[Federal Register Volume 78, Number 90 (Thursday, May 9, 2013)]
[Proposed Rules]
[Pages 27129-27132]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2013-10962]
[[Page 27129]]
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DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
34 CFR Chapter II
[Docket ID ED-2013-OESE-0062]
Proposed Priority and Requirements--Education Facilities
Clearinghouse
AGENCY: Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, Department of
Education.
ACTION: Proposed priority and requirements.
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CFDA Number: 84.215T.
SUMMARY: The Assistant Secretary for Elementary and Secondary Education
proposes a priority and requirements under the Education Facilities
Clearinghouse program and may use one or more of the priority and
requirements for competitions in fiscal year (FY) 2013 and later years.
We intend to award funds under a cooperative agreement to support the
collection and dissemination of best practices for the planning,
design, financing, procurement, construction, improvement, operation,
and maintenance of safe, healthy, and high-performing elementary and
secondary education facilities. We intend to establish a Clearinghouse
to help stakeholders recognize the linkages between the school facility
and three areas: Academic instruction, student and community well-
being, and school fiscal health.
DATES: We must receive your comments on or before June 10, 2013. We
encourage you to submit comments well in advance of this date.
ADDRESSES: Submit your comments through the Federal eRulemaking Portal
or via postal mail, commercial delivery, or hand delivery. We will not
accept comments submitted by fax or by email. To ensure we do not
receive duplicate copies, please submit your comments only once. In
addition, please include the Docket ID and the term ``Education
Facilities Clearinghouse'' at the top of your comments.
Federal eRulemaking Portal: Go to www.regulations.gov to submit
your comments electronically. Information on using Regulations.gov,
including instructions for accessing agency documents, submitting
comments, and viewing the docket, is available on the site under ''How
To Use Regulations.gov'' in the Help section.
Postal Mail, Commercial Delivery, or Hand Delivery. If you mail or
deliver your comments about these proposed priorities and requirements,
address them to the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education
(Attention: Education Facilities Clearinghouse Grants-Comments), U.S.
Department of Education, 400 Maryland Avenue SW., Potomac Center Plaza
(PCP) Room 10073, Washington, DC 20202-6450.
Privacy Note: The Department's policy is to make all comments
received from members of the public available for public viewing in
their entirety on the Federal eRulemaking Portal at
www.regulations.gov. Therefore, commenters should be careful to include
in their comments only information that they wish to make publicly
available.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Pat Rattler. Telephone: (202) 245-7893
or by email: [email protected].
If you use a telecommunications device for the deaf (TDD) or a text
telephone (TTY), call the Federal Relay Service (FRS), toll free, at 1-
800-877-8339.
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:
Invitation to Comment: We invite you to submit comments regarding
this notice. To ensure that your comments have maximum effect in
developing the notice of final priorities and requirements, we urge you
to identify clearly the specific priority or requirement that each
comment addresses.
We invite you to assist us in complying with the specific
requirements of Executive Orders 12866 and 13563 and their overall
requirement of reducing regulatory burden that might result from these
proposed priorities and requirements. Please let us know of any further
ways we could reduce potential costs or increase potential benefits
while preserving the effective and efficient administration of the
program.
During and after the comment period, you may inspect all public
comments about this notice in Room 3W110, 400 Maryland Avenue SW.,
Washington, DC, between the hours of 8:30 a.m. and 4:00 p.m.,
Washington, DC time, Monday through Friday of each week except Federal
holidays.
Assistance to Individuals with Disabilities in Reviewing the
Rulemaking Record: On request we will provide an appropriate
accommodation or auxiliary to aid an individual with a disability who
needs assistance to review the comments or other documents in the
public rulemaking record for this notice. If you want to schedule an
appointment for this type of accommodation or auxiliary aid, please
contact the person listed under FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT.
Purpose of Program: The purpose of the Education Facilities
Clearinghouse is to provide technical assistance and training on the
planning, design, financing, procurement, construction, improvement,
operation, and maintenance of safe, healthy, and high-performing
elementary and secondary education facilities.
Program Authority: 20 U.S.C. 7131; 7243-7243b.
Background
The Education Facilities Clearinghouse is intended to assist
States, local educational agencies (LEAs), and schools in creating
safe, healthy, and high-performing education facilities by collecting
and disseminating best practices for facilities planning, design,
financing, procurement, construction, improvement, operation, and
maintenance.
