NREAC April Meeting Notes

Attendees: Jerry White, Jimmy Cunningham, Jared Bigham, John Hill, Jason Bell, Scott Turney, Allison Nys, Gerald Thorne, Phil Gerik, Sasha Pudelski, Leslie Finnan, Noelle Ellerson

Information

  • Next Call: Wed., May 14, 2014, 2 pm ET
  • AASA Legislative Advocacy Conference is scheduled for July 8-10, 2014 in Washington DC. We hope to see you there! More information. Register Online or Download the registration form (pdf)
  • Policy Insider: The policy dept released the Policy Insider, Spring 2014 Edition, including articles discussing public pension reform for teachers, ALEC and grassroots communications, new voucher bills, Common Core assessments, and how income inequality influences education. It can be found here. Please reach out to any of us with questions, comments, or suggestions.

ESEA

  • There has been no movement related to ESEA. The next step remains the Senate’s, to bring their committee-passed bill to the floor. No date for that, as of yet.
  • Waivers: While USED has backed off its push to provide waiver extensions/renewals (citing state concerns about capacity), they are moving forward with their thinking/regulations related to teacher equity and distribution.
  • Charters: In an effort to move a piece of bi-partisan legislation, the House Education and the Workforce committee moved a stand-alone charter bill. It is a questionable practice for several reasons: the comprehensive bill they passed out of committee and off the floor last summer includes charter language; if they are going to work in a bipartisan manner, they should work on the full bill; and there is not a Senate counterpart at this point. The bill consolidates the two main federal programs for charter schools (one for charter developers to open new schools, and money to help charters find/fix up facilities). The bill is an improvement over current law. It strengthens requirements related to how charter schools recruit and education special populations (students in poverty/with disabilities). That said, even with the strengthened language, the bill falls short of ensuring equitable treatment of all schools receiving federal funds. Until federal policy provides the same flexibilities (or has the same transparency, reporting, and accountability requirements for all entities receiving public dollars), it is inequitable, and we will oppose. Read AASA’s letter of opposition. We were the sole group to oppose, from what I could discern. The bill passed out of committee, with three Democrats opposing: Grijalva, Bishop and Fudge. This bill could be on the floor as early as May.

Letters of Support and Filed Regulations

  • Education Sciences Reform Act: AASA supported the reauthorization. We do not have a huge amount of energy invested in this specific bill, but it was a nod to the bipartisan work on a standalone bill (not one pulled out of ESEA). Read our letter of support for the Strengthening Education through Research Act (HR 4366). It is expected on the floor in early May.
  • Save American Workers Act: This bill is related to the Affordable Care Act and would redefine the threshold for average work week from 30 hours to 40 hours. This change would impact school districts in that it changes the population of school employees who would be eligible for coverage. Read our letter of support.
  • E-Rate: AASA filed a set of joint comments with the Association of Educational Service Agencies in response to the FCC’s proposed changes to E-Rate. Thank you to everyone who submitted their own comments. The reply comment period ends next week, and the step after that is a final order. The FCC will take a vote on the final order as early as this summer, as the Chairman has indicated an interest in having the changes finalized before the start of the 14-15 school year. You can also read the comments of EdLiNC, which AASA, AESA, NREA and NREAC signed on to.
  • School Nutrition: USDA had released regulations related to the certification, education and training requirements for food service personnel. While understanding the need for training and certification for food service personnel, AASA questions the need for national/federal standards. Further, these regulations come with zero fiscal support. AASA filed comments, urging that the regulations be recommendations not requirements. As a point of reference, here is AASA’s summary on the proposed regulations.
  • Support the IDEA Full Funding Bill: The House has introduced a 10-year proposal for full funding of IDEA. AASA was involved in the effort and supports the bill. Ask your Representative to sign on today! More information.
  • Support the Student Testing Improvement and Accountability Act: The bill replaces yearly testing requirements for math and language arts/reading with the same grade span testing requirements in the current law for science. This returns federal requirements on testing frequency to pre-NCLB standards.Reach out to your Representative today, using the Dear Colleague and One Pager to urge them to support the legislation.

Budget/Appropriations

  • Budget: Despite the two-year budget deal struck in December, the House moved a stand-alone budget earlier this month. While the FY15 portion is relatively consistent with the details of the December agreement, the outyears are very bad. Beyond providing overall funding levels that are far below sequestration, the proposal decimates the so-called firewall that currently exists between non-defense discretionary and defense discretionary funding. That is, while current law means that any cuts to discretionary would be divided between both defense and non-defense, this proposal eliminates the wall and shifts all of the cuts to non-defense discretionary, which funds education.
  • AASA opposed the House FY15 budget proposal both in committee and on the House floor. The House passed the budget earlier this month. The Senate does not have a stand alone budget at this time, and will not be considering the Ryan budget. Read the AASA letter of opposition.
    The chart below is a quick overview of various budget projections. The top blue line is FY12, pre-sequester. The red line represents the budget caps established in the 2011 Budget Control Act. The green line is sequestration, and the purple line is the House FY15 budget.

  • Appropriations: Neither the House nor the Senate have their 302(b) allocations (the amount they receive based on the overall budget to fund specific programs within their ‘slice’ of the appropriations pie). There are rumors of LHHS mark up in the chambers as early as June. That said, it is an election year, there is not any new funding for LHHS this year, and its an election year. I’d predict a failure to mark up a stand alone LHHS bill and a continuing resolution.

Perkins

  • The House and Senate Commitees continue to express interest in reauthorization but time is short. The House may not be in more than 10 calender days after the August recess, so it seems highly unlikely a bill in either chamber will be written, introduced and moved out of Committee. There are some major business and industry groups eager to include additional accountability requirements in Perkins. You can see their recommendations here: : If you have thoughts on their proposed changes, please email Sasha.

Vouchers

  • We remain concerned that the full House may take up a bill that would create a federal voucher program using existing K-12 resources. In the past, voucher proposals have all been proposed with additional funding streams (see D.C voucher program) but the idea of stealing money from the public school to allow parents to use vouchers in private schools is very concerning. We are fairly confident that there will not be any voucher provisions attached to the charter bill in a few weeks, but we remain concerned that Majority Leader Cantor may try and have a vote on private school choice before the August recess.