Education Law Center: New York’s Pandemic Adjustment: Depriving Resources to Students Impacted by COVID-19
On March 27, Congress enacted the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, which includes $13.5 billion in emergency relief to support a rapid response by school districts to a crisis unprecedented in the history of American public education: states closing all public school buildings and transitioning students en masse from classroom instruction to learning at home through remote and digital means.1
But the ink was hardly dry on the CARES Act when New York approved its Fiscal Year 2021 Budget with a COVID-19 “pandemic adjustment,” effectively wiping out the promise of additional federal resources for educating students remotely during school closure.
New York is the first state to enact a budget in the wake of the CARES Act. In this report, we show how the pandemic adjustment is actually a “pandemic cut” in New York State school aid, backfilled with the federal CARES Act emergency relief funds. Our analysis also shows that these cuts most impact students in New York City and other high poverty districts. We then explain how the pandemic adjustment replicates the strategy used by states to cut K-12 education funding during the 2008 Great Recession. In some states it took years to restore these cuts, and in others they had yet to be restored before the COVID-19 crisis.
CARES Act Emergency Relief Funds for K-12 Education
On March 18, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo issued an executive order closing all of the state’s CONTINUE READING: Education Law Center: New York’s Pandemic Adjustment: Depriving Resources to Students Impacted by COVID-19 | National Education Policy Center