With this array of services, it is the Department's intent to use
the Education Facilities Clearinghouse to assist education stakeholders
in creating and sustaining higher quality environments for students,
educators, and their communities. There is a growing body of research
linking school facility quality to educational outcomes and documenting
inequality in the distribution or quality of facilities:
Inequality in School Facilities: There are significant
inequalities in capital investment and in the availability of science
labs, art rooms, music rooms, and gymnasiums between schools in low-
income areas and schools in more affluent areas.\1\
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\1\ U.S. Department of Education: National Center for Education
Statistics, Public School Principals' Perceptions of Their School
Facilities: Fall 2005, NCES 2008-011 (Washington, DC: National
Center for Education Statistics, 2008), retrieved April 2013.
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Facilities and Health: Air quality, acoustics, levels of
thermal comfort, and lighting can affect the health and well-being of
school occupants and have been linked in a small number of studies to
student educational outcomes.\2\
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\2\ Earthman, G.I., C.S. Cash, and D. Van Berkum. 1995.
``Student achievement and behavior and school building condition.''
Journal of School Business Management, 8(3): 26-37; and Shaughnessy,
R., U. Shaughnessy, et al. 2006. ``A preliminary study on the
association between ventilation rates in classrooms and student
performance.'' Indoor Air 16(6):465-468.
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Facilities and Communities: School facilities affect
students and their communities. School siting, size, efficiency, and
design have implications for the community surrounding the school.\3\
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\3\ ``School Siting Guidelines,'' Environmental Protection
Agency, accessed April 2013, http://www.epa.gov/schools/siting/.
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Facilities and Behavior: There is evidence of a link
between various
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aspects of a school's physical environment, on the one hand, and
problematic student behavior in high schools and the retention of
teachers across elementary and secondary schools, on the other
hand.4 5
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\4\ Buckley, Schneider, and Shang, The Effects of School
Facility Quality on Teacher Retention in Urban School Districts.
National Clearinghouse for Educational Facilities. February 2004,
retrieved April 2013. http://www.ncef.org/pubs/teacherretention.pdf.
\5\ Revathy Kumar, Patrick O'Malley, and Lloyd Johnston,
``Association between physical environment of secondary schools and
student problem behavior: A national study, 2000-2003,'' Environment
and Behavior 40, no. 4 (2008): 455-486, retrieved December 2012 from
DOI: 10.1177/0013916506293987.
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With the proposed priority and requirements, we seek to build on
the efforts we began with the FY 2010 Education Facilities
Clearinghouse competition by clarifying the major goals of the
Clearinghouse in order to address many of the concerns about the status
of education facilities and by aligning this program with the
Department's other initiatives relating to health and safety. One such
initiative is the U.S. Department of Education's Green Ribbon Schools
(ED-GRS) program.
Proposed Priority
This notice contains one proposed priority.
Proposed Priority--Establishment of the Clearinghouse
Background
With the proposed priority, we reaffirm the central purpose of the
Clearinghouse, as stated in the notice inviting applications announced
for the FY 2010 competition (75 FR 34441), and clarify the major goals
of the Clearinghouse's core activities. The purpose of the
Clearinghouse is to provide technical assistance and training on the
planning, design, financing, procurement, construction, improvement,
operation, and maintenance of elementary and secondary school
facilities. The major goals we seek to address with this priority are:
First, to highlight the role that school facilities might play in
reducing education inequity and facilitating increased academic
achievement; second, to better align the work of the Clearinghouse with
the ED-GRS program; and, lastly, to preserve the role of the
Clearinghouse in helping schools retrofit their facilities to increase
security and student safety.
The ED-GRS program honors schools that are exemplary in three key
areas: Reducing environmental impact and costs; improving the health
and wellness of students and staff; and providing effective
environmental and sustainability education, which incorporates science,
technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), civic skills, and green
career pathways. To better align with the first two GRS-ED key
activities, the proposed priority would direct the Clearinghouse to
help education stakeholders understand how to use education facilities
to improve community health and safety and student achievement,
identify cost-saving opportunities, and increase the quality of school
time spent outdoors. More information regarding the ED-GRS program can
be found at http://www2.ed.gov/programs/green-ribbon-schools/index.html.
Proposed Priority
Establish a Clearinghouse to collect and disseminate research and
other information on effective practices regarding the planning,
design, financing, procurement, construction, improvement, operation,
and maintenance of safe, healthy, and high-performing facilities for
elementary and secondary schools in order to--
(a) Help education stakeholders increase their use of education
facilities to turn around low-performing schools and close academic
achievement gaps;
(b) Increase understanding of how education facilities affect
community health and safety and student achievement;
(c) Identify potential cost-saving opportunities through
procurement, energy efficiency, and preventative maintenance;
(d) Increase the use of education facilities and outdoor spaces as
instructional tools and community centers (e.g., outdoor classrooms,
school gardens, school-based health centers); and
(e) Increase capacity to identify hazards and conduct vulnerability
assessments, and, through facility design, increase safety against
hazards, natural disasters, and intruders.
