Strengthening Community Colleges

Funding Opportunity Announcement

Strengthening Community Colleges Training Grants

Supplemental Justification

Supplemental Supporting Statement A: Justification

This request seeks OMB approval under the Paperwork Reduction Act for the unique information collection requirements in the Strengthening Community Colleges Training Grants. The Strengthening Community Colleges Training Grants program (referred to as Strengthening Community Colleges or SCC) will build the capacity of community colleges to collaborate with employers and the public workforce development system to meet local and regional labor market demand for a skilled workforce. The purpose of this grant is (1) to increase the capacity and responsiveness of community colleges to address the skill development needs of employers and dislocated and unemployed workers, incumbent workers, and new entrants to the workforce; (2) to offer this spectrum of workers and other individuals accelerated career pathways that enable them to gain skills and transition from unemployment to (re)employment quickly; and (3) to address the new challenges associated with the COVID-19 health crisis that necessitate social distancing practices and expanding online and technology-enabled learning and migrating services to a virtual environment.

The Department of Labor will award grants ranging from $1 million to $5 million to community colleges. For the purpose of this Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA), community colleges are institutions of higher education, as defined in Section 101(a) of the Higher Education Act and whose most common degree awarded is an associate degree. A community college, as the lead grantee, will either apply as a single institution or represent a consortium of other institutions of higher education, as defined in Section 101(a) of the Higher Education Act, thus extending the reach of the consortium grants well beyond the lead institutions.

Applications will include the following information collections: 1) Form SF-424 “Application for Federal Assistance,” separately cleared under OMB control number 4040-0004, 2) Project Budget, 3) Project Narrative, and 4) Attachments to the Project Narrative.

Electronic availability:

This grant solicitation is available on the grants.gov website. Based on past DOL experience, the Department anticipates that at least 80 percent of responses will be submitted electronically.

Small Entities:

This information collection will not have a significant impact on a substantial number of small entities.

Assurances of confidentiality:

These grant solicitations do not offer applicants assurances of confidentiality.

Special circumstances:

This FOA implicates no special circumstances.

Burden:

Based on past experience, the DOL expects to receive approximately 25 applications from an equal number of respondents.  The ETA estimates public reporting burden for the information collection to average 20 hours per response for reviewing instructions, searching existing data sources, gathering and maintaining needed data, and completing and reviewing the collection of information.

25 applications x 20 hours = 500 hours

The DOL uses the average hourly earnings in the professional and business services industry of $34.29 per hour to monetize this burden.  See The Employment Situation—May 2020, DOL, Bureau of Labor Statistics, https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf  at page 36.

500 hours x $34.45 = $17,225

The DOL associates no other burden costs with this information collection. In addition to the application, each grantee will be required to submit quarterly financial, performance, and narrative reports to the ETA. Those information collection requirements will be cleared under a separate control number.

Total burden: 25 respondents, 25 responses, 500 hours, $0 other cost burden.

Supplemental Supporting Statement B: Statistical Methods

This information collection does not employ statistical methods.

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