COVID 19: Going Back to School Safely, Senate hearing transcript (June 10, 2020), GovInfo CHRG-116shrg45221, PDF
Summary
This is the GovInfo PDF of a Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions hearing convened June 10, 2020, on going back to school safely during COVID-19, chaired by Lamar Alexander. Witnesses were Penny Schwinn, Tennessee Commissioner of Education; Matthew Blomstedt, Nebraska Commissioner of Education; Susana Cordova, Superintendent of Denver Public Schools; and John B. King Jr. of The Education Trust. Alexander said Congress had already appropriated $13.5 billion, with $216 million going to Tennessee for K through 12, and that the states had received $150 billion; the chairman asked how much of that could pay for reopening. The hearing record includes prepared statements from the American Federation of Teachers, the National Education Association and the National Association of School Nurses, and written answers to senators' questions.
Summary drafted by a model from the document's text below and checked by script against that text before publication. It is a navigation aid, not a reading of what the document proves. Where AI is used
Full text
S. HRG. 116–551
COVID–19: GOING BACK TO SCHOOL SAFELY
HEARING
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON HEALTH, EDUCATION,
LABOR, AND PENSIONS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
ON
EXAMINING COVID-19, FOCUSING ON GOING BACK TO SCHOOL SAFELY
JUNE 10, 2020
Printed for the use of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions
(
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.govinfo.gov
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
45–221 PDF WASHINGTON : 2022
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COMMITTEE ON HEALTH, EDUCATION, LABOR, AND PENSIONS
LAMAR ALEXANDER, Tennessee, Chairman
MICHAEL B. ENZI, Wyoming PATTY MURRAY, Washington, Ranking
RICHARD BURR, North Carolina Member
RAND PAUL, Kentucky BERNARD SANDERS (I), Vermont
SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine ROBERT P. CASEY, JR., Pennsylvania
BILL CASSIDY, M.D., Louisiana TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin
PAT ROBERTS, Kansas CHRISTOPHER S. MURPHY, Connecticut
LISA MURKOWSKI, Alaska ELIZABETH WARREN, Massachusetts
TIM SCOTT, South Carolina TIM KAINE, Virginia
MITT ROMNEY, Utah MAGGIE HASSAN, New Hampshire
MIKE BRAUN, Indiana TINA SMITH, Minnesota
KELLY LOEFFLER, Georgia DOUG JONES, Alabama
JACKY ROSEN, Nevada
DAVID P. CLEARY, Republican Staff Director
LINDSEY WARD SEIDMAN, Republican Deputy Staff Director
EVAN SCHATZ, Minority Staff Director
JOHN RIGHTER, Minority Deputy Staff Director
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C O N T E N T S
STATEMENTS
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 10, 2020
Page
COMMITTEE MEMBERS
Alexander, Hon. Lamar, Chairman, Committee on Health, Education, Labor,
and Pensions, Opening statement ...................................................................... 1
Murray, Hon. Patty, Ranking Member, a U.S. Senator from the State of
Washington, Opening statement ......................................................................... 4
WITNESSES
Schwinn, Penny, Commissioner of Education, Tennessee Department of Edu-
cation, Nashville, TN ........................................................................................... 7
Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 9
Summary statement ......................................................................................... 15
Blomstedt, Matthew, Commissioner of Education, Nebraska Department of
Education, Lincoln, NE ........................................................................................ 15
Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 17
Cordova, Susana, Superintendent, Denver Public Schools, Denver, CO ............ 23
Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 25
Summary statement ......................................................................................... 28
King, Hon. John B. Jr., President and CEO, The Education Trust, Wash-
ington, DC ............................................................................................................. 29
Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 30
Summary statement ......................................................................................... 35
ADDITIONAL MATERIAL
Statements, articles, publications, letters, etc.
American Federation of Teachers, Prepared Statement ............................... 57
National Education Association, Prepared Statement .................................. 71
National Association of School Nurses, Prepared Statement ....................... 72
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
Response by Penny Schwinn to questions of:
Senator Scott ..................................................................................................... 74
Senator Murkowski .......................................................................................... 75
Senator Sanders ............................................................................................... 75
Senator Warren ................................................................................................ 76
Response by Matthew Blomstedt to questions of:
Senator Scott ..................................................................................................... 78
Senator Murkowski .......................................................................................... 78
Senator Warren ................................................................................................ 79
Senator Sanders ............................................................................................... 81
Response by John B. King, Jr. to questions of:
Senator Murkowski .......................................................................................... 82
Senator Sanders ............................................................................................... 82
Senator Warren ................................................................................................ 84
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COVID–19: GOING BACK TO SCHOOL SAFELY
Wednesday, June 10, 2020
U.S. SENATE,
COMMITTEE ON HEALTH, EDUCATION, LABOR, AND PENSIONS,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m., in room SD–
430, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Lamar Alexander,
Chairman of the Committee, presiding.
Present: Senators Alexander [presiding], Enzi, Cassidy, Mur-
kowski, Scott, Braun, Loeffler, Murray, Casey, Baldwin, Murphy,
Warren, Hassan, Smith, Jones, and Rosen.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR ALEXANDER
The CHAIRMAN. Good morning. The Committee on Health, Edu-
cation, Labor, and Pensions will please come to order. This may be
a little bit of a historic milestone for our Committee’s work. Every
single one of us are remote today. This is a completely virtual hear-
ing. We had a little technical difficulty with the cameras in the
hearing room last night so there are no Senators in the hearing
room. Our witnesses are in their hometowns and we are in our of-
fices and other places like that. Actually, that is all that has
changed. We will all be able to participate. We will all be able to
see each other.
The media will be able to follow what we do and so will the peo-
ple who by and large tuned in to our website. Just a few adminis-
trative matters to get started. As I just explained, everyone can
tune in to www.help.senate.gov. That is our website. And I am
grateful to everyone for working late into the night to try to make
sure that we were all together this morning. Senator Murray and
I will each have an opening statement and then we will turn to our
witnesses. We thank you very much for being with us today. We
will ask you each to summarize your comments in about 5 minutes,
which will leave more time for the Senators to ask questions.
I will ask each Senator in rank and seniority, going back and
forth, Republican and Democrat, until we finish. On May 28, on the
Memphis Commercial Appeal, there was a story about schools plan-
ning for the 2021 school year and included a bittersweet image.
There was a young girl reaching her hand out to touch her teacher
who is standing in line to welcome students to the first day of
school in 2019. As the Commercial Appeal reporter wrote, ‘‘the first
day of school in August 2019 would flunk 2020’s course on social
distancing.’’ Today’s hearing is about how we reopen schools safely
this fall and that means teachers welcoming students back without
hugs or high fives, I am afraid.
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The opening of schools in 2020 is not going to look like 2019. But
today’s witnesses will talk about their work to help 56 million stu-
dents from kindergarten to 12th grade go back to the 100,000 pub-
lic schools and 34,000 private schools and to go back in the fall as
safely as possible. In doing so, they will help our country take its
surest step toward normalcy.
Our witnesses today are Dr. Penny Schwinn, Commissioner of
Education for Tennessee Department of Education, Dr. Matthew
Blomstedt who is the Commissioner of Education of Nebraska and
partially he is the President-elect of all the State Chiefs School Of-
ficers, Ms. Susana Cordova, Superintendent of the Denver Public
Schools, and John King, President and CEO of The Education
Trust. John is very familiar to us because he was the United States
Secretary of Education for President Obama. The question for Gov-
ernors, school districts, teachers and parents is not whether schools
should open but how to do it safely. Any teacher can explain the
risk of emotional, intellectual and social damage if a child misses
a school year. Schools need to assess how this year’s disruption has
affected our children and how we get learning back on track.
At our hearing last week on the reopening of colleges, we heard
about a variety of strategies that colleges are using to help keep
campuses safe, including keeping class sizes small so students can
stay six feet apart, creating campus-wide policies for wearing
masks, and rigorous hygiene improvements.
As with colleges, k–12 school plans will vary for each community
and will also depend on the prevalence of the virus in the fall in
the various communities. Excuse me just a minute. I have got my
pages out of order. The goals for schools working to reopen are fun-
damentally the same as the colleges we heard from last week.
Some mentioned social distancing, aggressive hygiene, face masks
where appropriate, systems for testing and contact tracing.
In order to accomplish those goals, it is clear that school boards,
superintendents and principals need to be focused on the following.
Creating an environment where students and teachers can socially
distance. Making modifications to the school year calendar and
daily schedule. Preparing to integrate more distance learning. Re-
structuring classrooms and extracurricular activities. Planning how
to provide meal services safely. Making sure the school has enough
protective equipment such as gloves and masks. Protecting the stu-
dents and adults in school buildings who are at a higher risk. To
accomplish this, schools will also need to create a strategy for test-
ing and tracing students who may have been exposed.
My advice is you want your school to be a part of your state’s
monthly plan for testing needs. The availability of widespread test-
ing will allow schools to identify teachers and students who have
the virus or have been exposed to it and trace them and their con-
tacts. Widespread testing not only helps contain the virus, it builds
confidence that the schools are safe. Fortunately, the U.S. Assist-
ant Secretary for Health, Admiral Brett Giroir, told our Committee
there will be 40 to 50 million tests available per month by Sep-
tember. That is 4 to 5 times the number of today’s number of to-
day’s tests.
Today’s number in the United States is twice as many as any
other country. And Dr. Francis Collins, who once led the Human
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Genome Project and now leads the National Institutes of Health,
leads the competitive Shark Tank enterprise at the NIH to discover
new ways to conduct tens of millions of quick and accurate and in-
expensive diagnostic tests. Schools’ COVID–19 plans should last for
at least a year. The Government is pursuing vaccines at what it
calls warp speed, faster than we have ever done that before, but
no one expects a vaccine this August. In the second half of the
school year, schools should be better able to provide more tests,
more treatments, better contact tracing and hopefully, we should
begin to have vaccines. It will likely be the Fall of 2021 though be-
fore we begin to approach normal.
There are several reasons schools have an advantage in pro-
viding a safe environment for students and faculty. The first reason
is that younger people have been less hurt by COVID–19 than
older people, although Dr. Anthony Fauci told our Committee that
we should be careful about cavalierly assuming that young people
are not at some risk. Second, schools are generally small commu-
nities that are closely supervised and monitored.
Third, outbreaks can be traced. If a child becomes sick, that
child’s classmates can be tested. And fourth, individual schools can
close to control the spread of the virus while other schools are able
to remain open. Schools are not unfamiliar with outbreaks of flu,
for example, or other illnesses that have resulted in the temporary
closure of individual schools while other schools continue to be
open. But school environments pose challenges as well. First, there
is not much extra space in our elementary and secondary schools
are there is on most college campuses. That makes social
distancing more difficult. Second, school administrators face more
rigid rules as a result of state and local and union rules and regu-
lations. So making changes to the academic calendar and the class
size and the school schedules will be more difficult.
Third, creating a mask-wearing culture will be harder specially
with the youngest children. Seeing facial expressions is also impor-
tant for young children. They learn to socialize and self-regulate,
so obscuring faces with masks prohibits some learning for early ele-
mentary school-aged children. Fourth, rigorous hygiene isn’t always
easy with children. Fifth, children go home at night, potentially ex-
posing older adults. And sixth, even systematic testing of 50 mil-
lion children, or 55 million children, is a lot of tests.
Today 9 out of 10 families with children have at least one parent
employed. And among married parents, families with children, two-
thirds had both parents employed, according to the Bureau of
Labor Statistics. And many children live in environments where
the school is the safest place they will be in all day.
It is also the place where almost 30 million students receive a
school lunch. More than 70 percent of those students qualify for
free or reduced-priced meals. Administrators have a responsibility
to make our schools among the safest small communities in our
country this fall. And in doing so, it will help our country move
back toward normalcy.
Senator Murray.
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OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR MURRAY
Senator MURRAY. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman,
and I really appreciate all of our witnesses being with us today as
well. And as always, thank you to our Committee staff who worked
really, especially extra hard today to make this hearing possible so
we could be safe and socially distant. Before we begin I just want
to say again how inspired I am by the young people protesting
against police brutality and systemic racism nationwide. They are
calling for change and accountability and justice, and I hope their
urgency and resolve will be an example to all of us here in Con-
gress.
Now, we are here today to discuss something else this country
owes all young people and children and that is a quality of public
education even in the middle of a global pandemic. COVID–19 has
upended schools in ways that are truly unprecedented, creating
chaos for educators and support staff, parents, and of course our
students. As this crisis was first hitting my home State of Wash-
ington, I got a text from my daughter telling me the North Shore
School District in Washington State had closed because of the
Coronavirus outbreak.
My daughter didn’t know what to do and what that meant. Who
was going to take care of her kids when she was still working or
what that meant for their learning. And even as a United States
Senator, I didn’t have any answers for her and it wasn’t long before
nearly every school district, every educator, every parent, and
every student in this country had many of the same questions. The
challenges schools and families across this country have had to
overcome this past school year were unimaginable a matter of
months ago. Schools and school districts are now facing some of the
biggest cuts to state and local revenue that we have seen in a long
time while facing increased costs as a result of this pandemic. And
it is especially important to recognize that while this hasn’t been
easy for anyone, school districts, communities, and families with
more resources have had more capacity to adapt than those who
have less.
As we talk about ways to reopen our schools safely for students
and educators and school staff, our response must not only ensure
that public health and science is driving decisionmaking but also
ensure every child can access a high quality public education dur-
ing this pandemic whether in person or online. We know COVID–
19 is having a disproportionate impact on the health of Black com-
munities and communities of color, and research is already show-
ing how it has exasperated the inequities that existed in our edu-
cation system before this pandemic stroke.
Data projects that Black students could lose over 10 months of
learning, Latino students could lose over 9 months of learning com-
pared to white students who are projected to lose 6 months of
learning. Because of this, estimates show achievement gaps could
grow by 15 to 20 percent in this country. We can’t let COVID–19
continue to make things worse when it comes to the education of
students of color and the same goes for students from families with
low incomes, LGBTQI students, students experiencing homeless-
ness, students in foster care, English learners, migrant students,
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students with disabilities. So when it comes to reopening building
safely, as I have said before and cannot say enough, schools and
school districts must follow the advice of local public health officials
and let science drive decisionmaking.
At a minimum, public health experts say before reopening class-
rooms, states should be able to provide widespread testing and con-
tact tracing to follow-up in every single case of the virus. The Fed-
eral Government should also start planning now for the distribu-
tion of a safe and effective vaccine, which will be critical for schools
ultimately returning to normal. But until we have a safe and effec-
tive vaccine, I am glad to see so many states and school leaders en-
gaged in detailed scenario planning. Because before families send
their children back to the classrooms, educators return to teach,
they need to know schools have thought through every possible sce-
nario.
Given how much we don’t know about how children transmit this
disease, we need to look at it, how safe it is for medically vulner-
able parents and guardians to send their kids back to school. There
are countless questions schools have to answer before they can
physically open safely. But school districts and schools can’t do this
alone. They need in-depth, actionable guidance from the Federal
Government on best practices to ensure the safety of students, edu-
cators, school staff and the broader community. They need addi-
tional resources to measure and address learning loss among their
students, to implement public health protocols to protect students
and staff, and to outset dramatic declines in state and local rev-
enue.
But whether schools are able to open physically, operate vir-
tually, or use a hybrid of both, we have to ensure school districts
deliver quality and equitable educational, social, emotional and
health, including mental health services to students. And we have
to address the ways this virus has further exacerbated inequities
that long existed within our education system. I recently heard
from a mom and Yakima Washington who told me that her chil-
dren are sharing one iPhone to learn and she is not even sure if
she is going to be able to afford that phone bill and that is just one
small example of this digital divide.
For school districts that are under-resourced in areas without
Internet access, distance learning may just consists of a few links
to online material. For the over 1.5 million students experiencing
homelessness across the country, finding transportation to pick up
school meals is not always an option. And for students across the
country experiencing trauma and stress to say the least from this
pandemic or reckoning with centuries-long racism, it has never
been more important to ensure that every child has access to men-
tal health and trauma services and supports, particularly students
from communities bearing the brunt of this virus and those af-
fected by police brutality and systemic racism. And when it comes
to delivering these services and supports, we have to do better be-
cause if we don’t, the achievement gap that we strived so hard to
close will undoubtedly widen and we can’t let that happen.
To address all of these problems, we need a massive investment
in our schools right now. The American Federation of teachers has
estimated that schools will need billions more on top of what we
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already know is needed for basic things like cleaning supplies and
PPE. And we also know thanks to the work of the National Edu-
cation Association, without a significant investment, the US could
lose approximately 1.9 million education jobs. We could have begun
negotiations on this and countless other COVID–19 priorities
weeks ago and I am extremely frustrated that has not happened
yet, and I am going to continue to push for action.
I also want to note that while I am glad we have the opportunity
to hear from these witnesses today, we do need to hear from Sec-
retary of Education Betsy DeVos, especially about her efforts to
push her privatization agenda in the K–12 system and her flawed
interpretation of the equitable services provision in the CARES
Act. As we all know, K–12 public schools are truly the bedrock of
our communities.
Each of us here and at the U.S. Department of Education need
to be all in on ensuring schools have the resources and support to
rise to the massive challenge in front of them. I know I am and
I look forward to that those conversations today. And Mr. Chair-
man, I would like to ask consent to include in the hearing record
a plan from the American Federation of Teachers for safely reopen-
ing our schools and a letter from the National Education Associa-
tion about state and local budget cuts and the need for additional
resources from the Federal Government to meet our students’
needs. Thank you.
The CHAIRMAN. So ordered.
[The following information can be found on pages 57 and 71 in
Additional Material:]
The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Senator Murray, for your opening
statement. I am now pleased to welcome our witnesses to today’s
hearing focused on getting back to school safely. First, Dr. Penny
Schwinn, the Tennessee Commissioner of Education. Under the
leadership of Dr. Schwinn, the Tennessee Department of Education
has developed a number of resources for use by local districts, in-
cluding school closure toolkits, family friendly instructional guides
for programming on PBS, and a school meal website for families.
Dr. Schwinn will be convening a COVID–19 child well-being task
force to support local leaders in communities. Our second witness
is Dr. Matthew Blomstedt, Nebraska Commissioner of Education.
He has also been chosen to serve as President-elect of the Board
of Directors on the Council of Chief State School Officers. Under
his direction, Nebraska Department of Education has created a
website, launchne.com. It suggests several options for districts to
consider for ensuring schools open safety this fall.
The third witness is Ms. Susana Cordova, Superintendent of
Denver Public Schools. Under the leadership of Superintendent
Cordova, Denver public schools have announced that they expect to
begin on time in August and has been exploring a variety of op-
tions for safely bringing students back to school. And I will now
turn to Senator Murray to introduce our fourth witness.
Senator MURRAY. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. Today we are
lucky enough to have Hon. John King, former Secretary of Edu-
cation under President Barack Obama as a witness. During Dr.
King’s tenure, I had the pleasure of working closely with him to
implement the Every Student Succeeds Act. Dr. King has been a
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steadfast champion for students, public education, and giving every
child the opportunity they deserve, and I am really glad we have
the chance to hear from him today.
Before becoming Secretary of Education, Mr. King served on the
Department of Education’s Equity and Excellence Commission as
Acting Deputy Secretary of Education and as the New York State
Education Commissioner. He began his career as a high school so-
cial studies teacher and middle school principal.
Currently, Mr. King is the President and CEO of the Education
Trust. That is a national nonprofit that uses research and advocacy
to identify and close opportunity and achievement gaps from pre-
school through college. Mr. King holds a Bachelor of Arts from Har-
vard University, a JD from Yale Law, and M.A. in teaching, and
a Doctorate in education from the Teachers College and Columbia
University. His personal life story is a testament to the power of
public education and the importance of caring educators in a stu-
dent’s life. So, thank you so much, Dr. King, for being here and I
look forward to your testimony.
The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Senator Murray, and welcome again,
Dr. King. Now we will hear from our witnesses. We ask each of
them to summarize their testimony in about 5 minutes, which will
leave more time for questions from Senators. Let is begin with Dr.
Schwinn.
STATEMENT OF PENNY SCHWINN, COMMISSIONER OF EDU-
CATION, TENNESSEE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION, NASH-
VILLE, TN
Ms. SCHWINN. Good morning, Chairman Alexander, Ranking
Member Murray, and Members of the HELP Committee. Thank
you for inviting me to testify at today’s hearing. This has been an
unbelievable period of time in Tennessee for our students and fami-
lies. As educators and students spent a spring navigating learning,
we must now consider the challenges ahead with reopening school.
To be clear, this is complicated.
Any decision we make has significant costs. No easy answers or
one-size-fits-all solutions. What might be best for one is not for the
other. In our state, we have a metro region that experienced sig-
nificant spread of the virus, and we also have a county with its
first positive case last week. So as we look ahead to school reopen-
ing, I would like to share the major challenges we are facing in
Tennessee and nationwide, and some of the ways we plan to ad-
dress them. One, health and safety of our school communities. Two,
bridging the digital divide. And three, high quality academics and
resources.
First, school reopening must put the health and safety of our
children, their teachers, and our communities front of mind. Under
Governor Lee’s leadership, Tennessee has been a national leader
when it comes to testing for COVID and we will work to coordinate
testing efforts with districts and ensure that any school personnel
or any families interested in testing have the opportunity to do so.
To support districts, the Department will work with agency part-
ners to provide PPE and no-touch thermometers, along with re-
sources to help with planning how to implement safe and healthy
practices in our schools. But kids are kids and we need realistic so-
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lutions for areas like nutrition, classroom supports and procedures,
and transportation.
The Department is committed to providing resources and work-
ing with teachers and kids. There are almost 1 million students in
public schools in the State of Tennessee, two of them are mine, and
we have a responsibility to support all of them as if they were our
own. We made promises to families every day that their children
will be safe in our care and have access to a high-quality education.
We must do everything we can to keep that promise.
Second, we must address the digital divide for teachers and stu-
dents. Districts need 21st century technology solutions, access to
devices, access to broadband, access to professional development for
educators. Our own Governor often references not having Internet
on his farm. That is a reality that is all too true for many of our
students and their teachers but it is especially true for our rural
community, our most vulnerable populations, and those who re-
quired distance teaching and learning from a health perspective.
The Department is devoting significant CARES Act funding to
support greater access to technology because this is no longer a
nice thing to have. For many, it is a necessity for a free and appro-
priate public education. Finally, we must accelerate a child-cen-
tered strategy rooted in our commitment to high quality academic
opportunities for every student. We must stay committed to identi-
fying and addressing any gaps that we see in student achievement.
We know the impact of lost learning, especially for children who
tend to experience the greatest gaps. We must also be especially fo-
cused on literacy for our youngest student, knowing that reading
proficiency is one of the most important indicators for future suc-
cess. And literacy instruction at a distance is incredibly hard to do.
Ask any kindergarten teacher.
The Department recently released the reopening framework and
will continue to release over 20 additional tool kits for districts and
educators to use. Our students and our teachers must be given the
resources and supports they need. It cannot just be about helping
them get through. It must be about helping them thrive. As a Com-
missioner and a mom to three very young children, I have been in-
spired every day, day after day, by the way that our teachers and
our schools have come together in Tennessee, whether it is working
with teachers to problem-solve how to setup socially distanced
classrooms in elementary schools.
We are talking to superintendents about high schoolers con-
tinuing to get access to dual credit and work-based learning oppor-
tunities. Tennessee has shown our collective commitment for oppor-
tunities for kids and I realize that all of these are not small things
but they matter deeply to us because they matter for kids. So, I
wish these were clear-cut decisions, but they are not. The chal-
lenges that we face are large. We must keep people safe and we
must keep kids educated, and our job and our responsibility is fig-
uring out how to do that well.
We are deeply appreciative of the CARES funding to help jump-
start the necessary needs that we have in our schools and districts
across the state. And as we head into next year, I hope we are all
able to appreciate what has been done, what is in front of us now,
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and what still lies ahead. And in these challenges I see opportuni-
ties.
Our kids, my own included, need us to meet those challenges
head-on with optimism and courage. Our kids are counting on us.
Thank you so much, and I look forward to your questions later in
the hearing.
[The prepared statement of Penny Schwinn follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF PENNY SCHWINN
Good morning, Chairman Alexander, Ranking Member Murray and Members of
the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. Thank you for inviting me
to testify at today’s hearing, ‘‘COVID–19: Going Back to School Safely.’’ I very much
appreciate the opportunity to share Tennessee’s story, and incredible work that con-
tinues to be done by our districts, educators, and department of education on behalf
of our students.
As commissioner at the Tennessee Department of Education, I feel strongly that
our agency must work to support high-quality educational opportunities for the
nearly one million students in our care. While this is true every day, it is even more
important to set a clear focus on this work now, so that we can ensure no child is
more disadvantaged by the current COVID–19 pandemic and that our schools and
districts are supported moving into and throughout next year and beyond. Although
I have the privilege of serving as commissioner, I am also a mother of three chil-
dren, with one whose adoption was finalized last week. I have seen first-hand the
impact of this pandemic at the classroom level, specifically for my school age daugh-
ter’s learning and for her teacher in our local public school system. Yet I also know
that even with the challenges we face, we must collectively seize opportunities to
excel.
To understand where we are headed, we must look back to when this pandemic
began, and how our state has collaborated and come together along the way to en-
sure our children are safe, healthy, and like every year, ready to face the challenges
and seize the opportunities of a new school year.
On March 16, 2020, Governor Bill Lee urged public school districts in Tennessee
to close to protect the health and well-being of Tennessee students, teachers, and
communities across the state. On April 15th, Governor Lee recommended extending
public school closures through the end of the school year. In each instance, all pub-
lic-school districts in Tennessee followed the Governor’s recommendation.
This launched an unprecedented need for COVID response work for Tennessee
schools, districts, and the State Department of Education.
