AASA Advocacy Recap: School Buses, ARP Data Collection, and Title I Fun

We had a hat-trick of advocacy items in play last week that we didn’t highlight. We’re placing them here for a quick recap and for your reference:

School Transportation Letter: AASA was happy to lead a letter, signed by 12 other national organizations and shared with the Department of Transportation and Capitol Hill, with recommendations aimed at addressing the school bus driver shortage. Read the full letter.

Maintenance of Equity Data Collection Comments:  AASA filed comments in response to a USED notice related to data collection for the American Rescue Plan’s Maintenance of Equity provision. In comments closely aligned with those of the Council of Chief State School Officers, AASA expressed concern that USED continues to draft policy and propose data collections that are not based in an understanding of how SEA and LEA data systems operate and uses timelines that are not feasible. We strongly urge the Department to retract or substantially revise the proposed reporting rule as fundamentally incompatible with state and local systems and functionally impossible to implement as proposed.

Title I State Set Aside: In a letter address to appropriators and authorizers, executive directors from a handful of AASA state affiliates weighed in on a proposed change to the state administrative set aside for Title I. Senate FY22 language includes a change that would allow some states to increase the amount of money they set aside from the overall Title I state allocation. The state executives were clear that there is support for the change, so long as "any updates to the small state administrative reservations do not come at the expense of local allocations". Read the full letter.