A quick look back at the news from last week. Compiled by Penn Hill Group.

HOUSE and SENATE

The House and Senate were in recess until after the September 5^th Labor Day Holiday.

House Education and Workforce Committee Chairman John Kline (R-MN) and Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-TN) issued statements opposing the U.S. Department of Education’s (ED) supplement, not supplant (SNS) regulatory proposal for Title I spending under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA).

HELP Committee Ranking Member Patty Murray (D-WA) and House Education and Workforce Committee Ranking Member Bobby Scott (D-VA) issued a statement supporting ED’s SNS proposal.

House Education and Workforce Committee Ranking Member Scott and House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI) sent a letter to the Government Accountability Office requesting the agency to examine data on the disparities in school discipline practices and student absenteeism by school type.

House Education and Workforce Committee Chairman Kline and Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education Subcommittee Chairman Todd Rokita (R-IN) issued a statement on their concerns over the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) final rule revising the Head Start Program Performance Standards.

HELP Committee Ranking Member Murray and House Education and Workforce Committee Ranking Member Scott released statements applauding HHS’s new Head Start Program Performance Standards.

ADMINISTRATION

ED and HHS released a statement encouraging states and districts to help enroll students in health care coverage during school registration processes and to ensure that students have access to the health coverage they need.

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) decided that charter schools are private corporations, not public schools, and that employees of those schools must organize under the National Labor Relations Act, not State public employee union rules. The impact of this decision is limited to just the two cases on which the NLRB issued a decision, which are two specific charter schools in New York and Pennsylvania.

The owner of the Center for Excellence in Higher Education, a chain of for-profit colleges, filed a lawsuit in Federal court over ED’s decision to deny recognition of their schools as non-profit, rather than for-profit, institutions of higher education.

ED released the proposed SNS regulation under Title I of ESSA as well as a Fact Sheet about the regulation.

It was reported that GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump’s campaign has added Rob Goad, a policy adviser to Representative Luke Messer (R-IN), as an education advisor to the campaign.

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton named Rohit Chopra, a former assistant director and student loan ombudsman at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, to her transition team.

HHS announced a final rule updating the Head Start Performance Standards. Of note, the final rule increases the amount of annual hours of classroom time that Head Start programs must provide and permits programs to implement these increased hours over a five-year period.

GRANT OPPORTUNITIES 

Penn Hill Group provides a list of grant opportunities and summaries for select grants. Please visit our website for more information.