Kennedy Serve America Act

NYLC is pleased to join many supporters nationwide in celebrating the bipartisan votes by the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives, which send the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act to President Obama for his signature. The bill, renamed in honor of Massachusetts' Senator Edward Kennedy, authorizes a massive expansion of national service programs for Americans of all ages.

The new law:

• Requires high-quality service-learning practice standards, ongoing service-learning professional development, and a Service-Learning Impact Study, a 10-year longitudinal study to measure outcomes of service-learning programs.
• Creates new Youth Engagement Zones, competitive grants for local school-community partnerships that engage a majority of K-12 youth and high school students in a comprehensive continuum of service-learning.
• Launches a Summer of Service program engaging middle and high school students in volunteer activities in their communities and allows them to earn a $500 education award to be used for college costs.
• Triples the size of AmeriCorps to 250,000 members, and includes a new education corps where members can serve as service-learning coordinators in schools.
• Increases federally authorized spending levels for youth programs from $43 million to $97 million.

Obama intends to sign the Serve America Act, continuing his leadership and pledge to make service “a cause of my presidency.”