“Right now, we have focused on ELA and math, so I would say it’s [funding toward NGSS] not comparable right now. Down the road, it is going to depend on how much [funding] we get. Once we know, then we can try to figure that out.”

“NGSS is a big shift… I think [it’s] taking [us] to new heights in the re-engineering of science education. Because of that and because of that foundational work that began long ago, we’ve been previewing that for the last several years. We’ve used that preview to do things like, so far, adopt a new course design at the middle ranks.”

“It is hard to find good, deeply rooted, science people. That is an issue that we all have. I don’t want teachers to see NGSS as an add-on.”

“One of the biggest barriers, especially for science is, ‘Here’s the NGSS. Go for it! We’re picking up your old textbooks. We’re going to test you in a year but we’re not going to give you curriculum for another three years.’ [So] you get online and you’re spending hours researching. Some people say this is NGSS and [then you] come to find out that after three more trainings really what you thought was NGSS you had no clue really what NGSS was. They [the policy leaders] try to implement this stuff without a plan.”

“Teachers have so little time to spend on doing their own research that, I really want to be able to provide them the core materials and any additional supplemental so they don’t have to go out, finding all their materials.”

“I don’t feel like I can do more than [what we’re doing] right now. It isn’t because of funding; it’s because I feel like they’re [the teachers] not yet where we need them to be with ELA and math for me to add NGSS to the juggling.”

“It’s a talking point right now, but if you were to look at our budget… I don’t see much focus on NGSS. We de-prioritized as much professional development [as possible]… We’ve put more into ELA and math. That’s something that just came up in an LCAP session I had last week, is that we need to start making sure that we really start focusing on getting our teachers ready for NGSS and, of course, the curriculum that will be coming out soon.”

“Our push and priority has been around [ELA and ELD where] we are pouring a good amount of resources with our coaches, consultants, trainers, [and] staff development. We’re having to… put [NGSS and social studies] on the back burner a little bit because money is running a bit short in those areas now… Adoptions will be delayed, driven by expense.”

“We’re using our Educator Effectiveness [grant] to fund [NGSS] this year. I would say this year has come on pretty strong. We have some great teacher leaders who, again, have gone to all the county training [and] shared [what they learned] at the school sites. We spent a lot of time when NGSS came out using our funds to pool our teachers into specific professional [learning] days for NGSS standards. We have purchased curriculum to assist in the implementation of NGSS. I would say the only difference is we do not have science specialists at site. We’re not struggling to figure out what we’re going to do. We have made sure that that was something we knew was coming down the pipe, so [we] tried to prepare for that and there hasn’t been any expenditure for NGSS so far that we said no [to].”

“We’re going to need a lot of equipment. We’re going to need so many different things. [It] has been helpful to start to set aside funds so that we’re prepared for the implementation of NGSS. This is a big shift. It’s no longer cookie-cutter labs. It’s now investigations where you need to have a variety of different resources for kids to solve problems and have the technology and equipment that students need access to so that they can solve the problems. It’s a lot of training for our teachers, too, on how to teach differently.”