Department of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is at it again, pursuing her agenda to fund private, religious instruction at the expense of public schools.
Now DeVos is misusing her position to divert coronavirus relief funds intended for public schools to private, religious ones.
As part of the CARES Act, Congress created the Education Stabilization Fund to help schools respond to the coronavirus pandemic. Congress intended only for a small portion of these funds to go to private schools, based on the proportion of low-income students enrolled in such schools.
Unfortunately, however, Secretary DeVos has her own plan. Ignoring the law, she issued a rule that requires school districts to provide the limited funding to private schools based on the proportion of all private-school students in the district, instead of the proportion of low-income private school students as Congress intended. This rule will result in hundreds of millions of dollars of CARES Act funds being diverted from public schools to private and religious schools!
Depriving public schools of hundreds of millions of dollars will seriously hinder these schools’ ability to respond to the effects of pandemic on public education. Public school systems are in desperate need of federal support to implement measures to protect students and staff against the virus, provide technology to students for remote learning, and feed students whose families have been thrust into poverty.
Image by Gage Skidmore under CC BY-SA 2.0
