(1) Any school district, charter school, or facility school that seeks to participate in the grant program shall submit an application to the department in the form and according to deadlines established by rule of the state board. The application shall include the following information:
If the applicant is a school district, the names of the schools that will receive thebenefits of the grant;
The current level of information technology education integration at the charter school, facility school, or recipient schools;
The school district's, charter school's, or facility school's plan for integrating information technology education into the ninth-grade through twelfth-grade curriculum, including any specific method or program to be used, and any entities with whom the school district, charter school, or facility school plans to contract or cooperate in achieving the integration;
The specific, measurable goals to be achieved through the integration of informationtechnology education into the curriculum, a deadline for achieving those goals, and a proposed method of measuring whether the goals were achieved;
Any businesses with which the school district, the charter school, the facility school,or the recipient school has partnered to improve the availability and integration of information technology education within the curriculum;
Any other information that may be specified by rule of the state board.
(2) In recommending and awarding grants through the program, the department and the state board shall consider the following criteria:
The degree to which information technology education is already integrated into thecurriculum of the applying school district, charter school, or facility school to ensure that those school districts, charter schools, and facility schools with the least degree of integration receive the grants first;
The degree to which the applying school district's, charter school's, or facility school's proposed plan for using the grant moneys will result in integration of information technology education into the curriculum and the scope of the information technology education to be integrated;
Any other financial resources available to the applying school district, charter school,or facility school for integrating information technology education into the curriculum;
The degree to which the applying school district, charter school, facility school, orproposed recipient school is cooperating or partnering with businesses to improve the availability and integration of information technology education in the curriculum. The department and the state board shall apply this criteria with the goal of encouraging such partnerships.
The validity, clarity, and measurability of the goals established by the applying school district, charter school, or facility school and the validity of the proposed methods for measuring achievement of the goals;
Any other criteria established by rule of the state board to ensure that grants areawarded to school districts, charter schools, and facility schools that demonstrate the greatest need and the most valid, effective plan for integrating information technology education into the curriculum.
In awarding grants through the grant program, the state board shall ensure, to theextent possible, that the grants are awarded to school districts, charter schools, and facility schools in all areas of the state.
If a facility school receives one or more grants pursuant to this section and the facility school subsequently ceases operations, any hardware or software purchased using the grant moneys received shall revert to the school district in which the facility school was located.
Nothing in this article shall be construed to limit or otherwise affect any school district's ability to enter into an agreement with or receive funds from any private entity.
Source: L. 2001: Entire article added, p. 836, § 1, effective June 1.