Lanzamiento de la revisión federal de la Oficina Nacional de Head Start para el año fiscal 2020

(En inglés)

FY20 Monitoring Kickoff

Adia Brown:  Good morning and good afternoon, Head Start. I'm so happy to be here with you again. I'm Adia Brown and I'm the Monitoring Lead at the Office of Head Start and I'm here with somebody very special today.

Dr. Bergeron:  Hello. Dr. Bergeron here. Very excited to be here with Adia and I think we have a great hour in store for you to get you all ready for monitoring season. Almost as good as football season. Right?

Adia Brown:  Almost.

Dr. Bergeron:  Almost.

Adia Brown:  Almost, almost. I should have worn my football little jersey. I didn't get a chance to wear it today.

Dr. Bergeron:  Yeah.

Adia Brown:  Well, we always come to you around this time of the year to give you all the updates and highlights with what's happening with the FY20 monitoring season. We're very excited to do that. This webinar is going to be recorded so you'll be able to see it again. Not again today, but it will be up on ECLKC later on, maybe sometime next week. If you miss it or if your friends miss it, because you're watching it right now, you can see it then.

Adia Brown:  So Dr. Bergeron, there are lots of things that grantees are going to want to know.

Dr. Bergeron:  Yep.

Adia Brown:  And I think that we should start off telling them a lot about just what Focus Area One and Focus Area Two is. They need to remember it. Some grantees have had some of the reviews, not all of the reviews, and we're just going to give them some updates about what that looks like.

Dr. Bergeron:  Yeah, and you've made some changes.

Adia Brown:  And we've made some changes.

Dr. Bergeron:  So we want to make sure if they've been talking to somebody who maybe had a review a year or two ago, they're not basing their information on that.

Adia Brown:  That's probably a good idea.

Dr. Bergeron:  Yeah.

Adia Brown:  We're going to talk about an unpopular topic today.

Dr. Bergeron:  Uh-oh.

Adia Brown:  Unannounced reviews.

Dr. Bergeron:  Uh-oh. Okay.

Adia Brown:  People always come up to me at conferences and they ask, "Adia, are we going to have unannounced reviews?" And we're going to talk a little bit about that today in our presentation. We're also going to talk about some highlights from the protocol, those new things you talked about. We're going to let grantees know what they look like and we did some changes to the report structure that are pretty exciting and we're going to let the grantees know about that.

Dr. Bergeron:  Excellent.

Adia Brown:  Okay. The first thing that we want to let you know is that monitoring is starting very early this year. We are starting on time. We're starting on September 30th. We already have all the grantees who are going to start on that date. They have gotten their 60-day letter and they know that next week, they're going to be up for monitoring. We have about 460 FA1s that we're going to be doing this year. Dr. Bergeron, those reviews are... They're really exciting.

Dr. Bergeron:  Yeah?

Adia Brown:  Yeah, because they're really about giving the grantee the opportunity to talk about their plans.

Dr. Bergeron:  Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Adia Brown:  So FA1s are not when we come out to visit you. We call you on the phone and we really give the grantee an opportunity to think about who they are, what they're doing, and what some of their goals are going to be for the next five years of the grant. Have you heard anything about our FA1s?

Dr. Bergeron:  I have, and I would say we've talked a lot over the last year about wanting to be more growth rather than gotcha. I feel like this is a big part of that right? This is about developing relationships, kind of getting to know a grantee, maybe even giving some feedback.

Adia Brown:  Yeah.

Dr. Bergeron:  Yeah?

Adia Brown:  Yeah. It's a lot of that that happens in the Focus Area 1. And the grantees that we've done so far, they've actually enjoyed them. So if you're nervous out there, know that this is not something that you need to be nervous about. The grantees have enjoyed this. People have come and said, "I've gotten so many insights from my FA1." They always ask me, "Am I going to have the same reviewer?" Will I have the same reviewer in my FA1, they kind of fall in love with those reviewers and they want them again at FA2. I have to break the bad news to them and tell them that's not always possible.

Dr. Bergeron:  Right.

Adia Brown:  You might get someone different. But they usually get a strong relationship with that reviewer who calls them, who makes sure that they know what to do. They actually ask them, "Who are you going to invite to your meeting?" Who would you recommend that they bring to a FA1 call?

Dr. Bergeron:  Well, I think all of the key people in the organization are going to be able to represent the different aspects of monitoring. I think some of that's going to be dependent on the grantee, right?

Adia Brown:  Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Dr. Bergeron:  There should be some mainstays. The fact that they don't have the exact same reviewer might be disappointing, but the good news is the notes that are being taken during that time are pretty thorough. They're leaving a nice trail for the FA2 reviewer to have.

Adia Brown:  Absolutely, absolutely. And FA2 reviewer goes back and reviews those notes.

Dr. Bergeron:  Yeah.

Adia Brown:  They really see what happened the last time.

Dr. Bergeron:  Right.

Adia Brown:  Everyone always asks me, Dr. Bergeron, "How long is this review? And how long will it take? What's my commitment?"

Dr. Bergeron:  Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Adia Brown:  The FA1 review, it does have a little bit of a commitment. It lasts for five days, so they'll have a telephone call with somebody each of those five days. The calls are somewhere between 60 and 90 minutes. It really depends on the grantee. You worked in the school board. When people would call you and ask you questions about your school, you would always want to brag, I'm sure.

