The Advocate: June 2020
Noelle Ellerson Ng
Associate Executive Director, Advocacy & Governance
AASA, The School Superintendents Association
As district leaders figure out how to scrape pennies together to make the next school year a viable option for all students, the U.S. Secretary of Education is using the pandemic as an opportunity to advance her top policy agenda: redistributing federal public school funding to private schools. While to some observers her actions are not surprising, few anticipated the breadth of her actions and her ability to redirect hundreds of millions of dollars earmarked for public K-12 education to private schools.
By intentionally misreading the CARES statute and the citation embedded within it to Title I’s equitable services provision, DeVos has disregarded the historical precedent of directing federal funding towards low-income students in public schools. Instead, her guidance and the soon-to-be-issued interim rule, misinterprets the CARES Act statute by saying that funding should be driven by the total number of students enrolled in non-public schools in the district regardless of poverty level. Rather than require districts to apportion some of their funding to private schools who participate in Title I and private school students who meet Title I eligibility, DeVos is allowing any private school regardless of their prior history with Title I or their population of students, to now receive funding that was allocated to districts based on their share of localized poverty.
The guidance that was issued on April 30th spurred considerable confusion as to whether States can and should ignore this erroneous interpretation of law and proceed with allowing districts to allocate funding to private schools in a traditional fashion. Currently, ten states have publicly indicated they will follow the guidance while eight states have said they will follow the statute and ignore the Department’s guidance. In response to AASA and our partners at the Council of Chief State School Officers’ statements that state and districts ignore the guidance, the Department has indicated it will issue an interim rule that will allow it to go after States and districts for their refusal to send millions of dollars to private schools. While the rule is pending districts would have to set-aside CARES funding in escrow, which during a time of financial instability is both an unprecedented and inconsiderate request to make of districts.
What can you do? Republicans and Democrats alike on Capitol Hill are angered by this power grab by DeVos (even those who are voucher proponents) and believe she needs to be reigned in quickly. But, we need YOUR help to ensure that Congress throws a wrench into the Department’s plan and stops private schools from receiving funding intended for public schools.
First, as of the writing of this article, we do not yet have a proposed document to formally respond to. Once we do, AASA advocacy will read and analyze it, draft a template response and post it to the blog. At that time, we’d ask you to take a moment to go to our blog and cut/paste and personalize the template comment in the U.S. Federal Register. We will include easy-to-follow steps for how you can comment on the Federal Register and also encourage you to email us your comment if you’re not sure of how to do it and we will submit it for you. This comment does not have to be on district letterhead.
Second, send a copy of your comments to your Representatives and Senators, so they are aware of your advocacy on this issue and the importance of restoring this funding into public school coffers even before the next COVID-19 package is complete. Given that we anticipate timing of that large package to be in mid-July we need Congress to act before then.
Third, keep the pressure up! Talk about this with your State Chief, State boards, school boards and other elected officials and fellow superintendents. Make sure they are engaged.
We will continue to do whatever we can to stop this funding from leaving your school districts. Stay in touch with us on twitter and on our blog for the latest info and updates.
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