Facilitator Instructions During Public Comment

The ESSA Stakeholder Engagement Toolkit provides resources to support stakeholder engagement during the 30-day public comment period for California’s draft ESSA Consolidated State Plan.

If you would like to conduct a stakeholder engagement activity, the toolkit contains all of the resources you will need. Below you will find instructions for presenting these resources to your group of stakeholders.

Step 1 – Preview Overview Materials

To set the context for your activities, your participants may need some overview information. The California Department of Education (CDE) strongly recommends that all stakeholders read and review the plan introduction materials before reviewing additional plan sections. Although this section of the plan is not required by, and will not be submitted to, the U.S. Department of Education, it contains important information that will help stakeholders to understand how the ESSA State Plan fits into California’s larger education system. You will also find links to the ESSA State Plan templates provided by the U.S. Department of Education, which may be useful for assisting participants in understanding the scope of the information required in the State Plan.

Overview Materials

State Plan Introduction

• State Plan Introduction (DOC)
• State Plan Introduction Video (Video; 19:17)
• State Plan Introduction Summary (DOC)

U.S. Department of Education ESSA State Plan Templates

• Revised Consolidated State Plan Template (DOC)
  
• Revised Assurances Template (PDF)
  

Timeline

The CDE will conduct the public comment period on the draft ESSA State Plan between May 22, 2017 and June 30, 2017.

The CDE anticipates presenting the ESSA State Plan for final SBE approval at the September 2017 SBE meeting before submitting it to the U.S. Department of Education on September 18, 2017. More detail regarding opportunities for stakeholders to engage in plan development activities will be provided in future SBE information memoranda and agenda items and the ESSA listserv.

Step 2 – Review Sections of the Draft Plan

After participants learn about ESSA, the State Plan requirements, and California’s timeline to develop the State Plan, you can then present the draft sections of the State Plan. The CDE has made available the draft plan sections in document form as well as video overviews and brief summary documents to accompany each section.

You will need to determine which sections of the draft plan your participants would like to review. They may want to review only certain sections or all of the sections of the draft plan.

You can then play the video overviews for participants. You can decide if you’d like to print out the draft sections or summary documents for participants to review while watching the video overviews. You can find all of these resources in the Draft ESSA State Plan Public Comment Toolkit.

Step 3 – Public Comment

Once participants have had a chance to review the sections of the draft plan, you can promote their engagement with the public comment survey. Links to the online survey and a document version of the survey are provided in the toolkit. The survey will gauge participants’ response to each section of the draft plan and collect any feedback they may have for ways to improve the section. Your participants may want to engage in a discussion before providing public comment. They may prefer to provide public comment later. Whatever the preference, please ensure they know how to access the survey and the draft documents and resources to inform their input.