Worcester Public Schools District Interview

Speaker1: Danielle Parrillo - Grants Director

Speaker2: Kaylee Grace - Writer Developer

Speaker3: Ryan Rodriguez

Speaker1: [00:00:00] Timelining and evidence and things like that. So I think really anything that could help coordinate that work is helpful. And I will say that since I've been here trying to, like, systemize the grants office and make it a little bit easier, we have been exploring a bunch of different existing products, and there's not a whole lot that does all of the things that we would like it to do. So you know, I hope you guys are successful with what you're doing because it could definitely be helpful. That sounds amazing. Introduce yourself as well.

Speaker2: [00:00:32] Hi, I'm Kaylee Grace. I'm a grant developer for Worcester Public Schools, and I've been here since December. Prior to that, I was the science department head and a science teacher for different school district.

Speaker3: [00:00:48] Amazing. Cool. Just to just two things before we. Would you guys mind if we recorded the meeting just so that we could we don't miss anything in our notes. It's totally okay. If not

Speaker1: [00:00:58] That's fine.

Speaker3: [00:00:59] So we want to so just before we jump into, like any of your answers, like, don't don't try to refrain from using, like, school district language. Like, both my parents are educators, and I've heard that language my whole life, so don't, like, refrain from using, like, sophisticated stuff. So my first question is, both of you, both of you guys could just answer, like, super quickly, how many active grants are you overseeing each year for Worcester Public Schools in terms of like, end to end? Like the grants that you apply for, like on a regular yearly basis and then like new grants that you also search and find for sure.

Speaker1: [00:01:39] I would say on average it's anywhere between like 75 and 100. Right now we have 83 that we're currently running. Some of them will go multiple fiscal years. So we're closing out entitlement grants as an example from FY 24. They're ending the end of this month. So there's a little bit of overlap, but I feel like that's been relatively steady amount since I've been here.

Speaker3: [00:02:09] And then Kaylee did you have anything to add on that as well.

Speaker2: [00:02:17] No, it's the same. Same office. Yeah. That that's the.

Speaker1: [00:02:23] Overarching office, but.

Speaker2: [00:02:25] We have, you know, three grant developers plus Danielle. So kind of spread that around.

Speaker3: [00:02:34] Okay. Okay. In terms of these next couple questions are going to be for like time and effort. So for the end to end cycle for each of these grants from like finding the grant to like then actually getting the grant and then getting all the data that you need for that grant, and then getting the award timeline and then creating your action plans. How long does that typical cycle take for you guys? Or is it very grant dependent?

Speaker1: [00:03:02] I'd say it's pretty grant dependent. And then also sometimes we don't get a lot of lead time from the funder themselves. So our timeline is shrunk based on what they give us. So as an example, there's times when let's say they release a grant, you know, September 1st and they'll want some sort of concept paper or application, you know, 30 days or two weeks or sometimes you'll hear about it and it'll be rolling and you'll have, you know, months to work on it. So some of it is influenced by that. I would say.

Speaker3: [00:03:37] In terms of, yeah, go ahead.

Speaker2: [00:03:40] Definitely deadline dependent, you know, and we have multiple streams of finding grants. So with that kind of complicates things as well, depending on how, how we find out about it. And really, you know, in relation to what the deadline is.

Speaker3: [00:04:00] In terms of like, I know you just said it's like grant dependent in terms of, like your weekly hour splits, though, since you guys are focusing solely on grants, how much would you say you dedicate time towards, like discovery versus I guess this is going to be a two part question. So like for discovery and then like drafting for example, and then like pulling all that data together, would you guys be able to give like a general estimate of the time you spend doing those things?