November 3, 2017
PRESENT: David Wihry, Aaron Dombroski, Ed Barrett, Maryalice Crofton, Joe Young
The meeting opened at 8:30 am.
ITEMS:
-- Certification of peer reviewers.
The credentials of external peer reviewers had been provided to task force members. The members agreed to certify the group as the peer reviewers for the AmeriCorps State Competitive round now underway.
-- Review of Grantee Performance Reports.
The task force received the year end performance reports submitted to CNCS on Oct 30. All programs had retention issues and only two fully enrolled. The two programs MCCS closed out at two years had poor performance related to service delivery. There were questions about the CNCS directive for LearningWorks to not report all the students they served. Maryalice agreed it skews the reported results but the narrow focus of US Dept. of Education interests means only certain students in a classroom can be counted as served.
The task force asked that quarterly reports for the year underway be more concise. Maryalice noted that is the intent and those will be provided for February’s meeting.
-- Training on Task Force review.
The task force will handle two types of reviews in December. The process for considering continuation applications was described. It is heavily dependent on performance, enrollment, retention, and compliance. One program will have sufficient data because it is 16 months old. The second will only have four months of data since it is in the first year.
The proposed timeline for continuation reviews would leave enough time for the task force to complete reviews of new applications and not have to work over the 12/25-1/1 holiday break.
The components of review for new applications was laid out along with a quick tour of the tools. It is very data driven and the qualitative scoring rubric is the same as the one used by peer reviewers. The difference comes with conversion to point scores because the task force portion is only 50 points.
-- Current AmeriCorps grant competition. The Request for Proposals is on the new Division of Purchases web page and it is posted on the MCCS business site. Task force members can read through this link: http://www.maineservicecommission.gov/grants/
-- Status of hiring new Grant Officer.
The position was posted mid-October and closes on November 13. The extended time for applications was set to allow for national recruiting through service channels. Maryalice hopes to conduct interviews the first week of December and have the new person start the first of January.
There being no other items to discuss, the meeting ended at 9:42 am.