A $341,000 chunk of federal Race to the Top money will launch the Dade County Schools system on the road to reform, officials said.
“I always wish it would be more, but I’m pleased with that,” Dade Superintendent Patty Priest said Tuesday. “I think we can put it to good use.”
HOW IT WORKSIn accordance with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, school districts participating in the Race to the Top have a four-year period to implement their plans and spend the grant money. States and schools systems are accountable for meeting the goals, timelines, budgets and annual targets established in the states’ applications, and their schedule for receiving the federal funds is tied to them.
Dade’s comparatively small award – a total of $200 million is being given to 26 school districts in Georgia – is not surprising, she said, since it is based on federal Title I funding that districts receive. Money from Title 1 is tied to the number of free and reduced-price lunches and special education programs a system provides and, since Dade is so small, its numbers in those categories are small, too.
In Dade, Race to the Top funding will fit hand-in-hand with a $2.4 million, three-year federal School Improvement Grant recently given to the school and with technical grants from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation aimed at building systems to collect student achievement data in Dade and around the state, Priest said.
The state education department and the individual school districts are splitting a total of $400 million awarded to the state for Race to the Top program implementation, officials said.
In Georgia, Dade’s share of Race to the Top money is the second smallest allocation among the 26 district participants next to Pulaski County, records show. The lion’s share of the districts’ $200 million – well over half – will go to Atlanta, DeKalb County, Gwinnett County and Richmond County schools, record show.
States have a four-year period to implement their plans and spend the money, state officials said. Districts, meanwhile, have an Oct. 25 deadline to submit plans on how they will use the money, Priest said.
Georgia was named a second-round Race to the Top winner in August, garnering a share of about $3.4 billion in federal education funding. Tennessee and Delaware were the winners in the first round, with the Peach State coming in third but out of the funding.
Dade was one of three districts added to the 23 systems that competed in the first round because of its demographics and in order to align those systems’ School Improvement Grants with Race to the Top reforms, state officials said.
Georgia Department of Education spokesman Matt Cardoza said funding will be distributed on a timeline defined by the scope of each district’s reform plan.
“Say one system’s bigger amount of money is for merit pay,” he said. “That will be nearer the end of the four-year period.”
Under those guidelines, some of Dade’s reforms that stem from a pilot “value-added” teacher effectiveness measure might not be funded for a while, he said.
The pilot program – funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Teacher Effectiveness Momentum Grant – is being fielded by Atlanta, Dade, Gwinnett and Peach school districts, officials said.
Priest said the teacher-effectiveness measure will get funding help from the state, as well. She said she expects funding in some of the other state-level reforms to follow suit.
RACE DIVVY
Georgia officials say the 26 districts that signed agreements to participate in Race to the Top reforms will divvy up almost $200 million in education funding. The systems make up 41 percent of Georgia’s public school students, 46 percent of students in poverty and 68 percent of the lowest-achieving schools. The districts also contain 53 percent of Georgia’s black students and 48 percent of Hispanic students in the state.
System: / Funding amount / Percentage of total
Atlanta: / $39.3 million / 19.68
Ben Hill: / $1.2 million / 0.58
Bibb: / $13.3 million / 6.65
Burke: / $1.9 million / 0.95
Carrollton: / $1.2 million / 0.61
Chatham: / $12.7 million / 6.36
Cherokee: / $2.9 million / 1.43
Clayton: / $15.3 million / 7.63
Dade: / $341,455 / 0.17
DeKalb: / $34 million / 17.01
Dougherty: / $6.9 million / 3.43
Gainesville: / $1.7 million / 0.85
Gwinnett: / $20.8 million / 10.4
Hall: / $3.8 million / 1.9
Henry: / $3.3 million / 1.66
Jones: / $573,265 / 0.29
Meriwether: / $1.3 million / 0.64
Muscogee: / $11.4 million / 5.71
Peach: / $1.2 million / 0.6
Pulaski: / $338,338 / 0.17
Rabun: / $395,831 / 0.20
Richmond: / $16.6 million / 8.32
Rockdale: / $2.4 million / 1.18
Spalding: / $3.2 million / 1.58
Valdosta: / $3.4 million / 1.70
White: / $649,749 / 0.32
Total allocation to school districts: $199,976,325
Source: Georgia Department of Education