Truants' Alternative and Optional Education Program

The Truants' Alternative and Optional Education Program Notice of Funding Opportunity is administered through the Illinois State Board of Education. The program supports eligible entities seeking to provide truancy intervention services, optional education programs, or both. The available FAQ establishes that entities may propose both types of programming within a single proposal. It also explains that only one proposal may be submitted per entity and directs applicants to Section 205 of 23 Ill. Admin. Code for the complete rules governing eligible applicants. The FAQ does not provide the grant's funding amount, individual award range, matching requirement, or period of performance. Eligible applicants discussed in the FAQ include school districts, Regional Offices of Education, Intermediate Service Centers, and other eligible entities governed by the applicable Illinois administrative rules. Two eligible entities may separately apply for TAOEP programs serving the same population of students when their proposed services are not duplicative. In such situations, both entities must provide a Service Agreement in their applications describing the services each entity will provide. More generally, all entities applying for the TAOEP NOFO must complete the Service Agreement, including participating districts that the applicant proposes to serve. The eligible entity must obtain signatures from all participating districts; electronic signatures are accepted when original signatures cannot be obtained. Applications are handled through the Illinois State Board of Education's IWAS system. A Program Administrator commonly receives access to the grant application from the District Administrator. If the District Administrator does not have access, the administrator must sign up for the TAOEP NOFO. Applicants experiencing continuing access problems are instructed to contact the ISBE IT Help Desk at 217-558-3600 and have their RCDT code available. Applicants providing truancy intervention services must identify all schools receiving services on the Projected Sites page. Regional optional education programs must provide the complete RCDTS code, including the applicable school site code. Providers operating only truancy intervention or prevention services do not need the additional optional education program school site code. The application also requires applicants to address participating districts and projected service sites. The Service Agreement is uploaded with the initial grant application to help ensure that services are not duplicated among participating entities. For optional education programs, applicants may check the Evidence-Based Funding student-claiming box when students attend a serving site full-time; the box should be checked even if only one student among the total entered will be claimed. The FAQ provides instructions for obtaining Illinois School Report Card information used on the Districts to be Served page and identifies the Evidence-Based Funding distribution information as the source for percent adequacy. It also explains that Illinois School Report Card metrics with counts of nine or fewer are redacted. Budget information is entered on the Budget Detail page. Applicants are directed to the instructions link on that page for guidance on function and object coding and to the State and Federal Grant Administration Policy, Fiscal Requirements, and Procedures for additional grant-related information. The FAQ does not specify award ceilings, award floors, total program funding, allowable expenditure categories, indirect cost limits, or a required cost share. Accordingly, those financial terms cannot be established from the supplied source alone. The proposal is subject to a Merit Based Review Process and application scoring. The FAQ distinguishes performance standards from performance measures: performance standards are the minimum performance requirements of the program, while performance measures are the ideal objectives applicants should meet or exceed over the duration of the grant. GATA pages are not included in the initial NOFO proposals. Instead, entities selected for grant awards after merit review and scoring complete the applicable GATA requirements and have the GATA pages uploaded into their applications. The supplied FAQ does not state an application opening date, submission deadline, pre-application deadline, award notification date, grant performance period, or recurring application schedule. Those timeline fields therefore require verification against the complete TAOEP NOFO rather than extrapolation from the FAQ. The FAQ provides the ISBE IT Help Desk telephone number, 217-558-3600, for IWAS access assistance but does not identify a named grant contact, program email address, or grant consultant contact information. It instructs applicants needing information about new regional program school site codes to contact their grant consultant.

Avoid duplicative services when multiple eligible entities propose to serve the same student population and clearly delineate services in the required Service Agreement; identify all schools receiving proposed truancy intervention services; include the complete RCDTS code for optional education programs; follow the Budget Detail instructions for function and object coding; distinguish minimum performance standards from ideal performance measures; do not expect GATA pages in the initial proposal because selected grantees complete them after merit review.