“There is nothing in the act suggesting Congress intended to discriminate between children based on public or nonpublic school attendance, as you seem to do,' she says. 'The virus affects everyone.”
“I will not play political agenda games with COVID relief funds. Our most at-risk students depend on this commitment,” she tweeted.
While private schools, responsible for educating around 5.7 million of the nation’s children, are thought to be brimming with finances, they claim that the pandemic has left them in crisis due to a decrease in enrollment and tuition revenues. According to DeVos’ letter, “a growing list of nonpublic schools have announced they will not be able to reopen, and these school closures are concentrated in low-income and middle-class communities.
“I don’t understand why we have to pick winners and losers when everything we’re asking for is targeted at helping children and families,” Jennifer Daniels, the associate director for public policy for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, in support of DeVos. Federal education law already requires school districts to use funding intended for their poorest students to provide “equitable services,” such as tutoring and transportation — not only for low-income public students, but private school students within their districts as well. However, with DeVos’ guidance, she would give private schools even more of a financial boost.
For decades DeVos has been an advocate of funneling public dollars into the private school sector, and admitted during a radio interview last week, reported by, that she was using the current health pandemic to do so. During the interview DeVos was asked by Roman Catholic archbishop of New York, Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, if she was using “this particular crisis to ensure that justice is finally done to our kids and the parents who choose to send them to faith-based schools.
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