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A Leadership Perspective on School of Hope Grants
Dissertation   Open access

A Leadership Perspective on School of Hope Grants

Maribeth Callmer Mason
University of West Florida Libraries
Doctor of Education (EDD), University of West Florida
2024

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Abstract

The Florida House Bill 7069 set aside funding to assist schools in school improvement efforts during the 2018–2019 and 2019–2020 school years (FLDOE, n-d-a). Twenty-one schools in the state qualified for the extra funding. This qualitative phenomenological study aimed to explore the implementation of the School of Hope Grant at two elementary schools that submitted the same grant application for funding. The whole school transformation model helped implement specific strategies to improve each school’s academics. The interview questions explored school improvement from the theoretical lens of critical pragmatism. The grant funding initiatives were successful in the two schools in this study and the other 19 schools that received the School of Hope Grant. The first important finding of this study was that each school focused on improving school leadership, developing teacher capacity, providing student-centered learning with rigorous instruction, and increasing parent and community involvement, and their academic standing showed improvement. A second important finding was that the lack of funding after the grant implementation finished did not negatively affect the schools’ academic success. The third research finding was that school improvement efforts were sustainable when the school culture was supportive, and the teacher retention rate was high. Future research in school improvement efforts should include a quantitative research study to determine if grant funding can have long-term sustainability in schools that serve low socioeconomic populations of students. A more extensive qualitative study would warrant using the whole school transformation model.
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