This year’s Spring Meeting continues to be an important opportunity to meet with legislators and share the story of your site and the work you continue to do in this challenging fiscal environment.  It will also be an important time to stress the need for NWP and other national organizations to be eligible for competitive federal funding. We hope to see as many of you in Washington, DC March 28 – 30 as can make it.

 

Spring Meeting registration is open! Please register is if you are planning to attend.

 

On February 13, President Barack Obama released his FY2013 budget request. The Education budget is similar to his requests of the past two years.  Notably for the NWP, the administration includes an increase in the Title II set-aside funds for competitive Teacher Quality grant programs.  The increase to 25% of the Title II funding is a significant increase over the 1.5% set-aside that was included in the recent passed FY2012 budget.

 

You can read more about the “Teacher Proposals” and the full education budget in Ed Week.

 

On the ESEA reauthorization front, the House Education and the Workforce Committee is moving forward with draft legislation of their Elementary and Secondary Education Act reauthorization.  A mark-up of the previously released drafts of the “Student Success Act” (H.R. 3989) and the “Encouraging Innovation and Effective Teachers Act” is thought to be taking place in the next two weeks.  Importantly for NWP is the status of national organizations and their eligibility to compete for funding in these drafts.  As released, national organizations are unable to compete for funding in the Committee drafts. 

 

During the mark-up, the Committee can amend the bill to include eligibility for NWP and other national non-profits to compete for federal funding under ESEA. 

 

In both FY2011 and FY2012 NWP is eligible to compete for the “Supporting Effective Educator Development” (SEED) grant program funded by Title II-A.