If you are keeping up with these posts, you will find that not much has changed but we wanted to give you an update in any case. Over the last month, the FY2012 budget process has been slowed by the uncertainty surrounding the Supercommitee and its subsequent failure to produce a deficit reduction plan and by the Thanksgiving Holiday period.

Since FY2012 began on Oct. 1, 2011, the government has been funded by a Continuing Resolution (CR) to give the Members of Congress time to move the FY2012 budget through both houses. The current CR expires on December 16.

Congress is working on several ‘minibus’ bills, which will combine the FY2012 appropriations for various federal agencies into one piece of legislation.

Either the consolidated funding bills will be approved by both houses by the new deadline of December 16, or an additional CR will be needed to continue funding the government.

So what does this mean for education funding? In the current drafts of the proposed FY2012 education budget, an important difference for the National Writing Project exists between the Senate version and U.S. House version.

Under the FY2012 Senate Labor, Health and Human Services and Education Appropriations bill, there is a 5% set aside in Title II for competitive awards to national. The FY2011 appropriations bill had a similar set aside of 1% and NWP recently applied for a portion of these “set aside” funds through the “Supporting Effective Educator Development Grants Program” (SEED).

In the House version of the FY2012 education budget, the current 1% set-aside in Title II is eliminated.

Over the last month Dear Colleague letters have circulated in both the U.S. House and Senate supporting the increase in the Title II set-aside for national not-for-profit organizations for teacher training or professional enhancement activities, from 1 percent to 5 percent.  Posted along with this blog are the Senate and U.S. House Dear Colleague letters.

For information about the current Title II federal funding opportunity, read Judy Buchanan’s latest post here in Connect: Next steps in the continuing conversation.