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For this SIA Update we just a few brief reminders that we wanted to share;
EGMS Claims deadline is June 30, 2021
As a reminder, all grantees will need to claim 100% of SIA funds in EGMS by June 30, 2021, even if you have requested a summer extension to continue spending funds through September 30, 2021. The EGMS team is working on updating each SIA subgrant in EGMS to reflect a “Claim By Date” of June 30, 2021. Once this update is complete, each grantee will need to read a SAN Modification report prior to making new claims. Please continue to refer to your grant agreement for period of performance dates and reporting deadlines
Summer Extension Grant Agreements
Summer Extension Grant Amendments were sent out last Friday, June 4th. Once received, please sign and return (via the Smartsheet link) as soon as possible so we can process them before the end of the biennium. As a reminder, these Grant Amendments do not need to go through your governing board process in order to be executed.
Please note all grantees will need to claim 100% of SIA funds in EGMS by June 30, 2021. The EGMS team is working on updating each SIA subgrant in EGMS to reflect a “Claim By Date” of June 30, 2021. Once this update is complete, each grantee will need to read a SAN Modification report prior to making new claims. Please continue to refer to your grant agreement for period of performance dates and reporting deadlines.
Financial Audit
You may have seen the Financial Audit in last week’s update. Based on feedback we received, we’ve made some revisions to the Financial Audit, and are releasing a revised version with this week’s update.
As a reminder, this Financial Audit is structurally designed to be embedded in the school district or eligible charter school’s annual municipal audit, and is similar to work performed for areas of high-risk in the State School Fund.
The first financial audit of SIA funds is to be conducted, presented to the governing body, and submitted to ODE by January 31, 2022.
Please review the revised SIA Financial Audit and Suggested Audit Procedures for the SIA Fund.
If you have any questions regarding the SIA Financial Audit, please reach out to Wei Keat Lui, SIA’s governmental auditor.
SIA Plan Update Office Hours
The SIA team is continuing to offer office hours on a weekly basis to answer questions about SIA plan updates. Register for one of our upcoming SIA Plan Update Officer Hours Sessions:
Q: We have a summer extension, but know that we need to claim all 100% of the funds by June 30. What happens if we don’t end up spending all of the funds by September 30? What is the process for returning unused funds?
A: Grantees who do not spend 100% of their funds, will need to go through the process to return any unspent funds as part of their Period 3 Progress Report. The Fiscal Return process is done through the Fiscal Return to the Oregon Department of Education Smartsheet. You will fill out the form, and ODE staff will progress the request through our systems. Financial Services will then issue the grantee an invoice for payment.
In our team’s ongoing learning journey about Dr. Rich Milner’s tenets for opportunity-centered teaching, we wanted to look more closely at tenet #2: locating the problem of underperformance. In a recent office training, Dr. Eric Toshalis cautioned us not to locate student resistance, disengagement, and underperformance in the shortcomings of students themselves, but rather in the classrooms and schools that are not meeting core developmental, relational and learning needs. We wanted to share this article from Zaretta Hammond that speaks to how Culturally Responsive Teaching can help meet these needs:
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What is Culturally Responsive Teaching really? Hammond outlines common misconceptions about Culturally Responsive Teaching that seek to distill it into a set of practices related to culture like incorporating students’ countries of origin or cultural artifacts into lessons or comprehensively learning students’ cultural norms. Instead, she explains Culturally Responsive Teaching as a “cultural orientation” in which educators form relationships and build bridges between students' cultural ways of being and frames of reference to classroom practice and content.
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Practicing Culturally Responsive Teaching to facilitate student learning Culturally Responsive Teaching allows for deeper cognitive engagement opportunities by identifying core ways that students can create usable knowledge: “Train yourself to recognize the cultural learning tools students bring to school. Too often we miss them. For example, when diverse students come from oral traditions, the most common cultural tools for processing information utilize the brain’s memory systems – music, repetition, metaphor, recitation, physical manipulation of content, and story.”
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Improving student learning through community engagement As we continue engaging communities in our SIA work, Culturally Responsive Teaching is an opportunity to partner with parents and caregivers to better-understand each students’ “thinking routines, “learning moves,” and “challenge areas” and better respond to students’ needs.
Since a core purpose of the SIA is to increase academic achievement and reduce disparities for students from racial or ethnic groups, we fully support and encourage districts to find ways to fund Culturally Responsive Teaching work through SIA funds.
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Please send any questions or comments to SIAInfo@state.or.us.
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