WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. Senators Susan Collins (R-ME) and Jon Tester (D-MT) wrote a letter to Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos on May 15, calling her attention to a provision in the fiscal year (FY) 2017 funding bill that “strongly encourage[s]” the Department of Education to allow institutions to resubmit corrected applications for the Upward Bound program.
The senators’ letter was signed by 19 bipartisan Senators, including Senators Thad Cochran (R-MS) and Patrick Leahy (D-VT), the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee.
The Department of Education recently rejected dozens of grant funding applications for first-generation college students over arbitrary formatting requirements. Barring re-evaluation, thousands of low-income and first-generation students could be denied a chance to access higher education because of inadvertent formatting issues.
“The explanatory statement accompanying the FY 2017 Consolidated Appropriations Act is a clear, strong statement from Congress that the Department of Education should provide recourse for this year’s applicants to correct minor, unintentional deviations from the arbitrary formatting criteria,” Collins and Tester wrote. “We strongly encourage you to heed this explicit direction from Congress.”
Last month, Collins and Tester led a group of 25 bipartisan Senators in urging the Department of Education to reverse course and review the rejected applications. In addition, Senator Collins, a senior member of the Appropriations Committee, secured a provision in the FY 2017 funding bill that expresses “concern that the Department has rejected and made ineligible for review several fiscal year 2017 grant applications based on minor formatting issues” and “strongly encourage[s] the Department to provide flexibility to such applications by permitting submission of a corrected application.”
Senators Collins and Tester’s letter was signed by Senators Thad Cochran (R-MS), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), Patty Murray (D-WA), John Boozman (R-AR), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Steve Daines (R-MT), Angus King (I-ME), Thom Tillis (R-NC), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Rob Portman (R-OH), Tom Carper (D-DE), Luther Strange (R-AL), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Ed Markey (D-MA), and Maria Cantwell (D-WA).
