**FTS-HHS ACF**

**Moderator: Eugene Gousie**

**October 15, 2008**

**1:00 pm CT**

Coordinator: I would now like to turn the meeting over to Mr. Gene
Gousie, sir you may begin.

Eugene Gousie: Thank you very much and good morning everyone or good
afternoon if you're in Idaho. This is Gene Gousie with the Head Start TA
network in Region 10 and I'm delighted you were able to join us today.

I'm hoping most of you are able to get on the webinar and for those of
you who haven't been able to do that that you are able to following
along with the handouts that were sent out yesterday with the
announcement and that you're on line.

You'll have the opportunity as we go along to ask questions and
contribute your comments. The format today is the webinar and I will be
toggling back and forth between the two handouts so that you'll be able
to see them on your desktop as we go along.

We will stop after each section to field questions or comments,
contributions from all of you.

Let's start us right off here and we'll go to the first slide. The goals
for today are to identify the requirements in reauthorization around the
grantee public reports as they are called.

And to share examples of what grantees have done, are doing, or could do
for each of the requirements.

Here are some things to know right off the bat. Number one, there
haven't been any further clarifications or additional information from
the Office of Head Start on this topic.

So what we're doing today is we're taking the language in
reauthorization and we're thinking through what the parameters are, what
the limits on that are, what really is being asked for, and then the
options available to each grantee.

We're going to be operating from the assumption that where there is some
ambiguity or lack of clear boundaries here that you will take that to
your best advantage and respond to the expectations as they are
expressed, but do so in a way that as best as possible works for your
program, works for your various audiences, works to make the best case
that you can to show the progress and the outcomes of your program.

As far as these reports go, there is no mention in the Act of any kind
of format, that is to say the format is at least at this point open to
you. That means that the reports that you create could indeed be posted
on the web, they could be web based. They could be stand alone reports,
they could be reports that are embedded in something a little bit
larger, say a document that also contains anecdotal evidence or what
have you of children and families in the program and the progress they
have made.

They could be embedded in a different kind of document. I know the
Umatilla Morrow program, for instance, has put its annual report
activities in a program calendar, so that would be one example of
thinking broadly about the way that you embed the expectations here in a
larger document.

And that document by the way can be either now or shortly will be able
to be accessed on the Umatilla Morrow website.

So what we'll do today then is share examples of each of the categories
of elements expected in the report as I have pulled them from public
reports from Head Start agencies, from community action agencies, from
other nonprofits, to give you a sense of what's been done out there,
what is being done in a number of cases to show, to illustrate, each of
these elements.

And I know I haven't seen all of the documents that are out there so
your program may well have something of interest to share and you can do
that either today or I could be used as a conduit to get information out
to others as we go along.

Let's go to our next slide. Here is the reauthorization language. "Each
Head Start agency shall make available to the public a report published
at least once each fiscal year (note the [fiscal year)]{.underline} that
discloses the following information from the most recently concluded
fiscal year."

That may sound like you have this period of time, the current fiscal
year, to report on last year's fiscal year and so on into the future.

Here's the framework for how we'll approach this today. We'll look at
each of the seven elements that is expected in the annual report,
identify the key terms, talk a little about the level of detail in which
you may respond. When I say "which you may" it means you have lots of
options here. And then to talk about the presentation options, what are
some ways that the element could be represented.

Here's the first category, category A on your handout: the total amount
of public and private funds received and the amount from each source.

On your PowerPoint, the key terms there are the public and private funds
and the level of detail. We're going to switch here in a second, but you
can think of responding to this question quite broadly. Or you can break
down the amounts that you are receiving into smaller categories. On page
1 of the other handout, you'll see here are three examples of programs
that have listed the total amount of pubic and private funds received
and the amount from each source. Again these are ones that I've pulled
out from public reports available, these are in hard copy or on the web.

In this first example, I've taken the numbers out, but you can see that
the program is listing its federal, state, local sources, it's broken
out into fee and service and fund raising, miscellaneous, other and in
kind as one way of putting the numbers out there.

Now example two takes a little broader perspective on this. It's
combined a few categories, child care, United Way, early state programs,
youth programs.

You can see this is an agency that's bigger than Head Start, the Head
Start fund and then other sources. And then in example three you can see
that here we have a much broader category, federal funds, State of
Oregon funds, foundations and trust, so fund raising basically, and then
local contributions and volunteer time which would cover non-federal
share as well.

> On this first one, you can see the level of detail can vary and
> depending as all of these will on how much information you want to
> share and what you think your audience is that you're crafting your
> report for need to hear.