Types of Priorities
When inviting applications for a competition using one or more
priorities, we designate the type of each priority as absolute,
competitive preference, or invitational through a notice in the Federal
Register. The effect of each type of priority follows:
Absolute priority: Under an absolute priority, the Department
considers only applications that meet the priority (34 CFR
75.105(c)(3)).
Competitive preference priority: Under a competitive preference
priority, we give competitive preference to an application by (1)
awarding additional points, depending on the extent to which the
application meets the priority (34 CFR 75.105(c)(2)(i)); or (2)
selecting an application that meets the priority over an application of
comparable merit that does not meet the priority (34 CFR
75.105(c)(2)(ii)).
Invitational priority: Under an invitational priority, we are
particularly interested in applications that meet the priority.
However, we do not give an application that meets the priority a
preference over other applications (34 CFR 75.105(c)(1)).
Proposed Requirements
The Assistant Secretary proposes the following requirements for
this program. We may apply one or more of these requirements in any
year in which this program is in effect.
Background
The following proposed requirements describe the four core
activities of the Clearinghouse: Developing and maintaining a Web site
to facilitate public access to electronic resources and research;
developing resource materials and compiling best practices to assist in
the creation of safe, healthy, and high-performing facilities;
developing and implementing training programs for various education
stakeholders; and providing direct, specialized technical assistance to
schools and LEAs. With these requirements, we seek to clarify that the
applicant must include in its application its plan to implement these
four core activities.
Proposed Requirement 1--Establish and Maintain a Web Site
An applicant must include in its application a plan to establish
and maintain a dedicated, easily-accessible Web site that will include
electronic resources (e.g., links to published articles and research)
about the planning, design, financing, procurement, construction,
improvement, operation, and maintenance of safe, healthy, and high-
performing facilities for elementary and secondary schools. The Web
site must be established within 120 days of receipt of the award and
must be maintained for the duration of the project.
Proposed Requirement 2--Track and Compile Best Practices and Develop
Resource Materials
An applicant must include in its application a plan to track and
compile best practices at the State, LEA, and school levels and a plan
to develop
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resources that support the planning, design, financing, procurement,
construction, improvement, operation, and maintenance of safe, healthy,
and high-performing facilities for elementary and secondary schools.
Proposed Requirement 3--Training
An applicant must include in its application a plan to develop and
conduct at least two training programs per year for individuals in
leadership positions (such as business or operations managers) in
elementary or secondary schools or LEAs, who are responsible for the
construction and or maintenance of elementary and secondary education
facilities. Training topics must include information on the planning,
design, financing, procurement, construction, improvement, operation,
and maintenance of education facilities in order to improve the
capacity of elementary and secondary schools or LEAs to make quality
decisions regarding safe, healthy, and high-performing elementary and
secondary education facilities. Training must be conducted upon request
by the Department, elementary and secondary schools, States, or LEAs,
and must be conducted by appropriate Clearinghouse staff or
contractors.
Proposed Requirement 4--Technical Assistance
An applicant must include in its application a plan to provide
technical assistance, including a plan for providing on-site technical
assistance to elementary schools, secondary schools, or LEAs, about
issues related to the planning, design, financing, procurement,
construction, improvement, operation, and maintenance of education
facilities. The technical assistance may be provided in the form of
electronic or telephone assistance when requested by these schools,
LEAs, or the Department. On-site technical assistance visits will be
conducted upon request by, or based on input from, the Department,
elementary schools, secondary schools, or LEAs and must be completed
using appropriate Clearinghouse staff or contractors. The Department
must approve in advance all technical assistance visits.
The technical assistance must consist of consultation regarding the
planning, design, financing, procurement, construction, improvement,
operation, and maintenance of education facilities. Specific technical
assistance topics may include information related to: assessing
facilities and construction plans for energy efficiency; conducting
vulnerability assessments; and developing written plans to retrofit
education facilities to address identified hazards and security
concerns. Technical assistance may also address low-cost measures that
can be taken to enhance the safety and security of schools.
Final Priorities and Requirements
We will announce the final priorities and requirements in a notice
in the Federal Register. We will determine the final priorities and
requirements after considering responses to this notice and other
information available to the Department. This notice does not preclude
us from proposing additional priorities, requirements, definitions, or
selection criteria, subject to meeting applicable rulemaking
requirements.
Note: This notice does not solicit applications. In any year in
which we choose to use these priorities and requirements, we invite
applications through a notice in the Federal Register.
