Government Affairs Update - Week of August 6, 2010
Date Posted: 08/06/2010
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| Week of August 6, 2010 Based on recent feedback we’ve received, we are in the process of making structural and content upgrades to our Update. In the meantime, we are providing you with a focused Government Affairs Update that includes Legislative items and Administration Items (that is, items having to do with The White House, HHS, ACF or OHS). Please bear with us during this time of change. We hope that the overall changes will make our Updates more useful to you. And by all means, let us know what you like better, and what you might be missing. Legislative Update
Administration Update
LEGISLATIVE UPDATE Appropriations Update As we recently explained in an Alert, on July 27th, 2010, the Senate’s Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, HHS, Education and Related Agencies held its mark-up for the FY2011 appropriations bill, which includes Head Start’s appropriation for the upcoming fiscal year.
Following the Senate Subcommittee’s mark-up, last Thursday the full Senate Appropriations Committee approved the Subcommittee’s mark, and in report language, deems our “base grants” to include funds for agencies that were appropriated and expanded by the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act. This is great news for Head Start! We support the Senate Appropriations Committee’s mark-up, which maintains the funding requested by HHS and the President for FY2011 and is slightly higher than the House Mark. In a time when our nation is working to decrease its spending, it is no small feat to maintain our current appropriations levels and even receive funding increases. So thank you for your phone calls and emails to Congress. A total of 6,039 messages were sent through NHSA’s www.supportheadstart.org website alone. For those of you who reached out to specific House and Senate Appropriations Members, please take a moment to thank them for all their work to ensure that every child is ready for life! For those of you who didn’t, please visit the website by clicking here. We’ll keep you posted this Fall for the latest on appropriations. House and Senate News: August Recess? Or Not. The House entered its August district work period or “recess” this week. The Senate is scheduled to begin its recess on August 9th. However, between now and September 14, 2010 when Congress is set to reconvene, the House may return early. Briefly next week, the House may come back into session to vote on a 26 billion aid package to states for Medicaid and education funding, which is likely to come to a floor vote this week in the Senate. For more on this subject, please see: House to return next week to move $26 billion state aid package - TheHill.com. Should you need to contact your Senators and Representatives, call the Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121 or if you'd like to email them, go to: www.senate.gov and click on your Senator's website or www.house.gov and click on your Representative's website. You can also find out the phone numbers for their local district offices on their websites and call them there directly while they are home for recess. Or simply visit the NHSA Support Head Start Website by clicking here! Senator Sherrod Brown Appointed to the Senate Appropriations Committee Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) was appointed to the Senate Appropriations Committee last week to full the vacancy left after the passing of Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV). As you may know, the appropriations committee is charged with setting the funding levels for all federal programs, including Head Start. Senator Brown will give up his current seat on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (“HELP”) Committee, and will continue to serve on the Senate Committees for Banking, Veterans and Agriculture. For more information on Senator Brown please visit here, and for more information on the Senate Appropriations Committee, please visit their website by clicking here. And, Ohio, this means more work for you! Thanks in advance!!! Senator Dodd Holds Third Subcommittee Hearing on “The State of the American Child: The Impact of Federal Policies on Children” Last Thursday, July 29, 2010, Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT) and the HELP Subcommittee on Children and Families held the third in a series of hearings on the “State of the American Child”. The hearing covered the impact of federal health and education policies on children’s lives from birth to adulthood, including policies related to Head Start programs. During his opening statement to the Subcommittee, Senator Dodd mentioned the unique and positive impact that Head Start and Early Head Start programs have had on the social and health outcomes for our nation’s at-risk children, and expressed the need to expand the programs to serve more of country’s eligible children. For more information, video clips, and statements from last week’s Subcommittee hearing—“The State of the American Child: The Impact of Federal Policies on Children”, please click here. NHSA Leadership Institute to Honor Voinovich and Dodd We are pleased to announce that Senator George Voinovich (R-OH) and Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT) will both be in attendance at this year’s Award Reception at our Leadership Institute on September 22, 2010. The reception will be sponsored by the Connecticut Head Start Association and the Ohio Head Start Association in partnership with NHSA. It will honor the Senators’ dedicated work to furthering the lives of our nation’s children as they both retire from the Senate this winter. We hope that their respective contributions will be celebrated by Head Start leaders from all states. For more information, please visit the event page here. ADMINISTRATION UPDATE HHS and Department of Education Create New Policy Board This week Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education, and Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services, announced the creation of the Early Learning Interagency Policy Board. The Policy Board will look to improve the quality of early learning programs. Additionally, Secretaries Duncan and Sebelius hope the Board’s creation will advance the effectiveness of the early leaning staff among federally funded programs, such as Head Start. For more information on the Policy Board and to read the press release, please visit here. Office of Head Start Issues Revised Income Eligibility Verification Form The Office of Head Start issued a revised Program Instruction last Thursday, ACF-PI-HS-10-02, regarding updates to the Income Eligibility Form. For more information and to read the revised PI, please click here. Two New Information Memoranda Last week, the Office of Head Start and the Administration on Children, Youth and Families jointly issued Information Memorandum ACF-IM-HS-10-04 entitled, “Head Start and Child Welfare Partnerships: Partnering with Families Involved in the Child Welfare System”. Additionally, on July 29, 2010 the Administration for Children and Families also issued an Information Memorandum, ACF-IM-HS-10-05, which discusses the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting Program. Unannounced Visits Have Started We understand from our members that unannounced visits, indicated by OHS in May after the GAO hearing, have started. As we learn more about them, we will keep you posted. In the absence of more information, we believe that it is important to help your staff to keep the stress down and to remember that the reviewers are there with a set of questions and tasks. President Obama’s Speech on Education Reform to the Urban League Check out the President’s recent comments about Education Reform: * * * © National Head Start Association, 2010. All rights reserved. Please feel free to redistribute this NHSA Government Affairs Update in its entirety to your networks. When you do so, please ensure that NHSA is credited with its contents. Forwarding this email in this original form is sufficient observation of the copyright.
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