But there's nothing at this point that says that you have to break these
categories down more specifically. So I also put the pie graph, the pie
chart graphics, there as an illustration of another way to format the
information.

So for instance instead of example three down there being written the
way it is, you could represent that with a pie chart with lines coming
out of it representing the federal, the state, the foundations and the
volunteer with a number and percentage or just a percentage, or just a
number perhaps.

That's the first element of the grantee report and you can see as you go
back to the slide that the presentation options could be in narrative or
chart or graph.

Let's stop for a second and see if anybody on the line has either a
question or a comment to contribute at this point. Operator, we'll take
a question or two if there are any at this time.

Coordinator: One has just come into the queue. Dale Hlland, your line is
open.

Dale Helland: Okay, my question is we are a Head Start agency within a
larger community action agency. Do we need to do the whole agency or
just the Head Start for the annual report?

Eugene Gousie: Thanks for that question. Let's go back to the original
language and reauthorization, each Head Start agency shall make public a
report.

I think the Head Start information has to be included and as we get
further along and the elements you'll see that there's some specific -
more specific Head Start activity, like the total number of children
served for instance.

This is about the Head Start agency, so I would think that the agency as
a whole would make the report - I don't have a definitive answer here.

I think as you think through for your program, and if you're a larger
agency, my guess is that you're doing some reporting already. And if
that is the case, I would look to see how the elements here can be
worked into a report that makes sense for the agency as a whole.

If you're not doing any reporting, I would think that you know this - I
mean it seems to me what they're getting at is information about the
Head Start program. But it's also about the agency a little more
broadly.

So what we have at this point is that initial language in
reauthorization to work with.

Thank you, Dale.

Eugene Gousie: All right, let's go to the next element B, the
explanation of budgetary expenditures and proposed budget for the fiscal
year.

Again we're looking at the budgetary expenditures, the proposed budget
and that interesting term, explanation. So in terms of level of detail
we can do some listing or explanations.

You can use a variety of categories, we'll show some examples here in a
second, and look at various options including budget categories and a
narrative.

Let's go to the example here on page B, the second page of the other
document, and you'll see in example #1 we have a breakdown of a budget,
of budget categories for the proposed fiscal year.

Again I've taken the numbers out and this example is clearly from a
larger than Head Start agency. And so if you were going to do this
within Head Start your budget categories, certainly on the income, would
look different.

On the expenses you can see that the categories are pretty broad here,
I've seen some examples where these categories have been broken down
into much finer sub categories.

But this is nice in that you get a sense of it without having too much
information on the page.

The example #2 is a narrative piece and again a little explanation of
what ABC Head Start program does with funds from where.

So again this is taken pretty much verbatim from an existing document
and the point there is to put something in a narrative form - if you
were going to do something narrative it would qualify as an
"explanation" but it wouldn't look quite like this. But you'd want to
have some additional information in there. So that's a couple examples
of ways to think about what your agency might do in response to the
explanation of budgetary expenditures and proposed budget.

Let's take another moment here for questions or comments.

Eugene Gousie: All right, so back to the PowerPoint and on to our next
element which is the total number of children and families served,
average monthly enrollment and percent of eligible children served.

The key terms, children and family served, somehow I left out average
monthly enrollment but that should be in there, and percentage of
eligible children served - those are the key items you want to get in
this element.

Again when you begin thinking of reporting on children and families,
there are lots of ways to cut this. Some programs look at all of the
children and families in the program and simply report on that.

Depending on the focus of your program, how large you want your report
to be, how detailed you want your report to be, what outcomes you want
to show, you could break this down by age, by geography, special needs,
or special circumstances and provide a lot of information rather than a
small amount.

As for presentation options, you can think of putting this in
categories, charting or graphing or a narrative.

We have three examples of the total number of children and family served
average month enrollment as a percentage and percentage of eligible
children.

In the first example it's a chart that by county lists the eligible
children, the federal enrollment, additional funding enrollment and the
actual Head Start enrollment.

That's one way to provide a lot of information in a pretty small piece
of a chart. Example two breaks that down into different kinds of
categories by program design: home based, center based and combination.

Funded and actual enrollment - neither of those address the average
monthly enrollment and I don't think I came across that in this
documents I was looking at but that's a piece that you'd want to add in
there.

And then the third example is again a narrative approach to the same
information and very broadly the total number of children served and
again you could put the information asked for in C, the average monthly
enrollment, total served, percent of eligible.

You could put that in a narrative sentence or a couple of sentences to
make that brief. So any comments or questions on this element?

Coordinator: At this time there are no questions or comments.

Eugene Gousie: Okay, we will move along then, thank you. All right,
let's go to the next element, D. So here we're looking at the results of
most recent review by the secretary and financial audits.

