Discriminating Shoppers
An article in the August 21st 2009 Gazette tells of $5.8 million in federal grants being awarded to Colorado Springs school districts where the military population is growing. The article says this:
“Four Pikes Peak region school districts have been awarded Defense Department grants aimed at assisting schools where the military population is growing.The area districts — Academy School District 20, Falcon School District 49, Harrison School District 2 and Fountain-Fort Carson School District 8 — received $5.8 million to use on programs over three years. The districts will use the money to improve student achievement, and Falcon and Harrison have targeted math programs in particular.The Department of Defense Education Activity awarded $56 million nationwide, and was able to make awards to all qualified districts, said spokeswoman Connie Gillette. The grants are for schools with at least a 15 percent military dependent population, but the programs can serve all students in the school.”
Over 10,000 new soldiers and airmen will be flowing into the Colorado Springs area over the next couple of years, so these grants were not unexpected.
Take another look at the districts that are receiving these grants and take note of the district that is not receiving the money. D11, the largest district in the region, does not qualify for the federal funding. When military families move to a new location, the parents tend to be discriminating shoppers when it comes to the education of their children. It is apparent that very few military families would place their children in a school district that spends little effort on educating kids.
Not only is D11 losing millions of dollars annually from students choosing to attend school elsewhere, but it is losing military families who take the time to research local school districts and who discover that D11 is a district that is best kept at arms’ length.
“Four Pikes Peak region school districts have been awarded Defense Department grants aimed at assisting schools where the military population is growing.The area districts — Academy School District 20, Falcon School District 49, Harrison School District 2 and Fountain-Fort Carson School District 8 — received $5.8 million to use on programs over three years. The districts will use the money to improve student achievement, and Falcon and Harrison have targeted math programs in particular.The Department of Defense Education Activity awarded $56 million nationwide, and was able to make awards to all qualified districts, said spokeswoman Connie Gillette. The grants are for schools with at least a 15 percent military dependent population, but the programs can serve all students in the school.”
Over 10,000 new soldiers and airmen will be flowing into the Colorado Springs area over the next couple of years, so these grants were not unexpected.
Take another look at the districts that are receiving these grants and take note of the district that is not receiving the money. D11, the largest district in the region, does not qualify for the federal funding. When military families move to a new location, the parents tend to be discriminating shoppers when it comes to the education of their children. It is apparent that very few military families would place their children in a school district that spends little effort on educating kids.
Not only is D11 losing millions of dollars annually from students choosing to attend school elsewhere, but it is losing military families who take the time to research local school districts and who discover that D11 is a district that is best kept at arms’ length.
posted by Craig Cox | 2:59 PM
2 Comments:
Did D11 even apply for the grant?
Good question. A whole blog post could be dedicated to analyzing D11's performance on grant requests. One would think that a district that is bleeding money at the rate that D11 is bleeding would be quick to request grants and proficient at writing grant requests. Neither is true.
So did D11 actually qualify for this military related grant but simply not request the funds? According to the D11 source with whom I spoke, the grant request was never made because D11 leaders did not believe that the district qualified. Back in 2005, we spent a good deal of time talking about the Ft. Carson expansion and the possibility of a large influx of students into the area. The schools on the south side of the district were predicted to gain hundreds of students each as the families moved into the area. As everyone is well aware, this large influx never occurred in D11. Students and families chose other districts, and as we all know, the BOE chose to close down a large swath of southern schools due to low enrollment.
As to D11's grant writing abilities, a board member of the Daniel's fund, which grants hundreds of thousands of dollars to school districts annually, told me that he has read D11 grant requests. His obervation is that D11 requests are some of the most shoddy and unprofessional he has ever seen. No surprise there.
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