001Thank you all for joining us today to learn more about lasso cycle 4 opportunities. Let me begin by introducing myself. My name is Anisha Dandona and I serve as division director for integrated district supports. My team oversees a number of initiatives including lasso and one system. I will hand it over to my colleague Donna to introduce herself. >> Hello everyone. My name is Donna Wer. I'm excited to be here today. I will help support you in in your Lasso endeavors. I'm the manager of integrated district support and oversee Lasso. Um before we jump in, a few quick notes. If you have questions during the presentation, please type them into the Zoom Q&A box at the bottom of your screen and our team will be answering them as they come in. I already received questions about
002the deck and the recording. So today's slide and the recording will be posted on the lasso cycle 4 website once all the general webinars are complete. If you think of questions later, no worries. You can email us anytime at lasso tea.ex.gov. Moving on to our objectives and agenda for today. Here's what we will cover in the next hour. First, we will introduce the lasso cycle 4 portfolio, the initiatives included, and the supports available. Next, we will share tools and resources to help you select the initiatives that best meet your local needs. Then, we'll highlight process improvements that we have made in the cycle, including the prioritization criteria. And then, we will wrap up by walking through the application structure, timing, and next steps. Do note that this is a general webinar. So we are keeping
003it high level today. For detailed uh on initiative specific information, we encourage you to attend the initiative specific webinars taking place between October 7th and 23rd. You can find the registration links on our website. So with that we are going to dive into our first segment which is the lasso overview. So this year's lasso portfolio represents approximately $500 million in supports and services including grants, aotments, and inind supports across 15 different initiatives all accessed through one single program application. This portfolio uh brings together funding and supports in four key areas like number one curriculum and instruction, second education and training, more time that's the learning time and then lastly innovative school models. So on the next slide you are going to see the full lasso cycle 4 portfolio. Uh on this slide you can find
004couple of key pieces of information. You can see each initiative included in this portfolio. You can also see the total allocation for that initiative, the initiative duration, estimated total value of the award and estimated number of anticipated awards for this cycle. There are two things to note here. First is that many lasso initiative span multiple years. So you can look at the duration column to see uh for how many years an initiative is uh going to occur. The funding view has been updated to display the estimated total allocation across all years beginning within the lasso cycle and then including the continuation grants were applicable. The second thing to note here is that the estimated range of awards reflects direct grant funds and inind supports available in the current lasso cycle 4 in addition to potential
005continuation grants over the full program duration. So you can use this slide to know what are the initiatives included, how much funding is going to be available in each one of those initiative across multiple years and what is the estimate range of awards and number of awards a school system can get over the duration of the entire program. All right. So with that we are going to move to our next slide. So now that we have shared the portfolio, we're going to discuss guiding questions that will help school systems in identifying the right initiative for their needs. Um so if uh you don't if you click through the slides couple of times here um you will start to see a um road map that guides the thinking to help you match your needs with the
006right set of initiatives. So we will first begin by the first pathway here, the curriculum and instruction. And so if your school system is seeking to strengthen curriculum and instruction supports, you can consider the first set of grants which are lift add-on for school improvement and curriculum and instruction SI grants. So thinking about if your focus for your school system is around strengthening curriculum and instructional supports and systems, these are the available set of um grants that will support that initiative. Next, if your school system is seeking digital supplemental product support with staffing and scheduling assistance, you can look at the blended learning grants. And lastly, within this pathway, if your school system is looking to expand computer science pathway, the APCSP grant will support building those programs. The next pathway is education and training.
