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SBCSA details 2026–27 school improvement plan deadlines, minimum requirements for charter schools
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Summary
SBCSA education programs professional Brittany Weinhold summarized required components, documentation and key deadlines for 2026–27 school improvement plans, including minimum goal counts, stakeholder committee requirements, documentation needed for desktop monitoring, and the March 4, 2026 submission deadline for grant-review eligibility.
Brittany Weinhold, an education programs professional on the SBCSA school support team, walked charter school staff through the required components and timeline for submitting school improvement plans for the 2026–27 school year using NDE’s Plan for Learning platform.
Weinhold said schools must complete fund source budgets for all applicable funding streams before entering goals, document at least one stakeholder meeting that includes needs-assessment discussion and funding plans, and include at minimum four school goals. She warned that missing required elements will cause a plan to be rejected and that SBCSA and NDE cannot provide substantive feedback until a plan is submitted.
Why it matters: schools must have an SBCSA-approved school improvement plan (SIP) in place for grant applications to be reviewed. Weinhold said grant applications open Feb. 16, 2026, and that plans must be submitted and approved by March 4, 2026, for schools to be eligible for grant review; she recommended submitting at least two weeks early to allow time for corrections.
Key requirements and dates
• Fund sources first: Schools are required to enter estimated budget amounts for each funding source (examples Weinhold listed include Title I, IDEA, Title II, Title IV, McKinney‑Vento) before adding goals. Weinhold said fund source budgets are required and that entering 0 is acceptable for nonapplicable sources.
• Minimum goals: Plans must include at least four school goals: two student-success goals (including one general student-success goal and one dedicated to special education), one adult-learning-culture goal and one connectedness goal. Weinhold stated goals must include baseline data, a target, a measurement method and a completion date (SMARTIE format) or the plan will be rejected.
• Stakeholders and documentation: The continuous improvement team must include at minimum a principal, a teacher and a parent; middle and high schools must also include a student. Schools must be able to provide documentation of stakeholder consultation (meeting agendas, presentation slides, meeting notes, sign-in sheets or the meeting log in the Plan for Learning platform) for desktop monitoring.
• Improvement strategies and professional development: Each goal must have at least one improvement strategy with fully described action steps; every strategy must include at least one professional development action step aligned to a professional development standard.
• Status checks and reflections: Required status checks for each improvement strategy occur in October and January, with an end-of-year reflection and a 'reviewing our journey' reflection in May. Some checklist items (green check marks) will be validated during those status checks rather than at initial submission.
• Review, rejection and resubmission: Once a SIP is submitted it will be reviewed by SBCSA staff and either approved or rejected. If rejected, schools must address reviewer-required revisions within 48 hours of the status update. Grant applications will not be reviewed until the SIP is approved.
Contact and next steps
Weinhold encouraged schools to use SBCSA’s guidance documents and Canvas resources for detailed instructions and to contact SBCSA’s grants team for assistance. She reminded teams to submit early to allow time for corrections before the March 4, 2026 deadline.
