Disaster Recovery Grants Project
A Program of The Barbara Bush Texas Fund for Family Literacy
Final Report, September 2009
GRANTEE SUMMARIES
Brazosport College
The objectives of this project, as written, were:
- to purchase and display a street banner advertising spring classes.
- to print and distribute 3,000 bilingual flyers.
- to add a Level 2 English language class at the Lake Jackson location.
- to purchase 30 Level 2 Side by Side student books and 30 workbooks for use in the new Lake Jackson class.
- to purchase 30 readers for use in the new Lake Jackson class.
- to purchase 15 Rosetta Stone language learning software kits for use in the new Lake Jackson class.
- to provide staff with three hours of professional development on student retention.
The program opened an additional class to recover from the loss of contact hours and students when the storm damaged one of their centers and displaced many students. They designed, purchased, and displayed, in partnership with the city, a banner which was used for recruitment purposes. The banner spread from side to side of the highway leading to Freeport and was displayed with permission from the city for two weeks. The program reports that it was a very successful strategy and they will use the banner in the future to attract new and returning students. They have decided to budget the funds needed in their regular program to display the banner yearly.
The addition of the Rosetta Stone software to the language lab at the Lake Jackson location was very successful. The software was an excellent tool, not only for recruitment purposes, but, most importantly, to encourage student persistence.
Narrative Project Success
Literacy and fluency are strong influencing factors on the quality of life, including self-sufficiency, civic involvement and legal status. But programs can’t help students learn unless they are present in the classroom.
Brazosport College’s English Literacy and Civics Education program experienced a 31% loss in attendance due to the disruption of Hurricane Ike. That meant that nearly one-third of the program's students were at risk of not gaining improved literacy skills - skills critical to the improvement of their quality of life and work performance. Without these enhanced English language skills, those who lost jobs would have more difficulty in obtaining new employment and thus lack financial resources to make home repairs. In other words, the disruption to their studies (and to their ultimate goal of English-language proficiency) would have long-term effects upon their overall lives and ability to recover from Hurricane Ike.
Implementing grant-funded activities provided for the expansion of recruitment efforts to increase public awareness of the program. The addition of a Level 2 class in Lake Jackson was specifically aimed at meeting the needs of Limited English Proficient populations, improving long-term student retention and enhancing program delivery. The Barbara Bush Texas Fund’s Disaster Recovery Grant provided much needed funds for the purchase of learning materials (books and software) and for staff development - a key component in providing classroom instruction based on the latest best practices in the field.
Hurricane Ike caused a loss in attendance, loss of contact hours and loss of student progress. However, despite these negative impacts, with the help of the Disaster Recovery funds, Brazosport College’s English Literacy and Civics Education (EL Civics) program managed to end strong. The program’s Texas Educating Adults Management System (TEAMS) Performance Report indicates that during the 2008-2009 fiscal year, the program met or exceeded both the state retention goals and the federal performance targets for all five federal performance levels in which Brazosport had students.
Another way the program evaluated the success of this recovery initiative was through a student outreach and satisfaction survey conducted at the conclusion of the spring 2009 semester. At the end of the spring semester, students throughout the program were given a bilingual survey to complete. Eighty-five surveys were collected. Results were compiled and analyzed to determine the impact of the Barbara Bush Disaster Recovery Initiative on recruitment, retention, and student satisfaction.
The survey results indicated the following:
- Percentage of students who heard about classes via the bilingual flyer: 27%
- Percentage of students who heard about classes via the street banner: 8%
- Percentage of students who heard about classes via La Voz newspaper ad: 7%
- Percentage of students who used Side by Side Books: 35%
- Percentage of students who used Side by Side Workbooks: 28%
- Percentage of students who used classroom readers: 20%
- Percentage of students who used Rosetta Stone: 21%
- Percentage of students who reported that the classroom instructional materials helped them progress more rapidly in learning English: 74%
- Percentage of students who said their teacher’s instructional skills helped them progress more rapidly in learning English: 71%
The vast majority of this program’s regular EL Civics budget goes toward salaries for support staff including: teachers, testers, aides, the coordinator, and employee benefits. There is often little left over with which to purchase new instructional supplies. The purchases made by the Disaster Recovery Grant put much needed state-of-the-art instructional supplies (books, workbooks, readers, software) into students’ hands and helped mitigate Ike’s devastating effects. These same supplies will continue to be available to hundreds of students in this program in the years ahead.
