Allow me to draw your attention to another important part of the bill. It authorizes continuation of assistance to programs for migratory children. Based on estimates of eligible migrant children provided by the U.S. Office of Education and on projections of actual migrant student counts provided by the Migrant Student Record Transfer System. migrant allocations are estimated to increase more than threefold by 1976. This growth will result from a switch to use of the Migrant Student Record Transfer System and the inclusion of the 0bc dren of migratory fishermen. Puerto Rican migrant children. and 5year provision children. Given these new estimates. the number of migrant students in the program is estimated to increase from 162.480 this year to 708.000 in 1976. with the estimated cost rising from $78.3 million in 1974 to $262.2 million in 1976. Assuming a 1974 hold harmless for all other State agency programs. the growth in the migrant programs will represent a 40 percent increase in State agency allocations. Thus. assuming a constant total title I appropriation level in the 1975 budget request of $1.885 billion. this growth will result in a corresponding 11.17 percent decrease in the funds available for LEA grants in 1976 since State agency grants are paid at full entitlement off the top. In this way State agency grants will increase from $187.9 million in 1975 to $371.8 million in 1976. with LEA allocations decreasing by the 11.17 percent from $1.647 billion to $1.463 billion. While not questioning the worth of the migrant programs. I am not sure that in funding them we want the LEA allocations to be cut this drastically. At this time I just want to flag this issue and promise my colleagues I will be looking into the potential impact of this decrease. We should examine alternatives and try to find some other way of providing the needed services to migrant children without sacrificing LEA allocations.
Keywords matched
migrant Migrant