The State Board of Education continues to discuss items for its 2017-19 expansion budget request. As you probably know, agencies submit requests for expansion items to the Governor’s office in the fall prior to the General Assembly’s upcoming long session.

This year, agencies have been directed to limit requests to 2 percent of its appropriated budget and to identify cuts commensurate with any expansion request total. In essence, we have been asked to reorder our priorities but not to expect new funding.

I am hopeful that lawmakers will consider the needs we present and take a different approach.

NC Check-Ins (Formerly Proof of Concept Study) Webinar Scheduled

Effective with the 2016–17 school year, the name of the Proof of Concept Study has been changed to NC Check-Ins. Information on the design and implementation of the NC Check-Ins will be provided via a webinar scheduled for Friday, Sept. 16, from 3:30 – 4:30 p.m.

The target audience is districts and school staff participating in the NC Check-Ins; however, nonparticipating districts/staff also are welcome to register and attend. The webinar will be recorded for those unable to attend. In order to access the recording at a later time, you will still need to register for the webinar.

Once registered, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar. If you have questions regarding the webinar, please contact Jaime Kelley with the NCDPI Accountability Services division.

Forwarding Messages May Risk Subscription

A few of you have had issues with being unsubscribed from the superintendents’ email group without your permission. NCDPI Communications posed the problem to GovDelivery technical support staff and this was their response:

“Do you think that the school administrator forwarded any bulletins (emails) to a group, colleagues, or another distribution list? When this happens the secondary receiver (it only takes one) may click on the unsubscribe link, and inadvertently unsubscribe the original recipient. It does happen from time-to-time. We don't recommend forwarding for this reason, if this is the case.”

So a word of caution, think twice before you forward a message as the recipient may click on unsubscribe and inadvertently take you off the email group. A better option would be to copy the message and send via a separate email. Communications staff will keep an eye out and confirm with you should this happen again.

Multi-Tiered System of Support:
Best Practices in Building an
Intervention System

All Cohort 1 and 2 teams are beginning a second school year of involvement in the MTSS blended learning being offered by the NCDPI Multi-Tiered System of Support (MTSS) state team. The MTSS Module 2: Best Practices in Building an Intervention System course was created to help district teams gain the necessary skills and build local capacity to implement this component of a MTSS with fidelity.

Through this course, teams will:

• establish readiness to build an intervention system in the district and schools;
• develop best practices for guiding school MTSS teams to understand the essential elements of intervention systems; and
• prepare and guide the district and school MTSS teams to analyze and define intervention systems.

An exciting twist with MTSS implementation is a focus on standard treatment protocol rather than individual student problem solving. Cohorts will continue to engage in critical dialogue about this efficient and effective shift in implementation that research supports for providing rapid supports for students.

The blended course, which runs from October to June, is estimated to take approximately 40 hours of learning and implementation planning to complete. If you have questions about implementation in your district, please contact Amy Jablonski, director of Integrated Academic and Behavior Systems.

Implementation Science:
Implementation Teams

Implementation of new innovations relies on structures to build capacity among stakeholders within the organization, to implement the new innovation.

Implementation Teams are an effective means to support the implementation, sustainability, and scale-up of usable interventions. Implementation Teams also are important to creating communication pathways among and across various stakeholders.

Effective research based interventions, cloaked by effective implementation structures within an enabling context, yields positive outcomes:

North Carolina Virtual Public Schools and Shared Courses

The North Carolina Virtual Public School (NCVPS) is currently working on a process to share the courses designated as shared courses through the NC Canvas Commons and Home Base.

While staff work on this process, there will be a moratorium on the sharing of these courses. Once the course content is available through the NC Canvas Commons and Home Base, an update will be communicated through multiple channels.

For information on which courses will be available, see the shared course list below. We anticipate these courses being available through either NC Canvas Commons, Home Base, or both by spring 2017. NCVPS staff thank you for interest in incorporating digital content into your practice and your patience while staff streamline this process.