 Coming to you with the perks of Perkins. If you would like to type in that Google address here at the bottom of the first screen, it'll allow you access to the slideshow itself and you sure can share it out or use it and whatever benefits you. I am Tammy Cheatham and I am the Perkins Coordinator for ESU-8. I am going to just walk you through some of the steps to Perkins. A lot of you, if you are a veteran teacher, you probably already know all of this, but if you are a new teacher, it'll kind of give you a little bit of a glimpse into what can be offered to you. We are in a consortium with ESU-1 and 17 and 8 and they each have their own money but we collaborate together to write the grant and then we share some of our trainings so that way it benefits a bigger array of teachers. With the Perkins funds, a lot of our money goes to different places and we try to make sure that it's always used back for students and for teachers. The NCAP is a Northeast Nebraska Community Action Partnership. A lot of those funds will go into actually any CC. They work very diligently to offer things to your kids and get those programs out there that are in need so they are a great partner to have. The Coal Conference is that conference for school counselors. The Counselor Optimal Learning Day. This year we focused on mental health and mental wellness. It's usually at the end of January. We had 54 counselors that were registered and we had presenters. We had two, three people from the different agencies, Heartland Counseling and then Associated Psychologists and Counselors from Norfolk and we had Cheryl Krakemeier who was a counselor at Wisner Pilger. We heard really great things about this so we want to continue to make sure that these days are used specifically for you and what your needs are. The Project-Based Learning is something new this year. We had applications and we selected teams of teachers and we have seven teams. Six teams are from ESU-8 and one team is from ESU-1 and then we have been meeting with them throughout the school year. We met with them in November and February and then March and they are creating projects together and using them for their students. They can also apply for up to $2,000 per team for equipment that they might need to carry out this project. So we're anxious to see what those all entail at the very end of the year. The blended is something that's been around for a couple of years so we are still sustaining this by going in and providing that support to the teachers in the various schools. Professional Development Grants, these are funds that are available to CTE teachers and you can use this money to apply to go to state conferences, national conferences. They're used for registration fees, for travel, for your lodging and it's up to $1,000 per teacher. Now, you don't have to use the whole $1,000. Let's say if you want to go to the NCE conference that's coming up in June, you can put in a requisition for that. I have a Google form. If you're not getting that, make sure to let me know and I'll send it out to you. So let's say you put in your registration fees, $350. Your hotel room is going to be $210 for two nights. You're going to have some meals expenses in there. So you'll put in to kind of estimate about that and then when you actually go to the conference make sure you save all of your receipts and your business manager and you can fill out the federal reimbursement form that's found on ESU8's webpage and then you're going to get that money back. Let's say that you decide that, oh, you know, there's one more conference that I want to go to. So you can reapply, put in for that, make sure you're detailed and you will be more than likely awarded that money. You just cannot go over $1,000 but it can be for two or more registrations by June 15, I believe, is when that deadline is. The special project grants, those are up to $3,000 per project. So we want to make sure that those are, they can be a new program or an existing program that you're wanting to try new and inventive ways to use technology. You can also use, you know, purchase materials for that. So it's just, it's real important that you're detailed with that. We'll talk about that application process here in a little bit. Again, in order to get credit for a program of study, if you are a participant, the student takes one semester of a CTE class. If they are a concentrator, they take three semesters of a CTE class in the same program of study. If you click on this Perkins Resource Site link, take you out here to this page and I just wanted to show you the programs of study. If you click on programs of study, it has all the different programs of study listed over here. So if you want to go and say, you know, I want to go and see if my school has a health science program of study. Look for things that you already have. You know, look down this list, the sequence of the CTE classes. Maybe you say, you know what, I do, right here, we do health sciences. So you look over here. You have to take the introduction course is a health science one, intermediate health science two, and capstone course is health science three. So make sure that you follow that procedure. Sometimes a capstone course might be a dual credit class. So just make sure, again, if you have any confusion, I'm more than happy to come out and help you do this. It's really important that the codes are put in correctly