May Nreac Meeting Notes

MAY NREAC MEETING NOTES

Meeting Attendees: John Hill, Jimmy Cunningham, Dan Rask, Don Rogers, Joe Bard, Ray Patrick, Phil Gerik, Gerald Thorne, and Noelle Ellerson

ESEA: Brace yourselves, June is going to be busy. Both the House and Senate are planning to release their draft legislation and mark it up in committee. The House even intends (at this point) to move its bill to the floor at some point this summer. I am breaking this write up in to two separate pieces, one detailing the process/politics and one detailing the content of the proposals and what we can anticipate:

Politics and Process: Both bills will be partisan. The bipartisan conversation in the Senate fell apart over the topic of ‘performance targets’ (more on that later). You can expect a bill, along with a substitute from the minority, in each chamber. The Senate is on track to release their bill the week of June 11th and mark up the week of the 25th. The House could introduce their bill as early as the first week in June. They don’t have a lot of flexibility, if they are looking to not directly conflict with the Senate timeline and they are serious about moving to the floor before the August recess.
Content: The House bill (as introduced by the Republicans) will be largely unchanged, when compared to the bill as passed out of committee last year. It extends the testing requirement to include science (this is similar to what the Senate bill included). We are waiting to see where the bill lands as it relates to authorizing caps. Given the strict pattern of House Republicans complying with the budget cap and funding levels, it is possible this bill would include authorizing levels that are very low, especially when you consider that these would likely be based on post-sequester allocations. For the Senate, the stumbling block was performance targets. Outside of these changes, the bill is apparently quite similar to what they passed in 2011. As it stands, there will be three types of performance targets: one where the school would measure all students toward a standard by a given year (too close to AYP/110% proficiency for comfort); one related to closing achievement gaps; and one where the state could determine the performance target, pending approval by the Secretary. The devil will be in the details of each bill. AASA will read, analyze, respond and report on each bill.
Anticipating more changes in the Senate bill, AASA sent a letter outlining our priorities to Senator Harkin. Diane Ravitch caught wind of the letter and featured it on her blog, in a post titled Outstanding Proposal About ESEA/NCLB by AASA. She writes:… AASA clears away the legislative debris, recognizes the over-reach of the federal Department of Education, recommends the removal of the claptrap

associated with NCLB, and urges the restoration of a healthy federalism, with a balance of powers among federal, state, and local authorities. A welcome dose of reality.

House ‘Upward Mobility’ Package: House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan is working on an ‘Upward Mobility’ proposal that will include education components. The proposal is still being formed, and is separate from (not related to) House ESEA efforts. The presence of two seemingly related—but not coordinated—legislative proposals is interesting. At this point, the proposals as outlined by Mr. Ryan may inform amendments on the House floor, should ESEA move that far. In preliminary conversations, there was much focus on obvious topics like choice, innovation, vouchers, and portability. Beyond these conversation non-starters, there was room for considering proposals that would strike balance in the federal role as it relates to paperwork/reporting and mandates. Stay tuned!

FY13 Funding: The final charts for FY13 (post-sequester) state allocations are available for Title I and IDEA. These charts are crucial, especially since some states have been counseling cuts that are deeper than will be reality. Use these charts in conversations with your SEA. You can also see final program funding levels for all USED programs.

FY14 Funding:

BAD NEWS! The House Appropriations Committee released its 302b allocations (these are the amounts that are available to each committee to fund their programs). The 302bs would mean a HUGE cuts to LHHS, which funds education. If the numbers in the related story are correct, this would represent an 18.7% cut below FY13 (post-sequester) levels. At the program level, that would mean $2.5 billion from Title I and $2 billion from IDEA, to name a few.
If there’s a silver lining, it is that this proposal is so crazy it won’t go much further than the House. In fact, it is unlikely the House itself could move all the appropriations bills through the traditional process.
Part of the House budget proposal relies on the continuation of the sequester cuts while protecting defense. So, the House will be able to move through related appropriations bills relatively easy. When it comes time to those appropriations bills they haven’t protected, they will need to make deep, deep cuts. Remember, the total dollar amount didn’t change; they just limit the cuts to non-defense discretionary (including education).
IMPORTANT Technical Note: While a continuing resolution is the likely end result for FY14, it would not be painless. In theory, the budget caps put in place thru

the Budget Control Act included modest increases for each year. Unfortunately, the final FY13 CR is ABOVE the FY14 budget cap, meaning that we would have an

across-the-board cut in the CR in addition to whatever cuts come from sequestration.

The Senate is still planning to work under a budget of $1.058 trillion, significantly higher than the House level. This overall spending difference, plus the fact that the Senate resolves sequestration and the House does not, pretty much cement a CR.

Miscellaneous Funding Stuff

The House Appropriations Committee Democrats released A Report on Sequestration Effects and Efforts to Mitigate its Impact as well as an Executive Summary. For education the report focuses on Head Start and Impact Aid.
Senate Judiciary Committee passed an amendment to their comprehensive immigration bill that would take money collected on fees for labor certifications and direct these dollars towards a new STEM fund that would be distributed to states based on their Title I allocation. The governors and chiefs of each state could then determine how to invest in STEM programming, but the funding must be used to 1) strengthen computer science, 2) ensure schools have access to well-trained and effective STEM teachers, 3) support efforts to strengthen the elementary and secondary curriculum or 4) and help colleges and universities produce more graduates in fields needed by American employers. The STEM fund is anticipated to be funded at approximately $90 million annually, and would not be subject to appropriations. This STEM fund would be in addition to the roughly $30 million in STEM demonstration grants available directly to districts working with public/private partnerships through the National Sciences Foundation. While it’s unclear whether the House will adopt a similar STEM fund during its work on immigration, AASA is generally supportive of the Senate amendment that creates a new funding stream for STEM in schools, even though the low funding level prohibits this money from being distributed via formula to districts.