A bookkeeping change at the Education Department will kick hundreds of rural school districts out of a federal program that for nearly two decades has funneled funding to some of the most geographically isolated and cash-strapped schools in the United States.The story explains the bookkeeping shift in relation to the Rural and Low-Income School Program, a funding stream that requires districts to report how many of their students live in poverty. In the past, the percentage of students receiving a free- or reduced-price lunch has been a proxy for high poverty (20% or more) among school-age children because "census data can miss residents in rural areas." Now, however, the Department of Education has suggested that it must strictly follow the Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates (SAIPE) rather than rely on lunch program data, though it has been relying on the latter for 17 years.
On bi-partisan pushback against the new interpretation, Green writes:
The department’s decision to enforce the tougher criteria drew swift, bipartisan condemnation, and alarmed lawmakers and advocates who questioned why an administration whose political base includes large sections of rural America would initiate such a change — especially in an election year. Rural school districts, which serve nearly one in seven public-school students, have long been considered the most underfunded and ignored in the country.
Congressional leaders indicated that they were prepared to take swift action. A spokesman for the Senate committee that oversees education said its chairman, Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, was “very concerned” about the change and working with Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, to “solve this problem for hundreds of rural schools around the country.”Will be interesting to see the outcome of this tussle. Will rural schools once again be a sacrificial lamb?
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