The Biden Administration has proposed $82.4 billion for the next year’s Department of Education budget, marking a $3.1 billion increase from the previous fiscal year. It’s a nearly 4% increase in the budget for a Department that many Americans think should be dismantled.
The surge in funding is meant to address challenges students have faced due to learning disruptions caused by the governments’ own closures of schools during the Covid pandemic and to give more power to the agency’s enforcement arm in the Office of Civil Rights.
But it also sets a new baseline of funding for future years’ budgets, much in the way that the Alaska Base Student Allocation resets a baseline of funding going forward.
Education Secretary Miguel Cardona presented the department’s budget last week to a House Appropriations Committee.
He said $22 million increase for the Office of Civil Rights has tripled its workload over the past 15 years, saying that a rise in antisemitism and anti-Arab discrimination is to blame and that his agency needs more money.
In other settings, he has admitted that the complaints are usually about antisemitism, and rarely are anti-Arab.
The last budget for the Office of Civil Rights was $161.3 million. Biden is proposing it be raised by 7.4% to $173.3 million.
The Office of Civil Rights investigates discrimination in educational institutions and has become more recently known for defending pornography, literature that pushes LGBTQ ideology, and how-to sex manuals in school libraries.
Cardona highlighted during the hearing what he said is a disproportionate targeting of “LGBTQI and BIPOC” (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) literature. Cardona emphasized the Department of Education will use the extra money to target Title 1 schools (students in poverty) staff, student support initiatives, English learner programs, and higher education-related endeavors.
The budget reduces support for charter schools, cutting the grants for them by $40 million, and reallocating it to other areas. Cardona told the committee that he does not support public funding for charter schools. When asked by House Rep. Chuck Edwards of North Carolina about the cuts, Edwards reminded Cardona that his staff had previously said the “cut was due to a lack of interest. Can you help me better understand the basis in that statement?” Edwards asked for surveys and data that would support the statement that there is a lack of interest in charter schools.
Cardona said the demand for the competitive grant to support charter schools has been decreasing.
“In some pockets of our country there’s not a greater demand for charter schools,” Cardona explained. He said the department would be able to make the same number of awards as previous years. In followup questions from Edwards, Cardona said he would have his staff send answers later.
Rep. Edwards also gave Cardona an earful about the Biden plan to have taxpayers pay for the student loans of college students.
“I’m gonna give you a chance right now, in the time that I have left, to explain to that working class why this proposed program this debt relief program is fair and not turning its back, our back, on those folks that have calluses on their hands and really have built this country.”
“I’m talking about the folks that are plunging toilets every day and cutting pipes and laying bricks, that didn’t have an opportunity to go to college and now we’re asking them to pay for the education of the folks that you’re trying to describe there. Those are different classes.
“Mr. Secretary, one of the things that I continually hear from folks in my district and from all around America is that Washington seems to have forgotten so much of the working class, and I see no better example of that than the student debt relief program that’s being suggested right now – where folks with dirt and grease under their fingernails are being asked to pay for folks’…
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