PA: How Badly Are Districts Hurt By Feds Holding Back Funds

On Juily 1, the federal government was scheduled to distribute federal education grants. Instead, the Department of Education sent an unsigned e-mail saying, "Yeah, we're just going to sit and think about that." It's a technique known to every parent who ever responded to a child's unwelcome request with, "We'll see." Except that in this case, the states are not unruly toddlers, but folks who expected that since Congress had duly appropriated the funds, there was no reason to think the funding wasn't going to happen. 

Even Betsy DeVos, who hated the idea of forgiving student loans, signed off on documents (reluctantly) because it was the law. But Trump 2.0 is not so interested in the laws.

Here are the programs for which the feds have decided to withhold funding.

Title I-C for migrant education ($375 million)
Title II-A for professional development ($2.2 billion)
Title III-A for English-learner services ($890 million)
Title IV-A for academic enrichment ($1.3 billion)
Title IV-B for before- and after-school programs ($1.4 billion)
Plus a last-minute addition of adult basic and literacy education

The six programs add up to $6.8 billion, and that adds up to some real money for school districts. 

At New America, Zahava Stadler and Jordan Abbott have collected and crunched some numbers that provide a more detailed picture of the damage, and I've taken a look at the bigger picture over at Forbes.com. 

But since I'm in Pennsylvania, I'm going to pull out part of a list that deals with our state. What I'm going to do here, you can do (with even more detail) with the information they have posted. One table they provide breaks down how much money the feds are threatening to take from districts, broken down by the Congressional district for each member of the House (aka "that bunch of spineless weasels who have decided not to do their jobs"). I recommend you look up your rep and call them, encouraging them to look into the extra-legal impounding of funds that they duly authorized.

Here's the Pennsylvania breakdown with the grand total of the dollars at risk.

District 1    Brian Fitzpatrick (R)     $6,693,000

District 2    Brendan Boyle (D)         $28,416,000

District 3    Dwight Evand (D)          $28,416,000

District 4    Madeleine Dean (D)       $7,670,000

District 5    Mary Gay Scanlon (D)   $36,333,000

District 6    Chrissy Houlahan (D)     $7,209,000

District 7    Ryan Mackenzie (R)        $11,402,000

District 8    Robert Bresnahan (R)      $8,734,000

District 9    Daniel Meuser (R)           $11,736,000

District 10    Scott Perry (R)               $6,989,000

District 11    Lloyd Smucker (R)         $5,959,000

District 12    Summer Lee (D)             $7,398,000

District 13    John Joyce (R)                $8,140,000

District 14    Guy Reschenthaler (R)    $6,243,000

District 15    Glenn Thompson (R)       $8,504,000

District 16    Mike Kelly (T)                 $6,667,000

District 17    Christopher Deluzio (D)  $4,902,000

I recommend you reach out to your Congressperson and ask them why the heck this money, duly okayed by Congress, should not be going out to the school districts. Ask why local taxpayers should shoulder the burden of either making up for the shortfall or doing without the services that will be cut because, even though Congress duly authorized this spending, the administration just doesn't feel like it.

Again, you can do for your state just what I've done here for PA (the tables are here). Yes, the department plans to zero these programs out in next year's budget, but that doesn't mean they get to ignore this year's budget.