ESSA Required Meetings for 2025-26

ESSA Required Meetings for 2025-26

April 4, 2025 | Grants Management

Spring is in the air, and the arrival of April makes it imperative that planning for 2025-26 begins. Previously, CSS posted a tip about beginning the Annual Comprehensive Needs Assessment, and today’s article is closely related to this topic. Before staff is gone for summer, several meetings need to take place to meet compliance and to plan for federal grant funding for the 2025-26 school year. If you haven’t already, let’s get those meetings on the calendar today!

The CSS federal team will be available to advise our partner schools through the process of planning for federal grant funds for the 2025-26 school year.

What planning meetings are required?

Meetings may be required at the LEA and/or campus level depending on which is going to primarily benefit from the funds. Typically, each Title I campus conducts planning activities for Title I, and the other Title funds (usually II, III, and IV) are planned at the central administration level. However, if campuses are given control of purchasing decisions from Title II, III, or IV, then campus-level planning meetings would be necessary for those federal grants as well. So, it depends on if your charter school has a single or multiple campuses.

The following planning meetings are usually held in the spring of each year, prior to the grant application, to plan for the upcoming school year.

  1. Campus level review and revision of the School-Parent Compact
  2. Campus level evaluation of parent and family engagement activities as part of review and revision of campus Parent and Family Engagement Policy
  3. Charter District- level review and revision of LEA parent and family engagement activities as part of the annual review and revising of the LEA’s Parent and Family Engagement Policy
  4. Campus-level Collaborative Comprehensive Needs Assessment* (usually Title I only) leading to the Campus Improvement Plan
  5. Charter District-level Collaborative Comprehensive Needs Assessment* (Title I for LEA- level activities, Title II, Title III, and Title IV; and Title I School Improvement, if required) leading to a District Improvement Plan.

*CSS offers a separate, low-cost online course for conducting a Collaborative Comprehensive Needs Assessment.

What are the specific planning requirements for ESSA grant funds?

  • Title I – identify problems/needs according to academic achievement data, particularly those children who are failing or at-risk of failing to meet State standards (see also Parent and Family Engagement requirements listed above). If operating a targeted assistance campus, the criteria to be used to identify students who will be served needs to be reviewed.
  • Title II – identify problems/needs in improving compensation and working conditions (recruiting, hiring, and retaining effective teachers); creating, improving, and expanding pathways to the profession; providing induction and professional learning; offering educator leadership and career advancement opportunities; and promoting educator diversity.
  • Title III – identify problems/needs in progress of Emergent Bilinguals (EBs) (new term for English Language Learners) in acquiring English and mastering state standards/graduation rate; supporting preschool programs for EBs; access to post-secondary education; and required parent, family, and community engagement activities.
  • Title IV – process to determine program needs (under $30,000). The local education agency (LEA) is required to select one or more area to prioritize regardless of how much Title IV funding is received. This includes documenting the need to transfer funds to Title I.
    OR – identify problems/needs in the areas of well-rounded educational opportunities, supporting safe and healthy students (including school safety), and improving the effective use of technology to impact academic achievement/digital literacy (if receiving over $30,000).

What resources are available for planning requirements?

CSS highly recommends that you review the validation documents for each fund prior to conducting planning meetings. This is not to say that each grant fund requires a separate meeting. Meetings can be combined, but each Title program requires individual attention specific to the purpose of that grant fund. The validation documents will also include the expectations of committee membership representation of each fund. You must have the right people (stakeholders) in attendance! The validation resources will tell you what documents you might be asked for regarding your planning meetings.

In addition, consider the information that will be needed when completing the end of the year ESSA Consolidated Compliance Report. Much of what is collected in the annual compliance report goes back to documentation of planning meetings that are held in the spring/summer before the grant is done. Failure to plan will result in having to self-report non-compliance which will lead to year long corrective action under TEA monitoring.

Please remember any time you have a meeting regarding federal funds, it MUST be documented by sign-in, agenda, and minutes/notes (remember the acronym “SAM”). Virtual meetings are no exception, except sign-ins may be substituted with other attendance documents (ex. participant screen shots). The role (parent, Principal, SPED teacher, etc) of each member must always be identified on the sign-in sheet along with the name of the attendee. TEA will not accept just names without indication what their role is.

Need help?

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