DeVos shifts virus funds to schools she champions
WASHINGTON — Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is using the $2 trillion coronavirus stabilization law to throw a lifeline to education sectors she has long championed, directing millions of federal dollars intended primarily for public schools and colleges to private and religious schools.
The Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act, signed in late March, included $30 billion for educational institutions turned upside down by the pandemic’s shutdowns — about $14 billion for higher education, $13.5 billion to elementary and secondary schools, and the rest for state governments.
DeVos has used $180 million of that money to encourage states to create “microgrants” that parents of elementary and secondary school students can use to pay for educational services, including private school tuition. She has directed school districts to share millions of dollars designated for low-income students with wealthy private schools.
And she has nearly depleted the 2.5% of higher education funding, about $350 million, set aside for struggling colleges, to bolster small colleges — many of them private, religious or on the margins of higher education — regardless of need. The Wright Graduate
University for the Realization of Human Potential, a private college in Wisconsin that has a website debunking claims that it is a cult, received about $495,000.
Bergin University of Canine Studies in California said its $472,850 allocation was a “godsend.”
“I think we are one of the most important educational institutions out there right now,” said its founder, Bonnie Bergin, who is credited with inventing the service dog.
House Democrats included language in a stimulus bill that passed Friday that would limit DeVos’ ability to use about $58 billion in additional education relief for K-12 school districts for private schools. Congress has largely rejected DeVos’ proposals to create programs that resemble private school vouchers, and public education groups say DeVos is abusing discretion granted to her under the emergency legislation to achieve a longheld agenda.
“And it only took a pandemic,” said Sasha Pudelski, the advocacy director at the AASA, the School Superintendents Association.
The Education Department called the accusation “absurd.” But in a statement, the department said that every student and teacher had been affected by the pandemic. “The current disruption to our education system has reaffirmed what Secretary DeVos has been saying for years: We need to rethink education for all students, of every age, no matter the type of school setting,” it said.
DeVos has long held that taxpayer funds should be available for private school tuition, giving parents the chance to escape failing public schools and public education competition to drive improvement.
A spokesman for Republican members of the House Education Committee defended DeVos’ actions: “The language the appropriators wrote gave her the flexibility to implement it as she has done.”
The most contentious move is guidance that directs school districts to increase the share of dollars they spend on students in private schools. Under federal education law, school districts are required to use funding it receives for its poorest students to provide
“equitable services,” such as tutoring and transportation for low-income students attending private schools in their districts. But the department said districts should use their emergency funding — doled out based on student poverty rates — to support all students attending private schools in their districts, regardless of income.
Her guidance comes as elementary and secondary education groups lobby Congress for billions of additional dollars to lift students out of the educational crisis caused by the pandemic. In big cities, which serve the most vulnerable students, district leaders are projecting budget shortfalls of up to 25% because of collapsing tax revenues, said the Council of the Great City Schools, which represents 76 of the nation’s large urban districts. Its member districts said they could be forced to lay off 275,000 teachers.
The federal Education Department said if school districts were to count only poor students, “they would be placing nonpublic school students and teachers at a disadvantage that Congress did not intend.”
“It’s sad, but unsurprising, that some would put their own financial interests ahead of the needs of all students and teachers,” the department said.
Educators are pleading with the department to revise or rescind the guidance. In Montana, school officials estimate that compliance would shift more than $1.5 million to private and home schools, up from about $206,469 that the schools are due under current law. In Louisiana, private schools would receive at least 267% more funding, and at least 77% of the relief allocation for Orleans Parish would be redirected, according to a letter that state education chiefs sent to DeVos. The Newark Public Schools in New Jersey would lose $800,000 in federal relief funds to private schools, David Sciarra, the executive director of the Education Law Center, said in a letter to the governor of New Jersey asking him to reject the guidance.
Indiana has announced it would not enforce the guidance. In a memo, its superintendent of public instruction, Jennifer McCormick, a Republican, said the state
“ensures that the funds are distributed according to congressional intent and a plain reading of the law.”
“I will not play political agenda games with COVID relief funds,” she said on Twitter.
Private school educators say that they have always been included in emergency relief funding, including for Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy, and this should be no different.
A competition announced by DeVos in which states can vie for tens of millions of dollars either to create statewide virtual schools or offer “microgrants” is drawing fire for mirroring voucher programs that help parents pay for services outside the public school system. The program also stands to benefit virtual education companies that DeVos has personally invested in.
Rep. Robert Scott, D-Va., the chairman of the House Committee on Education and Labor, said the competition’s point system was weighted in favor of rural areas and voucher-friendly states rather than those most affected by the coronavirus.
“This program design is indistinguishable from a standard voucher scheme and is the latest attempt by this department to promote privatization initiatives against both the wishes of the American people, and the intent of Congress,” he wrote to DeVos.