(a)
The regional consortia authorized under Section 52059, in collaboration with the department, from funds provided for this purpose pursuant to subdivision (c) of Section 53101, shall provide, at a minimum, technical assistance and support to local educational agencies with one or more persistently lowest-achieving schools to assist with the implementation of the duties specified for any of the four interventions for persistently lowest-achieving schools pursuant to Section 53202.
(b)
Funds for the regional consortia shall be distributed based on the number of persistently lowest-achieving schools identified pursuant to this section and the pupil enrollment of these schools.
(c)
It is the intent of the Legislature that the regional consortia coordinate the duties described in subdivision (a) with the duties performed pursuant to Section 52059 as it relates to schools and districts identified in program improvement pursuant to the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (20 U.S.C. Sec. 6301 et seq.).
(d)
The areas of technical assistance and support pursuant to this section may include, but are not limited to, any of the following:
(1)
Identifying strategies that are designed to recruit, place, and retain staff with the skills necessary to meet the needs of the pupils at the school, including financial incentives, increased opportunities for promotion and career growth, and more flexible work conditions.
(2)
Identifying
strategies that provide increased instructional time.
(3)
Implementing any of the professional development activities authorized in the state’s plan or application submitted for the federal Race to the Top program.
(4)
Developing a new governance structure that may include the establishment of a new turnaround office, located within the local educational agency or the department, that a school implementing the turnaround model will report to.
(5)
Developing social-emotional and community-oriented services, including strategies for parental involvement and services that can be located at the schoolsite.
(6)
Identifying, reviewing, and recommending quality charter school operators, charter management organizations, or education management organizations
that can operate a persistently lowest-achieving school.
(7)
Identifying higher-achieving schools in the school district, including charter schools, to relocate pupils attending a school that is scheduled for closure.
(8)
Developing, in consultation with teachers and principals, a rigorous, transparent, and equitable evaluation system for teachers and principals that includes the use of pupil growth data and other factors such as multiple observation-based assessments that all schools implementing the turnaround or transformation model may use.
(9)
Identifying strategies to identify and reward school leaders, teachers, and other staff who, in implementing the transformation model, have increased pupil achievement and high school graduation rates and have identified and removed those, who, after ample opportunities,
have been provided for them to improve their professional practice, have not done so.
(10)
Identifying and approving mentor schools pursuant to subdivision (c) of Section 53202. The regional consortia shall first seek eligible mentor schools located within the district of each of the schools implementing the turnaround or transformation model.
(11)
Consistent with the collective bargaining agreement, assisting a local educational agency in doing any of the following:
(A)
Meeting federal guidelines under Appendix C of the Notice of Final Priorities, Requirements, Definitions, Selection Criteria for the federal Race to the Top program published in Volume 74 of Number 221 of the Federal Register on November 18, 2009, which encourages the state to ensure that persistently lowest-achieving schools are not required to
accept a teacher without mutual consent of the teacher and principal, regardless of the teacher’s seniority.
(B)
Implementing schoolsite-based teacher hiring decisions.
(C)
Giving persistently lowest-achieving schools first priority in selecting from the qualified district applicant pool, among those teachers who have specifically applied to work at the school.