because that way then your information system at your school will, you know, automatically run some of those reports and make sure that they put in your participants and your concentrators for you. So again, don't try to reinvent the wheel. Look to see in your schools what courses you're already offering and see maybe if you need to get a capstone course. You know, maybe that's what you're missing. So we can go and make sure we look and see, yep, we can offer that, we can make that work. So those are real important to do for your kids. Give you a minute to read this slide. I would say CTE courses really have been really, I would say, probably the last five to 10 years. They've always been there, but now there's really the push, you know, we see from community members from business people, from industries, factories, that there's, you know, the shortage of workers coming out. And so, you know, they want skilled workers. They want workers that maybe have a one-year degree, two-year degree. And these, you know, degrees are helping students and people earn good money. And we want those back in our communities. And whether they're a large community or a small community, there's always a need for the CTE type workers. So I think it's important that we, you know, make sure that our kids get to explore this and know what's all out there with their Perkins application. That application will be sent out probably late spring and you're going to get a form and you can be as creative as you want. Maybe you want to help to, you know, boost an existing program, that is fine too. You're just going to have to make sure that everything's very detailed. Don't leave anything out. Take a look at what all the requirements are. Make sure that you tell me the amount that you're requesting. Make sure that you let me know if it's a newer existing program. What program of study does it follow? Really give me a good project description. The innovation. Where does the innovative part come when you're in your request for some funds? Are you forming a partnership outside in your community? What area? Is it a business? You know, is it something that will benefit your town? Let me know that. If you need a professional development, make sure that you put that in there because we can cover expenses for you to go to a training. You know, maybe it's a three-day training, a two-day training, but we'll take that in consideration when you are putting in your application. And make sure to put an itemized budget list. And then the last thing is the district support. If you are applying for, let's say, the full $3,000, and when you add up your budget list, and it comes up to $4,000, it's over budget, but you need to make sure and talk to your district administrator to see is this something that the district is willing to cover that extra $1,000 expense? That's why you want to make sure they have their support. Because I work so closely with the teachers that are putting these applications together, I am not on the team to score this. So there is a rubric, and if you click on this link, it'll be taken out to the rubric, and you can kind of see exactly what you're going to be judged on and graded on. So it's not a surprise. But again, there's a team of people that help score this, so that way I can remain impartial and help you work through this to the best of my ability. So when we think about why CTE classes and courses, well, when we start looking at the dropout rate, a lot of these kids said if they had the CTE courses that they would have stayed in school. So many times, again, we think that as a CTE teacher that we get a lot of the kids that are, you know, Kansas still needs something to do, don't get things in, but a lot of those kids need that hands-on and they need to know that reason why. So this helps them when they get to thinking about post-secondary education. So these classes would have kept some of those dropouts in school. So you are a very important part of their education. Big concepts here. There are nine required uses for the local funds, and this guide is going to help you if you are trying to enhance your programs, maybe go through some programs to study. There are nine uses of the funds, but then underneath it talks about the strategies or best practices that might help you get to there. And again, we're seeing a lot of them wanting to tie in that academic and technical side of classes. So it's important to, you know, make a partnership with your core teachers as well. This document that I linked in here is the allowable uses of funds and the non-allowable uses of funds. I get a lot of calls for this, and I just always tell people too that sometimes I can answer them right away, but if it gets to be kind of a gray area, I send this request on to the Perkins State Coordinator in Lincoln and then I make sure that they give me the yes or the no or I tell you that it's okay and then to find out only that it's not. So if you click on this link, you can see down here the different uses for Perkins. Like if you just look here and say, it's not to be used for promotional items. They're not approvable. Not for basic tools. And you can look at your chisels, clamps, gardening tools. They're not allowable. They want you to make sure that if it's part of an innovative program that this is their state of the art equipment tools, maybe more of even like an industrial type tool. So that gets