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1834 Kongens Gade St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS (RFP) FOR Teacher Quality and Professional Development Program RFP: Teacher Quality and Professional Development Program Page 2 of 9 I. GENERAL INFORMATION A. PURPOSE / OVERVIEW The purpose of this Request for Proposals (RFP) is to solicit proposals from qualified provider(s) who can provide support and training to our beginning teachers and teacher leaders on effective instructional strategies, best practices and classroom management. The Virgin Islands Department of Education (VIDE) understands that teacher effectiveness is one of the most important criteria contributing to student achievement. VIDE data shows that school leaders that assume an active role in continuous teacher development see the greatest gains in individual student outcomes. Thus, a comprehensive beginning teacher induction program will focus on building the capacity of principals and other site leaders to create environments where new teachers thrive. This proposal will support school leadership in utilizing standard-based supervision and evaluation/observation practices and providing meaningful feedback that strengthens the entire system of human capital development, especially with the beginning teacher cadre. The Virgin Islands Department of Education (VIDE) seeks qualified service provider(s)/person(s) with the knowledge, experience, and expertise to provide all things necessary to provide whole group sessions and job embedded training to beginning teachers and teacher leaders. To set up a dashboard of resources that can be accessible to teachers that will be used to provide a wide array of content area learning opportunities to assist them in improving their instructional skills. The qualified service provider must provide professional development services, materials, access to online resources for all participants identified by the district leadership (Office of the Insular Superintendent). The proposal must include services and costs inclusive for 2016-17 school year. B. BACKGROUND Virgin Islands Department of Education The Commissioner of Education heads the Virgin Islands Department of Education, including the Virgin Islands Public School System. The Territory of the United States Virgin Islands is divided into two (2) school districts – the St. Thomas-St. John school district and the St. Croix school district. The two (2) school districts are managed and directed by Insular Superintendents with the day-to-day operations of each school district being managed with district offices on St. Thomas and St. Croix. The following contains additional information concerning the two (2) school districts: ST. THOMAS/ST. JOHN SCHOOL DISTRICT Number Schools 15 Elementary Schools 10 Middle Schools 2 Junior High School 1 RFP: Teacher Quality and Professional Development Program Page 3 of 9 High Schools 2 Programs 3 Day Adult Program 1 Skill Center 1 Alternative Ed Program 1 Total Schools and Programs 18 Number of Students 7,069 ST. CROIX SCHOOL DISTRICT Schools 13 Elementary Schools 8 High Schools 2 Junior High 3 Programs 3 Adult Ed 1 Alternative Ed 1 Career and Technical Ed 1 Total Schools and Programs 16 Number of Students 6,453 BOTH DISTRICTS TOTAL NUMBER OF VIDE REGULAR K-12 SCHOOLS 28 TOTAL NUMBER OF PROGRAMS 6 TOTAL NUMBER OF STUDENTS 13,522 TOTAL NUMBER OF TEACHERS/ADMINISTRATORS 1,203 On the island of St. John, two (2) schools serve the elementary and middle school student population. The senior high school students from the island of St. John are served by schools on the island of St. Thomas. The Insular Superintendent Office for the St. Thomas/St. John and the St. Croix districts have been designated and will serve as the DOE liaison on this project which will include one conference for the territory and individual job embedded support at each school within both districts. . C. ADMINISTRATIVE STRUCTURE Honorable Sharon Ann McCollum, Ph.D. heads the Virgin Islands Department of Education. The Department has two (2) school districts, the St. Thomas-St. John School District, and the St. Croix School District that are managed and directed by Insular Superintendents. The official physical and mailing to be used for any correspondence or delivery of paper reports address for the DOE is as follows: Virgin Islands Department of Education 1834 Kongens Gade St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands 00802-6742 RFP: Teacher Quality and Professional Development Program Page 4 of 9 Honorable Randolph N. Bennett, Commissioner of the Department of Property and Procurement (DPP), and other personnel at DPP, will manage the bidding, negotiation, and contractual processes. DOE’s Division of Procurement will serve as the liaison between the selected contractor and agencies of the Virgin Islands Government in contract preparation. D. CONTRACT TYPE The contract awarded under this RFP will be for professional services and cost reimbursement. No payments in advance or in anticipation of services or supplies to be provided under the contract shall be made by the Government. E. CONTRACT TERMS Unless otherwise agreed pursuant to negotiations, the term of the contract awarded under this RFP shall be for a period of two years, with up to one (1) year options to renew, upon mutual agreement between the Government and the selected contractor. F. SELECTION OF CONTRACTOR A contract shall be negotiated with a proposer deemed to be the most qualified and responsive to this solicitation. Such a proposer is one, which has financial, technical, and other resources that indicate an ability to perform the services required by this solicitation. A number of factors may influence the Government’s decision in selecting the provider. These factors include, but are not limited to, proposer’s ability to deliver requested services in a timely manner; reputation, qualifications, experience, familiarity, and specialty in providing similar services; quality of supporting resources; and responsibility status. The proposer shall also meet the following minimum requirements: (1) Provide description of the proposer’s organization. (2) Provide history and background of organization. (3) Provide previous experience including years of experience describing the type of experience required for the project. (4) Demonstrate ability and capability to deliver on all aspects as described in Section II.  