Letter to the Delaware Department of Education — Reasonable Level of Tolerance (January 25, 2024)

Summary

A January 25, 2024 letter from the United States Department of Education, Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, to Secretary Holodick of the Delaware Department of Education (DDOE); the signature block names Laura Jimenez, Director, Office of State and Grantee Relations. The letter states that the Department received a written plan for a reasonable level of tolerance in calculating whether DDOE met State maintenance of equity requirements in fiscal year 2023 under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. It states that DDOE proposes a tolerance of up to a 10 percent decline in per-pupil funding for small LEAs, defined as LEAs with 200 or fewer students, and that the Department determined this approach includes a reasonable level of tolerance.

Summary drafted by a model from the document's text below and checked by script against that text before publication. It is a navigation aid, not a reading of what the document proves. Where AI is used

Full text

                      UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
                           OFFICE OF ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY EDUCATION




                                        January 25, 2024

The Honorable Mark A. Holodick, Ed.D.
Secretary of Education
Delaware Department of Education
401 Federal Street, Suite 2
Dover, DE 19901-3639

Dear Secretary Holodick:

The U.S. Department of Education (Department) received your written plan for a reasonable
level of tolerance when calculating whether the Delaware Department of Education (DDOE) has
met State maintenance of equity requirements in fiscal year (FY) 2023 under the American
Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARP Act). This written plan applies only to a subset of Delaware’s
local educational agencies (LEAs).

The ARP Act State maintenance of equity requirements help ensure that State funding supports
LEAs with high concentrations of poverty and the students who have been subject to
longstanding opportunity gaps in our education system and experienced the greatest impact from
the COVID-19 pandemic. These requirements are vital for ensuring that States maintain funding
to address the impact of the pandemic on students’ education, and for protecting students in high-
need and highest-poverty LEAs from disproportionate cuts if reductions in State effort do occur.

The Department determined that it is consistent with the State maintenance of equity
requirements to allow a State educational agency (SEA) to calculate whether it has maintained
funding equity with respect to its very small high-need and highest-poverty LEAs within a
reasonable “tolerance level.” The Department’s determination is based on the possibility of
significant volatility in the calculated per-pupil funding amounts for very small LEAs caused by
small changes in student enrollment, which may be unrelated to whether an SEA has achieved
the intent of the requirements. (See Frequently Asked Questions, American Rescue Plan
Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Program, Maintenance of Equity
Requirements, July 26, 2022, Question 21(a).)

DDOE’s proposal considers LEAs with 200 or fewer students to be small. Under this proposed
threshold, Delaware has two small LEAs out of 45 statewide. DDOE asserts that calculated per-
pupil funding amounts for small LEAs are significantly affected by small changes in enrollment
rates and students’ educational needs, making annual per-pupil funding amounts in these LEAs
an imperfect indicator of whether the SEA has achieved the intent of maintaining equity in
funding across LEAs. Accordingly, DDOE proposes to implement a tolerance of up to a 10
percent decline in per-pupil funding. Applying this tolerance would impact two small LEAs that
the SEA identified as meeting the definition of high-need or highest-poverty in FY 2023;
together, these LEAs served 0.2 percent of Delaware’s students in FY 2023.
After reviewing DDOE’s tolerance proposal and accompanying data, the unique circumstances
in the State, and our further State-specific analysis, we have determined that this approach
includes a reasonable level of tolerance when calculating whether Delaware has maintained
equity for small LEAs in FY 2023 and is consistent with DDOE’s FY 2022 tolerance request.

We appreciate your diligence in developing this proposal. If you have any questions, please
contact your program officer at: Delaware.OESE@ed.gov.

                                            Sincerely,
    Aur
                             a Jimenez      Laura Jimenez

                                            Laura Jimenez
                                            Director, Office of State and Grantee Relations


File and source

File

department-of-education-1-25-2024-used-response-to-tolerance-proposal-letter-fy23-www-ed-gov-4668590893.pdf

Size

150,287 bytes

SHA-256

a275514a06bf445dfbf672e4dc34b11ba397e4d27832d2c08121b2d6dd71dc8e

Our copy

department-of-education-1-25-2024-used-response-to-tolerance-proposal-letter-fy23-www-ed-gov-4668590893.pdf

Original

www.ed.gov