A State educational agency (SEA) and its participating local educational agencies (LEAs), once approved to participate in the pilot, must meet the following conditions:

• The SEA must take actions to help ensure that more students participate in SES and public school choice as demonstrated by a substantial increase in the combined participation in public school choice and SES in the pilot LEAs between 2005-06 and 2006-07.

• The SEA must provide the Department with information on the academic achievement of students receiving SES by school within the participating LEAs within one month of the date that each of the LEAs receives its 2006-07 assessment results.

• The SEA must ensure that parents in pilot LEAs have access to a variety of SES providers, as demonstrated by the following:

  1. Maintaining a comprehensive list of SES providers (e.g. nonprofit, for-profit, faith- and community-based, online).
  2. Ensuring that at least two providers from which parents may choose are available in each pilot LEA.
  3. Ensuring that parents in pilot LEAs receive timely information on school performance and student eligibility for, and enrollment in, public school choice and SES that is clear, accurate, and easily accessible, in languages parents can understand. The SEA may want to develop model parental notification letters and standard forms for enrolling students in choice and SES.
  4. Ensuring that pilot LEAs provide fair and equitable treatment of non-LEA providers by giving providers access to school facilities at a reasonable price and dividing space among providers in a fair manner.
  5. Ensuring that pilot LEAs allow providers to market their services to parents and work with community and business partners to reach out to parents and provide them with information on their options.

• The SEA must require pilot LEAs to notify eligible parents about SES prior to the start of the school year, or within the first few weeks of the school year, and provide SES shortly thereafter.

• The SEA must require pilot LEAs to offer continuous enrollment in SES or multiple SES enrollment periods throughout the 2006-07 school year until each pilot LEA spends the 20 percent required by NCLB or all students eligible for SES and choice are served.

• The SEA must submit complete and accurate public school choice and SES data to the Department via the Educational Data Exchange Network (EDEN) for the 2005-06 school year by the end of October 2006, and for the 2006-07 school year by the end of October 2007.

• The SEA must submit to the Department a report on how it met the terms of its flexibility agreement under this pilot by June 30, 2007.

Flexibility Agreements 2006