West Oso ISD board approves Strong Foundations implementation grant agreement with Moe Casey

The West Oso ISD Board of Trustees voted to accept an implementation-grant agreement with Moe Casey, the district said during its meeting, committing the district to a Texas Education Agency (TEA) Strong Foundations implementation grant that includes an external-provider contract.

The grant totals $200,000; district staff said TEA requires that up to 50% of an implementation grant go to an external approved provider. Because Moe Casey has worked with the district on K–5 Eureka math implementation this year, staff proposed contracting Moe Casey again for 6th–8th grade math work, with roughly $100,000 of the grant available to pay the provider and the remainder to be used by the district for stipends, supplies and partial salary support for an instructional facilitator.

District staff and Moe Casey consultants described the services the provider will supply under the TEA implementation grant. Those services include an implementation adviser to work with administrators, a product adviser focused on instructional materials, professional learning for teachers and leaders, several classroom observations and “learning walks” during the year, support for professional learning communities (PLCs), a staffing study comparing district staffing to similar districts, and registration assistance for assessment conferences. Staff emphasized that TEA’s implementation grants are prescriptive: districts must choose from TEA’s approved provider list and must meet TEA deliverables tied to the grant.

Board members pressed staff for outcome data from last year’s K–5 implementation before moving forward. District staff said the full analysis of spring assessment and STAR results was not yet complete but that a summary of preliminary results and the consultants’ classroom observations would be presented to the board at the June 23 meeting. Staff also said the provider conducted classroom observations and PLC support last year and that teacher feedback was positive.

A motion to accept the implementation agreement was made by Trustee Gutierrez and seconded by a fellow trustee. During roll call Trustee Martinez voted no; Trustees Dorn, Adebondo and Pablo Rodriguez answered in the affirmative on their roll-call prompts as recorded in the meeting. The motion carried and the board approved the agreement.

Next steps described by district staff include finalizing the written contract with the provider, uploading required documents for TEA, and scheduling initial planning meetings and the first set of deliverables so the provider can begin work this summer and during the upcoming school year.