| PublicationDate: 8/18/97 Summary: This is the sixth of our periodic updates about Federal Work-Study (FWS) allocations for 1997-98, the America Reads Challenge, and community service. Author: ODAS - Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary - SFA Dear Colleague: This is the sixth of our periodic updates about Federal Work-Study (FWS) allocations for 1997-98, the America Reads Challenge, and community service. As your students arrive for fall semester, we encourage you to share with them the exciting opportunities in FWS and community service. I am very pleased with the information you have shared with us and your colleagues regarding efforts to employ FWS students in community service and tutoring jobs. SFAP will continue its efforts to provide technical assistance, as we have over the past few months. To date, we have provided you with a series of 5 BBS messages; "Dear Colleague" question and answer letters CB-97-5 and CB-97-12, among others; America Reads Challenge sessions at NASFAA and other regional student assistance conferences; and the "Expanding Federal Work-Study and Community Service Opportunities" guide. (Additional copies of the guide are available by calling 1-800-4FEDAID.) I trust these efforts have been helpful to you as you planned FWS opportunities for your students in 1997-98. For additional technical assistance, you may want to subscribe to the America Reads Listserv by sending an e-mail to: majordomo@etr-associates.org with the message "subscribe americareads-digest". The America Reads Listserv is a no-cost forum for interested parties to discuss questions and best practices regarding America Reads programs. We also would like to clarify an issue about which many of you have asked. To join the America Reads Challenge, you do not need to commit 50 percent of your 1997-98 FWS increase to reading tutors. Institutions that wish to sign onto the Challenge are asked only to voluntarily commit an increased number of FWS students as reading tutors. To sign onto the Challenge, please submit the America Reads response form that can be found in a number of our mailings this year, as well as on the web at: www.ed.gov/inits/americareads/ Your institution can sign onto the America Reads Challenge if it has even one additional FWS student tutoring a preschool age or elementary school student in reading. Institutions that use at least 50 percent of their 1997-98 FWS increase for reading tutors will be listed on the America Reads Honor Roll. Over 680 institutions already have signed onto the America Reads Challenge thus far, and we hope you will join with them. Thank you again for your enthusiastic response to the Department's initiative to involve more FWS students in community service. Respectfully submitted, Elizabeth M. Hicks |