be maintained locally. The documentation requested for submission during the program
009monitoring process may not include all forms of documentation that are required to be kept locally. on the compliance report which is the PR3107 for the title 4 part A program. One of the self-check items state that the school system engaged in timely and meaningful consultation with a broad range of stakeholders as part of their process in determining the targeted areas of improvement related to students access to effective programs. The school system indicates yes or no on the compliance report. If yes is selected, the school system must ensure the documentation is readily available and kept locally in the event that TEA or an another auditor requests that documentation. The documentation required to meet this requirement is first the dated docu dated agendas of ongoing stakeholder consultation meetings for the past year and that agenda may be
010made up of various meetings. It does not have to be one meeting to serve all stakeholders at the same time. And and it must also include the corresponding meeting notes of that same ongoing consultation meeting for that previous year. So you would have the agenda plus you must have the meeting notes that match up with that particular agenda uh on that particular date. Those are two of the requirements that would be uh required to submit for acceptable documentation. And in addition to those those two things, the school system must also include the corresponding participant roster or sign-in sheets of those stakeholder consultation meetings. And these are going to be the meetings that match the same agenda and the same meeting notes that were referenced in 1.1 and 1.2. You need to ensure that everyone that
011is signing in or that is on the computer in a Zoom meeting or that is filling out a survey that you indicate what role or they indicate what role they are filling as a result of the doc for the documentation that must be submitted. Issues that may result in an improvement needed status would be auditable documentation requested was not submitted. Submitting the wrong documentation that is our most common finding and so you need to ensure that whatever that documentation is that you are submitting would meet the compliance requirement and would be for the year in which that requirement is being requested. documentation submitted does not reference all of the title 4 stakeholders and identified roles through the agenda, the meeting notes and the identified roles on the stakeholders um list. And so you need to
012make sure that documentation submitted does provide information about those that are not located within the boundaries for participation. and therefore not required. Again, a reminder to write on that program monitoring validation uh documentation that there are some stakeholders that were not located within the boundaries and therefore there's not a requirement for that particular stakeholder. Now I'd like to share a few examples of resources and support are program monitoring validations process online resources. For example, there are uh program monitoring validation process handbooks, instructions for how to submit documentation through the work app. There's a training video and there's also the training slides for this particular training. Program specific resources are available under the guidance documents for each program and requirement as well as those videos and training slides that are program specific. And you may see
013all of the pro all of the program resources are available by clicking on the ESA program monitoring validations webpage link at the bottom of this presentation. have resources available uh in the federal program compliance division on our program monitoring validations web page and you will be able to click on the blue link which is the ESA program monitoring validations web page and you will be able to find in the title for section under the consultation requirement it will provide a guidance document training slides and this training video where you can download information and review it to ensure that you are meeting the compliance with those documentation um records that are being submitted. I highly suggest that you would share those pieces of documentation with your local education service center staff. The ESC staff are very
014knowledgeable and experienced in providing feedback to school systems and alerting school systems in what documentation should be required, what is too much to send in, what does not meet the requirement, what is enough documentation to send in. Please do that. that can help you to meet compliance if you're sharing with that ESC member and getting some final guidance and a walkth through of that documentation with them and that would greatly help you moving forward. School systems may also receive support from their local education service center um as a complimentary technical assistance and training service. You may find the ESC contacts for each regional center on the TEA Title 4 Part A web page. Thank you for attending this virtual training session. If you have questions, please let me know. Have a wonderful day.