The Biden administration announced Wednesday it is releasing $81 billion in education assistance to help schools across the country reopen.
The move is part of President Joe Biden’s pledge to get the majority of public schools up and running during his first 100 days in office. In a recorded message, Biden told the nation’s educators that “help is here.”
“Help is here for schools to purchase PPE, hire additional personnel like nurses, counselors, custodial staff, improve ventilation and sanitation, avoid devastating layoffs, and give students extra support,” he said at the National Safe School Reopening Summit. “Help is here to help students make up for lost time and lost learning. Unless we act quickly, this pandemic could have a devastating long-term impact on our kids who have gone through this, including on their mental health.”
On March 11, Biden signed the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan into law. It provides more than $170.3 billion to education and is the single largest federal government investment in the country’s schools. The money includes $125.4 billion for state K-12 public education programs and $39.6 billion for higher education. Since the spring of 2020, the federal government has given more than $200 billion in funding to deal with the effects of COVID-19 in schools.
During his remarks, Biden urged states to be proactive.
“I need states to move quickly to get these resources down to the school districts and put them to work,” he said.
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First lady Jill Biden, herself an English teacher at Northern Virginia Community College, began Wednesday’s event by promising that teachers had a friend in her husband’s administration.
“My husband made a commitment to you: that we would be open and honest about the opportunities and challenges of reopening schools for in-person learning … which is why today is just the beginning,” she said.
The Biden administration has been pushing for broader school openings.
Last month, the president promised that a majority of elementary schools would be open five days a week by the end of his first 100 days in office.
So far, nearly half of U.S. elementary schools were open for full-time classroom instruction as of last month. However, the breakdown of students with in-person learning has varied greatly by region and race, with nonwhite students making up the majority of children who are taught entirely online, according to an administration survey.
About 76% of elementary and middle schools were open for some type of in-person or hybrid learning, while 24% offered remote classes only.
Education Secretary Miguel Cardona called the findings encouraging but said it also highlighted critical gaps in the public school system.
Last Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released new guidance saying students can safely sit just 3 feet apart in the classroom as long as they wear masks. The revised recommendations cut the previous 6-foot standard by half, a number the agency had recommended since early in the pandemic.
The original guidance posed a problem for many districts that had limited space to allow for proper distancing, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said.
Wednesday’s summit also featured leaders of school districts that had begun to reopen their schools.
Meisha Porter, chancellor of New York City’s Department of Education, said school reopenings were only possible because of an extraordinary partnership between government agencies, parents, students, teachers, and community leaders. New York City was the first major school district to reopen partially to students last fall.