Dr. Bergeron:  Well I was going to say I'd use every minute that you're given, because it's your opportunity to really give insight into every detail about your program.

Adia Brown:  Right. And people always ask me, "Who should I bring?" Well your governing body for Head Start is really important. You might be from a school district like Dr. Bergeron was. If you could get a school board member to come and talk and say how great your Head Start program is and how involved they are in it, that would be fantastic. But if you can't, a policy council member is always great to have. But your management team, your staff, people who could really tell the story about your program. Those are the people that you want to invite.

Dr. Bergeron:  Right.

Adia Brown:  So let's talk a little bit about Focus Area 2.

Dr. Bergeron:  Okay.

Adia Brown:  This is not on the phone anymore. This is the one, Dr. Bergeron, that I have to say, makes people pretty nervous.

Dr. Bergeron:  Yeah, because there is an outcome.

Adia Brown:  There is an outcome for this one. Yes.

Dr. Bergeron:  Little higher stakes.

Adia Brown:  A little bit. There's a little bit higher stakes for this one and people always want to... It's like having a guest come to your home, so you want to spruce everything up. You want to paint. You want to put the new curtains on. You want to sort of put your best foot forward. Many grantees this year have done that. They've had their Focus Area 2. It's a lot different than what the old monitoring system was like. You talked about the opportunities for growth, and here, we do a lot of things with the grantee that we didn't do before. One very interesting thing is something called a data tour.

Dr. Bergeron:  Okay.

Adia Brown:  So imagine, Dr. Bergeron, if I sent the reviewer into your office and I said, "Dr. Bergeron, show me all the data that you have about the progress that Head Start is making." What would you do?

Dr. Bergeron:  Well I would go into the system and start showing them some good information.

Adia Brown:  Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Dr. Bergeron:  Depending on how broad my program is, if I've got Early Head Start and Head Start, I'd want to make sure that I'm covering the breadth of the audience. I think the really interesting thing about that is kind of always being prepared to be able to do that.

Adia Brown:  Yeah.

Dr. Bergeron:  So even though you're having a guest over, you kind of always want to make sure that a guest might stop by.

Adia Brown:  It's easier if your house is already clean.

Dr. Bergeron:  Yeah. It's easier if your house is already clean.

Adia Brown:  It's easier if your house is already clean. So data tours are a really nice feature. Recently I went out and I did a data tour with a lovely young woman. She was nervous. She said, "I'm new here. I'm new to the program. I don't know what I'm doing." She brought a lot of people to the room. She said, "I have all my friends. They're going to stay here with me and help me through this." I said, "Okay, that's fine. You can do that." We let the grantee know that if you need people to support you during your data tour, that's fine.

Dr. Bergeron:  Right.

Adia Brown:  But I told her, I said, "You know, what I want you to do is pretend like you just came in this morning. You're having a cup of coffee, and you do exactly what you do every day with the data," and this young woman was amazing.

Dr. Bergeron:  Yeah.

Adia Brown:  She was a family community engagement worker and she showed me all the data that she had in ChildPlus, and how that data actually helped her make decisions about what resources to provide for the parents. She also showed me what meetings they were involved in and where they concentrated more of their effort depending on what the parents need. She was just fantastic at it.

Dr. Bergeron:  Why do we even bother to ask for a data tour?

Adia Brown:  Well, a data tour is really important to us because it helps us understand how the grantee is actually using their data. It's not that we just want to go and see if you're using ChildPlus or see whether or not you are using Promise or one of those systems. We want to see that you have data and you know how that data impacts your program.

Dr. Bergeron:  Right.

Adia Brown:  So it's really fun. It's a good tour. We also do classroom observations and while we're there, we talk to teachers. You know about talking to teachers. I'm sure you've done plenty of classroom observations.

Dr. Bergeron:  Sure.

Adia Brown:  What's that like, when you... How do you think-

Dr. Bergeron:  I think that just like having, say, a FA2, teachers get nervous when they know someone's judging them or evaluating, right? I think the best way to prepare for that is that within the program, there's always someone going into the classroom, giving feedback, making sure that teachers feel comfortable, and kids feel comfortable, with somebody coming in on a regular basis they might not know, so that they're not reactive.

Adia Brown:  Right.

Dr. Bergeron:  That's really the sign of a well run school or educational environment, from an instructional standpoint, is that there's enough traffic in that classroom on a regular basis so that nobody really responds. I love when I go to a visit and I walk in and the teacher might look up and say hello but the whole thing doesn't stop. I know that sometimes people feel obligated to do that, but there is sort of this sense of comfort with someone coming in because they've got their routine. It could be today, it could be tomorrow. It's going to look the same. We're not putting on a show for you. This is what we do. That's really where you want to get people to a place where they feel comfortable.

Adia Brown:  I'm bet you there's a lot of grantees that are out there saying, "Wow, that's a great tip." I think you're right. If you do that in your classroom when we come out to visit, your monitoring visit will be so smooth and wonderful.

Dr. Bergeron:  Yep. Regular visits.

Adia Brown:  Regular visits. So I think that's good. The other thing that we do when we come out is we talk to the management staff. We talk to the people who observe the teachers, who do the monitoring of the teachers. We talk to the people who make the program goals, so we talk to the governing body, we talk to the policy council. Just like on the Focus Area 1 call, we try to make sure that all the stakeholders involved are a part of the review process.