Prioritizing both the health and safety of students as well as academic instruc-
tion, the Tennessee Department of Education team responded swiftly and began
working diligently to communicate with districts and issue guidance to help them
make plans and decisions to ensure a continuation of academic instruction as well
as critical meal and other services for students during times of school closure. Cen-
tral to this work has been the department’s engagement with stakeholders, specifi-
cally with school superintendents, educators, and policymakers to seek input and
feedback both to inform the response and to help prioritize urgent needs of districts,
schools, educators, and students during a public health crisis. At the department,
we knew we needed—and will continue to need—this input to formulate the most
effective ways to help school districts address student, family, and educator needs
resulting from the coronavirus pandemic.
On March 16th, the department began hosting three times per week conference
calls for superintendents, which continue to this day. These regular conference calls
have fostered close coordination with superintendents across the state and been a
valuable tool for the department to provide updates, answer questions, and solicit
feedback.
The department began sharing health and safety resources developed by the U.S.
Centers for Disease Control and the Tennessee Department of Health, and devel-
oping a series of guidance and toolkits focused on the specific needs, challenges, and
decisionmaking that school and school district leaders had to address, including:
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Guidance Documents
• Cleaning Guidance • Handwashing Best Practices.
• Coronavirus: A Guide for Schools • Infection Control Tips for School Buses.
• Emergency Plans & Procedures for Schools • Instruction, Assessment, and Accountability.
• Federal Programs and Funding • Nutrition.
• Guidelines for Health Care in a School Setting • Special Populations.
• Staffing, Educators, and EPP Resources.
School Closure Toolkits
• Academics and Instruction • Nutrition.
• Early Childhood • Safety and Operations.
• Finance • School-administered Before/ After Care Programs.
• Fine Arts • Special Populations.
• Health and Wellness • Staffing.
• IT and Distance Learning .
The department also developed school closure toolkits for families, made available
in English and Spanish, to assist families in identifying resources and making plans
to support the academic and nonacademic needs of children while out of school. Uti-
lization of these resources was robust, with over 250,000 views of our COVID19
website, but the needed response to address the impacts of coronavirus went far be-
yond the capacity of many districts in Tennessee, especially those that are small or
rural.
With the passage of time and conversations moving past the immediate response
to COVID–19 and the resulting school building closures, we began to sense how the
pandemic is elevating known gaps and required even more acceleration of a child-
centered strategy.
To support districts and schools as they were navigating an unprecedented chal-
lenge, the department began work to develop partnerships that provide re-
sources and supports for students and educators.
The department brokered several critical partnerships which, in true Volunteer
State spirit, led to a variety of free, optional resources to support educators,
principals, families, and students across the state.
These include:
• Partnership with all 6 Tennessee PBS stations to deliver up to 30 hours
per week of daily academic instruction and educational content to first
through eighth grade students during times of school closure. Developed
by the department in collaboration with Tennessee teachers, three hun-
dred and 20 lessons on math and English language arts were broadcasted
statewide. These videos are also posted on the department’s YouTube
page where they have received over 77,000 views. Accompanying lesson
plans for educators and student work packets are available on the depart-
ment’s website.
• Partnership with the University of Tennessee’s Center for Educational
Leadership to support principals at no cost as they lead their staff and
schools in addressing student needs. The Tennessee Principal Profes-
sional Learning Series leverages the intellectual resources of the uni-
versity, as well as other external expertise, to address the most pressing
problems of practice facing school principals. As of June 6th, more than
500 principals representing 82 of Tennessee’s 95 counties have completed
this training.
• Partnership with Trevecca Nazarene University to offer free profes-
sional development for Tennessee teachers to help them prepare for
digital teaching and learning. As of June 6th, over 14,000 Tennessee
principals have participated in this training.
• Partnership with the ReadyRosie early education platform to provide
Tennessee families with free and easy access to critical early lit-
eracy lessons. Around 2 minutes long in both English and Spanish, the
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video ‘‘moments’’ feature real families demonstrating instructional activi-
ties that parents can then replicate with their own children and are root-
ed in learning goals for children on topics such as literacy, early math,
health and well-being.
• Partnership with Hoonuit to provide families with the most up-to-date
information on meal pick-up locations closest to them through
SchoolMealFinder.com. Hoonuit utilizes an interactive map to allow users
to search by city, zip code, and address to locate the nearest food pick-
up site.
• Partnership with the Tennessee STEM Innovation Network (TSIN) to de-
velop the STE(A)M Resource Hub to provide 3 weekly challenges to pro-
mote critical thinking and career exploration that can all be done
in the home. The challenges are ideal for students grades 3–12, but
younger students can also participate with parental assistance.
While we know these partnerships and the resulting resources helped to
fill some gaps that emerged following school building closures, more sig-
nificant challenges within our field have become apparent. In some cases,
there are new challenges that we must face together. In other cases, they are chal-
lenges that have been brought to the forefront of the public consciousness and de-
mand to be addressed.
Achievement Gaps: We are incredibly proud that Tennessee was the fast-
est improving state from 2011–2015. Still, achievement gaps have not
closed and school building closures will likely serve to widen those gaps fur-
ther. This is not a new challenge, but the pandemic has served to poign-
antly highlight existing gaps in student achievement and opportunity. As
educators and students navigate a new distance learning environment,
there is a need for innovative resources to support learning.
Rural Communities: School building closures have continued to highlight
the disparity related to connectivity and broadband, access to more commu-
nity resources, and opportunities to raise and use local funds in support of
public schools in our rural communities.
Early Literacy: In Tennessee, just over 33 percent of 3d graders and 27
percent of 8th graders are reading proficiently. Reading proficiency in 3d
grade is one of the most important indicators for future success and must
continue to be an area of focus. School building closures will likely exacer-
bate this challenge, especially for children in our youngest grades.
Mental Health: The pandemic has highlighted the significant challenges
that districts, schools, and educators face related to student mental health
and behavioral needs. School building closures have brought this conversa-
tion to the forefront as children and families struggle with the anxieties as-
sociated with the pandemic, and in some cases additional familial struggles
that would normally be identified and addressed earlier by schools.
We know for certain that our education community will work to support our stu-
dents. By working collaboratively with educators and district leaders, investing in
high-quality materials and supporting the implementation of best practices, we will
continue to accelerate the work that moves our field forward. We must invest in
both resources and people.
While there are some policy conversations that need to take place to address the
impacts of the pandemic, we have also seen that educators will step-up to fill
the space.
However, merely stating the expectations does not mean people can meet them.
We have seen that schools and districts are rapidly trying to pivot to address the
current needs, with minimal time for development or meaningful support. We must
create opportunities to provide resources and professional development opportunities
to our educators and system leads.
To be clear, this is complicated. Any decision we make has significant costs and
there are no easy answers. There is no one-size fits all solution for a state as region-
ally varied as Tennessee. This is why the role of the state education agency is so
important—it is the critical link between policy and practice. It considers the broad-
er landscape of policy decisions and then works to determine how to make those ap-
plicable and real for practitioners that are making important school reopening deci-
sions for their local communities.
Given that, as we plan for school reopening this fall, we must ask our-
selves: What is in the best interest of students and staff, as we balance the
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needs of community health with the needs of children to have access to
strong educational opportunities, families to financially support them-
selves, and critical services to be delivered to students?
School reopening must put the health and safety of our children, their
teachers, and our communities front of mind.
Tennessee has been a national leader when it comes to testing for COVID–19. Al-
ready, 7.3 percent of Tennesseans have been tested, with sites available across the
state. Tennessee ranks in the top 12 states for testing per capita and in low-
est percentage of positive cases. The department of education will continue to
work closely with Governor Bill Lee’s COVID–19 Unified Command group 1 and the
Tennessee Department of Health to coordinate testing efforts with districts and en-
sure that any school personnel or any families interested in testing have the oppor-
tunity to do so.
Further, in close partnership with Tennessee Emergency Management Agency
(TEMA) and Unified Command, the department will be able to provide Personal
Protective Equipment (PPE) like masks and no-touch thermometers to our districts
at no cost to utilize if and how they choose. The department is coordinating efforts
geared toward reducing some of the financial burden associated with health and so-
cial distancing recommendations.
Considering that and the recent guidance from the U.S. Centers of Disease Con-
trol, the department will continue to offer a suite of resources to districts. In the
first weeks of school, we are encouraging districts to monitor key statistics to man-
age the success of reopening. Those include: availability and use of PPE; reported
virus cases and spread statistics in the school, district, and community; frequency
of disinfection of materials and shared areas; quarantine/illness space needed vs.
available; physical and virtual attendance of staff and students; and other metrics
comparable to prior years (ex. counseling, staffing, nutrition, etc.).
We have also identified significant operational needs that may exist in our dis-
tricts, which cover a range of topics, including:
• Procurement of disinfecting and personal hygiene supplies
• Classroom reconfiguration to maximize the ability of students and staff
while socially distancing from one another
• Cohorting consistent small groups of students for recreation and eating
• Elimination of assembly and mass gathering
• Procurement of signage to communicate policies and procedures to staff,
students and families
• Implementation of daily symptom checking of students and staff, to in-
clude non-contact temperatures upon arrival when feasible
• Need for additional janitorial service to perform regular and frequent
cleaning of high-touch surfaces in restrooms, hallways and classrooms
• Bus ridership for costing out additional or multi-trip routes, if needed
• Minimized community entry into the school and exposure to students, in-
cluding parent drop-off and consideration of staggered drop-off times and
• Isolated illness spaces and protocols for immediate removal of sympto-
matic individuals
These are just a handful of the significant operational and logistical consider-
ations that must be taken at the school and district level. While schools are not typi-
cally built for this level of operational emergency and health response, districts are
working diligently to make the changes necessary to keep people safe. As such, our
systems must also remain flexible enough to make changes as the data indicates.
School reopening must include a series of scenarios from which local dis-
tricts may operate, in the best interest of local needs.
Broader policy conversations have discussed the three ways in which schools can
reopen: physically in person, in a distance format, or in a hybrid format. However,
our schools require much more guidance than that. Many of our schools do not have
the physical capacity to house a full student body and maintain social distancing
but may also have the need or desire to ensure all children receive a commensurate
high-quality education in-person (as able). Over the last month, I spent time setting-
up example demonstration classrooms in regions across the state. Depending on the
1 The Unified-Command Group is a COVID–19 response tactic that merged the Department
of Health, Department of Military and Tennessee Emergency Management Agency to streamline
COVID–19 response efforts
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classroom size, intended capacity, and student needs, both myself and the teachers
who provided feedback were struck by the various ways teaching and learning may
need to adjust.
To support this local decisionmaking, the department released guidance that
added options within those broad categories. For physical return to schools, the de-
partment has suggested that districts consider a traditional return, a staggered re-
turn over a set period of time, a staggered schedule to minimize physical occupancy,
or a year-round schedule to reduce physical capacity.
For virtual or distance options, there are the possibilities of virtual synchronous
models as well as asynchronous models where students learn at a self-pace during
the day with the support of their teachers. As noted in the spring, the universal
access to technology and internet is a significant concern for many districts and
families, especially those in rural communities, serving less resourced populations,
or vulnerable student groups. These are significant considerations that districts
must discuss at a local level, and for which the state would encourage application
of the U.S. Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act (CARES Act) funding
to support.
For those districts considering a split model, the department has provided alter-
natives for split days with morning and afternoon cohorts, alternating days or
weeks, or attendance based on need to accommodate children with disabilities and
those requiring additional services.
The department has also presented a category related to cyclical or intermittent
distance education based on staff and family choice or a virus resurgence. Regard-
less of the options selected, students and staff with personal or household health
risks must have a viable option for maintaining their education or employment from
home.
The decision on how to reopen schools is a challenging one which balances health
and education. Both are important to the future of our children and all facts must
be included in the discussion as it progresses. Each of the scenarios listed above in-
clude opportunities for flexibilities and options within the model. What is most crit-
ical is that local needs, resources and statistics drive decisionmaking within the
framework and boundaries outlined through the Departments of Health and Edu-
cation.
School reopening must include supports for our local districts, as needs
increase and resource efficiencies become critical. This must be done with
a child-centered strategy.
We must address students’ academic and physical and mental health needs. Re-
gardless of the reopening option(s), districts will still need ways to determine the
academic, physical and mental health needs of returning students. Districts should
ensure that there is a whole child plan in place to address the different social and
mental health needs that may exist for some students due to school closures and
resulting from the impact of the pandemic and recent events.
We must provide a virtual option for the most vulnerable students and staff mem-
bers. Until there is a vaccine for COVID–19, there is still a risk of seasonal waves
of the virus. So, the most vulnerable students and staff (those with underlying
health conditions or undergoing disease treatment) may not be able to return to a
school campus. Social distancing is difficult in public spaces and even more chal-
lenging in the typical classroom or campus setting. Districts may identify and pro-
vide high-quality distance learning to vulnerable student populations and should
clearly communicate the options to families.
We must provide strong opportunities for students requiring at-home care. Stu-
dents who are diagnosed and/or live in a home with a confirmed positive case may
be required to isolate for days on end and there will need to be accommodations
made to support that student.
We must stay committed to identifying and addressing any gaps that we see in
student achievement, which will necessitate a beginning of the year progress check.
Districts should ensure that any diagnostic (or optional checkpoint tool provided by
the state at no cost) used in the fall is aligned with state standards and is accom-
panied by quick turnaround. These assessments should be used for information pur-
poses only, to better capture student learning and needs and to ensure educators
and families have information to provide an understanding of where their students
are starting for the year.
Guidance documents are being developed by the department to support
that locally driven effort.
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The department is in the process of developing and finalizing over 20 school re-
opening toolkits, which will cover many of the same topics as school closure toolkits
did. Over the course of the next few weeks, these resources will be provided to dis-
trict leaders, many of whom contributed to the content and framing of this work
as a reflection of what authentic and meaningful partnership can look like in times
of uncertainty.
These school reopening toolkits will include:
• Academics
• Procedures
• Assessing Student Learning
• Professional Development
• Childcare
• Public Charter and Non-Public Schools
• Communications
• Safety and Operations: Emergency
• Consolidated Funding Applications Operations, Pandemic, Post-recovery
• Counseling Evaluation
• Equitable Access and Opportunity
• School Improvement
• Finance
• Social Distancing at Schools
• Governance and Management
• Special Populations
• Health and Public Health
• Staffing
• Nutrition
• Technology
• Policy and Legal Considerations
• Transportation
• Postsecondary Transitions
• Well-being and Mental Health
While we sincerely hope and believe these resources will be critical for districts
as they make the best decisions for their local communities, we must acknowledge
that beginning a new school year this year might be different. Children and edu-
cators have experienced a global pandemic; their lives or livelihoods may have been
impacted; they need to feel safe; and they will still face the exciting challenges and
opportunities of starting a brand-new school year.
No different than the past several months, the work of reopening schools and ad-
dressing the academic and whole child needs of all children will be like never before.
We are navigating the very fabric of education and how we build critical relation-
ships, deliver excellent instruction, and provide opportunities for all of our children
to thrive.
This is difficult work and I have been inspired day after day by the way that Ten-
nesseans have come together and shown our collective love for children and commit-
ment to their well-being. As a commissioner, a former teacher, and a mother, I ap-
plaud and appreciate the hard work of our school communities.
We must continue to pull together, work hard, and keep pace. Our commitment
to our children is unwavering, and I also know that in many ways doing this is a
marathon that we have all been running at a full sprint. I am confident that we
will be stronger after this, and that we will use the innovative spirit of our Ten-
nessee educators and districts to continue accelerating the achievement of our chil-
dren.
I hope we are all able to appreciate what has been done, focus on what is left
to do and remember what still lies ahead.
Thank you and I look forward to answering any questions from the Committee
Members about the great work being done in the Volunteer State.
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[SUMMARY STATEMENT OF PENNY SCHWINN]
Good morning, Chairman Alexander, Ranking Member Murray and Members of
the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. Thank you for inviting me
to testify at today’s hearing, ‘‘COVID–19: Going Back to School Safely.’’ I very much
appreciate the opportunity to share the Tennessee story, and incredible work that
continues to be done by our districts, educators, and department of education.
As commissioner at the Tennessee Department of Education, I feel strongly that
our agency must work to support high-quality educational opportunities for the
nearly one million students in our care. While this is true every day, it is even more
important to set a clear focus on this work now, so that we can ensure no child is
disadvantaged by the current COVID–19 pandemic and that our schools and dis-
tricts are supported moving into and throughout next year and beyond. Although
I have the privilege of serving as commissioner, I am also a mother of three chil-
dren, with one whose adoption was finalized last week. I have seen first-hand the
impact of this pandemic at the classroom level, specifically for my school age daugh-
ter’s learning and for her teacher in our local public school system. Yet I also know
that even with the challenges we face, we must collectively seize opportunities to
excel.
To understand where we are headed, we must look back to when this pandemic
began, and how our state has collaborated and come together along the way to en-
sure our children are safe, healthy, and like every year, ready to face the challenges
and seize the opportunities of a new school year.
No different than the past several months, the work of reopening schools and ad-
dressing the academic and nonacademic needs of all children will be like never be-
fore. We are navigating the very fabric of education and how we build critical rela-
tionships, deliver excellent instruction, and provide opportunities for all of our chil-
dren to thrive.
This is difficult work and I have been inspired day after day by the way that Ten-
nesseans have come together and shown our collective love for children and commit-
ment to their well-being.
We must continue to pull together, work hard, and keep pace. Our commitment
to our children is unwavering, and I also know that in many ways doing this is a
marathon that we have all been running at a full sprint.
I hope we are all able to appreciate what has been done, focus on what is left
to do and remember what still lies ahead.
The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Dr. Schwinn.
Dr. Blomstedt, welcome.
STATEMENT OF MATTHEW BLOMSTEDT, COMMISSIONER OF
EDUCATION, NEBRASKA DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION, LIN-
COLN, NE
Mr. BLOMSTEDT. Members of the Committee, thank you for the
opportunity to testify at this important hearing today. I am hon-
ored to participate with this distinguished panel in this critical dis-
cussion of where we need to go as a country with our education sys-
tem this fall. Nebraska, like all states, experienced the arrival of
the pandemic with little advanced understanding of the dramati-
cally long-term impact it would have on the Nation and our edu-
cation system. This pandemic is an inflection point for the chal-
lenges my state and this country face.
This crisis has laid bare the persistent inequities of our edu-
cation system and of every system and sector across the country,
from healthcare to justice. I want to take a moment to say I mourn
the loss of George Floyd and every other Black life lost because we
allowed inequities to permeate our society for far too long. I have
worked my whole career believing that education is the right place
for society to make progress to ultimately ensure equity. Closing
schools statewide was never something I anticipated as part of my
role as Commissioner of Education.
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In our earliest days of closing, I knew the more difficult tasks
would ultimately be reopening schools. In late March and early
April, we identified summer learning as a time to focus energy on
the recovery reopen and reopening scenarios. By April 16th, I was
publicly announcing efforts that were underway to plan for the fall
semester. On Friday May 8th, we announced Launch Nebraska as
a way to organize a recovery and reopening approach organized
around three major pillars, leadership and planning where we
would focus on Government operations and technology, conditions
for learning really focused on facilities and wellness, and then con-
tinuity of learning with a real focus on instructions and transitions
back into education. Schools in Nebraska are diverse. Nebraska’s
small school districts have under 100 students in the most remote
areas of the state while our largest in Omaha exceeds 53,000 stu-
dents.
Additionally, Nebraska has counties that have yet to officially ex-
perience their first COVID–19 positive case, while other areas have
been affected at rates similar to the worst per capita cases in the
country. We have organized several working groups including near-
ly every school across the state that are developing regional and
local plans with local public health officials School leaders are com-
mitted to balancing this difficult task of safe opening with the
needs of students, families, communities and staff in mind. There
are few one-size-fits-all moments in these planning efforts.
It has become increasingly clear that large-scale guidance needs
to be available for local school and health officials to customize for
local conditions and environments, and that is what we are at-
tempting in Launch Nebraska. Although I believe most schools in
Nebraska are planning to open in the fall, we are concerned that
many will face extensive disruptions and interruptions across sev-
eral communities. As school buildings closed across Nebraska this
spring, educators and school district officials were rightly con-
cerned about their capacity to appropriately meet the obligation—
such services were not pandemic proof. I continue to engage in pro-
ductive dialog with parents and disability advocates to provide a
path forward.
I expect that as restrictions are lifted, schools will need to pro-
vide necessary compensatory education. Although I know that
broadband is not in the jurisdiction of this Committee, it is appar-
ent that a lack of broadband access is a huge inequity for many of
our students and households. I am concerned that the economic im-
pact of the pandemic will result in necessary and sustained cuts in
PK–12 education funding, perhaps to exceed 20 percent in Ne-
braska. This is a perfect storm as we face increased needs and de-
creased resources.
I cannot express enough how proud I am of Nebraska—amazing
talented individuals. But in recent months, they have all stepped
up in incredible and unprecedented ways to serve our students.
While we have many challenges ahead, I remain confident in the
abilities of local Nebraska educators to make the impossible pos-
sible. But we also must protect our educators. Our teachers will
continue to be on the front lines and we must address individual
accommodations that will also limit an already strained workforce.
This will require additional contract time for some teachers and
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17
educational staff that may be asked to provide supports beyond the
normal school day. I want to thank this Committee and all Mem-
bers of Congress for the relief funding through the CARES Act.
Schools are addressing many of the barriers with these funds
and securing critical services and infrastructure for the recovery.
At a state level, we continue to partner across the education and
health sector to build state and regional supports to address condi-
tions for and continuity of learning. I understand and share the
concern that many have expressed regarding the Secretary’s equi-
table services provision interpretation of CARES.
I urge Members of Congress to clarify this as soon as possible.
I want to ensure that both public and non-public schools are able
to move forward quickly without lingering doubts about the proper
use of these funds. In closing, we must seize this opportunity to ad-
dress the systemic inequities that have persisted for decades. It has
become a bit of a mantra with our partners in Nebraska that we
need to build back better.
In fact, they tell me radically build back better. I truly believe
that education is and must be a substantial part of the effort to
erase inequity in society, but it will take a whole societal approach
to address these challenges in this time. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Matthew Blomstedt follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF MATTHEW BLOMSTEDT
Chairman Alexander, Ranking Member Murray, thank you for the opportunity to
testify at this important hearing, ‘‘COVID 19: Going Back to School Safely.’’ I am
Matt Blomstedt, Commissioner of Education in Nebraska and incoming President of
the Council of Chief State School Officers. I am honored to participate in this crit-
ical discussion to reflect and begin to address our next steps as a Nation and the
supports needed for state and local education agencies to continue on the path of
response and recovery.
Nebraska, like all states, experienced the arrival of the pandemic with little ad-
vance understanding of the dramatic effects that the pandemic was to have on the
Nation. In mid-February, a few short months ago that feels like a lifetime, I, like
others, struggled to comprehend the enormity of the emergency that was about to
hit Nebraska and the country. The warning signs seem obvious to us now, in retro-
spect, but rapid onset at the time left schools with little time to respond. We are
still experiencing a wave of current challenges that we have to fully grasp, and must
prepare to overcome.
I especially appreciate the opportunity to provide testimony with my colleagues
at this hearing and ask that these times be a moment of unity for our country rath-
er than further division. Nebraska, like many states, is diverse in views, popu-
lations, and impacts. This pandemic is an inflection point for the challenges my
state and this country face, including persistent inequities that manifest in commu-
nities across the Nation. The tragic consequences of a failure to address inequities
in education, health, housing, income, and opportunity is amplified in current events
as we witness our own citizens suffer injustice and discrimination and an apparent
disregard for Black lives.
I feel like I was born into a better place after the historic efforts of the 1960’s
to establish civil rights legislation led by civil rights giants. (Among this legislation,
as you know, was the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, which re-
mains a key pillar of the Federal role in promoting educational opportunity for all.)
Yet today, I see how fragile that balance has been and the curtain pulled back
proves we have chipped away at necessary progress for civil rights and equity while
civil rights expectations in education are at risk of being limited by the pandemic
and further weakened by blatant and obvious actions of violence and racial injus-
tices. I mourn the loss of George Floyd and every person who has been lost as a
result of the failures of this country to recognize and act on the inequities that we
have allowed to permeate society.
In my view, the role of the Federal Government is to set a tone and direction for
the country that establishes an expectation of equity. I, as a state official who un-
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derstands his state well, freely admit that I alone am not strong enough to overcome
the larger injustices that our students of color and their families face. I have worked
my whole career believing that education is the right place for society to make fur-
ther progress to ensure equity, but our collective failure as a Nation to successfully
confront the pandemics of poverty, racism, and injustice has left us more vulnerable
to the pandemic of COVID–19 and its generation-shaping consequences.
Impacts on students and communities: Closing schools for any reason is not
in my normal job description as Commissioner of Education in Nebraska. Education
leaders must be necessarily adept at understanding local conditions and responding
appropriately based on the community needs and norms, however, especially in un-
precedented circumstances.
On February 27, when I received the first call from a school district super-
intendent asking how we were going to lead through the impending impacts of the
pandemic, I responded, ‘‘That’s funny; you’ve never asked me to tell you what to do
before.’’ My ‘‘tongue-in-cheek’’ response was quickly followed by calls with medical
and infectious disease control experts, including the Chancellor of the University of
Nebraska Medical Center, our Governor’s office, and other state and local education
leaders and policymakers. We sprung to action with the primary realization that
schools would potentially have to close suddenly to contribute to the efforts to con-
tain the invisible threat of the virus. Make no mistake; there was very little under-
standing at this point of the scale of this threat except through the valiant efforts
of a few health officials and infectious disease experts that had little other reason
to engage with school leaders before. The situation was a fast-moving challenge for
leaders.
