Denair Unified School District will be busy over the next month finalizing how to spend two $75,000 College Readiness Block Grants — whether it’s through funding Advanced Placement programs, college prep or interventions — to make sure students are college and career ready at Denair High School and Denair Charter Academy.

Awarded through the California Department of Education’s Local Control Funding Formula, the College Readiness Block Grant provides $200 million in funding to California high school pupils, particularly unduplicated pupils, for additional supports to help increase the number who enroll at institutions of higher education and complete an undergraduate degree within four years. Unduplicated pupils are students who are English learners, meet income or categorical eligibility requirements for free or reduced-price meals under the National School Lunch Program or are foster youth.

Denair High School and Denair Charter Academy each received $75,000 grants based on their unduplicated pupil counts of 145 students and 131 students, respectively.

Chief Business Officer Linda Covello submitted a “skeletal” spending plan to the DUSD Board of Trustees Thursday. The $75,000 grants that were preliminarily awarded to both Denair High School and Denair Charter Academy were broken down into $10,000 for advanced placement, $15,000 for intervention and $50,000 for college prep programs.

For Denair High School, Covello said the Local Control Accountability Plan goal DUSD is hoping to achieve is creating “dynamic, multi-dimensional, organized” educational processes that will “inspire, prepare, develop and advance all students to be college or career ready.” Over at Denair Charter academy, the LCAP goal for college readiness is to make sure all students engage “their individual learning styles to acquire 21st Century Skills as they pursue higher education or Career Technical Pathways.”

Thursday’s agenda item was only for discussion purposes, according to Covello, who said that the Board will come back to vote on spending options in February. Her goal over the next month is to meet with the principals of Denair High School and Denair Charter Academy to finalize details as to how both schools plan on addressing issues related to college readiness.

“The requirement by the State for the new College Readiness Block Grant is that it’s discussed in a Board meeting and it’s approved at a later Board meeting,” said Covello. “We’ll elaborate a lot more at the February Board meeting once I’ve had a chance to sit down with the principals and see how this can help us in plans we already have going forward into next year to help all students be college ready.”