The coronavirus has caused incalculable harm to millions of people. Two million people have been infected. More than 100,000 have died. The death toll increases daily. The scientific response to the pandemic—close down the economy—caused additional harm, with most economic activity halted, millions of people out of work, businesses Closed, livelihoods lost. The economic shutdown caused a dramatic decline in state revenues, which means less funding for schools. As schools plan to reopen, classes must be smaller, more nurses and healthcare workers are needed, and costs will rise, to keep students and staff safe.
How can schools cut costs while costs are rising? They can’t.
Three scholars—Bruce D. Baker, Mark Weber, and Drew Aitchinson—propose four specific steps that are needed to enable schools to weather the collapse of state revenues due to the global pandemic.
The first of these is a federal aid package. Without federal aid, schools cannot reopen safely, cannot reduce class sizes, and cannot provide the care that students and staff need.
Congress will have to decide whether it is willing to invest in the nation’s children and their teachers. And in our shared future.
One topic I have not seen covered anywhere: Economic gain of Social Security dollars due to the deaths of ‘elderly’ SS recipients (by the TENS of thousands). Do the math. The average check is $1,503 a month. If that were 80,000 people, that would be $120,240,000 per month. Our loss is DT’s gain.
…thought this was going to your email…
We need to demand Congress defund and nix the so called reform plan for public schools that siphon money for vouchers and charters. If the federal funds allocated for these programs were not diverted away from our public schools, and our state legislators adequately and equitably funded them as per state constitution, perhaps they would not be in such a dire situation..
The whole charter school scheme is based on making the needs of many take a back seat to the wants of a few. Public schools become a host that is continuously weakened by an array of private parasites. After a certain point, public schools will collapse under the weight of so much charter drain.
that transparent logic which legislators endlessly avoid…
For people who don’t pay attention, this kind of neoliberalism cloaked in “education reform” will make it difficult for us to make our case:
Oh my!
I’m not sure why what he said was so outrageous.
The investments he cites are all technology. Not a word about the many issues Diane and many other knowledgeable commentators on this blog have made: access to food, health care, small classes, etc, etc, etc. His solutions are narrow–technology and access to it are the answers!–and focused on profit-seeking interests, not the children he purports to care for.
This is a farce. Canada’s Harlem Children’s zone has a huge endowment. He is sounding like a salesperson for the tech industry.
see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlem_Children%27s_Zone
Congress will be hampered in doing anything for schools as long as miserly Mitch McConnell is in charge and will only increase the national debt by offering perks to CEOs and the very rich. Then there is the problem of DeVos and her power to sustain or increase funds for charter schools and “opportunity scholarships” with only the minimum distributions to states required by ESSA. I think that tax increases, recommended by the authors of the Kappan report, are unlikely even if desirable. ESSA also requires schools and districts to report per-pupil-expenditures by funding source (federal, state, local). This paperwork burden is intended to make visible inequities in funding, but it is also the source of data for showing how costs can be reduced, salaries of course, insofar as these are tied to years of service and include benefits.
3 months out of school is not going to ruin children – if they have books in the house and games to play and live in a healthy community. Tech is not the answer. A strong beginning and healthy community and family is key.
Thanks for the shout out, Diane. In my opinion, there needs to be a massive push right now to get Congress to move on school funding relief. It’s the only way schools are going to be able to operate safely and effectively this fall. -Mark Weber
The HEROES bill, that passed the House, is absolutely crucial for public schools, “speculation” is the Republicans will be ready to vote in July: what will the bill look like? NYC is facing a $9B deficit, could easily lead to teacher layoffs and an extended period of reduced school funding. … w/o the House HEROES bill schools in urban centers will be decimated, a Democratic victory in November is “life or death” for public schools …
Canada ran a network of charter schools in Harlem, with tens of millions from American Express, sadly, with mediocre results ….
The HEROES bill, that passed the House, is absolutely crucial for public schools, “speculation” is the Republicans will be ready to vote in July: what will the bill look like? NYC is facing a $9B deficit, could easily lead to teacher layoffs and an extended period of reduced school funding. … w/o the House HEROES bill schools in urban centers will be decimated, a Democratic victory in November is “life or death” for public schools …
Canada ran a network of charter schools in Harlem, with tens of millions from American Express, sadly, with mediocre results ….
