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Agenda Item No. 5( C) CITY OF EL CERRITO CO-SPONSORSHIP & COMMUNITY BASED CO-SPONSORED FACILITY USE AND GRANT APPLICATION Submit to: City of El Cerrito Recreation Department 7007 Moeser Lane El Cerrito, CA 94530 Deadline: Please complete the following application using the instructions provided on the last page of this application. You may attach additional pages if necessary. Name of Applicant: Communitv Alliance for Learning Address: PO Box 6098. Albany. CA 94706 Email: [EMAIL REDACTED] Phone: [PHONE REDACTED] Contact 1. Name: _ Phone: [PHONE REDACTED] Contact 2. _ Phone: [PHONE REDACTED] Federal Tax ID # or Social Security _ Request: $2.500 to support the WriterCoach Connection program in El Cerrito schools. Eligibilitv Requirements: Please answer the following guestions: Have you or will you be receiving funding in 2012 for this program from other sources? Yes Are you aware of any other City program providing this service? If so, which one? None that we are aware of. Program Description I Scope (please use additional pages if necessary) Describe your program: (Please see attached description of WCC and the El Cerrito program.) How does or will this program benefit the El Cerrito Community? (Please see attached description of WCC and the El Cerrito program.) 0/o of El Cerrito Residents Served-=2:....!,; K:\General\Administrative Policies & Procedures\General Administration\! A 5 city co-sponsorship and grants. doc 5 I ---PAGE BREAK--- Applicant Background: Community Alliance for Learning has been serving East Bay public-school students with individual classroom writing support through the WriterCoach Connection program since 2000-01. This applicant is a Non-Profit Years In Business:_.1=3'--------- Number of _ Number of Volunteers:-=5 5=0 _ (Please attach an organization chart, if available.) Names of Officers and Board Directors: (Please see attached annotated Board of Directors list.) Name: Title: Experience In Program Area: (Please see attached staff biographies.) Financial Capabilities I Budget: Current funding sources and levels: (Please see attached CAFL 2012-13 budget.) Current funding sources: Portola Middle School Site Council ($10,000); GoPortola community group ($2,320). Previous City funding received or requested in the past three years: (Please attach a budget for program request including funding schedule.) Attached. K:\General\Administrative Policies & Procedures\General Administration\! A 5 city co-sponsorship and grants. doc 6 ---PAGE BREAK--- Reporting Requirements: A report on how the funds were spent will be required to be filed with the City annuallyJ or when funds are spent, whichever comes first. Proof of program expenses are required to be held for two years, during which time the City reserves the right to audit the records. We agree to adhere to the reporting requirements described above. Yes Certification: WeJ the undersignedJ do hereby attest that the above information is true and correct to the best of our knowledge. (Two signatures required) Title Title K:\General\Administrative Policies & Procedures\GeneralAdministration\1 A 5 city co-sponsorship and grants. doc 7 ---PAGE BREAK--- COMMUNITY ALLIANCE FOR LEARNING Bringing WriterCoach Connection ™ To Public Schools Board of Directors LuNell Anderson Barnes- Slater Edmund Bussey Denis Clifford Maureen Dixon Shelli Fried Kristine Hafner Kathleen Hallam Sanam Jorjani Kathleen Kahn Loretta Kane Katherine Koelle Marty Price Amy Resner Tom Waller Kent Wright Executive Director Robert Menzimer PO Box 6098 Albany, CA 94706 [PHONE REDACTED] [PHONE REDACTED] www. writercoach connection.org A federal tax exempt 501 corporation Tax ID: 91- 2144555 WriterCoach Connection in El Cerrito About WriterCoach Connection The mission of WriterCoach Connection (WCC), a program of the nonprofit organization Community Alliance for Learning, is to help develop the writing and critical-thinking skills of public secondary-school students, and to build bonds between communities and their public schools. WriterCoach Connection recruits, trains, and organizes community volunteers as writer coaches, who work with students, one-on-one in class, on their teachers' writing assignments. Launched in 2000-01 at Berkeley High School, WCC has spread to a dozen schools in four East Bay school districts. The program arrived in West County for the first time three years ago, a result of active campaigning by a group ofEl Cerrito parents. That year, 49 community volunteers worked as writer coaches with 140 El Cerrito High School English Language Development (ELD) students. The following year (2011-12), a determined group ofEl Cerrito community members helped raise funds to expand the program to include all 9 1h graders at ECHS, and 91 volunteer writer coaches worked with 406 ECHS students. Also in 2011-12, the program spread to Portola Middle School in El Cerrito, where 40 community volunteers worked with 62 ih graders and ELD students in a pilot