School integration funding opportunity: The Department of Education has released a $10 million funding notice for a new competitive grants program, “Fostering Diverse Schools,” for selected local school districts to plan for increased school diversity. This was the final outcome of a two year campaign, led by the National Coalition on School Diversity and its members, to fund the full $100 million Fostering Diverse Schools program requested by the President in the 2022 and 2023 budgets. The final program is a setaside of existing funds within the Every Student Succeeds Act. In perhaps an excess of legal caution, the Department has limited the new program to “socioeconomic integration,” but we are confident that districts that are also seeking to promote racial integration will find tools here that they can use. See the funding notice here.
For more information on Fostering Diverse Schools and the new Magnet Schools funding opportunities, join us next Tuesday, May 16, for a webinar sponsored by the Bridges Collaborative, NCSD, and Magnet Schools of America: “What can the federal government do to support school integration?”
Live in NYC! Come see the Epic Theatre Ensemble’s take on the intersection of housing and school segregation with their engaging performance of Between the Lines – a youth-written and performed play commissioned by PRRAC and NCSD. The performance is on the evening of the Brown anniversary, May 17, at the NYU Kimmel Center. Please join us and RSVP here.
AFFH toolkit: We were pleased to have had the opportunity to contribute to a new HUD toolkit, Lessons from the Ground: Best Practices in Fair Housing Planning (April 2023). PRRAC joined in this project with Enterprise Community Partners and Abt Associates, combining reviews of the initial 2016-17 AFFH plans and interviews with local officials and advocates.
Removing barriers to portability: Along with the National Housing Law Project, we recently revisited a major oversight in a 2016 HUD regulation governing families with HUD vouchers who attempt to move from one PHA jurisdiction to another, as they have a legal right to do. See our letter on “rescreening” here.
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