Dr. Bergeron:  Right, right.

Adia Brown:  Now, a lot of times... I'll stop here a little bit, because a lot of times when I start talking about FA2s and the reviewers coming on site, people always ask me about class.

Dr. Bergeron:  Of course.

Adia Brown:  They always ask me about class. They're always asking me, "Adia, am I going to get the class review at the same time that I'm getting my FA2 review?" I'm here to tell you guys that you don't. So Focus Area 2 and Class are separate reviews. You don't get them at the same time. You could get them in the same year, but you don't necessarily get those reviews at the same time. I want to make sure that grantees are really clear on when they get a Focus Area 2 and when they get a Class, and they're not at the same time.

Adia Brown:  Another question I get a lot from grantees is, "When am I going to get my Focus Area 2?" A Focus Area 2 generally happens for a grantee at the end of their second year and into their third year. That changes if you have multiple grants. We try to align them together and give you the Focus Area 2 when it makes sense for all the grants that you have, but for the most part, you get it at the end of your second year going into your third.

Dr. Bergeron:  Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Adia Brown:  Okay. So Dr. Bergeron, I told you we had an unpleasant topic to talk about, and it's unannounced reviews.

Dr. Bergeron:  Right.

Adia Brown:  Which of us should break the bad news?

Dr. Bergeron:  I don't think it's bad news.

Adia Brown:  Okay, all right. Well tell them a little bit about it.

Dr. Bergeron:  Well, we've got a million children that show up every day.

Adia Brown:  Okay.

Dr. Bergeron:  To Head Start classrooms. It has to be fantastic every day. It can't just be fantastic when we have a scheduled review. I think that you know what we're going to ask about, that's what this is... This is to help front load things. We're not trying to surprise people. We're not trying to do a "gotcha." But just like a teacher should be comfortable with someone coming into his or her classroom on a regular basis because I'm the best teacher I can be every day, a program should be prepared for someone to stop by because you're doing your job every day. I know that... I'm not going to pretend like that's not going to make you a little nervous I guess, but if you run your program so that somebody could drop by any day, then when they do, you're going to be in better shape. If everything is about preparing for that one week when your FA2 is going to happen, your staff is going to be so on edge and your level of anxiety is going to spread through the building. And frankly, the kids will feel it.

Dr. Bergeron:  But if you treat your staff as if you expect that someone should be able to walk in any day and it's not a big deal, and that's what you expect from them, and you are going to expect that from yourself, then you'll create this sort of calmness about it. At first, people will be shocked. They might think, "You can't really be okay with that." But if that's how you present it, your staff will adjust to that and then the expectations will be there. If you feel like, "Well, but I hate being caught off guard, I want to make sure... Someone's going to come in and then we have to somehow get all these people together and pull data or whatever." Do some unannounced reviews yourself. Go into your program and say, "Hey, pretend I'm Adia. Show me what you got," and then you can reflect on, how did that go? Is that a prepared as we want to be? So maybe you do have to do a little bit of thought behind that part but I do think that, the business we do is too important to rely on some kind of big preparation moment for a monitoring review.

Adia Brown:  I agree. It's not bad news grantees, it really isn't. You guy ask me this all the time, will there be unannounced reviews, and the answer to that this year is yes. So yes, there are going to be unannounced reviews. There are programs where we don't do unannounced reviews and that's tribal programs. Because of our government-to-government relationship we do not do unannounced reviews for tribal grantees. However, all other grantees can be subject to an unannounced review. One thing that's very interesting is that all grantees get, what's called a 60 day global letter. I don't know if they always read all of the language in that global letter. But in the global letter, it tells you that, if you do not submit your calendar, that you can be subject to an unannounced review. You'll see on the slide, that all grantees who have not submitted their calendar for the FY20 season at this point, you will have an unannounced review. You can't go back and put in your calendar now. If you haven't put in your calendar, then you are a part of a group of people who will have an unannounced review.

Dr. Bergeron:  So you're saying if I'm having my monitoring during FY20, and I haven't submitted a calendar, I know that I'm unannounced.

Adia Brown:  You already know.

Dr. Bergeron:  If I have submitted my calendar, could I still be unannounced?

Adia Brown:  Well, that's a good question Dr. Bergeron.

Dr. Bergeron:  I sprung that on her.

Adia Brown:  You did.

Dr. Bergeron:  Do you have an answer for that?

Adia Brown:  I do.

Dr. Bergeron:  Oh good. Wasn't sure.

Adia Brown:  I have an answer for that. So all grantees could be subject to an unannounced review. Every grantee has the opportunity to have an unannounced review. It's just there for grantees who didn't submit their calendar, you now know, you will have an unannounced review.

Dr. Bergeron:  You start with those folks.

Adia Brown:  We start with them first. But other grantees could be subject to an unannounced review. If you've already gotten your 60 day letter, you know that's not you. So you will not have that, but other grantees sure.

Adia Brown:  Let's move on from unannounced reviews and let's talk a little bit about ERSI.

Dr. Bergeron:  Okay.

Adia Brown:  ERSI is something that we really decided to highlight in this FY20 protocol. It's always been there, it was in the protocol, but this year, we really decided to put some more emphasis on ERSI. We, over the years, for Head Start grantees, we always pick something at the beginning of a monitoring year, that we tell the grantees, "We want to focus on this. We want you to think about it and we want you to do better." On this case, one thing that we really want grantees to work on is eligibility.

