TransACT Blog

As part of our commitment to provide school district administrators with resources and guidance on federal program compliance and administration, we regularly publish blogs featuring guest writers. We are honored to feature Scott Nyary, the EL Coordinator, Lead ESL Teacher and Title III Coordinator for Lamar County School District located near Hattiesburg, Mississippi discussing his observations following the announcement that the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program has been rescinded:

As part of our commitment to provide school district administrators with resources and guidance on federal program compliance and administration, we regularly publish blogs featuring guest writers. We are honored to feature David Nieto of the BUENO Center for Multicultural Education, writing about changes to migrant education programs under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) as amended by ESSA. 

I recently wrote a blog about the U.S. Department of Education’s (USED) announcement that the offices at USED that handle special education issues had identified for rescission 72 special education regulations and guidance documents. I included information about the immediate outcry from special education advocates and political adversaries of Betsy DeVos, the U.S. Secretary of Education, and how that resulted in the list of documents that were rescinded being reposted to the USED website, this time with an explanation for why each document was selected for removal. Following on the heals of the rescission of the special education documents comes the announcement of the rescission of nearly 500 more documents from other USED offices, including the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education (OESE) and the Office of Postsecondary Education (OPE).

In July 2017 I wrote a blog about the U.S. Department of Education (USED) requesting comments on regulatory reform. The reason for the USED action is Trump’s executive order requiring each federal agency to establish a Regulatory Reform Task Force to evaluate existing regulations and make recommendations regarding their repeal, replacement, or modification.

To help with new Parent and Family Engagement requirements under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) and to meet the civil rights obligations of schools in working with Limited English Proficient (LEP) and English Learner (EL) families across the state of Maine, leaders in the Maine Department of Education are partnering with TransACT^® Parent Notices to provide all 266 local education agencies representing thousands of schools and teachers with unlimited access to expertly written parent notifications that meet legal requirements and guidance on required audiences, and recommended timelines.

Transact RoadMaps are a compliance and guidance component of TransACT Parent Notices subscriptions that existing subscribers can access at any time. RoadMaps use a series of yes/no questions to guide educators through the process of determining which parent notices are required to send out in a particular time period or situation. This helps educators to create a list of notices they need based on the unique characteristics of their school and/or school district. RoadMaps are a helpful, time-saving compliance tool for:

Parent participation is an essential component to academic growth and achievement. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) as amended by the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) in 2015 considers parent participation so pivotal that sixteen different types of meetings are defined throughout the law. In this blog and in our free ebook, "The Parent Participation Form for Parent Meetings: What You Need To Know", we discuss best practices for raising participation in parent meetings, and review the components of an effective meeting notification.

When I was employed at a state department of education, I monitored school districts for compliance with ESEA requirements for both Title I and Title III. I also contracted with the U.S. Department of Education (USED) and helped USED monitor Title III in five states. One of the most common English Learner (EL) program monitoring issues I found was an improper use of Title I or Title III funds to pay for the salaries of teachers working in a district’s core “language instruction educational program” (LIEP), also know as an EL program.

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) went into effect at the beginning of the 2017-18 school year, forcing districts across the country to evaluate, re-write, and re-translate the parent and family notifications that are required under the law. During a webinar training about the required changes (recorded July 24, 2017), the question was raised, “Which letters do charter schools use to schedule a Parent and Family Engagement Policy development meeting, the ‘school’ level letter or the ‘district’ level letter?”

Back in April I wrote about the efforts of local, state, and national organizations who were urging congressional leaders to retain funding for the 21^st Century Community Learning Center (21CCLC) program (ESSA Title IV, Part B) at no less than the current funding level ($1.167 billion). Trump’s budget proposal included elimination of the 21CCLC program and advocates for this program came out to support the program in force. Well, their efforts may be seeing some results.