Legislative Updates

JNCL-NCLIS has been working with legislators in DC for over a year to create the World LEAP Act to put $15 million in grants to the Department of Education in order to fund programs that would help with the teacher shortage, diversifying the teacher workforce, support our Multilingual (ML) population, support teacher professional development programs, among other things.  This Act would also bring World Language Programming back to the DOE rather than only being supported at the Dept. of Defense.  

As of Nov 2023, the National Budget proposed in the House is calling for major cuts including Education.  The proposed cuts would reduce Title I funding by 80%, and would completely eliminate Title II, and III!  The Senate proposed budget calls for no cuts and equal spending from the previous fiscal year.  It is up to both sides to negotiate these numbers as soon as they are passed out of their perspective sides.  

November 20th, 2023 update - The government has passed a specific funding package to keep the government open until the end of January / early February.  Part of this is that education will remain at FY23 funding.  The Speaker of the House scrapped the bill requiring the education cuts, among other cuts, due to it's inability to garner enough votes.  We still need to keep up this fight, but we have a slight reprieve for the holidays.  

Stay tuned!

In the summer of 2023, Indiana approved two new Graduation Pathways with world languages being at the foreground of both of them.  The first one by Perry Township was entitled "Connecting English Learners to Successful Employment" with a focus on our Multilingual students' abilities to graduate from Indiana High Schools; and the second one was jointly written between Highland, IPS, and MSDLT called "Global Communication" to support students planning to go into the fields of translation, interpretation, communication, international studies, and global entrepreneurship.  

September 2022 - The wording on the CoMP Document now stipulates that students can use either their WIDA scores or any other state graduation qualifying exam in order to earn their Certificate of Multilingual Proficiency.  

February 2022 - IN Sen. Young sponsored a bill to continue funding Title VI as well as the Fullbright Scholarships.  This has now passed both houses of Congress.  JNCL-NCLIS Update

March 1, 2022 - HB1134 is DEAD!!

December 2021 - Please send a Thank You letter to Sen. Braun for joining the America's Languages Caucus, as one of the first Republican Senators to join this new Caucus!!  Very excited that Indiana is represented in this important Caucus.