007So, if staffing, teacher pipelines, or retention are your school systems major priorities, then you can consider the prep program aotment and the Texas strategic staffing grant. The next pathway here is more time. So if you want to rethink your school calendars or extend the years to maximize your learning time, you can look into ads planning and execution program. And then the last pathway here is innovative school model. So if you are considering bold actions like restarting a campus, creating new school model or supporting turnaround efforts, you can check out our school action fund grant and the next grant. If you are looking to provide students opportunities to earn college credit, gain career aligned experience, then you can consider the ECS and PTAC pathway grants. And if you're seeking to build a virtual program then you
008can consider virtual program accelerator um uh grant. So on the screen you can see a set of guiding questions. Think of this as a map or decision tree. Start with your most urgent need at your school system and then see which initiative or sets of initiatives help to solve it. That way the school systems can avoid overloading while selecting the most aligned set of initiatives to maximize the impact on students. All right. So these next set of slides will give you an overview of the supports and services included in each lasso initiative. These are designed to help you understand what each initiative actually offers. uh so that you can decide which ones are best in meeting your school systems need. You'll find this slide to have lots of details. So I will summarize and highlight
009uh some of the key points around each one of these offerings. So first one is the lift grant. This offers comprehensive curriculum and planning uh implementation supports including adoption supports, training and coaching, observation system development support and implementation uh support across your curriculum and implementation planning. Next is your Lyft add-on for school improvement PLC support. So, this is uh if you've already gotten the Lyft uh grant and your school improvement campus, this is additional funding for PLC uh and coaching supports. Next is a school improvement curriculum and instruction supports grant. So, this is technical assistance and training to adopt and implement SBOA approved HQIM for title one school improvement campuses. Next is your blended learning grant. So this is for supports for designing and implementing blended learning including training, vendor support and teacher types. And
010last in this curriculum instruction pathway is AP computer science principles grant and this is for funding for teacher training, course materials, students exam fees for AP computer science principal opportunities. This next set of slides gives you an overview of supports in the education and training and also more time um learning acceleration strategies. So these are focused on building teacher pipelines strengthening the mentorships and maximizing instructional time. First one is your prep aotment program. So for prep residency uh pre-ervice program this is funding to provide teacher residents with paid classroom experience practice based preparation and to support to earn teaching certificates for grow your own program. This will help school systems to support uh the employees working towards teaching degrees and prepares high school students for future career in teaching. Next is your prep mentorship program.
011This funds mentor stipens, uh, teacher training, release times to support teachers through structured mentorships. And then the next one is your Texas strategic staffing. And these are supports to design and sustain high quality teacher residency programs including coordination, technical assistant, and resident statements. You also have uh more time initiative. So, if you're looking for uh guidance, professional development, and technical assistance to help schools extend learning time and redesign calendars, uh these supports are going to be provided by our ads program. The next set of initiatives focus on innovative school models. So these are program designed to redesign schools uh implement proven instructional strategies and expand access to college credit opportunities for students. So the first one here is school action fund. This is providing uh funding guidance and resources to plan and implement bold school
012actions including restarting um low performing campuses, creating new schools or res reassigning students to higher performing schools. Next you have the next grant navigating excellence through targeted supports. Um this provides supports to districts with the root cause analysis, adoption of high quality instructional materials, educator training and stakeholder management. Um all uh tied to the clear uh plan for improving student outcomes. Next is your early college high school grants. helps district design and launch highquality early college high schools with technical assistance, college partnerships, professional development and student recruitment resources. So think of these as your wraparound supports and then we have the PEK which is supports the districts to design and launch high quality PEK programs through the technical assistance, staff training, college and industry partnerships. And lastly, we have the virtual hybrid program accelerator which
013provides coaching and design guidance and teacher development to build and refine highquality virtual or hybrid programs. So these set of grants um and slides give you an idea of what type of supports and services uh are included in each set of lasso initiative. This concludes our lasso overview. Um next we are going to be discussing the resources that are available to your school systems in making a decision on which set of uh initiatives are aligned to your local needs. So for that I'm going to pass the mic to my teammate Donna to walk through the set of resources available. Hello everyone. We're excited to share that we have four main guidance docs for you. The first one is the initiative one pagers. So this is if you would like an overview of all the initiatives
