On December 28, 2020, President Donald Trump issued this executive order to purportedly allow federal Community Services Block Grant (CSBG) funds to be used to finance “emergency learning scholarships” (school vouchers) “to disadvantaged families for use by any child without access to in-person learning”
This executive order will go nowhere.
First, there is no time for the Department of Health and Human Services create an application process specific to this school voucher purpose and to process new grant applications for states or entities and for those states or entities to establish processes to identify and distribute funds to qualified individuals and for those individuals to locate private schools or other qualifying services, either before the school year ends (we’re a semester in) or before the Trump presidency ends.
Second, even if states and other entities are allowed to redirect current CSBG funding toward Trump’s eleventh-hour voucher flash-in-the-pan, doing so would mean just that– taking money designated for other purposes– which is bureaucratically easier said than done in justifying the reallocation, actually redirecting the money, and establishing a process for its disbursement for a new purpose– and, again, the clock is running out on both the 2020-21 school year and the Trump presidency.
This school choice executive order appeared on December 28, 2020, the day after Trump signed the latest COVID relief bill, which did not include the school voucher funding exiting US ed sec Betsy DeVos wanted. Also on December 28, 2020, DeVos publicly lamented the CONTINUE READING: Trump’s School Choice Executive Order: A Big Nothing | deutsch29: Mercedes Schneider's Blog
