An exciting spring high school coach stipend bonus opportunity (please reply by Thursday afternoon)

We know you are right in the midst of preparing for our biggest and most important tournament of the year, next weekend’s Chicago Debate Championship at Curie.

We recognize the impact of our most important resource, you, our coaches. We have some great news that we believe will help your debate teams grow and prosper.

This spring, we are fortunate that our CPS Manager, Academic Competitions, Sylvia Nelson Jordan has solidified some one-time funding from the Healthy Communities Grant that we wrote. We are applying the toward additional coach stipends, pending that coaches sign this Letter of Intent by the end of the day on Thursday March 21st, 2019 (as the funds must be expended by March 30, 2019) and complete the following tasks by May 15th, 2019:

– Each school’s coaches taking part must work with Chicago Debates to develop and submit a recruiting plan by May 15th with at least 2 action steps for increasing interest in debate and identifying new debaters who are not seniors

– Each school’s coaches will send a roster of potential debate recruits identified in the spring of 2019

– Each school’s coaches will communicate with other teachers and school administrators about identifying promising new debate recruits and raising visibility for the team

The goal of this program is to motivate schools to build their debate teams and to set a foundation for students who can attend introductory meetings in the spring and become active debaters in the fall of 2019, with an additional goal of attending the 2019 CDSI summer camp at Dunbar from 7/22 – 8/2.

This is a one-time bonus and coaches should NOT expect that stipends will be increased by the amount received this spring in 2019-2020 or in any future season.

The stipend bonus depends on participation – $1500 for meeting participation standard 3 or more times, $750 for attending 3 or more CDL tournaments and meeting participation standard at least once, and $300 for teams that have attended 2 or more CDL tournaments this school year through March 15th, 2019 (does not include T6 for high school). Stipend bonuses will be added to CPS staff members’ paychecks in the second half of March or the first half of April. This stipend bonus is open only to current CPS staff members and is not available to charter school employees.

There is also a one-time stipend bonus for schools that attended the 2019 IHSA Varsity State Championship of $500.

Coaches can get a further explanation of the breakdown and how much each school will receive here – High School Spring Bonus Stipends

We await your responses through Thursday afternoon and hope that we are growing thriving debate teams throughout the city next fall by creating a foundation this spring through your recruiting efforts.

All schools that wish to receive this additional stipend money must complete an online Letter of Intent by filling out this Google Form by the end of Thursday – Spring Recruiting Bonus Letter of Intent.

We appreciate all that you do and thank you for a historic season. See you at Curie!

Sincerely,

David Song and Sylvia Nelson Jordan