014and key details to help you and your teams decide on which initiatives are the right fit for your school system needs then this one pager will be a helpful guidance to you. um naming that these are published on the laws of four web page and so you may review this for the content and the information contained to be able to help support your decision making. So next if you are looking for the eligibility and prioritization um if you are looking for more insight into the likelihood of being selected for funding then this doc would be of interest to you. Inside you will find all the initiatives and prioritization and eligibility details in one fluid doc. They're designed to have all the information you need for that purpose. And then also the very last page, excuse
015the scrolling, will give you an overall of our top prioritization categories, 10 buckets of prioritization or priority points that will help you again decide um what your what are your chances of being awarded in this and highlighting those eligibility criteria. We have two new things. We have an initiative selection tool. So, if you would like guidance on just being able to select the grants which align with your primary focus, then you may enjoy this document. This gives you the pathways that we shared. But now, guiding questions. So, is your school system seeking to, as an example, engage in a multi-year effort to strengthen curricular and instructional systems at the district and campus level? Then the Lyft grant is something for you to consider. And then lastly, we have the roles and responsibilities insight tool. This
016was in response to feedback to know what commitments that all district personnel campus and district um are going to be expected to engage in. So within this tool, you will see that you can dig deeper into the expectations for each of your stakeholders to decide your capacity for the initiatives chosen. So you will see the initiatives here on the left and the roles above and then these are the tasks or the activities that you will be expected to engage in to implement with Fidelity. So please use this guide to determine your capacity for implementing the initiatives with with Fidelity noting that several grants offer continuation funding for successful implementation. We hope that you enjoy your adventure into deciding which of these laws of four opportunities best align to your school systems goals and needs and
017which of the opportunities you are most likely to be selected for. Through feedback received from all stakeholders, we have made some process improvements for the lawsuit cycle for opportunity. We still have the 60-day application window, but it's even more responsive to school needs. It aligns with school system planning cycles, avoids testing windows and major breaks, still supporting timely strategic decision making. The prioritization criteria. We have also enhanced to be be very transparent for what is prioritized. We are looking to support the districts who need it the most for the applicable grants. So you will see some un unacceptable rating schools within the last 5 years also being a priority and the 5day of school week noting that the lift uh portion the blue bonnet curriculum does require at least 165 days as is another one
018that also has to implement with fidelity you need to be able to commit to a uh a 5day school week or longer instructional calendar. And then as shared before the additional resources for decision-making, we have those new tools for you to be able to share. So transparently, we hope that these resources provide you and your teams with meaningful guidance as you begin planning for the Lasso 4 application to open and what's next, when does it open? Here gives you an overall timeline from the Lassa application. So we are currently here in our general webinars. We also have another opportunity tomorrow for who did not were not able to come today and both webinars are exactly the same. We will have the um application open as stated from December 1st October 1st excuse me to December
0191st. It will close at 5:00 p.m. Central time. You have the opportunity and are encouraged to review the law of website to choose your program webinars that you are most interested in. There are two options for each program so you can choose which fits your schedule best and these are in the range of October 7th through October 23rd. We will also have office hours. Each program has one office hours for technical assistance and laws led by me will have um technical assistance for applications. So if you have any questions or getting stuck, feel free to join us for those little office hours. We will take all of the questions that you're putting into our Q&A session here and through the lawsuit email and publish them with answers in our FAQ document on November 3rd. And
020then sharing this is the rest of the cycle. So from beginning the application opening to when when do I receive my NOGA? Just note that if you are selected for funding, you will receive um an announcement, a letter signifying that around anticipate to be February 2nd. You will also be notified if you did not were not selected for funding. But once you receive this selection, it'll give you um the next step. So you do have to take 30 days to accept or decline any part of your um opportunity. And then once you submit that application, then the NOGA processing begins. So they will begin processing as soon as the grantee official certifies and submits. So that process does take about 60 days. So the sooner that you submit your application, the sooner you will receive
021your NOGA. All NOAs are expected to be issued by May 5th. So the state approved provider list, we are in the process of confirming all of the providers for the law grant for each of the opportunities and this will be published on the law website on October 1st when this application opens. So why is this important? What does this provide? This will share with you which providers support which grants and additional information. So be on the lookout for our state approved SAB list affectionately known as SAB. Now overview of the application process let me share with you some key um points. So firstly similar to prior you will select your region and your school system based on what the information has been derived from ASTED. You will be asked to provide a school system contact.
