Yukon-Koyuk School District's
Operational Handbook for the Voluntary Public School Choice (VPSC) Grant
II. Key Personnel and Job Descriptions
A. School District Staff and their responsibilities to Objectives #1 and #2
Project Director, Kerry Boyd, YKSD Superintendent — Ms. Boyd has over 10 years of combined educational experience. Five of those years were spent in an administrative position within one school district. She holds a M.A. in School Administration, a Special Education endorsement, and is committed to standards-based education. Ms. Boyd will devote 25% of her time supervising this project, working closely with all schools, and creating partnerships to promote the project.
Andrea Berg, YKSD Assistant Superintendent — Ms. Berg is responsible to coordinate grant activities with all site directors and site principals. Ms. Berg will provide support and guidance regarding implementation of grant objectives.
YKSD Directors — All Directors will coordinate and cooperate with project personnel to support grant objectives.
YKSD Site Principals — Site Principals will provide support and coordination to implement grant objectives at each site.
YKSD Teachers — Teachers will implement participate in intervention trainings and implement knowledge gained from trainings in their individual classrooms.
Administrative Assistant is assigned exclusively to assist in the VPSC grant administration support. This is a new position created and funded to support the VPSC project. The Administrative Assistant is also responsible to disseminate, collect, and supply to the evaluator all enrollment documentation as described in the enrollment plan. In addition the Administrative Assistant will track and code all grant expenditures.
Two half-time business office positions are assigned to assist with financial and office transactions associated with the grant including student travel and boarding coordination and funding set up, and financial reporting for the grant.
Local Assets Liaison is responsible for coordinating student/school/community engagement opportunities, to help promote the knowledge of VPSC choice opportunities with the communities, and to coordinate and track student asset and resiliency work to support students in participating VPSC schools, or eligible to participate in choice schools. In addition, the Local Assets Liaison will be responsible to initiate and secure partnership agreements as needed.
Online Course Developer provides full time course development and monitoring for AIDE, a distance education choice option for YKSD students.
Reading/Education Specialist works with all of the YKSD schools to coordinate school choice options and to support and coordinate school improvement works to increase local choice options.
B. Contracted Service Providers and their responsibilities to Objectives #1 and #2
Project Administrator, Carl Knudsen — Mr. Knudsen provides project leadership and administrative services to implement and direct the VPSC grant. Program Administration includes coordination with District Administration, monitoring grant-funded employees, monitoring grant-funded contracted services, general program management and grant compliance.
Evaluator, Meghan McCarthy-Grant — Ms. McCarthy-Grant owns a consulting firm that specializes in educational technology planning, grant writing, training, and evaluation. She will perform the project evaluation. Ms. McCarthy-Grant has experience writing successful grants for school districts and educational service districts, and has also performed grant evaluations for two major grants. Clients include the Department of Defense, Galena City School District, Idaho IDEA, and WorldWide IDEA Private Academy. She was also the project evaluator for the Department of Defense Remote Location Homeschool Program.
PEAK Learning Systems (www.peaklearn.com) — Spence Rogers is the creator of the PEAK Teaching for Excellence Model™ and President of PEAK Learning Systems. He is known internationally for his work in building high-performance classrooms and learning environments; helping to make performance excellence for all kids a reality through enhanced student motivation; aligned curriculum; effective assessment; and research-supported, brain-compatible instruction. An award-winning instructor and staff-developer, Mr. Rogers is consistently recognized for his abilities to make what he teaches theoretically sound and immensely practical while helping others to build on their strengths. Educators have long been committed to being successful with all children, but recent events have made it a priority. The PEAK Teaching for Excellence Model™ (the PEAK Model) is an effective integration of research-supported approaches to curriculum, instruction, and assessment principles, strategies, and techniques that have consistently made positive differences in leaving no child behind.
WW IDEA (www.wwidea.org) is an educational nonprofit specializing in education technology and school choice options that meet each individual student's needs. They also have extensive experience in supporting grant coordination and communication among partners and stakeholders. Contracted services to YKSD for fulfilling VPSC requirements include providing and customizing a Web-based student learning management system that helps support PEAK Model strategies, as well as State of Alaska and district goals. WW IDEA also provides administrative research, policy, marketing and reporting materials development.
Specifically, WW IDEA provides student learning management software, training, support and customization. The web-based student learning management system, training and support provides data collection and instruction/assessment planning. The data collected is used to drive instruction through the school success model. These systems help schools that are not high performing to become high performing schools and therefore additional schools of choice. The student learning system also provides the data necessary for high achieving schools to remain high achieving, and increase capacity. Student data is available for district administration to review district-wide for ability to view student and instructional progress before and after exercising choice.
Onsite travel at school choice sites includes community events discussion the VPSC project and school choice options.
Administrative research, reporting and policy development provided by WW IDEA includes development of school choice promotional materials, press/media information regarding choice options, and boarding home materials. They also develop inter-and intra district agreement drafts, school success plan materials, grant-related handbook and report development and coordination, training coordination, and general policy development related to the VPSC grant school choice options.
Derek Peterson is the founder of the Institute for Community and Adolescent Resilience (ICAR-US) and Integrative Youth Development™ (IYD), which is based on asset, resiliency, and other relevant research and combines the research into especially effective principles and practices. Mr. Peterson is a pioneer in the implementation of the principles and outcomes of IYD within schools, communities, families, as well as within the minds and hearts of individual youth. In his career, he has received many honors and accolades, but the most significant one is the "thank you" that is given by an individual whose life his work has touched. Between 1995 and 2004, Mr. Peterson served as the Director of Child/Youth Advocacy for the Association of Alaska School Boards. While there he developed the IYD model that expanded the dialogue around student achievement in both urban and rural schools. His work guided the Chugach School District's Psycho/Social Developmental Standards and supported them in earning the nation's first Baldridge Award for Excellence in Education. ICAR-US is devoted to the implementation of the principles and practices of Integrative Youth Development. Since 1993, the institute has worked to instill these practices within individual youth, schools and communities. Today, the institute specializes in three areas. The first is creating measurable supports for each individual youth, second increasing caring and connection within school environments — the critical component to any systemic school reform effort and third, working to support caring and connected communities. The institute offers education, materials, and support to individuals (adults and youth,) schools, agencies, communities, and statewide organizations in their youth development related work.