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

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 attached 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 8th graders

– 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 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 the Chicago Middle School Debate Championship that concluded our season last weekend. Stipend bonuses will be added to CPS staff members’ paychecks in the second half of March or the first half of April.

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 for current CPS staff (unfortunately, it is not available to charters) and coaches should NOT expect that stipends will be increased by the amount received this spring in 2019-2020 or in any future season.

There is also a one-time payment for self-funded schools of the full coach stipend ($3000) to help relieve the pressure on their schools to fund the cost of debate.

Coaches can get a further explanation of the breakdown and how much each school will receive here – Middle 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.

We appreciate all that you do and thank you for a historic season.

Sincerely,

David Song and Sylvia Nelson Jordan