B.E.S.T. ACADEMY (6-12) at Benjamin S. Carson

TITLE I

Your child attends B.E.S.T. Academy (6-12) which receives Federal Title I funds to assist students in meeting state achievement standards. Beginning in the 2013-2014 school year, Title I schools moved from NCLB Needs Improvement (NI) status based on Adequate Yearly Progress (APY) to Reward, Priority, and Focus schools status based on definitions provided by the US Department of Education.

What makes B.E.S.T. a Title I School?

The identification of a school for Title I status is based upon one thing and one thing only – the socio-economic level of the families and students who reside in the attendance area of the school. The designation as a Title I school has nothing to do with the academic level of the students in the school. It is strictly and solely based on the economics of the surrounding area.

How are schools selected to be Title I?

The law requires each school system to use a standardized measure to determine the socio-economic level of each school’s attendance zone. One of those options is the free-lunch count. In City Schools, the percentage of free-lunch students determines whether or not a school is eligible to receive the added resources of Title I funding.

How does that happen?

Each year there are two critical dates that determine the school’s socio-economic level. The first date is September 30^th. That is the date on which the school’s official enrollment is recorded. The second critical date is October 31^st. That is the date on which the free-lunch eligibility of all students in the school is determined. Those two numbers, enrollment and free-lunch, are then used to calculate a ratio or percentage known as the school’s Socio-Economic (Poverty) Index. The two dates of September 30^th and October 31^st are established by regulations. The dates cannot be changed and the same dates must be used for all of the schools in the school system.

Can you provide an example of how a Socio-Economic Index ratio is calculated?

On September 30^th a school’s enrollment has officially been recorded at 400 students. On the following October 31^st(one month later), after all of the lunch applications have been collected and recorded, that school has 300 students ineligible for free-lunch, 50 students eligible for reduced-lunch, and the remaining 50 students ineligible for any lunch subsidy. The Socio-Economic Index is then calculated by dividing the free-lunch number (300) by the enrollment number (400). When you divide 300 by 400 the result is 75%. Therefore, this school’s Index is 75% (300 divided by 400 equals 75%).

What determines the amount of Title I money each school receives?

Once a district determines how much money is available for distribution to schools, the amount of money is divided by the number of free-lunch students to calculate the per–pupil allocation.