Executive Orders 12866 and 13563
Regulatory Impact Analysis
Under Executive Order 12866, the Secretary must determine whether
this regulatory action is ``significant'' and, therefore, subject to
the requirements of the Executive Order and subject to review by the
Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Section 3(f) of Executive Order
12866 defines a ``significant regulatory action'' as an action likely
to result in a rule that may--
(1) Have an annual effect on the economy of $100 million or more,
or adversely affect a sector of the economy, productivity, competition,
jobs, the environment, public health or safety, or State, local or
tribal governments or communities in a material way (also referred to
as an ``economically significant'' rule);
(2) Create serious inconsistency or otherwise interfere with an
action taken or planned by another agency;
(3) Materially alter the budgetary impacts of entitlement grants,
user fees, or loan programs or the rights and obligations of recipients
thereof; or
(4) Raise novel legal or policy issues arising out of legal
mandates, the President's priorities, or the principles set forth in
the Executive Order.
This proposed regulatory action is not a significant regulatory
action subject to review by OMB under section 3(f) of Executive Order
12866.
We have also reviewed this proposed regulatory action under
Executive Order 13563, which supplements and explicitly reaffirms the
principles, structures, and definitions governing regulatory review
established in Executive Order 12866. To the extent permitted by law,
Executive Order 13563 requires that an agency--
(1) Propose or adopt regulations only upon a reasoned determination
that their benefits justify their costs (recognizing that some benefits
and costs are difficult to quantify);
(2) Tailor its regulations to impose the least burden on society,
consistent with obtaining regulatory objectives and taking into
account--among other things and to the extent practicable--the costs of
cumulative regulations;
(3) In choosing among alternative regulatory approaches, select
those approaches that maximize net benefits (including potential
economic, environmental, public health and safety, and other
advantages; distributive impacts; and equity);
(4) To the extent feasible, specify performance objectives, rather
than the behavior or manner of compliance a regulated entity must
adopt; and
(5) Identify and assess available alternatives to direct
regulation, including economic incentives--such as user fees or
marketable permits--to encourage the desired behavior, or provide
information that enables the public to make choices.
Executive Order 13563 also requires an agency ``to use the best
available techniques to quantify anticipated present and future
benefits and costs as accurately as possible.'' The Office of
Information and Regulatory Affairs of OMB has emphasized that these
techniques may include ``identifying changing future compliance costs
that might result from technological innovation or anticipated
behavioral changes.''
We are issuing these proposed priorities, and requirements only on
a reasoned determination that their benefits would justify their costs.
In choosing among alternative regulatory approaches, we selected those
approaches that would maximize net benefits. Based on the analysis that
follows, the Department believes that this regulatory action is
consistent with the principles in Executive Order 13563.
We also have determined that this regulatory action would not
unduly interfere with State, local, and tribal governments in the
exercise of their governmental functions.
In accordance with both Executive orders, the Department has
assessed the potential costs and benefits, both quantitative and
qualitative, of this regulatory action. The potential costs are those
resulting from statutory requirements and those we have determined as
necessary for
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administering the Department's programs and activities.
These proposed priorities and requirements would benefit individual
children by supporting the development and enhancement of safe, secure,
and healthy school practices that would provide educators and
stakeholders with timely and useful information to guide policy and
decision making for education facilities.
Intergovernmental Review: This program is subject to Executive
Order 12372 and the regulations in 34 CFR part 79. One of the
objectives of the Executive Order is to foster an intergovernmental
partnership and a strengthened federalism. The Executive Order relies
on processes developed by State and local governments for coordination
and review of proposed Federal financial assistance.
This document provides early notification of our specific plans and
actions for this program.
Accessible Format: Individuals with disabilities can obtain this
document in an accessible format (e.g., braille, large print,
audiotape, or compact disc) on request to the program contact person
listed under FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT.
Electronic Access to This Document: The official version of this
document is the document published in the Federal Register. Free
Internet access to the official edition of the Federal Register and the
Code of Federal Regulations is available via the Federal Digital System
at: www.gpo.gov/fdsys. At this site you can view this document, as well
as all other documents of this Department published in the Federal
Register, in text or Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF). To use PDF
you must have Adobe Acrobat Reader, which is available free at the
site.
You may also access documents of the Department published in the
Federal Register by using the article search feature at:
www.federalregister.gov. Specifically, through the advanced search
feature at this site, you can limit your search to documents published
by the Department.
Dated: May 3, 2013.
Deborah S. Delisle,
Assistant Secretary for Elementary and Secondary Education.
[FR Doc. 2013-10962 Filed 5-8-13; 8:45 am]
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