Department of Education Funding Update

As announced on the MENTOR website, it now appears that the Senate Appropriations Committee has followed the recommendations of the House and the White House in terminating the funding for the U.S. Department of Education's Student Mentoring Program in the FY 2010 Labor/Health & Human Services/Education bill.

As you know, this places the third year of funding for 2008 grantees at considerable risk. The FY 2009 funding has already been allocated and is good to go.

Apparently there will be ongoing efforts by MENTOR and additional advocacy groups to try and get these funds restored through other means. I'm not sure what all that entails, but MENTOR hints that they are trying to make significant changes to the Student Mentoring program itself so that the whole initiative could get re-launched down the road.