WiRSA Update - July 2, 2024

Update From CEF (Center for Education Funding)

• I. FY 2025 House Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations Bill released with huge cuts to education

  • Links to bill and Committee press releases – This morning the House Appropriations Committee released its fiscal year (FY) 2025 Labor-HHS-Education bill that slashes funding for Department of Education (ED) programs by $11.1 billion (14.0%) as part of the bill’s deep 11% overall cut in funding below current levels. (Republican appropriations bills in the House cut non-defense funding to the level of the statutory cap, which is about $68 billion (9%) below the level enacted for FY 2024 even; the cap itself is 1% higher than the statutory cap for FY 2024.) The Subcommittee will mark up the bill tomorrow at 8am ET (webcast will be here). The markup should be very quick, likely with no amendments offered, as another Appropriations subcommittee has a markup at 8:30am.  Below are links to the bill and to the Democratic and Republican summaries, which highlight different components.

  • Text of the bill – Department of Education (ED) starts on page 126. The legislative text includes funding for accounts and for just a few programs. We won’t know every program level until we see the Committee Report, which is generally released the day before the full Appropriations Committee holds its markup, which is currently planned for July 10.

  • Republican press release and summary – It touts that the bill as “Reducing funding for ineffective, duplicative, and controversial K-12 education competitive grants by $1 billion (50%)”  - I don’t know what the 50% means! It says the bill eliminates 17 education programs – see my list below of 8 that I can tell are eliminated.

  • Democratic press release and summary – Titled “House Republicans Try to Eliminate Public Education that Makes the American Dream Possible, Harms Women and Children”

  • Preliminary CEF funding table attached – CEF’s FY 2025 attached education funding table has blanks for the many programs where I cannot yet tell what the funding level is. The Subcommittee funding levels in the table come from the bill text, the Republican press release, or the Democratic press release. I will fill in the blanks when I have more information and share the updated table.

  • Summary and analysis: Huge cut to education – Education funding is below 2011 enacted level (see attached chart) – Like last year’s Republican bill in the House, this bill cuts education funding in two ways: it reduces funding – and in some cases provides no funding - below what programs received for FY 2024, and it also rescinds a total of $3.1 billion of already enacted funding. The rescissions include $2.6 billion of FY 2025 funding that was already appropriated in the FY 2024 bill as “advance funding” for Title II and Title I, and $516 million of other funding. The advance funding is considered in the “program level” for FY 2024 and was provided for the school year about to start; schools are counting on that funding to be made available on October 1 to be used for the upcoming school year. The other rescissions are $415 million from rehabilitation services, $25 million from the Institute of Education Sciences, and $76 million from the Nonrecurring Expenses Fund. The Republican press release does not count the rescissions in the FY 2025 total of $72 billion that it lists for ED. However, when you account for the rescissions, the bill’s impact on FY 2025 ED funding is a cut of $11 billion – a huge cut of 14% funding for education programs – cutting funding to $68.1 billion. The bill cuts ED funding to below what Congress enacted 14 years ago for FY 2011, and it is almost $28 billion below the 2011 level in inflation-adjusted terms (see attached chart). This huge cut is still smaller than the 28% cut proposed in last year’s House bill, and this year are a few programs that get small increases. The bill also has several education policy riders that restrict how funding can be used and that restrict funding going towards grantees or institutions that take certain actions or that fail to take certain actions

  • Programs eliminated (there are more than this list shows) – The Republican press release states that the bill eliminates “17 programs that do not fill full the core missions, tasks and functions of the Department…” I can account for half of the bill’s total cut to education funding from programs that are eliminated, and there are apparently more eliminations that aren’t enumerated in the bill text or press release. The eliminated programs include many that provide educator training.

  • Title II – Supporting effective instruction state grants ($2.19 billion, plus another $1.7 billion of advance funding that is rescinded)

  • English language acquisition ($890 million)

  • State assessments ($380 million)

  • Promise neighborhoods ($91 million)

  • Child care means parents in school ($75 million)

  • Teacher quality partnerships ($70 million)

  • Comprehensive centers ($50 million)

  • Hawkins centers of excellence ($15 million)

  • Congressional earmarks (House Republicans had said they would not include any in this bill) – ($202 million)
    

  • Programs with huge funding cuts –

  • Title I - The bill cuts Title I by $4.7 billion (25%). The Republican press release says the cut is because of “student test scores continuing to decline despite annual increases to Title I and a $190 billion investment in schools during the pandemic.” Part of the cut is almost $1 billion in advance funding that school districts were planning to use for the school year starting in a few months.

