U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

OFFICE OF SAFE AND DRUG-FREE SCHOOLS

CAROL M. WHITE PHYSICAL EDUCATION PROGRAM

TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE TELECONFERENCE

FRIDAY

FEBRUARY 22, 2008

The PEP Technical Assistance Teleconference was convened at 1:30 p.m.
Eastern Standard Time, Dana Carr and Debbie Rudie, Office of Drug-Free
Schools, presiding.

P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S

1:34 p.m.

OPERATOR: Good afternoon, my name is George and I\'ll be your conference
operator today.

At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Technical
Assistance Conference Call.

All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise.

After the speakers remarks, there will be a question and answer session.

If you\'d like to ask a question during that time, simply press star,
and the number 1 on your telephone keypad.

If you\'d like to withdraw your question, press the pound key.

I\'d like to open the call to Ms. Carr and Ms. Rudy. You may begin your
call.

MS. CARR: Thank you, George. Hello, and welcome to the Technical Systems
Call for the Carol M. White Physical Education Program, also known as
PEP.

I\'m Dana Carr from the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools and I\'m
joined by my colleague, Debbie Rudy, also from the Office of Safe and
Drug Free Schools.

I am going to provide a brief overview of the program for about 5-10
minutes, and then we are going to open up the call to your questions.

As George said, there\'s going to be \-- he will facilitate the question
and answer period.

Just so you know, we are also joined with us, by a transcriber on the
call, who will record all the questions and answers. The transcript of
that portion of the call will be posted on our website at
www.ed.gov/programs/whitephysed/applicant.html. Exactly where you found
the information for this call.

If you have questions that are not addressed on this call, you can call
back into any of the next technical assistance calls we\'ve scheduled,
or you can e-mail me at dana.carr@ad.gov. My e-mail address is posted on
our website also. Or you can cal the phone number also listed on the
website.

For a brief overview of the program, the intent of the PEP program is to
provide grants to local educational agencies and community-based
organizations, to initiate, expand, or enhance physical education
programs for students in kindergarten through twelfth grade. To help
students meet their state standards for physical education.

Eligible applicants, as I said, are local educational agencies,
including charter schools that are considered LEAs under state law. And
community-based organizations, also referred to \-- I\'ll refer to as
CBOs. Which also include faith-based organizations.

Current, active grantees are not eligible to apply. That means that if
you have an active PEP grant, whose end date is after the transmittal
date of March 24, 2008, you are not eligible to apply for this program.
That includes grantees on a current no-cost extension.

You cannot try to end your grant early to be eligible to apply this
year.

The grant period is for up to 36 months. You can propose programs that
last one year, two year, or again, up to that 36-month period. You
don\'t have to propose three year programs if you don\'t want to.

And finally, the application is due on March 24, 2008. And complete
transmittal instructions are included in the application package.

The absolute priority for this program, is the initiation, expansion,
and improvement of physical education programs, including after-school.
In order to make progress towards meeting state standards for physical
education for kindergarten through twelfth grade students by one,
providing equipment and support to enable students to participate
actively in physical education activities.

And two, providing funds for staff and teacher training and education.

To receive PEP funding, a proposed program must provide for one of more
of the following six elements, and I\'ll read them to you, so that you
hear them. They\'re also listed in the application package.

One, fitness education assessment to help students understand, improve,
or maintain their physical well-being. Two, instruction in a variety of
motor skills and physical activities designed to enhance the physical,
mental, and social or emotional development of every student. Three,
development of, and instruction in cognitive concepts about motor skills
of physical fitness, that support lifelong healthy lifestyle. Four,
opportunities to develop positive social and cooperative skills through
physical activity participation. Five, instruction in healthy eating
habits and good nutrition. And finally six, opportunities for
professional development for teachers of physical education, to stay
abreast of the latest research, issues, and trends in the field of
physical education.

We are also \-- excuse me \-- offering a competitive priority again this
year. We will award five additional pints for novice applicants.

The definition of a novice applicant is listed in the application
package again, so please refer to that.

If you are going to be applying as a novice applicant, please be sure to
indicate that on your SF-424 sheet. Also on the screening sheet that is
included in the application package.

If it is not marked, that you\'re applying as a novice on the SF-424, we
will not consider that you\'re applying as a novice and you won\'t be
getting \-- given the five points \-- or consideration for the five
points.

And for the first time this year, we are including an invitational
priority. And this is inviting applicants to propose programs that
address problems identified by the applicant in a self-assessment tool,
called the School Health Index. Which is \-- was created by the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention.

We are specifically inviting applicants to do two of the components. The
physical education and other physical activity programs, and nutrition
service modules.

If CBOs are interested in this invitational priority, they are invited
to partner with a local educational agency or school, to complete these
two modules of the School Health Index. Since the self-assessment tool
is designed to assess school-based programs and policies related to
physical activity and nutrition services.

For more information about the School Health Index, you can look at
www.cdc.gov/healthyuse.

In terms of requirements, the one I will mention here, is that the grant
program has a matching requirement. In year one of this grant, the
grantee must provide 10% of project cost. And in years two and three,
the grantee must provide 25% of program \-- project cost, excuse me.

While there are other requirements for this program, that\'s the one I
wanted to highlight because that\'s the one that\'s most commonly \--
that is commonly missed by applicants.

And if you do not have a match proposed in your budget, you could be
considered ineligible for peer review at all. So I just wanted to
highlight that.

Just a couple of tips for application and applying. If we could offer
you one big piece of advise, it is read the application package in its
entirety. Read it backwards, forwards, and upside down and follow the
instructions.

This is particularly important for the instructions on transmitting the
application. Particularly if you\'re planning to use grants.gov and send
that electronically.

We have no flexibility when it comes to these requirements. So please
read this very, very, very carefully and follow it as carefully as you
can.

If you have any questions at all, please contact the Office of Safe and
Drug Free Schools. Please don\'t contact someone that you got a list
serve e-mail from. If you have any questions, please contact us.

The other piece of advise and it sort of goes with that, is please be
sure that you\'re responsive to the absolute priority and the selection
criteria, and ensure that you provide all of the required information
requested for the application.

So that is all. I told you I\'d be quick. And I just will open it up now
for questions.

OPERATOR: At this time, I would like to remind everyone, if you\'d like
to ask a question, you can press star, 1 on your telephone keypad.

If you\'d like to withdraw your question, press the pound key.

We\'ll pause just for a moment to compile the Q&A roster.

MS. CARR: Thank you.

OPERATOR: Okay, your first question is from Cathy Mangeser. I apologize,
ma\'am, you may have the floor.

QUESTION: Thank you. I have a question regarding the indirect costs that
are allowed.

In the application information, at several points, it talked about a
negotiated restricted indirect cost rate. There is one place where it
just talks about the negotiated direct cost \-- indirect cost rate.

My question is, I\'m with a community-based organization. We have a
negotiated indirect cost rate. It\'s not restricted. Can you explain
what the difference is? And tell us if we would need to go through the
process of getting some sort of a restricted rate?

MS. CARR: Debbie, I\'m going to let you \-- I was going to say, Debbie,
I\'m going to let you answer that one.

MS. RUDY: Generally, if you have had your rate \-- your indirect cost
negotiated with an agency, other than the U.S. Department of Education,
you probably don\'t have a restricted rate.

The restricted rate programs are generally found and administered here
at the U.S. Department of Education.

So, when folks negotiate a rate with us, they usually get both a
restricted and an unrestricted rate.

In the case of local education agencies, those rates are usually
assigned by their state educational agency, and are fairly often
restricted rates. Only a restricted rate is assigned. Although, some
case \-- in some cases, some states do assign both kinds of rates.

For CBOs, if you have an existing negotiated rate, we will \-- we cannot
honor the full unrestricted rate, because this program requires that a
lesser or restricted rate be used.

We will \-- if you\'re a successful applicant, provide an estimated an
amount of funds for indirect costs in your grant award. And we\'ll work
with you in our indirect cost group at the Department to either help you
get a restricted rate issued by your existing cognizant agency. Or
perhaps, in some instances, we\'ve been able to agree on sort of an
informal restricted rate, that both the grantee and our indirect cost
group thinks is an appropriate rate, given the kinds of things that are
usually excluded from the restricted rate negotiations.

But, you don\'t need to do anything in the interim until you\'ve \--
until you get to the point of actually being a grantee. And then we\'ll
work through the steps with you that we need to help you get that
restricted \-- restricted rate or a rate that we can use for that
purpose.

Please do include information about your unrestricted rate in your
application. Just so that we\'ll have a sense of what that is. And that
will help us in estimating some costs to include in your budget, if
you\'re a successful grantee.

QUESTION: Thank you, that\'s very helpful.

MS. CARR: And \-- and I would just add to that, for those of you that do
have restricted rates, please be sure to provide proof of that
restricted rate, or any rate, in your applications that you submit.

Next question.

OPERATOR: Your next question comes from a Lynn Housner. You have the
floor.

QUESTION: Yes, that\'s me. Thank you for being here today.

I was wondering if the unit of analysis for this grant could be a single
elementary school?

MS. RUDY: I\'m sorry, a single \--

QUESTION: Elementary school.

MS. RUDY: If a single elementary school is the school \-- is the local
educational agency, then they can be the applicant. But the \-- but, if
it\'s a local \-- if it\'s a regular elementary school that\'s part of a
school district or local educational agency, they cannot be the
applicant.

QUESTION: So you\'re looking for more district-wide initiatives?

