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Office of Migrant Education Notice

In July 2008, the following letter was sent to State Migrant Education Program Directors by the Acting Director of the federal Office of Migrant Education, Lisa Ramírez.

Dear Colleagues,

On behalf of the Office of Migrant Education (OME), I am sending the following materials for you and your State and local Migrant Education Program colleagues:

NOTICE OF FINAL REGULATIONS

A Notice of final regulations announcing changes to the ESEA Title I, Part C Migrant Education Program (MEP) program regulations, was published in the Federal Register on July 29, 2008 (today). This notice implements (and explains the rationale for):

§ a number of changes and additions to the program definitions in §200.81 of the regulations governing child eligibility – including new definitions for the terms: “in order to obtain,” “move or moved, “temporary employment,” and “seasonal employment;”

§ a minor change to correct a drafting error in 200.83 to clarify that the comprehensive need assessment and service delivery plan must, as required by the statute, include the measurable program outcomes (i.e., objectives) the MEP will produce and the strategies the MEP will pursue to achieve the outcomes; and

§ a new §200.89 that --

  • Adjusts the base amounts of the MEP Basic State formula grant allocations for fiscal year (FY) 2006 and subsequent years (as well as for supplemental MEP awards made for FY 2005) to reflect the defect rates reported by the States;
  • Requires States that have not conducted re-interviewing to do so and submit a defect rate to be used to adjust the base amounts;
  • Establishes specific requirements -- including prospective re-interviewing, a standard, national COE, and minimum quality control procedures -- to strengthen the processes used by State educational agencies (SEAs) to determine and document the eligibility of migratory children under the MEP.

You will find that these final regulations are somewhat different from those in our earlier Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) that was published in the Federal Register last year on May 4, 2007. These differences from the NPRM – and the reasons for them -- are discussed at length in the preamble to the final notice and reflect the public comments [summarized] that were received on the earlier NPRM.

The regulations can be viewed by clicking here: Federal Register
Please note that, in general, these final regulations become effective 30 days after publication in the Federal Register. (or August 28, 2008)

INFORMATION COLLECTION PACKAGE

While the final regulations generally become effective in 30 days, those new regulatory provisions that have information collection implications – e.g., prospective re-interviewing, the standard, national COE -- do not become effective until such time as the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) completes its review of the Department’s supporting statement explaining the costs and burdens associated with these requirements and issues an OMB control number for the requirements.

On September 5, 2005, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) approved the information collection package for the new MEP regulations that were published on July 29, 2008 and effective as of August 28, 2008. An official notice announcing the approval - and requiring compliance with the information collection requirements of the new MEP regulations -- will be published in the Federal Register shortly.

This said, OME and OMB have recognized that the most recent round of public comments on the information collection included a number of substantive, albeit technical suggestions and concerns about the exact content and layout of the standard national COE required by sec. 200.89(c ), as well as technical concerns about the exact language of the instructions for completing the COE. In this way, while OMB's approval establishes, among several other information collection requirements in the regulations, the specific requirement in sec. 200.89(c ) that SEAs must use a standard, national COE, ED and OMB agreed it was useful to still make - over the next few months and through consultation with SEA/LEA MEP staff - technical changes to perfect the format and content of the COE and its instructions.