Nebraska’s first COVID–19 case was identified on March 6. It had a broad impact
because the person identified was a participant at a widely attended Special Olym-
pics event. The event assembled athletes and communities from multiple school dis-
tricts across a wide geographic area. By March 9, we had at least three school dis-
tricts temporarily announce school building closures and many others who were
about to begin spring break and chose not to return to school.
By March 12, I had met and spoken with dozens of local school leaders and the
Governor as well as the Chancellor of the University of Nebraska Medical Center.
By Monday March 16, I had been involved in three statewide press conferences and
numerous stakeholder meetings announcing that schools would soon take steps to
physically close buildings and would soon be closing with no clear sense of when
or how they would know how to open again. In 10 short days, COVID–19 went from
being a fringe concern to the primary focus of my agency and state.
Our state’s first concerns were for the role that schools could play in containing
the virus and broader public health issues. It was immediately necessary to under-
stand the impact of schools in promoting food security and the general well-being
of school age populations across the state, and there was little time to understand
the enormity of the disruption that was taking place.
School administrators, teachers, and food and nutrition staff, shifted to an emer-
gency relief mission where health, safety, and food security were the first concerns.
But it was also quickly apparent the broader routines for children were also critical,
particularly for students already at risk. For example, several administrators
reached out to me to express concerns about students that had been on suicide
watch and were already suffering from trauma and being further traumatized by
school closures. We also know that reports of child abuse and neglect are down pri-
marily due to the role schools play in the reporting system. Additionally, we know
that students and families have suffered from extended out-of-school time for mul-
tiple social and economic reasons as well.
The challenge we face, in Nebraska and the Nation, is to better understand the
balance of the health risks and broad societal costs. That is a burden we are all
going to share as we make decisions about how to safely open schools.
Closing and Reopening: As the impact and likelihood of sustained closures to in-
person schooling were becoming clearer, Nebraska established a clear approach to
guiding schools through the pandemic. I sought to make clear with local public and
non-public school leaders that a first priority was community health and well-being
and educational opportunities were part of that need. Schools were truly remarkable
in shifting to these priorities and establishing remote learning. Schools were asked
to submit basic continuity of learning plans to the Department that answered two
basic questions, ‘‘ How do you plan to serve students?’’ and specifically, ‘‘How do you
plan to serve students with disabilities?’’ (See more at http://www.education.ne.gov
and https://cdn.education.ne.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Statement-on-Con-
tinuity-of-Learning-—3.27.2020.pdf).
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I am confident in the abilities of local Nebraska educators to adjust educational
practices when there is clarity about the learning environment. Our NDE team and
partners established Launch Nebraska as a way to organize a recovery and re-open-
ing approach organized around three major pillars:
1. Leadership and Planning: Government, Operations and Technology
2. Conditions for Learning: Facilities and Wellness
3. Continuity of Learning: Transitions and Instruction
We have organized several working groups across the state that are developing
regional and local plans with local public health officials. This effort started early
on as our Educational Service Units (Nebraska intermediate education agencies)
helped to organize regional conversations with public and non-public schools to cre-
ate a feedback loop directly to me as well as to the Governor regarding their needs.
We maintain weekly calls statewide to discuss re-opening efforts and have further
pursued intentional planning efforts at a regional and local level among schools. Ad-
ditionally, organizational leaders have developed plans among like-sized districts to
understand how to best open schools. Our local health officials are collaborating to
create easily understood local risk assessment and develop communication tools.
Each effort to share and review these plans advances the conversation to open
schools.
There are some things that are becoming clearer in the effort as well. There is
a substantial desire and pressure to open schools in the fall as normally as possible.
At the same point, there is an uncertainty about how to best weigh and mitigate
risk. The Launch Nebraska resource allows us to break up the conversations among
stakeholders and groups to review feasibility and determine tradeoffs. For instance,
today there is an increasing belief that wearing masks is a necessary step in main-
taining the most normal environment. There is also an understanding that social
distancing is dependent on many circumstances. Although frequent handwashing,
cleaning, and masks seem feasible in many classrooms, spacing desks at least six
feet apart and other tradeoffs are very difficult.
School leaders are committed to balancing this difficult task of safe opening with
the needs of the students, families, communities, and staff. There are few ‘‘one size
fits all’’ moments in the planning efforts. Instead, it is important to shape broad
guidance, with specific examples, that contribute to specific local plans. The efforts
have been immense to date and we will soon have decisions made by schools based
on this work.
Additionally, the NDE has provided and will continue to provide supports to
schools including professional development for the environment we are now in. Thus
far, we have offered eight sessions focused on professional learning for addressing
content areas and equity in a remote learning environment. We will continue to
shape professional learning in partnership with our LEAs and intermediate agen-
cies. Additionally, we are advocating to expand digital resources collectively with
schools as part of the effort to fill gaps that have become obvious for some learners
and for some schools. Schools across the state are planning to address these chal-
lenges by building local plans and we will continue to support these efforts from a
state level as well as help facilitate best practice development and exchange.
Serving Students with Disabilities: In these early days and weeks of the
COVID–19 pandemic, meeting the needs of students with disabilities in extraor-
dinarily challenging circumstances was my primary focus. As school buildings closed
across Nebraska and the Nation, educators and school district officials were rightly
concerned about their capacity to appropriately meet their obligations to students
with special needs. As a result, many school districts became temporarily paralyzed,
in effect, by fear of litigation and were resistant to providing services that were nec-
essarily inconsistent with the expectations of Individualized Education Plans devel-
oped before the pandemic made the provision of planned services functionally impos-
sible.
I refused to allow fear of litigation to dominate our actions and understood the
need to guide responsible action. NDE staff and I encouraged our school districts
(and school attorneys) to understand the obligations of the law while also encour-
aged them to provide the best services possible. Teachers teach, and that is what
I committed us to do during this national emergency. Instead of retreating and
viewing parents and advocates as a potential threat, and that costly litigation under
IDEA as inevitable, I sought to facilitate communication and engagement with
stakeholders in support of students and families. Because the NDE is also respon-
sible for Nebraska Vocational Rehabilitation as well as Disability Determinations,
we have a tremendous set of partners in the disability community that helped us
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set a tone and direction for school services. We will continue to do this work. In
some cases, we are finding that schools are still struggling to provide services espe-
cially for those students who need in-person services. But what is clear, and re-
mains clear, is the importance of communication with the most effected students
and their families. We continue to issue guidance and have most recently issued
summer learning guidance and specific guidance for students with disabilities.
(https://www.launchne.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/
SPEDGuidanceFinal2020.pdf ).
We continue to engage and listen to these important groups and hear from con-
cerned parents and parent representatives. This helps us better understand the con-
cerns of parents for whom school is a lifeline for necessary developmental support.
We take seriously the concerns of advocates and attorneys seeking to protect hard-
won legal protections for students who have been ill-served in public education sys-
tems across the country.
My intent is to continue to build relationships between educators, parents, attor-
neys, and advocates that will ensure that we are all on the same side of the table,
working together on the same mission of ensuring that all students succeed in Ne-
braska schools. These partnerships, forged during times of crisis, will continue to
help move forward the reopening of schools and the reimagining of public education
in Nebraska.
English Learner Students and Families: Nebraska has approximately 130 dif-
ferent languages spoken in schools across the state and some of our communities
were struck especially hard by the impacts of the virus in the meat packing indus-
try. We continue to see communities that have suffered a greater impact as a result.
Because schools were closed so suddenly, we did lose a normal communication ap-
proach with families. Certainly, English Learner students become a critical commu-
nication link to families who may not speak English. As this became obvious,
schools began to organize and communicate through schools about critical health
and safety issues. In a few cases, students themselves helped to organize messages
in multiple languages to help ensure that the non-English speaking populations
would understand the threat of the virus. This work is still ongoing but it has been
clear that we face some barriers in working with our refugee and new immigrant
populations without schools.
Systems Involved and Homeless Youth: I have substantial concerns for our
students who are in treatment, detention, foster care, and those who are homeless.
Though we typically face challenges to serve these populations properly, it has be-
come evident that these students have, and will have, further challenges due to the
pandemic. I have met regularly with our treatment centers and facilities that serve
systems-involved youth in treatment and rehabilitation centers. I have also bene-
fited by working with our Supreme Court, court system, Department of Health and
Human Services, Foster Care system, and other public and private providers. Ne-
braska is in the middle of efforts to reform parts of this system and the pandemic
has been a substantial setback for the attention needed for these vulnerable youth.
I intend to continue efforts in this moment that expand access to appropriate digital
resources, and better track and sustain progress for these students. In my view, we
need to be especially mindful of investing in systems that eliminate the school-to-
prison pipeline and find strategies that address the inequities these students face
in school and society at large. If not for the pandemic, this would be my primary
focus for the summer. Now it will be a primary focus as part of the larger recovery
effort. We really cannot miss an opportunity to improve the system dramatically
that is already disproportionately represented by students of color, poverty, and dis-
ability.
Summer Learning / School Building Reopening: Nebraska has provided
guidance to schools for the summer and fall through an effort called ‘‘Launch Ne-
braska’’ (www.launchne.com). It combines strategies from across the state and is in-
formed by a variety of partners including state and local health officials and experts
from the University of Nebraska Medical Center and College of Public Health as
well as national efforts in partnership with Opportunity Labs, LLC. This work origi-
nated in the need to provide guidance for schools during the pandemic around re-
mote learning for the spring, summer, and fall. As my staff began to address needs,
it was clear that guidance from CDC and other national sources was only beginning
to trickle out while schools needed to gather, explore, and share best practices.
It has become increasingly clear that large-scale guidance needs to be available
for local school and health officials to customize for local conditions and environ-
ments. Schools in Nebraska are diverse. Nebraska’s smallest school districts (Pk–
12) have under 100 students in the most remote areas of the state while our largest
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district in Omaha exceeds 53,000 students. Additionally, Nebraska has counties that
have yet to officially experience their first COVID–19-positive case while other areas
have been affected at rates similar to the worst per capita cases in the country. This
has proved to be an extremely complex environment as Governor Ricketts and
health officials have worked to keep track of the capacities of hospitals as to not
overburden the health care system. However, explaining to lesser-impacted commu-
nities the role in reducing the spread is a challenge. Yet, as the virus persists, the
likelihood of affecting communities without any health care providers and only vol-
unteer emergency medical technicians is also a challenge.
Federal Role: Thank you for the bipartisan congressional efforts to provide relief
and for including education in the CARES Act. The availability of funding for our
state and schools has cut through much of the immediate concern for schools as we
addressed this unprecedented challenge. Although I was personally concerned that
there was not clear guidance and direction available from the CDC about reopening,
I am appreciative of the efforts of CDC officials to release what was eventually per-
mitted. Like one can expect, the scale of the challenge is real and providing guid-
ance that can be customized for state and local use is appreciated. I compliment the
USDA and USED for rapid responses on waivers for various programs including the
regular communication from our USDA field offices and the ability to shape pro-
grams as quickly as possible to meet the food security needs. I also appreciate the
quick responses by USED on flexibility around existing funds and waivers for an-
nual assessments and accountability as well as the turn-around on applications for
ESSERS funding and GEERS funding provisions.
We need a level of trust among and between agencies across Federal, state, and
local government. This is not a moment of national divide, but instead a necessary
time to manage a crisis collectively. I cannot emphasize enough need for leadership
and unity. Nebraska has taken this to heart, and I hope and expect that Congress
will also. I continue to work regularly with Governor Ricketts and the agencies
under his Nebraska Constitutional executive branch control. The Nebraska Depart-
ment of Education consists of a separately elected State Board of Education and this
independent, nonpartisan Board appoints the commissioner of education. As such,
some might expect division and divide, but in Nebraska, we are constantly working
together for what is best for our state and constituents. The divide at this point is
primarily between those who want to work fast and those who want to work even
faster. We have weaknesses and we have made mistakes along the way in this cri-
sis. However, I am proud to continue to balance the needs of our state with all of
the energy to do what is best. There are differences of opinion and the importance
of proper investment in public health and capacity for local governments is clear.
During the historic flooding of 2019, we witnessed the same spirit but nothing in
my lifetime compares to the challenges we face in this pandemic. Unfortunately, I
feel that the country does not have that same unabashed willingness to lock arm-
in-arm to address the challenges we face. That is Nebraska’s greatest risk at this
point, and the Nation’s.
CARES Act: Nebraska is still finalizing approaches for the CARES Act (ESSER
and GEER) and we are guided by our survey of schools and communities as well
as parents. The results have informed preliminary decisions based on the top-five
areas identified as priorities for our schools and communities:
1. Enhance technology infrastructure (e.g., broadband, devices, platforms,
data privacy, etc.) for students and families
2. Build supports for planning for possible interruptions upon returning to
school and student and staff reentry
3. Ensure student nutritional needs are met
4. Provide professional learning to support an inclusive remote learning en-
vironment and engagement, along with best practices for different student
groups
5. Create or expand mental, behavioral, and social emotional supports (e.g.,
telehealth)
In addition to the CARES Act funds, we have been working across agencies and
with our non-profit partners to establish a community response. This effort started
early in the pandemic and we have been working with communities across our state
to leverage multiple partners to respond to community needs. We are working
across agencies including Nebraska’s Department of Health and Human Services,
the Nebraska Department of Education, the Nebraska Department of Labor, and
numerous entities and agencies as well as nonprofit sectors. We have benefited from
an effort organized to address children and family needs through ‘‘Bring Up Ne-
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braska’’ under the Nebraska Children and Families Foundation and assisted by Ne-
braska’s First Lady, Susanne Shore. There continues to be a high level of coordina-
tion across the state with multiple community partners and agencies.
Equitable Services Conflict: One major, unexpected challenge in the implemen-
tation of the CARES Act has been the U.S. Department of Education’s non-regu-
latory guidance on equitable services for non-public schools. Before the Secretary re-
leased this guidance on April 30, we were planning in Nebraska to implement equi-
table services under the plain language of the CARES statute, which expressly re-
quires districts to follow the traditional Title I approach to equitable services. When
ED released its guidance, however, which advances an interpretation that conflicts
with statute and would provide much more funding to private schools in Nebraska
and nationwide, including wealthy schools that serve no low-income students, it
caused much confusion.
I understand and share the concern that many have expressed regarding the Sec-
retary’s interpretation of CARES. By requiring school districts to calculate the share
of CARES funds based upon all students and not just the low-income students con-
sidered under Title I, this could have the effect of diluting CARES funds and direct-
ing them away from kids who need the most help in both public and private schools.
I also understand, however, that students in private schools are also affected by
COVID–19, and they also deserve appropriate supports of state and Federal Govern-
ment to manage this crisis. This has presented a conundrum and a major implemen-
tation challenge in my state and many of our school districts.
Some students do need more support than others. It is my role to promote equi-
table educational opportunities for all students and bridge opportunity gaps that
plague our system. Without thoughtful approaches in this moment, we may limit
our state’s success as we emerge from this pandemic. As we have worked to imple-
ment equitable CARES services in my state, I have refused to allow us to be para-
lyzed, even temporarily, by confusion at the Federal level while students across my
state need immediate support.
I have led engagement statewide with nonpublic schools in support of a real-world
solution that works best for all kids in my state who need support, whether they
attend public or private school. I have encouraged private schools with limited stu-
dent needs to carefully assess those needs to better deploy CARES Act funds that
Congress targeted to public school districts on the basis of student poverty. At the
same time, I am working with our Governor to use state-level CARES funding to
provide improved broadband internet access, devices, and digital resources to all
students including those who attend nonpublic, as they are also deserving of support
in this crisis.
It is my responsibility as Commissioner to connect students and families in need
with the resources they need to survive this pandemic and succeed in school and
in life. I am working to successfully balance our unique state and local needs with
Federal rules and to engage my longtime state and local partners on an effective
path forward in Nebraska. Nonetheless, I urge Congress to step in to further clarify
its intention regarding CARES Act equitable services and resolve uncertainty and
discord currently present in states across the country.
Additional Federal Funding and Ongoing Flexibility: I do not know what
we may yet face as a state and Nation but I believe we will have even greater chal-
lenges ahead. It is imperative that Congress and the Administration act with a uni-
fied regard for the challenges that are happening in our local communities, counties,
hospitals, public health districts, and schools.
Our Nation’s schools and communities will face untold challenges this summer
and into fall. Although I believe we will see that most schools in Nebraska are able
to operate this summer, we will face extensive disruptions and interruptions. One
ongoing effort where we need more Federal support is in providing broadband access
to the homes of students and teachers. Although I know that broadband is not in
the jurisdiction of this Committee, it is apparent that lack of broadband access it
is a huge inequity for many of our students and households. We in public education
can no longer simply accept the educational result of being forced to overcome every
inequity in society based in housing, labor, health, and infrastructure policy. It is
critical that we as a Nation address inequity where it persists if we are to overcome
the inequities in schools and results that surface.
I appreciate the waiver approach for assessment and accountability for the past
year but we also need to hold accountable the efforts of sectors beyond education
for the future. Nebraska intends to measure the amount of unfinished learning and
the persistence and potential growth in an educational gap that is a matter of this
circumstance. However, I cannot stand by an artificial notion that education will
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solve this challenge without a much more substantial lift of other sectors overseen
by the Federal Government including your Committee on Health, Education, Labor,
and Pensions. I have a great deal of respect for Chairman Alexander and Ranking
Member Murray and deeply appreciate the work of this Committee.
Future of Education: I do not believe that we should miss an opportunity in
the midst of this crisis to build back to the same systemic inequities that have per-
sisted for years and made visible in educational assessment and accountability. In-
stead, as has become a bit of a mantra with our partners in Nebraska, we need to
‘‘build back better.’’ I truly believe that education is and must be a substantial part
of the effort to erase inequity in society but it will take a whole societal approach
to address these challenges. I believe we need to redirect efforts to meet the most
pressing needs of our students and families while marking a new expectation of in-
dividual progress and growth for each student.
Nebraska will need additional supports to manage the ongoing crisis for our stu-
dents and families. I am very concerned that we lack the technology infrastructure
to provide remote learning for sustained periods of time as well as make the invest-
ments in the appropriate resources and supports. Without additional Federal sup-
port dedicated to K–12 education in future supplemental appropriations legislation,
it may be difficult for states that are already strapped for funding in several sectors
to meet the critical needs to keep schools open.
I am concerned that the economic impact of the pandemic will result in necessary
and sustained cuts in my state’s K–12 education funding to exceed 20 percent while
at the same time our costs of providing multiple platforms for learning will increase
the need for teaching staff time. This is a perfect storm as we face increased needs
and decreased resources. Recovery in Nebraska will require expenditures to address
compensatory education for months of lost services which will strain the already
limited resources for special education services.
Additionally, I am very concerned that teachers on the front lines of the pandemic
will not have the proper protections for conditions that they may experience. Pro-
tecting teachers from the effects of COVID–19 will require addressing individual ac-
commodations that will also limit an already strained workforce. This will require
additional contract time for some teachers and educational staff. This goes across
several areas including maintenance, custodial, food service, nursing, mental health
counseling, and every support service imaginable.
Conclusion: I cannot imagine a more challenging time in our society than we
currently face. However, I am optimistic because what I find in Nebraska is a spirit
of collaboration and cooperation; a desire to work together to address challenges and
a sense of urgency to establish what is ultimately best for students and families.
The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Dr. Blomstedt.
Ms. Superintendent Cordova, welcome.
STATEMENT OF SUSANA CORDOVA, SUPERINTENDENT,
DENVER PUBLIC SCHOOLS, DENVER, CO
Ms. CORDOVA. Good morning. Thank you. Chairman Alexander,
Ranking Member Murray, and Senators, I want to thank you for
the opportunity to share the Denver public schools experience with
COVID–19 public health crisis. As I reflect on the events in our
city and country over the past 3 months, and particularly over the
past 2 weeks, it is increasingly clear that our systems, education
and policing, healthcare and housing, are fraught with inequities
and systemic racism. We now have the unique opportunity, unlike
any other in our lifetimes, to address these inequities and create
a better solution for our students and our communities.
On March 20th, we closed our schools for what we thought would
be an extended spring break. We then began to get a clear indica-
tion of how highly contagious and deadly COVID–19 is. With only
2 weeks until school resumed, we immediately focused on building
a full-time remote learning program for 93,000 students and 15,000
employees. In addition to keeping our students and teachers con-
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nected for academic and social development, we also focused on
providing wraparound supports, including serving over 732,000
meals and distributing over 55,000 laptops to students who needed
them for remote learning.
Given the number of low-income families in Denver, ensuring eq-
uitable Internet access for remote learning continues to be one of
our biggest unmet challenges. We go into next school year knowing
that some of our highest priority students, those who need extra
instructional attention, are falling further behind during this ex-
tended remote period. In mid-May, we put together a working
group of principals and teachers to help us plan together for the
new school year. We surveyed our families and staff, asking them
for their input to help focus our planning. The message we heard
from that survey was loud and clear, prioritize health and wellness
first, then get kids back into class.
As a result, we partnered with our local health experts to create
guidelines that have served as the foundation for all of our return
to school planning. Based on the current health guidance, we are
planning for a mix of in person and remote learning when the
school year starts in August. We have shared three draft options
that offer a mix of in person and remote learning with all students
having a minimum of 40 percent in person learning and each of our
options priority learners.
Students with disabilities, English learners, students who are
not on track to graduate will receive a full additional day of in-per-
son instruction each week. This is an important equity measure
that will help mitigate the impact of lost learning from remote
time. I am incredibly proud of the hard work and relentless focus
on equity and serving our families and community over the past 3
months. And we received invaluable support from colleagues across
Denver, Colorado and the Nation, including Chiefs for Change the
Council of Great City Schools whose partnership and sharing plans
ideas and advocacy has been invaluable. Governor Jared Polis in
Colorado and his health and education teams have been especially
valuable partners. They recognize the immense challenges we faced
in developing remote learning programs amidst the anxiety and
rapidly changing conditions of the COVID crisis.
I know we could not reopen school without the help we have re-
ceived from the Federal Government through the CARES Act. We
are currently facing a $61 million budget shortfall due to the eco-
nomic impact of COVID. The CARES Act will provide some help in
recovering lost revenue and the additional costs related to COVID
but we still have a lot of work to do to balance our budget and en-
sure we have the resources to educate all of Denver students while
maintaining our focus on equity. At a time when our kids and our
community need us the most for education and all of the support
that our schools provide, we are having to make massive cuts.
I appreciate Congress’s efforts to provide additional Federal
funding for education and I would like to stress that while it is
very helpful, we know that our students will face incredible chal-
lenges over the coming years and will need critical and required
compensatory services that we will be obligated to provide despite
our budget challenges. Our educators are working hard for our kids
and our community during these challenging times.
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Additional funding will be essential to make sure that our kids
grow academically and come through this pandemic with a great
future still ahead of them. Additional funds will help us provide
Internet and counseling, therapies and tutoring, training for our
staff, and technology for our students. We must double down for
those who have been most impacted by the COVID crisis if we are
to deliver on the promise of education to create a more equitable
society. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Susana Cordova follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF SUSANA CORDOVA
Thank you for the opportunity to discuss the challenges that our community in
Denver has come together to work through and adjust to the COVID–19 public-
health crisis.
On March 12, facing the clear signs that the virus was beginning to spread more
quickly and getting closer to our campuses, we made the decision to close schools
2 weeks ahead of our scheduled spring break.
At that time, as strange as it seems now, we were planning on returning to our
regular school calendar and operations during the first week of April.
On March 20, with an even clearer indication of how potent and deadly COVID
is, we came to the realization that it would be a long time before we could resume
in-person instruction.
Then, with roughly 2 weeks to go until school resumed after spring break, we
turned our full attention, resources, and collaboration to putting together a remote-
learning program for 93,000 students—children from around the globe, with a wide
range of socio-economic status and access to technology, and speaking many dif-
ferent languages at home.
Because of the varying needs, backgrounds, and resources among our families, we
built a remote-learning plan that gave our educators some flexibility to decide how
best to connect with their students.
That turned out to be an effective approach, as we feel like we had a strong last
2 months of the school year as 100 percent remote learning.
Throughout the final 8 weeks of the 2019–20 school year, we save average attend-
ance rates around 87 percent, which is just a few percentage points below the pre-
vious year’s.
In addition to working hard to ensure we kept our teachers and students con-
nected for academic growth, we also focused on providing as much of the wrap-
around support and service we could, even with our buildings closed.
Over the past 3 months, we’ve distributed over 732,000 meals, through our own
Food Services Team and in partnership with the city and our DPS Foundation and
its philanthropic partners.
The city-run health centers that operate in our schools have remained open for
telehealth and in-person appointments throughout the spring at three DPS loca-
tions, providing care for all students who need it at no cost to families.
We sent a technology survey to our families to ask them what they needed to help
with remote learning, and we purchased an additional 9,000 laptop computers to
help meet the need.
To support our families with remote learning, we ended up distributing over
55,000 laptops and 2,700 wifi hotspots.
Given the number of low-income families in Denver, ensuring equitable internet
access for remote learning continues to be one of our biggest unmet challenges.
We go into next school year knowing that some of our highest-priority students—
those who need extra instructional attention—have fallen further behind, because
of our buildings being closed and not being able to assure internet access across the
city.
In mid-May, we put together a Workgroup of educators—primarily principals and
teachers—to help us put together a plan for the new school year.
To help ensure we put together a plan that was attentive to the priorities and
needs of our family and staff, we sent out a community-wide survey asking them
what they wanted us to focus our planning on.
The message to us from that survey was loud and clear: prioritize health and
wellness.
As a result, we partnered with the leadership of Denver Health and the Denver
Department of Public Health and Environment to put together a set of health stand-
ards that served as the foundation for all of our return-to-school planning.
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Those health standards include:
• Wellness screenings upon arrival.
