We thank you for your continued support of afterschool and summer learning programs, and for your work on behalf of children and working families. We ask that the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies Subcommittees ensure that the Nita M. Lowey 21st Century Community Learning Centers Program remains a vital resource to students and families moving forward.
In order to support a safe and healthy school environment and make sure our students receive a well-rounded education that puts them on a path to success, we must continue to invest in our nation’s schools, educators, and most importantly, our students. For these reasons, we urge Congress to fund the SSAE flexible grant program at $2 billion in FY 2023. Thank you for your 1 of 4 consideration of this request. We look forward to working with you to make sure students in every community are supported to reach their maximum potential.
The Build Back Better Act will boost families’ economic stability and reduce racial inequities in income, housing, education, and health care that harm Black and brown children every day. By passing this critical legislation, we are finally meaningfully investing in our children and families.
All students deserve access to an education that prepares them to succeed in college, career, and life and to fully exercise their social, political, and economic rights. Attempting to gag educators and whitewash the aspects of U.S. history that rightfully make people uncomfortable undermines that basic principle.
Since the Children’s Defense Fund last published our annual State of America’s Children report in February 2020, our children have experienced a year of unprecedented upheaval due to the COVID-19 pandemic and a racial reckoning years in the making. Every aspect of children’s lives has been impacted by these shifts more quickly than data can track; even the most recent available data sets do not fully encompass how this past year has shaped our lives. This, of course, includes our 2021 State of America’s Children report. Because, as one element of the report makes clear, “Our Children are Not Immune.”
236 organizations wrote to President-Elect Biden and Vice President-Elect Harris urging them to boost the economy, tackle racial disparities, and provide much-needed stimulus to help all Americans weather the pandemic and the associated recession by using executive authority to cancel federal student debt on Day One of their administration.
When children are not attending school in person, they are not only missing out on vital education that is hard to deliver virtually; they are also abruptly without services they rely on and support from educators and professionals trained to connect them with resources and ensure their most urgent needs are met. As many schools returned to virtual instruction this fall, students are approaching almost a full year without those supports and services—which include access to healthy food, care for their physical and mental health, caring adults tasked with ensuring their safety, and federally mandated supports for marginalized students.
We joined leading organizations to express our opposition to the Department of Education's interim final rule on "CARES Act Program; Equitable Services to Students and Teachers in Non-Public Schools" and particularly to the scenario provided that would require school districts to divert more funds to private school students in the name of the CARES Act's "equitable services" provision than is required under the law. This interim rule does not prioritize students facing the greatest barriers to education success.
We urge Congress to enact new pandemic relief legislation that can effectively reduce the harsh scope of the health and economic crisis engulfing our nation. Congress must approve (1) cash and other assistance to prevent devastating and long-term losses to the jobless and families; (2) protections and resources to create conditions for a safe return to work; (3) state and local aid to ensure adequate health care, education, and many other essential services; and (4) Congress must protect mainstays of our democracy from being undermined by the pandemic: safe voting; the U.S. Postal Service; and the decennial Census.
we urge Congress to include robust funding for education in the next legislative package in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, we urge at least $200 billion in additional funding for K-12 education and programs that support marginalized students that are most likely to be affected by missing in-person instruction. Money must be available to all schools regardless of their timeline for reopening. Schools in areas with high rates of COVID-19 spread may need to consider delaying a return to fulltime in-person instruction, and these schools will need the same or greater federal investments, not fewer. In addition, we strongly urge Congress to increase the federal government’s share of Medicaid costs by raising the federal medical assistance percentage (FMAP) at least another 5.8 percentage points.