to be a little bit more where we have to really make sure that we're doing what we need to do. So again, this is just a nice document to have. Okay, the advisory council. We put together an advisory council and obviously the first thing is to advise us. Advise us what direction they maybe would like to see that our program go. They help to assist and to support an advocate. So we try to get members selected from all different realms of experience. We look for the geographical sections of our schools that we serve. We look at all types of business in an industry. We look at both labor and the management side of things. We try to do job service personnel. Even look into I have some government officials that might have somebody from NDE set on our team just to make sure that if there's any new information we get that information. We try to have students or former students so that way they can advise maybe to see, oh, this would be better. I've been in these classes and what about this? These young students, they're not limited by anything. And we also try to get some parents of students on there. So if you get a call and are asked to be sitting on our advisory council, think about it, we try to rotate that so that way you're not stuck on it for life. This is something that the issues 9, 10, 11 collaborate to do this day. We were going to go and sit in on this day out at Carney, but unfortunately our lovely Nebraska winter weather had other plans. So this day got canceled. They are putting together a day to get lots of different people from lots of different areas. Like they might have some people from NDE and they might have some people that are out in their business world, in their industry, in their communities. And then there's different breakout sessions. So I think this is going to be a very integral part of what we want to do and kind of where we want to go with some things here with ESU-1, 8 and 17. And so we are going to try to meet with Kelly Klopp from ESU-9 and we're going to do a Zoom conference with her to kind of pick her brain about how this process gets started, what's it going to take to implement, how it's going to be sustained. So you can see there are good things are coming. I'm really excited about this. And February is CTE month. So I got this video off of the Nebraska website and I would encourage you to have your students put together a little bit of a video clip that promotes CTE classes in your school. Maybe if there's a teacher that wants to get in on the fun, you can do that also and submit these to the Nebraska Department of Education site and they're going to compile the very best at the end of the month. So I think it will be interesting to see if any of our schools in Northeast Nebraska get selected. February's National Career and Technical Education month at the Nebraska Department of Education we're proud of the wide variety of CTE opportunities available to students throughout the state. To kick off CTE month, we want your help showcasing it to the rest of the nation with a show us your CTE video. Grab your phone and make some videos, 30 seconds or less, that highlight what CTE looks like in your school, classroom, or community. Then tweet out your video using the hashtag any CTE now through February 20th. Some possible prompts to get you started might be what CTE means to me. CTE has helped me by I love CTE because CTE in the community looks like CTE in our school looks like and don't forget to add a geofilter for your school or community to let people know where you are. At the end of the month we'll compile the best videos to promote CTE all year long. Thank you and have fun showcasing CTE. So I think that would be exciting if some of our schools submit these and we get selected. So good luck. So I think remember again Perkins is in the center. It provides some of the resources, the funds that you may need to support and enhance and start different projects in your CTE classes and also links and bridges the community because that's important to make sure that the community knows what's going on inside of our schools and how we're working to make sure that we have responsible citizens that are going to go out and be able to hold the jobs and contribute to the community that they live in. So reviewing some concepts. We talked about the uses of the Perkins funds. You kind of know where some of your money is going to be spent. We talked about CTE courses and the benefits to all students taking those. We looked at the application, what needs to be on that for later this spring. You get access to the rubric. Those nine uses are required for the Perkins. You have a resource for non-allowable use of funds and you get to see a little bit of select people for our advisory council. Again, I just want to thank you for this opportunity to reach out to you about Perkins. Again, some of you are veteran teachers and you're like, ah, this is old hat. For those of you that are new, just kind of getting you a little bit of a sample and make sure that you know, reach out to me. I am here. I'll take any questions. If I don't know the answer, I will sure reach out to find that answer and get back to you as soon as I can. You can find me at the email below. I am here to work for you and I would love to get out in your schools and see some things you're doing and help you try to problem solve and take the next step forward in your CTE program.