2023-25 Strategic Plan Updates | Dec. 28, 2023

• In FY23, more than 300 District child care educators have completed CDA coursework for free with support from OSSE.  
• More than 500 early childhood educators have been accepted into our DC Leading Educators toward Advanced Degrees (DC LEAD) scholarship program. This provides scholarships and incentives to DC child care educators to complete coursework toward an associate and/or bachelor’s degree in early childhood education. 
• OSSE distributed nearly $42 million in Early Childhood Educator Pay Equity Funds (quarterly payments of $2,500 to $3,500) to more than 4,000 educators. 
• We also expanded eligibility to child care subsidies to include families earning up to 300 percent of the federal poverty level (up from 250 percent previously).  
• As a result of this expansion, a family of four with income up to $90,000 will qualify for subsidy, and 5,200 children 0-13 live in families that are newly income eligible for subsidies 

• This year, we adopted updated social studies standards for the first time in 17 years! What a tremendous accomplishment, and the vote by the State Board of Education was unanimous.  
• We invested $1.6M in intensive professional development math bootcamps to improve educator and local education agency practices. 
• This investment is focused on schools with the highest needs, as well as on new teachers with less than five years of teaching experience.  
• More than 350 educators have completed our science of reading training so far, with another 300 registered.  
• Like the math bootcamps, participants in the science of reading courses receive a $1,000 stipend for their time and efforts, and more than 300 educators have received this incentive.  
• Our work on dyslexia has been extraordinary - more than 13,000 DC educators completed OSSE’s Dyslexia training in 2023. 
• Just last month, we introduced a revamped DC School Report Card, unveiling a user-friendly, dynamic website that delivers comparable data at the school-, LEA-, and city-level data for all public schools in the District of Columbia.  
• EdFEST, run by OSSE’s My School DC team, was a huge success, spanning over two weekends! We welcomed more than 8,000 attendees, exhibitors and volunteers back in person for the first time since before the pandemic. This celebration of the incredible public and public charter school options in the District helps families make their choices now that the lottery opened this past Monday. 
• For the first time in 2023, OSSE collected school course catalogs. More than 16,000 courses were submitted to OSSE by more than 90 LEAs and non-public schools.  
• And, always a highlight, we were able to pull off a surprise event celebrating Beth Barkley, high school teacher at Cardozo Education Campus, as our 2024 DC Teacher of the Year Award. 

• In 2023, the District experienced a paradigm shift when it comes to high-impact tutoring — a transformation not only in access but in mindset.  
• OSSE-funded HIT occurred in 73 of the District’s highest-need schools as well as 19 community-based sites in the 2023-23 school year 
• And high-impact tutoring reached more than 5,000 public school students in in the 2022-23. The program is on track to reach more than 10,000 public school students over three years   
• We also released the first-ever Special Education Performance Report (SEPR), a comprehensive evaluation of special education programs in the District designed to help educators, families and policymakers better serve and improve academic achievement for students with disabilities. 
• As of early December 2023, 591 educators, representing 61 LEAs have enrolled in the SPED micro-credential pathway, and 324 educators, representing 21 LEAs have enrolled in the SEERI pathway! We are leveraging this special educator credential and providing robust supports to general educators.  
• We announced $6.3 million in awards to local education agencies and community-based organizations through the Nita M. Lowey 21st Century Community Learning Centers grant competition. The seven awardees, located across DC, will serve 6,817 students and 2,326 of their adult family members with high-quality out-of-school time programming throughout the five-year award period. 

Thanks to our great work on building futures, residents can count on OSSE to eliminate barriers to education so that all residents are ready for success in their careers and their lives. We are working hard to reimagine the high school experience for DC students, including revamping our graduation requirements, so they align with the skills that today’s students need to be effective, expanding pathways to high-demand careers in high school. 

• We’ve invested more than $30 million in recovery dollars to expand work-based learning opportunities, including advanced technical training and internships, that align with what DC students are studying, and with what DC-area employers need. 
• In August, we celebrated the launch of the permanent home of the Advanced Technical Center at the Penn Center! In the 2023-24 school year, the ATC is serving 191 students representing 15 DC public and DC public charter high schools. During the 2022-23 school year, students attending the ATC earned a total of 740 college credits – worth approximately $625,000 in tuition – at no cost to students or their families.  
• We hosted the first-ever DC Futures Conference, welcoming more than 400 DC residents enrolled in the DC Futures college access program, where attendees could access resources and strategies on how to address personal and financial barriers to college completion. 
• In the 2022-23 school year, 625 students participated in the dual enrollment program, the highest number the program has seen. 
• Through the $21 million GEAR UP grant we received, we can work to inspire college dreams in the minds of hundreds of DC middle school students furthest from opportunity, giving coaching as needed through high school and financial support after high school. 

• OSSE became the first jurisdiction in the country to adopt statewide menstrual health standards for all students, regardless of gender. Our first-in-the-nation, inclusive, science-based standards are a model for other states, including state boards of education, and were featured in the Washington Post, local news, and national news outlets.  
• We have trained over 300 school behavioral health providers in suicide prevention and 207 DCPS and charter schools have received age-appropriate suicide prevention curriculum to implement with students in grades kindergarten through 12, at no-cost to the school.  
• OSSE, in partnership with City Blossoms and the United States Botanic Garden, convened the Regional Garden-based Learning Summit in July. Over 50 participants representing 21 schools gathered to create plans for the school year, learn outdoor teaching strategies, engage in activities with garden-based professionals, and connect with regional peers. 

We are working hard to build a culture where all staff believe they belong at OSSE, that their work is important and they understand the community they serve. We are excited to explore multiple ways that we might recognize and celebrate significant contributions to our agency's recovery efforts, and we've made great strides to help retain staff through this critical period of recovery and beyond. 

• We held the first-ever OSSE Awards to honor exceptional staff members and teams who have made significant contributions to OSSE 
• We continue to grow our efforts to embed Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging throughout the work of our agency, including offering several in-person and virtual heritage and spirit events this year, among them OSSE Wears Pink to honor Breast Cancer Awareness month and Why Apply DC day to encourage students to apply to college. 
• This fall, the Kaiser Permanente Mobile Health Van made a special visit to our New York Avenue terminal where OSSE bus drivers, attendants and other DOT staff were able to stop by to get free blood pressure screenings, body mass index testing, diabetes tests and more. 

Through a variety of efforts, we have improved and enhanced our systems to better serve students, families, educators, schools and to better serve you, our staff. 

• OSSE DOT now has a streamlined organizational structure with clear reporting lines, which has helped us improve our transportation service to students with disabilities.  
• OSSE DOT launched a Transportation Request Form status website for LEAs to monitor their TRF submissions for extended school year this summer and now for the 2023-24 school year.   
• We launched a new Learning Management System to provide educators across the District with high quality instructional materials. 
• OSSE was awarded a $4 million Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems (SLDS) Grant by the U.S. Department of Education, which will support significant modernization to our PK-12 and post-secondary data systems.  
• We ordered 25 electric school buses that will be used to serve students starting with the 2024-25 school year. The new electric buses will support our efforts to operate a cleaner and greener bus fleet in our community.  
• To improve services, DOT kicked off pilot testing for a new Parent School Bus Hub Mobile App.