Since the request came from a government entity, open records laws allowed WHQR to make public records requests related to The Endowment grant, allowing for a somewhat rare look at the operations of the organization. While The Endowment is funded by public money from the sale of the county hospital to Novant, its structure allows it to hold private meetings and leaves it outside the purview of public records law. (Note: You can find the full correspondence at the end of this article.)
David Stegall, The Endowment’s newest director of education, told WHQR that “scaling back” the grant would be an “inaccurate way” to describe what happened, “because we didn't think they could use them or would use them wisely. We have capabilities to do the 14 [positions], see what works with that, and get data from that to inform next year cycle and subsequent years.”
He said all grants come in as requests and that there are no promises that The Endowment can award a full ask – and contends they have to commit funding to their other three pillars of equity, community safety, and community development. Stegall also said his organization has spent approximately 10% of the $159 million awarded thus far on the public school district. The figure includes the recent $900,000 allocated to Communities in Schools of Cape Fear, a local non-profit, to support schools that don’t have active Parent Teacher Associations. They also tout their investment in the Young Scientist Academy, Voyage, and the Child Development Center.
To date, The Endowment has awarded a total of $13.1 million directly to the district: $2.7 million for this September specialist grant, $8.7 to put in early learning facilitator in each of the elementary schools, and $1.6 million to be a part of a health collaborative to improve the nursing pipeline in concert with Cape Fear Community College and the University of North Carolina Wilmington and the Wilmington Chamber of Commerce.
County manager pushes The Endowment to fund grant
The original 42 specialist request went to the New Hanover County Commissioners last budget cycle but the majority declined to fund it, instead proposing the school district go to The Endowment for the money. Democratic commissioner Stephanie Walker had requested that the board write a letter in support for the application, but her colleagues didn’t take that up.
Like some other county funding that was dropped, Republican commissioners suggested that The Endowment could pick up the tab, like they did with county non-profit funding. In that case, The Endowment did cover the full amount, close to $1.6 million.
When The Endowment announced $6 million in grants at the end of August, NHCS wasn’t included. That’s when county manager Chris Coudriet sent an email to the commissioners and top administrators at the Endowment and NHCS.
He wrote, “I’m disappointed not to see the New Hanover County School system noted as a funded grant by The Endowment. The school year started this week. As I understand the request, a specialty program based on acute need would have been available in every public school across the district. I appreciate the grants awarded [...] but not one directly touches 24,000 school-aged children. New Hanover County School does.”
Coudriet added that he hoped The Endowment could fund the request and said that the organization was created to invest in initiatives like this. He added that he didn’t think it ran afoul of the Asset Purchase Agreement – that it was “an aim to try something never before done to enhance the public education experience for our children.” A month after that comment, the new grant was awarded.
When the reduced grant for 14 specialists was announced on September 30, Coudriet asked his staff to highlight the announcement in the county’s press releases, saying they “welcomed” it, adding, “with more than $107 million in county funding committed to the schools this fiscal year, the Endowment’s $2.7 million grant is additive, exactly the type of investment it was established to make, helping the community go further than public dollars alone.”
Reducing numbers of specialists
In early September, WHQR requested emails between Endowment and district staff dating back to earlier this year. Last week, the district turned them over, shedding some light on how the grant came to exist in its current, more limited form.
NHCS Superintendent Dr. Christopher Barnes said all district principals were given a rubric with the school selection process for the specialists. WHQR asked for that and has yet to receive official documentation, but in an email, Barnes compared it to a similar rubric used over the summer to manage other positions for “our ever-dwindling resources like Assistant Principals and social workers. Anyway, the principals came up with a couple of dozen metrics and we are sending them a survey to narrow it down to the top 10.”
On September 9, Stegall informed Barnes, and other top staff at the district, that The Endowment board had “tabled your proposal and asked for the updated one for 14 positions. This shows 29 positions. I feel confident that 14 positions will be the maximum they will fund at this time.”
In a response to Stegall, Barnes asks his staff to send him a rubric used to determine “how we got to the 29 number.” WHQR has asked for this and has yet to receive that information.
The original NHCS application for the 42 specialists included flexibility for the principal to select a particular niche for that specialist to fill, based on the needs of the school. Each specialist in the school system is assigned to a role in academic remediation, academic extension, behavioral support, graduation rate improvement, or exceptional children’s program.
From available public records, the district’s request did not include details about which specialists would be assigned to which school(s).
Origins of the request
The request was based on a proposed pilot program for the state legislature, which would be a way for them to revisit their allotment formula for positions. As noted in their application, the legislature funds one instructional support position (counselors, media specialists, social workers, and instructional coaches) for every 417 students.
Under the current formula, the state essentially funds 60 positions, but the county has to fund an additional 58 to meet school needs. According to the district, even with this allotment of 118 people between 45 schools, “students still have unmet needs in several critical areas.”
