TransACT Blog

Proactive schools and school districts are finding and using all means available to communicate with parents, including English learner (EL) students and parents with limited English proficiency (LEP). In an article from District Administration titled “Tech: A language translator allows districts to reach out to ELLs”, a number of creative and innovative solutions are discussed. This includes the use of machine translation (computer-assisted translation) tools, such as Google Translate.

"Parent Notifications Summary, Checklist & Timelines" is a resource to help educators identify the important parent notification distribution, timelines, and responsibilities. This document is provided to TransACT ParentNotices customers with an active subscription to the ESEA (ESSA) ParentNotices Collection. In August of 2018, this resource was updated with a new title and guidance.

There are several points throughout the school year where parent communication is required by law, but it can be difficult to keep track of the dates or specific circumstances which warrant required or recommended parent communication.

States, school districts and charter networks who subscribe to TransACT ParentNotices' ESSA  have a helpful resource to help them keep track of these timelines and requirements: "ACCT-A3 - ESEA Stakeholder Notifications Summary, Checklist & Timelines"

The U.S. Department of Education (USED) has published notice in the Federal Register that it is receiving applications for Statewide Family Engagement Centers (SFECs). Funding for SFECs is authorized under Title IV, Part E of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). This is the first time this funding will be awarded under ESSA.

As of the most recent count, there were over 6,900 charter schools in 43 states across the U.S. Even though some states have not joined in on the charter school movement, the majority have, and each state has its own system of holding charter schools accountable in ways that differ from the criteria set forth by each district’s board of education.

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.