Biden Asks Congress to Double Title I on top of Stimulus Dollars: Why Is All This Money Needed? | janresseger

Biden Asks Congress to Double Title I on top of Stimulus Dollars: Why Is All This Money Needed? | janresseger

Biden Asks Congress to Double Title I on top of Stimulus Dollars: Why Is All This Money Needed?

On March 11, President Joe Biden signed the American Rescue Plan, COVID-19 relief bill, which will provide $125.4 billion for state K-12 education programs including investments to help kids catch up, provide after-school programs, offer summer enrichment, undertake facilities upgrades and “stabilize and diversify the educator workforce and rebuild the educator pipeline.”

And on April 9, President Biden proposed doubling the annual Title I allocation in the administration’s FY 2022 federal budget proposal. Title I was created in 1965 as a federal supplement to compensate for inadequate state funding for the nation’s school districts that serve concentrations of poor children.  It has been chronically underfunded. Chalkbeat explains: “The proposal would take the Title I program from its current $16.5 billion to $36.5 billion… The budget plan also includes a boost for special education funding… more counselors, nurses, and mental health professionals in schools… more for child care and Head Start… a big increase for the relatively small Community Schools program (schools with wraparound medical and social services for families)… and more money for the Office of Civil Rights.”  Of course, Biden’s budget is just a proposal for now—the first stage in several rounds of negotiations with Congress before a final federal budget will be passed by September 30.

None of us can fully comprehend what all these billions of dollars will mean. Probably some of us wonder whether they are really needed. In fact, those of us who live in school districts able to pass regular local property tax levies might imagine that all American schools probably look like ours—adequately maintained and at least adequately staffed. But in a CONTINUE READING: Biden Asks Congress to Double Title I on top of Stimulus Dollars: Why Is All This Money Needed? | janresseger

What Biden’s COVID-19 Rescue Plan Will Mean for American Poorest Children and for Our Public Education System | janresseger

What Biden’s COVID-19 Rescue Plan Will Mean for American Poorest Children and for Our Public Education System | janresseger

What Biden’s COVID-19 Rescue Plan Will Mean for American Poorest Children and for Our Public Education System

On February 27, the U.S House of Representatives passed President Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan COVID-19 relief bill, and on Saturday, the U.S. Senate passed its version of the House bill. Nancy Pelosi says the House will promptly enact the Senate’s version, and the bill will move later this week to the President for his signature. News reports have focused on big economic elements of the relief package—unemployment relief and one-time stimulus checks, but one of the most important things about this bill has been under-reported: what the President and Congress plan to do for America’s children and their public schools.

The American Rescue Plan Supports Public Schools and the State Governments that Fund Public Schools

There has been enormous and utterly confusing guidance coming from the CDC, the White House, and mayors of big cities, all of whom want to get all children back to school in-person. But it is rarely mentioned that when the COVID-19 pandemic struck, public schools had been struggling for years with inadequate funding. Yes, schools could reopen safely if ventilation were adequate, but lots of old schools have windows that don’t open. Yes, schools could reopen safely if classes were small enough that classrooms could house all the students in desks six feet apart, but in too many classes these days, one teacher works with more than 30—sometimes even 40—students. Running school buses with social distancing would require additional buses. Because most of us don’t spend our time inside schools where we can observe the realities children and their teachers live with every day, we like to imagine that reopening schools ought to be an easy process.  But the complexities can be overwhelming and the problems expensive to address—which is why many students are still learning remotely or attending school on complicated hybrid schedules.

The new stimulus package will help school districts address the complexities. The Washington CONTINUE READING: What Biden’s COVID-19 Rescue Plan Will Mean for American Poorest Children and for Our Public Education System | janresseger

Foundation Leaders Should Use Their Cash and Connections to Advocate for a Federal Racial-Equity Stimulus | Schott Foundation for Public Education

Foundation Leaders Should Use Their Cash and Connections to Advocate for a Federal Racial-Equity Stimulus | Schott Foundation for Public Education

Foundation Leaders Should Use Their Cash and Connections to Advocate for a Federal Racial-Equity Stimulus

Originally published in The Chronicle of Philanthropy.

With the stroke of a pen less than a week after his inauguration, President Biden did something no amount of philanthropic dollars could accomplish. He signed four executive orders to combat racial inequity. In quick succession, these measures strengthened anti-discrimination housing policies, ceased new federal contracts with private prisons, increased tribal sovereignty, and initiated government efforts to fight xenophobia against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.

These were just first steps toward the administration’s larger efforts to promote racial justice in the United States, but they should send a signal to philanthropy: All the increased giving to address systemic racism, as welcome as it is, can never substitute for the power and purse strings of the federal government. Nor should it.

Instead, philanthropic leaders should heed the words of President Franklin Roosevelt when a prominent labor and civil-rights activist urged him to take bold action against the Depression-era economy: “Go out and make me do it.”

At the same time, as philanthropy increases its own investments in racial equity, it can use its influence to insist on the bold solutions and government spending needed to close deep racial disparities in wealth, health, and education and put an end to discriminatory policies and practices in our criminal-justice system.

That bold action should stop at nothing short of a major federal racial-equity stimulus package.

Historically, when our nation has faced challenges so severe that normal self-correction was nearly impossible, policy makers have infused cash into the economy to stave off financial hardship and alleviate American suffering.

A little over a decade ago, the more than $800 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act helped pull the country out of the worst economic crisis since the Depression. The Biden administration’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package, if passed by Congress, will bring total federal pandemic stimulus spending to nearly $5 trillion in less than a year.

