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USCCB URGES SUPPORTER OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION
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USCCB URGES SUPPORTERS OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION TO CONTACT CONGRESS BY FRIDAY, MARCH 26TH
Dear Colleagues,Your help is needed NOW to convey to Members of Congress, as they work to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (most recently known as No Child Left Behind), the importance of addressing the needs of students and teachers in private schools.The U.S. Department of Education has just released a Blueprint for Reform and Congress is holding hearings on reauthorization. The House Education and Labor Committee is encouraging stakeholders in this legislation to send their priorities to eseacomments@mail.house.gov by Friday, March 26, 2010. We urge the Catholic school community to use this e-mail opportunity to convey the importance of addressing the needs of students and teachers in private schools when they revise this legislation.Many Catholic schools have found accessing services for their students and teachers to be very complicated and frustrating. Thus we encourage you to address the following issues in the individual e-mails we ask you to send:- equitable participationby students in private schools has been a requirement in ESEA since it was first passed in 1965.
- in recent years funds generated by students in private schools have been diverted to public school programs in which our students cannot participate, such as Supplemental Education Services and All School Improvement programs.
- ESEA should be changed so that the proportional share of funds to serve nonpublic school students and teachers in private schools will be based on the total allocation of a program prior to a school district setting aside funds which only public schools can use.
Many of you have examples of how your students and teachers do not receive the full benefit of the federal funds the students generate. Please don't hesitate to provide examples of this in your e-mail message.Please distribute this message as widely as possible and urge recipients to send comments before March 26th. Congress needs to hear from us!Sincerely,Marie PowellSr. Suzanne Bellenoit, SSJ