Attorney general sues to challenge DOE rule related to school CARES Act funding
The state attorney general has sued to challenge a Department of Education rule that affects how CARES Act funding is distributed to schools.
“(Secretary of Education) Betsy DeVos is unlawfully trying to funnel much-needed relief funds away from Washington’s most vulnerable public school students and give them to private schools,” Attorney General Bob Ferguson said in a press release. “Low-income families have been hit hard by this pandemic. This lawsuit will ensure the funds go where Congress intended them.”
Ferguson filed the lawsuit Monday in federal court in Seattle.
Washington state is supposed to get $216 million in Coronavirus Aid, Relief & Economic Security Act funds for elementary and secondary schools, his office said.
“More than a month after the CARES Act passed, the U.S. Department of Education issued guidance that would have distributed the funds based only on the total number of enrolled students in public and private schools, regardless of the income level of those students’ families,” Ferguson’s press release said.
“After intense criticism, the department issued the current interim final rule, which forces districts to choose between distributing all of the funds only to Title I schools in their districts, or distributing the funds by total student population.”
It goes on to say that, in some districts in the state “private schools would receive more than five times more funding under the department’s enrollment-based formula. Within the Seattle Public School District, private schools would receive nearly 20 percent of the total funding allocated to the district, despite having a much lower proportion of low-income students.”
DeVos said in a press release last month, “There is nothing in the law Congress passed that would allow districts to discriminate against children and teachers based on private school attendance and employment. In this new rule, we recognized that CARES Act programs are not Title I programs. There is no reasonable explanation for debating the use of federal funding to serve both public and private K-12 students when federal funding, including CARES Act funding, flows to both public and private higher education institutions.”