In its request, the district said there is academic research showing that the creation of a positive school culture and climate has led to improved academic achievement, increased attendance, higher graduation rates, and improved behavioral health. Their argument is that having more specialists would mean they could make inroads into achieving these goals.
The district’s application as said additional staff would hopefully improve the district’s Math 1 (eighth and ninth graders) and third grade reading scores, which declined last school year.
The Endowment’s grant
Those arguments didn’t get the district every specialist it sought. But they got some funding.
The Endowment ultimately agreed to a “targeted staffing initiative aimed at closing achievement gaps, improving student engagement, and creating positive learning environments.”
The budget for these 14 staff members for each of the two years averages around $97,000 for salary, social security, retirement benefits, and health insurance. Stegall told WHQR that this allocation has enough funds to hire specialists with a range of experience levels and has the potential to support professional development training if they so choose.
Stegall wrote The Endowment and the district would “co-develop a plan of monitoring and data gathering to assess impact.” If the pilot showed “promise” then the board could increase the amount of funding for additional school specialists after the two years.
The district’s proposal included plans for such data gathering through the STOIC (Structure, Teach, Observe, Interact, and Correct) framework and a partnership with UNCW for program design and evaluation.
Stegall also wrote that the 14 specialists should not be focused on schools that “receive additional state support (turnaround),” a reference to schools that either received Title I funds or are characterized as ‘low-performing’ from the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction.
Stegall clarified in an interview with WHQR that the district has “full flexibility; we’re not telling them where to put the resources.” But he added that some of the lowest performing schools already have turnaround or additional Title I funds, so “are there other schools that don’t have that?’”
It’s worth noting that, based on WHQR’s reporting on the last two years of the NHCS Turnaround Task Force, roundtables of both administrators and teachers from these schools have repeatedly said they don’t necessarily have the resources and the staffing to support their students.
Stegall suggested those 14 positions could go elsewhere to avoid layering “one more level of strategy.” He suggested adding more resources all at once would make evaluation more challenging. But he also acknowledged that in terms of achievement on standardized tests, “when you’re dealing with human behavior, there’s so many factors that can influence it. We can’t narrow down. If you do this one thing, you’ll get this one result.”
He also noted that the district could decide those specialists could be roving, not necessarily dedicated to a specific school nor a period of time.
“They know their needs best,” he said.
Barnes said in early September that they’ve lost more than 300 educators in recent years: “There's going to be some corollary between a loss of staff that large and initial proficiency for students.”
Previous grant results colored the Endowment reaction
Email records show a potential reason for the downsizing to 14 positions instead of the 29 or the 42. It appears that The Endowment’s leadership were disappointed in the school district’s reading test scores, and that appears to be part of the reason this grant was whittled down.
In an email sent on August 18 Stegall wrote to district leadership asking some tough questions about results from a previous grant.
“The board has asked about the impact of the [early learning facilitators] grant on student achievement for the first year. The data suggests that there was not a significant impact on DIBELS data this academic year,” Stegall wrote, referring to standardized testing to assess basic literacy skills.
Stegall continued, “What would be your response to their questions around why the data has not increased the first year? What do you intend to do differently in an effort to see improved proficiency levels?”
Stegall said the board had taken “a keen interest” in the specialist grant while taking the new grant application under consideration. “They are very focused on how the grant funds and the personnel that the funds support are showing a measurable impact on student achievement and overall student data.”
Previously, the district’s K-5 literacy curriculum specialist, Maureen Hill gave a glowing review of the impact of the early learning facilitators in June to the school board and the public. The DIBELS early literacy scores were actually improving and/or holding steady, but what didn’t improve were the end-of-grade reading proficiency scores, in particular, 3rd grade reading.
WHQR has been asking to speak to the district on the achievement differences between DIBELS and reading EOGs since the beginning of September, but the district is still working on scheduling an interview.
On August 4, in the context of discussing the new grant request, Stegall also asked district leadership about the facilitators grant and how those positions are being utilized. “In particular, I need to understand how your team is measuring impact of those positions, how those positions are sharing best practices, etc. This will be a question that comes up from the board and I need to have a clear understanding.”
District staff sent data to Stegall showing they had improved on DIBELS with the help of the facilitators.
Stegall later acknowledged the DIBELS data was, “not falling behind; it’s plateaued, but we do think it’s going to continue to go up.”
He also recognized that the district was in “that first year of transition where you might not see large variances; it does not mean it’s not being effective. It means now this is their new baseline.”
He added they’re looking to see how each cohort improves every year, essentially how their proficiency level increases or decreases. Stegall maintained that the specialist and early literacy facilitators were two separate grants, implying the one didn’t impact the other. But these discussions were happening simultaneously, and The Endowment board was questioning the efficacy of an earlier grant while reducing the scale of this new one.
To view public records correspondence between NHCS and The Endowment, click here.
Prior reporting on NHCS, CIS of Cape Fear and The Endowment
CIS of Cape Fear starts work on the $900,000 Endowment grant
