Dear Colleagues —
Happy new year! We are pleased to notify you that the Department has issued the July 1, 2016, Perkins State grant award, covering year ten, under the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act. These awards represent roughly two-thirds of the $1.1 billion investment that the Department will make in career and technical education for FY 2016-17. Thank you for your steadfast efforts to submit your State plan revisions and budgets, and enter into thoughtful and thorough performance level negotiations with our team for the upcoming year.
As you also know, the U.S. Departments of Labor (DOL) and Education (ED) have made publicly available five rules to implement the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) (Pub. L. 113-128). President Barack Obama signed WIOA into law on July 22, 2014. WIOA is landmark legislation that is designed to strengthen and improve our nation's public workforce system and help get Americans, including youth and those with significant barriers to employment, into high-quality jobs and careers and help employers hire and retain skilled workers. The final rule is available here: https://doleta.gov/wioa/Docs/wioa-regs-joint-final-rule.pdf. We also strongly encourage you to visit DOL’s Employment and Training Website at https://doleta.gov/wioa/ for updated information on WIOA, including a new set of resources that States can use for performance accountability.
Finally, stay tuned for notification about the nomination process for next year's 2017 class of U. S. Presidential Scholars in CTE. As with last year, a letter will be issued by the Department through the Chief State School Officers, requesting 5 CTE students as nominees for the upcoming year. The selection criteria, review process, and timeline will remain the same. We will notify you when the letter is issued and will post it on the PCRN Website.
On behalf of the entire DATE team, we wish you the best for a relaxing and rejuvenating summer and look forward to working with you in the new year!
Best —
Sharon Lee Miller
Director, Division of Academic and Technical Education