NEC Notes from the COE Draft RFP Conference Call on Friday, August 9, 2019

Acting Principal Undersecretary of Postsecondary Education Assistant Secretary post was vacant up to two weeks ago. Other posts also remain vacant. Dr. Lynda Byrd Johnson reports to these positions so draft applications have not yet been approved.  

Approval process has changed several times.

Draft application in current form is meaningless as it is the same as what was published in 2014.

CPPs must be chosen from a list that has been previously published by the Trump administration in March 2018: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2018-03-02/pdf/2018-04291.pdf

But COE does not believe that the CPPs will be from that list. No insight as to which priorities will be included however.

Nobody should lose sleep over these. Concentrate on writing the rest of the proposal for now.

Advice:  Forget about this draft.

Most likely, when the actual draft comes out we will probably have less time to comment.

Department staff is reluctant to approve publication of SSS RFP until there is some guidance from Congress (ex.until there is approval for FY 2020 funding).

ED still wants to have the proposal out for first review by Readers in December, so ED is hoping to have final RFP out in Sep, but there are people along the way who can hold the process up.

The COE call will be repeated on Monday, Aug 12 at 3:00 p.m. (Eastern) using the dial-in information below. (Please note that the information on Monday's call will be the same as the information shared on today's call; therefore, if you already participated, please do not dial-in on Monday. Otherwise, we may exceed the call's capacity.)

Dial-In Number 202-602-1295

Access Code  600-898-378

Please e-mail any questions you have before or during the call toVanessa.Ramirez@coenet.org.