022This is the main contact if we do need to um follow up with any communications and then also the superintendent contact information. It's very important that the superintendent's name and email matches here. And on the very last page, we give two opportunities to collect that information. And then this is um for our information. You will select um two oops, excuse me, there are two questions for your calendar. What is your current calendar for this year? And what is um going to be your estimated thought for future? You may apply for multiple initiatives. So please look through all the guidance resource documents that we have provided and then choose the the grants and aotments the opportunities that best meet your district's needs. The one pager that we have shared that is posted um will also give
023you a high level of the program guidelines and expectations, key commitments, things like that. The program guidelines are not published until October 1st when the the grant opens, but that of course gives you everything. 20 pages of information of all the things that you will need to commit to and what to expect from the grant. So, one thing to make sure we said several times, just make sure that the grants and the aotment opportunities align with your school systems needs and priorities and capacity so that you may be on a successful journey to make those improvements that your um that your goals are aligned to. We have made a process improvement. We have the we have designed the application to go backwards and forwards all the way to the beginning to the end. The only
024caveat that we want to share with you is once you get to the program specific requirements with or selections within particular grants if you choose that campus then and you decide oh that's not my district you will not be able to go you can go back to the beginning but it'll be locked because your application um answers and choices are saved. So you will need to uh reach out to Lasso to re to request a Lasso uh application retake link and then you will be able to then go in and and modify your application to choose the right district and um and region. So just make sure when you first start the application you are choosing your region and your district um carefully and then you shall have all of your answers saved accordingly. So
025we are requesting requiring a superintendent signature. This is required to be considered for funding. So you will be asked several times if you're the superintendent. Now we we recognize that many people are filling out this application. The superintendent may may review at the end. That is fine. At the very end, right before you are to submit, we do need a signature. So at some point within the 60-day window, the superintendent needs to review and to be able to sign. There are extenduating circumstances. We recognize this. So, please email [email protected] texas.gov for further information. But that's why you will provide the superintendent information and then there will be directions if you are not the superintendent what you would need to do. Lastly, you have the ability once you get once you get to this page to
026review again. It'll take you back to your application to review all of your answer choices. And then you can come to this point again and sign and submit. This is a text field. So you just squiggle away to capture your signature. Um and then after you have signed and click save and next, then a summary page will appear. This will give you a running um list of everything that you have chosen. But this is on this page only. If you want a static copy, then find the download PDF. you are able to click on this and download a copy of your application so you have that for your records for your interests. So now that we review the application, let me just jump into um some key things. So you must submit your application by
027December 1st at 5:00 p.m. Central time. That's you must submit by that time. You will superintendents will receive a unique application link to be able to access the application on October 1st if you have if the superintendent there's a staffing change or um you did not receive it. Sometimes it ends up in junk because the email is from no reply but uh we have a solve for that. You may go to the website and on October 1st you will have a request for application link form to fill out and then we will send you your link. Each district has their own unique link PDF's copy of the application. So blank copy will also be posted on the laws of website. This will be used by you if you would like to to look ahead to
028see what the questions are to be able to gather your answers before entering into the application. So that is an option that's available to you. And a reminder that applications must be signed by the superintendent in order to be accepted. And just as a reminder that lasso is an informal discretionary competitive grant process. So declines and change requests are not advisable in a typical competitive process. If declines are requested there they will be considered on a case- by case basis for the school systems but recognize that it could raise the system school systems federal grant risk level in the coming year. So here's some FYIs and next steps what you could be doing at this point. So we have general webinars coming up. These links are um are posted on our website and also get
029the opportunity to see to reach out to the contact leads for whom the grants um are led by. So if you would like deeper um information that you have information that you are requesting join us for the for the program webinar but also you may reach out to the program links. Again this um depth will be posted on our web page um at the by the end of the week and so you will have this information to be able to to reach out to them directly. So what are your next steps? So review and discuss the offerings with your team. Use the resources that we've shared that are located in the law of our website to start those conversations to then identify the the grants and aotment opportunities that best fit your district needs. Register
030for any of these webinars, any and all. There are two options. They'll be exactly the same. And the decks and recordings of these will also be posted within um possibly a week of its closing. And then prepare to apply. So applications open on October 1st, 2025 and close on December 1st, 2025, 5:00 p.m. Central time. Thank you very much for your time. We appreciate your interest in Lassa. We hope that we have collected opportunities that match your needs and that you are as excited as we are to help you and your school districts be successful in the coming years. Thank you Janna. um team I am seeing a couple of questions around where are these resources located um and where we can access uh the links and also what is included in each one of
