| | | | |  | | By Juan Perez Jr. | With help from Mackenzie Wilkes
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Students at Pasadena City College. | Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images | ON THE EDGE — Billions of dollars in federal pandemic relief aid helped schools pay for staff, tutoring programs, and infrastructure through one of the toughest periods in American history. Now that money is running dry, just in time for a presidential election. — Education Department officials are optimistic schools will have spent most of $122 billion in American Rescue Plan funds by the time that money must be earmarked in September. Tens of billions of dollars are still available. But there’s urgent concern over how schools might get burned when the money’s gone, as the process to request extensions to looming spending deadlines heats up in the coming months. — District leaders will, or already are, making “very difficult decisions” about which programs they will keep or cut, said Allison Socol, The Education Trust’s vice president of P-12 policy, practice, and research during a recent chat with reporters. — “It doesn’t look good,” Socol said. “It’s fewer educators, bigger class sizes, fewer mental health professionals and support staff, reduced extracurricular opportunities, and fewer advanced coursework opportunities.” — The department estimates 1 to 3 percent of rescue plan funding will be left over by September 2024, the date by which schools must commit their money for spending. As of late January, a department official told Weekly Education, an estimated $51.8 billion in funding was still available. — “We think the vast majority of that $51.8 billion is either already spent and there's just a delay in the reimbursement – or it's committed and will be paid out. So, for instance, staff salaries every two weeks for the next seven months,” the official said. — Socol worries potential staff cuts could land atop increased labor costs and declining school enrollment, and that higher-poverty schools will be most impacted by hiring freezes or other cuts because they tend to have more attrition and more unfilled positions. State leaders have an opportunity during this year’s budget season to get behind — and pay for — big ideas in the federal government’s absence, she said. At the same time, local administrators need to be ready. — “It is up to district leaders to be proactively engaging families in this conversation,” Socol said. She also suggested schools use other existing federal funding streams to keep effective programs — such as high-dosage tutoring — running. There’s also a need for hard conversations with unions to make sure any staff cuts don’t have a disproportionate impact. — “You will continue to see the secretary and other leaders in the administration point to the need for states to be ready to grab the baton here,” the department official told your host. — “I think we're trying to turn over every rock and pull every lever to address the concerns about what this looks like for 2024, 2025 and 2026, recognizing that it's going to be a multiyear recovery.” IT’S MONDAY, FEB. 12. WELCOME TO WEEKLY EDUCATION. “The hardest thing for all of us was accepting that we weren’t going to get Dreamers or a pathway to citizenship,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said of lawmakers’ fruitless negotiations over a bipartisan border deal. “We contemplated whether we could do a bigger deal in which we got Dreamers on the table, but also other elements of [Republicans’] H.R. 2. In the end, that was not going to be a viable path,” he said. Reach out with tips to today’s host at jperez@politico.com and also my colleagues Michael Stratford (mstratford@politico.com), Bianca Quilantan (bquilantan@politico.com) and Mackenzie Wilkes (mwilkes@politico.com).
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| | SHOP TALK — House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries delivered a political pep talk to the National Education Association’s board of directors on Friday, where he outlined some of the education-based messaging his party is testing ahead of the November election. — “We acknowledge that there's still work that needs to be done,” the New York Democrat told the NEA, according to excerpts of his remarks provided to your host. “But then make the point that here’s what we have already been able to do to meet the moment, whether it’s the American Rescue Plan, shots [in] arms, money in pockets, kids back in school. — “There are people within the right wing who wanted to use this moment to shut down public education as we know it and defund state and local governments,” Jeffries added. “And we stepped in with the largest infusion of financial support the state and local governments in the history of America in the middle of a pandemic to support public education.” — Foreign policy was top of mind for the country’s largest labor group, too. The NEA called for a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war, plus the release of hostages and provision of humanitarian aid in Gaza as part of a resolution that made clear union members want American officials to do more to stop the fighting. — “We believe NEA must expand its efforts to influence U.S. officials and international leaders to join us in our call by convening and working with other U.S. international labor leaders, as well as civil rights, faith and progressive organizations, and Jewish and Arab leaders, to draw upon our greater collective power and help influence an end to this conflict and humanitarian crisis,” the union declared. — The American Federation of Teachers has also called for a cease-fire in the conflict. So have local teacher unions and a list of labor groups, including the United Auto Workers, which signed a petition exhorting President Joe Biden to call for an immediate cease-fire. THE OTHER SUPER TUESDAY — Most political watchers will be transfixed by the outcome of March 5th’s presidential primaries, but a historic union election set to occur that same day carries high stakes for the higher education and college sports communities. — Members of the Dartmouth College men’s basketball team will vote on Super Tuesday to decide if they want to be represented by a local branch of the Service Employees International Union. The National Labor Relations board formally scheduled the election on Friday. — The Dartmouth election would be the first to occur in major college sports in several years, and arrives after the NLRB’s regional director in Boston earlier this month determined the institution’s men’s basketball players qualify as workers under federal labor law and thus are eligible to unionize. — Dartmouth has said it will seek a review of the regional director's order by the agency's board, which has a 3-1 Democratic majority with one seat vacant. — However, the NLRB says the election can still move forward if a review request is pending. So, beginning at 11:30 a.m. ET on March 5, expect to see players cast ballots inside a human resources training office on Dartmouth’s Hanover, N.H., campus.
