Final CARES Act Disribution Rule Still Favors Private Schools Over Public Schools
Betsy DeVos just released binding final guidance for states to distribute $13.2 billion from the CARES Act to public school districts and private schools. States and public school districts have been pushing back against DeVos’s preliminary non-binding guidance, which favors funding for private and religious schools. Now in her final guidance DeVos has struck a compromise of sorts, but many think her new plan is unworkable.
In the language of the CARES Act, Congress distributed $13.2 billion in relief funds to school districts to reflect the distribution plan in the Title I formula, which sends federal money to school districts according to the number and concentration of impoverished students enrolled in the district’s public schools. Title I also requires school districts to provide Title I services for students who live below 185 percent of the federal poverty level and are enrolled in private schools located within district boundaries. In April, in her preliminary (non-binding) guidance for distribution of CARES Act dollars, however, DeVos prescribed that CARES Act dollars would be distributed to private and religious schools based on their total enrollment, not just for the number of impoverished students they enroll.
Education Week‘s Andrew Ujifusa explains how Betsy DeVos’s new final rule revises her previous non-binding guidance for the distribution of CARES Act dollars to public and private schools:
- “A district can decide to distribute the CARES money only to schools that received Title I for the 2019-20 school year—essentially, those schools with a minimum share of CONTINUE READING: Final CARES Act Disribution Rule Still Favors Private Schools Over Public Schools | janresseger
