Conn. schools relief bill raises fears of a ‘cliff ’

WASHINGTON — When the U.S. House passes and President Joe Biden signs the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan in the coming days, it will unleash historic levels of federal education dollars to public K-12 schools, universities and child care providers in Connecticut.

Connecticut public schools are expected to receive a massive infusion of about $1.2 billion in federal aid from the package, which the Senate adopted early Saturday. When combined with the education aid included in previous coronavirus legislation, Connecticut’s public schools are collectively getting 3.5 times the amount of federal aid they receive in a typical fiscal year from these emergency relief bills, said Lisa Hammersley, executive director of the School and State Finance Project.

The school aid is on top of billions of dollars Connecticut is set to receive for towns, the state government and bolstered federal programs such as food assistance.

But local school leaders are already worrying that budget moves by the state could mean schools see only part of this money. And they fear they may experience a “fiscal cliff” in education dollars in the future, meaning more hard times down the road.

Education institutions, from child care providers to colleges and universities, have seen their operating costs spike with coronavirus expenses as they purchase personal protective equipment, rearrange classrooms, buy more laptops, and pay for more staff and bus runs. Helping children recover from the negative impacts of remote schooling could strain education budgets for years to come.

When the American Rescue Plan passes — House approval of the latest version is expected soon — the $130 billion allocated for public schools across the nation will mark the largest infusion of education money Congress has ever made through Title I. That money uses a funding formula that based on the number of low-income students in a district, a Democratic aide said.

The money dwarfs emergency education dollars previously allocated by Congress during the pandemic.

The “historic” funding is aimed at supporting emergency school reopening costs and to upgrade public education for the future, said Rep. Jahana Hayes, D-5, a former teacher who sits on the

House Education and Labor Committee.

“A lot of this is really trying to back-fill some of the gaps we already knew existed. The good thing about this massive influx of money is if districts are strategic they can try to take care of two things at one time. Fill in some of the short-term needs, but also make sure these are things that are sustainable,” she said. “It really is a result of long-term neglect, if you will.”

Urban schools that serve the most low-income students will receive the most money. Bridgeport and Hartford public school systems are both slated to get about $134 million from the American Rescue Plan, the most of any districts in the state. Waterbury and New Haven Public Schools are expected to receive about $95 million each.

Stamford Public Schools will get roughly $39 million; Norwalk and Danbury, $29 million each; Greenwich, $11 million and Middletown, $9 million. Five very small towns — Andover, Canaan, Colebrook, Eastford and Union — will get no added money for schools under the Title I formula.

About 20 percent of the money will have to be spent by district to address “learning loss,” students who have fallen behind during the pandemic. A small portion of the federal dollars spent will also be aimed at funding summer enrichment, after-school programs and education technology — provisions U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy pushed for.

Education officials are unsure exactly when the money will arrive in their accounts. That will depend on a combination of federal and state actions that could mean schools don’t see much of this money until much later in 2021 or in 2022.

Republican critics of the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill say much of the money will be spent in future years, proving, the critic say, that the goal of many Democrats is to change policies on spending, not to stimulate a battered coronavirus economy. The bill passed the Senate on a straight party-line vote.

Exactly how much relief local school districts get could depend on how the state adjusts its own budget to take account for the influx of federal dollars. Connecticut’s state government provides about $2 billion a year for local school systems’ operating costs under an “education cost-sharing” formula.

In interviews, Democrats in Congress emphasized that the federal education dollars are intended to supplement, not supplant, state obligations to fund schools. They included language Hayes authored in the COVID bill saying states must maintain K-12 funding in the same proportion to their overall state budget as in the 2017-18 and 201819 school years — an attempt to block states from back-filling their own education spending with the incoming federal dollars.

Congress, led by Democrats who favor the full, $1.9 trillion relief total, has including giant infusions for state and town governents in the bill. Connecticut will receive about $2.7 billion and cities and towns in the state will receive $1.6 billion.

Education funding has been a part of every coronavirus relief bill passed by Congress so far. The CARES Act, signed into law in March 2020, included $30 billion for schools across the nation

— part of which went to K-12 schools and part of which was reserved for higher education — while the next relief bill signed into law in December had $82 billion for schools, the bulk of which went to K-12.

To date, there is no data in Connecticut on how school districts have spent their previous education money they received and what their future financial needs are, Hammersley said.

“Funds received to date from have been applied towards PPE and cleaning supplies, software for distance learning, student technology support specialists, HVAC repairs, bus sanitizing, and special education evaluations, among other areas,” said Ryan Fealey, director of finance for Stamford Public Schools. “Additional federal funds may be applied to these areas, as well as academic and social-emotional support for our students and families.”

Connecticut’s public schools have not yet seen any of the $440 million allocated from the December coronavirus bill. Under Gov. Ned Lamont’s proposed budget, the state would provide half the money to schools in fiscal year 2022 and half in 2023, Hammersley said.

Connecticut will use the federal funding to pay for part of a scheduled increase in education spending that pre-pandemic, the state was planning on paying for. Lamont has not made any similar reduction in state higher education spending, Hammersley said.

Lamont has not committed to avoiding further reductions in state education spending.

In interviews, school leaders said their biggest fear is after the federal aid to schools and local and state governments runs dry, districts will plunge off a “fiscal cliff.” They worry state education funding for schools will drop precipitously in two to three years time, if states use federal dollars now to cover their own education obligations.

“Schools are going to have be careful on how they spend this money to avoid a damaging cliff phenomenon,” Murphy said. “There are ways to do that. I don’t know that I’d necessarily advise school districts to hire a whole bunch more permanent classroom teachers with this money. But what you absolutely can do is bring in para-professionals, special education professionals, you can bring in social workers — I really focus on bringing in a class of employees who can support the immediate needs of kids who are going to have to catch up really fast.”

The American Rescue Plan also includes $371 million for colleges and universities in the state, as well as $277 million for Connecticut child care providers.

Without investment, Connecticut could lose up to 46,349 licensed child care slots, approximately 48 percent of the child care supply, Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-3, warned.

“These funds will help our child care providers cover the costs of reopening, and in turn, help working parents return to work knowing their children are in a safe environment,” DeLauro said. “While this funding will support costs associated with the pandemic, it has the potential to expand access to child care beyond pre-pandemic levels. But, this cannot be the end of the federal government’s support for the critical industry.”

Unlike past coronavirus bills, this one written primarily by Democrats received no Republican votes in the House and is not expected to win any in the Senate.

On Thursday, Senate Republicans lambasted the education outlays in the bill as too expensive and unnecessary. They pointed to a report from the Congressional Budget Office from mid-February that said that said most of the education dollars from earlier coronavirus bills remain to be spent so “CBO anticipates that the bulk of spending of funds provided in the reconciliation recommendations would occur after 2021.”

Republicans said this showed that the new spending was not really about spending to re-open schools for in-person learning, but instead a huge increase in education spending hiding behind the guise of emergency relief.

“It feels like extortion,” said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas. “It feels like we have to pay off the teachers union to get them to bless what we already know to be true, which is students can safely go back to the classroom.”

Democrats insisted the money from previous bills had been allocated, even if it was not already spent. And they say, schools were still staring down huge future costs to try to get kids back on track.

“We're going to have an enormous amount of work to do to deal with all the learning loss, to deal with kids who have been essentially completely absent from school for most of the pandemic and that’s expensive,” Murphy said. “It's going to take at the very least, the entirety of 2021-22 to try to address the education and social traumas kids have been through.”