MS. RUDY: Yes, sir.

QUESTION: Okay, good. All right, and just a second question if I could
ask about the matching stipulation.

Five percent is the maximum for administrative matching costs, correct?

MS. RUDY: It\'s \-- there\'s a cap on administrative costs for 5%. So
that either \-- that \-- so that is for the direct cost.

QUESTION: Okay. Can you provide some examples? I never got a clear idea
of what kinds of matching costs could be included in the 10 and 25%.

MS. RUDY: Sure, that\'s actually a great question and that was one of
the one\'s I had on my list if noone else had questions.

Examples of matching can be, for example, if you have some teacher time
that teachers are providing direct instruction that support the goals
and objectives of the program, and help students meet their state
standards, that would be allowable.

If the district would pay for teacher relief time, for teachers to
attend training, that counts.

If districts provide \-- purchase equipment for the program that
supports the goals and objectives of the program, that could be counted.
We would caution you that typically, if you\'ve got gym equipment \-- we
will \-- that \-- it exists, that you\'ve had it for many years, and you
put it in at its original purchase value, we will depreciate that. You
can\'t say that, you know, something you\'ve had in your gym for 10
years is worth the same as when you first bought it.

But certainly any equipment that the district would be using to support
the goals and objectives of the program.

Volunteer time, sometimes hospitals will provide training for teacher or
for parents or direct instruction for students. For example, a nutrition
education, that could be counted towards your match.

QUESTION: What about \-- what about \-- speaking of volunteer time, what
about the time contributed by people on the wellness policy committees?

MS. RUDY: That would probably be just fine. What you would need to
provide \-- what we would ask for you to provide to us in terms of sort
of proof of that costing out, is that the person would be paid per \--
on an hourly basis if they were being paid by your district to do
something.

QUESTION: Okay, because I anticipate \-- I think you\'re encouraging it
this year, to have the county wellness policy committees actually
collaborate with the schools and the school districts.

MS. RUDY: That would be great.

QUESTION: Yes. Okay, cool.

MS. RUDY: And that allows you to be responsive \-- actually very
responsive to one of the selection criteria, so \--

QUESTION: Which is the FHI.

MS. RUDY: Yes, it\'s good to have.

QUESTION: Thank you.

MS. RUDY: Thank you.

OPERATOR: Your next question comes from Ingrid Broadnick. You have the
floor.

QUESTION: Thank you. I\'m with a faith-based organization, and my
question has \-- deals with the novice status.

We have \-- already have HUD grants and HHS grants. Does that take us
out of the novice status for this particular proposal?

MS. RUDY: If you have current, active grants from other federal
agencies, then yes, it does.

QUESTION: Okay, and then the second question has to do with partnering
with schools. Are we required to partner with a local school district or
a local LEA?

MS. RUDY: Are you required to \--

QUESTION: Yes.

MS. RUDY: \-- for \-- just for application purposes?

QUESTION: Yes, for application purpose.

MS. RUDY: No you\'re not. There is no requirement to do so.

QUESTION: Okay, thank you.

MS. RUDY: We would probably encourage you to do so, to strengthen sort
of the link with state centers, but there is absolutely no obligation to
do so.

QUESTION: Okay, thank you.

OPERATOR: Your next question comes from Vincent Hodge.

QUESTION: Yes, thank you. I have a couple questions.

The first is an anticipated expenditure per student. Have you identified
a \-- an expenditure?

And the second would be a partner. If we hire a partner to contract
services, would that be a conflict for us? I know you mentioned
something about the \-- the bidding of services. If we want to partner
with the person that would probably provide services. And if that would
cause us a conflict?

MS. RUDY: Okay, your first question about expected expenditure per
student.

QUESTION: Right.

MS. RUDY: That\'s something that we would ask you \-- that we would work
and figure out. It \-- should you receive your grant as part of your
performance measures. So, that\'s not something that we would probably
expect to see on the front-end in your application.

I\'m going to let Debbie respond to the contracting on bids and
services, since this has been her thorn in her side of late.

MS. CARR: Yes, and I actually I want to ask you to qualify your question
or clarify it a little bit for me. You mentioned that you have a partner
that you would like to perhaps contract with for services.

Can you say a little bit more about what relationship you have with this
organization that you\'d like to contract with?

QUESTION: Well, the organization typically provides support services for
our students. And specifically, they provide physical education type
services. And we\'d want to write the grant with them, because they have
expertise in, you know, how they would supply, or expect those services
to look. And we would bring them in as a partner to help \-- actually
help us write the grant.

So, as we expand the services, we want to include those people in the
services that we expand to students.

MS. CARR: Actually, I should probably say a few words in response to
that question about some requirements for competition in contracting
with public funds with grant funds.

In something called the Education Department General Administrative
Regulations, you\'ll hear us abbreviate that as EDGAR. Part 80 of those
regs, and specifically Section 80.36, talks about the responsibilities
that grantees have in awarding contracts with grant funds.

There are a lot of standards that have to be met. Grantees are generally
permitted to use their own contracting procedures, but they need to be
consistent with the standards that are set out in that \-- in that
portion of EDGAR.

And so, I think generally, it would be worth your while to take a read
through and a look through that, because there are some concerns or some
issues that need to be addressed about competition under a contract
being generally full and open.

That folks \-- a variety of vendors would have an opportunity to compete
in order to win a contract for services. And so to the extent that, for
example, somebody has been involved in developing an application with
you, and developing specifications, and doing things in that vain. It\'s
possible that, that organization, and your organization could have a
conflict of interest that would impact whether or not they could
participate in a \-- in a competition to do services.

So, I guess we would just ask you to look at those requirements and
consider that as you think about partnering with another group. And how
you might do that in a way that keeps you on the right side of kind of
those requirements about competition and procurement\'s.

QUESTION: If we \-- let\'s say we conduct an open bidding. And we
receive the three solicitations, or whatever. And, is it possible for us
to partner with a person before we submit the application?

MS. CARR: And I guess what \-- and I guess what we would say to you is
that, you need to carefully consider what that interaction before looks
like and whether or not that interaction prior to a competition would
constitute a conflict. Or, you know, if a person has been involved in
developing the application, developing for example your proposal, that
they would then be responding to.

I think that you might want to consider whether or not that constitutes
any sort of conflict and, you know, really if that competition is full
\-- full and open, or if, you know, the person that you\'ve been
partnering with from square one has an advantage that others would find
difficult to compete with.

QUESTION: Right, right. So as long as we \-- I\'ll just answer \-- so,
as long as we keep the bidding fair and open?

MS. CARR: Yes, as long as it meets those standards and that you\'re not
incurring conflicts with people that you\'re working with. And that
their role in developing your proposal, is one that is, you know, not
large and significant, and not, you know, making it difficult or
impossible for anybody else to have. You know, to sort of have \-- our
goal in contracting is always a level playing field.

QUESTION: Right.

MS. CARR: As it is in grants. So we don\'t \-- for example, we don\'t
announce the grant to some people on one day and wait three days and
then put it up on the website. You know, we try to be pretty scrupulous
about making sure that everybody has access to the same amount of
information.

That anybody can join in these calls, you know, there\'s \-- I mean, you
know, we try to \-- try to be just, you know, full and open and
everybody come and everybody have the same information and be working
from what is a very level playing field.

And that\'s sort of the same underlying idea about these procurement
provisions.

QUESTION: All right. Now, this is the last question.

We have \-- we have an evaluator that we want to help write our goals
and objectives. Do we \-- can we bring in an evaluator that we already
know, and have hired on our staff? Or do we have to bid that one out?

MS. CARR: Is your question whether or not you must have an external
evaluator?

QUESTION: Yes, we \-- we\'d like to bring one in. A guy that works on
our projects. I mean, we\'d like him to work on our goals and objections
in this application.

Is it possible to contract with him, or do we have to bid that out as
well?

MS. CARR: When you say contract \-- I mean, anytime you say contract
with him, I\'m thinking you need to bid. Or there are procedures. But
there \-- and there are \-- again, you need to read the section of the
regulatory requirements, because there are abbreviated procedures or
informal procedures for smaller \-- smaller dollar size things. And kind
of the lengths that you need to go to.

QUESTION: All right.

MS. CARR: But, pretty \-- pretty much, there are not very many occasions
when from our perspective you don\'t have to do something competitive.

You know, if there truly is only \-- truly, genuinly only a single
source for, say, you know, a material or something that you want to use,
that\'s \-- that\'s one exception. But, you know, they are \-- those
exceptions are very \-- are very few and small in number.

QUESTION: All right. Fantastic. Thank you very much.

MS. CARR: Thank you.

OPERATOR: Okay, next question comes from Ramoldo Rankinson. You have the
floor.

QUESTION: Thank you. I\'m with a CBO, and we currently have a PEP grant,
which ends after March 24th, so we\'re not eligible to apply for
additional funding.

My question is, if we collaborate with an LEA, and they submit a
proposal as the lead agency, but write our program into the application,
will this consider us to be eligible?

Would we still be eligible, or would that \-- would the proposal still
be acceptable?

MS. RUDY: We would say that technically, that is allowed, because of the
way the \-- the regulatory guidance is written. Or, the language is
written that the LEA could apply.

But we would tell you as the \-- that proposal could not be
substantively \-- it must be substantively different than the currently
funded program.

QUESTION: Yes.

MS. RUDY: You cannot propose that it would be the exact same funding. In
other words, you can\'t \-- these aren\'t \-- this shouldn\'t be looked
on as a sustainability, or operating funds, and it would have to be a
relatively different program.

