By David J. Holbrook
Greetings from Colorado. Some of you may know me or know of me because of my previous collaborations with EduSkills, or from other activities and events. I’ve previously written a few newsletter articles, was interviewed for a Cultural Connections podcast, provided a webinar, and spoke at a couple of conferences on behalf EduSkills. And, I’m back, and among other things, I will be contributing to this newsletter on a regular basis.
For those of you that don’t know me, my specific expertise is in ESSA federal programs, federal education funding, compliance, and Civil Rights for English Learners/Multilingual Learners (ELs/MLs). I have broad experience working with ELs/MLs as a state director (holding positions of Title III Director, Title I Director, and Federal Programs and Assessment Director), State consultant for Native American education, contractor to the US Department of Education (USED) helping to monitor State’s Title III implementation, over 16 years with the National Association of English Learner Program Administrators (NAELPA, where I’m currently Executive Director), and over 11 years working for EL/ML focused for-profit Software as a Service (SAAS) companies like EduSkills.
I’ll be contributing to future newsletters, starting with a three-part series on using Title I funds to support ELs/MLs, but today I want to dive into some recent developments with funding the US Government and the passage of the Fiscal Year 2026 (FY26) funding for education. FYI, FY26 funding includes ESSA funds for programs like Title I and Title III for the 26-27 school year.
Passage of FY26 government funding had an original deadline of September 30, 2025. The US Congress was unable to pass an appropriations bill at that time and it resulted in the longest government shutdown in history. In November, Congress passed a Continuing Resolution or CR, which temporarily funded the government into December. Then it passed another CR with a deadline of January 30, 2026. After another brief government shutdown, Congress finally passed appropriations legislation into law in early February, including funding for education.
The good news is that education funding levels are the same for FY26 as they were for FY25. There were no cuts to Title III funding, which was a significant concern. Title III will again be funded at $890 million for the 26-27 school year. The funding legislation section for Title III includes a request for USED to provide a briefing to the US Senate Committee responsible for education no later than 90 days after implementing its actions and plans to improve outcomes for ELs/MLs, including information on staffing levels and fulfillment of statutory requirements (read the Title III section here, page 286).
This is great news, as it is a recognition of the significant responsibilities that USED has to implement Title III and calls for USED to report on its implementation of Title III. The wording regarding staffing levels and meeting statutory requirements is especially important given the current state of USED’s Office of English Language Acquisition (OELA). Due to cuts at USED, only one person remains in OELA. The Senate recognizes that it will take more than one person to implement Title III and is putting pressure on USED to ensure that the staffing levels are sufficient to handle all that is statutorily required regarding the implementation of Title III. As with anything with the current administration, we need to take a wait and see approach and be watchful regarding what will actually get done, but the attempt by Congress to create some accountability is very encouraging.
P.S. If you are attending the National ESEA Conference in Denver, come see my presentation Thursday, February 12th at 3:00 pm in Room Bluebird 2A.
