Elementary
and Secondary School Counseling Program FY 03 Grants Announced July
3, 2003 On Monday,
June 30, the Department of Education announced the award
of nearly $20 million in grants to 60 school districts
through the Elementary and Secondary School Counseling
Program. To view the Department of Education's press release,
as well as the list of recipients, please refer to: http://www.ed.gov/PressReleases/06-2003/06302003.html Current Status The
Senate Appropriations Committee has recommended that
the ESSCP
be funded at $34 million in FY04, while the House Appropriations
Committee recommended a funding level of approximately
$32 million. The full House and Senate must now consider
and vote on the Labor/HHS/Education Appropriations bills;
the two chambers will then go to conference, where they
will work out the differences between the funding levels
of the two bills. It is important that your Representative
and Senators continue to hear about how important this
program is to their constituents. If your Representative
or Senators are on the House or Senate Appropriations Committee
(for a list of members, please see http://appropriations.senate.gov/
and http://www.house.gov/appropriations/), please thank
them for including this program in the bill — the President's
budget request eliminated the program, so we are very lucky
that the Committees decided to include it. Background The ESSCP, formerly
known as the Elementary School Counseling Demonstration
Program, is a discretionary grant program that provides
grants to school districts to establish or expand comprehensive
counseling programs and mental health services through
qualified school social workers, school psychologists,
and school counselors. The ESSCP was
reauthorized as part of the No Child Left Behind Act in
2002. While the reauthorization expanded the program to
include secondary schools, it also included a funding trigger.
This funding trigger requires that the program be funded
at more than $40 million before secondary schools can participate. |
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