Spotlight 4 Success

Federal Program Insights

• American Book Company • Season 1

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Have you ever wondered how federal education funding actually reaches classrooms and impacts students? Dr. Molly Killingsworth, Director of Federal Programs for the Alabama State Department of Education, pulls back the curtain on this process in our illuminating conversation recorded at the Alabama Federal Programs Conference.

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Devin Pintozzi:

Welcome to Spotlight for Success by American Book Company. I'm Devin Pintosa, your host. We are here at the Alabama Federal Programs Conference with the Director of Federal Programs for ALSDE. This is Molly Killingsworth. Thank you, Molly, for joining us today.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely, you're welcome.

Devin Pintozzi:

All right. So Dr Molly Killingsworth, tell usa little bit about what's going on here at the conference that you can share.

Speaker 2:

Sure. So at the conference we're updating, giving updates, federal updates, state updates, different things that are going on in Washington with legislation, what to expect, and we're also having an opportunity for the school districts to share with each other bring, challenges, questions that they have, sharing ideas and information. We want everyone to leave with a better understanding of the federal grants and being better able to implement, you know, for the kids in.

Devin Pintozzi:

Alabama. Oh, that's wonderful. So a lot of buzz about that here at this conference, trying to make sure everybody's informed on the best way to get those forms filled out and make sure everything's straight. Yes, absolutely. Okay, that's great. Dr Killingsworth, can you tell us a bit about your journey to get into this role and special experiences you had during that process?

Speaker 2:

Sure. So I actually started teaching math and I went from math to guidance counseling. I was a guidance counselor at the elementary, middle and high school level actually, and then I got into administration at the school and district level before coming to the State Department. The majority of my experience in the public schools was in Elmore County and we actually used some of the products American Book Company products with our students that were struggling passing the graduation exam, that math and the social studies they just had so much difficulty with them. But we had remediation sessions after school and then we actually had a built into the master schedule sessions where they had could use primarily those books as resources to help them remediate for the test.

Speaker 3:

Thank you for watching Spotlight for Success. I am Devin Pintozzi, chief Operating Officer of American Book Company. We are located here in our headquarters in Woodstock, georgia. All of our materials are printed in USA. We have course books, ebooks and online testing in grades K through 12 in mathematics, ela, science and social studies. These materials are all designed to help students achieve higher scores on their state-specific high-stakes assessments. We guarantee score improvement. You can get free samples of our materials either in print or in electronic formats at abck12.com. We look forward to hearing from you.

Devin Pintozzi:

That's wonderful. And did they see score improvement?

Speaker 2:

with that. Actually, yeah, yeah, actually, yeah, they did.

Devin Pintozzi:

That's awesome. That is so great to hear and I'm so happy that you were able to have. What a wonderful career you've had as well reaching so many students. Is there anything you'd like to share with the federal programs community or anything regarding next year you could share with us?

Speaker 2:

Well, just that. You know, in the state of Alabama we are always looking to see what we can do to improve, to make sure our programs are effective, and what we can do to work more efficiently. So our job is to support the school district, so they can support the schools and, ultimately, the students. So we want to do what we can do to make it easier for them.

Devin Pintozzi:

Okay, wonderful. Well, thank you once again, Dr Killingsworth, Director of Federal Programs with the ALSDE. Thank you for joining us today.

Speaker 2:

Thank you, bye-bye.