As this discussion is winding down, I would like to address some
questions that I think went unanswered:

1. What is the opportunity for the Louisiana Department of Education to
increase the allocation in light of the increased ESOL population?

We have an EL/Civic grant which is the least funded literacy program in
our state compared to Adult Literacy and Family Literacy.  I cannot say
whether funding will increase for the ESOL population, but can say that
we went from 140 students pre-Katrina to 640 students post-Katrina and
our funding never increased.  In addition, when funding was
re-distributed for professional development, we were excluded and were
told because we fell under the EL/Civic grant and not Adult Literacy or
Family Literacy.  What this means is beyond my comprehension.

2. Can state staff development or leadership dollars cover the cost of
bringing in the one or two ESOL planning experts that are needed and
cover the costs of implementation activities the experts develop with
those on the ground?

I doubt the state will cover the cost to bring one or two ESOL planning
experts to help out.  We have asked the state to increase our funding
for staff development and were told that we could only use 5% of our
grant for administrative costs ( a total of $1000).  Our challenge is
funding to hire site facilitators to oversee programs that are
accommodating approximately 100 plus students per site along with
volunteer instructors. 


3. Can funding for VESOL programs come from the local WIB funding -it is
clearly an eligible activity for core services?

I am not sure if funding can come from WIB.  From past experience, the
grants we have applied for had many restrictions that did not allow the
new demographics to access training dollars.   In addition, it was to
develop new programs and many that we are already providing.  More
federal dollars are needed in order to continue to meet the demand for
ESL programs.


Karla








Karla Sikaffy, M.Ed
Director-Adult Education
Office of Catholic Schools/CCANO
Director-ESL
Hispanic Apostolate
Community Services/CCANO
ksikaffy at archdiocese-no.org
1000 Howard Ave., Suite 200
New Orleans, LA 70113
(504)722-5692 Office
(504)523-6962 Fax

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.nifl.gov/pipermail/povertyracewomen/attachments/20070829/6c2acf6b/attachment.html