AASA’s policy and advocacy team invites you to journey with them into the weeds of federal education policy at the national conference in Los Angeles. As in past years, there’s a policy strand of can’t-miss sessions taking place.
On Thursday, Feb. 14, attendees can celebrate Valentine’s Day by showing their love for school safety and mental health; how items like teacher labor markets and competitive wages impact school funding realities; and the new fiscal transparency requirements under ESSA.
At 9 a.m., walk through the various formula and competitive grant opportunities that exist at different federal agencies that will enable you to use federal funding to meet the behavioral health and safety needs of your students. For lunch, join Rutgers University Graduate School of Education Professor Bruce Baker, who will present on “Education Inequality & School Finance.” Then, at 3 p.m., Marguerite Roza, director of the Edunomics Lab at Goergetown University, will present on “ESSA Fiscal Transparency: How to Communicate About Money.”
Also on the first day, a panel of leaders will discuss the pressures on rural schools and the dangers of consolidation. This session on rural consolidation takes place in the Knowledge Exchange Theater at 2 p.m.
On Friday, Feb. 15, sessions include “Student Data and Privacy: What to Expect in the New Congress,” at 8 a.m.; “E-Rate and Your District: Leveraging Federal Dollars to Expand District Connectivity,” at 12:45 p.m.; and a Federal Education Update at 11:15 a.m. with AASA’s policy team — Noelle Ellerson Ng and Sasha Pudelski — which will cover AASA’s 2019 legislative agenda priorities, including Perkins implementation, IDEA, vouchers, higher education, rural education, E-Rate, appropriations, school nutrition, privacy and more.
Ready for some more fun? Ellerson will lead you through the inaugural “Officially Unofficial Fun Run” at 6 a.m. Friday, Feb. 15, open to all fitness levels and paces. Find details here and RSVP here.
Follow the goings-on of the advocacy team and the conference’s policy sessions on the AASA blog and by following @Noellerson and @SPudelski on Twitter.
(Deanna Atkins is the digital content manager at AASA.)