QUESTION: Right, but it would still \-- but if it\'s a different
program, it would still be acceptable for the LEA to submit as the lead
agency?

MS. RUDY: Technically that is allowed.

QUESTION: Okay. My final question is, is the FRP an annual
(\*\*\*inaudible\*\*\* 1:59:37), or is it just released every three
years?

MS. RUDY: We \-- we don\'t actually have sort of a set pattern. Future
competitions depend on congressional appropriations. It also depends on
whether or not we decide we want to fund the next group of highest
scoring applications from this application round. It also depends on
whether or not we want to make changes to the program, which would
require us to run another competition.

QUESTION: Okay, thank you.

MS. RUDY: Thank you.

OPERATOR: Your next question comes from Bart Creewall. You have the
floor.

QUESTION: Yes, if you could talk a little bit more about the Student
Health Index, as the invitational priority?

We\'re looking at a proposal that would be \-- it\'d cover multiple
school districts and dozens \-- couple dozen buildings.

And, one of our goals is to get everybody inline, countywide. It\'s
almost \-- in our case, Student Health Index is \-- would be something
that we would do after we kind of get the curriculum inline countywide,
rather than beforehand.

Could you just talk about the importance of that? Or, if this is a \--
where does \-- where does that stand as an invitational priority?

MS. CARR: What do you mean? Do you mean is it \--

QUESTION: I mean, is it \-- is it this is a nice thing to do, or we
throw it out there for your consideration, or, boy, without this,
you\'re in trouble.

MS. CARR: I think it would be the first couple of statements.

QUESTION: Okay.

MS. CARR: We \-- we put it out there as something that we would
encourage you to consider to do. It\'s certainly not, it\'s not a
requirement. It\'s not an absolute priority.

What the hope is, is that it would help you to identify some key gaps
between current practice and best practices and desirable policies.

QUESTION: Yes, and that\'s in our case \--

MS. CARR: \-- and building level.

QUESTION: Yes, we\'re looking at multiple \-- multiple districts.

MS. CARR: Right.

QUESTION: So we\'re \-- we want to get them inline, and then I think an
SHI assessment would be more reasonable, because the gaps would be
similar as opposed to be all over the, you know, here and there and
everywhere.

MS. CARR: Well, I \-- you know, I can\'t tell you kind of how to
approach this.

QUESTION: Right.

MS. CARR: I think that the \-- you know, if you ask someone from the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the CDC, what they would
think. They would probably say, it\'s always best to do a
self-assessment at baseline. And to see where you are now and where the
gaps and opportunities are. So that you can begin strategic planning, in
a way that\'s uniform across the buildings and across your districts. If
that\'s your goal.

You can certainly do the School Health Index once you\'ve made all of
\-- you know, a whole bunch of changes. To see if those changes were
truly responsive to the gap. And if they help you meet the \-- the
schools meet the gap, then move forward.

QUESTION: Right.

MS. CARR: So, while the \-- the assessment is done at the school
building level. It certainly can be looked at in the aggregate, at the
district level. And certainly again, any aggregate, the meta-aggregate
at the regional level.

It sounds like you\'re doing a \--

QUESTION: Right.

MS. CARR: \-- a county or a regional approach. And that\'s certainly \--
again, this is invitational. We invite you to consider this. It\'s not a
requirement. But that\'s \-- that would be probably how I think they
would advise that you approach it.

QUESTION: Good.

MS. CARR: Is that helpful? Did I answer your questions?

QUESTION: Yes, I think \--

MS. CARR: Okay.

QUESTION: \-- one quick thing. We\'ve written for this grant before
unsuccessfully. In reviewing some of the reviewers comments of the last
time, a couple years ago. In one case we noted that we would have an
external evaluator. But we were dinged, by at least this one reviewer
for not being specific \-- by not specifically naming and identifying
the individual.

So, I\'m kind of \-- is that a \-- you know, obviously this is not
millions of dollars that are going to be allocated to an evaluator. We
\-- but \--

MS. CARR: No.

QUESTION: I\'m kind of at odds here, do I name them \-- name someone? Or
\-- we don\'t have anyone in mind, but I mean, do I identify someone, or
just say we\'re going to do it, and figure that the rules have changed
\-- or the interpretation has changed a little bit.

MS. CARR: I \-- I think that, and Debbie please jump in. I think that
you should \-- you need to follow the rules that Debbie very clearly
delineated about identifying individuals, with anyone with whom you
would contract. And, you would have to have an open fair bid process.

That \-- that\'s really great feedback for us, because that\'s something
that we can build into the peer review training. And make sure that they
understand that.

QUESTION: Now this \-- an outside contractor is different than
identifying someone from within the organization, who would taking lead
role in this program, right? I mean \--

MS. CARR: In terms of evaluation?

QUESTION: No, I mean, in terms \-- in whatever role as a \-- in the
project. If we were to contract outside \--

MS. CARR: Right.

QUESTION: \-- that\'s \-- that\'s up for bid. If you identify someone
within your organization who\' already on staff, to be the lead person
here, there, or whatever, that\'s a different issue.

MS. CARR: That\'s my understanding.

MS. RUDY: You may include information about existing employees \-- a
resume or whatever.

If you are going to contract for services, for example, an external
evaluator, unless you\'ve, you know, done that selection process using
appropriate procedures, probably shouldn\'t be including information in
the application about that\'s going to be.

QUESTION: Okay.

MS. RUDY: Because in theory you don\'t know who that will be.

QUESTION: Yes, exactly. Like I say, two years ago, that was my
interpretation and I was \-- we were dinged a little bit for it. You
know, it was mentioned specifically that we should have mentioned
somebody, so I \--

MS. RUDY: You absolutely should not. I \-- and actually there\'s no
requirement even if you do have an in-house evaluator, to say who
that\'s going to be and provide, you know, provide
(\*\*\*inaudible\*\*\* 2:05:42), or anything.

There is an exception to that, but it doesn\'t \-- that doesn\'t \--
that isn\'t applicable to this \-- to this competition. There is \--
we\'re beginning a competition for another program, where we\'re giving
competitive preference with experimental design evaluations. And in
those cases, we are looking for folks to use an expedited contracting
process, and to identify that person in their qualifications.

QUESTION: Right.

MS. RUDY: But for the person of the PEP, that\'s not \-- not necessary.
And Dana\'s point is a very good one. We\'ll make \-- make it clear to
our peer reviewers, you know, that what they\'re evaluating \-- the
points shouldn\'t be deducted for whether or not someone is named or not
named.

QUESTION: Unfortunately, I don\'t think that made the difference for us
last time around, but it would have helped. So, thank you.

MS. RUDY: Well (\*\*\*inaudible\*\*\* 2:06:36), but it didn\'t make the
difference.

MS. CARR: Exactly, we would have felt bad. But you know, it\'s good for
us to know, sort of where to open people\'s eyes. I\'m sure everybody
else on the phone, you brought up just another point, I do want to kind
of emphasize, is that you also are not required under this program to
hire an external evaluator.

You may, and many, many people do. But that is certainly not required of
you.

QUESTION: Very good, thank you.

MS. RUDY: Thank you.

OPERATOR: Your next question comes from Ms. Debbie Callassi. You have
the floor.

MS. RUDY: Hello?

OPERATOR: Ms. Callassi, you have the floor.

Okay, at this time, there is no response from her line. Her question has
been withdrawn and I will proceed to the next question.

Your next question comes from Sasha Powers.

QUESTION: Hi, if we are grant recipients, what is the obligation of the
LEA after the grant period?

MS. CARR: In terms of?

QUESTION: Do we have to, you know, continue to support by, you know, X
amount of dollars once the grant period is over? Is our LEA responsible
for, you know, X amount of dollars afterwards?

MS. CARR: Okay. Okay, so after the period of the grant is over?

QUESTION: Right.

MS. CARR: Okay. I just wanted to make sure. I heard you asking a
different question and it got me worried.

After the grant period has ended, and you submitted your final report,
and we sent you a letter that said, we\'re closing you out and we close
you out and it\'s over. We have no more contractual relationship. You
have no more obligation to \-- your district has no more obligation.
Frankly, to support any of the initiative, although we would hope that
all of the great work that you\'ve undertaken during the project period
would be sustained by your district, or by matching \-- or, you know,
other sources. But we have no more contractual relationship with you.

QUESTION: Okay, thank you. I have one more quick question.

I had read in the application about hiring staff, and it said that you
could hire P.E. teachers, but it needed to be above and beyond their
normal job function.

We currently do not have an intermediate school P.E. teacher, and the
funding\'s not available for one at this time. Is that something that we
can put in the grant, would be to hire?

MS. RUDY: Yes, you absolutely can. We would \-- we would sort of advise
you just sort of as project officer hats, be thoughtful about what
happens to that position after the grant period ends. And that\'s just
sort of, you know, not as a requirement for you application, but just
sort of food for thought for you, as you sort of enter in that process.

QUESTION: Okay, thank you.

MS. RUDY: And we would caution about hiring staff for any grant program
that we have. The same advice, so.

QUESTION: Okay, thank you very much.

MS. RUDY: Dana, did you have anything else to add?

QUESTION: No, I think (\*\*\*inaudible\*\*\* 2:09:50).

MS. RUDY: Okay.

OPERATOR: Your next question comes from Kim (\*\*\*inaudible\*\*\*
2:09:54). You have the floor.

