Www.aasa.org



NREAC Call

May 18, 2011

Steve Breckon Phil Gerik Cindy McIntee Lee Warne Barbara Havlicek

Jimmy Cunningham Rob Mahaffey Dan Rask John Hill Sasha Bartolf Noelle Ellerson

ESEA

• The House has taken steps forward in releasing its first two ESEA proposals: one on flexibility and one on program eliminations. The one on program eliminations (HR 1891) was introduced and passed out of the House Education and the Workforce Committee (more detail below).

• FLEXIBILITY: Please note that legislative language is not yet available, and some changes may occur between this preliminary information and the bill itself. Everything reported here comes from discussions with committee staff. We will keep you up-to-date!

o AASA Policy and Advocacy team members met with key staff of the House Education and the Workforce Committee (HEWC) for an initial overview on the House’s first proposal for ESEA reauthorization. AASA was the first education organization the committee staff met with. The proposal outlined below is subject to some minor tweaks, given that today’s meeting was the first unveiling.

o LEAs will have 100% flexibility in moving funds within and between ALL ESEA titles and programs. It is a full expansion of the limited and under-utilized transferability language currently in Title VI. Unlike the legislative language currently in Title VI, however, ALL titles and programs within ESEA are ‘fair game’ for having money moved into and out of.

o Committee staff were quick to assert that this maximum flexibility is possible because there is an implicit trust (assumption) that the SEAs/LEAs will act in good faith to move funds in the manner that best meets the educational needs of their students. 

o School districts would be able to move money into and out of Title I as they see fit. 

o The reporting requirements for the various Titles and programs would remain the same. The only way an SEA or LEA would be exempt from reporting requirements would be if they transferred the full amount of their money from one title to another. For example, if you transfer 75% of your Title II funds out, you still need to comply with Title II reporting requirements for Title II. Should you transfer 100% of your funds from Title II, the reporting requirements would not apply. Any Title that has federal funds in it would be subject to reporting requirements.

o Regardless of the amount of funds transferred into or out of Title I or Title III, all Title I and III reporting requirements will remain in tact. While there will be subsequent discussions about the proper structure of federal accountability requirements, this specific proposal addresses only the flexibility of funding and maintains current accountability/assessment requirements.

o All set asides will remain in place. This includes the 20% set-aside for SES and choice, the 10% set-aside for professional development, and the 1% set-aside for parental engagement. Future bills will address any changes/tweaks to the set-asides. Note: The absolute dollar amount of an LEA’s set-aside will be locked at a base year calculation so as to not tie-up transferred dollars. That is, should this bill become law in 2012, the amount of dollars and LEA sets aside in 2012 would remain flat in all out-years. Any dollars transferred in to a Title would not be subject to the set-aside requirement. 

o One program outside of ESEA is impacted by the transferability: LEAs can move money from any title in ESEA into Part B of IDEA (this is expanded from just Section 613 F of IDEA (early intervening services)). This is the only non-ESEA title or program to which money can be transferred. Funds CANNOT be transferred from IDEA to ESEA.

o Funding flexibility does NOT apply to the Impact Aid funds.

o The increased flexibility comes with minimal reporting requirements. LEAs will have to report to the state, on an annual basis, which funds were transferred, to where, how much, and for what uses. SEAs will face similar reporting requirements. It is a simple reporting mechanism. LEAs will not have to apply for this flexibility, there is no approval process.

o As of Thursday, the House Republican staff was moving forward with discussions with the Democrats. Under Mr. Kline’s direction, the proposal was moving forward as outlined above, including the flexibility to move funds in to all of IDEA Part B.

o No details on a timeline for when we will see language for the flexibility piece; it is unlikely to be before the House adjourns for their recess on June 3.

o AASA Position: We support the increased flexibility and continued reporting for Title I and Title III. We OPPOSE the ability to move ESEA funds into IDEA. The federal government has two separate funding commitments—one each to IDEA and ESEA—and flexibility between the two is a false proxy for proper education funding. We have urged the committee to eliminate the flexibility to transfer into IDEA.

• PROGRAM ELIMINATIONS: The House Committee introduced and passed HR 1891, a bill that would eliminate 43 education programs in the Department of Education. During mark up, one of the 43 programs (PIRCs) was saved by amendment. You can access the full list of eliminated programs here: The bill passed out of committee along strict party lines. No word, as of yet, as to if/when the bill goes to the whole floor.

• SENATE: Latest information from the hill is that Mr. Harkin hopes to have draft language released by July 4th. He fully recognizes that earlier deadlines of Easter and Memorial Day have both passed, but emphasized the importance of this deadline. At this point, while the Senate bill is likely to be more comprehensive than the House piece-meal approach, it will not be a completely comprehensive bill. It is likely to be a skeleton or frame, with the remaining pieces to be addressed through amendment. That said, at this point it is unwise to assume that just because an item wasn’t included in the base bill doesn’t mean that the corresponding amendment wouldn’t have already been discussed/negotiated.

• JOINT RESOLUTION: AASA and NSBA have joined forces, releasing a joint resolution  calling for regulatory relief for the nation's school districts before the 2011-12 school year. Join the cause!

o Sign the online petition

o Print off an editable version of the resolution and adopt it in your school district.

• JOB CUTS SURVEY: AASA released the eleventh study in its Economic Impact Series. The newest report, focused on projecting job cuts for the 2011-12 school year, found that as many as 227,000 education jobs are on the chopping block. The anticipated job cuts are quite high, and mirror the perfect storm facing school districts: continued fiscal belt-tightening at the state/local level, cessation of ARRA and EduJobs funds, and actual and anticipated cuts in annual federal education appropriations for the FY11 and FY12 school year.

