Following its recommendations on the areas that schools should prioritize for federal Covid relief aid, Chiefs for Change today released a workbook to help systems plan for and allocate their share of the funds. Developed in partnership with Thru, the workbook includes information on the various types of funding and provides guidance for how to organize and receive funds, select initiatives, and identify partners. It also contains self-populating graphs, charts, and other tools to communicate how the aid will be used to address students’ social, emotional, and academic needs.
The workbook has three input tabs to consolidate the documentation of initiatives and funding sources, organized to help leaders make decisions and facilitate community conversations. The output tabs, meanwhile, allow leaders to easily report key details to families, partners, and governance teams. The tabs provide at-a-glance metrics and data visualizations to show how spending decisions match a system’s strategic priorities.
“Our chiefs are grateful for the federal government’s support. Just as they have throughout the pandemic, they are rapidly responding, building plans for how to accelerate learning and address students’ mental health with this much-needed infusion of funds,” said Chiefs for Change CEO Mike Magee. “Our workbook can help leaders and their teams quickly get up to speed on the statutory requirements and streamline the process for gathering community input, coordinating internal plans, and actually spending the money to meaningfully support America’s students.”
Chiefs for Change has urged systems to dedicate significant resources to initiatives in the following areas: reopening schools and keeping them open; accelerating student learning; creating strong postsecondary pathways; closing the digital divide; and redesigning assessments and accountability systems.
The master workbook will be updated periodically with new information. Systems wishing to customize the workbook for their own use should please click here to make a copy. For answers to questions or to inquire about implementation support, please contact CFCTA@chiefsforchange.org.
