News : Are colleges ready to respond to Roe’s rollback?

Monday, June 27, 2022

Are colleges ready to respond to Roe’s rollback?

Jun 27, 2022

Presented by Sallie Mae®

GET READY, COLLEGES — The Supreme Court's dismantling of abortion rights is likely to lead to more pregnant students, but advocates for these students say colleges aren't ready.

— Rolling back Roe v. Wade allows for broad restrictions on abortion access in at least 20 states. Seven states banned or mostly banned abortion immediately: Alabama, Arkansas, South Dakota, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri and Oklahoma. Other red states are set to follow suit in the coming weeks.

— "As it stands, higher education institutions are not sufficiently prepared to support students who are also parenting, let alone welcome more," said Generation Hope, a nonprofit that advocates for those students, in a statement. "Without a college degree, we know that the path to economic mobility for young parents becomes even more narrow.

" Higher education institutions must do their part by reevaluating how they interact with young parents on their campuses and implement measures and services that truly support and uplift student parents," the group added.

— Commenting from a campus health perspective, the American College Health Association said: "This decision will further exacerbate health inequities and reduce educational access by making safe, legal reproductive care unavailable to many Americans.

"… College health professionals include clinicians and mental health providers who have licensure and certification obligations and codes of ethics to which they must adhere," the group wrote. "This ruling, and the restrictive state laws triggered in its wake, will directly endanger college health professionals' ability to provide evidence-based, patient-centered care, and may place them in legal jeopardy."

IT'S MONDAY, JUNE 27. WELCOME TO WEEKLY EDUCATION. HAVE WE MET YET? Let's grab coffee. Ping me at bquilantan@politico.com to chat. Send tips to my colleagues Juan Perez Jr. at jperez@politico.com and Michael Stratford at mstratford@politico.com. And follow us on Twitter: @Morning_Edu and @POLITICOPro.

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In Congress

BIDEN SIGNS GUN CONTROL MEASURE INTO LAW — The bipartisan gun safety law, which cleared the House Friday, is Congress' first major response to nearly three decades of mass shootings. While the bill's provisions fell short of most Democrats' hopes, most House Republicans opposed the bill. The final vote was 234-193.

— The law strengthens background checks and includes additional scrutiny of juvenile records for gun buyers under the age of 21. It also allows states to implement their own red flag laws and changes federal law so that an assault on a dating partner or a recent former dating partner qualifies as domestic violence, meaning the assailant will be restricted from purchasing a gun. It also includes new spending for mental health treatment and school security.

— The bipartisan bill emerged as the result of deadly shootings last month that killed 19 children and two adults in Uvalde, Texas, and 10 people in Buffalo, N.Y. "This is a good first step, and the bill will absolutely help save lives, but we cannot stop here," National Education Association President Becky Pringle said in a statement. "We will not stop until every educator can plan their lessons without also planning for evacuation. NEA will continue our work because we are not done until every child — in every corner of our country — can walk to school and sit in class in safety."

THREE-MONTH EXTENSION FOR FREE SCHOOL MEALS — Congress on Friday approved a bipartisan, three-month extension of universal free school meals, days before current funds expired on June 30, POLITICO's Meredith Lee reports. Anti-hunger advocates had warned that the loss of universal school meal funding beginning in July would have abruptly increased hunger for millions of children. President Joe Biden signed the Keep Kids Fed Act on Saturday.

— The law provides free summer meals for about 30 million kids, regardless of income. But it will scale down aid in the fall. Democrats, however, are pushing for additional funding to bolster school meals beyond the summer in appropriations bills currently moving through Congress. Anti-hunger advocates had warned that the loss of universal school meal funding beginning in July would have abruptly increased hunger for millions of children.

— Democrats originally wanted a full-year extension of the free school meals program for all kids. But Republicans blocked that effort earlier this year, citing its steep $11 billion price tag. "By returning these programs back to normal, we can uphold our responsibility to taxpayers and the principle that aid should be targeted and temporary," said Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), the top Republican on the House Education and Labor Committee.

