Region 10 T/TA
Grantee Public Reports

Transcript

Moderator: Gene Gousie
October 15, 2008
1:00 pm CST

Coordinator:

I would now like to turn the meeting over to Mr. Gene Gousie, sir you may begin.

Eugene Gousie:

Thank you very much and good morning everyone or good afternoon if you're in Idaho. This is Gene Gousie with the Head Start TA network in Region 10 and I'm delighted you were able to join us today.

I'm hoping most of you are able to get on the webinar and for those of you who haven't been able to do that that you are able to following along with the handouts that were sent out yesterday with the announcement and that you're on line.

You'll have the opportunity as we go along to ask questions and contribute your comments. The format today is the webinar and I will be toggling back and forth between the two handouts so that you'll be able to see them on your desktop as we go along.

We will stop after each section to field questions or comments, contributions from all of you.

Let's start us right off here and we'll go to the first slide. The goals for today are to identify the requirements in reauthorization around the grantee public reports as they are called.

And to share examples of what grantees have done, are doing, or could do for each of the requirements.

Here are some things to know right off the bat. Number one, there haven't been any further clarifications or additional information from the Office of Head Start on this topic.

So what we're doing today is we're taking the language in reauthorization and we're thinking through what the parameters are, what the limits on that are, what really is being asked for, and then the options available to each grantee.

We're going to be operating from the assumption that where there is some ambiguity or lack of clear boundaries here that you will take that to your best advantage and respond to the expectations as they are expressed, but do so in a way that as best as possible works for your program, works for your various audiences, works to make the best case that you can to show the progress and the outcomes of your program.

As far as these reports go, there is no mention in the Act of any kind of format, that is to say the format is at least at this point open to you. That means that the reports that you create could indeed be posted on the web, they could be web based. They could be stand alone reports, they could be reports that are embedded in something a little bit larger, say a document that also contains anecdotal evidence or what have you of children and families in the program and the progress they have made.

They could be embedded in a different kind of document. I know the Umatilla Morrow program, for instance, has put its annual report activities in a program calendar, so that would be one example of thinking broadly about the way that you embed the expectations here in a larger document.

And that document by the way can be either now or shortly will be able to be accessed on the Umatilla Morrow website.

So what we'll do today then is share examples of each of the categories of elements expected in the report as I have pulled them from public reports from Head Start agencies, from community action agencies, from other nonprofits, to give you a sense of what's been done out there, what is being done in a number of cases to show, to illustrate, each of these elements.

And I know I haven't seen all of the documents that are out there so your program may well have something of interest to share and you can do that either today or I could be used as a conduit to get information out to others as we go along.

Let's go to our next slide. Here is the reauthorization language. "Each Head Start agency shall make available to the public a report published at least once each fiscal year (note the fiscal year) that discloses the following information from the most recently concluded fiscal year." That may sound like you have this period of time, the current fiscal year, to report on last year's fiscal year and so on into the future.

Here's the framework for how we'll approach this today. We'll look at each of the seven elements that is expected in the annual report, identify the key terms, talk a little about the level of detail in which you may respond. When I say "which you may" it means you have lots of options here. And then to talk about the presentation options, what are some ways that the element could be represented.

Here's the first category, category A on your handout: the total amount of public and private funds received and the amount from each source.

On your PowerPoint, the key terms there are the public and private funds and the level of detail. We're going to switch here in a second, but you can think of responding to this question quite broadly. Or you can break down the amounts that you are receiving into smaller categories. On page 1 of the other handout, you'll see here are three examples of programs that have listed the total amount of pubic and private funds received and the amount from each source. Again these are ones that I've pulled out from public reports available, these are in hard copy or on the web.

In this first example, I've taken the numbers out, but you can see that the program is listing its federal, state, local sources, it's broken out into fee and service and fund raising, miscellaneous, other and in kind as one way of putting the numbers out there.

Now example two takes a little broader perspective on this. It's combined a few categories, child care, United Way, early state programs, youth programs.

You can see this is an agency that's bigger than Head Start, the Head Start fund and then other sources. And then in example three you can see that here we have a much broader category, federal funds, State of Oregon funds, foundations and trust, so fund raising basically, and then local contributions and volunteer time which would cover non-federal share as well.

On this first one, you can see the level of detail can vary and depending as all of these will on how much information you want to share and what you think your audience is that you're crafting your report for need to hear.

But there's nothing at this point that says that you have to break these categories down more specifically. So I also put the pie graph, the pie chart graphics, there as an illustration of another way to format the information.

