Notice of deadline for State educational agencies to identify eligible local educational agencies for Early Reading First and of alternate eligibility standard for the initial year's (fiscal year 2002) Early Reading First grant competition.[OESE]

[Federal Register: April 10, 2002 (Volume 67, Number 69)]
[Notices]               
[Page 17593-17595]
From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
[DOCID:fr10ap02-150]                         


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Part VI





Department of Education





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Early Reading First; Notice of Deadline; Notice


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DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

[CFDA No: 84.359]

 
Early Reading First; Notice of Deadline

AGENCY: Department of Education.

ACTION: Notice of deadline for State educational agencies to identify 
eligible local educational agencies for Early Reading First and of 
alternate eligibility standard for the initial year's (fiscal year 
2002) Early Reading First grant competition.

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SUMMARY: In this notice, the Secretary sets a deadline for State 
educational agencies (SEAs) to identify and provide a list of eligible 
local educational agencies (LEAs) upon which applicant eligibility will 
be based for those grants, and establishes a standard that the 
Department will use in the absence of timely SEA information. Early 
Reading First grants are authorized by subpart 2 of part B of title I 
of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA). The 
Secretary will be inviting applications for new grant awards for fiscal 
year (FY) 2002 for the Early Reading First Program in a separate notice 
published in the Federal Register.

DATES: State Data Submission Deadline: The Department must receive the 
submission by April 30, 2002.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:

Background

    Under the Early Reading First Program, $75 million is available for 
FY 2002 for direct competitive grants from the Department to eligible 
LEAs, and to public and private organizations in communities served by 
those LEAs (or one or more of those LEAs in collaboration with one or 
more of those organizations). Those agencies and organizations will use 
the Early Reading First funds to support early education programs and 
teach preschool-age children to develop the early language and 
cognitive skills that they need to enter kindergarten ready to learn to 
read and succeed under State standards.
    Early Reading First, for preschool-age children, complements the 
Reading First State Grants Program, which focuses on school-age 
children. The Reading First State Grants Program is aimed at helping 
children in every State become successful readers through high-quality, 
classroom-focused reading instruction. Reading First State Grants will 
help school districts establish high-quality, comprehensive reading 
instruction for all children in kindergarten through third grade.

Eligible Applicants

    The Early Reading First statute ties grant applicant eligibility to 
basic LEA eligibility for Reading First State Grants subgrants. 
Specifically, to meet the basic eligibility criteria under the Reading 
First State Grants Program (and, thus, the Early Reading First 
Program), each eligible school district (LEA) must be:
     Among the LEAs in the State with the highest numbers or 
percentages of students in kindergarten through grade 3 reading below 
grade level, based on the most currently available data (and a State 
may use the lowest grade for which it has those data, such as grade 4, 
up through grade 5); and also qualify under one of the following 
categories as an LEA that:
     Has jurisdiction over a geographic area that includes an 
area designated as an empowerment zone (EZ) or an enterprise community 
(EC).
     Has jurisdiction over a significant number or percentage 
of schools that are identified for school improvement under section 
1116(b) of title I of the ESEA (or the predecessor statutory 
authority).
     Has the highest numbers or percentages of children who are 
counted under section 1124(c) of title I of the ESEA (the number of 
children counted for Title I Basic Grants to LEAs).
    Because LEA eligibility information from all Reading First State 
Grant applications is not expected to be available for many months, the 
Department is asking SEAs to help the Department by identifying and 
providing a list of eligible LEAs for Early Reading First now, under 
the above Reading First statutory criteria, before States files their 
Reading First State Grants applications and hold their Reading First 
State Grants subgrant competitions. This will assist LEAs and other 
applicants in each State in applying for Early Reading First Funds.
    An LEA's eligibility for the purpose of the initial year's (FY 
2002) Early Reading First grant competition will be determined as 
follows--
     For an LEA within any State for which the SEA submits an 
eligible LEA list by April 30, 2002, only those LEAs identified by the 
State at the time of the State's submission will be considered 
eligible.
     For an LEA within any State for which the SEA does not 
submit an eligible LEA list by April 30, 2002, only those LEAs 
identified by the U.S. Department of Education (under the alternative 
Title I Basic Grants child count standard described below) will be 
considered eligible.
    Any LEA status changes, or later revisions that an SEA may make to 
an SEA-generated Early Reading First eligible LEA list for purposes 
other than correction, will not affect the eligibility of Early Reading 
First applicants in the initial year's (FY 2002) Early Reading First 
grant competition.

