School Districts get $800 Million QZAB Funds, Thanks to the Efforts of NEF

Dear State QZAB Director,

Last Friday the U.S. Congress passed and the President signed the Omnibus Appropriations ACT containing a 2-year (2015, 2016) QZAB extension for $800 million. As the national non-profit leader in QZAB, we had to promise to set aside $80 million for QZAB match, and set up world-class QZAB STEM academies in the districts of key members of Congress to secure QZAB extension.

According to the House and Senate leadership, you have to:

  1. Do your best to get most of the QZAB funds from 2014, 2015 and 2016 allocations utilized – increase the utilization rate from the current 50% to 80%.
  2. Include provisions requiring LEAs to set up new quality QZAB academy (to “prepare students better for college and workforce” as required by the QZAB law) in your QZAB application. We will send you shortly the academy provision in the Florida QZAB application, acceptable to the Congress, so that you can include it in your QZAB application.

We will be glad to assist your LEAs to meet the 2 Federal mandates, namely the QZAB Match and the QZAB Academy by giving any QZAB-eligible LEA the most recognized 10% match and the QZAB academy by the acclaimed State University of New York (SUNY) and a local university. We have given over $120 million in QZAB match donation so far.

U.S. Treasury will notify us the state-by-state QZAB allocations for 2015 and 2016 before March, 2016. We will promptly notify you.

Working together, we CAN make a difference (our mission) in the lives of millions of our QZAB-eligible LEA students, teachers and parents! Thank you.

PS. Some of you still have most or all of the QZAB allocations for 2014, expiring on 12/31/16. Our Foundation can help any interested LEAs to get those funds. Please ask any interested LEA to contact us at www.qzab.org  for the mandated 10% match, the required QZAB academy subsidized by our Foundation and financing assistance at no fee. We will be glad to assist them, and demonstrate to the Congress that, working together, we CAN help to get most QZAB funds committed and help students in the QZAB academies receive world-class STEM education mapped to every state’s standards. If we do that, we CAN work with Congress to make QZAB permanent-our joint mission.

 

Happy Holidays!