After Months Of Lobbying, Some Hope Emerges For Massive Preschool Push
Posted: 01/14/2014 12:46 pm EST | Updated: 01/14/2014 1:13 pm EST
After months of campaigning nationwide, the Obama administration seems poised to secure funding for some pieces of its expensive preschool push, in the form of $1.1 trillion in a budget bill released late Monday.
Overall, the bill is a "mixed bag" for education funding, according to an analysis by Joel Packer, who leads the Committee for Education Funding, a nonprofit education policy group. While the bill increases funding for the Education Department by $1.597 billion above 2013 levels, it does not return its funding to where it was before sequestration, the federal budget cuts that went into effect at the beginning of last year. Instead, education spending comes in at $811 million less than 2012 levels.
The latest congressional budget deal also includes a boost of more than $1 billion for preschool programs. Head Start funding would increase by $1.025 billion, bringing the program to $612 million above pre-sequestration levels. Sequestration forced the program to cut 57,000 slots for students last year.
Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) told HuffPost in a statement, "The budget deal we reached in December rolled back the across-the-board spending cuts that were so
