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Thank you so much for the clarification which is all the more devastating because you are so measured and balanced. The NASA work has been so exemplary. We can't let it erode or disappear. 


Eric Siegel
Sent from my mobile

On Apr 26, 2013, at 9:33 AM, Anita Davis <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> ISEN-ASTC-L is a service of the Association of Science-Technology Centers
> Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and related institutions.
> *****************************************************************************
> 
> Hi All,
> 
> I want to follow up on this posting about the proposed changes to STEM education funding, to hopefully clarify a bit about what this may mean for members of this community who access and use NASA science content in their work. Please note that though I do work in the NASA EPO community, I am absolutely not representing NASA in this post, and am representing only myself.
> 
> If enacted as is, the proposed budget will zero out the Science Education budget at NASA. In NASA, education and outreach are inextricably linked - they are education and public outreach (EPO). If the EPO budget goes to zero, here are a few things that will be lost:
> 
> - All of the Science EPO staff --every single science mission will lose all of its education and outreach dollars (from Mars Rovers, to James Webb, to Sun Missions, Earth Missions), apparently meaning all of that staff. The science missions are not allowed to restore these funds from their own budgets. 
> - NASA Museum Alliance
> - Night Sky Network
> - NASA's contribution to efforts such as Earth Science Week
> - Much of the Scientific Visualization Studio, which creates so many wonderful visualizations
> - NASA public affairs efforts will be hampered, as they work in tandem with EPO, and EPO staff provide much of the content for the public affairs staff 
> 
> NASA has pulled back the recent EPOESS grant call - no information yet about if it will be restored. 
> 
> Perhaps you are wondering if NASA could simply find additional funds from other aspects of it's work and augment the EPO budget. With the direction NASA HQ has been given, this will not be allowed. NASA Centers are also not to do this, nor can individual missions.
> 
> The overall federal education budget actually increases the funding for education nation-wide. There is much in the request that is quite positive, and the goal of better coordinating science education across agencies seems very reasonable. At the moment there is no plan for how this budget would actually work - that is, no indication of how NASA science content would be actively brought into the programs the budget creates. One barrier that remains is that legally neither NSF, Smithsonian nor Dept of Ed can offer a grant program for which NASA could compete. How NASA and other science agencies are to work with these 3 agencies to ensure the science content is brought into the new programs is not clear at this time. 
> 
> For those who are interested in learning more about this budget, there are a number of documents and websites with a variety of components, including the budget overviews from the science agencies including NASA as well as the Department of Ed, NSF and Smithsonian. 
> 
> The White House Office of Science  & Technology Policy, provides a document on the context for this budget request, called "Preparing a 21st Century Workforce Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Education in the 2014 Budget."
> http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/2014_R&Dbudget_STEM.pdf
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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