• Health measures enforced throughout the school day: wearing of masks;
frequent hand-washing; continuous, thorough cleaning and disinfecting of
the entire school facility.
• Classroom occupancy limited to allow for a minimum of 6 feet of physical
distancing.
• Limited student movement in the school throughout the day and no large
gatherings.
On top of those measures, we will be creating policies that provide an extra level
of protection and care for the DPS Community.
That will include creating specific policies for staff and students who are at higher
medical risk, either because of their own health or because they live with someone
who is at a higher medical risk.
If there is the possibility of a resurgence of cases in a classroom, due to a student
or staff member testing positive, health officials are advising that it is likely that
classroom will stop in-person instruction immediately and move to entirely remote
learning for at least 14 days.
To help our families understand and start to get comfortable with how different
school will look under these health guidelines, we put together a video in multiple
languages to show how schools will look and operate when they reopen.
With health and safety as our highest-priority, we are planning at this time for
a mix of in-person and remote learning when the school year starts in August.
As much as we’d like to have a full return to full-time in-person learning, we re-
main committed to following the advice of our health experts and keeping health
and wellness as the overriding priority in our plans.
On Friday, May 29, we shared with our community 3 scheduling options for a mix
of in-person and remote learning:
• A 2-day block each week (Tuesday-Wednesday or Thursday-Friday, for
example) of in-person learning, with the remaining 3 days offering remote
learning.
• An alternating 2-day schedule (Tuesday-Thursday or Wednesday-Friday)
of in-person learning each week, with the remaining 3 days offering re-
mote learning.
• And an alternating-week scheduling option, which would provide four
continuous days of in-person instruction in 1 week, along with 1 day of
remote learning, followed by a full 5-day week of remote learning the fol-
lowing week.
Option 1: 2-Day Block (AA/BB) Schedule for In-Person Learning.
Students will have remote learning the remainder of the week.
Monday * Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday
Additional In-Person Group A Group A Group B Group B
Learning for Priority
Students
Option 2: Alternate-Day (AB/AB) Schedule for In-Person Learning.
Students will have remote learning the remainder of the week.
Monday * Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday
Additional In-Person Group A Group B Group A Group B
Learning for Priority
Students
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Option 3: Full-Week Rotating (AAAA/BBBB) Schedule for In-Person Learning
Students will have remote learning the remainder of the week.
Monday * Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday
Week 1 Additional In- Group A Group A Group A Group A
Person Learning for
Priority Students
Week 2 Additional In- Group B Group B Group B Group B
Person Learning for
Priority Students
The day that’s set aside for additional in-person learning for priority students may be switched to
a different day of the week.
It’s important to note that in each of those options, students who we consider to
be priority learners—those who need additional attention—will receive a full, addi-
tional day of in-person instruction each week.
Those priority students are students with disabilities and students who are in the
early stages of learning English.
And then each school will work on including as many additional student groups
as possible for the extra day of in-person learning, including:
• Students who are not on track to graduate
• Students from historically underserved populations
• Students from low-income households
We feel that this is an important equity measure that will help mitigate the ef-
fects of learning loss from the switch to remote learning at the end of last school
year.
Overall, each option provides for every student to receive at least 40 percent of
their overall learning through in-person instruction, with priority students receiving
up to 60 percent in-person instruction.
To get feedback from our staff and community, we sent another followup survey
with the details of these options.
That survey closes on Friday, and we will review the feedback from the survey
and some targeted focus groups we’re doing this week to help us reach the best deci-
sion on the final plan for returning to school in August.
I’m extremely proud of Team DPS’s hard work and relentless focus on equity in
serving our families and our community over the past 3 months.
We’ve remained both steadfast in our values and nimble in our execution. And
we’ve received invaluable support and collaboration from our partners across Denver
and Colorado.
Governor Jared Polis and his health and education teams have been especially
valuable partners.
They have provided strong leadership on the priority of community health and
limiting the impact of the virus. And they have been responsive to and under-
standing of the immense challenges we’ve faced in developing remote learning pro-
grams amidst the anxiety and rapidly changing conditions of the COVID crisis.
We are also grateful for the help we’ve received from the Federal Government
through the CARES Act.
We’re currently facing a $61 million budget shortfall due to the economic impact
of the COVID crisis, and the CARES Act will provide some help in covering lost rev-
enue and additional costs related to COVID.
But we still have a lot of work to do to balance our budget and ensure we have
the resources to devote to educating all of Denver’s students while maintaining our
priority of health and wellness and our focus on equity.
Under normal conditions, we are stretched thin on resources.
We’ve had to go to Denver’s voters 4 times over the past 15 years to ask for addi-
tional local tax revenue in order to meet the needs of our schools and students.
We’re now, despite the highest unemployment since the Great Depression, very
likely going to still have to go back to voters to ask for more local taxes on this No-
vember’s ballot.
At a time when our kids and our community needs us the most—for education
and all of the support our schools provide—we’re having to make massive cuts.
We’re doing our best to tighten our belts and streamline operations.
The last thing we want to do is have staff reductions. We just went through that
last year, and we need our people to be able to provide the best schooling and
backup support we can right now.
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That’s why we’re so appreciative and supportive of Governor Polis’s efforts to
bring in additional Federal funding for education, through these two pieces of pro-
posed legislation:
The Governor’s Emergency Education Relief Fund would provide Colorado with
$44 million for grants to help local educational agencies (LEAs), institutions of high-
er education (IHEs), and other education-related entities that have been most sig-
nificantly impacted by COVID–19.
The Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund would provide
$121 million to school districts with a focus on equity and prioritizing the school
districts that serve students with the highest needs.
Our schools and our educators are working so hard to step up for our kids and
our community during these challenging times.
Additional funding with flexibility is essential to us and to our families to make
sure their kids are continuing to grow academically and come through this pan-
demic with a great future still ahead of them.
As we look to next year, it will be essential for us to prioritize the dual impera-
tives of supporting the social emotional needs of our students, many of whom have
been highly impacted by COVID–19, as well as their academic needs. We know that
in Denver, 70 percent of the people who have contracted COVID–19 have been
LatinX , and as a district serving 60 percent LatinX students, we anticipate that,
when our students return at the end of the summer, we will be on the front lines
of supporting them as they process their experiences from this long period of remote
learning.
Thank you.
[SUMMARY STATEMENT OF SUSANA CORDOVA]
Since mid-March, Denver Public Schools has turned its full attention, resources,
and collaboration to designing a completely revamped instructional model in re-
sponse to the COVID–19 crisis. The overriding priority in this work has been and
continues to be the health and wellness of our students and staff, coupled with
meeting the academic and social emotional needs of our students.
In roughly 2 weeks at the end of March, we built a new, 100 percent remote-
learning program for Denver’s 93,000 students.
We now go into next school year knowing that some of our highest-priority stu-
dents—those who need extra instructional attention—have fallen further behind.
We have focused our efforts to create and share with our community 3 scheduling
options for a mix of in-person and remote learning for the fall, but we all know that
our students learn best when they are in school full time.
It’s important to note that in each of those options, students who we consider to
be priority learners—those who need additional attention—will receive a full, addi-
tional day of in-person instruction each week. Overall, each option provides for
every student to receive at least 40 percent of their overall learning through in-per-
son instruction, with priority students receiving up to 60 percent in-person instruc-
tion.
At a time when our kids and our community needs us the most—for education
and all of the support our schools provide—we’re having to make massive cuts.
We’re appreciative of the Federal Government’s relief efforts to date and urge you
to allocate additional resources and support to help our educators and families re-
cover from the COVID–19 crisis so that we can realize the promise that education
offers to all.
Our schools and our educators are working so hard to step up for our kids and
our community during these challenging times.
As we look to next year, it will be essential for us to prioritize the dual impera-
tives of supporting the social emotional needs of our students, as well as their aca-
demic needs. We know that in Denver, 70 percent of the people who have contracted
COVID–19 have been LatinX, and as a district serving 60 percent LatinX students,
we anticipate that, when our students return at the end of the summer, we will be
on the front lines of supporting them as they process their experiences from this
long period of remote learning.
The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Ms. Superintendent Cordova.
Welcome, Secretary King.
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STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN B. KING, JR., PRESIDENT AND
CEO, THE EDUCATION TRUST, WASHINGTON, DC
Mr. KING. Thank you so much, Chairman Alexander, Ranking
Member Murray, and Members of the Committee. Thank you for
the opportunity to testify on how we can ensure students, edu-
cators, school staffs and their families are prioritized as we con-
sider the safest, most equitable way to reopen our Nation’s schools
in the mist of COVID–19. Before discussing this in more detail,
however, I am compelled to lift up that when our students return
to school buildings, they will need additional support as they grap-
ple with the continued reality of racism in America and the legacy
of over 400 years of anti-Black—the murders of George Floyd,
Breonna Taylor, and the Ahmaud Arbery have once again sent the
message to Black students that their lives are devalued.
As schools reopen, our Nation’s students of color and their fami-
lies also find themselves during a pandemic that disproportionately
impacts their health and safety mired in an economic crisis that
disproportionately affects their financial well-being and living in a
country that too often still struggles to recognize their humanity.
School closures due to the pandemic, although unquestionably nec-
essary to protect public health, had a disparate impact on students
of color, students from low-income backgrounds, students with dis-
abilities and English learners.
Historically, underserved students have disproportionately expe-
rienced less access to devices and to Internet service, teachers with
less support around online learning in under-resourced districts,
parents less able to telework and support their learning during the
day, and more so emotional stressors. Despite the heroic efforts of
many educators, many students and families have not received the
academic or social emotional support they need. As we look to-
gether as a Nation toward the 2021 school year, we must ensure
that all students, and especially our most vulnerable, have the edu-
cational resources they need. We urge Congress to take the fol-
lowing actions.
First, increase Federal investment in education. State and local
education budgets have been and will continue to be devastated by
the loss of tax revenue. Without Congressional action, there will be
no conceivable way to avoid layoffs and hiring freezes dispropor-
tionately impacting educators and staff in high poverty schools.
And the public health requirements to ensure safe reopening of
schools won’t be able to be met in too many places. Over 70 stake-
holders have called on Congress to allocate at least $500 billion for
state and local Governments, including at least $175 billion for K–
12 education.
Second, ensure states and districts do not walk away from the
students who have been hit hardest by the crisis. New Federal
stimulus funding should include a strong maintenance of effort for
vision and add a maintenance of equity provision to apply to both
states and districts. Together, these requirements would maintain
education spending at the same percentage of state spending as be-
fore the pandemic and shield the highest needs schools and dis-
tricts from the worst cuts.
Third, ensure distance learning if possible for every student. Be-
fore the pandemic, 79 percent of white households had broadband
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access compared with only 66 percent of Black families and 61 per-
cent of Hispanic families. To ensure home access to broadband for
students as possible, Congress should allocate at least $4 billion to
the FCC’s E-Rate program to provide hotspots and access to band-
width. Fourth, help schools and teachers address the significant
learning loss caused by the pandemic.
Congress should allocate dedicated funds to help schools add
more learning time such as through summer school and extended
school day for school year or after school programs. Fifth, address
students’ nutritional, social, emotional and mental health needs.
Congress must extend and expand the pandemic EBT program to
enable more children to receive meals while not in school and en-
sure educators’ social, emotional and mental health needs are met
through funding additional counselors and mental health profes-
sionals.
Finally, Congress must not step back from its important role in
protecting students’ civil rights. ESSA and IDEA exist because the
Federal Government wanted to ensure all students have equitable
access to a high quality education. That goal has not changed even
with the current crises. Permitting blanket waivers to either law
is dangerous and unnecessary. We also urge Congress to ensure
that the Department of Education follows congressional intent in
applying the Title I Equitable Services provision of the CARES Act.
The Department’s current interpretation would steer money
away from low income public school students and into the hands
of wealthier private schools, an idea rejected by several states and
one the Committee should reject as well. We have the public health
data to help drive decisionmaking on when students return to
school. Now, we need to target the appropriate resources and sup-
ports to help students, educators, and school staff recover and pre-
vent any further widening of inequities.
Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today, and I
look forward to your questions.
[The prepared statement of John B. King Jr. follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF JOHN B. KING JR.
Chairman Alexander, Ranking Member Murray, and Members of the Committee,
thank you for the opportunity to testify on how we can ensure that students, edu-
cators, administrators and staff, and their families are prioritized as we consider the
safest, most equitable way to reopen our Nation’s schools in the midst of COVID–
19.
Before discussing this in more detail, however, I’m compelled to lift up
that when our students return to school buildings, they will need addi-
tional supports as they grapple with the continued reality of racism in
America and the legacy of over 400 years of anti-Blackness. The murders of
George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery have once again sent the mes-
sage to Black students that their lives are devalued. Over the past several weeks,
our Nation has viewed the strength and message of the Black Lives Matter move-
ment on full display. Many of our Nation’s kids have been on the forefront of this
movement in their communities and in their classrooms prior to this pandemic. As
schools reopen, we face more than keeping students and staff safe during a pan-
demic—we face a moment where our Nation’s students of color and their families
also find themselves enduring a pandemic that disproportionately impacts their
health, mired in an economic crisis that disproportionately affects their financial
well-being, and living in a country that too often still struggles to recognize their
humanity.
While our Nation faces this pandemic together, it is important to recognize that
we do not confront it with an equitable distribution of resources, and the impact of
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the virus does not impact all communities and groups of people in the same way.
Relatedly, we see the coronavirus has only intensified inequities in education, in em-
ployment, in healthcare, and in other areas that already disproportionately impact
people of color and low-income families.
From access to a strong and reliable internet connection, to the more than 20 mil-
lion students who depend on schools for access to meals, we know how much our
children rely on the resources and supports that their schools and educators provide
to them on a day-to-day basis. The pandemic has crippled this vital structure as our
kids know and depend on it.
We also know that not everyone has the privilege to work from home in accord-
ance with social distancing or states’ stay-at-home orders, and that those who are
deemed ‘‘essential’’ and are required to place themselves at risk are disproportion-
ately individuals of color or those from working-class, low-income backgrounds. Only
roughly 1 in 5 Black workers and 1 in 6 Latino workers are able to work from home,
compared with nearly 1 in 3 White workers. Research shows that predominantly
Black counties account for over half of coronavirus cases in the United States, and
nearly 60 percent of total deaths. It also shows that social determinants—including
employment, access to health insurance and medical care, and poor air and water
quality—are more predictive of infection and death from COVID–19 than are under-
lying health conditions. In Chicago, while Black residents are about 30 percent of
the city’s population, they account for nearly 70 percent of COVID–19 deaths.
The economic impact on communities of color has been substantial. A new Associ-
ated Press poll finds that over 60 percent of Hispanic Americans say they have ex-
perienced some household income loss as a result of the pandemic, including job
losses, unpaid leave, cuts in pay, and fewer scheduled hours compared with 46 per-
cent of Americans overall. While 37 percent of Hispanic Americans and 27 percent
of Black Americans say they’ve been unable to pay at least one type of bill as a re-
sult of the coronavirus outbreak, only 17 percent of White Americans say the same.
Inequities do not exist in a vacuum. They are the result of racism and bias baked
into our institutions and our structures, from employment to housing to the
healthcare system to the education system. We know, for example, that even prior
to the pandemic, K–12 students who attend high-need schools were already receiv-
ing less of everything that research and experience show are vital: from access to
qualified teachers, to school counselors, to rigorous coursework, to other supports
necessary for their success. Across the Nation, we’re seeing schools that are strug-
gling with the capacity to move to distance learning, and teachers and administra-
tors who may not have familiarity with learning management tools. Parents and
educators alike are searching for promising practices related to online instruction,
and there are several schools and districts that lack large-scale experience with edu-
cation technology. This spring, we saw many high school students take Advanced
Placement tests from home with the hope of using those tests for college, but not
every student has the same chance to take an AP course or test. Additionally, not
every student has a compatible device or access to high-speed internet to make on-
line learning viable. In states where schools are closed for months or even longer,
students’ learning loss, particularly students who are already vulnerable, will carry
far into the future, unless directly addressed through expanded learning opportuni-
ties.
Confronted with the uncertainty about the nature of COVID–19 and how long it
may prevent the full resumption of in-person learning, parents and families are un-
derstandably concerned not only about their children’s health and well-being, but
also about their education at this unprecedented time. The Education Trust just
conducted polls of parents in New York, Washington, Texas, and California. These
polls show that nearly 90 percent of parents are worried that their children will fall
behind academically because of school closings. This is a valid concern in the transi-
tion to distance education when we know that before the pandemic, 79 percent of
White households had broadband access, while only 66 percent of Black families and
61 percent of Hispanic families had home broadband service.
The Education Trust is grateful that many educators across the country have
made one important shift during this crisis—to show their students even more clear-
ly that they care, from asking about their students’ well-being and connecting fami-
lies with resources to providing some levity through fun virtual interactions with
their students. This relationship-building between teachers and students was al-
ready happening in many places, but it was not happening nearly enough in places
that served a majority of students of color and students from low-income back-
grounds. That connection is essential. Ed Trust’s parent poll in New York revealed
that 95 percent of parents reported it would be helpful to have regular contact with
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or access to their child’s teacher, but only 52 percent said their child’s school has
made that available. Our California poll revealed that Black parents were less likely
to have been contacted by their child’s teacher than parents of all other racial
groups. We need to make sure this is something that is cherished in places where
students face the most obstacles.
We have work to do and a responsibility to insist that the Federal Government,
state governments, local governments, and school districts invest resources in miti-
gating the effects of this crisis and that they do so with a focus on equity. Although
the CARES Act (S. 3548) allocated roughly $31 billion for education purposes, it will
not be enough to fully address the challenges that students, districts, and schools
are currently facing, and will continue to face.
More Federal Investments in Public Education Are Needed to Reopen
Schools Safely
States and localities—which provide the vast majority of K–12 education fund-
ing—are bracing for major budget cuts as revenues continue to plummet. After the
Great Recession in 2008, over 300,000 educators lost their jobs, and inflation ad-
justed state funding per pupil was still lower in 2017 than 2008. The cuts this time
may be even larger. Our partners at the Learning Policy Institute estimate, based
on projected state revenue losses during the end of this fiscal year and next, that
K–12 systems might need as much as $230 billion to stabilize their budgets. And
those estimates are focused solely on making districts whole; they do not incorporate
the additional costs districts face as a direct result of responding to COVID–19, in-
cluding sanitizing schools and providing devices and materials for distance learning.
That is why over 70 education stakeholders have demanded Congress allocate at
least $500 billion for state and local stabilization, and require that a proportional
amount of these funds be directed toward K–12 spending. As K–12 education makes
up, on average, 35 percent of state general funds, Congress should allocate at least
$175 billion for K–12 education.
These targeted Federal stabilization funds, as well as the additional provisions
below, are necessary to ensure that schools are able to reopen safely by ensuring
that states and districts can provide all schools—particularly underfunded, high-
poverty schools—with the resources they need to implement the Centers for Disease
Control (CDC) considerations or local health authority’s guidance for keeping stu-
dents and staff safe (e.g., adequate testing and contact tracing, use of PPE, protec-
tions for at-risk staff and students, social distancing, etc.).
Ensure States and Districts Do Not Walk Away from the Students Who
Have Been Hit Hardest by This Crisis
This Federal stabilization money must be accompanied by strong requirements to
ensure that states maintain their investments in education; to require that states
and districts minimize cuts to their highest need districts and schools; and to pre-
vent the U.S. Department of Education from steering funding away from low-in-
come, public school students.
Specifically, the Federal Government must include maintenance of effort provi-
sions that require state education spending to remain at least the same percentage
of the state’s total spending, even if the state’s overall budget shrinks. Further, if
spending cuts are necessary, the Federal Government must protect our highest-need
schools by requiring both states and districts that receive additional Federal funding
to show that any necessary cuts are smaller per student in the highest-need dis-
tricts and schools than the rest of the state or district.
Finally, we’ve already seen the U.S. Department of Education advise states and
school districts to steer Federal funding away from low-income, public school stu-
dents into the hands of wealthier private schools. Therefore, we urge Congress to
prevent forthcoming regulations that would allow ED’s misinterpretation of the Title
I equitable services provision within the CARES Act to be used to direct over $1.3
billion more to private schools, as forthcoming data from Learning Policy Institute
will show, regardless of whether those schools are serving students from low-income
backgrounds. Several states have already rejected this approach. The Education
Trust thanks the committee leadership for expressing opposition to this idea and
urges action to prevent that outcome.
Ensure That Distance Learning is Possible for Every Student
Before the pandemic, 79 percent of White households had broadband access, while
only 66 percent of Black families and 61 percent of Hispanic families had home
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broadband service. More than one-third of all households with school-age children
that earn less than $30,000 annually lack high-speed internet access. Additionally,
Microsoft estimates that as many as 163 million people do not use the internet at
broadband speeds, burdening students even further.
It is likely that distance learning will continue through the summer, the begin-
ning of next year, and intermittently if new cases of the virus emerge. And the data
we have from this spring is alarming. For example, data from California showed
that 38 percent of low-income families and 29 percent of families of color are con-
cerned about access to distance learning because they don’t have reliable internet
at home, and 50 percent of low-income and 42 percent of families of color lack suffi-
cient devices at home to access distance learning. Therefore, states and districts
must have a plan in place to ensure that all students, including students from low-
income backgrounds, have access to reliable, high-speed internet and devices and IT
support to connect to virtual learning opportunities, and that educators have the
support they need to effectively teach, assess, and connect with their students re-
motely. The lack of equitable access to broadband is not only a distance learning
issue, but also an emergency preparedness issue in the event of further widespread
closures.
Congress must allocate at least $4 billion through an Emergency Connectivity
Fund via the FCC’s Federal E-Rate program to expand access to broadband services,
Waif hotspots, and devices to ensure all students have the ability to access online
learning at home in the event of continued disruptions, and Congress should encour-
age districts to implement multilingual digital learning platforms to be fully inclu-
sive. Congress should also encourage private companies to enable home broadband
access for the students in the communities they serve during the pandemic at no
cost.
Address Learning Loss Through Expanded Learning Opportunities
Students will likely return to classrooms with significant learning loss, which
schools and teachers must be prepared to assess and address. Schools serving larger
populations of students from low-income backgrounds are far less likely to be able
to provide online learning opportunities for all students and, therefore, must find
a way to make up for lost instructional time.
The stabilization funding described above—meant to make districts and schools
whole—will not be sufficient to accelerate learning to make up for the billions of
hours of instructional time that students lost this spring. That is why Congress
should allocate dedicated funds to help schools facilitate expanded learning time, in-
cluding summer school (online or in-person based on the most recent public health
This additional funding must be targeted to prioritize the equity gaps we know have
been exacerbated by COVID–19 and to prioritize students, including students from
low-income backgrounds, students with disabilities, English learners, and students
experiencing homelessness or foster care, who have been most directly impacted by
lost in-person instructional time. Additionally, educators will need sufficient time to
prepare for the next school year and the substantially different work environment
that they will be faced with, including altered or expanded school schedules, addi-
tional remote instruction, and curricular changes. This professional learning and
planning time comes at a cost; Congress must allocate funding to cover these costs.
Address Students’ and Educators’ Social, Emotional, Mental, and Physical
Needs
All students are experiencing stress, anxiety, and learning obstacles due to school
closures and other COVID–19 related-stressors. Every family is feeling the strain
of ensuring students receive the care, attention, and educational resources they need
to thrive. Parents and guardians are scrambling to maintain their own jobs, meet
their families’ basic needs, identify childcare, and help engage their students in
meaningful online learning. And while these challenges may be universal, they are
even greater for some students, including students from low-income backgrounds
and students of color, who already face steep economic and health inequities pre-
viously mentioned. Therefore, in addition to academic learning, schools must
prioritize and center the social, emotional, mental, and physical health needs of
these historically underserved students upon return to school.
At a minimum, we must ensure students’ basic needs are met, including the more
than 20 million students who depend on schools to get meals every day. Congress
can directly address food insecurity of students and their families through the Pan-
demic Electronic Benefits Transfer (P-EBT) program to ensure students’ nutritional
needs are met throughout this summer and into the next school year. The program
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must also be expanded to cover children under 5 years old who are not currently
included in this program due to the free-and-reduced-price lunch eligibility metric.
Beyond these basic needs, we know that over 75 percent of students rely on
schools for mental health supports. In order to provide these supports to students,
schools must provide a positive and welcoming school climate, as well as quality
dropout prevention and re-engagement programs—especially for the most vulnerable
students. Therefore, it is critical that Congress allocate additional Federal funding
to support school counselors, mental health workers, psychologists, and social work-
ers in the highest-need districts, and allocate resources to train teachers to under-
stand and address the negative impacts of COVID–19 on students, especially those
of color and from low-income backgrounds.
In addition to student health, it is critical to remember that we must ensure the
safety and well-being of administrators, educators, and support personnel. Edu-
cators are experiencing greater stress and anxiety during COVID–19. When edu-
cators were asked in a recent survey conducted by the Yale Center for Emotional
Intelligence about the most frequent emotion they felt each day of remote learning,
their top five responses were: ‘‘anxious, fearful, worried, overwhelmed and sad,’’
with anxiety being the most mentioned emotion. These emotions can often lead to
teacher burnout. Therefore, we must support our educators by providing them with
emotional support and mental health resources.
Congress Must Protect Students’ Civil Rights
Finally, it is important to note that during this hectic and uncertain time, Con-
gress must not step back from its important role in protecting students’ civil rights.
Therefore, Congress must not provide blanket waivers of critical requirements under
the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) or the Individuals with Disabilities Edu-
cation Act (IDEA) that protect all students’ civil rights. ESSA and IDEA were de-
signed to ensure all students have equitable access to a high-quality education. That
goal has not changed even with the current crises this country faces. Permitting
blanket waivers to either law is dangerous and unnecessary.
