Overview
Last Friday, CSPEN shared with the higher education community information received from the House Committee on Education & the Workforce of their intent to bring H.R. 6585 – The Bipartisan Workforce Pell Act to the full U.S. House of Representatives

Your Immediate Action Required
Step One:
Log on to Congress.gov and use the tab entitled “Contact Your Member” on the right hand side to determine your U.S. Representative(s).

Step Two: 
The list of your two U.S. Senators and Representative will appear.  Click the “Contact” link for your Representative (Note: In some instances, if your campus straddles more than one congressional district, you will be provided with two or more Representatives – in this case, send the request to all Representatives, as you likely draw students from and support the local communities of both districts.)

Step Three:
Fill out the short “Email Me” information with the campus information and fill in the “Your Message” portion with this very brief request.

On behalf of our students, we request that you vote in favor of H.R. 6585 – The Bipartisan Workforce Pell Act.  This important piece of legislation will enable individuals seeking to enroll in short-term, in-demand, skilled workforce educational programs.  By expanding the Federal Pell Grant program the legislation will help—

  • students afford short-term training programs;
  • workers find in-demand and good-paying jobs;
  • employers fill the approximately 10 million unfilled jobs of employers across all industries who are eager to find qualified workers.

What’s Next
Once you have completed the Call to Action, your next action should be to register for this week’s CSPEN Federal Legislative & Regulatory Update webinar.  It has been a couple of weeks since our last webinar due to the busy times preparing for and hosting CSPEN’s 6th Annual Higher Education Policy Meeting (HEPM), but we are not back on track to provide those of you who were unable to attend the highly informative meeting in Washington, and those who were too, with a summary of the key takeaways from the HEPM, the outcome of the House floor vote on H.R. 6585, the status of several other critically important higher education bills preparing for House floor consideration in the weeks and months ahead, AND a summary of the final Issue Papers presented to the non-Federal negotiators on the Program Integrity and Institutional Quality Committee late yesterday afternoon and posted to the Department of Education’s website just moments ago.

Department’s Email Announcement
Dear colleagues,

Last night, the Department shared new redline and other documents with negotiators ahead of the next rulemaking session, which begins on Monday, March 4th. Those materials are now posted on the neg reg page under the “Program Integrity and Institutional Quality” section.

Members of the public who wish to view the sessions can register for the livestream.  At the end of the first three days, the committee will reserve 30 minutes for public comment. To request time to comment, please send the name of the speaker, as well as the name of the organization, if applicable, to negreghearing@ed.gov no later than 12:00 p.m. Eastern time on the day of the meeting. We will provide information to commenters on how and when to log in to the meeting as a speaker. We will accommodate as many requests as possible. No public comments will be made on the final day.

REGISTER FOR CSPEN’s FEDERAL LEGISLATIVE & REGULATORY UPDATE
Please register for CSPEN Legislative & Regulatory Update on Feb 29, 2024 2:00 PM EST at:
https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/7033244267891009112
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.