Proposers should present their vision of how they propose meeting DOE’s needs and identify the overall approach to the project, define the scope of their offered services, and how they propose to meet the Scope of Services and Deliverables as defined in this RFP. (5) Provide at least three (3) professional references (project references). (6) Demonstrate the ability to perform services on-site in DOE’s facilities. H. INCURRED COSTS The Government of the Virgin Islands is not liable for any cost incurred by the proposer prior to the signing of a contract by all Parties. I. LATE PROPOSALS RFP: Teacher Quality and Professional Development Program Page 5 of 9 Any Proposal received after the exact time specified for receipt will not be considered. J. GIFTS FROM CONSULTANT The Government’s officers, employees, or agents shall neither solicit nor accept gratuities, favors, or anything of monetary value from contractors or potential contractors. To the extent permissible under local laws, rules, or regulations, such standards shall provide for appropriate penalties, sanctions, or other disciplinary actions to be applied for violations of such standards. K. LICENSES, FEES & TAXES 1. The selected contractor shall be responsible for paying all applicable taxes and fees, including but not limited to, excise tax, local income tax, and payroll and withholding taxes for its employees. The contractor shall hold Government harmless for all claims arising from payment of such taxes and fees. 2. The selected contractor shall obtain and post as required, all licenses, insurances, permits, and certificates as required by federal and local laws, rules and regulations, and policies. L. PROPOSAL FORMAT Each proposal must also meet the following minimum requirements: Part I: Narrative 1) Table of Contents This section must contain a table of contents. All major parts of the proposal must be identified by page numbers. 2) Executive Summary/Proposal Overview This section must describe the salient features of the proposal. It must contain an overview of the proposer’s company background and qualifications, and must condense and highlight the contents of the proposal to provide a broad understanding of the entire proposal. The Executive Summary should include conclusions and generalized recommendations. Pricing information must not be included in the Executive Summary. 3) Required Parts and Documents The proposal must include components of Section I. F. 4) Technical Response Demonstrate ability and capacity to provide services described in Section II. In this section, proposers should present their vision of how they propose meeting the Government’s needs and identify the overall approach to the project, define the scope of their offered services, and how they propose to meet the Scope of Services as defined in this RFP. RFP: Teacher Quality and Professional Development Program Page 6 of 9 Part II: Cost Proposal The proposal shall provide the proposed compensation for the services to be provided as described in Section II. Costs must be delineated by a fixed cost inclusive of travel, resources/materials, training and job embedded support. II. SCOPE OF SERVICES Overview The selected contractor shall provide services to VIDE to include a three day conference with breakout sessions that focus on instructional strategies and the evaluation processes with (300) beginning teachers and teacher leaders. They will also be required to provide job embedded support to include observations, consultation and modeling with beginning teachers. The contractor will also be required to set up a dashboard of resources that would be easily accessible to the beginning teachers and teacher leaders. This dashboard would provide immediate support to teachers as they work on improving their instructional skills. Tasks The selected contractor shall provide a three day induction conference. This conference will provide learning opportunities that will provide the target audiences with instructional leadership skills, i.e., coaching and mentoring; explore the latest best practices in teaching and learning with a focus on the unique needs of VIDE’s beginning teachers; and ultimately support school instructional leadership in establishing and maintaining a comprehensive Beginning Teacher Induction Program (BTIP). The contractor shall provide two days per school of job embedded professional development that will provide the participants (beginning teachers and administrators) structured support within their learning environments. The professional development will support the participants in instructional quality, formative assessments activities, analyses of student data and timely feedback, team teaching and reflective process. The contractor shall also provide an online dashboard that will manage the intra-processes of the BTIP based on the VIDE’s pre-determined performance metric or key performance indicators (Teacher/Leader Effectiveness System). Overall, operational functionality will help to identify trends over time or provide context around the teaching and learning performance metric, the ability to drill through information, to get alerts and to identify potential concerns as they occur. It will house pertinent resources relevant to beginning teacher and will have an application to facilitate school wide access to those resources. RFP: Teacher Quality and Professional Development Program Page 7 of 9 Deliverables The selected contractor must deliver to DOE the following: 1. A. Three Day Conference to be held during the First week of December 2016 on the island of St. Thomas. The participants will include beginning teacher and teacher leaders from all three islands, St. Thomas, St. Croix and St. John. The contractor will work with the Insular Superintendents from both districts to design the professional development modules