QUESTION: Hi, I\'m calling from a CBO, and we are \-- have a national
program that we went to cross date lines with to go into two school
districts \-- two elementary school districts in two different states.
Is that allowed?

MS. CARR: That is allowed. That gets very tricky in terms of talking
about state standards.

As I \-- I think that you \-- okay, let me back up. You would need to
identify state standards from each state \-- for each state.

QUESTION: Right.

MS. CARR: For the target population that you would be working with in
each state.

QUESTION: Okay.

MS. CARR: So that \-- that makes it a little more complicated because
you\'re dealing with two sets of state standards.

QUESTION: Right, and I \-- I read where, don\'t use the national
standards, only use the state.

MS. CARR: Right, if your state has standards. Now, if one of those
states does not have state standards \-- just for example, if, you know,
Minnesota is one state and they don\'t have state standards, you could
\-- they could adopt whatever the first states standards are. And you
could just use one set of state standards.

But if each state that you\'re working with \-- so, for example, if
it\'s Maryland and Virginia, you would need to site state standards that
you are targeting from both Maryland and Virginia.

QUESTION: So, even if one of the states does not have it\'s own
standards, don\'t use national? Still use the other states?

MS. CARR: Exactly.

QUESTION: Gotcha. Okay.

MS. CARR: You got it.

QUESTION: Very helpful, thank you.

OPERATOR: Your next question comes from J.J. Buehl. You have the floor.

QUESTION: Yes, to talk about novice grant recipients here.

You had said that if we had received any kind of grants before, does
that mean such as the Kate B. Reynolds grant that was just awarded to
us?

Or a Fresh Fruit and Vegetables grant from the USDA \-- I mean the
Department.

Is that included in those, or is it just a PEP-type grant?

MS. CARR: It\'s any grant from the federal government. It says \-- but a
discretionary grant from the federal government, in the five years
before the deadline date for the competition.

I\'m not familiar with the first one you mentioned. Is that a
discretionary?

QUESTION: The Kate B. Reynolds grant was given to local schools that
here, in North Carolina, that met certain requirements, such as, free
and reduced \-- number of free and reduced lunch applicants
(\*\*\*2:12:16\*\*\* inaudible).

MS. CARR: That\'s not a federal grant.

QUESTION: Okay. Now the other one \--

MS. CARR: No, I\'m asking. If that\'s not a federal grant, then it
doesn\'t matter. And I don\'t \-- I don\'t think, is the Fruit and
Vegetable one?

QUESTION: I would assume that\'s a federal one, just because it \--

MS. CARR: That\'s definitely federal. I just don\'t know if it\'s
discretionary.

QUESTION: What does discretionary mean?

MS. CARR: It means that you would have had to compete in a grant
competition. Like what you\'re doing right now for PEP.

QUESTION: Yes, we \-- yes, we did, but it was only for Fruit and
Vegetables. You cannot use physical education. You could not use
anything. That was just getting \-- so, yes, we had to compete. There
was 25 schools in North Carolina received the grant. So, once you
applied for it, you could get it, you know?

MS. CARR: Oh.

MS. RUDY: But, did everybody that applied receive funding?

QUESTION: No.

MS. RUDY: Was it like an allocation, or were some successful and some
not successful?

QUESTION: Right, some were not.

And now \-- now, we\'ll say this, our school, the one that I\'m
currently at is the only one that got it out of our district. There are
other 2 \-- 3 elementary schools \-- other 2 elementary schools applied
for it, but they did not get it.

So, I\'m the only one that got it in this whole county. But, if we\'re
doing a district PEP grant here, is that \-- is this going to hinder us
then?

MS. CARR: You know, this seems like a very specialized situation. And
maybe you could just e-mail us and we could talk offline.

QUESTION: That\'s fine.

MS. CARR: So that we \-- yes, because it seems like this is \-- and
I\'ll do a little homework too on that program.

QUESTION: Okay.

MS. CARR: And figure out whether or not that counts or not.

QUESTION: Okay, and then \-- now, as well as that, such as a dropout
grant. Things that our county has gotten, should I just e-mail you and
just let you kind of look through that, and see if we would apply as a
novice?

MS. CARR: I would talk to your business office and just find out if
they\'ve received any federal discretionary grants.

QUESTION: Okay.

MS. CARR: It\'s maybe \-- I think \-- I suspect the dropout one probably
would count as a federal discretionary. If \-- if it\'s from our
Department, for example \-- but yes, we can \-- if you\'ve got very
specific stuff like this, we can talk.

QUESTION: Okay, that\'s fine. And then the other thing, right at the
beginning you were talking about, of course the matching grants. And I
have spoken to Rosalee about this a little bit, but one thing that
caught my ear just now, is you were talking about equipment that would
be used. And you said if you purchased it 10 years ago, you know, they
would have depriate \-- you know what I\'m trying to say.

MS. CARR: Depreciation.

QUESTION: Thank you. And, but the \-- some of the new stuff that we\'re
about to get, such as the Hop Sports training system in our school. Can
we use that if we\'re using that towards our goal here? We could use
that whole price if it\'s just brand new? Is that correct?

MS. CARR: Absolutely, yes.

QUESTION: Okay.

MS. RUDY: But it also goes to the goals and objectives of your program.

QUESTION: Right. Well, I mean, the goals in our \-- basically in our
program I guess, would be to making sure that more of our children get a
quality physical education program. And with the Hop Sports system, it
does that. You know, it will be included in that most \-- almost
everyday, once we get it, so.

And then you also said that, you could hire a physical education
teacher. Is that correct? As long as you could look at it to see if they
are going to stay. Is that correct? After the grant?

MS. CARR: You can \-- okay, well, a couple of things first. And, Debbie,
did you want to jump in?

MS. RUDY: I made some notes, and I\'ll jump in after you finish.

MS. CARR: Okay, okay. You don\'t have to tell us that you\'re going to
sustain \-- I just want to make a couple of points about hiring a P.E.
teacher.

I didn\'t mean to say \-- I didn\'t mean to imply that, that was a
requirement for including that in your budget, the hiring of a P.E.
teacher.

(Simultaneous talking.)

QUESTION: No, but that\'s what most of us need.

MS. CARR: But, sure \-- but I was just saying as sort of food for
thought, kind of advice from people who\'ve seen a lot of these grants
come and go, is that it\'s just something \-- just something for you to
think about long-term.

You can absolutely, as long as the funds incurred under this program do
not supplant local funds, then you can absolutely hire a P.E. teacher.

QUESTION: Okay, explain that last part.

MS. CARR: Again \-- I\'m sorry?

QUESTION: Explain that last part.

MS. CARR: As long as \-- for example, you couldn\'t have a P.E. teacher
that is on the payroll currently, that you would say, okay, we\'re going
to use grant funds to pay that person.

QUESTION: Right, right.

MS. CARR: And we\'re going to take that money and put it someplace else.

QUESTION: Oh, no, no, no. No, we need another P.E. teacher in each of
our schools.

MS. CARR: There you go.

QUESTION: Because I\'ve got 900 students in just mine, so.

MS. CARR: Okay.

QUESTION: Yes, we need some more help. So that\'s what I\'m wondering,
so.

MS. CARR: Okay.

QUESTION: Okay.

MS. RUDY: A couple of other points if I can. When we were talking back
about novice \-- novice preference. Remember that the entity that is the
applicant, in your case, it\'s going to need to be your school district,
not your school.

QUESTION: Right.

MS. RUDY: But you\'ll need to be thinking about whether your school
district has been a recipient of a prior federal grant. That\'s what \--
you know, we\'ll check by looking at the \-- at your districts
(\*\*\*inaudible\*\*\* 2:17:46) number.

So, keep in mind that the applicant needs to be your district.

Secondly, mentioned using equiptment that you\'re purchasing in the near
term and that is consistent with the goals of your grant. Just want to
have a \-- say another word or two about the issue of depreciation.

If you\'re going to be spending \$50,000 for that equipment that you\'re
going to be buying, and you\'re going to use it across the years of the
program, don\'t \-- I mean, you can\'t be taking all \$50,000 of that in
year one, because it\'s not all used up in year one.

That same concept of depreciation, just as the stuff that\'s been in
your building for 10 years, doesn\'t hold it\'s original value for that
period of time.

A similar concern about a new purchase. You know, it\'s not all in the
project and used up after year one.

QUESTION: Right.

MS. RUDY: Because you\'re going to have it hopefully for three years, or
five years. And so you would need to charge a portion of that \-- or
make a portion of that your matching funds. Not the entire cost.

QUESTION: Okay, I understand.

MS. RUDY: Okay.

MS. CARR: Okay.

QUESTION: Thank you.

OPERATOR: Your next question comes from Jose Santiago.

QUESTION: Good afternoon. My question is pretty simple. Our district has
two departments. An elementary department and secondary level
department, physical education.

Can we submit two different applications for our district?

MS. CARR: Yes, are you one local education \-- you\'re one school
district?

QUESTION: Yes.

MS. CARR: And why wouldn\'t you want to just submit one application?

QUESTION: We would like to do a separate \-- we have, like I said, two
different departments, and we have different \-- different goals and
objectives.

MS. CARR: That\'s \-- that\'s okay for one application. That\'s
perfectly acceptable to focus on two different age groups.

QUESTION: Okay.

MS. CARR: And clearly, the high school students, or the secondary
students would have different goals and objectives from the elementary
students.

So, if you wanted to, I mean, you could submit it as one with two
different foci.