program. At all WCC East Bay school sites in 2011-12, 530 community volunteers worked with 2,037 students, conducting 14,929 individual writing conferences throughout the school year. Writer coaching for 2012-13 in El Cerrito Schools Community members, schoo 1 administrators, and teachers are determined to continue WriterCoach Connection at both ECHS and Portola Middle School this year, but severely constricted school budgets make the goal a challenging one. ---PAGE BREAK--- How the City of El Cerrito can help At Portola Middle School, Principal Matthew Burnham has pledged $10,000 in site-based funds toward the $15,000 it will take to bring the writer coaches to the same cohort the program served last year at the school. The school community has donated another $2,300. Support of $2,500 from the City of El Cerrito, matched with additional donations from the community, will bring the writer coaches back to Portola Middle School classrooms for the 2012-13 school year. Why a volunteer program needs funds This highly effective program needs funds to recruit, train, organize, and supervise its volunteers; to coordinate with the district, schools, and teachers; and to assess the program's impact. What West County educators say about WriterCoach Connection "WriterCoach Connection works. Student writing achievement goes up, teachers get much-needed relief, community members bond with their schools. Everyone wins, and we need more of it." ---Bruce Harter, Superintendent, West Contra Costa Unified School District "The program has raised student classroom achievement in a powerful and measurable way." ---David Luongo, Principal, El Cerrito High School "The grades this semester with writing coaches, compared to last semester without them, went up 10% or one full grade level." - Curt Douglas, English Dept. Chair, El Cerrito High School "With the aid of the coaches my turn in rate for essays increased to almost 100%." --Jennifer Dreyfus, English teacher, El Cerrito High School "In my English 1 class this semester, 13% more students scored A's and B's on their writing." - Molly McGrath, English teacher, El Cerrito High School "The regular appearance of writer coaches helped my classes complete more than twice as many large writing assignments compared to last year." Eric Jepson, English teacher, El Cerrito High School "85% of my low achieving (D and F) students went up one grade level, largely due to the work they did with their writer coaches."- Kenny Kahn, English teacher and varsity football coach, El Cerrito High School "I just heard today that ONE of my regular English classes will get to have writing coaches. Our ELA scores went UP last year. Don't you think this made a difference? I do! Maybe if more contributions are made, both of my needier English classes may have this privilege."- Carol Renee, English teacher, Portola Middle School 2 ---PAGE BREAK--- Community Alliance for Learning Directors and Officers November 1, 2012 Kathleen Kahn, Chairperson and Director (510) 524-9270 Kathleen Kahn (J.D. University of San Francisco 1975) retired from practicing law in 2005. For most of her career, she specialized in criminal appeals, working at the Office of the State Public Defender and at the First District Appellate Project in San Francisco. She also clerked for the California Supreme Court for three years. Following her retirement, she began service on the board of the Community Alliance for Learning, since 2007 as its chair. She is delighted that her career has taken such a cheerful turn, and loves working with kids who are still on the right side of the law. Katherine Koelle, Vice Chairperson and Director (510) 531-3257 A Master's degree in writing from the University of San Francisco caps Katherine Koelle's academic preparation with the Bay Area Writing Project and a secondary teaching credential from UC Berkeley. She has twenty years of teaching experience at secondary and college levels, has done extensive curriculum planning, works with diverse student populations, and promotes community involvement in the schools. She has focused most recently on school-to- career advancement, working with high school and community college instructors and in the Tech Prep arena, and has taken leadership positions to establish articulation agreements and certification. Kathleen Hallam, Secretary and Director (510) 665-1410 Kathleen Hallam has a Master's degree in English from San Jose State University, experience as a community college instructor and lecturer in composition, literature and writing skills, and extensive practical work in technical writing, copy editing, and free-lance editing. She has worked with WriterCoach Connection since 2002, serving schools in all ofCAFL's school districts, first as the Willard Middle School site coordinator; then coordinating the eighth-grade program in Berkeley at all three of the district's middle schools; serving as the program's site co-coordinator at Albany Middle School; shifting back to Berkeley as the WCC