Dr. Bergeron:  Okay.

Adia Brown:  When we talk about eligibility, it all starts with how the staff actually validates when parents are coming into the program. Their applicants, they really need to look at lots of things. Source documentations, W-2's. They need to look at statements of not having income, whether or not children are homeless. The grantee has to do a really good job of really showing that they used all the source documentation to ensure that the children who are enrolled in the program are actually eligible.

Dr. Bergeron:  Right. This is important. We're really designed to serve the most vulnerable children and if we're not careful, we can create a situation where slots aren't available for those families, and those are the families who are less likely to seek us out. So it's important that we are mindful to make sure that every child enrolled with certain eligibility has the verification to back that up I think. I think that's really important. And I would say, just as an aside, we're in an interesting time because minimum wages have gone up so much in some areas. Some cities and then some states have even implemented some pretty significant minimum wage increases. It's a double edged sword because, for some folks, it pushes them out of the eligibility frame and I can understand your frustration of wanting to figure out a solution to that. But that's not our job. Somebody else has to solve that problem. We have to implement the program the way it's designed, even if sometimes you wish you could be the master of that, in making those decisions. You do have to be kind of careful about that.

Adia Brown:  I think this is a good year too, for people to think about dusting off those training manuals for that. As I go around the country, I'm hearing that... We talk to some staff that they don't really remember all the rules that relate to eligibility. You know how myths, they get built.

Dr. Bergeron:  Yes.

Adia Brown:  People think, "Oh, well this is the way that we actually do eligibility. We're allowed to enroll children who have a disability regardless of what their income is." I hear that all the time. They say, "We'll put those children at the top of our selection criteria," and it doesn't matter how much money they make, if they have a disability, they can come into the program, and that's just not true.

Dr. Bergeron:  Right, right. Good idea.

Adia Brown:  So it's a good idea to really dust off your training process for staff. Maybe take everybody through, at the beginning of the year again, what is eligibility? What is our selection criteria?

Dr. Bergeron:  And what documentation do I need to have to back it up in case somebody wants to pull those files during monitoring or whatever and be able to verify that we're doing things the right way.

Adia Brown:  Right. The other thing that we're stressing in the new protocol is, sometimes when you're training staff or anybody... I get trained, everybody gets trained... Sometimes the training sticks and you continue to do a good job, and sometimes it doesn't. So we are focusing in the protocol on making sure that once the staff has actually verified from the applicant that they're eligible for the program, there is someone else in the program that does a periodic check to make sure that's being done right.

Dr. Bergeron:  I think, with training, the reason that... you say sometimes it sticks and sometimes it doesn't. I think it's all about what's relevant at the time. We tend to hang on to information that matters to us. If we're not in the throws of enrollment at the time, we may not hang on to some of the detail. Coming up with some strategies to make sure that those big things are constantly a reminder, and you're right, spot checking. Things like that, coming up with some systems that make sense.

Adia Brown:  It's good to let grantees know that this is something that reviewers are really going to... you're going to be wondering this year, "Why are they asking me so many questions about eligibility?" They're going to ask you a lot more about them. It's a focus for the year and we want to make sure that grantees are definitely prepared to understand that this is something that they need to maybe put a highlight, flash some attention to.

Adia Brown:  The other thing is enrollment.

Dr. Bergeron:  Yeah.

Adia Brown:  There was a big push, Dr. Bergeron, from the office of Head Start, for grantees to make sure that they were fully enrolled. I think there was a campaign, a full enrollment campaign that went out. Grantees really did work hard to try to make sure that children were enrolled. They tried to do a good job with making sure that that happened. There was some creativity around enrollment that sometimes works and sometimes it doesn't work. So, one of the things that we saw in that creativity was really how grantees were handling children that attended the program. Previously in monitoring, we only looked at the 85% and we only looked at whether or not children who hadn't attended for four consecutive days, were getting a phone call and that people were following up. Well, this year, we're looking at something very different. Now we're looking to see if the children who the grantee has submitted as enrolled has actually attended the program. That's a really important distinction that we're making for grantees that we haven't made in the past. Children who are considered enrolled must have attended the program. If those children haven't attended the program for 30 days, we're expecting that that slot will become vacant.

Dr. Bergeron:  Right, and I know that a couple of things that come to mind that concern some grantees are things like a serious health condition. So I haven't been in attendance for 30 days, but I'm in the hospital, those kinds of extreme examples. I think if they're reasonable and you have documentation and you can show what's going on, we're not talking about kicking kids out because they have a dire situation. I think we're talking about children who just aren't showing up and we're holding on to that slot, maybe in hopes that they return, but maybe also, because it makes me look like I'm fully enrolled. Again, we'll go back to the very beginning of our conversation, and that is, that our purpose is to reach our kids. We don't just want to reach them on paper. We need to reach them for real. Right?

Adia Brown:  Yeah.

Dr. Bergeron:  I know when I was a principal, we used to have to stop everything and go count heads. Physical, and then report that and have somebody verify it, so you couldn't even just turn in enrollment. Because it's important, you know.

Adia Brown:  It is important and I think that the example that you gave was a good one. Typically when a child is in a dire situation or they're in the hospital, the program is actually still providing services. They're generally calling that program, the family service worker is engaged, and they're generally still engaged somehow with that family. When a program is providing services to a child, we consider that child to still be enrolled. When the child is just not coming to the program-

Dr. Bergeron:  And you can't get them there.