Debbie, I don\'t \-- in terms of submitting two \--

MS. RUDY: I think essentially it\'s fine \-- it\'s fine to do either
thing. I think that from a strategic perspective, if you\'re submitted
two, you\'re sort of competing against yourself.

QUESTION: Okay.

MS. RUDY: In a way that you \-- but then the other \-- and conversely,
then you\'ve got all your eggs in one basket, and you\'re either going
to succeed or fail.

QUESTION: Yes, absolutely. But that basically answered my question.
Thank you very much.

OPERATOR: Your next question comes from Anna Marie Carlisle. You have
the floor.

QUESTION: Hi, I\'m calling from Chicago and I work at a community-based
organization, that manages a network of charter schools.

I wanted to make sure that we can partner with our own charter schools,
and that we can include within this proposal, working with three charter
schools that will be opening in the fall. So, they\'re not open yet.

MS. CARR: I\'m just jotting this down, so I catch it all.

Are you \-- so you \-- would you be the applicant or the charter school
would be \-- one of the charter schools would be an applicant?

QUESTION: No, because the charter schools aren\'t considered LEAs in
Illinois. So we would be the applicant.

MS. CARR: Are you \-- so you\'re considered an LEA?

QUESTION: No, we\'re a CBO.

MS. CARR: Oh, a CBO. I\'m so sorry. Okay, you said that.

So, that \-- that would be fine. Sure, sure.

In terms of the schools opening in the fall, Debbie?

MS. RUDY: Yes, I think that\'s okay. It wouldn\'t be okay if they were
opening the next fall.

QUESTION: Okay, right.

MS. RUDY: You know, basically we\'re going to, you know, hope to award
these grants at the beginning of July \-- at the end of June and
beginning of July. And we\'re making the assumption \-- it sounds like
some schools are \-- that you would be working with are already open and
others would be enrolling children within a few months, and the program
would be getting directly underway.

QUESTION: Right. We\'ve got five existing schools, and three more on the
way.

MS. CARR: That will be fine.

MS. RUDY: Yes, I think that\'s fine.

MS. CARR: Yes, I do too. And since you\'re applying as the CBO, it\'s
not like we have to wait for them to attain LEA status, which is
sometimes a problem with a charter school.

QUESTION: Yes. And then for the school \-- so it will be a total of
eight schools, we don\'t need to submit eight different versions of
everything, if we\'re trying to meet the same state standards at every
school, correct?

MS. CARR: Right. So basically doing the same program?

QUESTION: Right.

MS. CARR: Yes, that\'s fine.

QUESTION: Okay.

MS. CARR: That\'s fine.

QUESTION: Thanks.

MS. CARR: That\'s fine. And \-- okay \-- yes, I\'ll just stop there.

OPERATOR: Your next question comes from Susan Jordan. You\'ve got the
floor.

QUESTION: Thank you, I had two questions. One, you\'ve already answered.
The other is, I\'d just like some clarification on the difference
between administrative expenses and indirect costs.

MS. CARR: That\'s a good, popular question. Debbie, do you want to?

MS. RUDY: Yes, I will take a stab at this.

I guess, I\'m not sure what the easiest, or the most direct or easy way
to explain this is.

Generally, what \-- when you think about indirect costs, you should
think about those kind of in comparison or in opposition to direct
costs. And in that case, the indirect\'s \-- the directs are the ones
that we can, and you all, can easily identify and charge, or cost out
directly to this project.

And the indirect\'s are those things that, by their very nature, are
difficult to determine, you know, how much of a resource you\'ve used.
Kind of in the general resource that you\'ve used in your agency, for
this project.

And so things that are often in indirect\'s are things like \-- oh, I
don\'t know \-- utilities, liability insurance for your organization.
Those kinds of things, where the benefits cross many projects and
programs in your organization.

And it\'s difficult, or impossible to say, you know, to figure out what
share belongs to \-- for example, your PEP project. The thing that kind
of you should be thinking about, in terms of admin, the sort of other
\-- the costs that aren\'t admin costs, are what we would consider
programmatic, or program costs.

And the only language that we have available to offer to you all, is the
definition about what those things are, is that administrative costs are
those things that are incurred for costs that are typical for the
development, administrational in a general way.

So reporting, filing, reporting \--

MS. CARR: Bookkeeping.

MS. RUDY: Bookkeeping. Those things we would generally considered to be
administrative costs.

For example, one thing that we look at in these grants, because there is
a 5% cap for administration on the federal grant funds. Somebody will
include a project director and that is often outside of the scope. A
full-time project director is often outside of the scope of the 5% of
their grant size.

But we, you know, we always sort of them poke around in what that person
is doing. And some of what they\'re doing is administrative. But,
usually what we find is that some of what they\'re doing is program.
They are training teachers, they are \-- they have content expertise,
they\'re selecting materials and equipment, and you know, things based
on that content expertise. And we would consider those functions to be
program functions.

The place where I\'m going to leave you in the lurch here, and I\'m not
really sure what to tell you about that, is to what extent those two
things \-- the admin cost cap and the indirect cost \-- how they
interact with one another.

So, for example, if you have an indirect cost rate that exceeds 5%, I\'m
really \-- we\'re going through some discussion in the Department right
now, about how to treat the intersection of those \--

QUESTION: Right. Right now ours is at 6.13. So, I was thinking I could
probably just leave that in, because that\'s different than an
administrative expense.

MS. RUDY: And that\'s what we\'re actually trying to figure out. Is to
what, you know, whether or not those things can work in \-- in parallel.
Or if the indirect costs are assumed to all be administrative in nature
and consuming that administrative cost cap at the same time.

QUESTION: Right. I mean, if I put in a percentage of my \-- of the time
for our superintendent or an assistant superintendent, I would put those
in as administrative, but I don\'t add those in at all anyway.

MS. RUDY: Yes.

QUESTION: So I guess I\'m somewhat at a loss as to where does
administrative expense, which I wouldn\'t include anyway \-- what impact
that might have on my budget.

MS. CARR: If you don\'t need to include it, I would say just don\'t
include it.

QUESTION: Right, but will it impact \-- do I need to limit my indirect
costs to your 5%, or is my 6.13 okay?

MS. RUDY: I would put down your 6.13, and if you are fortunate enough to
be on the funding slate when we review your budget. By then we will
hopefully have figured out whether or not you\'re limited to 5%, or if
you can have 6.13.

QUESTION: Okay.

MS. RUDY: And I\'m sorry that this is an underdevelopment response, but
it is pretty thorny going, and it has caused a lot of \-- all of the
program offices in the Department, as well as all of our finance folks
and \-- so, we\'re just \-- we\'re trying to move, I think, towards a
position where we\'re giving consistent advice across programs and
across offices in the Department. And I\'m not sure we\'re there right
yet.

But put it \-- put down \-- you know, I mean this is always one of those
where it\'s better to put down, because we\'re not going to let you add
after the fact.

QUESTION: Right, so I\'ll put my 6.13, and if you need to change it,
you\'ll change it.

MS. RUDY: Change it.

MS. CARR: Exactly. And thanks for that question, because it\'s one that
comes up an awful lot, and I\'m sure folks on the phone didn\'t even
know they had it. And they\'re glad to hear the answer.

QUESTION: All right.

MS. CARR: So thank you.

QUESTION: Absolutely.

OPERATOR: Your next question comes from Ingrid Broadnax. You have the
floor.

QUESTION: Thank you. I just want to go back to bidding of contracts. And
you probably feel that you\'ve already answered it completely, but
several months ago, we had talked to an individual about (\*\*\*
inaudible 2:29:31\*\*\*) heading our physical education programs. And,
so we had been talking about either bringing him onboard as a direct
hire. And so then he would coordinate the programs in three sites. Or
possibly as a consultant.

But what you \-- what I\'m hearing you say is that, the open bid process
is required.

MS. RUDY: Well certainly not for a direct hire. You would just do
whatever you do in terms of following your personnel procedures.

QUESTION: Okay.

MS. RUDY: If that\'s the route that you would \-- I mean, you just need
to use your personnel \-- your \-- we don\'t have alternative procedures
for hiring that are required with federal grant. We would just expect
you to sort of do what you do, and follow the procedures and processes
that your organization has in place for hiring an employee.

QUESTION: Okay, but if we decided to go the route of the consultant,
what I\'m hearing you say is that, it\'s just not simply choosing this
individual, but we would have to do open bid process.

MS. RUDY: Yes, to some extent I think that\'s correct. That, I mean \--
and again, there are levels and layers of complexity and again, I don\'t
know your \-- I don\'t know your procurement or contracting processes
for your organization.

But yes, our expectation is that as a general matter, when you are
contracting with government funds, that they are awarded competitively.

QUESTION: Okay, thank you.

OPERATOR: Your next question comes from Brent Times. You have the floor.

QUESTION: Yes, thank you Dana and others. This is very, very helpful.

I\'m working with a collaborative arrangement with a couple of CBOs and
two or three fairly large school districts. And we\'ve identified
approximately 2,000-3,000 youngsters with disabilities in need of
nutrition education and physical activity and physical education.

Would a proposal be acceptable if it was exclusively for children with
disabilities in physical education and nutrition education?

MS. CARR: We would say absolutely. As long as it is responsive to the
absolute priority and to the selection criteria.

QUESTION: Terrific, thank you.

MS. CARR: You can absolutely target a specific population in your
district, that you find to be at highest need.

QUESTION: Okay, thank you very much. So we can exclusively identify and
provide in our goals and objectives exclusively for children with
disabilities?

