New House speaker, same old chaos. Last week, Speaker Johnson pulled two extreme appropriations bills from the floor—because they don’t have the votes—while continuing to refuse to work in a bipartisan manner based on the debt ceiling law passed earlier this year.
One of those bills expanded the District of Columbia voucher program—which impacts fewer than 2,000 private-school students—by cutting nearly $9 million from the public schools that educate 50,000 students. Even more galling, the House GOP is simultaneously pushing to decimate Title I with an 80 percent cut in funding.
The House GOP’s FY2024 education funding bill—still scheduled to come to the floor this week—slashes education funding to the lowest level ever as a share of GDP. The Title I cuts alone would cause 224,000 teacher jobs to be lost, leading to bigger classes and less individual attention for students—the opposite of what is needed. Click for a breakdown by state or congressional district.
The bill would also eliminate more than 50,000 Head Start slots, Title II grants to recruit and retain educators, cripple programs for English learners, and put higher education further out of reach for low-income students.
Meanwhile this week, NEA Vice President Princess Moss and Calvert Association of Education Support Professionals President Stacy Tayman participated in a briefing on the Paraprofessionals and Education Support Staff Bill of Rights (S. Res. 450). Introduced by Sens. Ed Markey (D-MA) Bernie Sanders (I-VT), and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), the resolution calls for living wages, good benefits, and fair working conditions for our nation’s nearly 3 million education support professionals.
Wasting yet another week, the House GOP again failed to agree on a strategy or consider a bill to keep the government open when funding runs out Nov. 17. In response to questions about how a shutdown will be avoided, Speaker Mike Johnson said, “Trust us.” The Senate is likely to move its own plan early this week.
In solidarity,
Marc Egan
Government Relations Director
National Education Association
CHEER: Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) offered an amendment to the House Financial Services and General Government Appropriations bill (H.R. 4664) that would prevent funding the failed District of Columbia voucher program at the expense of the public schools that educate the overwhelming majority of students in our nation’s capital.
CHEER: Reps. Don Bacon (R-NE) and Jeff Jackson (D-NC) introduced the bipartisan Success for Military Connected Students Act (H.R. 6287) to continue current student-to-teacher ratios in schools operated by the Department of Defense Education Authority.