We've got those review finding, oh, I left the audit out of there, but
two elements there, the review and the audit.

As far as the level of detail, would you list non-compliances or
findings or other categories? Would you list areas of programming that
you were commended on? Would you list specific findings? It is looking
for the results, and so I didn't find any reports out there giving much
or giving anything in this regard.

I would think your presentation would most likely be in the form of a
narrative but again depending on what you're looking at you could think
otherwise.

I don't have any examples on this one, just a list of things you could
include in there, the findings, the recommendations, the responses. You
could identify the firm that did the audit.

You might want to include the date of a review. So that's one that I
think will be new to most programs. Any comments or questions on this
element?

Coordinator: Jo O'Leary, your line is open.

(Jo O'Leary): Hi, we're mulling over the previous question actually
Gene, average monthly enrollment. If you've filled all your slots within
30 days are you at your 100% of your enrollment?

Eugene Gousie: You would think so, wouldn't you?

(Jo O'Leary): I like it that way.

Eugene Gousie: I mean that would be what you're reporting, right?
Because you're having to do the monthly reporting, right?

(Jo O'Leary): Yeah, do you use the monthly reporting figure?

Eugene Gousie: I would think so.

(Jo O'Leary): Okay, thank you.

Eugene Gousie: Okay, thank you. All right, let's move on to the next
one. We're looking at the percentage of enrolled children that received
medical and dental exams, percentage, enrolled children, the medical and
dental exam.

Again you could take a very broad view of this and in one narrative
sentence or in one chart you could respond to that. That would be very
simple.

You may you know want to highlight some other goal of the program or
some other way to approach the progress the agency is making and present
more information broken down into greater detail.

Let's look at the examples we have. They both go into more detail than
is asked for and again you know from your PIR numbers and the tracking
you do of that that you've got the numbers of children receiving
screenings, the numbers of "need medical or dental treatment" or
percentage or numbers of children who are receiving.

And you could include all of that on here, in which case it would be a
basically a simple extraction of your PIR number.

Depending on what it is that you want to report on to your chosen
audiences, you may want to go into more detail. If there perhaps may be
a specific effort over this period of time to access medical homes or
dental homes, then that's information they may want to provide in this
section.

They would include the medical and dental service question but also
include more information. The second one is a combination, it's mostly
narrative with some larger health issues that they're reporting on.

And within that they could easily report on the number of enrolled
children receiving medical and dental exams. So any questions on that
element, or comments? Some of you have done something a little different
or want to suggest something?

Coordinator: And thank you, Mary Ellen Fritz, your line is open.

(Mary Ellen Fritz): Hi Gene, this is Mary Ellen up in Anchorage and I
just wanted to let you know that I'm going to write a formal letter of
complaint to the office of Head Start. I think they've totally gone mad.
This is like we already report all of this on the PIR in our grants and
it's in our audits and it's just way beyond control now and I'm not
blaming you, please don't take that personally.

But wow.

Eugene Gousie: Right. And not having been asked to help write the
reauthorization act, I won't take that personally, Mary Ellen. it's
always appropriate to give feedback to the Office and let them know how
initiatives like this impact the program.

Thank you, anything else?

(Mary Ellen Fritz): No, that's it, thank you.

Eugene Gousie: Let's go on to our next element. Information about
parental involvement activities, and you can see already that is an
extremely broad category open to all kinds of interpretation and level
of detail. You could list numbers of activities. You could list
categories or kinds of activities. You could highlight special
activities that the program is proud of and has made progress in. You
could put that information in categories with numbers, charts, graphs,
narratives.

Let's look at some examples. The first example lists a number of
activities that a program has done. And that's basically what it is,
we've provided x, we've provided y, we've provided z.

Example two takes activities and attempts to link them to outcomes. So x
number of families have received a particular service that resulted in
them doing something that improves their lives. This is an example for
those of you who feel the push, and I think most of us do, to get
clearer about outcomes from any of our funding sources.

And perhaps you can see the advantage of responding to that element in a
way to make a case for your program. Now on the other hand, if you want
to go to the minimalist approach you can look at example three. You
could work this into a couple of easy narrative sentences that would
identify parent involvement fairly broadly in your program and suggest
its value and begin to do that in a way that's hopefully not too
burdensome.

So any comments or questions about this one?

Coordinator: Laurie Bradford, your line is open.

(Laurie Bradford): Thank you. Gene. The question that I have with the
reauthorization - it says the report is done for the fiscal year, and
yet this question about parental involvement activities, that doesn't
follow our fiscal year.