Adia Brown:  And you can't get them there.

Dr. Bergeron:  You've tried everything.

Adia Brown:  Yep. Then after 30 days, you have to make that slot vacant. Once you make the slot vacant, it's really important that you have a wait list.

Dr. Bergeron:  Yes.

Adia Brown:  What we're going to start looking at, is grantees' wait lists and whether or not they have them, who's on the wait list, and whether or not they're using those wait lists to actually fill enrollment.

Adia Brown:  That's eligibility and enrollment. I'm going to go back one slide.

Dr. Bergeron:  Can I talk about under-enrollment for a minute?

Adia Brown:  You can talk about under-enrollment.

Dr. Bergeron:  I don't think this necessarily connects directly to monitoring, but while we're on the topic, because I've been very involved in the under-enrollment appeals. So I've talked to a lot of grantees, and we'll talk through, "Okay this is what we're doing. This is the reason," and talking through, "What should we really be doing?" One of the things that I want to just put out there as a general, not a warning, just something to pay attention to, if you're struggling with enrollment and you're going on a plan, don't wait until the last minute to come up with a solution. I'm seeing a lot of grantees sort of wait and then all the sudden it's a scramble. So make sure you're dealing with that very proactively from the get go, regardless of whatever you think the solution is, so that under-enrollment isn't something that you're hanging onto and it's that stressor in your program.

Adia Brown:  Okay. I think that's good advice.

Adia Brown:  Grantees are going to have a lot of questions about background checks because there is a lot of information coming out about background checks. There was some new things in the regulations that relate to background checks, and I know the office of Head Start was still working on those things. In monitoring, what we decided to do was to monitor background checks exactly the way that we did last year.

Dr. Bergeron:  Okay.

Adia Brown:  So we're only monitoring background checks based on the act and based on the things that you see in 648AG3.

Dr. Bergeron:  Okay.

Adia Brown:  So that's what we monitor on. We're not monitoring on the new regulations and we will do that throughout FY20.

Dr. Bergeron:  Okay.

Adia Brown:  Okay?

Dr. Bergeron:  Good to know.

Adia Brown:  All right. Let's talk about some fun stuff.

Dr. Bergeron:  This is the best.

Adia Brown:  This is some fun stuff. One thing that grantees are always wanting to have is their report. They can't wait to get their report. We've tried a lot of different things over the years to give grantees more information in their report. This year is no different. One thing that you really stressed last year was highlights. You love them. You wanted us to make sure that everybody had them. Can you talk a little bit about the highlights.

Dr. Bergeron:  Well, I think that when you're evaluating anything or anyone you should be looking for what's working and lifting that because when folks know what's working, they do more of it. So, it's important to get feedback, not just on what we might need to... the areas of growth or what might need to be addressed, but what's really working well. In particular, what are programs doing that are innovative, that are making a big difference for kids that they might not even be required to do, but they're doing anyway. As I was reading some of those I wanted more of that so that I could get a better sense of what was happening on the ground. Then, sort of out of this grew this feedback that I give grantees sometimes. If I see something really different, I want to point it out and make sure the staff know that it's impressive and it's exciting to see. I think what that does is it inspires folks to keep moving down that path of innovation. I know that I had given you a lot of positive feedback about, I love seeing these highlights. But, of course, any time something is good, we always try to make it even better.

Adia Brown:  We always try to make it even better. Dr. Bergeron, you did give us a big push around highlights and it did turn out to be a very good thing, and grantees, I think, were appreciative of all the innovations that we showed that they were doing and the good work. So, we're going to do more.

Dr. Bergeron:  Yay.

Adia Brown:  This year, highlights will show up for grantees in each section of their report with one caveat. As long as that section of the report doesn't have an area that they need to correct.

Dr. Bergeron:  Okay.

Adia Brown:  If there's an area that you need to correct or an area where we think that you can improve, you'll see that in the section, but if there's not then under Health, under FCE, under PDM, you'll get a highlight. That highlight will tell you a lot, something about the program area, or it will tell you about an innovation or something that the grantee is really doing stellar.

Dr. Bergeron:  Right, right. You can look forward to that. The grantees can look forward to that because that's something you can share out with your staff.

Adia Brown:  Or your board.

Dr. Bergeron:  Yeah.

Adia Brown:  Or your policy council.

Dr. Bergeron:  It's important to let folks know that they're doing good work.

Adia Brown:  It's an opportunity to celebrate.

Dr. Bergeron:  It is.

Adia Brown:  The other thing that we did in the monitoring report was we created something that was called the Opportunity for Continuous Improvement.

Dr. Bergeron:  Okay.

Adia Brown:  We really built that from conversations we hear from you that always talks about giving the grantee the opportunity for growth. We all need growth. There's always things that we can actually just put a little bit more, I like to cook, so put a little more spice on it. In these areas, these are areas where the grantee is actually meeting the standard. They meet the standard, but it doesn't sparkle. It may be a place where they actually can improve or increase the quality of something. We let grantees know that right in the report now. This is something that is very new. It's not a penalty. It's not a finding. It's not an area of noncompliance. But it is an area where the grantee could think about strategies to really help them increase of quality for that particular performance measure.