MS. CARR: Again, as long as their responsive to the absolute priority,
you identify state standards, and you can be responsive to the selection
criteria.

QUESTION: Very good, thank you.

MS. CARR: Thank you.

OPERATOR: Your next question comes from Doreen Halperin. You have the
floor.

QUESTION: I\'d like to revisit the novice applicant again. Would I be
right to assume that any Title money that school districts receive, or
pass-through money, federal pass-through money that states allocate,
such as Reading First, would not apply?

MS. CARR: Right, the \-- right. You would still be \-- the novice \--
the definition of novice \-- let me just read it.

There \-- it says, the term, novice applicant is defined as any
applicant for a grant from the Department of Education that one, has
never received a grant or sub-grant under the program from which it
seeks funding. So it has never had a PEP grant.

Has never been a member of a group application submitted in accordance
with the CFR number, that received a grant under the \-- under this PEP
program. So, you\'ve never been part of the (\*\*\*inaudible\*\*\*
2:33:19).

QUESTION: Right.

MS. CARR: That received a PEP grant. And has never received an active
discretionary grant from the federal government in the five years before
the deadline for this competition.

So any \-- so, a discretionary grant, again, is a competition like this.
Where you write an application, it\'s peer reviewed, you\'re selected,
not everybody gets it.

QUESTION: Right, I\'m very familiar with that. So, it\'s only limited to
those agencies directly from the federal government? So, in \-- a
discretionary grant, which is reading first, which is federal
pass-through money. It\'s federal dollars, but it\'s allocated by the
state. We\'re still considered novice?

MS. CARR: Debbie?

MS. RUDY: Yes, actually the Reading First question sort of threw me for
a loop, because that\'s competitive at the sub-state level.

I can answer more positively with regard to, for example, your Safe and
Drug Free Schools state grant funds, or Title 2 funds, or those funds
that are basically allotted to your district based on a formula that has
to do with enrollment or some other component.

I \-- again, I want to go back and look at the \-- look at the
definition in parse a little bit, but I basically, your district \-- I
mean, as I\'m thinking about this, your district didn\'t receive
discretionary grant and didn\'t have to compete for discretionary grant
from us. But, let us \--

MS. CARR: Yes, that\'s \--

QUESTION: But it\'s federal money. That\'s why I \-- that\'s why I
didn\'t know.

MS. CARR: No, it\'s a good question. We\'ll \-- we \-- if again, same
things as we advised the other person \-- I\'m sorry, whose name I wrote
down on my other piece of paper \-- why don\'t you e-mail us and we can
talk about it off-line?

QUESTION: Okay.

MS. CARR: Because we\'ll need to do \-- well, we\'ll just need to do a
little homework on our end.

QUESTION: Okay. Thanks, I\'ll do that (\*\*\*inaudible\*\*\* 2:35:20).

MS. CARR: Thank you. And this is a really good \-- again, this is good
for us to know, because this is something we can sort of talk about on
the next technical assistance call. We\'ll try to address this up-front.

QUESTION: Okay, thanks.

MS. CARR: Thank you.

OPERATOR: At this time, I\'m showing no more questions in the queue.

I apologize, next question\'s from Lynn Housner.

QUESTION: One final question. Could you share with us some key
non-allowable expenses we should watch out for?

MS. CARR: Sure, surely. I think, you know, one of the \-- the first one
that pops in my head is food.

QUESTION: Okay.

MS. CARR: Or incentives.

QUESTION: No beer?

MS. CARR: Pardon me?

QUESTION: No beer?

MS. CARR: No beer, you know, no pizza parties, no ice cream socials. We
\-- no incentives. Lots of people want to give t-shirts, they want to
give awards to kids, or they want to take them bowling as a reward for
doing something.

QUESTION: Okay.

MS. CARR: None of that is allowable. Something that is unallowable is
\-- in your application \-- this is just something for you to know, and
it may or may not be \-- have a budget impact, is that something that\'s
unallowable is the use of your equipment that you purchased for this
program by community \-- by the community, or families on a regular
basis.

QUESTION: Okay.

MS. CARR: We see that a lot. Any kind of like award banquets, anything
like that. Any activities that are considered recreational, that
wouldn\'t necessarily help kids meet their physical \-- that their
physical education state standards.

So things like fishing or orienteering. Stuff like that, that really
doesn\'t count sort of an activity component.

QUESTION: Okay. What about \-- I know years ago, I think maybe even in
the first round of this grant, substitute teachers were not allowed.

MS. CARR: No, we would \-- if the substitute teachers are being brought
in so that the regular classroom teachers can attend professional
development, that\'s allowable.

QUESTION: Cool, okay.

MS. CARR: Relief time. If teachers are asked to come to a professional
development session on Saturday, for example, you can pay them a stipend
to do so.

QUESTION: Okay.

MS. CARR: Anything like that is definitely allowable.

I\'m trying to think of other, sort of glaring things that we always
chop out of budgets.

No construction. We\'re not going to be building gyms. No permanent
structures. We\'re not going to be, you know, paving running tracks, or
anything like that.

MS. RUDY: No new air conditioning in your gym.

MS. CARR: Yes, not that kind of stuff. You know, the bottom line is
making sure that costs are always reasonable and allowable.

QUESTION: Right.

MS. CARR: So, we\'re not going to be paying \$10,000 for a motivational
speaker. We\'re not going to be paying for kids to go to competitive
games. So to compete in a district-wide track meet, or something, you
know, Penn Relays or something. We\'re not going to be paying for any of
that kind of stuff.

The idea, sort of lifelong physical activity, helping kids meet their
state standards, and helping the most kids in your target population
participate.

So, you know, we would \-- we would probably not allow for three kids to
be taken to the Red Sox game, or something like that.

QUESTION: Right, right. Now what about the \-- you just mentioned
recreational opportunities. What if, in a community, there are lots of
potential physical education and structural opportunities in the private
sector. And there might be some marginal cost to gain access to those,
at least in the short-term. Things like golf courses and swimming pools
come to mind.

MS. CARR: You said \-- what you said is sort of the trigger. It\'s that
there\'s a physical education opportunity. And so it\'s \-- it\'s not a
recreation if you\'re actually \-- the kids are either learning a skill
or they\'re applying a skill that they learned in the classroom.

QUESTION: So, if the local country club \--

MS. CARR: To me that would be \--

QUESTION: \-- agrees to provide instruction for children in high school
physical education classes, that would be reasonable to transport those
kids to an from that opportunity?

MS. CARR: For the \-- for golf, did you say?

QUESTION: Yes, golf.

MS. CARR: Is that what you said. Sure, I think we have funded golf in
the past.

MS. RUDY: We have.

MS. CARR: We have funded golf-related activity. We fund \-- we fund all
kinds of stuff. I mean, so \-- we have funded snow shoeing and canoeing
and bowling units and golf and swimming.

QUESTION: Very good.

MS. CARR: And rock climbing, dancing, yoga, pilates, you name it. I
mean, we\'re \-- you know, as long as kids are getting \-- Dance
Revolution \-- as long as kids are getting up, they\'re moving, they\'re
trying, you\'re getting them to meet their state standards.

Another sort of big category of activities that we typically cut are
sort of general health education activities. So, if you wanted to build
in anything sort of like tobacco, or characterize \-- tobacco prevention
and character education, general life skills curriculum, any of that
kind of stuff, we\'ll cut it. Because that\'s not sort of within the
scope of his program.

QUESTION: Right.

MS. CARR: All great things \-- all things we\'re hoping you\'re \--
we\'ll hope that you\'re doing in your schools in your districts, but
it\'s outside of the scope of this program.

QUESTION: And nutrition is now within the scope?

MS. CARR: Nutrition is absolutely in the scope.

QUESTION: Very good. Okay, cool.

MS. RUDY: Another group of things that we have excised from budgets are
things that are directly related to competitive sports. People have
requested new bleachers for their athletic fields. A new \-- not so much
Jumbotron, but a pretty nice scoreboard. Some things like that, that I
think we believe are sort of more necessary as a part of interscholastic
and competitive things, then sort of the general physical activity that
is the \-- and lifelong fitness that\'s the goal of this program.

QUESTION: Very good, thank you.

MS. CARR: Yes. And I think we would advise is, you know, think carefully
about what you put in your budget. Please don\'t just agree to lock,
stock, and barrel something that someone tells you that you should buy.

Would just be \-- sort of (\*\*\*2:42:08 inaudible), what are sort of
best practices, and season (\*\*\*inaudible\*\*\* 2:42:12) product
officer hats.

That would just be a piece of advice I would give you, is just think
very carefully about what your needs are and what your capabilities are
in your district to utilize the purchases that you\'re making.

QUESTION: Very good.

MS. CARR: Another thing that \-- and I\'m glad you brought this up. This
is a great question. And something I just want to throw out there, is
that when you do your budgets, we would \-- we would ask that you
provide as much detail as possible in your budget narratives.

No amount of detail is too much for us. We would like as much detail as
you can possibly provide.

Often what happens, if we have to go back and ask people, they\'ll say,
oh, we\'ve got this beautiful Excel spreadsheet with all of our
(\*\*\*2:42:54\*\*\* inaudible) cost on it. And any of that kind of
stuff, please send it along with us. It helps us to determine if your
costs are reasonable and allowable. And whether or not, bottom line, is
if you\'ve added everything up right.

So that helps us make a correct determination about your budget. And
again, we want to see as much detail as you can.

