Connecting Colorado Students Grant Program (CCSG)

Submit questions or requests for technical assistance to CCSGapplications@cde.state.co.us.

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HB 20B-1001 Connecting Colorado Students Grant Program

HB 20B-1001 appropriated $20 million from the general fund to award grants through the Connecting Colorado Students grant program to increase access to broadband services for students, educators, and other staff who lack stable, reliable internet access for online learning. Eligible applicants that receive this grant shall use the funds to meet the internet access needs of its students, educators, and other staff.

Funds will be disbursed in full upon award and will be made available after the applicant has an approved application and budget.

Applicant Information

Eligibility

Funds are available to education providers who can apply on behalf of individual schools or in partnership with a broadband service provider. Eligible applicants include:

School districts (on behalf of all schools or particular schools)
BOCES
Charter School Institute (CSI)
Charter schools (Note: the charter school’s authorizer will be the fiscal agent, if funded)
Federally recognized Tribes that operates a public school in Colorado .

Priority Considerations

Priority for this funding opportunity will be given to applicants that:

Serve a high percentage of students who are eligible for free and reduced lunch; and
Serve a high percentage of students with little to no access to broadband. Broadband data is based on Census ACS broadband subscription % estimates.

See Attachment A for the ranking of school districts based on the percentage of students eligible for free and reduced lunch (FRLP) and the districts that serve a high percentage of students with little to no access to broadband (BB).

Data Privacy

CDE takes seriously its obligation to protect the privacy of student and educator Personally Identifiable Information (PII) collected, used, shared, and stored. PII will not be collected through the Connecting Colorado Students grant program. All program evaluation data will be collected in the aggregate and will be used, shared, and stored in compliance with CDE’s privacy and security policies and procedures.

Note: Documents submitted must not contain any personally identifiable student or educator information including names, identification numbers, or anything that could identify an individual. All data should be referenced/included in the aggregate and the aggregate counts should be redacted to remove small numbers under n=16 for students or n=5 for educators.

Review Process and Timeline

Applications will be reviewed by CDE staff to ensure they contain all required components. Applicants will be notified of awards no later than Friday, January 22, 2021.

Note: This is a competitive process – applicants must score at least 63 points out of the 90 possible points to be approved for funding. Applications that score below 63 points may be asked to submit revisions that would bring the application up to a fundable level.

Connecting Colorado Students Grant funding will be awarded to applicants that score at a fundable level and meet the priority of serving both a high percentage of students eligible for free and reduced lunch and a high percentage of students with little to no access to broadband. To ensure funding reaches applicants with the highest priority (see Attachment A for the priority eligibility list), funding will be awarded to fundable applicants as follows:

CCSG Funding

Score	Funding Level
Applicants scoring at or above 63 points and ranked from 1-20 on the priority eligibility list	100% of request Amount
Applicants scoring at or above 63 points and ranked from 21-50 on the priority eligibility list	At least 70% of requested amount
Applicants scoring at or above 63 points and ranked above 50 on the priority eligibility list	At least 50% of requested amount

Contacts:

For Program Questions:

DeLilah Collins

For Budget/Fiscal Questions:

Jennifer Austin

For Application Process Questions:

Kim Burnham