CHEYENNE n The Hathaway Scholarship Program was approved Monday by the Senate Education Committee.

The bills creating the scholarship and funding the program are expected to reach the Senate floor this morning.

The bill creating the scholarship program, Senate File 85, was approved unanimously by the committee after adoption of an amendment offered by Sen. Charles Townsend, R-Newcastle.

His amendment would allow Hathaway scholarship administrators “latitude for scholarship eligibility exceptions for good cause.” Eligibility currently requires that scholarship applicants live in Wyoming. Sen. Townsend related the account of a Wyoming National Guard family that was transferred to a base in Germany, saying it wouldn’t be fair to knock that’s family’s high-school-aged children out of the running for a Hathaway scholarship simply because a soldier was transferred out of state.

Committee members readily agreed and passed the amendment unanimously.

Child Support Enforcement staff pointed out a potential glitch in bill language, which would have required the state office to cross-check with the University of Wyoming as to whether scholarship applicants were behind on child support payments. Anyone behind three months or more on child support payments would not be eligible for the Hathaway scholarships, according to the bill.

Brenda Little explained that as much as she appreciated the intent, federal and state confidentiality laws won’t allow that sort of cross-checking.

After wrestling with several suggestions on how to get around that stumbling block, Committee Chairman Sen. Hank Coe, R-Cody, asked Little to double check with the state attorney general’s office and federal officials. If new language can’t be found to prevent Hathaway scholarships from going to people who were behind on child support, the language would be stripped when it reaches the House.

The companion financing for the Hathaway Scholarships was unanimously approved as well. Senate File 86 provides for:

* $556,200 to the Department of Education to carry out the scholarship program. The department will hire four full-time positions to administer the program.

* $13 .5 million from the common school permanent fund reserve for the scholarship’s expenditure account for the fiscal year beginning July 1, 2006.

* $4.2 million from the common school permanent fund reserve, to the community colleges and University of Wyoming to implement the scholarship program during the first two years of a three-year phase-in period. Of that amount:

* $1.4 million will be equally distributed among the state’s seven community colleges, while $2.8 million will go to the University of Wyoming.

“We’re pleased that the process is moving smoothly along,” said Sara Axelson, University of Wyoming’s interim vice president of student affairs. “We’re hopeful that we’ll have a great scholarship program that will reach Wyoming students.”

This entry was posted by Taman Siswa on Tuesday, February 21, 2006 at 8:17 pm and is filed under Education News, Scholarship. Tags: Brenda Little, Charles Townsend, College, Department of Education, Education News, Germany, Hank Coe, Newcastle, Sara Axelson, Scholarship, Senate, Senate Education Committee, state attorney general’s office, Student, University of Wyoming, Wyoming, Wyoming National Guard, . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.