031the resources. So I can take a little bit of time here to orient folks to where you can find these resources and what is included in each one of them. If you look at the chat, you will find the links to each one of the resources. Um, however, I am going to show you on the screen where exactly these are located on our website. So, if you just give me a moment, going to grab the screen and Donna, if you can give me a thumbs up if you can see my website screen. Great. All right. So, if you go to the lasso um cycle 4 website, the link is included in the chat. Um here you are going to find a couple of key pieces of information. Um first, you'll find the application window. So,
032when does it open? October 1st. When does it close? Uh December 1st. Um you'll find registration links to the general webinar that's happening here but also registration links to all the program specific webinars um that are uh anticipated to be taking place in October. So if you're looking for more details about hi where can I learn more about lift when where can I learn more about prep prep? So these are all of the program specific webinars that you can register to learn more about each one of those opportunities. A couple of other things that you can find on this website is the portfolio that we just shared with you all which is what are all the opportunities initiatives included? What is their estimated funding looking like the program duration? You can find all that information
033on this website as well. And then lastly, here is our resources tab. So all of the um links to the documents and the resources that you saw in the webinar, which is the one pager, the eligibility and prioritization matrix, uh initiative selection tool, roles and responsibility tools. You can find all of those posted on our website here. Um I'm going to quickly show you what those look like. So if you are looking for high-level information about each one of those opportunities which showcase to you number one what are the supports and services that this uh initiative offers you can find that information a list of supports and services for each one of the opportunities in the onepage job. If you're looking for what is the eligibility criteria for this initiative you can find that listed
034as well. If you are thinking through well is this initiative right fit for me? What do I need to consider to determine whether this is uh the program that is going to meet my need you can find that guidance in the best fit guidance here. Um if you're looking for um estimated funding amounts duration you can find that information here as well. And then if you're looking for highlevel information on okay if I do apply for this opportunity and I get awarded what are going to be the major key commitments that u as a school system I'm going to have to adhere to you can find that list here as well. So use the one pager to give you information of what is this opportunity, who all is available, is this opportunity best fit for
035me, am I ready to take on the commitment? You can find all of that information in the one pager. So that's the one pager document. Um, if you're looking for eligibility and prioritization information, so eligibility was also found on one pager, but it is also found on this document. So you can see eligibility at a scan for all the initiatives but also if you're looking for um the prioritization criteria that you know when you apply um which set of uh school systems are prioritized in the first tier second or if there's additional priority points for certain criterias. You can find the list of prioritization for each grant in this document. So you can use this to assess your likelihood or chances of receiving a specific award based on the prioritization that's listed here. You can
036also look at the historic um award rate. So if this is an opportunity that has featured in previous lasso cycles. Um you can look at you know um how many of the applications that were received um actually received an award as well. So this gives you additional information on assessing the likelihood of a school system receiving an award given the estimated funding amounts. So use this to kind of make those decisions. Um, next, if you are looking for guiding questions uh and pathways that you can kind of in a decision-making tree that you can use to assess what your need is at your school system and then how that need is matched by a certain set of initiative, you can use this in initiative selection tool. This gives you a guiding set uh guiding questions
037that you if you answer yes, you uh will probably lead to the initiative that's best fitting for you. If you answer no to these guiding questions, then that initiative is probably not best for you. So you can use this um sort of decisionmaking tree to make those determinations. And then the last tool here is the roles and responsibility tools. saw a lot of questions in the chat around oh it are there any board requirements um are there any requirements for a campus leader a school leader so you can kind of use this tool to uh determine that information this gives you two pieces of information one is uh for each one of the initiatives what is the involvement at each district level uh role so starting from the board what is the responsibility of the
038board with that initiative um what will be the responsibility of the superintendent, your central office, seuite staff, district leaders. So you can find that information and then the second thing is also if you are considering to apply for multiple grants, you can see that like how that roles and responsibility layers on across multiple grants. they can make that determination of oh it looks like if I apply for these three it is going to uh involve my uh central office staff or district leaders in all these different ways and then you can make assessments about capacity u at the school system level to be able to take on uh the all the sets of initiatives. So wanted to walk you through where all of the information is available uh so that you can make that determination
039of like what sets of initiatives are the right fit for your school systems. A couple of other themes that I'm seeing in the chat for questions. Uh folks are asking for access to the slide deck and also access to the recording. So um the slide deck will be posted on this website itself um towards the end of the week once we are done with all of the general webinar. So you also have another webinar option coming up I believe tomorrow. So once we have completed all the general webinar we'll post the slide deck. You'll see it in the resource section here up here and then you'll also see the recording of the webinars appear as well. We are going to uh hang out on on this webinar for um five more minutes as we're still
040seeing some questions come in. So this concludes our information session so to say for this webinar. Um we are going to hang on on this webinar to continue to answer questions in the Q&A and then if we're seeing the themes we'll come and address it whole group as well. Um if you have put in the question you're welcome to stay on the webinar uh as we continue answering questions. Um but if you don't have any questions further questions you're welcome to hop off. This does conclude our uh formal information session on this webinar.