Dr. Bergeron:  I love this of course. One of the things that I felt was missing is it seemed like you were either struggling or you might have this really high level work and that would get raised and written about in a highlight format. But we all know that there's sort of that in between where there's no reason to ding you for it right? It's fine, but wouldn't it be great if it could be better than fine? If we can give feedback like that now, the reports all of a sudden can be a real tool for learning and growth for the whole staff.

Adia Brown:  Mm-hmm (affirmative). It's something that the grantee doesn't... Grantees will ask, "Well, do I have to respond to it?" Or, "Do I have to send back in a corrective action?" You do not. It's really something that's there to help the grantee think about new strategies that will just make their program just that much better.

Dr. Bergeron:  It's not a whole lot different than evaluating a teacher right. You walk into the classroom, you might see a great lesson. But you want to give some constructive feedback so that even somebody who's a really good teacher has an opportunity to grow, because we all can.

Adia Brown:  We're training the folks who write this to make sure that they're all in the positive. We want this to be a positive experience for the grantees. We know that many grantees give these reports to their boards, to their policy council and to parents. We want opportunities for continuous improvement to really just feel that way, and not to feel as if it's something that is punitive for the grantee.

Dr. Bergeron:  Right, right.

Adia Brown:  There's nothing here like that.

Dr. Bergeron:  There may be even some of these Opportunities for Continuous Improvement that you read as a grantee and you say, "Well, that's a good idea. That's not going to work here." It could be that some of those suggestions may not even be relevant but at least you can get some positive feedback, create some new ideas and possibly avenues for growth.

Adia Brown:  Yep. The other thing that's been around, this has been around for a while, it's not necessarily new, but when we add Opportunities for Continuous Improvement, people are going to ask me, "Well, what happened to Areas of Concern and how are they different?" The Opportunity for Continuous Improvement is at the performance measure level, so it will encompass maybe a lot of standards or a few standards all at once and it will give you something that says, "In this area, you may want to think about some strategies." An Area of Concern is about a particular standard and it's a particular standard that we think is at risk for being out of compliance. It's not out of compliance right now but it's teetering right on the fence and left to it's own device it will be out of compliance. So it's a little bit more, here is more than a suggestion of improvement. It's saying, "Grantee, we really want you to pay attention to this and we want you to think about things that can make this better. It's not out of compliance but it will be if you don't attend to it."

Dr. Bergeron:  Got it, okay.

Adia Brown:  I'm going to go back to that because along with that we still have all the things like Areas of Non-Compliance which have a corrective action period. We have Deficiencies, which also have a corrective action period. In the report, they're all laid out and they all have labels to help the grantee to understand what they are, and how they need to respond. So if you get a Non-Compliance or you get a Deficiency you'll have a clear timeframe, it'll tell you that you need to respond to that. If you have an AOC it'll tell you to work with your regional office. If you have an OCI or an Opportunity for Continuous Improvement, it'll also say you can work with your regional office, but that is up to you, how much you want to do that. It's clearly outlined in a report. Grantees should feel very comfortable with how they can deal with each one of those things, and we hope that this report is going to give you a lot of more information about your grantee and something that will help you to improve over time.

Adia Brown:  I just said a lot of this.

Dr. Bergeron:  She's deciding this slide was repetitive.

Adia Brown:  I'm deciding that this slide was competitive and it just says a lot about... We give these slides to the grantees so we want to make sure that everything that I say is pretty laid out here. One thing that we make very clear in this slide is that grantees will ask, "Well am I going to get a highlight in every section even if I have an AOC or even if I have an OCI or even if I have a finding?" The answer is no. If you have any of those things in the section you won't have a highlight. It doesn't mean that your program did not do something well in that area. It just means that in this section we want you to pay attention more to the area where you need to grow.

Adia Brown:  The protocols are already posted on E-Click.

Dr. Bergeron:  Okay.

Adia Brown:  This is something that grantees ask me all the time. When will they be posted? They're there. So if you haven't looked at them, you don't know where they are go to E-Click and they will be right there waiting for you.

Adia Brown:  The Virtual Expo is also now open. The grantees love the Virtual Expo, Dr. Bergeron. It's like a little mini conference that you go to at your computer.

Dr. Bergeron:  Got it.

Adia Brown:  This video eventually winds up there. We have all kinds of tools, tip sheets, things to help the grantees. That's open. We also have something that's called Office Hours. A grantee can actually come into an Office Hour and chat with experts about anything that has to do with monitoring and there are people there to answer their questions.

Dr. Bergeron:  Oh that's great.

Adia Brown:  Finally I just want to remind people that monitoring is an opportunity to celebrate their success and to make the improvements that enhance program quality.

Dr. Bergeron:  Yeah, there's no doubt. I think, my biggest piece of advice to you, if this is your season to be monitored especially FA2, is that you communicate to your staff that that's what you expect. This is an opportunity to celebrate and to grow as a staff and to be as calm about it as you possibly can, even if inside you might be nervous, fake it. You're the leader. You need to set the tone for calm and confidence and if you do that, that'll get passed on to your staff and they'll pass it on to the children. When somebody is coming into your building, it'll feel fine and you will be very well off I think.

Adia Brown:  Okay, well we have questions. We have a half an hour to breeze through them.

Dr. Bergeron:  All right, let's do it.

