August 9, 2007

Conference Call

Joe Bard, PA, Chair
Jimmy Cunningham, AR
Noelle Ellerson, AASA
Bruce Hunter, AASA
Mike Kellogg, OK
Mary Kusler, AASA
Ray Patrick, MO, Vice-Chair
Bob Rodgers, IL
Don Rodgers, TX
Dave Walrath, CA

ESEA

• As we look toward September, energies will focus on the House. The tentative plan is that the House will have a mark up and pass it through by the end of September.

• In a meeting with Chairman Miller two weeks ago, Miller said that he has a commitment from Speaker Pelosi that as soon as he is ready to bring the reauthorization to the floor, he will have the floor time he needs.

• They have made a lot of progress. The outlook of the committee is markedly different then what we had anticipated.  They are much more open to change then we originally anticipated.  Chairman Miller’s openness seems to have been influenced by the freshmen members of Congress. The new class ran against Iraq and NCLB; they have been a very strong in putting pressure on Miller and he has responded.  However, Miller has identified that the 2013-14 proficiency goal is a non-negotiable.

• There has been progress in quality assessments, especially with Democrats and allowing multiple measures. They are considering allowing local assessments to count as one of the potential multiple measures.

• School Improvement: They will use a graduated accountability model. Not all schools missing AYP would be in the same group. Current consideration would have two groups: priority and high priority. Right now, at this early stage, the district would define which category they fall into, based on a list of criteria.

• There seems to be a shift from a sanctions mentality to systemic improvement.

• Special Education Assessment: there are two approached: maintaining the percentage cap AND/ OR assessing students with disabilities where they are (allow for out-of-level assessment). Efforts to eliminate the cap are not going well; the only demonstrated flexibility is their willingness to move the cap to 4% from the current 3%.   We are still unsure where they are on out-of-level assessment.

• Supplemental Services: The Republicans have made supplemental services their number one issue for reauthorization. Their goal is to expand both participation in supplemental services and the overall money into supplemental services.

  • They are receptive to the idea that there still are not options for supplemental services in rural America, but their general response is 'this wouldn't apply to you', not 'we shouldn't do this'.

• Merit Pay: The Republicans’ second issue is merit pay and allowing incentives for teachers. We will see some sort of teacher incentive in the final bill.  We don’t know what it will be, but we anticipate that the unions will be all over it.

• Assessment and Multiple Measures: The third Republican issue: They only want a single assessment.

• Focus on Students in Poverty: The issue resurrected itself last week. The idea is to NOT create a new group, but to base it on eligibility (low income subgroup).  This would only apply to schools using targeted assistance for Title I.

  • These schools will look at the performance of Title I eligible students to determine if the school made AYP.

Title I Formula Issue

• There has been mixed progress. Everyone understands that raw numbers are not good to use and that we should focus on percentages.

• There is fear to opening the formula on the House side (but not the Senate side); they are concerned with opening up the formula and do not want to engage in the ‘back and forth’ associated with reviewing the formula.  There are always winners and losers.

• National Alliance of Black Educators wants to partner with us on this issue. We will continue to work with the Rural Schools and Community Trust groups.

Title II Education Technology

• This issue has done well and was introduced in the reauthorization. The bill in the House is HR 2449 Achievement Through Technology and Innovation Act (ATTAIN).

• A notable change is a shift from the 50/50 split between formula and competitive grants to 60/40 formula/grants split.  This will benefit rural.

• They shifted more money to the formula side because there is a minimum grant allotment; every school would be guaranteed $2,000.

• The new bill has a 40% set-aside requirement component, where schools have to invest 40% of the monies into professional development (integrating technology into the classroom). The justification is that teachers do not know how to use technology. The counterclaim is that this is a steep jump from the previous level of 25%.

Teacher Quality

• The requirement for Highly Qualified seems non-negotiable.

• The Chairman seems inclined to include a flexibility for rural schools where instructors teaching in multiple subjects similar to the “flexibility” allowed by the U.S. Department of Education.

REAP (Rural Education Achievement Program)

• We are currently in the process of reauthorizing REAP. Look for final version to be introduced in early September. Our cosponsors are Sens. Conrad (D-ND) and Collins (R-Maine) and Reps. Pomeroy (D-ND) and Kuhl (R-NY)

• There have been a handful of changes:

  • Some schools will need to update their locale codes to the new locale codes; this is an issue for some schools and not others, as some of the old locales are in close correlation to the new locales, and vice versa.

  • There is strong resistance to using the 31, 32, and 33 locales to correspond to the current Locale code of 6 (small town) because it would include such a broad number of schools, dilute the monies, and be in direct conflict with what the committee had suggested.

  • If a school is currently eligible for both small/rural and low income/rural but you get no monies under small/ rural, you will be allowed to apply under the low-income/ rural program and therefore receive a financial benefit.

  • Eligibility for the Rural and Low-income schools program will change from 20 percent Census poverty to 40 percent free and reduced lunch.

  • The sliding scale under the Small and Rural Schools Program will shift from its current $20,000 to $60,000 to ; will allow for larger REAP grants, trigger changes to have REAP meet $200 million;

Appropriations

• Appropriations went better than anticipated, and we fared well in both the House and the Senate. There is an increase of over $1 billion for Title I in both houses, including $500 million for IDEA.

• Our biggest issue with IDEA was the lack of democratic support in the House.  Luckily some Republican amendments raised our overall IDEA increase.

• Both houses cut Safe and Drug Free Schools funding by 13.4%

• The Senate proposed to eliminate Title V, but the House provided level funding.

• In addressing funding concerns this fall, best strategy is to urge members to support congressional funding levels for education.

  • Note that the President has already threatened to veto the Health, Education, and Labor bill. He feels congress is spending too much money on the bill. The entire focus is on preventing or overriding a veto. We can expect the appropriations process to carry into December.

Forest County Schools

• This program is operating under its one-year waiver, and expires Dec 31, 2007.

• We are working on a comprehensive 5-year reauthorization. Encourage your schools to continue to talk to their members in Congress.

• The reworked formula that doles out the money has a handful of states losing money. The three states that will lose the most money (CA, OR, and WA) will lose their money slowly. This is not the case for the next five states losing money (TX, OA, SD, SC, and LA).

• We are encouraging impacted school districts to attend the National Forest County and Schools Coalition Fly-in this fall to visit their Congressional delegations on this issue.  There is more information at www.forestcounties.net. 

Medicaid

• Good news: The House and the Senate debated their version of the SCHIP bills before recess. The House bill contained a moratorium preventing CMS from making any changes to school based Medicaid. The Senate bill did not include that provision. We are hopeful that the bill out of conference will include moratorium against any potential changes.

• Bad news: We finally came across paperwork that details the proposed elimination of administrative and transportation claiming. This proposed rule is expected to be announced before the end of September.  We are urging people to call Secretary Leavitt’s office at the Department of Health and Human Services and urge him not to release the proposed rule.

Next Steps/Follow Up

• NREAC will have an in-person meeting following the closing session of the NREA conference in Oklahoma City in November.  The meeting will be a couple of hours until early afternoon.

  • Mary will work with Bob to secure a room for the coalition meeting.

• Mary will set up conversation/staff briefing with Rural School and Community Trust Groups on the Title I formula for Congressional staff. Focus will be technical, not anecdotal.

  • Mary will follow up on payment Rural School and Community Trust for all of their work on the Title I formula.