  • Teacher programs – Several programs are eliminated (see list above), while others have substantial cuts.

  • Campus-based aid – Both Work Study and Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants are cut in half, cutting a total of more than $1 billion in student aid.

  • Staffing at ED – Student aid administration is cut by 26%, and ED program management is cut by half, to $211 million. The program management account covers a significant part of the total staffing costs for most of ED’s programs. The bill freezes funding for the Office of Civil Rights.

  • Innovation and Improvement – The account is cut by $321 million (26.7%) but I can’t tell which programs are cut by how much.

  • Full-service Community Schools – cut by $75 million (50%)

   

  • Program with funding increases – most of the increases are very small. The Republican press release mentions that it increases funding to support students “with disabilities at schools like Gallaudet University.” Other increases are:

  • Special education state grants – up $30 million (0.2%)

  • Title IV-A – up $10 million (0.7%)

  • charter schools – up $10 million (2.3%)

  • Career and technical education state grants – up $10 million (0.7%)

  • Indian education – up $8 million (3.9%)

  • Impact Aid – up $5 million (0.3%)

  • Rural education – up $5 million (2.3%)

   

  Early childhood programs in the Department of Health and Human Services:

  • Head Start – up $25 million (0.2%)

  • Child Care and Development Block Grants – up $25 million  (0.3%)
    

  • Notable funding freezes – The bill freezes funding for many programs, including several large ones, such as the 21st Century Community Learning Centers afterschool program, and three student aid programs: Pell grants, where the maximum grant is frozen for a second year at the 2023 level of $7,395; TRIO; and GEAR-UP.
    
    

  • Next appropriations action – By the end of this week, the House plans to have debated four of the twelve FY 2025 appropriations bills on the floor, will have all the others marked up by the subcommittee, of which two have already been approved by the full Appropriations Committee so likely will come to the floor next. The Labor-HHS-Education bill is usually one of the more challenging to pass (the House never voted on its version last year, although it debated amendments on the floor but never called for a final vote). House Appropriations Committee chair Tom Cole (R-OK) has set an ambitious schedule, planning for the Committee to mark up this bill on July 10 and then for the House to debate it the last week of July. The Senate hasn’t posted a schedule or any of its allocations but seems poised to mark up three of its bills in July but has not made any announcements about its Labor-HHS-Education bill yet. Whenever the Senate produces its bill, it will be very different from this one.

• Lots of House Appropriations action the week of June 24 – While the Senate is in recess this week, the House plans to debate three fiscal year (FY) 2025 appropriations bills on the floor and to mark up the remaining five government funding bills in subcommittee, including the Labor-HHS-Education bill on Thursday, June 27, at 8 am ET. It won’t be a long markup since the Transportation-HUD Subcommittee then has its markup at 8:30 am, and some Representatives are members of both subcommittees. Traditionally, the subcommittee markup is only a series of opening statements with no amendments offered. We should get our first sense of education funding levels when the Committee posts the legislative text and press release early Wednesday morning at the webcast link above. I’ll update CEF’s education funding table as much as possible and share it and an analysis as soon as possible on Wednesday. Remember that we likely won’t be able to discern every program level until we see the Committee report, which is generally posted the day before the full Committee markup, which is planned for July 10. What we do know is that the bill’s overall funding is cut by about 10% below the current FY 2024 level, that not all programs will be cut by the same percentage, and that some programs will get increased funding, which means others will be cut by more than 10%, and that last year, this Subcommittee’s bill cut Department of Education spending by 28% (the final FY 2024 bill cut Education funding by only 0.2%). By the end of this week, the House plans to have all 12 government funding bills marked up by the Appropriations subcommittees and 4 of the bills debated (and passed) on the House floor. The schedule for House appropriations actions is below, with links to the bill text and Committee reports that are already available.