Adia Brown:  We have some easy ones. The first one is, is there a list of acronyms that will be in the report? I say a lot of them, OCI, AOC, ANC. The answer is yes. In the front of every monitoring report there is a list of acronyms and what they mean. So there is a glossary there that's right there for you.

Adia Brown:  All right. Do you want to read another one?

Dr. Bergeron:  Well I have to put my glasses on if I'm going to do one.

Adia Brown:  Oh you have to put your glasses on. Oh gosh okay.

Dr. Bergeron:  How can I prepare for my FA2 review? Well this says, "Review the protocol. Review the standards. Familiarize staff with methodology. Visit the Expo. All of those things. But what we just talked about, is a lot of preparation and setting the tone so that folks feel like, "This is fine. We're a great organization. People can come in any time, see what we're doing and we feel really confident about the outcomes." That's how you want to set people up.

Adia Brown:  This is like a quiz, like a pop quiz for you.

Dr. Bergeron:  Uh oh.

Adia Brown:  When will the FY20 protocols be available?

Dr. Bergeron:  They already are.

Adia Brown:  Very good.

Dr. Bergeron:  Woop, woop.

Adia Brown:  Yes, they're on ECLKC for you and you can get them right now. Here's a good question. Is the ERSEA review a separate event or part of the FA2?

Dr. Bergeron:  Is that a quiz for me?

Adia Brown:  No.

Dr. Bergeron:  Part of the FA2.

Adia Brown:  Ding, ding, ding. All right. I feel like we're on a game show, like Jeopardy.

Dr. Bergeron:  We are. I'm going to quit while I'm ahead though. Don't ask me anymore trivia.

Adia Brown:  Okay, I will not, I will not. Yes, they are a part of the FA2. You don't have to worry about that. It's not a separate review. I won't make you put your glasses on because I have mine on. How will I know the classroom that will be visited during the FA2? I will not make you answer that pop quiz.

Dr. Bergeron:  Yeah.

Adia Brown:  During the FA2, the reviewer, they actually work with the grantee to pull... They don't do it until they come on site, but then they pull a random sample of your classrooms and they let you know when they come onsite which classrooms they're actually going to visit.

Dr. Bergeron:  Do grantees have any say about classrooms, say that have a brand new teacher in them or a substitute?

Adia Brown:  Yes. If you have a brand new classroom with a teacher or a substitute, we can always do a skip and go to another classroom.

Dr. Bergeron:  Okay, so it's important for grantees to pay attention to that part.

Adia Brown:  That's right. That's right.

Adia Brown:  What happens after I receive my 60 day letter? That's a good question. After you receive your 60 day letter, a lot of people start to take care of you. You're contacted by your review lead, something called a monitoring event coordinator also calls you and they start to actually plan the logistics of your review. They plan when your meetings are going to happen. They let you know who's going to come on site. There's a lot of phone calls and conversations that you have that will get you to the 60th day when your review is going to happen.

Dr. Bergeron:  This is a lot goes into this process. I think folks should know that.

Adia Brown:  There is a lot.

Dr. Bergeron:  There's a lot of orchestration behind the scenes.

Adia Brown:  There is. All right, Dr. Bergeron, this one is a detailed question too. Who will conduct my review? All reviews differ. The size and the shape of a review differs, who's going to be on that review differs. For a general idea of what a review looks like, you always have a review lead. Every review has a review lead. If it's a Focus Area 1 you only have a review lead. If it's a Focus Area 2, you get a review lead, you usually get a fiscal person and you usually have two generalists who can do things like ERSI, FCE, education. But if you're a bigger program you get more generalists because they need to cover a lot of ground in your program.

Dr. Bergeron:  Okay.

Adia Brown:  Okay? All right. Well we answered this one earlier but should we do it again? I'll ask you, this is a pop quiz.

Dr. Bergeron:  I get this all the time.

Adia Brown:  All right. Can I have a class review and a Focus Area review in the same year?

Dr. Bergeron:  Yes.

Adia Brown:  Yes, you can have it in the same year.

Dr. Bergeron:  How about on the same day?

Adia Brown:  Is it a pop quiz for me?

Dr. Bergeron:  Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Adia Brown:  No. You can't have it on the same day. You can have a class review in the same year but not in the same week.

Dr. Bergeron:  They'll be spread out a little bit. We don't want to overwhelm the system right?

Adia Brown:  Yes, we do not want to overwhelm the system.

Adia Brown:  Pop quiz.

Dr. Bergeron:  Okay

Adia Brown:  Will there be unannounced reviews?

Dr. Bergeron:  Yes.

Adia Brown:  Yes.

Dr. Bergeron:  Yes. There will be unannounced reviews.

Adia Brown:  There will be unannounced reviews.

Adia Brown:  All right let's see if we got any new ones. What are the changes from FY19 FA2 to FY20 FA2? There are minor refinements with an emphasis on ERSI. If you had the FA2 protocol last year, it's generally the same. The things that we talked about today are the things that you need to pay attention to so ERSI, eligibility and enrollment. They really have a lot of new nuances to them so I would suggest you pay attention there. There's also a few changes that happen in fiscal. They're not major but you should look at that fiscal section because they cleaned it up a little bit so that it's easier for grantees to understand.

Dr. Bergeron:  And the reporting is different.

Adia Brown:  The reporting is different.

