Today's CE News comes bearing an early Christmas gift - reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act! I'd also like to take a moment and introduce myself as the new Associate Director for Public Policy.

My name is Greg Dolan, I grew up in Pittsburgh, attending Catholic grade school and high school. I moved to Washington nine years ago for my undergraduate studies at George Washington University. For the last four years I was a policy and communications staffer on Capitol Hill in both the House and Senate. It is an exciting time for Catholic education, and a rewarding time to join the USCCB Secretariat for Catholic Education.

This morning, the Senate approved, by an overwhelming bipartisan vote of 85-12, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), which reauthorizes federal education policy and offers robust reforms of the current law, known as No Child Left Behind. President Obama is scheduled to sign ESSA at 11am on Thursday - you can watch live here.

Speaker Paul Ryan and ESSA authors at a signing ceremony today.

This is a tremendous victory for Catholic schools! During the negotiations for the final bill, we, as a member of the Council for American Private Education, had a list of 18 priorities - 13 of which were fully achieved, and four more were partially fulfilled.

Already, the conversation about implementation has begun. As Sen. Murray (D-WA) put it, "we can't just sign the bill and walk away." And neither will we! Our office looks forward to working through implementation and assisting you as best we are able.

Thank you for the warm welcome, and please stay in touch - you may contact me by email at gdolan@usccb.org or by phone at 202-541-3148