KEEP AN EYE ON APPROPRIATIONS THIS WEEK — The Labor-Education-HHS funding bill is headed to a full committee markup on Thursday. It would provide $86.7 billion in discretionary funding for the Education Department, a $10.3 billion increase compared with the current year.

JOIN TOMORROW FOR WOMEN RULE TALK ON THE ECONOMY: The U.S. economy is showing signs of slowing down after a period of robust growth last year. How would an economic slowdown affect women's economic security across socioeconomic, racial, and geographic lines? Join POLITICO's Women Rule for a conversation on what's ahead for the U.S. economy and how it will impact women's livelihoods and economic well-being. REGISTER HERE.

Quotable

BOBBY SCOTT TALKS COLLEGE AFFORDABILITY — For House Education and Labor Chair Bobby Scott (D-Va.), 2022 is a big year to advance college affordability. It marks the 50th anniversary of the Pell Grant, a federal aid program that helps the nation's lowest-income students pay for college. But there's still much to do, Scott told POLITICO Pro in an interview in which he discussed expanding Pell to short-term programs and how Pell intersects with college affordability. Your host has more.

Here are some highlights:

— Short-term Pell: "Right now, you can only use Pell Grants for courses that lead to a college degree. If all it leads to is a good job, you can't use the Pell Grant. Well, that's ridiculous.

"The problem is that we don't want to get in a situation where people set up little storefronts, pass out worthless credentials and take all the Pell Grant money. We need to have significant safeguards to make sure that the programs are providing high-quality job training."

— Doubling Pell vs. free community college: "The alternative would be to just, instead of putting money into community colleges, just put it into Pell Grants. That would be more targeted toward those who actually need the help. And the Pell Grant would be sufficient to properly cover the full cost of the community college so that those who need the help would be able to go.

"Inability to afford community college has not been identified as a key problem with higher education."

WANT TO DO A Q&A WITH POLITICO PRO? Email me at bquilantan@politico.com .

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Title IX

OCR RESOLVES TRANSGENDER DISCRIMINATION CASE — An Education Department Office for Civil Rights investigation found Tamalpais Union High School District in Northern California failed to protect a transgender student from harassment, POLITICO California's Blake Jones and your host report .

— The case: During the 2017–18 school year, a male student allegedly harassed a transgender student about her voice, used incorrect pronouns to refer to her and used the name she was referred to before transitioning. Despite several complaints from the student's mother and counselor, administrators "permitted the student to be subjected to a hostile environment that denied or limited her ability to participate in or benefit from the district's program on the basis of sex in violation of Title IX," OCR wrote in a letter to the district's superintendent last week.

— OCR's resolution with Tamalpais Union High School is an early example of how the Biden administration is taking action to enforce its interpretation of Title IX , the federal education law that bans sex-based discrimination. The proposal, released last week, interprets the law as prohibiting "all forms of sex discrimination, including discrimination based on sex stereotypes, sex characteristics, pregnancy or related conditions, sexual orientation and gender identity."

PSLF UPDATE — As of June 1, the Education Department has approved about $8.1 billion for nearly 145,000 borrowers under the limited Public Service Loan Forgiveness waiver, the agency announced Friday.

A message from Sallie Mae®:

At Sallie Mae, we want students and families to make responsible choices when it comes to planning and paying for college. That's why we offer free tools and resources to help calculate college costs, evaluate financial aid offers, plus discover and apply for scholarships. We also reward our customers who make payments while in school. More than half choose to do just that, saving them money in the long run and setting them up for financial success. That's why Sallie Mae makes sense.

Syllabus

— Florida Republicans turn school elections into new political battlegrounds: POLITICO Pro

— Dems hope abortion ruling stops their slide in blue states: POLITICO

— Talking education freedom with Betsy DeVos: Ricochet

— Schools are spending billions on high-tech defense for mass shootings: The New York Times

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