Congress allowed Trump to grab $500 billion from the stimulus package to give out as he saw fit without transparency after he fired the people in charge of making sure that money was used properly, and Congress did nothing to stop him.
If Congress can do that, then after the election when Trump is gone and the GOP has been decimated at the voting booth, Congress can easily fund the K-12 public school without any limits. Need $500 billion to fix our public schools, no problem. Need a trillion, no problem.
We’ll do what we have always done for the DOD, the CIA, banks, and corporations and just write checks whatever they want and need. And no money for any private sector schools or online education.
I’m for that, Lloyd. If Trump were to declare war on Iran, Congress would quickly authorize $1-3 trillion. Why not the same to save the next generation?
Unless I am mistaken, the first proposal in this report calls for huge federal funding to states for two years followed by three additional years of reductions back to pre-pandemic levels… on the assumption the economy will recover and Congress will fund another “stimulus” package. I am not certain the HEROES bill will pass, or in a form that will help schools opening in this year.
I am troubled by the authors references to lessons learned from the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). The only lesson seems to be that ARRA funds ended abruptly after two years, leading districts facing “a financial cliff.”
There is no mention of the god-awful Race to the Top Competition that Obama and Arne Duncan put into the larger ARRA program or to the 17 provisos in ARRA that included allocations for “a rigorous national evaluation by the Institute of Education Sciences, utilizing randomized controlled methodology to the extent feasible, that assesses the impact of performance-based teacher and principal compensation systems supported by the funds provided in this Act on teacher and principal recruitment and retention in high-need schools and subjects.” I have not looked at the HEROES bill but everyone should make sure it is not stuffed with junk.
Recall that ARRA was a disaster for schools. It was filled with provisos on incentive grants, target grants, school improvement grants, education finance improvement grants in addition to unconscionable requirements that states compete for funds and accept other stipulations about “common standards,” charter schools, investments in tech, and more.
Although the authors of the plan presented in the Kappan report point out that many schools “are now in an even worse position to weather a fiscal downturn than they were before the Great Recession,” the authors still expect states to “maintain their present effort to fund schools (avoiding cuts when possible), (and) to restore the funding levels that existed prior to the 2007-2009 recession.”
I certainly think education finance experts should forward aspirational plans. The elaborated 31-page plan, not the Kappan article, has more information about this proposal. It is clearly a well-developed wishlist, but entirely dependent on new administrations (federal, state, and local) with a political will to support public education even in the midst of many competing demands for funding.
In the near term, I do not hold out hope for miserly Mitch McConnell to support funding for teachers and other social services. And of course, the full report is already being attacked because it comes from the “union backed” Shanker Institute, endowed by the AFT. Here is a link to the full report. https://www.shankerinstitute.org//sites/default/files/coronavirusK12final.pdf
At this point I am not even looking at the long [post-covid vaccine] picture. We’ve most likely got the ’20-’21 school year & at least half the following schoolyear to try to get things right. Whatever we do during this time period is likely to slop over into post-covid era if it works to aid recovery. Strike while the iron is hot: for much of that time we’ll be in a mode of big govt attempting to get things off the ground by shoveling emergency funds to indivs, small&big biz, state ops. Best advice I’ve seen in this & other articles is, push state/ school funds down into poorest pops/ regions/ districts. That could set a corrective trend to our ever-inequitable ed delivery.
Meanwhile, sans sensible leadership, fed & state govts are going to be pushing ever-harder for school re-openings in order to support biz re-opening. They love to bash teachers & “bad govt schools,” but they suddenly wake up to the usually-derided role of schools as “babysitters.” Well, they’re going to have to put their money where their mouth is if they want it to happen. States will need mucho moolah for a high degree of testing/ contact-tracing/ feedback loop to opening/ closing/ quaranting decision-makers. Massive $ will have to flow into school districts for the extra staff/ eqpt/ procedures reqd to make in-school classes happen & to support remote-learning backup. Without it, teachers & families will not show up in force. In goober, “virus?-what-virus?” states opening on a wink & a prayer: maybe some rural areas w/very lo covid stats will be OK. Many other areas will suffer repeated stops-restarts, disrupting state economic recovery.