• FOR YOUR REFERENCE: AASA has issued/filed a host of comments and white papers, all hyper linked here for your information.

o Data Burden: States and districts face significant reporting requirements under ARRA and the subsequent COMPETES Act. Read AASA’s one pager on the issue.

o Child Nutrition: AASA filed comments on the first set of proposed regulations for the implementation of the reauthorized school lunch bill.

o FERPA: AASA filed comments on proposed changes to FERPA law.

BUDGET & APPROPRIATIONS

• Budget Resolution: The House passed its proposed spending plan for FY12, the Plan for Prosperity. The Senate defeated the measure on May 25 and the House-passed budget was rejected by a vote of 40-57.  All Democrats and five Republicans (Brown (MA), Collins (ME), Murkowski (AK), Paul (KY) and Snowe (ME)) voted no.

• Appropriations: The House has released it’s 302(b) allocations, the spending caps for each of the 12 appropriations bills that collectively fund the entire federal government. Education funding comes from the LHHS appropriation. Keeping in mind that the congressional funding process has two parts—budget and appropriations—this is the budget part. We are working alongside the rest of the Labor, Health, and Human Services (LHHS) community to make our 302(b) allocation (I like to call it the ‘pie’) as big as possible. From there, our LHHS ‘pie’ moves in to appropriations, where the education sector advocates to make its piece of the ‘pie’ as big as possible.

o Back to the 302(b) allocations: Having already passed their budget resolution, the House moved forward with dividing the resolution funding levels among the 12 appropriations subcommittees. These 302(b) allocations limit the total spending. House Appropriations Chairman Rogers announced both the FY12 allocations and the markup schedule for all bills.

o The allocation for LHHS is quite bad. While the totality of 302(b) allocations is 2.9 percent below FY11 levels and 10.7 percent below President Obama’s FY12 budget proposal, LHHS takes a cut of $18.2 billion (11.6 percent) from FY11 levels and $41.6 billion )23 percent) from FY12 proposed levels.

o At this point, we do not have education-specific details. They have yet to be released. The markup for the LHHS appropriation is scheduled 2nd to last, with subcommittee markup on the July 2 and full committee markup on August 3. It is not expected on the full floor before the August recess, meaning the earliest it gets to floor would be September 7.

• A handful of helpful charts are now available from USED:

o Final FY11 funding table

o State tables (by program) comparing FY10, FY11, and proposed FY12 levels for all state formula programs

o State tables (by state) comparing FY10, FY11, and proposed FY12 levels for all state formula programs

RACE TO THE TOP: The Administration announced that of the $700 million provided in the CR for Race to the Top, $500 million will be used for a new competition among states for early childhood education grants. Obama Administration Announces $500 Million for Race to the Top-Early Learning Challenge.  This program will be jointly administered by ED and HHS. Here is the brief program description:

• The RTT-ELC grant competition will focus on improving early learning and development programs for young children by supporting States' efforts to: (1) increase the number and percentage of low-income and disadvantaged children in each age group of infants, toddlers, and preschoolers who are enrolled in high-quality early learning programs; (2) design and implement an integrated system of high-quality early learning programs and services; and (3) ensure that any use of assessments conforms with the recommendations of the National Research Council's reports on early childhood. (§1832(b)(1), title VIII, Division B of P.L. 112-10, the Department of Defense and Full-Year Continuing Appropriations Act, 2011).

• Awards in Race to the Top will go to States that are leading the way with ambitious yet achievable plans for implementing coherent, compelling, and comprehensive early learning education reform.

• The remaining $200 million will be for a scaled down competition among the nine RTTT Round Two finalists:

U.S. Department of Education Announces $200 Million to Continue State-Led Reforms Under Race to the Top

• An announcement will be coming soon about the new I3 $150 million competition.

RURAL LEGISLATION

• AASA, the National Rural Education Association (NREA) and the National Rural Education Advocacy Coalition all endorsed legislation that would establish an Office of Rural Education Policy within the department of education. The legislation and its one-page summary are attached to the email. While we linked to the AASA letter, the text of the NREA and NREAC letters were identical.

• If you haven’t already done so, urge your Senators to support S 567, the REAP reauthorization.

• We are continuing to push for F&R lunch to be the poverty measure for distributing funds to rural schools; however, we are receiving some push-back on switching from Census Poverty to F&R. We remain committed to advocating for F&R, but are interested in any thoughts you may have on a compromise measure should it come to needing one. Please don’t hesitate to email us about this topic.

• We expect to have legislation introduced in the House the week of June 13 that would fix the number/percentage weighting issue in Title I. Our champion on the issue if Glenn Thompson (R-PA).

SECLUSION AND RESTRAINT

• We are anxiously awaiting Sen. Harkin to introduce legislation that would prohibit seclusion and restraint. In addition, OSEP has announced that they are interested in releasing guidance to schools on how seclusion and restraint should be used. We will be meeting with OSEP director, Alexa Posny, next week to find out more.

• We are also hearing rumblings that Harkin may introduce legislation that would ban corporal punishment in schools as well although we are not sure if this would be in the same bill as S&R or a stand-alone measure.

VOUCHERS

• On Wednesday, the House voted down an amendment to the Defense Authorization bill that would have created the first national private school voucher program for military dependent children with special needs. It failed to pass by 203-213. To see how your House member voted, click here.

................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download