When schools shut down this spring, Congress sent them $31 billion — nearly half its annual schools outlay — for sanitation and online learning, even though students weren’t in schools to theoretically contaminate them and online learning barely happened for millions of children. The vast majority of this money has not even reached schools yet.
Nevertheless, the Wall Street Journal reports that education special interests are demanding, through their Democrat representatives, nearly half a trillion in additional deficit spending for the fall without requiring schools to operate. Yes, you read that right: Democrats want nearly $430 billion extra to put kids in the equivalent of Khan Academy online math lessons. Did I mention that Khan Academy is free? And that the ask to duplicate it is 600 percent more than annual federal spending on K-12?
“There is absolutely no way that federal funds included in the next COVID relief package…will reach schools in time to open in August and September,” notes Inez Feltscher. “Due to bureaucratic inertia and the requisite multiple rounds of paperwork, new federal COVID-response funds are unlikely to reach schools before 2021.”