On September 3, 2024, the United States Department of Education (USDE) awarded the Kentucky Department of Education (KDE) a 5-year, $54,985,544.00, Comprehensive Literacy State Development (CLSD) grant to advance literacy skills, including pre-literacy skills, reading and writing, with an emphasis on disadvantaged children, including children living in poverty, English learners and children with disabilities.

The CLSD discretionary grant program, renamed Kentucky Comprehensive Literacy 2025 (KyCL 25), will provide competitive funding to districts to strengthen high-quality instructional resources (HQIRs) and curriculum based professional learning (CBPL) for all levels.  KyCL 25 will focus on increasing student literacy achievement through four project goals.

Goal 1: Instructional staff will use evidence-based, literacy HQIRs to deliver coherent and aligned instruction to all students.

Goal 2: Instructional staff will use evidence-based, literacy HQIRs to support struggling readers to narrow the achievement gap for our target populations in a cycle of continuous improvement.

Goal 3: Instructional staff will be engaged in sustained, aligned, job-embedded, high-quality CBPL focused on a literacy HQIR.

Goal 4: Schools will increase family engagement in the literacy development of their student(s) and awareness of resources to aid in supplemental literacy instruction at home.

The KDE Office of Teaching and Learning is issuing a Request for Application (RFA) for subgrantees for the KyCL 25 grant that can be found on the Competitive Grants Webpage. Funding will be based on the number of students in each district feeder system designated as small, medium and large. The number of awards will depend on the number and size of the awarded applicants. The KDE anticipates funding approximately 40 districts. The four-year award for small districts would be $1,065,000.00, medium districts would be $1,300,000.00 and large districts would be $1,560,000.00. All public-school districts and state schools can apply. No matching funds are required. RFA’s should be submitted by Dec. 18, 2024, at 4 p.m. ET. Funding for this grant will begin on July 1, 2025, and end on Sept. 30, 2029.