So for instance instead of example three down there being written the way it is, you could represent that with a pie chart with lines coming out of it representing the federal, the state, the foundations and the volunteer with a number and percentage or just a percentage, or just a number perhaps.

That's the first element of the grantee report and you can see as you go back to the slide that the presentation options could be in narrative or chart or graph.

Let's stop for a second and see if anybody on the line has either a question or a comment to contribute at this point. Operator, we'll take a question or two if there are any at this time.

Coordinator:

One has just come into the queue. Dale Helland, your line is open.

Dale Helland:

Okay, my question is we are a Head Start agency within a larger community action agency. Do we need to do the whole agency or just the Head Start for the annual report?

Eugene Gousie:

Thanks for that question. Let's go back to the original language and reauthorization, each Head Start agency shall make public a report.

I think the Head Start information has to be included and as we get further along and the elements you'll see that there's some specific - more specific Head Start activity, like the total number of children served for instance.

This is about the Head Start agency, so I would think that the agency as a whole would make the report - I don't have a definitive answer here. I think as you think through for your program, and if you're a larger agency, my guess is that you're doing some reporting already. And if that is the case, I would look to see how the elements here can be worked into a report that makes sense for the agency as a whole.

If you're not doing any reporting, I would think that you know this - I mean it seems to me what they're getting at is information about the Head Start program. But it's also about the agency a little more broadly.

So what we have at this point is that initial language in reauthorization to work with.

Thank you, Dale.

Eugene Gousie:

All right, let's go to the next element B, the explanation of budgetary expenditures and proposed budget for the fiscal year.

Again we're looking at the budgetary expenditures, the proposed budget and that interesting term, explanation. So in terms of level of detail we can do some listing or explanations.

You can use a variety of categories, we'll show some examples here in a second, and look at various options including budget categories and a narrative.

Let's go to the example here on page B, the second page of the other document, and you'll see in example #1 we have a breakdown of a budget, of budget categories for the proposed fiscal year.

Again I've taken the numbers out and this example is clearly from a larger than Head Start agency. And so if you were going to do this within Head Start your budget categories, certainly on the income, would look different.

On the expenses you can see that the categories are pretty broad here, I've seen some examples where these categories have been broken down into much finer sub categories.

But this is nice in that you get a sense of it without having too much information on the page.

The example #2 is a narrative piece and again a little explanation of what ABC Head Start program does with funds from where.

So again this is taken pretty much verbatim from an existing document and the point there is to put something in a narrative form - if you were going to do something narrative it would qualify as an "explanation" but it wouldn't look quite like this. But you'd want to have some additional information in there. So that's a couple examples of ways to think about what your agency might do in response to the explanation of budgetary expenditures and proposed budget.

Let's take another moment here for questions or comments.

Eugene Gousie:

All right, so back to the PowerPoint and on to our next element which is the total number of children and families served, average monthly enrollment and percent of eligible children served.

The key terms, children and family served, somehow I left out average monthly enrollment but that should be in there, and percentage of eligible children served - those are the key items you want to get in this element.

Again when you begin thinking of reporting on children and families, there are lots of ways to cut this. Some programs look at all of the children and families in the program and simply report on that.

Depending on the focus of your program, how large you want your report to be, how detailed you want your report to be, what outcomes you want to show, you could break this down by age, by geography, special needs, or special circumstances and provide a lot of information rather than a small amount.

As for presentation options, you can think of putting this in categories, charting or graphing or a narrative.

We have three examples of the total number of children and family served average month enrollment as a percentage and percentage of eligible children.

In the first example it's a chart that by county lists the eligible children, the federal enrollment, additional funding enrollment and the actual Head Start enrollment.

That's one way to provide a lot of information in a pretty small piece of a chart. Example two breaks that down into different kinds of categories by program design: home based, center based and combination.

Funded and actual enrollment - neither of those address the average monthly enrollment and I don't think I came across that in this documents I was looking at but that's a piece that you'd want to add in there.

And then the third example is again a narrative approach to the same information and very broadly the total number of children served and again you could put the information asked for in C, the average monthly enrollment, total served, percent of eligible.

You could put that in a narrative sentence or a couple of sentences to make that brief. So any comments or questions on this element?

Coordinator:

At this time there are no questions or comments.

Eugene Gousie:

Okay, we will move along then, thank you. All right, let's go to the next element, D. So here we're looking at the results of most recent review by the secretary and financial audits.