Please don\'t just put in a line that says, equipment, middle school
equipment, and in parenthesis, balls, hoops, hullahoops. We want to see
the breakdown of every \-- of all the things that you\'re buying.

QUESTION: Okay.

MS. RUDY: And please \-- please don\'t count on us having the time to
come back to you, if your application ends up in the funding range, and
if your equipment purchase line says, equipment, middle school,
\$75,000, and that\'s it \-- that\'s probably not going to have a very
happy outcome.

We\'re \-- we\'re going to look for a lot more detail and probably are
not going to have time to come back and try to sort of pry it out of
people a piece at a time.

So please, when you submit, put your best foot forward, give us the
information that we need to be able to say, these are all great
expenditures, they all make sense in the context of the program that\'s
being proposed. Costs seem reasonable. We can tell that while the bottom
line looks like a lot, we see the component pieces and those costs seem
reasonable.

But it\'s not usually \-- usually it does not turn out well if we\'re
doing a lot of guessing, because we\'re apparently not very good
guessers.

MS. CARR: Yes, and if \-- if for example, you obviously hit a cord with
us, because we just keep talking and talking.

Please don\'t just give us a category that\'s called like, miscellaneous
costs. That will be cut quicker than the blink of an eye. Don\'t give us
just miscellaneous or other.

But, by the same token, if you, for example, are going to let your
middle school teachers decide what equipment they want to buy
themselves, and they \-- please provide us a list of the possibilities.
And \-- or likewise, if they\'re going to get to choose from three
different training\'s, and the cost-out for each of those training\'s,
and they\'re going to be given a budget of whatever. At least give us
some very clear guidelines as to what the parameters are, so that we can
be clear that each of the things on that list, or each of the choices
are allowable and are reasonable.

QUESTION: Very good.

MS. CARR: Otherwise, it\'s just going to get cut right out.

QUESTION: Thank you.

MS. CARR: And not to be dire about it, but, that\'s just the nature of
the beast.

OPERATOR: Your next question comes from Carol Brooks. You have the
floor.

QUESTION: Thank you, and thanks for this opportunity to answer all our
questions. I know it takes a lot of your time.

MS. CARR: You know, this is so \--

QUESTION: Hopefully we can save you some by answering them.

MS. CARR: I was just going to say, it\'s so much better, yes.

QUESTION: Okay, on Page 11, when you talked about the grantee meetings.
We obviously have to figure out airfare. I assume they\'re in
Washington, D.C., for the meetings.

MS. CARR: That\'s right.

QUESTION: And we don\'t \-- I don\'t know exactly how much to allow for
other things. Do we just kind of guess and then that\'s okay to change
that when we know if we\'re going there?

MS. CARR: That is fine. What you can do, is you can look on GSA, the
General Services Administration, has per diem rates and hotel rates for
\--

QUESTION: I\'m sorry, what was that again?

MS. CARR: It\'s the General Services Administration, GSA. And if you
just type in Goggle, if you just say, GSA per diem, it will pull you up
to the per diem rate page. Just look for Washington, D.C.

I think the current rate for the hotel \-- for a hotel room per night is
\$150, or something like that.

MS. RUDY: I think it \-- yes, I actually think it\'s more like \$250 or
\--

MS. CARR: Is it really? Look at me. Behind the times.

And, it will also tell you what, what the government would pay for per
diem.

Now, we would also tell you that you would need to work with your
district. If your district has a policy for paying either per diem or
for paying by expense. I know some districts require that you submit
receipts for all of your expenditures when you travel, including food.
So, they don\'t give you a per diem. They say you have to be reimbursed
for everything. Just make your best guess and make sure that it\'s \--
just make sure that it\'s reasonable.

Sometimes a GSA rate helps you to think about what things cost in D.C.
Because it can be considerably more expensive here than some other parts
of the country.

QUESTION: Okay. And then also on budget, on Page 11, the national
evaluation that we would be required to participate if we\'re awarded
the grant.

Should we be budgeting in for that, or \-- I\'m not sure what that is.

MS. CARR: Nope. That\'s a \-- I\'m really glad you brought that up.
Thank you so much.

That is a study that we are undertaking at the Department. You don\'t
have to worry about putting in any funds for that at all. Because, if
\-- if we need to work \-- if we ask to work with you, it\'s evaluation
work that is undertaken from us at the Department. It\'s our money that
we\'re putting into it.

The only thing that we would ask is that you participate in the
evaluation if you\'re asked to fill out a survey, for example. Please do
so and please return it to us.

If somebody calls and asks you to do a structured interview, or to come
to do a site visit, please \-- please welcome them.

You will have advance warning of what\'s happening and when things are
going to happen. Your project officer should \-- will probably let you
know.

We don\'t have an idea at the moment of exactly what the \-- the
methodology\'s going to look like. So, I can\'t tell you, sort of how
we\'re going to structure it and who we\'re going to look at.

But this is a national evaluation. So this is to determine, at the end
of broadest aggregate level, across all of the funded programs, is the
PEP program having its desired effect?

And the \$70-something million dollars we put out annually. Is that
helping kids meet their state standards? And is it helping school
districts and community-based organizations change their policies and
practices around getting kids to be more active and eat more
nutritiously, and all that good stuff.

Is that helpful?

QUESTION: Yes, and then another budget question is, is we utilize simple
therapy for our special education students, we need special ed buses to
get them there. Is transportation allowed under that situation?

MS. CARR: You can charge for transportation \-- you obviously can\'t buy
a bus.

QUESTION: Right.

MS. CARR: But yes, you can do that. You ask, but we\'ve seen that in
budgets before. But you can charge say, by the mile. If you need to rent
a bus that\'s sort of above and beyond what the regular use of a school
bus would be in the day.

So sure, for an after-school program. If you\'re going 20 miles and
it\'s 10 cents per mile, three times a week, that\'s how you would cost
it out.

And we would want to see that level of calculation.

QUESTION: Okay great. And then the last one. On page 19, the subjects
reviewed by executive order 12372. And it\'s one of the questions that
we have to answer.

I called my clearinghouse number. There\'s no longer a clearinghouse for
Illinois.

MS. CARR: Okay.

QUESTION: So \--

MS. CARR: Then you are not \--

QUESTION: So, would that be a no, on that answer? Or do I pursue and try
and find someone?

MS. CARR: No.

MS. RUDY: No, I mean you\'re state is either a standard participating or
its not. And if they\'re not, they\'re not and you\'re off the hook.

OPERATOR: Okay.

MS. CARR: Lucky you.

OPERATOR: Yes. The contact information \-- yes, I have that information
and the source to prove that I did call and check.

MS. CARR: Yes.

OPERATOR: Okay, thank you very much.

MS. CARR: Perfect, thank you.

OPERATOR: The next question comes from John Andorfer. You have the
floor.

QUESTION: Hi, I guess my question is really one of where we fit in terms
of the definition of the applicant organizations. Because we\'re looking
at probably a group, or a contortion of elementary schools, we\'re all
Catholic schools in Omaha. And we don\'t have an LEA. The term CBO
doesn\'t really ring a bell.

And so, I\'m just wondering if we\'re kind of a subset of the diilsecean
school system, but we\'d be applying on our own.

Would non-profit status be more appropriate for us?

MS. RUDY: Your choice \-- the only two types \-- can I go ahead?

MS. CARR: Yes, go, go, yes.

MS. RUDY: The only two types of organizations that are eligible to apply
are either LEAs or community-based organizations.

You\'re not going to be an LEA. Since that\'s a public entity.

QUESTION: Okay.

MS. RUDY: But I suspect, and this is a \-- just a suspicion on my part,
that your organization may meet the definition for community-based
organization.

QUESTION: And is there sort of a (\*\*\*inaudible\*\*\* 2:52:01) test,
that we need to \--

MS. RUDY: There\'s a definition that\'s in the application package, I
think. Dana?

MS. CARR: Yes, Page 13 and 14.

QUESTION: Okay.

MS. RUDY: And basically \-- that\'s what I\'m looking for my \-- I\'m
grabbing from my statute here to see if I can\'t \-- but, it\'s a pretty
\-- it\'s one of those definitions that isn\'t too \-- too taxing in
terms of what it entails.

A community-based organiazation is a public or a private nonprofit
organization of demonstrated effectiveness, that is representative of a
community or a significant segment of a community, and provides
educational or related services to individuals in the community.

QUESTION: Okay, and then would we apply, because we all have our own
501C-3 status, would we apply as a group then, or would we choose one
lead organization? Or, how would you think we should structure that?

MS. CARR: Yes, just go ahead and choose one as a lead. And that person
would be the administrative and fiscal agent for the project.

QUESTION: Okay, great.

MS. CARR: But you can write it, sort of as the consortium. I mean, it
would just be that, that\'s the one that is the \-- but, did you say
that you are sort of from the \-- the regional group? Or are you from
one of the schools?

QUESTION: I represent one of the schools.

MS. CARR: Okay, okay, sorry.

QUESTION: And so \-- no, no, that\'s fine. It\'s just we have kind of a
loose hierarchical system. I mean, it\'s a lot of times, each school is
kind of doing its own, you know, fund-raising and that sort of thing.

So, we are under the umbrella, but it\'s a pretty loose umbrella.

MS. CARR: Loose umbrella, yes. Well, you know, and to the extent to
which, you know, that you\'re sort of adopting a standard approach to
these issues. I think \-- I mean, I think we would say it\'s probably a
great thing, so.

