Quick Takes
Senate passes bill reauthorizing Ready To Learn
|
The requested $25.7 million in funding for RTL remains unresolved and will be taken up in separate legislation.
Current (https://current.org/tag/ready-to-learn/page/2/)
The requested $25.7 million in funding for RTL remains unresolved and will be taken up in separate legislation.
The Senate is expected to vote on the legislation Monday.
An Association of Public Television Stations briefing focused on federal funding prospects and the next steps in the FCC’s 2016 spectrum auction.
The Department of Education awarded $25.5 million in grants in the latest round of RTL funding.
The CPB funds, which are approved two years before being paid out, not only stay at the current level but would include annual increases of roughly 2.2 percent through 2025.
CPB and Ready to Learn, a U.S. Department of Education program supporting preschool learning, will provide $2.2 million in grants to 21 public television stations to create new or expand existing school-readiness projects. One of the new grants, announced June 3, will establish an Illinois Ready to Learn transmedia network with pubTV partners WILL in Champaign-Urbana, WSIU in Carbondale and WTVP in Peoria, to reach 12,000 educators and 13,000 school children. Partnering with community coalitions in central and southern Illinois, the effort will provide educational programs to three low-income communities, as well as offer professional development for educators. The stations received just over $105,000 for that work. Since 2011, pubTV stations nationwide have used Ready to Learn grants specifically to extend the educational benefits of PBS Kids content by providing interactive math and literacy programs and services to local communities.
Plus, a voice in support of college radio.
President Obama has maintained level CPB funding in his fiscal 2015 federal budget request, but recommends eliminating the Rural Digital program and consolidating Ready to Learn funding into other programs within the U.S. Department of Education, in a mixed blessing for pubcasters.
With pubcasting no longer a political football, station reps meeting with lawmakers started off on better footing this year.