The existing waiver authority within ESSA provides sufficient authority for the
U.S. Department of Education to meet states’ needs. As ED has already acknowl-
edged, the impact of COVID–19 will affect each state differently; therefore, case-by-
case consideration of each state’s needs remains the most appropriate path moving
forward.
Conclusion
In closing, we cannot underestimate the impact that this crisis will have—and has
already had—on our children, particularly our children of color and children from
low-income backgrounds. They and their families are already bearing the brunt of
the crisis.
In a national survey by Hunger Free America, 37 percent of parents reported cut-
ting the size of meals or skipping meals for their children because they did not have
enough money for food between mid-March and mid-April, when the survey was re-
leased.
More than 111,000 people in the United States have died of the coronavirus, and
more than 33 million Americans have filed for unemployment during the pandemic.
Both in terms of deaths and lost jobs, people of color are disproportionately im-
pacted.
When students do eventually return to brick-and-mortar buildings, there will be
students sitting next to each other with very different progress in learning—one
whose parents had the resources and flexibility to help them continue to learn while
school was closed, and one whose parents had to work, possibly on the front lines,
to make ends meet during the crisis, who may not have had high-speed internet or
an appropriate device at home, and who could not focus on their education because
of other responsibilities they had to juggle at home. If after this pandemic, we go
back to ‘‘normal’’—obscuring the inequities we know exist—we will have learned
nothing. ‘‘Normal’’ should not be what we aim to return to—we have to provide the
resources and supports that ensure equity gaps are closed for good.
If we fail to educate and protect students of color and students from low-income
families, we have failed as a Nation. We can choose to continue to shut out commu-
nities of color and low-income communities or we can make changes to allow for a
more inclusive America—one that protects the most underserved and allows every-
one to reach their full potential.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify.
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[SUMMARY STATEMENT OF JOHN B. KING JR.]
Chairman Alexander, Ranking Member Murray, and members of the Committee,
thank you for the opportunity to testify on how we can ensure that students, edu-
cators, administrators and staff, and their families are prioritized as we consider the
safest, most equitable way to reopen our Nation’s schools in the midst of COVID–
19.
This pandemic has intensified already existing gaps in access to equitable edu-
cation. As we approach the upcoming school year, we must acknowledge the reality
that not every school will be able to reopen and operate as normal. There are mas-
sive challenges confronting schools and families—severe looming cuts to education
budgets nationwide, a lack of consistent student broadband access to enable dis-
tance learning, and substantial learning loss that must be measured to understand
how we can remedy it for our kids.
In response to these challenges, we urge Congress to take the following actions:
First: Increase Federal investment in education. State and local education budgets
have been—and will continue to be—devastated by the loss of tax revenue. Without
congressional action, there will be no conceivable way to avoid the same patterns
we saw during the last recession, including layoffs and hiring freezes disproportion-
ately impacting educators and staff at high-poverty schools, and the public health
requirements to ensure a safe re-opening of a school won’t be able to be met in too
many places. The requirements to ensure a safe re-opening of school—modified
transportation, restructured school schedules, personal protective equipment, reg-
ular deep cleaning, and more—will also require additional resources. Over 70 stake-
holders have called on Congress to allocate at least $500 billion for state and local
governments, including at least $175 billion for K–12 education.
Second: Ensure states and districts do not walk away from the very students who
have been hit hardest by this crisis. New Federal stimulus funding should include
a strong maintenance of effort provision and add a maintenance of equity provision
to apply to both states and districts. Together, these requirements would maintain
education spending at the same percentage of state spending as before the pandemic
and shield the highest need schools and districts from the worst cuts.
Third: Ensure distance learning is possible for every student. Before the pan-
demic, 79 percent of White households had broadband access, compared with only
66 percent of Black families and 61 percent of Hispanic families. The lack of equi-
table access to broadband is not only an immediate distance learning issue and an
obstacle to effective implementation of hybrid models in the fall, but an emergency
preparedness issue in the event of further widespread closures. To ensure home ac-
cess to broadband for students is possible, Congress should allocate at least $4 bil-
lion to the FCC’s E-Rate program to provide hotspots and devices for students who
require them. Congress should also encourage districts to implement multilingual
digital learning platforms to be fully inclusive, and encourage private companies to
enable home broadband access for the students in the communities they serve dur-
ing the pandemic at no cost. This investment should also be partnered with profes-
sional development for educators so they can effectively teach, assess, and connect
with their students remotely.
Fourth: Help schools and teachers address the significant learning loss caused by
the pandemic.
Congress should allocate dedicated funds to help schools add more learning time,
such as through summer school, an extended school day or school year, or after-
school programming.
Fifth: Address students’ nutritional, social, emotional, and mental health needs.
Congress must extend and expand the Pandemic EBT program to enable more chil-
dren to receive meals while not in school, and ensure students’ and educators’
socioemotional and mental health needs are met through funding additional coun-
selors and other mental health professionals in schools.
Finally: Congress must not step back from its important role in protecting stu-
dents’ civil rights. ESSA and IDEA exist because the Federal Government wanted
to ensure all students have equitable access to a high-quality education. That goal
has not changed even with the current crises. Permitting blanket waivers to either
law is dangerous and unnecessary. We also urge Congress to ensure that the De-
partment of Education follows congressional intent in applying the Title I equitable
services provision to the CARES Act. The Department’s current interpretation
would steer money away from low-income public school students and into the hands
of wealthier private schools, an idea rejected by several states and one the com-
mittee should reject as well.
Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today. I look forward to taking
your questions.
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The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Dr. King, and thanks to all the wit-
nesses. We will now move to a round of questions from the Sen-
ators. I would say to each of the Senators and the witnesses, there
is a small box in the bottom of your screen. There is a time clock
and has 5 minutes on it. If you would stay as close to that as pos-
sible, then all the Senators will have a chance to talk with the wit-
nesses. Let me begin with you Dr. Schwinn.
We talked about testing. Tennessee, as you said, has been a lead-
er in testing. It is in the top 12 or 13. Tennessee has tested about
more than 1.5 million Tennesseans for COVID–19. But as we come
up on the school year, we have 1 million children going back to
school. Governor Lee tells me that the demand for COVID tests is
down in Tennessee, maybe because it is so available.
His motto is if in doubt, get a test, and people can get one wher-
ever they want one at their public health center. What plans are
you making for systemic—for systematic testing of the 1 million
children in Tennessee?
Ms. SCHWINN. Thank you for the question and letting me high-
light I think the great work happening in Tennessee related to
testing. Yesterday we had one of the highest number of folks come
out and get testing and I think we have seen some incredible ef-
forts across the state. A couple things I would love to highlight. So
Tennessee has been in the top 12 in terms of per capita testing and
in the bottom 12 in terms of positive——
The CHAIRMAN. I only have 5 minutes so what I am trying to
get—I have got several questions. What I am trying to get to is
what are you going to do about the 1 million students?
Ms. SCHWINN. So having that testing available across the state,
we will continue will be able to work closely with unified command
and our Tennessee National Guard to be able to make that avail-
able for staffs and students. And then we are also working to part-
ner to provide free PPE and thermometers to any school district
who wants them for all students and staff.
The CHAIRMAN. Okay. The—you and I talked yesterday about
your plan for what would take for each of your 1,800 schools to go
back to school safely. Have you figured out about what the cost per
school district would be for that?
Ms. SCHWINN. Sure. So we have spent some time looking at the
variety. We have districts as small as a 130 and as big as over
100,000. What we have found is that the per student cost for hy-
giene, disinfecting materials including wipes, potential face masks,
etc., is anywhere from $100 to $150 per student depending on the
decisions at the local level. On top of that you have nutrition,
transportation services, and custodial services, which will vary de-
pending on whether districts have their own bus fleet or contract
out.
The same thing with custodial. What we are finding is that for
districts that are approximately 3,000 to 4,000 students, early esti-
mates, which are consistent with other national organizations, is
that it would be anywhere from one to $1 to $1.75 million for a dis-
trict for the year.
The CHAIRMAN. That is fairly consistent with what the national
study by the administrators is. So the total for Tennessee, did you
add that up what the total bill might be for the state?
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Ms. SCHWINN. Yes, sir. So when we looked at that again ac-
knowledging the fluctuations based on local decisions and contracts
that they may or may not have, the cost of Tennessee will be some-
where in the $100 million, $175—I am sorry, $100 million to $175
million. Certainly the CARES Act funding that is coming to our
districts will help to support some of that but it is a significant
need.
The CHAIRMAN. Well, would you do me a favor and I am going
to ask Dr. Blomstedt to do the same in his capacity as the national
head of the Chief State School Officers. Congress has already ap-
propriated $13.5 billion, $216 million came to Tennessee for K
through 12. The states have gotten $150 billion. Usually about a
third of the state budget or more goes for schools.
So what I am interested in is how much of the money we have
already given you can be used to help that $1.5 to $1.8 million per
school district and how much more is required? One more question
of you before I go to Dr. Blomstedt. Liability. What do you need for
the Federal Government to do about liability for teachers or school,
personnel. Let’s say a kid takes off his mask and coughs on a stu-
dent, and the student comes down with COVID, and the parent
sues the teacher or the principal. Does there need to be some sort
of Governmental action for liability protection?
Ms. SCHWINN. Sir, so in Tennessee teachers are covered under
the tort liability per state law. Our legislature is currently explor-
ing legislation on expanded qualified immunity specifically related
to COVID so I think continuing to support districts and feeling con-
fident to welcome students back to school is going to be incredibly
important and I am incredibly proud of our legislators for taking
up that work.
The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Dr. Schwinn. Dr. Blomstedt, I am
out of time, but let me ask you if I may following, if your organiza-
tion would submit to our Committee about what you think it would
cost to help all the school districts go back to school safely, just
those specific things, and how much of that can be covered by the
$13 billion that we have already given directly to K through 12 and
$150 billion we have already given to states? I think we would all
agree that there is not much of anything we could think of to do
that would help all families, all students, especially minority stu-
dents, than to be able to open school in August. And I want to
make sure that the Federal Government does its part. Senator
Murray.
Senator MURRAY. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Thank
you to all of you for your testimony today. You know, due to the
continued impact and potential spread of COVID–19, it is likely
that some schools will need to keep their physical buildings closed
either fully or partially for all or some as our states and districts
and schools and educators move to adjust quickly in the face of this
unprecedented pandemic.
But we do have to acknowledge the support for quality of dis-
tance education provided to students this spring varied signifi-
cantly across classrooms or schools or districts and states, and
some of the recent research and media reports indicate that stu-
dents facing some of the greatest challenges during COVID–19 are
low-income students, students of color, students with disabilities,
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English learners, homeless, youth in foster care, migrant children.
Also received less access to high-quality instruction in many in-
stances.
Secretary King, let me ask you, what are the lessons we can
learn from the successes and failures of distance learning over the
past several months and what should states and districts be doing
now to plan for the likely need for distance learning this fall?
Mr. KING. I think what we have seen is that devices remain a
challenge—access to devices remain a challenge for families, yet as
you described you often have the situation where maybe there is
one device in the home, but there are multiple kids and they need
to be able to use devices simultaneously——
Senator MURRAY. Or parents, they need the device too.
Mr. KING. Exactly, exactly. Bandwidth remains a challenge and
certainly Commissioner Schwinn pointed out the challenge in rural
communities. We also see in lots of high needs urban communities
a lack of bandwidth. We also see places where cable companies
won’t allow the family to access Internet services if they have an
unpaid balance on their cable bill. The result is those families are
without Internet access.
Tackling the digital divide is essential. We also know that teach-
ers in under-resourced areas didn’t have the professional develop-
ment and support they needed and so we need to make an invest-
ment in teacher professional development this summer so that we
can prepare for the next school year effectively. I think given the
public health context and students with pre-existing health condi-
tions, it is almost certain that every school district will need some
degree of hybrid learning and so we should prepare for that eventu-
ality.
Senator MURRAY. Okay. You know, estimates show that students
in grades 3 to 8 could return to school this fall, only retaining 70
percent of their reading progress from the previous school year and
lose anywhere from half to all of their academic growth in math.
This brings closures and the inconsistent support for distance
learning programs are projected to cause achievement gaps that ex-
isted before this pandemic to rise significantly.
Secretary King, let me have you speak to what policies can states
or districts and schools put in place now to measure learning loss,
whether schools are physically open or providing distance learning,
and what types of promising practices can you talk about to help
tailor academic intervention?
Mr. KING. Well, we certainly need diagnostic assessments to
have a sense of where kids are and what ground they have lost.
And Commissioner Schwinn in Tennessee and Commissioner
Muras in Texas are making available state funds to support those
diagnostic assessments that will be very helpful to districts. But
once we know students are behind we have to do something about
it.
What some of our international peers have done is open school
early for the highest needs students, students with disabilities, stu-
dents who are significantly behind academically. That may be a
part of the strategy. Summer distance learning may be a part of
the strategy. Randi Weingarten and I wrote an op-ed calling for a
significant investment by districts in summer learning.
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We also know that next school year students will need more time
to make up for what they have lost and that will mean adapting
the school schedule to allow for extended learning time. We also
know intensive tutoring has a very strong evidence-based. One of
the reasons why I am very supportive of efforts to expand
Americorps to provide more tutors in schools to support kids learn-
ing.
Senator MURRAY. Okay. Thank you. Finally, let me just start this
question by first saying thank you to all the educators and support
staff that have been navigating this crisis. Surveys are showing
that nearly two of every three educators have health concerns
about resuming in person instruction this fall. 18 percent of edu-
cators, 27 percent of principles are over the age of 55 and according
to CDC the older adults are at increased risk.
Many educators have pre-existing conditions. They are worried
about the health of their family members. They face childcare and
hardships related to the virus and I heard someone suggested older
educators, many of whom are very passionate about their work,
should retire early. Well that is callous and unacceptable to me as
an answer. So maybe Dr. Schwinn or Dr. Blomstedt. I just have a
few seconds left. I will go with Dr. Blomstedt. What steps should
school districts and states take to make sure all educators feel safe
and secure?
Mr. BLOMSTEDT. First of all, it is absolutely critical that schools
that are working on the reopening plans or working with their
teachers, we actually have kind of embedded safety committees
that include teachers so that is imperative. But really working with
each teacher. I really have a people first strategy working with our
agency. I have really tried to promote that with our schools as well,
that they are asking each teacher about what their concerns are
and making those accommodations as best they possibly can to
come back to the school facility.
Senator MURRAY. I am out of time but maybe there are other
witnesses who could respond to me in writing and talk to me about
how schools are dealing with that.
The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Senator Murray.
Senator Cassidy.
Senator CASSIDY. Thank you. Thank you all for all you are doing.
I have always observed that children have the lowest risk for sig-
nificant complications of coronavirus but in terms of opportunity
cost, they are bearing the highest cost. You are only five once to
be able to understand a word without definition and yet to know
the definition—all our brains are like that now but they are not.
But those children are so thank you for taking this on.
I am a physician and so I am kind of approaching this from two-
fold. One, as a physician and talking about public health, and sec-
ond as someone who is trying to help a school reopen back in Lou-
isiana. Now, Ms. Cordova, one issue with your block testing Mon-
day, Wednesday, Friday or Monday and Friday—a lot of parents
work, that was part of the opening testimony. What do you do for
those kids whose parents work, but the child would not be in school
two to 3 days a week? Is there any accommodation or is it just kind
of the way it is working out?
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Ms. CORDOVA. Yes, thank you for the question. It definitely is
one of the complexities that we are grappling with. We know it is
going to be important for kids to be in school for parents to be able
to go back to work. Right now our state is under a safer at home
order where businesses are only allowed to have 50 percent of their
working force in a building at a time.
Our hope is that in addition to trying to partner with childcare
organizations that we can help sync up schedules for families so
that when families are working from home, their children can also
be at home. Obviously our goal is to try to get as many kids into
school as possible——
Senator CASSIDY. So let me ask you—I have limited time, let me
ask you, I suspect many of your parents though cannot work from
home if it is a typical kind of public school setting. And so to
what—who is going to pay for their child care, for example? Would
that be the school’s responsibility or do parents have to do that?
Ms. CORDOVA. We are trying to work with local partners to see
how we can provide more childcare. We are really stymied by the
size of our buildings to be able to have the number of students in
our classrooms given the health——
Senator CASSIDY. Got it. Mr. Blomstedt, or Dr. Blomstedt I am
sorry, you mentioned that there are some areas of Nebraska in
which there has not yet been a case. Is this to say that in those
areas that there would be no disruption at all to the school? Be-
cause really what I read from the public health experts, if you have
an extremely low incidence, then you actually continue life as nor-
mal, particularly when it is returning to schooling. Is this the prac-
tice pattern that you have taken?
Mr. BLOMSTEDT. Yes. Across Nebraska we are working with our
local health officials and coming up with essentially a risk dial. If
there is evidence of spread that there will be at certain levels of
risk essentially a green, yellow, orange, red type of risk dial.
If we see extensive spread, it is going to need additional accom-
modations for health and safety. If there is very little, there is
more of an attention to the individual health and what is hap-
pening in the school. So our intention is to be able to balance that
based on the conditions locally.
Senator CASSIDY. But if locally there is no spread the schools
would open as it normally would open, correct?
Mr. BLOMSTEDT. We actually have had those conversations.
Many of those places are doing that. We believe masks and other
accommodations are going to be necessary all the time just to con-
tinue on that limited spread.
Senator CASSIDY. I will tell you that is probably not what your
health expert would recommend but that is up for you and your
public health expert. I could ask this of any of you but I will ask
it maybe to you, Ms. Cordova. Senator Menendez and I have put
together something called the Smart Act which would help state
and local Governments restore tax dollars lost because of the eco-
nomic shutdown requested by the Federal Government.
I am gathering with all this expense and with the economic
lockdown that you suggest is still going on in Denver that without
such aid, it will be difficult to rehire—excuse me, to do these pro-
grams, but let me ask specifically, also I have read that a lot of
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educators have been laid off. It is unclear to me whether or not
they have just been furloughed, they are out for the summer, or no,
you are laid off, we don’t have any money and we are not bringing
you back.
The program that you outlined seems like it is going to require
more personal not less. Do you have the financial capacity? And if
there is time I ask this of the other panelists as well.
Ms. CORDOVA. Absolutely. We do not have the financial capacity
to do everything that we would like to be able to do. And in fact,
we are looking at pretty significant cuts.
Senator CASSIDY. Anybody else have a little bit of time? Ten-
nessee or Nebraska? Y’all’s kind of experience?
Ms. SCHWINN. So our state budget—our state budget continues
to fully fund our school funding formula that is a commitment that
was made by the Governor. And so we are very grateful for that
and we will continue to want to look for investments as our econ-
omy bounces back.
Senator CASSIDY. Okay. Well, thank you all. I appreciate your
testimony. I yield back.
The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Senator Cassidy.
Senator Casey.
Senator CASEY. Mr. Chairman, thanks very much for this oppor-
tunity. I want to thank our witnesses for their appearance. My
questions will be directed to Dr. King, Secretary King and I wanted
to thank the other witnesses as well and they can certainly chime
in if they have a response to my questions. I will have two. One
will focus on the question of learning loss.
I know that Senator Murray asked a similar question. But I
wanted to start by noting what Secretary King just said in the out-
set of his testimony with regard to what we have just been through
and I am quoting from his statement, I am glad that he referred
to this earlier, ‘‘both the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor
and Ahmaud Arbery have once again sent the message to Black
students that their lives are devalued, ‘‘and he also outlined the
disparities and challenges that are faced by communities of color
in education and focused on what that means in the midst of a
pandemic mired in’’ an economic crisis that disproportionately af-
fects the financial well-being of these students living in a country
that too often still struggles to recognize their humanity.’’ On all
these issues we have to bear in mind these inequities, these dis-
parities which should be the subject of action.
I wanted to focus as well on students with disabilities because
they face barriers as well. I just spoke last week, and as I have
done a number of times the last few weeks, with parents of chil-
dren with disabilities, students with disabilities, and they shared
with me that in Pennsylvania they have been provided sometimes
hundreds of pages of instructional material that can be over-
whelming for a parent. And now we have to consider that if the
outbreak or the virus itself rears its ugly head again, another out-
break that lead to closures again.
Secretary King, I would ask, how can we minimize some of the
disparities, some of these many disparities in this context of stu-
dents with disabilities to ensure that these students who have ad-
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ditional instructional needs can continue to be provided with a high
quality education by way of distance learning?
Mr. KING. Such an important question, Senator Casey. We have
to start with getting the distance learning infrastructure right. So
we have to make sure that the low-income students with disabil-
ities have access to devices and Internet service for starters. We
have got to make sure that schools have the resources to provide
compensatory services for missed learning this spring, no question.
That we already had gaps, as you pointed out.
The graduation rate for students with disabilities in high school,
for example, is some almost 20 points below that of students in
general education. So we have got to make sure that we make up
for the lost time this spring and then we have got to have the re-
sources for schools to provide additional intervention.
There may be some opportunities with existing the CARES Act,
but our view is it is not sufficient to address the scale of learning
loss that we are seeing, particularly for students with disabilities.
They are going to need more time. Maybe starting early, maybe a
longer school day, and maybe a longer school year in order to make
up the ground.
Senator CASEY. Thank you. We look forward to working with you
on this issue. I wanted to close with a question pertaining to learn-
ing loss, and Senator Murray has mentioned and others have in
their testimony. We are told by the Center on Reinventing Public
Education that only 44 percent of districts are both providing in-
struction online as well as monitoring students attendance and
their progress by way of distance learning. Lack of funding plus
lack of assistive technology compounds in equities and exacerbates
these achievement gaps that we have been discussing today. How
can we assess learning loss and work to close these achievement
gaps?
Mr. KING. Well, we are certainly going to need diagnostic assess-
ment as students return to school to get a sense of where they are.
For students with disabilities in particular we are going to need to
assess their IDA goals and whether or not they have made progress
toward those goals and what it will take to help them make
progress. And I worry that there are some who have called for set-
ting aside the protections of IDA.
That strikes me as a mistake and potentially jeopardizing the
progress we have made over the last few decades in supporting stu-
dents with disabilities, particularly those who are from low-income
families or communities of color who are most vulnerable. So we,
I think, have to make sure that states and school districts honor
students IDAs. If they have missed services, they need to get those
when they come back to school.
Senator CASEY. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. Thank you, Mr. Chair-
man.
The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Senator Casey.
Senator Murkowski.
Senator MURKOWSKI. Am I there now?
The CHAIRMAN. You are, welcome.
Senator MURKOWSKI. Thank you. Thank you, and thank you to
the witnesses. Thank you for this hearing. I will tell you I have so
many worries and I am listening to you all sharing your concerns,
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sharing your worries. I am thinking about kids that really are
going to need the assistance of our school nurses, of our school
counselors. I am worried about those kids who were doing okay be-
fore COVID but now they are going to be looking at a school year
where they are part of the homelessness group. There are families
now that are homeless.
I think about our Anchorage school district, for instance, where
we have over 90 plus different languages that are the home lan-
guages in the Anchorage school district alone. How these non-
English learners are going to be adapting to this. I want to begin
my question first and this is probably directed to you, Dr. King.
Much of the success, if we are in a truncated school week or
school year, so much of what we have dealt with has relied on the
fact that our kids are able to take a laptop, have access to their
teachers through the Internet here. Well in my state and in many
rural states, Internet is spotty at best and we can give the kids as
many laptops as they want but if it doesn’t connect, if you will. It
doesn’t get them anywhere, and we know that E-Rate, and I appre-
ciate what you have raised Dr. King, this is what provides this crit-
ical support to our school districts in so many of our rural areas,
but when school is closed and the E-Rate program is limited to pro-
viding Internet at the school, kids can’t get access after that. They
don’t have the connectivity that they need.
We have been pushing on this. We have been talking with folks
at the FCC. They have appropriately pushed to expand the E-Rate
program to reach the entire campus so kids can go to a parking lot
at school and log on but what we are told is that without changes
to statute, they can’t provide support for tele-education into stu-
dents’ homes.
This is really problematic for us in Alaska. I am sure it is not
the only obstacle that our school districts are dealing with. Ours
are getting really creative, putting literally a dish up on top of the
school buildings. We know that we have seen great support from
many of our telecom providers providing her pre-Internet two fami-
lies during this initial COVID launch, but will they be there to pro-
vide that support in the fall if this is indefinite.
I guess the question is whether or not there is any integrated re-
view of the issues that are going on to provide some recommenda-
tions to this Committee for reforms in a future bill? Because with
the school’s coming on in August, no answer in sight for so many.
I am just not sure how you make it happen because it looks good
on paper, but again, if you haven’t connected, these kids are left
out. Dr. King?
Mr. KING. You are exactly right about these School Health, Li-
braries, Broadband Coalition has suggested a sort of comprehensive
strategy that would cost I think $5.25 billion to try to make sure
that every student has access to the Internet. I think there is an
important role for the FCC to play here with the Internet service
providers to try to make it as simple as possible for folks to access
Internet service and ideally to make it possible for school districts
to make bulk purchases of Internet service for families.
I think about the Cleveland school district that has committed
over the next few years to work with their Internet service pro-
viders to ensure that every household in Cleveland has access to
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Internet service. And from the school districts and point, it is a
question of protecting kids’ access to distance learning, it is closing
the homework gap so students can use the Internet even if we are
past COVID–19 to do their homework.
But also today the Internet is foundational to accessing post-sec-
ondary opportunities to accessing job opportunities. And so we do
need, I think you are exactly right, a comprehensive solution here,
and long-term particularly for our rural areas that may mean also
infrastructure investment.
Senator MURKOWSKI. I think we recognize we are lacking. To the
Superintendent Cordova from Denver, I have a question that I
have of you as it relates to the homelessness and the emergency
needs that our families and youth in our communities in the wake
of COVID, the community partners inside and outside of the
schools can help stabilize these children and youth.