Information Request and Deadline

    To help LEAs and other applicants in each State in applying for 
Early Reading First funds, and to assist the Department in 
administering the initial year's (FY 2002) Early Reading First grant 
competition, the Department invites SEAs to identify and provide to the 
Department a list of eligible LEAs in the State under Reading First. 
Specifically, the Secretary requests that each SEA, by April 30, 2002, 
provide to the Department a list of eligible LEAs for Early Reading 
First based upon the statutory criteria for Reading First (indicated 
above) relating to reading achievement, EZ/EC, school improvement, and 
poverty.
    The Department will make available to each State, and at the 
website location noted below, an Excel spreadsheet and instructions for 
States to use in providing this information. The Excel spreadsheet 
identifies basic information for all of the LEAs currently in the 
National Center for Education Statistics Common Core of Data (CCD) for 
each State, and information available from Federal records (EZ/EC and 
Title I Basic Grant child count information) for each of those LEAs.
    In addition, Excel spreadsheet identifies those LEAs the Department 
will consider eligible if an SEA chooses not to identify eligible LEAs 
by April 30. The spreadsheet also provides space for SEAs to use if the 
SEA chooses to identify LEAs as eligible for the Early Reading First 
grant competition under the Reading First statutory criteria indicated 
above.
    The spreadsheet and accompanying instructions are available on the 
Department's website at http://www.ed.gov/offices/OESE/earlyreading/
index.html. The Department requests SEAs to submit the LEA eligibility 
information electronically if possible, using the Excel spreadsheet. If 
it is not possible for an SEA to submit the LEA eligibility information 
electronically, the SEA should follow the directions below under ``SEA 
Submission of Information'' for other methods of submission. If an SEA 
uses a format other than the Excel spreadsheet to identify the eligible 
LEAs, the SEA also should provide to the Department the name of the 
State in which the eligible LEAs are located, and the date that the SEA 
identified those eligible LEAs.

[[Page 17595]]

Eligibility Standard for Applicants in States that Do Not Submit a 
List of Eligible LEAs by Deadline

    So that the Department can make timely awards of Early Reading 
First funds for the initial year's (FY 2002) competition, if an SEA 
does not identify and provide to the Department a list of LEAs eligible 
for Early Reading First, using the Reading First statutory criteria, by 
the April 23, 2002 deadline, the Department will identify eligible LEAs 
in that State for Early Reading First grants (upon which the Early 
Reading First applicant pool is based) using solely the Title I Basic 
Grant allocation child count for FY 2001. This information is available 
from Federal records.
    Specifically, the Department will consider as eligible LEAs for 
these States: (1) LEAs in which at least 20 percent of children are 
counted by the Department under section 1124(c) of title I of the ESEA 
(the number of children counted for Title I basic grants to LEAs) for 
FY 2001; and (2) LEAs with at least 10,000 of those children. These 
LEAs will be identified on the Excel spreadsheet that will be available 
on the Department's website at http://www.ed.gov/offices/OESE/
earlyreading/index.html.

State Submission of Information

    If an SEA chooses to submit LEA eligibility information for Early 
Reading First, the Department requests the SEA to submit that 
information electronically, by sending it to ERF@ed.gov as an e-mail 
attachment. If that is not possible, States should send the information 
as follows:
     By FAX: 202-205-0303 (Attention: Tracy Bethel).
     By FedEx, other mail carrier, or mail: Patricia McKee, 
Group Leader, Compensatory Education Programs, Office of Elementary and 
Secondary Education, U.S. Department of Education, 400 Maryland Avenue, 
SW., Room 3W106, Washington, DC 20202.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:
     Questions about the Early Reading First Program or this 
notice, contact Patricia McKee by e-mail at ERF@ed.gov, or Tracy Bethel 
or Jennifer Flood by telephone at 202-260-4555.
     Questions about the Reading First State Grants Program, 
contact Chris Doherty by e-mail at chris.doherty@ed.gov, or by 
telephone at 202-401-2176.
    If you use a telecommunications device for the deaf (TDD), you may 
call the Federal Information Relay Service (FIRS) at 1-800-877-8339. 
Individuals with disabilities may obtain this document in an 
alternative format (e.g., Braille, large print, audiotape, or computer 
diskette) on request to Tracy Bethel or Jennifer Flood as listed under 
this section.

Waiver of Proposed Rulemaking

    It is the Secretary's practice, in accordance with the 
Administrative Procedure Act (5 U.S.C. 553), to offer interested 
parties the opportunity to comment on proposed requirements that are 
not taken directly from statute. Ordinarily, this practice would have 
applied to the requirements in this notice. Section 437(d)(1) of the 
General Education Provisions Act (GEPA), however, exempts from this 
requirement rules that apply to the first competition under a new or 
substantially revised program authority. To ensure timely awards of 
Early Reading First grants, the Secretary, in accordance with section 
437(d)(1) of GEPA, has decided to forego public comment with respect to 
the State data submission deadline, and the eligibility standards and 
threshold levels.

Paperwork Reduction Act Considerations

    As required by the Paperwork Reduction Act, the Office of 
Management and Budget has approved this information collection under 
OMB control number 1810-0647, which expires August 31, 2002.

Electronic Access to This Document

    You may view this document, as well as all other Department of 
Education documents published in the Federal Register, in text or Adobe 
Portable Document Format (PDF) on the Internet at the following site: 
www.ed.gov/legislation/fedregister.
    To use PDF, you must have Adobe Acrobat Reader, which is available 
free at this site. If you have questions about using PDF, call the U.S. 
Government Printing Office (GPO), toll free, at 1-888-293-6498; or in 
the Washington, DC area at (202) 512-1530.

    Note: The official version of this document is the document 
published in the Federal Register. Free Internet access to the 
official edition of the Federal Register and the Code of Federal 
Regulations is available on GPO Access at: http://
www.access.gpo.gov/nara/index.html.


    Program Authority: Subpart 2, part B, title I of the ESEA, Pub. 
L. 107-110.

    Dated: April 8, 2002.
Susan B. Neuman,
Assistant Secretary for Elementary and Secondary Education.
[FR Doc. 02-8808 Filed 4-9-02; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 4000-01-M