Because our fiscal year ends in October, begins in November, but our
program year starts in September and ends in June.

Eugene Gousie: Right, thanks Laurie. That's a dilemma that many programs
face and I would say that you have to you know make some adjustments
based on that.

And I'm wondering if we have some others out on the line here right now
that have addressed it this way. Let me just open that up and see if
anybody else will respond at this point.

Coordinator: Dale Helland, your line is open.

Eugene Gousie: Thanks Dale.

Dale Helland: Here we solve it by using the company's fiscal year which
runs July 1st to June 30th, so our program year, which also is September
through June, works fine with that.

Eugene Gousie: Thanks Dale.

Coordinator: Barb Buchman, your line is open.

Barb Buchman: Regarding the fiscal year being different from the program
year, I don't see any reason why you can't report the questions
appropriately for each one and just produce your annual report and have
it available upon completion of which ever one ends later.

Because in some instances your fiscal year is different than your
program year, but your figures, facts and figures that you're compiling
are the same regardless of when your year ends.

So it would just be a matter of when the annual report is due and what
year you're reporting on.

Eugene Gousie: Okay, fine, thank you.

Coordinator: Jo O'Leary, your line is open.

(Jo O'Leary): I didn't hear all of that previous one because I was
logging in there, but are your - you know our fiscal year follows the
calendar year, so for '07, so reporting for fiscal year '07 I would
think we would just take the statistics from program year '06, '07.

That's what we would be reporting on - current activities or whatever.
Our '07 report would say in the 2006, '07 school year.

Eugene Gousie: Yeah. Okay, (Laurie) did you want to follow up at all
on - with your group on that?

(Laurie Bradford): Thank you, Gene. I think the questions are answered
for us right now. I appreciate people calling in. Thanks again.

Eugene Gousie: We all do. Thank you for raising that. All right, sounds
like we're ready to go on to the final element which is the agency's
effort to prepare children for kindergarten.

Again this is a pretty broad statement there, preparing children for
kindergarten, so what would you want to include: the efforts that you
make, the curriculum, staffing focus - some Head Start programs and
larger agencies have come up with their own definition of what school
readiness means.

If you have done that you would want to craft your response to this
question around the elements that you have determined for your agency
constitute school readiness, preparing children for kindergarten.

You can of course use results from the assessment tools you've been
using during the year. Again you have a variety of ways that you could
report this: do a narrative, do your assessment tool captures. Let's
look at several examples here.

So example one really focuses on preparing children for kindergarten as
being focused around transition services, which would be an interesting
take on this.

It's done very simply with a narrative.

> Example two picks a couple of key academic areas and says okay, how do
> we know our children are ready for kindergarten? We've done some
> assessment here and x percent of them are proficient in these
> categories. Again, it's a pretty simple response.
>
> Example three uses developmental milestone assessments. It's only
> reporting on the percentage, the numbers and the percentage of
> children who have met the developmental milestone, the assumption
> being that that is being prepared for kindergarten.

Example four gives some specific examples. They've got a school
readiness initiative and so if you've got something like that you would
pick and choose from that the examples that would illustrate that
children are ready for school.

Example five takes the objective across academic boundaries or across
component boundaries, so it's about health objectives as well,
identifying how many children have met those goals.

> Example six picks specific indicators for the Creative Curriculum
> Developmental Continuum, which many of you use, and just extracts that
> data, lays it out as evidence that our children are succeeding and
> prepared for kindergarten.

The final example identifies gains by domains of development for
children over the course of their pre-kindergarten years. So again this
is the assumption that this is what prepares them for kindergarten.
There are lots of examples there, different ways that you could craft a
response to this one and I'd be curious what folks think about that and
what part of this is that you're responding to an expectation. Part of
it is that you have an opportunity since these are public documents to
make a case for the good work that you all do to your key audiences.

And so what are your thoughts on this or questions or comments?

Coordinator: John Naegele, your line is open.

(John Naegele): Hey Gene, this is John.

Eugene Gousie: Hey John.

(John Nagel): I'm assuming that this report is also for Early Head Start
and Head Start programs, correct?

Eugene Gousie: That's my assumption.

(John Nagel): Okay. So it would seem that we'd have a little bit
different kind of reporting especially for number - for the last item on
kindergarten readiness since it's a few years till they get there.

But we might want to look at some different kinds of things when we're
looking at Early Head Start programs, correct?

Eugene Gousie: I would say certainly some of the examples in there are
applicable to Early Head Start, you know the continuum, the development
of continuum kind of thing.

Coordinator: Thank you, our next question comes from Barb Buchman.