I have introduced a bill just today related specifically to this. I
am quite concerned that there is this gap in services when it comes
to our homeless kids, our homeless families. I am out of time. I
want to respect the Chairman’s directive here.
Perhaps I could have a conversation offline with you if you have
any suggestions, but it is something that I would hope that we
have further discussion on, and I will submit that question for the
record, Mr. Chairman, as well as others. Thank you.
The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Senator Murkowski.
Senator Baldwin.
Senator BALDWIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I wanted to begin
by associating myself with the remarks of Ranking Member Mur-
ray, our witnesses, and colleagues who have acknowledged the un-
questionable call from people all over this country, including so
many young people, for racial justice, racial equity, and the change
that our country so desperately needs.
I hope this Committee, in fact I hope every committee in the Sen-
ate will look for ways that we can move this conversation forward
and this cause forward, and especially for us in the HELP Com-
mittee to look deeply within the jurisdiction of this Committee on
Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions to see where we can do
more. So I really think everyone who has drawn attention on this
very important hearing on how we can safely reopen our schools
and provide high-quality education to all of our children.
We also have to, on this topic, consider how students can safely
go back to school but also ensure that these environments are safe
for faculty, for administrators, for support staff. And I would note
as others have that this population are sometimes at higher risk
for severe illness from the COVID–19 disease. For example, accord-
ing to Federal data, nearly a third of all K through 12 teachers are
over the age of 50. So I am confident that all of our school districts
want to reopen safely, but I believe that they need clear rules of
the road about how they must protect their employees and edu-
cators so that they feel confident that they will be safe at work. It
is why I introduced the COVID–19 Every Worker Protection Act,
which requires the Occupational Safety and Health Administration
to issue emergency temporary standards that covers all workers
and requires workplaces to implement infectious disease exposure
control plans to keep workers safe.
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I believe it is critical for the safety of educators as well as the
students they serve that an OSHA standard be in place before
schools begin to open in any fashion in the fall. Now, this spring
we saw schools across the country forced to make an unprecedented
shift to distance learning on an extraordinarily tight timeline.
Among other critical issues, this shift underscored the need to help
educators effectively integrate a wide range of technologies into
their teaching and use them to educate those who may have quite
wide range of specific needs.
Dr. Blomstedt, you noted in your testimony that Nebraska has
identified professional development for teachers to support remote
learning as a priority for your use of the CARES Act fund, and I
would like to ask you to spend a little bit more about how you iden-
tified this as a priority and what additional Federal funding to sup-
port this type of professional development, particularly with regard
to distance learning technologies, help you better ensure that the
educators are prepared to use these tools to help all students.
Mr. BLOMSTEDT. Yes, I would be glad to and thanks also for the
question. The reality underneath what we have done underneath
Launch Nebraska, we really started thinking about we need to find
what our weaknesses are in the distance learning environment. We
knew some of it from technology standpoint, but we didn’t realize
that many of our students in urban areas and rural areas alike did
not have adequate broadband at home. And so we really looked at
everything from infrastructure to devices to the type of educational
content that is available that also needs to be addressing students
with disabilities and students with other types of challenges that
they might have relative to accessing that technology, and then ul-
timately training teachers to be able to use that effectively, became
really critical.
We have actually had a series of professional learning, at dis-
tance by the way, for our students—for our teachers, excuse me,
across the state and we have had, I think we are going to be up
to about 15 different trainings that we have done in content areas
and otherwise. And we also need to distribute high quality content
as well. And that has been a big part of our conversation.
We find some of the content being used by schools does not im-
mediately translate to a digital environment so we are looking ac-
tually the use CARES Act funding to make those investments all
the way through that important cycle.
Senator BALDWIN. Thank you.
The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Senator Baldwin.
Senator Braun.
Senator BRAUN. Thank you, Chairman. I was on a school board
for 10 years from 2004 to 2014. And I must say that this is in a
category in and of itself, trying to imagine how we navigate
through it. I am anxious to get back with my friends, some of them
are still on the board, but I got several questions and I am going
to limit them to two. And the first is going to be for Drs. Schwinn
and Blomstedt, and Ms. Cordova, and it would in regard to the
issue of liability in terms of trying to reopen schools.
I know that it has been a sensitive topic among business owners
in Indiana worried about if they want to robustly try to get their
businesses going as part of getting the economy restarted and espe-
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cially among the conference, the Republican conference, that is a
concern. Would each of you give me your opinion on, is that some-
thing that is tangible, measurably being discussed as a concern and
trying to do something that looks like it is going to have a lot of
acrobatics to it, a lot of guidelines.
Indiana, by the way, just released a 37 page guideline for reopen-
ing in the classroom. Came out on June 5th and paging through
it, it looks very comprehensive if any of you choose to look at it.
But give me a comment on whether you think that is a concern or
whether that is something that has not been on your minds.
Mr. BLOMSTEDT. So from my perspective, in Nebraska we cer-
tainly have had those conversations with school board members
and administrators and those types of concerns. Here is my concern
that we can’t have individuals waving their rights to general liabil-
ity concerns. We have actually had some conversations in the state
on that front. I don’t have a great answer on how we would go and
provide some type of umbrella protections for these environments,
but I do believe that is a worthy and worthwhile conversation.
Ms. SCHWINN. In Tennessee, our two priorities are to ensure that
we keep people safe and we keep kids educated. That is what this
is about. And so for us, we know that our teachers are covered for
tort liability through state law. We are currently having ongoing
conversations, but we want to make sure is that when educators
are in the classroom, that they are focused on keeping their kids
safe and that teaching and learning can take place.
Certainly we want to make sure there are enough protections
that they are not so over focused on some of the whether or not
little Johnny has his mask on in a kindergarten classroom, that
they are able to really focus on teaching literacy and Mathematics
and supporting the whole child. And so that is where our focus is
going to be.
Ms. CORDOVA. Speaking from a school district lens, this is defi-
nitely something that we have been discussing both in terms of
how we can implement the health guidance around entering into
our school buildings and our workplaces as well as thinking about
some of the needs that we have to require compensatory services,
which is less on the health side, but certainly is a very large liabil-
ity that we are very concerned about.
Senator BRAUN. Thank you. And Dr. King, there have been re-
cent developments in understanding the disease itself. The fact
that the World Health Organization just came out with the kind
of fine-tuning of transmissibility. We do know that probably in the
equation, protecting the teachers and staff that are going to fit into
that category that have been ravaged by the disease itself.
With what we have learned recently about what we may need to
do to fight this peculiar challenge off in general, have you found—
have you come across anything that you do differently now with
what we have learned recently and also discuss a little bit about
what we can do to protect teachers and staff that fit into that cat-
egory of being most susceptible to the disease.
Mr. KING. Yes, certainly I think looking back as a country, we
ought to have moved more quickly in response to the pandemic and
certainly move more quickly to put in place testing and contact
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tracing which is really foundational to any public health effort
around a pandemic. And we still need to do that work.
There are still places in the country where testing remains inac-
cessible and we don’t yet have the contact tracing infrastructure we
need and that is going to be foundational. I think we know now
from public health expertise, some of the things that schools can
do structurally from ensuring physical distance and to the use of
masks to improving cleaning to having a strategy to physically iso-
late a student who becomes ill until they can be picked up, needing
to follow-up with contact tracing within the school building.
Some of our international peers are using temperature checks as
a way to identify students who may be asymptomatic. But all of
those steps, as we talked about earlier, are going to require addi-
tional resources and school districts are going to have to do this in
close consultation with local public health experts.
I also should note that there are kids, in addition to having staff
who are particularly vulnerable because of pre-existing conditions,
there are also kids who have pre-existing conditions that might
make them more vulnerable. And certainly kids who are living in
homes with family members who may have conditions that make
them particularly vulnerable.
Senator BRAUN. Thank you. I yield.
The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Senator Braun.
Senator Murphy.
Senator MURPHY. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Thanks
to our panelists. Let me join in Senator Murray’s request to have
the Secretary of Education appear before our Committee. I think
that is absolutely essential given all of the questions that we are
raising today. We need the Nation’s top education official before us.
Second, let me express alarm at the prospect of leaving for a 2-
week recess in July without appropriating additional funding for
schools. The CARES Act put in about as much money for the air-
line industry as it did for the entire American public school system.
Now, the airline industry is important, but it is not more important
than all of the schools in the Nation and we got a letter back in
May from about 62 school superintendents of major cities fore-
casting that they are going to be looking at 15 to 25 percent cuts
in school funding even with the CARES Act funding, because when
you spread that money around, it just doesn’t get as far as the
need.
We need, we need to get additional funding to states and, or to
school districts before the July recess because the planning that is
going to need to be done in order to make sure that schools can
reopen safely is going to be done this summer. And that leads to
my first question and I will direct it to Secretary King.
There was a question raised by Senator Casey about how schools
get ready for students with learning disabilities and I am panicked
about this because many of them have not been able to engage in
any distance learning because they can’t learn without support
services—so talk to me about the need for schools to be able to plan
and hire now in order to be able to set up the support services that
they are going to need around these students. And what is the im-
pact of a 25 percent cut in funds for a school district on students
with disabilities when they return?
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Mr. KING. Well, Senator Murphy, I think this is exactly the right
question. Unfortunately, what we are seeing in a lot of places is a
degree of paralysis, because if you are anticipating a 20 to 30 per-
cent cut in state aid, that will be devastated. That will mean lay-
offs, program elimination, and so districts are in a sense stuck
waiting to see if Congress will help states with state stabilization
dollars that might prevent those kinds of cuts. So even as people
are doing that scenario planning, they are hampered in that work
because of fear of cuts.
There is no question that students with disabilities will need par-
ticularly intensive support when they return. They may be well
served by returning earlier, but that would be in very small groups.
Those teachers will need a tremendous amount of support to plan
for how they make up for the loss learning time. And then, many
of the students have not only disabilities that might affect learning
needs but they also have at times disabilities that affect their so-
cial and emotional needs.
We already know that schools have too few counselors, too few
mental health resources. That will be critical to supporting stu-
dents with disabilities and their families, many of whom have real-
ly struggled because as you note, over these over these several
months, without access to school and the support that school often
provides.
Senator MURPHY. I would just—this as an example, Laurence
Township in New Jersey where they have already laid off 80 of
their school aids. Many of those agents are those that serve the ex-
isting population and they are gone and likely not coming back. Let
me switch gears and direct a question to you, Ms. Cordova, because
I saw an announcement regarding a vote that is perhaps upcoming
to remove police officers from schools in Denver.
When we think about how to create safe schools, we are obvi-
ously talking about making sure that students don’t get infected
with the virus. But we are also talking about making sure that stu-
dents aren’t targeted because of their race. And the reality is that
while police officers have made a lot of students feel safe, they have
frankly made a lot of other students feel unsafe. In Virginia for in-
stance, Black students are about 40 percent of the state student
population, but they are 75 percent of arrests.
In my state, the basic same statistics hold. And so I am intrigued
by the decision that you have made. I think security officers are ap-
propriate but police officers often end up targeting students of color
for discipline and arrest. Just talk me through your decision.
Ms. CORDOVA. Thank you, Senator Murphy. So our school board
is taking this up in fact tomorrow to determine if they will end our
contract with the police and I think it aligns with the values that
they have for making the statement about the need to create envi-
ronments where students feel, safe, nurtured, welcomed, affirmed
for their identities, while still recognizing the important need to
create safe spaces with the kind of security that we know is impor-
tant in this day and age.
Senator MURPHY. Thank you. I am over my time. Thank you, Mr.
Chairman.
The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Senator Murphy.
Senator Loeffler.
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Senator LOEFFLER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you all
for being here today. One of the challenges that quickly became ap-
parent during the pandemic was the need to provide food to stu-
dents that are—many of whom are dependent on the school meal
programs. And as students begin to return to school in the fall,
many may only attend a few days a week, and I know and thank
the USDA for providing certain waivers and flexibility to school
lunch and EBT programs.
Based on the experiences that you have had in recent weeks, how
are your states and districts preparing to support the nutritional
needs of students when they are not able to be on campus going
on certain days? And I know for a fact that in our State of Georgia,
our farmers have stood ready to help provide resources. I would
love to hear from you on this important topic.
Ms. SCHWINN. So in Tennessee, we know that some of the most
important work that has to be done is around school nutrition.
Kids rely on schools to be fed breakfast, lunch, snack and some-
times supper. And so we led in terms of the number of ways or
waivers and how quickly we submitted waivers. We put up a
website, schoolmealfinder.com, so that families could put in their
addresses and get the closest meal possible.
But something I do want to highlight is that we are giving out
fewer meals because of school closures, because of the expenses and
costs of distributing that food, staff costs, etc., maintains stability.
So some of the CARES Act funding will go toward that but it is
certainly something that I think our districts are bringing up, but
our commitment stands firm that kids need to be fed. It is incred-
ibly important and the State of Tennessee will continue to do so
going into next year.
Mr. BLOMSTEDT. In Nebraska it is very similar. We have really
worked with our community partners to understand food security
at a community level. We have worked with a partnership that we
call them Nebraska Children and Families Foundation and Bring
Up Nebraska to really regionalize the state. And leverage what we
are doing in schools with private providers as well to ensure that
we can find some ways to do this. And so this has really been—
our initial effort was critical and it has continued to take place
statewide and we know it needs to stay in place for food security
for our needy families.
Ms. CORDOVA. Speaking from the school district lens, we will con-
tinue to provide food even on the days when students aren’t in
school, when they are engaging in remote learning because we
know how critical that is. We have been able to reach about half
as many students as typically eat on a school day and that is with
tremendous effort to try to get it to get it to kids. I talked with
families who say even having it in the neighborhood with distribu-
tion routes, but they simply don’t have the gas money to go pick
it up.
Mr. KING. Just quickly that the electronic benefits transfer card
through pandemic EBT I think has the potential to be very useful
here, but it will be important to extend that into the summer and
next school year, particularly as school districts consider hybrid
schedules where students will be away from school some days, that
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the pandemic EBT card will be even more important to make sure
that kids have access to it.
Senator LOEFFLER. Right. Well that concludes all—I yield my
time. Thank you, each of you, for your attention to this really im-
portant matter, and I think as we learn going forward, continuing
to share that information about how to address this would be great.
Thank you.
The CHAIRMAN. Senator Kaine is not available.
Senator Hassan.
Senator HASSAN. Well, thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you and
the Ranking Member for holding this hearing. Thank you to all the
witnesses for your work to meet the current unprecedented chal-
lenges that our Nation’s children and educators are facing. And
just before my questions, I also want to associate myself with the
remarks of our Ranking Member about the ongoing work we need
to do to address issues of institutional racism throughout our coun-
try and how important our education system is as part of that ef-
fort. Dr. King, I want to direct my first question to you.
As Congress has worked to respond to COVID–19, I have advo-
cated for additional funding and flexibility for state and local Gov-
ernments to help backfill your budget shortfalls. And budget short-
falls have been mentioned by all the witnesses here. We know that
some of the greatest implications of these shortfalls will be on
school budgets at a time when schools are being asked to com-
pletely rework education delivery and address student learning
loss.
Dr. King, do you agree that Congress should prioritize getting
states and local Governments to support that they need so that
educators have the necessary tools to meet students’ needs at this
critical time?
Mr. KING. It is absolutely essential, Senator, that Congress put
additional resources toward state stabilization dedicated to edu-
cation. We have called for at least $175 billion just to make sure
that districts don’t have to make devastating cuts to personnel and
programs. You need additional funds on top of that to address
learning loss and social and emotional needs, but those state sta-
bilization dollars are vital. We saw this during the Great Recession
that districts all over the country lost personnel, lost programs, and
the consequences were worse for the students who are most vulner-
able, for low-income students.
Senator HASSAN. Thank you. And, certainly. I simply hope that
we have bipartisan effort, as Senator Cassidy was talking about it
as well, to do just that. I also want to talk to you about another
particular group of students that face unique challenges during
this crisis and really following up on Senators Casey and Murphy
on this issue.
At a time when we have to meet the needs of all of our students
who have struggled to access a quality education during remote
learning, students who experience disabilities have been dispropor-
tionately impacted by changes to education delivery necessitated by
COVID–19. And you have spoken about that. Under the IDA, stu-
dents who experience disabilities have a right to access the same
educational opportunities as their peers. And that has been par-
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ticularly difficult as schools have shifted in person to remote learn-
ing.
In many cases, these disruptions will result in students with dis-
abilities experiencing learning loss and missing the education goals
outlined in their individualized education plans. Dr. King, as
schools experience increased demands to respond to COVID–19,
can you please speak to the value of Congress providing additional
dedicated funding to the IDA?
Mr. KING. Yes. We already know that for many school districts,
they are not getting nearly their level of ideal funding they need
to provide services and they are very reliant on local dollars. And
as states deal with budget cuts, it will be even more challenging
for them to ensure that they are serving students well. Some of the
things they will need, we know assistive technology will be vital for
some students be able to access distance learning.
We know that in some cases additional staff will be needed in
order to be able to potentially provide services at home to students
in a socially distant way that might get supports to those students.
Parents need additional support. In many cases parents are very
reliant on school to help them support students, particularly those
with the most significant disabilities, and they will need more sup-
port, social and emotional support as well as the instructional sup-
port for their kids.
This is a critical area. We got to make up for what students have
lost and we have got to be in a position to support students in what
may be a distance learning or hybrid learning environment into the
school year.
Senator HASSAN. Well, thank you for that. And I wanted to ask
Commissioner Schwinn and Blomstedt a question as well. We have
talked about all the different things that we are going to need to
do to get our schools ready for students to return there physically,
but we know that even in places where public health officials be-
lieve that schools can safely reopen, some families have faced in-
creased health risks at home.
They feel uncomfortable with their child going back to school
until there is a COVID–19 vaccine. So, can you share how your
own state school reopening plans address the needs of students
who may request to continue remote learning due to ongoing health
concerns?
Mr. BLOMSTEDT. Yes, and actually it has been a very important
conversation across the state that, again I kind of go back to my
people first approach, right, that when students are asking and
families are feeling that it is not safe, we want to make sure that
there are protocols in place. If they can’t feel safe in that environ-
ment or they have real medical conditions that are a big concern
for that family, especially students with disabilities that we know
have medical vulnerabilities on top of this.
We want schools to be accommodating for all of those different
settings. We want to find unique ways. We are asking schools to
find those unique ways and work with parents on IEP plans and
work with them relative to each plan and each individual concern
that parents may have. And so we see that taking place across the
state.
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There is a lot more to do and we will probably have challenges
yet like we always may experience. But from my perspective and
from our philosophy at the state, we need to be working with each
of them on those concerns.
Senator HASSAN. Thank you. Commissioner Schwinn, do you
have anything to add? I know I am over time.
Ms. SCHWINN. Yes, I will be brief. I think we have prioritized this
work in Tennessee. We put out a 60 plus page LEA guide and we
are putting out 20-plus toolkits over the next 7 days specifically on
issues like this. But we have prioritized children with disabilities
of $5 million compensatory education fund for our districts, $1 mil-
lion in assistive technology, and $3 million plus an innovative
grants so districts get supports they need specifically for students
who are unable to return to school.
Senator HASSAN. Thank you very much. Thank you all and thank
you, Mr. Chair.
The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Senator Hassan.
Senator Smith.
Senator SMITH. Thank you, Chair Alexander and Ranking Mem-
ber Murray, and all of our panelists for being here today. I want
to start out by addressing the issues that our Ranking Member
raised early on in this hearing. You know, Mr. George Floyd was
a constituent of mine. He was murdered by Minneapolis police offi-
cers. It is my hometown. His death is a tragedy and it never should
have happened and we cannot look away from the deep injustice
it represents. It reveals a systemic racism and inequity that exists
throughout our society, including in policing.
What is happening in my state and around the country, I believe,
is that people are rising up to demand justice for Mr. Floyd and
his family, but they are also marching in the streets because they
are demanding more. They are demanding that we address the sys-
temic inequities that we see in every part of our community. My
constituents are demanding that we address this everywhere and
I want to think about what this means for education. I want to talk
about what is difficult to talk about in my state.
Over the past 20 years, Minnesota schools have grown more not
less segregated. My state has over 200 schools where students of
color make up 90 percent of the enrollment, the bulk of those
schools are in the Twin Cities area. The Black-White achievement
gap in Minnesota remains unacceptably large, regularly 30 points
or more in Math and English proficiency tests. This dynamic is so
bad that it has been given a name, the Minnesota Paradox by a
professor at the University of Minnesota Humphrey school.
Colleagues, these disparities exist in my state and they are
shameful, but they exist in every one of our states. I believe so
strongly that in this moment we all have a moral responsibility to
not look away from this but to grapple with it and deal with it real-
ly directly. So I want to address my questions in the time that I
have here on this issue today and especially as we think about how
to safely reopen our schools.
Secretary King, let me ask you about this. One particular area
that I would welcome your thoughts in the whole area. You know,
we know that the COVID–19 epidemic has created such significant
stress on families and we also know that it is not the great equal-
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izer. That it disproportionately affects families and kids of color, in-
digenous communities, and Black families.
That this is a burden on top of this sort of trauma and inequity
and under investment in these communities. We have all of these
kids who we need to figure out how to bring safely back to and I
am thinking about the mental health challenges that these chil-
dren have been grappling with on top of everything else that has
been happening.
It feels to me like the scale and the scope that we are thinking
about for this is just completely missing the need. Secretary King,
could you address this and talk a little bit about how we need to
be urgent about this as our schools are trying right now to figure
out how to safely reopen?
Mr. KING. Yes. I mean, I worry tremendously about this. You
know, you think about kids from the relationship with adults and
peers at school is the thing that gives them a sense of hope and
stability. Now that they have been without that for months, think
about kids who are in families where there may be addictions or
domestic violence or where their families are going through an eco-
nomic trauma because of COVID–19 or their families are affected
by the disparate health impact COVID–19.
There is a lot that kids are carrying and we will need to address
when kids return to school. And we know that even though the
American School Counselor Association says we should have a ratio
of 1 counselor to every 250 students, we have states where the
ratio is more like 1 to 400, 1 to 500, 1 to 600. There is no way—
there is no way that counselors can provide adequate support.
We also know we have done polls of parents around the country
and one of the things we are seeing is skyrocketing stress amongst
parents. So I am very worried about parents and their need for so-
cial and emotional supports and access to mental health services.
So that is a vital area. I think of additional investment that schools
will need to make. Again, that will be very difficult in a context
where they are facing significant cuts.
Senator SMITH. So even before COVID–19, we have had a dis-
investment in counselors and mental health services in schools.
Schools right now are actually looking at cutting rather than in-
vesting. And where do they cut? They typically tend to cut not in
classrooms because that raises alarm bells for everyone.
They tend to cut in other places. This is my great worry that in
a moment when we should be investing, we are going to be seeing
cuts because Congress apparently feels no urgency in addressing
this issue as schools are trying to get ready for what is arguably
the most important beginning of a school year that will happen in
the lifetimes of these children. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Senator Smith. Senator Jones. I
think he is still in another committee hearing. Senator Rosen. We
have Senator Kaine and Senator Jones are in another hearing. I
think we are ready to conclude the hearing. Senator Murray. Do
you have some additional remarks or questions before we close the
hearing?
Senator MURRAY. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I do have one
question and then some closing comments. Secretary King, I did
want to ask you, there are over 1.5 million students who are expe-
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riencing homelessness enrolled in our public schools. And this num-
ber is going to grow because of the increase in unemployment and
other financial stresses on families right now.
I am really concerned that due to inequitable Internet and device
access, we have just talked about school budget cuts that are com-
ing, staggered school schedules, ongoing distance education, the
schools are going to find it really difficult to prioritize the needs of
students who are experiencing homelessness.
Dr. Blomstedt and Dr. Schwinn, maybe I will direct this to you,
what actions did you take to make sure schools in your state were
in regular touch with students and families who are experiencing
homelessness, and what are schools doing in your state now to
make sure they have the capacity to provide high quality instruc-
tional services to these students?
Dr. Blomstedt, let me start with you and then Dr. Schwinn.
Ms. BLOMSTEDT. Yes. Thanks for the question. And we have been
very concerned about our homeless students. Our systems are in-
volved in students right now. And at this moment in time, many
of our schools really worked hard to contact each family and start-
ed to find ways that they were able to do that. I was very im-
pressed to see teachers really, even though they might have been
teaching remotely, doing evening phone calls, making those close
contact type of connections, making sure folks are all right.
We did food drops and as part of that was trying to ensure that
those families were being recognized. Our homeless population is
obviously a huge, huge concern and so I don’t know that we have
every strategy down, but I know there was an intentional effort by
schools to check in on every single student on their rolls. And then
in some cases there were some concerns where we couldn’t find
necessarily what might have happened, and really some intentional
efforts to track down students if they weren’t being responsive to
the schools.
Senator MURRAY. Dr. Schwinn.
Ms. SCHWINN. Yes, ma’am. So to start out, Governor Lee an-
nounced the child well-being task force with the specific intent of
considering the full needs of our students when school buildings
are closed. That continues through the summer and we are con-
tinuing that through this coming school year understanding the
challenges. When I think about other things that we have done, we
put out the tool kit specifically for highly mobile students who
might be homeless and in foster care, etc. so that we can have addi-
tional supports for those kids who need it the most.
Frankly, I think about places like Shelby County in Memphis,
Nashville, and our first Tennessee region in the far East, and when
I think about what those districts are doing, they are making sure
that they are doing calls every day. We are setting up and working
closely with our state board of education to ensure that learning
plans for next year require and support that level of contact with
our kids because we have to make sure that whatever school looks
like and whatever community of those locally driven decisions, that
we are able to focus on the two most important things, our kids are
safe and healthy and they are getting a high quality education.
Senator MURRAY. Thank you. Superintendent Cordova, does Den-
ver have Mckinney-Vento liaison in place with the capacity to
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make sure students who experience homelessness get equitable ac-
cess to education?
