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To: Superintendents and Business Managers
From: Michael Elliott, School Facilities Program Manager, Oregon Department of Education
Re: Educator Retention Grants
Date: April 22, 2022
Dear Superintendents and Business Managers,
On Monday Governor Brown signed HB 4030 into law thereby authorizing the state to provide Educator Retention and Recruitment grants to school districts, public charter schools, and ESDs across the state. HB 4030 provides $78 million to support local efforts to retain and recruit a diverse and high quality education workforce.
It is the goal of HB 4030 to use these one-time funds to braid with existing recruitment and retention programs to boost and increase the effectiveness of programs that are proven to already work. The funds should be utilized with an equity lens and prioritize efforts to recruit and retain diverse educators, classified and certified, as well as retain and recruit for hard to fill positions. ODE understands that each education agency faces specific and unique needs and to that end, ODE is providing flexibility within a framework of spending categories that will best position the recipient to address short-term needs and have long-term positive impacts.
ODE understands that these funds need to be distributed as quickly as possible. To aid in those efforts, ODE has created two documents included here. The first is a program parameters guide. This explains how ODE will administer the grants and the expectations for spending and reporting that recipients will need to meet. The second is the allocations for each district, public charter school and ESD in the state. These allocations are based on ADM with an adjustment to ensure that every recipient has a minimum amount of funding to do the work of the grants.
The next step will be for each potential recipient to fill out an application for the grant funds. ODE will be releasing the applications shortly. The applications must provide estimates of how each recipient will use the funds within the designated categories, and demonstrate how the recipient’s personnel were significantly involved in creating the application. Once applications are reviewed and approved, ODE will issue grant agreements to qualifying applicants. Once the grant agreement is executed, recipients can claim 85% of the funds to begin their work. The remaining funds will be claimed after progress reports and financial reporting is received and approved by ODE.
We will be providing more communications and a website where you can find more information about these grants moving forward. In the meantime, if you have any questions after reading these documents, please contact Michael Elliott at michael.s.elliott@ode.oregon.gov.
Thank you,
Michael Elliott
School Facilities Program Manager
Oregon Department of Education
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