with breakout sessions prior to the event. There has to be a clear alignment with the Charlotte Danielson Framework which is a research-based set of components of instruction, aligned to the INTASC standards, and grounded in a constructivist view of learning and teaching. The complex activity of teaching is divided into 22 components (and 76 smaller elements) clustered into four domains of teaching responsibility that is aligned to our existing evaluation system. This framework focuses on high quality classroom instruction in order to ensure continuous academic growth and high levels of student achievement. The contractor will provide the presenters with instructional resources and will be responsible for securing their own accommodations. The Insular Superintendent’s Office will be responsible for securing the venue and meals. The contractor will provide professional development on best practices to include effective instructional strategies, classroom management, assessment methods to include interpretation of data, evaluation system, coaching and mentoring to include a plan for sustainability of the this induction program. 2. B. Two day job embedded support to each school. In both districts that is a total of 32 activity centers. This will occur on December 8-15, 2016. The contractor will be responsible with working with school administrators to design a professional learning experience that will focus heavily on conducting observations of new teachers, coaching and modeling lessons and providing administrators and teacher leaders’ support on conducting standards based observations and providing meaningful feedback. These sessions would be designed to assist the principal with developing a sustainability plan that involves providing ongoing support to the beginning teachers. This professional development will support the induction stakeholders in implementing key formative assessment activities such as analysis of student data so that students’ individual needs are met. 3. C. The contractor will build a dashboard specifically designed to support the needs of the beginning teachers. The dashboard will have two major functions. First it will manage the intra-processes of the teachers based on VIDE’s predetermined performance indicators. Trends will be identified and information gathered will be used to drive the decision made by each district. Administrators will be able to use that data to understand what happened, why and what changes would need to be made in the future in order to support the beginning teachers more effectively. Secondly, the dashboard will house resources relative to a beginning teacher. The contractor will work closely with the RFP: Teacher Quality and Professional Development Program Page 8 of 9 Insular Superintendents of both district to construct the dashboard and they will also be responsible for providing technical support and maintaining the platform. This dashboard will need to be built by the end of December 2016. III. NON-PERFORMANCE BY SELECTED CONTRACTOR In the event of the selected contractor’s non-performance under the subsequent contract and/or the violation or breach of the contract terms, the Government shall have the right to pursue all administrative, contractual, and legal remedies against the contractor and shall have the right to seek all sanctions and penalties as may be appropriate. Further, either party shall have the right to terminate the contract with or without cause upon the agreed upon written notice to the other party specifying the date of termination. IV. CONTRACTUAL REQUIREMENTS All bid proposals and subsequent contract and supporting documents (if selected) must reflect the legal name of entity. Supporting documents that must be submitted prior to contract execution and within the time established by the Government shall include, but not be limited to, the following: (1) Certificate of Resolution, as to the authorized negotiator and signer of a contract. (2) Current Virgin Islands Business License issued to the legal name of record of the entity by the Government of the Virgin Islands, Department of Licensing and Consumer Affairs; and if applicable, copy of current business license issued by state, city or county in which the foreign corporation is operating. (3) Three (3) current original Certificate(s)of Good Standing/Existence, in legal name of the Contractor by the Virgin Islands Office of the Lt. Governor, Division of Corporations and Trademarks; and if company is not locally formed, an original Certificate of Good Standing, Certificate of Existence, or Certificate of Status from the state of registration. (4) Certificate of Issuance or Renewal of Trade Name issued by the Virgin Islands Office of the Lt. Governor, Division of Corporations and Trademarks, if applicable. (5) Articles of Incorporation or Organization, as applicable; or documents governing operation. (6) Certificate of Liability Insurance indicating proof of coverage of Professional Liability Insurance and General Liability/Public Liability Insurance - each of no less than [One Million Dollars and Zero Cents ($1,000,000.00)] for any one occurrence. The Contractor must provide a Certificate of Liability Insurance and Declaration/Endorsement pages that indicating that the Government of the Virgin Islands, Department of Education, is as “certificate holder” and an “additional insured” on the General Liability/Public Liability Insurance. The Professional Liability Insurance must cover the services to be provided under the contract. (7) Certificate of Government Insurance/Copy of Certificate providing firm/agents are covered by Workers’ Compensation Employee’s Liability. Please note the above-referenced documents are subject to modification at the Government’s discretion. RFP: Teacher Quality and Professional Development Program Page 9 of 9 Any silence, absence, or omission from the contract specifications concerning any point shall be regarded as meaning that only the best commercial practices are to prevail. All contractual documents including insurance certificates/policies must be kept updated and maintained throughout the term of the contract