Barb Buchman: Yes, this is Barb from North Idaho College Head Start and
I did have one question, I know you're wrapping up but I wanted to get
it in there before the call was over.

Eugene Gousie: Take your time.

Barb Buchman: I thought I read in the requirements for the annual report
that we had to put in there the number of breakfasts, lunches and snacks
provided through the USDA program, am I incorrect there?

I thought there was a specific requirement for the number of meals
served.

Eugene Gousie: I don't know. Now let's - here's what I think you're
referencing. There are a number of other reports that have to be made
annually. All right, so for instance programs have to report on the
progress of their professional development plans for teachers, they
report on enrollment, they're reporting on administrative costs.

I think the USDA one may be one of those separate ones, but I will go
back and check.

Barb Buchman: Thank you.

Coordinator: Your next question comes from Dale Helland.

Dale Helland: Okay, actually I'll tell Barb first. USDA data is for your
board, that you have to report that on a monthly basis for their
oversight.

> Anyway my question was whether there's been any guidelines as to who
> we send this report to and you know you indicated that there doesn't
> seem to be any timeline other than sometime during the fiscal year.

Is there any time guidelines that you expect to come out on that?

Eugene Gousie: Thanks for the question Dale and for the information. I
don't have any further information about additional information about
the annual reports coming out that might do something such as tighten
that timeline.

So at the moment that's the information we have to work with. In terms
of sending reports to anyone, there is no mention of that, and the
conversations I've had simply indicate that the idea behind this is not
really an oversight of reporting at the office of Head Start, but it's
an attempt to make more transparent to the public and the agencies
supporting the agency's information about the programs.

Coordinator: Your next question comes from Gayle. Gayle McMurria your
line is open. Please check your mute button.

Gail McMurria-Bachik: This is Gail McMurria-Bachik from the Oregon
Department of Education. Gene I wanted to thank you very much for this
wonderful overview of the annual report.

I did want to make a comment about the use of the annual report. It
seems to me the programs are putting so much effort into creating a
document with this information that they could also use it as a
marketing tool in a variety of ways in the community.

And I just wanted to say remember to include lots of pictures in the
school. Pictures tell a story to the community a lot faster and more
comprehensively than numbers.

Eugene Gousie: Thank you, Gayle, for that reminder. And indeed you know
on the one hand we have expectations, on the other hand we have the
opportunity to take this information and make of it what we best can,
which includes that outreach, the marketing, the outreach to potential
funders, the responsiveness to families and communities.

The potential impact of seeing outcomes, measures, even for staff and
other programs members, any anecdotes, stories, pictures.

Coordinator: Our next question comes from Deborah Hoswell.

(Deborah Hoswell): Gene, when we had a conference call with the regional
office with Oregon Head Start Association Directors, the region stated
that our annual reports need to be submitted to them.

Eugene Gousie: Okay, thank you, Deborah. I'm sure that's within their
scope and it's not a message I had heard circulated across the region,
so thank you.

Coordinator: Blair Johnson, your line is open.

(Blaire Johnson): Yes hi, I just wanted to follow up on Gayle's comment
just a moment ago about the annual report. In our agency we publish two
annual reports so far before this requirement even came out that we
developed basically as a marketing tool.

And I just want to say that I think that's a really positive use of this
information. We weave these statistics with actual stories of families
that we have helped so that has a very personal component as well as a
statistical component.

And we've used these both to do outreach to the public schools, to have
parents generate interest in enrolling in the program.

They have gone to our state legislator to be able to explain and give a
picture more accurately of what we do and why it's important to continue
funding to the program.

We give them to our policy council for training so that they have a good
overview of what we're all about at the beginning of the year.

So I just wanted to follow up that I think this can be as much as it is
another task we have to complete something that can really help our
program.

Eugene Gousie: Thank you, Blair.

Eugene Gousie: Thanks to all of you for participating, especially those
who have contributed their experience and their questions today.

We've got a couple items to follow up on. I want to get back to Dale's
initial question about whether that's particularly an expectation for
the larger agency as well as Head Start.

And then what Dale and Deborah raised, the expectations of the regional
office for reporting, I want to get back to them and clarify that. So
you can continue to keep in touch about this effort by emailing me or
calling me at any time.

And as we get further information I'll send that out. If you have
examples or if your agency has created a report, I'd appreciate seeing a
copy of it - particularly if it's easily available online. Feel free to
send those in here. I want to thank you all as we bring this to a close.
The TA network has another conference call planned for a month from now,
November 19th. The topic is tentatively mental health and we'll get out
to everyone with additional information in advance of that. So once
again I want to thank you all and wish you a good day. Good bye.

END