Dr. Bergeron:  The reporting really different

Adia Brown:  Yeah, the report is very different. Where do delegates fall in the FA1 monitoring? Good question. Delegate agencies are a part of your agency. We don't do a separate review for delegates. We monitor a grantee. When we monitor a grantee, it includes delegates, it includes partners, it includes anyone who is actually providing Head Start services for you. So when you do FA1 or FA2 you want to make sure that you include your delegates and that they are a part of the conversations and that you have enough information to help us understand how you administer Head Start in that part of your program.

Dr. Bergeron:  I think we got all the questions.

Adia Brown:  I think we got all the questions.

Dr. Bergeron:  Will there be an exit interview? That's a good question.

Adia Brown:  Oh, well that is a good question. We didn't do that one. Will there be an exit interview? There's always a final discussion with a director. We actually call them touchpoints. Every day the grantee has an opportunity with their RL to do a touchpoint. Touchpoints let you know what happened during the day, they're there to make sure that you're not surprised, if there's more information that we need about something we let you know. We also let you know during a touchpoint if there's issues that we're finding. So if there's something that we're seeing that we think might be a problem, we ask you for more information. We ask additional questions. So touchpoints are very important and before the team leaves your FA2, they give you the opportunity to have a touchpoint. You can have it just as a director, you can have it with your staff, you can have it with the director, the staff and the governing body. There is one final touchpoint at the end of all FA2 reviews.

Dr. Bergeron:  I have a question opposite of that. Prior to my monitoring, is there like a conversation up front?

Adia Brown:  Yes there is. Before you have your monitoring review, after you get your 60 day letter, you start talking with your review lead. That's going to be a very important person in your life because up front, that's the person that actually talks to you about what your review is going to look like and additionally they go to HSCS and they get lots of information about your program. They look at your application. They look at your budget analysis. They look at a lot of things. They look at your PIR. They look a lot of things, so they get to know who you are as a grantee. They also ask you questions about who you are on the phone. For example, tribal programs, this is a great opportunity for you to talk about cultural nuances because that's the time when they start to learn what you're like as a grantee.

Dr. Bergeron:  Right. I was thinking, that's an important thing to point out because this is the opportunity where all of the things that probably give you a little bit of anxiety, you can clear up. If I'm a grantee that serves a very particular kind of population I would want folks to know that before they come in so that they can understand the context of what they're going to see. So I would very much encourage you to take advantage of those pre-conversations.

Adia Brown:  They're really important.

Dr. Bergeron:  Really important.

Adia Brown:  And they're very helpful. Very helpful. Our next question is, is there a specific classroom observation that will be used for EHS that we will be able to review ahead of time? The classroom that's in the protocol is for both Head Start and Early Head Start programs.

Dr. Bergeron:  Okay

Adia Brown:  Okay?

Adia Brown:  What do I search to find the monitoring protocol on E-Click? You need to go to the federal monitoring tab on E-Click and then... I wonder if the picture is still a little guy with the glasses. So it's still a little buy with the glasses and when you see him, he looks very smart, probably like I do. Click on him and he'll lead you to the protocols.

Dr. Bergeron:  That sounds good. Here comes another one. Will the class and the FA2 both be unannounced? Oh that's a good question.

Adia Brown:  That is a good question. This year, only the FA2 will be an unannounced review, not the class.

Dr. Bergeron:  Really good question. So the class review, you'll always know about it.

Adia Brown:  Yes, yes.

Dr. Bergeron:  Not that you wouldn't be prepared if someone just dropped by. We know you would be. Your teachers are awesome.

Adia Brown:  We know you will be.

Dr. Bergeron:  That's it.

Adia Brown:  It looks like it.

Dr. Bergeron:  I don't see any more questions.

Adia Brown:  It looks like it. We think there's no more and then another pops up.

Dr. Bergeron:  I know. Will they be able to ask questions after this webinar?

Adia Brown:  Sure, they will be able to ask questions after this webinar. When they go to the virtual expo, the virtual expo has their office hours and it has places for them to ask questions.

Dr. Bergeron:  So there's no lack of information. Make sure you're prepared, feel really good about this. It's your chance to show off and shine. Right?

Adia Brown:  Yeah. This was our second year doing it together, Dr. Bergeron.

Dr. Bergeron:  I know.

Adia Brown:  The pop quizzes, you nailed them. You did a great job.

Dr. Bergeron:  Amazing what a year will do right?

Adia Brown:  Amazing, amazing.

Dr. Bergeron:  I think last year we tried to do Star Trek.

Adia Brown:  Well that was my outfit. It was my dress.

Dr. Bergeron:  Oh is that what it was? I remember some Star Wars flashback or something.

Adia Brown:  It was my dress. It looked like it had a little telecommunication pin on.

Dr. Bergeron:  That's right.

Adia Brown:  I didn't wear it today because I was hoping to get out of that.

Dr. Bergeron:  All right.

Adia Brown:  Well, grantees, we are looking forward... I'm going to be out on the road this year, so maybe I'll get to see some of you guys. We're looking forward to having a really exciting monitoring year. We want to celebrate your successes with you and we want to help you make the improvements where you need. Monitoring, as always, is an opportunity for you to learn and grow and we hope that we're giving you the tools to do that and I'm just really excited.

Dr. Bergeron:  Yeah, it's going to be a good year.

Adia Brown:  All right. Thank you very much, and have a great day.

Dr. Bergeron:  Have a good day.

Cerrar