We've got those review finding, oh, I left the audit out of there, but two elements there, the review and the audit.

As far as the level of detail, would you list non-compliances or findings or other categories? Would you list areas of programming that you were commended on? Would you list specific findings? It is looking for the results, and so I didn't find any reports out there giving much or giving anything in this regard.

I would think your presentation would most likely be in the form of a narrative but again depending on what you're looking at you could think otherwise.

I don't have any examples on this one, just a list of things you could include in there, the findings, the recommendations, the responses. You could identify the firm that did the audit.

You might want to include the date of a review. So that's one that I think will be new to most programs. Any comments or questions on this element?

Coordinator:

Jo O'Leary, your line is open.

(Jo O'Leary):

Hi, we're mulling over the previous question actually Gene, average monthly enrollment. If you've filled all your slots within 30 days are you at your 100% of your enrollment?

Eugene Gousie:

You would think so, wouldn't you?

(Jo O'Leary):

I like it that way.

Eugene Gousie:

I mean that would be what you're reporting, right? Because you're having to do the monthly reporting, right?

(Jo O'Leary):

Yeah, do you use the monthly reporting figure?

Eugene Gousie:

I would think so.

(Jo O'Leary):

Okay, thank you.

Eugene Gousie:

Okay, thank you. All right, let's move on to the next one. We're looking at the percentage of enrolled children that received medical and dental exams, percentage, enrolled children, the medical and dental exam.

Again you could take a very broad view of this and in one narrative sentence or in one chart you could respond to that. That would be very simple.

You may you know want to highlight some other goal of the program or some other way to approach the progress the agency is making and present more information broken down into greater detail.

Let's look at the examples we have. They both go into more detail than is asked for and again you know from your PIR numbers and the tracking you do of that that you've got the numbers of children receiving screenings, the numbers of "need medical or dental treatment" or percentage or numbers of children who are receiving.

And you could include all of that on here, in which case it would be a basically a simple extraction of your PIR number.

Depending on what it is that you want to report on to your chosen audiences, you may want to go into more detail. If there perhaps may be a specific effort over this period of time to access medical homes or dental homes, then that's information they may want to provide in this section.

They would include the medical and dental service question but also include more information. The second one is a combination, it's mostly narrative with some larger health issues that they're reporting on.

And within that they could easily report on the number of enrolled children receiving medical and dental exams. So any questions on that element, or comments? Some of you have done something a little different or want to suggest something?

Coordinator:

And thank you, Mary Ellen Fritz, your line is open.

(Mary Ellen Fritz):

Hi Gene, this is Mary Ellen up in Anchorage and I just wanted to let you know that I'm going to write a formal letter of complaint to the office of Head Start. I think they've totally gone mad. This is like we already report all of this on the PIR in our grants and it's in our audits and it's just way beyond control now and I'm not blaming you, please don't take that personally.

But wow.

Eugene Gousie:

Right. And not having been asked to help write the reauthorization act, I won't take that personally, Mary Ellen. it's always appropriate to give feedback to the Office and let them know how initiatives like this impact the program.

Thank you, anything else?

(Mary Ellen Fritz):

No, that's it, thank you.

Eugene Gousie:

Let's go on to our next element. Information about parental involvement activities, and you can see already that is an extremely broad category open to all kinds of interpretation and level of detail. You could list numbers of activities. You could list categories or kinds of activities. You could highlight special activities that the program is proud of and has made progress in. You could put that information in categories with numbers, charts, graphs, narratives.

Let's look at some examples. The first example lists a number of activities that a program has done. And that's basically what it is, we've provided x, we've provided y, we've provided z.

Example two takes activities and attempts to link them to outcomes. So x number of families have received a particular service that resulted in them doing something that improves their lives. This is an example for those of you who feel the push, and I think most of us do, to get clearer about outcomes from any of our funding sources.

And perhaps you can see the advantage of responding to that element in a way to make a case for your program. Now on the other hand, if you want to go to the minimalist approach you can look at example three. You could work this into a couple of easy narrative sentences that would identify parent involvement fairly broadly in your program and suggest its value and begin to do that in a way that's hopefully not too burdensome.

So any comments or questions about this one?

Coordinator:

Laurie Bradford, your line is open.

(Laurie Bradford):

Thank you. Gene. The question that I have with the reauthorization - it says the report is done for the fiscal year, and yet this question about parental involvement activities, that doesn't follow our fiscal year.

Because our fiscal year ends in October, begins in November, but our program year starts in September and ends in June.

