With the passage of a reduced budget, Biden may have missed the best chance for historic school funding, advocates fear

Introducing 16 Under 16 in STEM: We are looking for 16 of the most impressive students aged 16 or younger who have demonstrated extraordinary achievement in science, technology, engineering and math. Name a student here.

With President Joe Biden’s major education spending proposals for very poor schools and students with disabilities excluded from this year’s budget federal budgetsome proponents are already turning their attention to next year’s cycle.

But with even Biden concerned that Republicans might take control of the House — and Congress increasingly unable to pass an annual budget on time — the chances that K-12 schools can rely on next year’s budget for a reprieve seem slim.

“I hope this is a down payment for what is to come,” said José Muñoz, director of the Coalition for Community Schools. Congress has allocated $75 million to schools that work with outside providers to address hunger, mental health, housing and other nonacademic issues for families, an increase of $45 million. But Biden offered a raise of $413 million. Muñoz said he was disappointed with the “extreme change”.

“Now we all have to get back to work to fix what just happened,” he said.

The White House has already indicated that Biden will request at least $400 million for community schools when he releases his fiscal year 2023 budget proposal, expected later this month. Supporters also expect to see him again ask for big increases for Title I and special education. But based on this year’s process, some are highly skeptical of Congress’s ability to pass a budget before the midterm elections or break out of its cycle of passing several short-term budget extensions to maintain the functioning of government.

“We will welcome the commitment to education…but we’ve seen how it’s rocked this year,” said Noelle Ellerson Ng, associate executive director for advocacy and governance at AASA, the School Superintendents Association. She added that she can see another set of continuing resolutions that stretch into the new year. “It raises all the questions of who’s in charge in January and how that shapes overall numbers and program allocations.”

The organization’s top priority will again be full funding for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA, which means the federal government would pay 40 percent of the cost of services for students with disabilities. Biden promised that he would comply with this requirement of the law. He proposed a $2.7 billion increase for fiscal year 2022, but the budget includes much less — a $448 million increase — bringing the total to $14.5 billion.

AASA hoped that Congress would at least maintain the higher level of special education funding received under the U.S. bailout, which provided an additional $2.5 billion for students with disabilities.

Congress is missing “a real opportunity to redirect forward on IDEA’s glide path,” Dan Domenech, AASA’s executive director, said in a statement. “We applaud them for the small increases included in [the] bill, while holding them accountable for once again leaving IDEA severely underfunded.

No more free meals for all

Domenech summed up the unenthusiastic reaction of educators to the budget by calling it a “mixed bag.” The bill, for example, includes new funding to address student mental health and $30 million more for after-school programs, but not a major increase for high-poverty schools.

The budget provides a $1.77 billion increase over fiscal year 2021 for school nutrition, but leaves out waivers that would have allowed those programs to continue serving free meals to all students and have flexibility in meal planning to deal with food and supply shortages.

This means that after more than two school years of free meals for all pupils, regardless of income, families living in poverty will have to register for the national school meals program for the 2022-23 school year so that their children receive free or reduced meals. meal prices.

And “given the impending financial crisis, schools will likely have to raise prices for paying families,” said Diane Pratt-Heavner, spokeswoman for the School Nutrition Association. With the end of pandemic meal programs, schools will also have to “significantly reduce summer meal services,” she said.

Biden has also campaigned to triple Title I funding for very poor schools. He proposed a $20 billion “equity” grant program to help bridge funding gaps between rich and poor districts and between those that primarily serve white students and those that enroll more black students and hispanics.

Instead, the budget increases Title I funding by $1 billion, bringing the total to $17.5 billion. It’s the biggest increase in more than a decade, but doesn’t include new funding to reduce disparities.

“Title I equity grants would have given the most needy districts greater assurance that they could continue effective academic interventions beyond the pandemic,” said Robert Tagorda, who led equity initiatives. in the Long Beach Unified School District in California and is now consulting with districts on their recovery efforts. . “Districts accept the ad hoc nature of COVID relief funds. They wonder how they can maintain tutoring, summer programs and other student services after the funds run out, knowing it will take a long time to get the kids back on track.

Young children’s advocates had a similar response after hoping last year that Biden would be able to push through his $400 billion plan to pay for childcare and universal pre-K as part of Build Back Better. This legislation has now stalled and it is not clear whether universal preschool is resurfacing in a New version the invoice’s.

For fiscal year 2022, Biden originally proposed nearly $20 billion for early years programs, including Head Start and child care. Instead, the budget bill provides approximately $17.5 billion for preschool programs.

“Without larger funding increases, these programs will continue to serve only a small portion of the children and families who are eligible to participate,” said Aaron Loewenberg, senior policy analyst at New America, a think tank for centre-left.

Other advocacy groups say their recent lobbying efforts made a difference in the final numbers. The National Association of Secondary School Principals, for example, sent 350 members to Capitol Hill two weeks ago to lobby for increased principal prep programs and mental health services for students — a subject which Biden addressed in his State of the Union address.

The budget includes a $27 million increase for state grants that fund teacher and principal training and $111 million — a $95 million increase from fiscal year 2021 — that can be used to train more school counsellors, social workers and psychologists. Beth Lehr, vice-principal at Sahuarita High School, south of Tucson, Ariz., was among the administrators advocating for the increases to deal with the consequences of the pandemic. There are teachers, she says, “who dread coming to work and parents who struggle because they feel they cannot keep their children safe”.

Submit a letter to the editor