The Logan County school district will be benefitting from a Race to the Top grant which will allow the district to give its students and teachers new strategies and methods for personalized learning.

Logan County is one of several districts in the Green River Regional Educational Cooperative (GRREC) that will be able to make use of a $40 million grant.

“We will ge the benefit of the funds, but GRREC will be the physical recipeint of the grant,” said Logan County schools superintendent Marshall Kemp.

The money will not be added to the Logan County school district’s budget, but it could be beneficial in other ways.

“This could help pay for licenses for educational tools which could wind up helping my budget,” Kemp said.

Race to the Top-District plans are tailored to meet the needs of local communities and feature a variety of strategies, including: using technology to personalize learning for each student; giving students opportunities to learn beyond the traditional school day and environment; supporting students’ transitions throughout their education, including from high school to college and careers; expanding partnerships with community organizations to provide students with targeted social services like crisis intervention, individual counseling and life enrichment opportunities; and providing professional development and coursework options to deepen learning in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields.

The 2012 Race to the Top-District grantees will receive four-year awards that range from $10 million to $40 million, depending on the number of students served through the plan. The winning applicants were the top scorers among the 372 applications the Department received in November, which were evaluated and scored by independent peer reviewers. Grantees represent a diverse set of districts, including applicants from both states that received a Race to the Top state grant as well as those that have not received Race to the Top state funding. Among the winners is a rural-area consortium representing 24 rural districts, which comprise 44 percent of the total number of districts that will benefit from the 2012 competition.

The project builds on the personalized learning each of the 22 GRREC and OVEC districts are already doing and will serve 112 schools and the 59,100 students in K-12, as well as preschool students in public and private center settings.

It was developed around four big components:

• Students as Leaders taking responsibility for their own learning through a new school culture of responsibility aligned with careers (Leader in Me work)
• School Leaders supporting teachers in making the shift to personalized and competency-based instruction. This revolves around work with Leadership and Learning, including training in Visible Learning, mentoring, and one-on-one leadership support. The district will also receive a career counselor to work with K-12 students in career alignment.
• Personalized Learning. Coaching and support for teachers as they learn to support students in flipped classrooms OR technology OR a hundred other personalized techniques you come up with. This will be based on your local work with a team of your teachers and leaders to create personal learning environments and implement new strategies.
• Helping your schools move to a competency-based system of grading, working, learning - where Johnny can easily move from 5th grade math and 6th grade English and 7th grade science in the same school day, for example. In addition, we will provide school software licenses for college/career support, math, and literacy, based on school needs. This also includes cohorts of Preschool Pals will work within each region to identify and support “Nana Care” centers as well as public preschool centers with resources, strategies, and training.

The funds will be awarded on or about December 31 and are for four years. Over the holidays, GRREC will be developing its roll-out plan to share first with superintendents. This will be a road map for the next 3 to 6 months. The GRREC grant was one of the two largest awarded ($40 million) and represents 44 percent of the school districts that will benefit from the grant. It is the only rural consortium grant funded.