This morning, the U.S. Department of Education (ED) issued a press release on its proposed regulations for Title I supplement-not-supplant (SNS) under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). The full text for the proposed rules can be found here, and once published to the Federal Register, will be open for public comment for 60 days. The Department of Education's press release and initial media coverage are excerpted below.
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“Specifically, the proposal clarifies for school districts options for how to demonstrate compliance with the supplement, not supplant, provision in Title I. Notably, the ESSA for the first time contains a statutory directive around how districts must demonstrate compliance with supplement, not supplant. The law states that districts must use a methodology to allocate state and local funds to each Title I school that ensures each such school receives all the state and local funds it would otherwise receive if it were not a Title I school. The proposal affirms that funds-based requirement and allows each district the flexibility to demonstrate compliance in a number of ways:
- A weighted student funding formula that provides additional resources for students with characteristics associated with educational disadvantage, such as students in poverty, English learners, and students with disabilities, and ensures that each Title I schools receives all of the actual funds to which it is entitled under that system;
- A formula that allocates resources including staff positions and non-personnel resources directly to schools, and that ensures each Title I school gets all of the funding it is entitled to, as measured by the sum of (1) the number of personnel in the school multiplied by the district’s average salaries for each staff category, and (2) the number of students in the school multiplied by the district’s average per-pupil expenditures for non-personnel resources;
- An alternative, funds-based test developed by the state and approved by a panel of expert peer reviewers that is as rigorous as the above two options; or
- A methodology selected by the district that ensures the per-pupil funding in each Title I school is at least as much as the average per-pupil funding in non-Title I schools within the district.
Regardless of how they choose to demonstrate compliance, the Department encourages districts to meet the requirement by:
- Increasing overall funding for education, with a focus on putting new resources in Title I schools, rather than shifting resources from other schools;
- Avoiding forced staff transfers and instead investing in providing the resources that students need to learn and that will attract staff to choose to work in Title I schools. Such resources might include high quality early learning opportunities, wraparound supports such as healthcare and counseling, improved working conditions, or financial incentives for effective educators who choose to work in high-need schools.”