Education
Providing Turn-Key Oversight Solutions for Federal and State Education Grant Programs
The Vander Weele Group provides turn-key oversight solutions for federal and state education grant programs. With the Every Student Succeeds Act as a mainstay, our firm has developed monitoring programs for more than 30 education grant programs. We have conducted educational monitoring reviews in more than 20 states.
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Whether your grant monitoring challenges involve multiple program sites, unsupported findings of non-compliance, weak technical support or fraud prevention, or keeping up with changing laws and regulations, the Vander Weele Group can save you time and money while optimizing your program for success.
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Services We Offer
What We Do
We provide comprehensive grants oversight services to ensure accountability, maximize impact, and promote the success of your grant programs. Our services include:
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Monitoring Program Development
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Fiscal Oversight and Risk Management
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Programmatic Monitoring
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Construction Monitoring
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Waste, Fraud and Abuse
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Technical Assistance and Reporting
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Grants Management
​To Learn More, Call Us at 773-929-3030 or Inquire Here
Sample Projects
Illinois State Board of Education,
Division of Federal and State Monitoring
Since 2018 we have been engaged by the Illinois State Board of Education to create and execute a risk-based monitoring program to monitor expenditures of Federal grants distributed to Chicago Public Schools District 299, and since 2020, to nine of the State’s other large districts.
Our team:
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Develops and implements program infrastructure: We created monitoring tools to gauge compliance with grant requirements including but not limited to the Uniform Guidance; the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA); the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act; the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations (CRRSA) Act; and multiple education-related statutes.
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Conducts in-depth monitoring: Between 2020 – 2023 we reviewed up to 13 different grant streams annually in 169 district schools, 51 charter schools, eight city wide units, and 37 central offices. We conduct testing to determine cost allowability, adherence to budgets, timeliness of spending, coding of expenditures, and the effectiveness of internal controls, among other elements.
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Reviews policies and procedures: We examine district-wide documentation to ensure compliance with Federal regulations, including the Uniform Guidance and specific grant requirements.
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Provides technical assistance: We offer guidance and support to help districts resolve any identified deficiencies and improve their grant management practices.
We have monitored more than $6.9 billion in Federal grants for CPS and the other nine districts. Our work has helped to ensure the responsible use of Federal funds for the benefit of students in Illinois.
North Dakota Department of Public Instruction
The North Dakota Department of Public Instruction (NDDPI) engaged the Vander Weele Group to create and support the implementation of a large-scale comprehensive monitoring plan for more than 30 Federal and state discretionary, formulary, and entitlement grants across North Dakota. For this engagement, we developed a risk assessment process, a comprehensive compliance matrix, a comprehensive monitoring plan, fiscal and programmatic monitoring tools, quality control processes, and templates for grantee communications.
New Jersey Department of Education
Beginning in the fall of 2022, the New Jersey Department of Education engaged the Vander Weele Group to monitor $600 million for services provided to students with disabilities under the Additional or Compensatory Special Education and Related Services (ACSERS) program, which is funded through the ARPA State and Local Fiscal Recovery Fund (SLFRF). Our team performed a risk assessment of the ACSERS program, a comparative risk assessment to prioritize individual districts for monitoring, individual school district risk assessments, and monitoring of funds.
Illinois State Board of Education,
Division of Federal and State Monitoring
In a five-year program, Vander Weele Group provided compliance reviews, evaluations and technical assistance to nearly all of the 183 schools funded by the Bureau of Indian Education (BIE). The firm made on-site visits to more than 140 locations in 23 states, reviewed more than 230,000 school safety and misconduct reports, and developed custom database tools for monitoring and reporting.
Each year, the Vander Weele Group provided a final report with recommended systemic reforms that addressed challenges such as high leadership and teacher turnover, inadequate technological infrastructure, insufficient understanding of student achievement data to drive educational programs, insufficient parental involvement, excessive carryover funds, violations of internal controls, Going Concern problems (schools improperly budgeting and at risk of exhausting their funds), and more. The BIE and its schools used the information from the monitoring visits and ​these recommendations to drive new strategies, future training, and technical assistance.