QUESTION: Okay. Well, thank you very much.

MS. RUDY: But, I\'m pleased you did go and take a look at the definition
and kind of parse through it. I mean, again, that\'s one that a lot of
organizations are able to meet. But just be sure that \-- you know, take
a look and think about your structure and your organizations just to be
sure.

QUESTION: Okay, thank you.

OPERATOR: Your next question comes from J.J. Buehl. You have the floor.

QUESTION: Yes, just a real \-- well, it\'s not really quick I guess, in
a sense. But it\'s talking about the budget and everything.

You talked about training\'s and all. Around our area, first of all
we\'re a very rural area in North Carolina.

We don\'t have a lot of opportunities for our children. We have to go an
hour plus anywhere, to any really physical activity, besides playing
basketball outside, basically around here.

You did say that such as a bowling alley or golf course or swimming. If
we took, as a P.E. teacher, if we took our children on a \"field trip\"
to these places to actually get the hands-on experience. That would be
allowable?

MS. CARR: As long as it\'s linked back to the goals and objectives of
the program. It\'s not being used as sort of an incentive.

QUESTION: Right.

(Simultaneous talking.)

MS. CARR: \-- not as a reward, but as sort of like an instructional
activity.

QUESTION: Right. Like right now I take my third graders \-- I teach the
lesson here in my gym of how to roll the bowling ball, what the pins
are, and all that. And then I actually take them 30-45 minutes away to
the bowling that\'s near us on a field trip, I guess, to actually apply
what they just learned to everyday, you know, to a hands on experience.

MS. CARR: Absolutely.

QUESTION: Okay.

MS. CARR: And again, as long as the costs are reasonable and allowable.

QUESTION: Right, right. The other thing is, going back to the teacher
professional \-- the staff development professional training and all, if
we wanted to put in there for all of our P.E. teachers or so, to go to
either the national conference or a state physical education conferences
or staff developments, that could be written in there along with a
substitute for them? Is that correct?

MS. CARR: That is correct. That would be considered professional
development.

QUESTION: Okay.

MS. CARR: As long as it\'s a reasonable \-- again, as long as it\'s
reasonable. We\'re not going to send, you know, 20 staff, but it\'s
perfectly reasonable for 1 or 2 teachers you know at \-- per level or
something, like that.

QUESTION: Per level could go to ECG \--

MS. CARR: You know something \-- you know, use your best judgement. I
mean, obviously I don\'t know your district, or your group of schools
that well, so \-- or at all. But please just use your best judgement.
All I\'m saying is, we\'re not going to send every teacher in your
entire district \-- 50 teachers, or something like that.

QUESTION: No, we don\'t have that many. We only have about \-- maybe 15
of us. If it\'s that many of us. It might only be like 10 or 12 of us
that are actually physical education teachers.

But our main this is, is they don\'t go. I\'m the only one in our county
\-- well there\'s another person that actually does go to our different
conferences, because one, we don\'t have the funding for it, but two,
it\'s not been pushed.

So, if it was written into the grant, it\'s almost like they have to go.
You know? And hopefully they will get something out of it.

MS. CARR: I would say \-- just again, use your best judgement on that.

QUESTION: Okay.

MS. CARR: Those are certainly allowable costs and allowable activities.
As again, as it pertains to professional development.

But again, just use your best judgement.

QUESTION: Okay. Now also, some of the budgeting things you were \-- you
were saying no to. If we were to write in there \-- and you said the
DDR, the Dance, Dance Revolution has been awarded in the past. Some of
the new technology that\'s come out in our physical education books,
such as, as similar to a Wii, not the actual play \-- you know, but the
actual things and all \-- that we\'re trying to get our children to
understand that 21st century is here and that we\'ve got to get them not
only physically active, but to understand technology as well.

Is that able \-- is that a no-no in there? Don\'t put too much of it?
Or, is that something that would be great in our grant?

MS. CARR: You know, I would say as long as you\'re responsive \-- just
be responsive to those selection criteria and the absolute priority.

Certainly the use of technology and physical education has really \-- is
kind of in its glory right now. And there\'s lots and lots of ways to
use technology.

QUESTION: Oh, yes.

MS. CARR: In P.E. and music as well. I would say that teaching kids to
use technology, you know, sort of this is the 21st century kind of
thing, is probably outside the scope. So using technology for teaching
technology, it would be outside the scope of this program.

QUESTION: Right.

MS. CARR: But certainly as it fits into a comprehensive, integrated
sequential course of physical education, probably makes some sense.

It\'s certainly not a requirement. We\'ve funded some really low-tech
programs that have also been really successful.

It really just depends on what the needs \-- the needs, and I would say
the capabilities and sort of the openness to utilizing technology. All
of those things are in your district.

One of the big challenges \-- and this is again, just sort of food for
thought \-- one of the big challenges I think some of our grantees face,
is that they have all of this equipment and they encounter a lot of
resistance to using it.

QUESTION: Right.

MS. CARR: From the sort of more seasoned teachers, who not using it for
years and years, and why do we need to do this now? And it takes awhile
for that to get incorporated and sometimes it doesn\'t.

And the other thing that I would sort of put out there is that, just
buying it doesn\'t always do the trick. A lot \-- there\'s a lot of
training and professional development around technology that you need to
consider as well.

QUESTION: Now, I know that we\'re going this district-wide, but that
brings me right to that point of what I\'m facing around here. Is that
we do have lots of seasoned teachers that want to just roll out the ball
and just anything that\'s quick and easy. And as long as we\'re taking
care of the kids until they go back to their next class.

Is that \-- is there a way to where if one of the schools is more of a
pilot this year, by training the other schools, and then the second and
third year, getting them on board and going on that. That\'s what I\'m
\-- had been kind of told already.

Is that what you\'re speaking about now? I mean \--

MS. CARR: That\'s \-- I mean, that\'s one approach. You absolutely can
do it that way. Again, as long as the scope of your first year, sort of
is responsive again, to all of those things that I keep saying.

QUESTION: Right.

MS. CARR: And your budget is commensurate with the planned activities.

Certainly you can have a smaller budget and a smaller project, a scope
in year one, and then build on that in years two and three.

We\'ve had people approach it that way. We\'ve had people approach it
that they do the elementary schools one year, middle schools the next
year, and the high schools the third year.

I mean, people can parse it and do it in probably more ways than I can
even think of.

QUESTION: Okay, and the very last question. If we don\'t get awarded or
sent onto the next level this year by chance, will we be getting
responses back why we did not do it? Or \-- and the second part of that
is, can we apply next year for it?

MS. CARR: To the first part of your question, yes, you will absolutely
get your peer reviewer comments back. Both successful and unsuccessful
applicants receive their peer reviewer comments.

They will be sent, just so all of you know, they get sent to the \-- to
the person who is listed as the authorized representative on the grant
application.

So, make sure that your superintendent, or your \-- you know, if that\'s
the person, or your executive director, if you\'re a CBO \-- if they get
something about this that they need to keep it around. They don\'t just
throw it in the garbage.

To your second question, which is kind of a nice last question, is
whether or not you can apply again next year. As I said earlier on the
call, future competitions depend on a couple of different factors.

One is future appropriations from Congress.

QUESTION: Right.

MS. CARR: And the second is whether or not we decide to fund the next
group of highly qualified applicants that competed this year.

We have \-- we can do that. And we have done that in years past. So, we
won\'t have a new competition next year potentially.

And the third possibility is that we change the program and then we
would have a new competition, but it would look probably pretty
different. It could look pretty different next year.

So, maybe you can apply next year, maybe not. Depending on what happens.

But certainly if you don\'t get funding, continue to check back with us.

QUESTION: Okay. And you said now, on the program director, I mean,
wouldn\'t that \-- let\'s say if I am the contact person, I\'m not the
superintendent, but I\'m the one that\'s getting \-- spearheading this
and would be the director and all that. Would I be getting that, or is
the superintendent the lead \-- the contact person?

MS. CARR: The authorized representative is who receives the \-- it\'s
who signs off on the grant. Who says, everything I say in this
application is true and honest. And that is the person to whom the peer
reviewer comments are sent.

QUESTION: And should that be your superintendent? Is that what you\'re
saying?

MS. CARR: Yes.

QUESTION: Okay, it should be your superintendent.

MS. RUDY: It needs to be somebody who has the authority to bind your
district to the commitments that are being made in your application.
It\'s most often, for a school district the superintendent.

Depending on the size of your district, it could be the assistant
superintendent. It could be director of federal programs. You know,
there are some different types of titles, but it\'s usually a senior
person. And we\'re looking for somebody at a level that can bind your
district to the agreements that you\'re making by submitting the
application.

QUESTION: Okay, thank you.

MS. CARR: Thank you. I think that\'s all the time we have.

Again, if you have questions that weren\'t asked on this call, we have
three more opportunities for conference calls. And you can call back in
and hear more questions.

The next one \-- I\'m sorry, we have two more opportunities. The next
one is on February 28th, from 2:30-4:30 \-- 2:#0-4:00 Eastern time. And
the third one is on March 4th, from 2:00-3:30, again, Eastern time.

I want to thank each of you for being on the call. You asked some great
questions.

Thanks to George for facilitating this.

And on behalf of Debbie Rudy and I, we wish you good luck and we\'ll
talk to you soon.

Thanks so much again. Bye-bye.

OPERATOR: This concludes the call. You may now disconnect.

(Whereupon, the above-entitled matter went off the record at
approximately 3:05 p.m.)