Celebrating CTE Month in Wyoming

Dear Superintendents,

What a special week for Wyoming CTE students! State officers from DECA, FBLA, FCCLA, FFA, and Skills USA visited Cheyenne for a special day of discussions with legislators, a Governor’s Proclamation, and good old-fashioned networking.

We would love to see Wyoming educators, business and industry community members, and students participate in the Career and Technical Education (CTE) Month celebration. This is an annual Career and Technical Student Organization (CTSO) Twitter chat and it will take place February 19 at 3:00 p.m. Wyoming time.  Be sure to use #CTSOchat when responding and let others know Wyoming is represented.

State Officers from the Career and Technical Student Organizations (CTSOs) visited the Captiol this week. They represented all CTE students very well!

Members of the business and industry community celebrated Governor Gordon’s signing of the CTE proclamation. This was the third proclamation signed by Governor Gordon.

 

Every Student Succeeds (ESSA) Implementation

The USED released proposed, non-regulatory guidance to support school districts’ compliance with the Every Student Succeeds Act’s (ESSA) requirement that federal funds supplement, and do not supplant, state and local funds.  The guidance explains how ESSA changed the long-standing requirement in order to reduce administrative burden, simplify the compliance demonstration, and promote effective spending.  (Note: The Department welcomes stakeholder comment on the proposed guidance directed to OESE.Feedback@ed.gov through February 25.)

While important and well-intentioned, the supplement not supplant requirement was restrictive and burdensome, to the point that some districts made ineffective spending choices in an effort to avoid non-compliance.  Under ESSA, the requirement changed to provide more flexibility to districts while still ensuring that federal funds are supplemental to state and local funds and cannot be used to replace them.

In order to comply, a district need only show that its methodology to allocate state and local resources to schools does not take into account a school’s Title I status.  For many districts, the requirement can be met using the district’s current methodology for allocating state and local resources. At the Wyoming Department of Education (WDE) we are committed to supporting you to spend federal dollars as flexibly as possible.

Marzano training Phase IV- Proficiency Scales for Exceptional Learners in Casper this week

 

Funding Opportunity

Performance Partnership Pilots for Disconnected Youth (P3) is a unique initiative that offers state, local, and tribal governments more flexibility to innovate to improve the outcomes of some of the nation’s most disadvantaged youth.  Specifically, P3 enables government entities to obtain waivers of statutory or regulatory requirements that impede effective service delivery to disconnected youth and also gives them the ability to blend together funds from multiple federal programs, eliminating the need to account for and report on each of them.  The deadline for applications is April 29.  (Note: Examples of possible waivers are in the Federal Register notice, while a list of waivers previously granted for prior pilots is on the Youth.gov program page.)

 

Memos to be released on Monday, February 11: