Last week, Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), the Ranking Democrat on the Senate Education Committee, and 17 Senate Democratic colleagues, including Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), introduced the Coronavirus Child Care and Education Relief Act (CCCERA).
The bill (numbered as S. 4112) is seen as Senate Democrats’ opening bid in the debate with Senate Republicans over providing additional COVID-19 stimulus funding for education.
The proposal would provide higher overall education funding than the House-passed HEROES Act, taken up in May, but, as noted above, is seen as only the opening gambit in what is likely to be a difficult negotiation with Senate Republicans as Congress debates how much federal assistance to provide state and local governments and schools to offset declining state revenues.
The Senate Democrats’ bill would build upon the CARES Act passed in the spring, providing an additional $175 billion in funds for K-12 school districts through the Education Stabilization Fund. The bill specifically proposes to allocate almost $13 billion for Title I, and $12 billion for special education programs funded under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Those two items are separate from the $175 billion “stabilization” fund the bill would provide for school districts to shore up their budgets and meet critical needs.
In addition, the bill would provide $4 billion in emergency funding for the federal E-Rate Program (which provides funding to schools and libraries for educational technology) to close the “homework gap” and enable equitable access to remote learning, and $4 billion for career and technical education (CTE) programs.
A notable mandate in the bill, as currently drafted, is language requiring that “for a state to receive any of the funding for elementary, secondary, or early childhood in the bill, the State must assure the Secretary that full rights are provided to children with disabilities and their families under IDEA and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act.”
More information on the legislation is available here.