‘More Difficult Than Rocket Science’

Eliminating 400 years of systemic racism certainly deserves a targeted economic stimulus of its own. Achieving such massive change requires a significantly greater level of resources than philanthropy has at its disposal. During the Clinton CONTINUE READING: Foundation Leaders Should Use Their Cash and Connections to Advocate for a Federal Racial-Equity Stimulus | Schott Foundation for Public Education

Soon-to-be Secretary Miguel Cardona, the Time is Now for an Education Stimulus | Schott Foundation for Public Education

Soon-to-be Secretary Miguel Cardona, the Time is Now for an Education Stimulus | Schott Foundation for Public Education

Soon-to-be Secretary Miguel Cardona, the Time is Now for an Education Stimulus

Originally published in USA Today.

Congratulations on your nomination to be U.S. education secretary, Miguel Cardona. You are poised to take this position at a critical point in American history. As you know well, for generations we have lived through a system of separate and unequal education. COVID-19 has greatly exacerbated the learning loss disparities experienced by children of color. Now, with Congress failing to deliver to schools, educators, students and parents the much needed learning and PPE resources, and states cutting their 2021 budgets, things are primed to get a lot worse.

When one couples the historic impact of structural racism on education with the challenges brought on by COVID-19, it is clear we are in a maze without a clear exit. But in times of uncertainty, the past can be a guiding light. One important lesson from the past: the positive impact of targeted economic stimulus packages.

Importance of stimulus packages

We know stimulus packages can make a difference. For example, according to the Department of Education, President Barack Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act “helped save or create an estimated 325,000 education jobs.” The stimulus needed now must go well beyond protecting teachers’ jobs, which are undoubtedly important, and extend to transforming learning and investing in families and community-based institutions. The bottom line is we cannot facilitate change and remedy years of divestment without an infusion of stimulus resources.

A stimulus moves us away from the scarce resources frame that too often dominates when confronting the need to invest in children. The bipartisan Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, which created the Troubled Assets Relief Program, a $700 billion fund to purchase toxic assets from banks, didn’t force banks or their CEOs to compete for needed resources to stabilize their operations. Instead, it provided them with well-calculated, targeted resources needed to do the job. Likewise, we are at a moment when the public education system, its students and educators are in dire need of resources to stabilize operations and eliminate the toxicity of racial disparities. 

A targeted, multi-year $1-2 trillion Education Stabilization Program is a vital part of a larger Racial Equity Stimulus Package proposed by  one of us, John Jackson, and other civil rights leaders. This education-focused stimulus would allow for the critical racial equity investments needed from birth and throughout the public preK-12 education system. It would serve as a stabilization fund for states whose education budgets are challenged by COVID-19-caused revenue shortfalls, while also requiring a maintenance of effort by states. It would also include investments to enable the expansion of community schools, address student mental health and socio-emotional needs, support states moving toward tuition-free community college, and make significant investments in Historically Black Colleges and Universities and other institutions that serve minorities and lead the nation in graduating students of color.  

Stimulus resources are especially needed to address the significant learning loss caused by the pandemic, felt most deeply in communities of color. These targeted funds can contribute to making gains on eliminating racial disparities in education by liberating learning, upending the constraining structures and paradigms in the educational system which have led to learning disparities identifiable by race and ethnicity.  

Inequality in education

Black students and other students of color have long faced a host of challenges where education is concerned — disproportionately under-resourced schools, school closures, criminalization in schools, a lack of teachers who look like them and curricula too often not culturally relevant to them. These biased policies and practices undeniably continue to limit education outcomes for Black and brown students and those from tribal communities. While most students have access to free public education, they remain shackled in achieving their learning potential. As such, it is impossible to address the systemic learning gaps without addressing the racially disparate learning constraints within the education system or, said another way, without liberating their learning.

In this moment of far-reaching change, we must pause to examine whether we are committed to investing in the future. That is the question we must pose to elected officials and those on whom the hopes of children and families rest.

If the twin pandemics of COVID-19 and structural racism experienced in 2020 have shown us anything, it is that there must be a radical shift in how we interact with those around us, and that should force us to rethink how we invest in and educate all students. It has exposed not only past education inequities but the danger of prolonged future disinvestment. While leadership by Congress and the president are needed to move the Racial Equity Stimulus package, your leadership is needed, Secretary Cardona, to target education investments to ensure that we liberate learning for all students and flatten the curve of structural racism so damaging to student learning in America. 

John H. Jackson (@DrJohnHJackson) is president and CEO of the Schott Foundation for Public Education. Derrick Johnson (@DerrickNAACP) is the president of the NAACP.

Soon-to-be Secretary Miguel Cardona, the Time is Now for an Education Stimulus | Schott Foundation for Public Education

Here’s How Much Your School District Will Receive From The New Stimulus Package | Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day...

Here’s How Much Your School District Will Receive From The New Stimulus Package | Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day...

HERE’S HOW MUCH YOUR SCHOOL DISTRICT WILL RECEIVE FROM THE NEW STIMULUS PACKAGE

You may be wondering how much your district will be receiving from the $900 billion stimulus package that was finally signed by President Trump yesterday.

In very rough and general terms, it will be $1,000 per student.

However, if you want to get a more specific amount – again, such a slightly less rough total, according to Chalkbeat:

districts can expect to receive four times whatever they got from the CARES Act.

If you don’t know how much your district received from the CARES act, which was the name of the previous stimulus package, you can calculate it here.

If you live in California, though, Ed Source has published a list of each district in our state and exactly how much money each one will receive.

Our Sacramento district will get over $66 million.

How much you wanna’ bet that teachers won’t be asked at our district, or at most other ones in the country, how to use it?

Here’s How Much Your School District Will Receive From The New Stimulus Package | Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day...