Community technology program in crosshairs of Congress.

Washington-- If you've never applied for a Community Technology Centers grant, well, you may never get another chance. The program, started in 1999, provides grants to begin or expand information technology programs and related training in low-income communities.

Its future is in jeopardy as the House approved an appropriations bill for fiscal year 2006 that zeros out funding for the program, as the administration had requested. The 2006 budget proposed to Congress stated that other financial sources can support the same services as CTC.

But the fiscal axe hasn't fallen yet. The Senate Appropriations Committee has approved a funding bill for next year that would continue the program at $4.96 million, the same level as this year, setting the stage for a possible Congressional showdown.

And while the U.S. Department of Education will award at least one more round of grants this year, it won't seek new applications. The Education Department's Office of Vocational and Adult Education decided that since it received so many good applications last year and could only fund a small fraction of them, it will choose grantees from leftover 2004 applications. According to department spokesman David Thomas, last year the department received almost 500 applicants and funded only 25.

The Education Department is saving itself a lot of work this way. Before awarding grants, however, the department said in a July 12 Federal Register notice, it will contact the highest-ranked unfunded applicants from last year to see if they remain interested and capable. If they aren't, the next highest-ranked applicants will get the nod.

Pending applications have to meet one of two absolute priorities from last year: either form a partnership between elementary/ secondary schools and community organizations (which could include community colleges), or provide instruction to needy high school students. The Education Department put in the priority on secondary education as part of its No Child Left Behind push.

The department had given out more grants in previous years, even though Congress slashed funding from more than $29 million in fiscal year 2003 to less than $10 million in 2004 and less than $5 million in 2005.

Each year, several community colleges have received awards directly and others have participated as part of a consortium. The NCLB thrust doesn't mean that community colleges couldn't get in on the act. In last year's competition, three community colleges got the nod directly, splitting $1,021,198.

Under the larger 2003 funding, five of the 78 grants went directly to community colleges--a larger number but a smaller share. The five shared $1,654,481. And in fiscal year 2002, only three community colleges earned grants, sharing $727,318.

When community colleges got grants directly, several used them to prepare students for careers. Lewis and Clark Community College Career Academies in Godfrey, Ill., for instance, gave students a shot at learning about careers ranging from dental hygiene to Web design and nursing.

And Iowa Valley Community College District has been offering a week-long Valued Employee Workshop in English and Spanish for the large Latino population in the Iowa communities it serves.

The Payoff

Adults, mainly young immigrants, are using the CTC labs to improve their English for community college and jobs, said Bettie Bolar, IVCCD vice president for continuing education and training. "We put them through a week-long workshop on what work life is like in America, what American businesses expect," she said. "The last day, they meet with staff at the community college and learn about enrolling in college."

Bolar said that local industry liked the program so much that she has gotten enough funds to keep the program running for two years after the federal grant expires.

But she acknowledged that while it worked well with adults, the effort to help prepare high schoolers for college fizzled. "We've fallen down on one of our goals ... and that is to work with high school students." The location wasn't near the school, and "I think it was just not a priority for the high school faculty and counselors to refer them and make sure high school students were getting to us," Bolar said.

The staff at Chemeketa Community College in Salem, Ore., told federal evaluators that they found it helpful to provide transportation as well as technology and training to their rural Oregon users.

And a relative few other community colleges have participated as partners. "The Community Technology Centers Interim Status Report: FY 2003 Grantees," prepared for the Office of Vocational and Adult Education by the America Connects Consortium (the latest report on the subject completed), stated that grantees formed an average of eight partnerships with other community organizations. Grantees are inspired to work with other groups by the program's goals and the need to match the federal grant dollar for dollar.

But community colleges accounted for only two or three percent of partners, according to the last two ACC reports--many more K-12 schools, businesses and governments signed on.

A few grantees did successfully work with community colleges, ACC found. One it cited was Dress for Success New Orleans Charities Inc., an agency basically geared to preparing economically disadvantaged women for careers. Dress for Success turned a mall storefront into a CTC, where it offered classes. ACC praised the effort, which included partnering with local Delgado Community College to provide instructional staff, materials and assessment. But the program couldn't survive after the grant money ran out, and the center was closed after two years.

The Education Department will award the coming round of grants (and any possible future ones) using different criteria than before. Until now, it had set aside up to 25 percent of funds for "novice" applicants, meaning agencies that had never received a CTC grant before (including as part of a consortium) or had not received any federal discretionary grant during the previous five years. However, this year, "Because of the separate ranking of novice and non-novice applicants and the set-aside requirements, a number of high-quality applications received through the 2004 CTC competition were not funded," the department said. So that it can fund the CTC applications it deems the best, the department won't distinguish between the two groups any more.

Several community colleges have gotten grants under the novice set-aside, including IVCCD. Miami Dade College's North Campus won $252,949 as a novice last year and set up a center that will provide adult basic education, general education degrees and college preparation classes.