Ms. CORDOVA. We do but I do want to really stress the intensive
effort that our teachers and support staff have to go into during
this time of remote learning. Our students who are experiencing
homelessness were definitely some of the hardest to reach students.
There were students who lacked consistent access to Internet.
There were families that were experiencing multiple issues and at
very high risk of infection. And so we know that it was an inten-
sive effort. And sometimes successful, sometimes very challenging
to keep those students engaged in school.
Senator MURRAY. Okay. Well, thank you. Thank you to all of our
witnesses today. And as students and families and educators and
staff across the country wrap up this school year and begin to look
to the next one, there are a lot more questions than there are an-
swers. I know that schools and districts are not only grappling with
how to provide students with the high quality public education,
whether in person or virtually, but they are also grappling with
some of the biggest cuts to state and local revenue that we have
seen in a very long time.
Schools and school districts shouldn’t be on their own. They need
support and resources from the Federal Government. They need in-
depth, actionable public health guidance on best practices to ensure
the safety of students and educators and school staff and the
broader community, and they need a massive investment in our
public school system so schools have the resources they need to im-
plement public health protocols, to measure and address learning
loss among their students, and to offset the declines that we are
going to be seeing in state and local funding.
What they don’t need is Secretary DeVos using this crisis to push
your privatization agenda and compound the difficulties they are
facing. So before I close, I just wanted to emphasize once again how
crucial it is that this Committee and the American people actually
hear from the Administration and from Secretary DeVos so as stu-
dents and educators prepare for the incredibly challenging school
year ahead, they deserve to know that all of us, including Secretary
DeVos, are doing everything we can to support them. So thank you,
Mr. Chairman. Thank you for the hearing.
The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Senator Murray, and thank you to
all our Senators and the witnesses and to the staff for creating this
virtual environment. Just a couple of areas I would like to com-
ment on. It would be, especially at a time when the whole nation
is focused on racial discrimination and disparity in trying to under-
stand what in terms of laws or change in behavior we can do about
that, I think this hearing has emphasized that it would be hard to
think of anything we could do to both help the country move back
toward normalcy and to help minority children and children who
are disadvantaged or who are from single-parent families, hard to
think of anything more we could do than to help them get back to
school safely.
Any teacher can tell us and all of our witnesses have reminded
us of the emotional, intellectual and physical damage to children
if the schools aren’t open, and of the difficulty it creates for fami-
lies. So this has been a very important hearing. One thing I would
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ask of each of our witnesses, and I mentioned it to all of them, it
would be helpful to me and I think to other Senators if you could
provide some specifics to the Committee about exactly what it
would take in terms of financial support to open our schools safely.
Now, as Dr. Schwinn said, there are two goals here, one is to
open safely and then there are all the questions that have to do
with how the students thrive and how they learn. I think the Na-
tional Administrators Association did us a favor, the American
Federation of Teachers did the same, when they tried to estimate
the cost per district of just the basic things that would take to help
schools to open because of administrators are reluctant to take a
risk to open a schools.
That means a child is going to be left at home and suffer all
those disadvantages. So Dr. Schwinn said that in Tennessee, she
thought that the cost might be about $1.5 to $1.7 million for an av-
erage school district. The AFT mentioned $1.8. I think was the fig-
ure. So that would be very helpful to have, especially from the
Council of Chief State School Officers, Dr. Blomstedt, if you can
provide that to us.
Then second, I would like to see some analysis, if you can give
it, of why the money we have already appropriated can’t be used
for some of that. For example, $213.5 billion was appropriated just
for kindergarten through the 12th grade on March the 27th. Ten-
nessee, for example, got $260 million of that. I would assume some
of that could be used to prepare to open the school safely at the
end of the summer and in the fall. We appropriated $25 billion for
testing. If you spent $3 or $4 billion of that on hiring contact trac-
ers, you could hire 100,000 of them.
I would—so I would assume some of that could be used. Then
there is $150 billion that has been given to the states. About a
third of the state budget or more goes for education. So I would as-
sume some of that could be used and one of the complications we
may have is that money was restricted, the statute restricted the
way states could spend the money.
It would be helpful to me to hear from the Council of Chief State
School Officers. Do you think that changing the law to give states
more flexibility in using the money to help children go back safely
to school would be one way to help? So all of that would be helpful
and it would be most helpful if you could segregate going back to
school safely from all the other things that many people suggest we
should be doing help children learn. And the other thing is testing.
I had a conversation with Dr. Schwinn about testing. I am in-
trigued—I have been very focused on diagnostic testing. I think we
need to do everything we can. I think it is important for the coun-
try to know that the current plans are to have $40 to $50 million
tests available by about the time school starts, and that every
month, states are submitting their plans to the Federal Govern-
ment about what their testing needs are. And if they can’t meet
them, the Federal Government is helping them meet those tests.
And in addition, there is an effort at the National Institutes of
Health to create new ways to create diagnostic tests, which can be
given frequently and if necessary.
I think all that is important not just to contain the disease, but
to build confidence among parents and teachers and students that
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it is safe to go back to school. So what I am getting around to say-
ing is I hope that you will convey to your 100,000 schools and all
the school districts, they should be a part of their state plan for
testing so that as they look toward July, August and September,
if they need x number of tests and they don’t have the capacity for
that, that they can get some help in finding those tests because
they should be available for systematic testing.
This has been a very helpful hearing. I thank the witnesses, Dr.
Schwinn, Dr. Blomstedt, Ms. Cordova, Secretary King, I thank you
for taking time from your demanding schedules and busy days to
giving us your opinion. The record will remain open for 10 days.
Members may submit additional information for the record within
that time if they would like.
The CHAIRMAN. Our Committee will meet again next Wednesday,
June 17th. At that time we are going to focus on telehealth, lessons
from the COVID–19 pandemic. We have crammed about 10 years
of experience into 3 months in terms of telework, telelearning and
telehealth. And next Wednesday, we are going to focus on the im-
pact of the COVID–19 epidemic on telehealth and what we should
be doing as a result of it. The Committee will stand adjourned.
ADDITIONAL MATERIAL
AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS
A Plan to Safely Reopen America’s Schools and Communities
Guidance for imagining a new normal for public education, public health, and our
economy in the age of COVID–19
Summary
People across the United States are eager to return to some semblance of ‘‘nor-
mal.’’ To do so, we must meet a Herculean challenge: remaking our society and the
places in our lives we hold dear—public schools and colleges, places of worship,
workplaces, restaurants and more—in ways that hold paramount our ultimate prior-
ities: the safety and well-being of our children, families and communities; the safety
of our members and every frontline worker; and the health of our economy and eco-
nomic well-being of working families.
Physical distancing efforts have slowed the rate of COVID–19 infections, but no
expert believes we will eradicate this virus without a vaccine. Reopening pre-
maturely by relaxing stay-in-place restrictions and resuming large public gatherings
runs the risk of undoing the work of the last 2 months. A premature return to full
commercial activity risks a second surge of infections and second lockdown as is
happening in Singapore right now. Even once public health officials deem it safe to
reopen, doing so without the necessary precautions could be deadly.
This document provides a roadmap for navigating the next steps. It provides spe-
cific guidance for transitioning from lockdowns to other public health tools to limit
the transmission of COVID–19. It focuses on reopening school buildings in par-
ticular, because the safe reopening of public school buildings means students can
go to school, and parents, who work outside the home, can go to work. That is key
to the reopening of the broader economy. 1
We expect the plan to evolve and adapt over time. It rests on five pillars that
draw on the best available science and public health guidance, and the expertise of
educators and health practitioners. Gradually, responsibly and safely reopening soci-
ety requires:
1. Maintaining physical distancing until the number of new cases declines
for at least 14 consecutive days. Reducing the number of new cases is a
1 School systems have been operating throughout this pandemic. By reopening schools, we
mean having regularized access to school buildings and other physical learning and service de-
livery locations.
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prerequisite for transitioning to reopening plans on a community-by-com-
munity basis.
2. Putting in place the infrastructure and resources to test, trace and iso-
late new cases. Transitioning from community-focused physical distancing
and stay-in-place orders to case-specific interventions requires ramping up
the capacity to test, trace and isolate each and every new case.
3. Deploying the public health tools that prevent the virus’ spread and
aligning them with education strategies that meet the needs of students.
4. Involving workers, unions, parents and communities in all planning.
Each workplace and community faces unique challenges related to
COVID–19. To ensure that reopening plans address those challenges,
broad worker and community involvement is necessary. They must be en-
gaged, educated and empowered.
5. Investing in recovery: Do not abandon America’s communities or forfeit
America’s future. These interventions will require more—not less—invest-
ments in public health and in our schools, universities, hospitals, and local
and state governments. Strengthening communities should be a priority in
the recovery.
The AFT held its first press conference on COVID–19 on Feb. 1A2. Our union has
worked to ensure the safety and well-being of our communities and our members,
and we’ve been particularly fixated on the frontline workers who are risking their
lives to combat this pandemic. Early on, we worked to alert our members and allies
of the risks of an impending pandemic; unfortunately, the Trump administration
gave little and often conflicting guidance. We have remained steadfast in our efforts
to keep people safe, while also fighting to keep our public schools and universities
functioning, and for economic security for workers.
There are no magic elixirs to simply reopen. Reopening demands comprehensive,
transparent action and forthright communication by Federal and state authorities,
and will take the dedication, voice and forethought of frontline providers and edu-
cators and their unions, school districts, hospitals, local governments and commu-
nities. The alignment in every school and workplace of public health, instruction
and operations is absolutely imperative.
COVID–19 has exacerbated the deep inequalities in our society and underscored
the need for additional public investments to combat this inequity. As we face grow-
ing recessionary forces, we can’t simply limp out of this crisis or revert to a status
quo. We need a renewed sense of national urgency to reimagine a better America
and a pathway to a better life for all.
The challenges facing us should not be underestimated. For example, even as Gov-
ernors relax physical distancing requirements (after observing a reduction in the
number of new cases), some communities may not reflect the statewide trend. More-
over, each workplace faces a unique set of challenges for preventing the spread of
the virus. Additionally, we must consider the possibility of a resurgence of the virus
in the fall. Communities must be engaged, educated and empowered to exist under
this pre-vaccine new normal.
No one knows our public schools, universities and hospitals better than AFT
members, many of whom will face great risks in carrying out their jobs. That is why
our members and leaders must be at the table in envisioning and implementing
plans to reopen our society at the local level.
Our commonsense approach requires real partnerships with employers and com-
munity stakeholders on state and local levels. School districts, universities and hos-
pitals should look to unions and the collective bargaining process as opportunities
to provide genuine participation, communication and buy-in from the workers ulti-
mately responsible for ensuring the health and safety of our students, patients and
those we serve. In the absence of collective bargaining, other consultation processes
must be established. There is no substitute for eyes and ears on the ground in the
case of public health and safety.
2 Caitlin Rivers et al., ‘‘Public Health Principles for a Phased Reopening During COVID–19:
Guidance for Governors,’’ Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, April 17, 2020,
https://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/our-work/publications/public-health-principles-for-a-
phased-reopening-during-covid–19-guidance-for-Governors.
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1. Maintaining physical distancing until the number of new cases declines
for at least 14 consecutive days.
While projections vary, we are likely at least a year away from a widely available
vaccine. Adherence to physical distancing protocols has flattened the curve, showing
early signs of reducing the number of new cases. Flattening the curve is not a pan-
acea; it does not mean no additional cases. Its goal is to reduce the number of new
cases, to reduce illness and to ensure the healthcare system is not overwhelmed by
critically ill patients.
Unless and until we have adequate testing capacity, there is simply no way to
know whether we have sufficiently reduced the number of new cases to consider re-
opening society. Once we have reduced the number of cases for at least 14
days with adequate testing in place, reopening plans can go into effect on
a community-by-community basis.
Decisions to phase in less stringent physical distancing requirements and to begin
expanding allowable activities should be based on established criteria such as a sus-
tained decline of infections combined with protocols for protecting high-risk popu-
lations. This must be coupled with a robust public health infrastructure with the
capacity for effective disease surveillance, tracing, isolation of those infected and
quarantine.
While most physical distancing requirements come from state authorities, local
decisionmaking has a critical role to play. Even if a state determines that it can
ease or altogether lift physical distancing requirements based on the 14-day trigger,
the number of new cases in a specific community may not reflect the statewide
trend. That is why it is critical for unions to be in regular contact with their employ-
ers, and with their local and state authorities, as well the Centers for Disease Con-
trol and Prevention, to assess their particular situation. Unions and employers need
to determine whether there is (a) adequate testing in their community, given the
number of confirmed cases, and (b) then, once there is adequate testing capacity,
a reduction in the number of new cases for at least 14 consecutive days to make
a decision to transition to reopening. This information must be transparent and
available.
Active surveillance of new cases that develop once reopening has started will iden-
tify clusters of disease. Prompt action must be taken to prevent the widespread re-
surgence of COVID–19 in a community. It may be necessary to resume sheltering
in place for shorter periods of time in communities where there is disease resur-
gence, and plans must be in place so schools and other workplaces are prepared if
they must close again.
2. Putting in place the infrastructure and resources to test, trace and
isolate new cases.
Transitioning from community intervention to case intervention requires the ca-
pacity to test, trace and isolate new cases as they emerge. As Governors and public
health experts have repeatedly said, this capacity to test, trace and isolate every
new case of COVID–19 must be built now. People with confirmed infection should
quarantine for at least 14 days (or based on the latest CDC guidance). Anyone in
contact with confirmed cases should be traced and tested. Since there is ample evi-
dence of both asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic spread, it is necessary to test con-
tacts to ensure the virus is contained. In addition, anyone who exhibits symptoms
consistent with COVID–19 should be tested immediately.
Serological testing—a test that looks at people’s blood for trace evidence of wheth-
er they have come into contact with the virus—also provides some hope. With sero-
logical testing, we may be able to identify people who have developed immunity and
may be less vulnerable to infection. Concerns about reliability, privacy and govern-
ment oversight warrant close consideration by unions in determining whether and
how serological testing is appropriate for the workforces we represent.
Public health departments are leading testing and tracing efforts, but they have
been defunded for years and are stretched thin for resources. Estimates suggest that
the United States needs to deploy somewhere between 100,000 and 250,000 contact
tracers to adequately move from community intervention to case intervention.
However, local communities cannot hold their breath for a day that may never
come or the scale that we need. Unions, in partnership with employers and state
and local authorities can help public health departments in their efforts to test,
trace and isolate new cases. And to contribute to this effort, unions, working with
employers and others, should also consider creating and training in-house contact
tracers and rapid response resource coordinators. These roles would serve to help
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people with confirmed diagnoses, and provide available health and financial sup-
ports and resources during quarantine, to mitigate the isolating and other effects
of the experience.
Again, alignment of strategies, logistics and operations is essential. What we are
facing is complicated and unprecedented. Testing, tracing and isolation must be
done in conjunction with other public health tools and interventions like physical
distancing, proper hand-washing, the use of personal protective equipment like
masks, and other supports and services (for example, food and mental health serv-
ices) that communities need.
3. Deploying the public health tools that prevent the virus’ spread and
aligning them with education strategies that meet the needs of students.
Reopening society and the economy hinges on successfully reopening schools.
While there is general guidance on how each community should respond to mitigate
the risk of spreading the virus, public education, higher education and our
healthcare system each face unique challenges. We must take every precaution to
ensure that students, teachers and support staff are safe at school and not transmit-
ting the virus. This requires: adopting evidence-based public health measures at
every school and workplace; aligning those measures with necessary instructional
and well-being strategies that meet the needs of students and staff; and recognizing
that this may be a rollercoaster because it may be necessary to resume physical
distancing at certain times and on a rolling basis, to address community-specific
outbreaks. Even without COVID–19, there are many programmatic considerations
for educators as they plan for every school year. Elementary schools program far
differently from high schools, so incorporating public health measures takes plan-
ning and resources. The alignment of logistics, educational strategies and public
health tools really matter, which is why the eyes and ears of frontline workers must
be respected.
The following framework for assessing methods for controlling exposure to haz-
ards in the workplace was initially developed by the National Institute for Occupa-
tional Safety and Health and later modified by Johns Hopkins University in re-
sponse to the COVID–19 pandemic. It is a good starting point.
• Physical distancing—Allowing people to work from home and/or restruc-
turing work to minimize the number of workers physically present in a
workspace.
• Screening—Utilizing screening measures at work and school sites. This
could include temperature-taking, if still recommended as an effective
screening measure by the CDC.
• School-based programming and organization—Among many things dis-
cussed below, redistributing work responsibilities to reduce contact be-
tween people.
• Personal protective equipment and sanitization—Providing medical-grade
masks for health professionals and nonmedical-grade masks for all oth-
ers, and disinfecting schools on a regular basis, in addition to providing
hand-washing and sanitizing stations.
A. Reopening Our Schools
First and foremost, we must do all we can to ensure students, teachers and sup-
port staff are safe at school and are not unknowingly transmitting or contracting
the virus. This will require a number of steps that anyone who has consumed any
news has heard repeatedly: screening and testing, contact tracing, and isolation and
quarantine measures, as well as ongoing prevention measures like frequent hand-
washing and some degree of physical distancing. There won’t be a one-size-fits-all
process, or a hard open where every school in every district immediately turns the
lights on; we may be opening and closing for a number of months while we secure
these measures and develop ways to keep everyone safe. In addition to the imme-
diate public health tools and interventions, we must plan for a curriculum-based
academic year, and for the panoply of appropriate educational and social-emotional
supports our students need. We must be prepared for the trauma, the transition and
the many instructional issues—including the effects of learning loss and the digital
divide.
Revisiting the community school model is a way to do all of the above. Even be-
fore the COVID–19 pandemic, community schools created a community hub where
students and families could get access to health services, where marginalized com-
munities received support, and where necessary services were available in one place.
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This model is needed even more now, given the effects of the pandemic—from the
inequalities that have been exacerbated, to the need for care before and after school
so that essential workers can continue to work and other parents can return to
work.
If experts deem it safe, summer may be a way to start planning a community
school model that incorporates the collaborative partnerships and community re-
sources families have used, including meals and medical care, while schools were
closed. 3 Summer is a way to try things other countries are doing, including Den-
mark, Germany, Israel and Norway, which are bringing in small groups of students
who need instruction first, including students with special needs whose needs were
hardest to meet during closure.
A voluntary multiweek summer session could provide enrichment and ‘‘catch-up’’
time. It also would enable trying, on a smaller scale, protocols that may work when
schools open more broadly, including staggered scheduling, increased hand-washing,
and nightly school cleaning. And summer can be an opportunity to expand grab-and-
go nutrition programs, as food insecurity remains a pressing issue for far too many
students.
Now is the time for unions and employers to work on all issues for returning to
school. This includes programming, space, operations, logistics, calendar, and align-
ing all the public health interventions with all the schooling interventions: ensuring
students’ healthy social, emotional and academic development; nurturing productive
relationships; building resilience; supporting diversity and inclusion; and rebuilding
the school community.
While COVID–19 has upended much of our lives, it has reinforced the value and
importance of public schooling. Teachers and school staff across this country con-
tinue their heroic efforts to make distance learning work and support their stu-
dents—with many parents working valiantly to support them as well. This experi-
ence has made clear that there is no substitute for a safe and welcoming neighbor-
hood school.
And while our public schools have been woefully under-resourced, and we must
continue the fight to change that, this next 2 years is an opportunity to visualize
what schooling looks like in a post-pandemic era, to ensure every child has the op-
portunity to thrive.
i. School-Based Public Health Interventions
Even after shelter-in-place orders are lifted, physical distancing—including lim-
iting the number of people who can be in a school, a hall, an auditorium or a class-
room—will play an important role in school safety. Physical distancing measures are
the most effective intervention but also the most disruptive. It is a real possibility
that even after schools open, targeted building closures could happen around the
country in response to community outbreaks. That is why, even though online edu-
cation is not a substitute for the in-person learning and socialization that happens
in schools, schools must prepare for hybrid measures: both in-school and remote
education.
Handling emergent cases:
Districts, in partnership with unions, will need to develop protocols for the refer-
ral, tracing and isolation of students and staff who are exhibiting COVID–19-related
symptoms or with confirmed diagnoses. Any plan should, at minimum, include:
Entry process/screening:
• Hand-washing on entry to all schools, with soap and water or hand sani-
tizer;
• Screening for symptoms in children and staff, including temperature-tak-
ing if recommended by the CDC;
• An isolation room;
• Clear protocols for communicating with students, parents and staff who
have come into close/sustained contact with confirmed cases;
• Limiting access to the nurse’s office and creating a secondary area for
triage for other student illnesses or injuries;
• An ability to transfer healthcare staff to sites with more cases, without
diminishing support available to students elsewhere in the district; and
3 John King and Randi Weingarten, ‘‘What Comes Next for Public Education?’’, The Hill,
April 24, 2020, https://thehill.com/opinion/education/494521-what-comes-next-for-public-
schooling.
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• Communicating directly and immediately with parents and community
regarding cases and how the district responded.
Protections for at-risk staff and at-risk students: COVID–19 disproportion-
ately affects people 65 and older and those with underlying chronic health condi-
tions. Reopening plans should consider providing these workers with the option to
deliver instruction remotely while students are in the building, with students under
the supervision of qualified staff. At-risk students should have a similar option to
learn remotely while their teachers and peers are in school.
ii. School-Based Public Health Reorganization
Prolonged physical distancing practices may prove impossible for certain popu-
lations. Schools serve diverse populations, from very young children, to students
with severe behavioral issues, to others with physical limitations that may make
strict adherence to a six-foot distancing standard difficult. This will require efforts
to reorganize the school day and school operations to maintain health and safety
standards.[3]
It is critical to recognize that different schools, different districts and even dif-
ferent rooms will require tailored solutions.
• Smaller class sizes. One of the most important measures districts can
take is to reduce class sizes. Class sizes of 25 or more students in a small
classroom pose obvious risks to student health and safety. Class sizes of
12–15 students will, in most circumstances, make it possible to maintain
physical distancing protocols.
• Split scheduling. Alternating days of the week or times of the day may
offer schools a way of limiting the number of students physically present
in the building at any given time. Knowing that split scheduling may
cause disruption for parents and guardians, schools should consider put-
ting in place after-school care with safety protocols for students and fami-
lies most in need.
• Monitoring access to school facilities. Schools should closely monitor ac-
cess to school facilities and limit the number of visitors granted access
to school facilities.
• Transportation. Districts should consider modifying transportation to pro-
vide staggered arrival times and multiple arrival locations to limit large
gatherings of students.
• Staggered lunch and meal times. Meals should be staggered throughout
the day, and schools should consider having students eat in classrooms
with appropriate protocols to keep the classroom clean.
• Special student populations. Additional considerations and planning will
be needed for students with disabilities, underlying health conditions,
asthma or respiratory illness, and special education requirements.
• Training for staff, students and parents. Districts should consider pro-
viding up-to-date education and training on COVID–19 risk factors and
protective behaviors.
• Alternative plans for after-school programs, sports, recreation and phys-
ical fitness. These activities may need to be adjusted using the above pro-
tocols.
• Space and time considerations. This includes the need for portable class-
rooms or additional space if schools are overcrowded.
• Additional supports. This includes professional development, small-group
instruction, and all the other social-emotional and academic pro-
grammatic supports necessary during this transition.
iii. PPE and Sanitization
• Availability of and training on how to effectively use PPE. Educators and
support staff need appropriate PPE and training on how to properly put
on, use, take off and dispose of it.
• Hand-washing stations and protocol. Schools should set up hand-washing
stations upon entry to school buildings. Hand-washing recesses can be in-
tegrated into the schedule throughout the day for all students and staff.
• Daily sanitizing. School facilities should be thoroughly sanitized on a
daily basis to prevent transmission of the virus, increasing staff as nec-
essary.
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iv. Mental Health Supports for Students
Our collective response to COVID–19 requires much more than limiting the
spread of the virus. Prolonged physical distancing, death and illness in our families
and communities, and economic dislocations, will leave many students and faculty
with ongoing trauma and mental health issues, and it is incumbent on us to meet
their needs now more than ever. We know from brain science that lack of psycho-
logical safety and the impact of adverse childhood experiences impede and even pre-
vent learning. These impacts will be widespread. This will require additional staff
with expertise in mental health, to provide trauma and sensitivity training for all
staff, students and parents. All staff should be trained on how to identify students
struggling with trauma and refer them to mental health professionals for additional
support.
v. High-Quality Instruction
Teachers and school support staff have responded to the crisis with verve and cre-
ativity, creating an entirely new educational delivery system remotely with no ad-
vanced notice and little, if any, training. If anything, the pandemic has proven that
teachers, when given the freedom to teach, will rise to the occasion to deliver high-
quality instruction to their students.
• Blended in-person and distance learning models. When school attendance
is not possible or is limited, districts could consider a temporary blended
model that distributes educational time between in-person learning and
distance learning or fully remote instruction. Recognizing the dangers of
excessive time on devices, especially for young students, districts should
develop age-appropriate student learning schedules with teacher input.
• Expanded access to broadband and technology to close the digital divide.
Districts should identify students and educators who lack sufficient ac-
cess to the internet and the hardware that has become critical to distance
learning, and determine solutions for equal access to learning opportuni-
ties for those who are unable to connect with the school digitally.
• Professional development. Professional development and collaboration
time for teachers—before the school year begins, and ongoing—will be
more important than ever. This should include not only relevant content,
but should address teaching in the new instructional environment, and
trauma-informed practices.
• Rethinking student assessments. An extensive review of all assessment
programs to limit the loss of learning time to excessive testing, and to
prioritize assessments that provide teachers critical information. Special
effort will be needed for appropriate diagnosis of students’ learning levels
and needs given the truncated traditional school year. These diagnostics
should be teacher-friendly and accompanied by access to relevant instruc-
tional resources and supports to fill gaps.
