Insight Client New London Public Schools of CT Awarded US ED Full Service Community School (FSCS) Grant
We are thrilled that New London Public Schools of New London, Connecticut was recently awarded a Full Service Community Schools (FSCS) Grant through the U.S. Department of Education! New London originally applied to the FY 2014 program and was awarded funds in FY 2015 when awards were made “down the slate.” The Insight Team worked with key New London staff and administrative members to develop and write the comprehensive proposal. Funding for Year 1 is expected to be $497,307 and the 5-Year projected amount is anticipated to be $2,434,535.
The New London project, titled “Project Connect,” is a five-year service provision and coordination FSCS initiative designed in partnership with multiple community organizations, including: Connecticut College; United States Coast Guard Academy; New England Science and Sailing; Connecticut Science Center; Child and Family Agency of New London; Child Nutrition Program of New London; Appalachian Mountain Club Youth Opportunities Program; and New London Youth Affairs.
Project Connect is strategically designed to address four primary gaps faced by a highly vulnerable, at-risk youth with a primary overarching goal: To provide and ensure access to comprehensive services that improve the academic, health, and social outcomes of students.
Gap 1: The current academic program is insufficiently intense to facilitate academic standards
Gap 2: Lack of student engagement
Gap 3: Lack of parental/family engagement, involvement and parent services
Gap 4: Inadequate awareness/utilization of comprehensive services that support student achievement
The FSCS grant program has a 20% matching requirement and Ed Sweeney, Alison Burdick, and the staff at New London did a great job working to get commitments from community partners. The value of partner donations is $159,000 per year and $795,000 over 5 years! This is an outstanding example of a school engaging community partners to put together a competitive application and ultimately a strong, effective, community-changing project!
Spring 2014 Insight Company News and Notes
The Insight Team has been busy on a number of projects to start 2014. We hope the year has started off well for you. Here are some notes on current items our team has been working on.
- We’ve been making an effort to highlight featured grant opportunities on the Insight blog. While the focus of the grants is often based around physical education, we will also be featuring and discussing a wide variety of grants that cover other industries and topics as well. We also offer some very helpful sources for finding grant opportunities online at our Find Grants page. If you are in the early stages of looking for grant opportunities, that is definitely a good place to start. To stay up to date with the ongoing opportunities we feature, you can subscribe to our blog via email or follow Insight Grants on twitter.
- We’ve recently completed multiple grant proposals as well as editing for various clients. Project topics have varied from physical activity to fire departments. Although we can’t share details on these projects yet, we look forward to talking about some of the innovative and exciting projects if funding is awarded.
- Working on applications for the Carol M. White PEP grant program is usually a big spring project for the Insight Team. With no new PEP competition in 2014, it’s important for those interested in physical activity funding to watch for other opportunities and maximize the time they have before the next competition (anticipated 2015). For more information, see our blog post titled, No 2014 PEP Competition?! What Do We Do Now? Applicants from 2013 that scored highly but did not win may be awarded PEP grants in 2014. We’ve started hearing about the first winners TODAY (4/8/2014), as some members of Congress have begun contacting winners in their constituencies. If you’ve won, you may or may not hear directly from Congress, but you WILL eventually hear directly from ED via email and/or mail and you would be listed on the awards list which should surface soon.
- Speaking of PEP, although there is no guarantee of a 2015 PEP competition, we do anticipate one. We’ve already begun signing up and working with applicants interested in applying in 2015. With the competition becoming more and more competitive each year, it helps to get some pieces of your project in order far in advance, and an early start makes this more achievable. If you are interested in working with us for your PEP Grant project, contact us.
- We’re working with various PEP Grant winners to evaluate their ongoing projects. It is amazing to see the hard work of the project directors, school staff, and community stakeholders pay off with students improving fitness levels, nutrition habits, and education. We’ve featured aspects from Kenston Schools in Ohio and the Police Athletic League in NYC, and look forward to sharing more good news from PEP projects in the future.
- We’ve been working with our long-time partner Polar to create some exciting new web resources for grant seekers interested in including Polar products and services in their grant projects! We’ll be posting more on those soon.
- We are currently working with several schools on US ED Elementary and Secondary School Counseling grant applications due 4/28/2014.
- We have begun promoting three exciting US ED grant programs that are expected to open competitions within the month: School Climate Transformations grants for LEAs (school safety), Project Prevent (school safety), and Full Service Community Schools (covers MANY topic areas).
If you’d like us to assist you with your grant application or project evaluation, please contact us.
