December Superintendent’s Report, Submitted by Brenda Boeke We were notified that our Straight A Fund grant application was not approved. A total of 24 grants from more than 150 individual entities were recommended for a total of $88.6 million in funding by the Straight A Fund Governing Board after a rigorous screening process. The process began with each grant application being rated by three of approximately 230 independent fiscal scorers selected by the Department of Administrative Services who helped determine if applicants’ ideas were fiscally sustainable. From the original pool of 570 applications, 359 were approved as sustainable and promoted to the next step of the rating process. Each application was then rated by three of approximately 230 independent programmatic scorers selected by the Department of Administrative Services to determine if the proposal was innovative, had substantial value and lasting impact. After this programmatic review, the scores were reviewed by grant advisors. The approximately 30 grant advisors – professional educators and community and corporate leaders approved by the Governing Board - issued a recommendation of the highest quality applications to the Governing Board who made the final recommendations. The $250 million Straight A Fund was created in the new state budget signed this summer by Gov. John R. Kasich. In all, 420 organizations submitted 570 applications to be considered for funds to improve achievement and increase efficiency. The applicants requested nearly $868 million. A new round of grant funding will be held next year. We as a consortium of 6 school districts will evaluate any feedback concerning our application and determine our next course of action. Calendar for 2014-2015 Beginning in the 2014-2015 school year, traditional school districts, joint vocational school districts and chartered nonpublic schools will be required to comply with minimum hours of instruction instead of a minimum number of school days each year. School districts, joint vocational school districts, and chartered nonpublic schools will be required to be open for instruction for a minimum of: 910 hours for students in full-day kindergarten through Grade 6; and 1,001 hours for students in Grades 7-12. Currently we have 1137.5 at the elementary school and 1181.25 at the jr/sr high school. Beginning with the 2014-2015 school year, districts that change to an hour-based schedule will no longer have calamity days. Instead, schools may schedule “excess” hours above the minimum number. Hours missed above the minimum do not have to be made up. However, if a school closes enough that it will fall below the minimum number of hours, the school must extend its scheduled year. A traditional school district board of education must hold a public hearing at least thirty days prior to adopting its school schedule. While not required prior to July 1, 2014, the Ohio Department of Education recommends that a public hearing be held if the traditional district is proposing a change in its schedule in hours or days. Currently we make up after five days of missed instruction. Our hours over minimum allow us to miss over 26 days. We will be discussing this in detail as the calendar is developed but my recommendation would be to make up days as we currently have after five days unless extraordinary circumstances occur.