In instructions about county data reporting, CDSS has changed its policy about counting homework time for welfare-to-work participants in Self Initiated Programs (SIPs). A SIP is an education program started by the participant prior to welfare-to-work appraisal. Previously, CDSS said that SIPs could not count homework time for their welfare-to-work hours. In these data reporting instructions, CDSS states that SIPs can count homework time in the same way that any homework time is counted for any other education activity, which is actual hours spent doing homework up to one hour of unsupervised homework for each hour of class time. Unsupervised homework time can be verified by a statement from the education program indicating the amount of homework required for the student’s course of study. Counties can retain such statements from the education institution and use them for any student enrolled in that course of study.
CDSS also says that in a two parent household when one of the parents is a teen attending secondary school, the other parent must participate enough hours to total 35 average weekly hours.
In addition, CDSS says, for summer vacation, satisfactory progress and participation may count, regardless of the number of hours of participation, if the participant has not completed basic education requirements and is enrolled or intends to enroll as a full-time student after the school vacation.
(ACL 17-08, January 27, 2017.)