ED Releases Proposal for Supplemental ESSA Funding
The U.S. Department of Education is providing non-regulatory guidance to help school districts comply with federal requirements for ESSA funding.
As part of the Every Student Succeeds Act, a section of the law that oversees federal funding for education was changed in 2015 to reduce administrative burden, to simplify requirements for the compliance and to promote effective spending. Now, the U.S. Department of Education is releasing proposed non-regulatory guidance to help school districts' comply with ESSA regulations, which state that federal funding from ED should supplement and do not supplant state and local funds.
"This proposal does not change the legal obligations school districts have to make appropriate investments in education," said U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. "It simply makes clear that a school district has significant flexibility in how it demonstrates compliance with the law."
The proposed guidance is meant to help school districts that have made ineffective spending choices in the past in an effort to avoid noncompliance. In order to comply with the ESSA, school districts would only need to show their methodologies to allocate state and local resources to schools that do not consider a school's Title 1 status.
The full proposed non-regulatory guidance can be found here. Interested stakeholders are encouraged to submit public comments by email to [email protected].
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Sara Friedman is a reporter/producer for Campus Technology, THE Journal and STEAM Universe covering education policy and a wide range of other public-sector IT topics.
Friedman is a graduate of Ithaca College, where she studied journalism, politics and international communications.
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