District leaders in need of guidance on how to maximize the federal stimulus dollars that are beginning to flow their way can tap into the brain trust at the Council of the Great City Schools, which will offer a range of technical-support programs to urban schools over the next two years.
The council, a stalwart, Washington-based advocacy organization for 66 of the nation’s largest school systems, scored a half-million dollar grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to underwrite its work on behalf of districts.
Among its plans for support, the council will develop a Web site for urban school leaders to post their preliminary plans for spending their stimulus money and to swap ideas with colleagues in other cities.
The council’s experts, who are known for giving unvarnished feedback to their members on everything from business operations to academic improvement strategies, will also do a review of 10 districts’ proposed plans and provide on-site technical assistance to as many as five districts that need extra help in developing a sound stimulus spending plan.
The council also secured an additional $400,000 from the Hewlett Foundation to bolster the work it has been doing to help districts measure and improve their business operations, a project that my colleague Dakarai Aarons wrote about earlier this year.