| | THE WI-FI BUS ROLLS OUT — School buses on rural roads can soon be outfitted with internet access using E-Rate dollars. The Federal Communications Commission is revamping the decades-old E-Rate program that leans on schools and libraries to get students online. The E-Rate program has a nearly $4.5 billion spending cap, and added flexibilities would pour some of those dollars into school buses. — The first wave of applications for E-Rate dollars are due later this month. The plans to add flexibilities to the E-Rate program received some backlash from congressional Republicans who have argued that the expansions are duplicative to the Emergency Connectivity Fund and Affordable Connectivity Program, both of which are set to end this year. They also argue allowing school buses to have internet access through the E-Rate program is outside of the program’s original intention. One of those lawmakers — Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee that oversees the FCC — announced on Thursday that she’s not seeking reelection. — The FCC estimates that it will cost on average $1,840 per school bus per year to outfit the vehicles with Wi-Fi. One estimate from the consulting company E-Rate Central found that if 500,000 buses received funding at an average of $1,840 per bus, and with an average 75 percent discount, the FCC would still be within the E-Rate program’s spending cap at about $3.5 billion. — Around 2.3 million Americans under age 18 with a computer don’t have internet at home, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. That lack of internet access is dire for low-income students in rural areas where internet costs can be high, education advocates and school leaders say. — “Rural remote areas, or remote areas in general, they don’t have [internet] access or they can’t afford access,” Allen Pratt, executive director of the National Rural Education Association said. “Especially in tough economic times people have to choose what they’re paying for sometimes, what they're able to afford.” MORE CHIPS ON THE TABLE — In case you missed it, the Biden administration on Friday announced a $5 billion investment and signed on agency heads to join a consortium that is at the focal point of the CHIPS Act’s semiconductor research and development ambitions. — The formal launch of the National Semiconductor Technology Center comes months after the Commerce Department laid out its initial strategy, POLITICO’s Christine Mui reports. — But the NSTC is still in its early stages. States are competing to host its headquarters. The hub also must solicit companies for participation, build out the nonprofit that will operate it, announce funding opportunities, and establish a center for its workforce activities. — Workforce issues are a concern for Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo. Biden administration officials have made it clear that priorities such as updated school curriculums need scrutiny to prepare the army of builders, technicians and researchers needed to meet the government’s demands. Elementary and high school STEM and technical education programs, in addition to community colleges and topflight research institutions, all have their hands full. — Raimondo said Friday her department is “cooking with gas” and that a “drumbeat of even bigger announcements” on manufacturing incentives is coming in the next six to 12 weeks, slightly revising the six to eight-week timeline she gave earlier last week.
| | McKinsey & Co.’s management consultants profiled 14 international school systems — including Mississippi and Washington, D.C. — that are “beating the odds” to achieve sustained improvement on international and regional tests. Their conclusion: School systems that focus on seven targeted strategies (including setting fewer priorities and building clear strategy implementation plans) are far more likely to meet their goals for student outcomes and system transformation. “Individually, these strategies may seem obvious or incremental,” the authors wrote. “Together, they are transformative.”
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