Eugene Gousie:

Right, thanks Laurie. That's a dilemma that many programs face and I would say that you have to you know make some adjustments based on that.

And I'm wondering if we have some others out on the line here right now that have addressed it this way. Let me just open that up and see if anybody else will respond at this point.

Coordinator:

Dale Helland, your line is open.

Eugene Gousie:

Thanks Dale.

Dale Helland:

Here we solve it by using the company's fiscal year which runs July 1st to June 30th, so our program year, which also is September through June, works fine with that.

Eugene Gousie:

Thanks Dale.

Coordinator:

Barb Buchman, your line is open.

Barb Buchman:

Regarding the fiscal year being different from the program year, I don't see any reason why you can't report the questions appropriately for each one and just produce your annual report and have it available upon completion of which ever one ends later.

Because in some instances your fiscal year is different than your program year, but your figures, facts and figures that you're compiling are the same regardless of when your year ends.

So it would just be a matter of when the annual report is due and what year you're reporting on.

Eugene Gousie:

Okay, fine, thank you.

Coordinator:

Jo O'Leary, your line is open.

(Jo O'Leary):

I didn't hear all of that previous one because I was logging in there, but are your - you know our fiscal year follows the calendar year, so for '07, so reporting for fiscal year '07 I would think we would just take the statistics from program year '06, '07.

That's what we would be reporting on - current activities or whatever. Our '07 report would say in the 2006, '07 school year.

Eugene Gousie:

Yeah. Okay, (Laurie) did you want to follow up at all on - with your group on that?

(Laurie Bradford):

Thank you, Gene. I think the questions are answered for us right now. I appreciate people calling in. Thanks again.

Eugene Gousie:

We all do. Thank you for raising that. All right, sounds like we're ready to go on to the final element which is the agency's effort to prepare children for kindergarten.

Again this is a pretty broad statement there, preparing children for kindergarten, so what would you want to include: the efforts that you make, the curriculum, staffing focus - some Head Start programs and larger agencies have come up with their own definition of what school readiness means. If you have done that you would want to craft your response to this question around the elements that you have determined for your agency constitute school readiness, preparing children for kindergarten.

You can of course use results from the assessment tools you've been using during the year. Again you have a variety of ways that you could report this: do a narrative, do your assessment tool captures. Let's look at several examples here.

So example one really focuses on preparing children for kindergarten as being focused around transition services, which would be an interesting take on this. It's done very simply with a narrative.

Example two picks a couple of key academic areas and says okay, how do we know our children are ready for kindergarten? We've done some assessment here and x percent of them are proficient in these categories. Again, it's a pretty simple response.

Example three uses developmental milestone assessments. It's only reporting on the percentage, the numbers and the percentage of children who have met the developmental milestone, the assumption being that that is being prepared for kindergarten.

Example four gives some specific examples. They've got a school readiness initiative and so if you've got something like that you would pick and choose from that the examples that would illustrate that children are ready for school.

Example five takes the objective across academic boundaries or across component boundaries, so it's about health objectives as well, identifying how many children have met those goals.

Example six picks specific indicators for the Creative Curriculum Developmental Continuum, which many of you use, and just extracts that data, lays it out as evidence that our children are succeeding and prepared for kindergarten.

The final example identifies gains by domains of development for children over the course of their pre-kindergarten years. So again this is the assumption that this is what prepares them for kindergarten. There are lots of examples there, different ways that you could craft a response to this one and I'd be curious what folks think about that and what part of this is that you're responding to an expectation. Part of it is that you have an opportunity since these are public documents to make a case for the good work that you all do to your key audiences.

And so what are your thoughts on this or questions or comments?

Coordinator:

John Naegele, your line is open.

(John Naegele):

Hey Gene, this is John.

Eugene Gousie:

Hey John.

(John Nagel):

I'm assuming that this report is also for Early Head Start and Head Start programs, correct?

Eugene Gousie:

That's my assumption.

(John Nagel):

Okay. So it would seem that we'd have a little bit different kind of reporting especially for number - for the last item on kindergarten readiness since it's a few years till they get there.

But we might want to look at some different kinds of things when we're looking at Early Head Start programs, correct?

Eugene Gousie:

I would say certainly some of the examples in there are applicable to Early Head Start, you know the continuum, the development of continuum kind of thing.

Coordinator:

Thank you, our next question comes from Barb Buchman.

Barb Buchman:

Yes, this is Barb from North Idaho College Head Start and I did have one question, I know you're wrapping up but I wanted to get it in there before the call was over.

