From Education Voters of Pennsylvania (http://www.educationvoterspa.org/):
Betsy DeVos—and members of Congress who do not take action to stop her—are in the process of looting PA public schools by taking federal funding away from the poorest students in the state in order to provide well-off children in private/religious schools a windfall of federal funding.
Go to https://actionnetwork.org/letters/take-action-betsy-devos-is-looting-pa-public-schools to tell your members of Congress to enact legislation that will prevent Betsy DeVos and the US Department of Education from ordering that federal COVID-19 aid intended for PA’s most vulnerable students be given to well-off students in private schools.
If DeVos is allowed to push her school privatization agenda, public schools that educate Pennsylvania’s poorest students will lose approximately $50 million in federal COVID-19 aid.
Here is a timeline of events:
May 13, 2020
The US Department of Education (USDE) approves Pennsylvania’s share of federal aid for K-12 education (Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief or ESSER) in the CARES Act. A total of $471 million is to be distributed to school districts and charter schools. About $400 million is distributed to PA school districts and $71 million to charter schools.
The CARES Act stipulates that funding be distributed based on the number of students enrolled who qualified for federal Title 1-A funding in 2019. Title I is a federal program that provides federal funding to schools based on the number of low-income children they educate. It is intended to help increase resources available to students who are vulnerable and have greater educational needs.
The CARES Act also specifically states that school districts are to set aside an equitable share (equitable services) of this federal funding for private/religious schools based on the number of low-income students attending private/religious schools who participated in 2019-2020 Title I-A programming.
April 30, 2020
Betsy DeVos changes how CARES Act funds are to be distributed to promote her school privatization agenda and take from the poor to give to the rich.
DeVos issues nonbinding guidance that instructs school districts to base CARES Act equitable services funding for private/religious schools on the TOTAL number of students attending private/religious schools without respect to student poverty or Title I status.
May 7, 2020
The Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE) writes a letter to the US Department of Education challenging the DeVos guidance because it is inconsistent with the CARES Act statute and inconsistent with ensuring that one-time, emergency funding will reach our most vulnerable students–in whatever type of school they attend.
July 1, 2020
DeVos issues an Interim Financial Rule that carries the force and effect of law, instructing school districts provide a share of CARES Act funding to private/religious schools based on the TOTAL number of students in those schools, not just students eligible for Title I.
Congress can and should stop DeVos from stripping $50 million in federal COVID-19 aid from public schools that educate Pennsylvania’s poorest students.
The simplest way to get funding intended for vulnerable students into their classrooms this fall is for members of Congress to nullify DeVos’s Interim Financial Rule.
Click HERE to contact your members of Congress.
DeVos’s rule is also being challenged in the courts. Five states have filed a suit seeking to have the courts declare DeVos’ rule unlawful and to prevent the U.S. Department of Education from enforcing the rule. It is possible that this rule will be paused as the case moves through the courts. But this does not provide school districts with certainty about the amount of CARES Act funding available to meet the extensive needs of students in their buildings this fall.
Federal COVID-19 relief funding is not Betsy DeVos’s to dole out based on her personal agenda. This emergency aid was allocated by Congress to be used to help our most vulnerable students and Congress must ensure this it reaches them.
Thank you for your support of public education.
Leave a Reply