The Road to Naviance – Part 2: Getting the ball rolling

Welcome to the second part of my trek to integrate Naviance (@Naviance) into my counseling curriculum. You can find the first post of the series here.

Since my last post, I have had a few new things come up while building my case for bringing Naviance to my school. I met with my principal and registrar a few weeks ago and had a good discussion with them laying out the great features that Naviance offers. They were both supportive and provided some excellent questions that I had not thought to pose to the sales rep.

While this was happening, I had also sent my thoughts and supporting materials to our district superintendent. My first day of work, I had met with him and expressed my interest in Naviance. He had used it at a previous district and was very supportive. In fact, he was so interested — he wants to take it district wide to all of our high schools. So my vision for my high school will be expanded to the district level. Getting this news was great!

Over the next few weeks, I had conversed with the Naviance sales rep and got some updates on questions. I also worked on my grant to help fund the program. This grant will be crucial to getting Naviance onboard at the district level. I have gotten unofficial word that we can find some funds to put it at my site, but without this grant – we may not be able to implement Naviance district-wide. I would love to pilot the program, but if we can do it all at once, I think that would be awesome! I have never penned a grant proposal before so it has been an interesting process — more so now with the added weight of co-signing the grant with the superintendent and director of my department. No pressure. Needless to say that spell check has had a workout.

I am currently putting the final parts of the grant together and waiting for a formal letter from the superintendent before submitting it for approval. My vision is that we get notice of approval/denial of the grant by the New Year and hopefully we can work hard to get Naviance up by the end of January. I predict that it will be a “soft” start, rolling out to students slowly to allow myself and staff to familiarize ourselves with the software. This will also allow us to train the students, parents, and teachers on the features of Naviance. Full implementation should happen for the 2013-2014 school year.

My next post will be about the results of the grant process and, if approved, the next steps in getting Naviance set up at our sites. Stay tuned!