Eugene Gousie:

Take your time.

Barb Buchman:

I thought I read in the requirements for the annual report that we had to put in there the number of breakfasts, lunches and snacks provided through the USDA program, am I incorrect there?

I thought there was a specific requirement for the number of meals served.

Eugene Gousie:

I don't know. Now let's - here's what I think you're referencing. There are a number of other reports that have to be made annually. All right, so for instance programs have to report on the progress of their professional development plans for teachers, they report on enrollment, they're reporting on administrative costs.

I think the USDA one may be one of those separate ones, but I will go back and check.

Barb Buchman:

Thank you.

Coordinator:

Your next question comes from Dale Helland.

Dale Helland:

Okay, actually I'll tell Barb first. USDA data is for your board, that you have to report that on a monthly basis for their oversight. Anyway my question was whether there's been any guidelines as to who we send this report to and you know you indicated that there doesn't seem to be any timeline other than sometime during the fiscal year.

Is there any time guidelines that you expect to come out on that?

Eugene Gousie:

Thanks for the question Dale and for the information. I don't have any further information about additional information about the annual reports coming out that might do something such as tighten that timeline.

So at the moment that's the information we have to work with. In terms of sending reports to anyone, there is no mention of that, and the conversations I've had simply indicate that the idea behind this is not really an oversight of reporting at the office of Head Start, but it's an attempt to make more transparent to the public and the agencies supporting the agency's information about the programs.

Coordinator:

Your next question comes from Gayle. Gayle McMurria your line is open. Please check your mute button.

Gail McMurria-Bachik:

This is Gail McMurria-Bachik from the Oregon Department of Education. Gene I wanted to thank you very much for this wonderful overview of the annual report.

I did want to make a comment about the use of the annual report. It seems to me the programs are putting so much effort into creating a document with this information that they could also use it as a marketing tool in a variety of ways in the community.

And I just wanted to say remember to include lots of pictures in the school. Pictures tell a story to the community a lot faster and more comprehensively than numbers.

Eugene Gousie:

Thank you, Gayle, for that reminder. And indeed you know on the one hand we have expectations, on the other hand we have the opportunity to take this information and make of it what we best can, which includes that outreach, the marketing, the outreach to potential funders, the responsiveness to families and communities.

The potential impact of seeing outcomes, measures, even for staff and other programs members, any anecdotes, stories, pictures.

Coordinator:

Our next question comes from Deborah Hoswell.

(Deborah Hoswell):

Gene, when we had a conference call with the regional office with Oregon Head Start Association Directors, the region stated that our annual reports need to be submitted to them.

Eugene Gousie:

Okay, thank you, Deborah. I'm sure that's within their scope and it's not a message I had heard circulated across the region, so thank you.

Coordinator:

Blair Johnson, your line is open.

(Blaire Johnson):

Yes hi, I just wanted to follow up on Gayle's comment just a moment ago about the annual report. In our agency we publish two annual reports so far before this requirement even came out that we developed basically as a marketing tool.

And I just want to say that I think that's a really positive use of this information. We weave these statistics with actual stories of families that we have helped so that has a very personal component as well as a statistical component.

And we've used these both to do outreach to the public schools, to have parents generate interest in enrolling in the program.

They have gone to our state legislator to be able to explain and give a picture more accurately of what we do and why it's important to continue funding to the program.

We give them to our policy council for training so that they have a good overview of what we're all about at the beginning of the year.

So I just wanted to follow up that I think this can be as much as it is another task we have to complete something that can really help our program.

Eugene Gousie:

Thank you, Blair.

Eugene Gousie:

Thanks to all of you for participating, especially those who have contributed their experience and their questions today.

We've got a couple items to follow up on. I want to get back to Dale's initial question about whether that's particularly an expectation for the larger agency as well as Head Start.

And then what Dale and Deborah raised, the expectations of the regional office for reporting, I want to get back to them and clarify that. So you can continue to keep in touch about this effort by emailing me or calling me at any time.

And as we get further information I'll send that out. If you have examples or if your agency has created a report, I'd appreciate seeing a copy of it - particularly if it's easily available online. Feel free to send those in here. I want to thank you all as we bring this to a close. The TA network has another conference call planned for a month from now, November 19th. The topic is tentatively mental health and we'll get out to everyone with additional information in advance of that. So once again I want to thank you all and wish you a good day. Good bye.

END

Posted on October 22, 2008.