• Performance evaluation. Districts should put formal evaluations on hold
during the reopening period until they develop new expectations for the
possibility of instruction that alternates between in-person learning and
distance learning. Informal evaluation focused on helpful feedback should
continue.
• Role of data. Beyond refocusing schools on the fundamental values of
public schooling—a focus that has been lost over the years—it is also
time we repurpose the role of information and data in our schools. For
too long officials have used school and student data solely for account-
ability purposes. As we reopen our schools, we need to primarily use
these data to guide instruction, identify and share best practices, and
help collectively solve mutual problems.
• Teaching and learning. The considerations laid out above must be placed
in the context of the overall instructional program as well as supple-
mental services and co-curriculums—all of which will require significant
adjustment. Consideration of the needs of students—particularly students
with disabilities and special needs, economically disadvantaged students,
and English language learners—will help ensure that the program works
for all.
As the CDC guidance suggests, schools can be information hubs and
places to practice key protocols to help stop the spread of the virus. We are
facing a new normal, and at least in the near future, schools will not be the same.
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In the short term, this new normal requires more, not fewer, resources—nurses,
mental health professionals, and additional instructional and other support. This
crisis provides an opportunity to reimagine America’s public schools as inclusive and
welcoming places for all children to thrive and learn.
Perhaps, out of crisis, we will put our children’s and their educators’ well-being
first. That means, just as we must listen to the healthcare experts to help ensure
everyone’s safety through this outbreak, we must listen to frontline educators, staff
and administrators to ensure children’s new normal is one that meets their needs.
B. Reopening Our Colleges and Universities
Institutions of higher education have been essential to our defense against this
pandemic, and they will be essential to economic recovery in the new era. American
colleges and universities have produced many of the people who have helped us
through this crisis—physicians, nurses and other frontline medical professionals, as
well as supply chain logisticians, information technology personnel, materials
science engineers and innovators, and more, who will be urgently needed at every
step of what is to come.
College campuses are, historically, exceptionally open physical environments, with
most spaces, including buildings, accessible to the public virtually all day, and with
a wide range of students, faculty, staff, community members, vendors, outside orga-
nizations and other people—all of whom are potential COVID–19 vectors—moving
in and through the work site, and to off-campus locations both near and far. The
extended duration of daily campus operations—7 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily is not at all
uncommon—allows minimal or no window for deep-cleaning procedures.
All of this means that the dislocations caused by the COVID–19 crisis pose a
unique existential challenge to American higher education. Because of decades of
disinvestment, many institutions—public and private—are revenue-dependent, and
are currently not situated to survive even a 10 percent or 20 percent decline in en-
rollment, or the closure of campus housing for a semester or two. While prospective
students at elite institutions consider taking ‘‘gap years,’’ the students who would
and should attend public colleges and universities are in danger of dropping out of
college entirely. And college and university workers rightly fear that this confluence
of factors will combine with an aggressive transition to online modes of instruction
to result in institutional collapse.
It is critical to remember that the higher education workforce skews older than
average, and is, by the CDC’s definition, at heightened risk from coronavirus. And
they are, in the majority, struggling financially. Most teachers in higher education
are gig workers. Seventy-five percent are employed 1 year or semester at a time.
One-third of them are making less than $25,000 per year, one-quarter of them are
food-insecure, and 43 percent of them have put off seeing a doctor for financial rea-
sons in the past year.
To keep these institutions afloat, and to grow the educational infrastructure we
will need in order to come back as a nation from the coronavirus, a program of in-
vestment similar to the grant program that has helped to stabilize small businesses
in this time is needed. We must invest in our institutions of higher education like
never before, with the college equivalent of Title I: $50 billion in funding to public
institutions of higher education and minority-serving institutions. This money
should flow through states with a formula that emphasizes enrollments of low-in-
come individuals, and encourages greater support for institutions that derive larger
shares of their operating budgets from state and local sources.
Specific recommendations for our colleges and universities include:
i. Physical Distancing
• Faculty must decide whether and how online instruction is possible and,
with the guidance of campus and public health officials, how any in-per-
son or hybrid instruction can be conducted safely.
• As much as possible, college and university staff—both professional and
classified—must be afforded the opportunity to continue telework.
• To encourage the greatest extent of physical distancing, institutions must
do everything possible to close the digital divide for faculty, staff and stu-
dents, thereby lessening the need for anyone to be in shared space in
order to access the internet.
• Residential colleges and universities must implement physical distancing
measures for both residents and staff in campus housing, dining facilities
and other common areas including libraries, if they remain open. Institu-
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tions should consult with, or employ, public health specialists to advise
in an ongoing way about how to accomplish this.
• To prevent fear pushing faculty or students into physical proximity when
physical distancing could and should be maintained, institutional leaders
must expeditiously work with institutional accrediting agencies, pro-
grammatic accreditors, and union and employer sponsors of workforce
training programs, to assure students and faculty that the responsible
movement of instruction into remote/online and hybrid space will not be
penalized.
• Create and utilize campus public health teams to evaluate and rec-
ommend action on potential problem areas on campus, and to assess and
improve the institution’s capacity for testing, tracing and isolation.
ii. Campus-Based Solutions
• Flexible graduation requirements. Be flexible about program and gradua-
tion requirements, course timelines and sequences, requirements for pro-
fessional certification, and other areas of historic stringency that may
conflict with the need for physical distancing. Consider adjusting upper-
level courses to account for changes in the preparedness of students who
have taken lower-level courses online during this interval.
• Protections for academic freedom. Attend to academic freedom and stu-
dent/faculty privacy in a remote learning environment. The safety of open
discussion in a contained classroom could be compromised by the possi-
bility of recordings that get widely circulated.
• Data security. Establish rules, including contract language, that reassure
faculty and students that corporate education vendors will not be using
this crisis to enhance their data mining and in turn appropriate that data
to expand prefabricated curriculum.
• Prepare for ongoing disruption. To the extent an institution is reopening,
make and propagate plans for disruptions to in-person instruction caused
by surges in COVID–19 cases.
• Protections for at-risk populations. Create and enforce policy and prac-
tices to prevent replicating and worsening the virus’s disproportionate
impact on older people and people with underlying health conditions that
place them at greater risk. Be especially attuned to the needs of older fac-
ulty and staff, or those with underlying health conditions or with house-
hold members who have underlying health conditions, to be able to work
out of proximity to others.
• Adjust compensation for additional instructional time. To maximize edu-
cational value and ensure compliance with physical distancing, plan to
pay teachers, particularly adjunct teachers and graduate assistants, for
the time they are asked to spend meeting either in person or virtually
with smaller groups of students than had met in the past.
iii. PPE and Sanitization
• Identify and provide appropriate PPE for employees and students.
• Establish cleaning regimens; properly protect and train the custodial staff
who conduct the cleaning.
• Appropriately and regularly sanitize public buildings, especially campus
residential and dining facilities.
iv. Physical and Mental Health Considerations
• Community health liaisons. Add trained nurses and counselors to oversee
the handling of identified cases of illness in the college or university com-
munity, and to direct those in need of resources.
• Protocol for new cases. Expand campus health resources, including isola-
tion rooms for students identified with COVID–19 symptoms. Establish
criteria for when residential students with COVID–19 symptoms, or who
are diagnosed as COVID–19 positive, will be excluded from regular cam-
pus activities, and identify the procedure that will be followed to relocate
the student either on or off campus.
• Resources for degree completion. Strengthen and expand existing pro-
grams to help students maintain continuous enrollment and progress to-
ward degrees—e.g., small-dollar grant programs, transportation and child
care assistance.
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C. Readying Our Hospitals and Health Systems
The lessons of this pandemic demonstrate the dangerous consequences of being
ill-prepared. The inability of our decimated public health infrastructure to handle
a pandemic puts the problems with our corporatized healthcare system on full dis-
play. In the absence of widespread immunity to COVID–19, new infections could
surge once shelter-in-place orders are lifted and society begins to reopen. Experts
additionally talk about a possible second wave of outbreaks in the fall. Without a
robust public health infrastructure, and absent enforcement of strong protective
guidelines and a supportive response plan by the Federal Government, union lead-
ers in the health sector must engage in meaningful ways of holding employers ac-
countable.
The gap between our public health system and private healthcare corporations
must be addressed. A lack of transparency and a funding model that has starved
resources from the public health system not only reward pharmaceutical and large
healthcare corporations. They also establish a power imbalance that minimizes the
voices of patients and workers in setting standards of care and in helping shape how
care should be delivered. Notwithstanding the challenges with our current system,
evidence-based practices, enactment and enforcement of protective regulatory stand-
ards, and collectively bargained terms are necessary to ensure healthcare workers
can care for patients without fear of harm to themselves and their family, should
a resurgence of the virus occur.
Worker safety is patient safety. Our healthcare workforce has borne the brunt of
workplace infections and deaths related to COVID–19, owing in large part to the
crisis rationing of PPE and the diminution of Federal standards and guidelines that
conform with the highest standards of patient safety. It is imperative that nurses
and other health professionals are at the table during employer debriefs and when
preparedness plans are evaluated and modified, to ensure our healthcare workforce
is not working in hazardous conditions. Health and safety issues must be addressed
before another surge in infections occurs. PPE supplies must be adequate in number
and quality, and all staff should be fit-tested and fully trained for use of PPE.
State reopening plans phasing in the return of elective medical procedures and
routine care require a hard look at where we have failed to keep our patients and
healthcare workforce safe. With COVID–19, nurses and healthcare professionals are
working in conditions where protective measures of infection control have failed and
their expertise and training have been overlooked. Infection control measures in pa-
tient care environments have necessarily been adjusted during the pandemic and
will require ongoing adjustment as reopening occurs. Factors like patient flow, room
setup, and visitor policies will influence the ability to limit transmission in clinical
settings. And union leaders will need to press healthcare employers to ensure they
are ready to quickly implement preparedness plans in the event of a resurgence.
There is a need to stabilize the healthcare workforce, as areas hard-hit by the
virus have seen an increased need for critical care nurses, but a decrease in need
for other nurse specialties. Resulting layoffs and substantial job loss in healthcare
contribute to the overall unemployment rates, prompting the need for effective de-
ployment of our healthcare workforce; this is a key component of reopening and
preparation for a second surge in infections. Nurses on medical floors with low pa-
tient counts, for example, could be trained to augment staffing in critical care areas
where staffing numbers are low due to infection rates among clinicians. Rather than
tactics like recruitment from abroad, we should first implement retraining to rede-
ploy existing staff based on patient needs.
Mending well-being and emotional resilience among the healthcare workforce will
also be a necessity. Stressors abound for healthcare workers caring for acutely ill
COVID–19 patients in isolation in hospitals and other healthcare settings. Whether
related to stressors like employment of strict biosecurity measures, the isolation
from family and friends, the heightened workload demands, or even the risk of dis-
ease, our healthcare workforce will require a period of reintegration—even though
most of their facilities have remained open. The systematic failure of employers and
the Federal Government to prepare for a pandemic resulted in an extraordinary
level of unnecessary trauma across the healthcare workforce, and those things must
be addressed.
4. Involving workers, unions, parents and communities in all planning.
There is no one-size-fits-all solution to this crisis. Rebuilding community after a
complex public health and economic crisis necessarily involves thousands of people
navigating recovery who are as new to the experience as the average person; thus,
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the effectiveness of our collective response depends on the collective action of each
community. Communities and workers must be educated, engaged and empowered.
This is an unprecedented situation; the eyes and ears of practitioners are essential
to ensure that the public health, instruction and logistics of reopening are
operationalized as seamlessly as possible.
Schools, colleges, hospitals, and local and state governments will need to engage
workers and community stakeholders at every level of the decisionmaking process
to ensure that the mitigation strategies embedded in reopening plans are responsive
to the specific vulnerabilities of each workplace and that there is regular and open
communication regarding the policies and procedures to keep everyone safe. Without
transparency and joint decisionmaking, there is a real risk of distrust, the spread
of misinformation, and a lack of compliance with reopening plans.
Collective bargaining is the best way to ensure that workers are represented in
decisionmaking and that health and safety standards are enforced to the benefit of
workers and the communities they serve. In the absence of collective bargaining,
workers and employers can use meet-and-confer arrangements to formalize reopen-
ing plans and ensure accountability.
Protections for Workers and Community
Strong, clear and enforceable workplace health and safety standards must be in
place to protect workers’ voices during the reopening process. Employers and joint
bodies administering the phased reopening plans need to know where there are
faults in the plan and noncompliance issues. In addition to OSHA protections avail-
able in some states, workplaces and other authorities should develop policies to pro-
tect workers who speak up about health and safety issues, as healthcare profes-
sionals are frequently subject to gag orders, and many have lost their jobs for speak-
ing up about safety concerns. 4
To ensure that health and safety measures are implemented, workers who voice
concerns publicly should be protected from employer retaliation that could result in
their discipline or dismissal. Workers must have the right to refuse work if they fear
exposure to the virus because they have not been provided proper protections or
training to do their jobs safely. The surest way to protect workers in these instances
is to put these protections into collective bargaining agreements. Workers have and
will face great risks in transitioning to reopening, and their voices should be treated
as a public health resource, not a liability.
In general, unions and employers, consulting with diverse community stake-
holders, should treat the collective bargaining process as an opportunity to solve
problems facing school districts, universities and hospitals as they plan for and
manage reopening. Consultation provisions can be built into the agreement to en-
sure that all parties are regularly discussing and solving problems as they arise.
Collective bargaining can also be used to fight for the resources workers and com-
munities need. AFT affiliates from across the country have been fighting for smaller
class sizes, more nurses and counselors, safe patient staffing, resources for commu-
nity schools, and other supports for students. Public schools should continue to be
reimagined as community hubs—places where students and families can get access
to community health services, be regularly educated about how to stay healthy, and
learn where to go to receive testing and treatment. Strong community and family
engagement has been a cornerstone of transforming struggling schools to support
students. When practitioners and school administrators work together to support
these efforts the results are even stronger and more sustainable.
This kind of investment around a whole-community approach is what will not
only mitigate the disproportionate harm this crisis has caused the most vulnerable
communities, but help reverse the inequality that existed long before this pandemic.
A Seat at the Table
All community members are struggling with the fear and anxiety of reopening be-
fore a vaccine is widely available. In order for communities to trust reopening plans,
they need a seat at the table to make decisions, and to feel engaged and empowered
to help their community implement them.
Reopening plans need to address specific challenges in each community. Some
schools have a network of healthcare providers that deliver services to students and
4 Theresa Brown, ’’The Reason Hospitals Won’t Let Doctors and Nurses Speak Out,’’ New
York Times, April 21, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/21/opinion/coronavirus-doc-
tors-nurses-hospitals.html.
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the school community, and others don’t. Some universities have student populations
with no home to return to in the event campus is closed. African Americans face
higher rates of infection and death. Older workers and those with chronic or under-
lying conditions are at higher risk of having life-threatening cases of COVID–19.
To address these issues, state and local unions should start planning committees
now, for the next school year, and use a needs assessment tool to map out the risks
of reopening. These committees can also help align the resources available across
sectors—education, public health and public safety—to mitigate those risks. The
guidance on the available public health tools and strategies for preserving high-
quality instruction discussed in section three is a good starting point, as is any over-
ture to invite parents and community groups to join you.
The plans that come out of needs assessments not only should provide guidance
to employers, but also should become official policy upon adoption by school boards
and other governing bodies and/or included in collective bargaining agreements to
ensure compliance and accountability. Workers and community stakeholders need
the power and voice to enforce these reopening plans, and to make sure they work
to fulfill health, safety and educational goals.
Effective communication depends on a high degree of trust. Without the trust of
workers and community stakeholders, workplaces will be challenged to ensure com-
pliance with reopening plans. Communication before and during phased reopening
must be transparent about the stakeholders involved in the decisionmaking process,
the factors used to make decisions, and the nature of the decisionmaking process
itself. We must remember that our communities are eager to return to a sense of
normalcy, as they are feeling the grief of lost loved ones, economic insecurity due
to lost jobs and incomes, and prolonged isolation.
Perhaps most importantly, communication needs to be clear about the actions peo-
ple can and must take to protect themselves and others from COVID–19. Employers
may simply not have the ability to effectively communicate those actions to workers
and the community at large, and they will need to call on the help of union and
community stakeholders to deliver the message into the community. A ‘‘whole
school-whole community’’ approach has been the most effective at limiting the
spread of the virus and keeping panic at bay. The AFT has worked tirelessly to en-
sure our members and communities are properly informed.
Invest in recovery. Do not abandon America’s communities or forfeit
America’s future.
The paired crises of the COVID–19 pandemic and the resulting economic devasta-
tion make reopening the public square especially complex. We know we must re-
ignite the economy, and a safe reopening of schools and other workplaces is a nec-
essary step toward recovery. While we are eager to put people back to work, send
children back to school, and repair the damage done to the economy and our fami-
lies’ well-being, to rush this process or fail to put in place the safeguards advised
by public health experts will risk both a second surge of infection and an even deep-
er economic downturn.
The toll this has taken on America’s working families and our communities is in-
calculable, and the hole gets deeper with each passing day. This particular moment
requires our Federal Government, in particular, to respond appropriately. In addi-
tion to what has already been done, a substantial and immediate Federal invest-
ment in our states, cities and towns is critical to ensure that we are continuing to
respond to the pandemic, clearing the way for a safe reopening, and supporting our
families and communities.
A Plan to Support State and Local Governments and Other Critical Services: Public
Schools, Public Safety, Public Health, the U.S. Postal Service and More
Businesses large and small have shut down operations, and more than 26 million
workers have filed for unemployment in recent weeks, threatening to crater tax rev-
enue for state and local governments. Even with the $2 trillion CARES Act rescue
package passed in March, the White House predicts 20 percent of Americans will
be unemployed by June. Governors from all 50 states have issued emergency dec-
larations and taken steps to reallocate their budgets. Now, these Governors, Demo-
crats and Republicans alike, are calling for the next COVID–19 relief bill to include
another $500 billion to stabilize their states and prevent another wave of layoffs,
because they’re desperate to avoid the cuts to public services like schools, healthcare
centers and public safety. More will be necessary to provide for a safe reopening and
address new needs created by this crisis.
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But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell suggested that Congress should let
state and local governments go bankrupt, putting teachers, nurses, bus drivers, fire-
fighters, EMTs and other public employees out of work, plundering pensions and re-
tirement security, and plunging even more families and seniors into poverty. His
plan would gut public education, Medicaid, public health services and mental health
treatment—the essential public services that never recovered fully from the aus-
terity measures imposed after the Great Recession of 2008.
We cannot forfeit our future or abandon our communities. To survive as a Nation,
we must help our public schools, universities, hospitals, state and local government,
and the Postal Service provide services that will be more needed than ever; this will
require an immediate, massive reinvestment in public services. The CARES Act and
related legislation provided an important first step in a Federal response, but more
is needed. Congress should, in the next iteration of its response, do at least the fol-
lowing:
• Support the National Governors Association’s call for $500 billion in addi-
tional funds to meet the states’ budgetary shortfalls that have resulted
from this unprecedented public health crisis.
• Provide at least $175 billion for the Education Stabilization Fund distrib-
uted directly to local education agencies and institutions of higher edu-
cation, with minimal state set-asides, in an equitable and targeted fash-
ion. Also provide $50 billion in direct funding for public colleges and uni-
versities and minority-serving institutions. Given anticipated loss of tax
revenues, they will need substantially more Federal support to deliver
crucial public services, such as educating our Nation’s public school stu-
dents, sustaining public higher education and maintaining a public serv-
ice workforce.
• Invest in voluntary summer school, after-school programs and community
schools that will make up for the instructional time lost during the 2019–
20 school year, by providing significant additional funding for Title I and
the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act as well as additional
funding for high-quality, voluntary summer school and extended learning
time. While the full extent of the current crisis continues to evolve, we
already know that, despite their best efforts to support students and fam-
ilies, our schools will be faced with students who have experienced ex-
tended months of learning loss, significant poverty, trauma and unmet
social-emotional needs.
• Increase investment to close the digital divide. High-speed broadband, re-
liable mobile service, modern technology and hardware are no longer op-
tional. They are now core infrastructure needs of businesses, schools and
homes. 5
• Substantially increase Medicaid funding, provide free COVID–19 testing
and treatment for all regardless of immigration or insurance status, and
increase support for providers assisting underserved populations. 6
• Provide for the personal protective equipment, cleaning supplies and
other materials necessary to help our public institutions reopen safely.
• Cover 100 percent of COBRA health insurance premiums for those work-
ers now unemployed through no fault of their own, or who lost health in-
surance due to the death of the carrier. Ensure resources are available,
and that proper testing and safety provisions can be in place, before
schools reopen.
• Permanently expand eligibility for unemployment benefits to many pre-
viously uncovered workers (including the self-employed, independent con-
tractors and gig workers), and extend unemployment benefits for an addi-
tional 13 weeks.
• Boost SNAP maximum benefits by 15 percent and increase the SNAP
minimum payment from $16 to $30. This will help provide adequate nu-
trition assistance to meet the overall need and spur economic recovery.
5 Congressional Budget Office, ‘‘CBO’s Current Projection of Output, Employment, and Inter-
est Rates and a Preliminary Look at Federal Deficits for 2020 and 2021,’’ April 24, 2020,
https://www.cbo.gov/publication/56335.
6 American Federation of Teachers, ‘‘A Decade of Neglect: Public Education Funding in the
Aftermath of the Great Recession,’’ https://www.aft.org/sites/default/files/decade-of-neglect–
2018.pdf; Trust for America’s Health, ‘‘Pain in the Nation Update: Deaths from Alcohol, Drugs
and Suicide Reach the Highest Levels Ever Recorded,’’ February 2018, https://www.tfah.org/
article/new-report-funding-for-public-health-has-declined-significantly since-the-great-recession/.
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Every day there is new evidence of the depth of food hardship and eco-
nomic dislocation. Each $1 of Federal SNAP benefits during a downturn
generates between $1.50 and $1.80 in economic activity.
• Increase by a minimum of 15-percentage points the Federal Medical As-
sistance Percentages, which determines Medicaid spending. This increase
should be added to the 6.2 percentage-point increase adopted in the Fam-
ilies First Coronavirus Response Act, and increases should be retroactive
to Jan. 1, 2020, and should last until at least Dec. 31, 2021.
• Cancel student debt. As a Nation, we are now paying the price for our
decades of neglect of the systems through which collective effort once en-
abled us to take on Herculean challenges. This includes our neglect of our
system of higher education, which has produced fewer essential profes-
sionals than we need and has, in shifting the burden of its costs to indi-
vidual students and families, effectively demanded lifetime personal in-
denture of those who undertake college, graduate and professional edu-
cation. In the economic catastrophe we now face, for its stimulative effect
alone, it is time to free people who have attended college of the burden
of student loan debt.
Given these needs, Congress should make at least a $750 billion investment in
state and local government to stabilize public services, which will help put us on
a path to reopen safely and allow for a real recovery for all our communities. This
administration spent trillions on a corporate tax cut in 2017; it must be prepared
to invest a comparable amount on the anchoring institutions that have been key to
fighting the virus and are central to any recovery plan: Public schools, universities,
hospitals, state and local governments and the U.S. Postal Service provide services
that will be more needed than ever, and we need a massive investment in them
right now.
In partnership with the AFL–CIO and partner unions, we developed five economic
essentials to address the stark realities now faced by workers across all sectors:
• Keep America healthy—protect and expand health insurance for all work-
ers;
• Keep frontline workers safe and secure;
• Keep workers employed, and protect earned pension checks;
• Keep state and local governments, our public schools and the U.S. Postal
Service solvent and working; and
• Keep America competitive—hire people to build infrastructure and make
long-overdue investments in this key pillar of the economy.
We have all watched harrowing reports of abusive and unsafe conditions for es-
sential workers in meatpacking plants 7 and warehouses 8 across the country. On
April 28, AFT-affiliated nurses and healthcare professionals in 10 states filed 24
separate OSHA complaints 9 for lack of necessary personal protective equipment de-
spite their ongoing exposure to COVID–19 patients as part of their jobs. The presi-
dent must use the power of the office to protect workers with the aggressive enforce-
ment of Defense Production Act and OSHA standards. He must cease using the
power of the presidency, his public press conferences and his Twitter account to en-
danger the lives of working people.
A Progressive Economic Agenda
With interest rates and inflation at historic lows, the Federal Government should
continue to borrow to fulfill its role and to support state and local government serv-
ices. It is not the time to be concerned about deficits. And the Federal Government
should be prepared to raise taxes. We are trying to both save lives and ensure the
quality and dignity of those lives. It is completely appropriate to ask our future
selves to help pay for that. We must fund our future if we want our children to in-
herit the potential to fulfill the promise of the American dream.
7 Ken Anderson, ‘‘Trump Orders Meatpacking Plans to Remain Open,’’ Brownfield AG News,
April 28, 2020, https://brownfieldagnews.com/news/trump-orders-meatpacking-plants-to-re-
main-open/.
8 Alina Selyukh, ‘‘Amazon Warehouse Safety ‘Inadequate,’ N.Y. Attorney General Office
Says,’’ NPR, April 27, 2020, https://www.npr.org/2020/04/27/846438983/amazon-warehouse-
safety-inadequate-n-y-attorney-general-s-office-says.
9 Olivia Messer, ‘‘OSHA Complaints Flood in from COVID–19 Frontline Health Workers,’’
Daily Beast, April 28, 2020, https://www.thedailybeast.com/osha-complaints-flood-in-from-
covid–19-frontline-health-workers.
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States also will have an important role. In Illinois and California, there are initia-
tives on the ballot this fall to raise revenues by asking those who have more to pay
more. These are the right policies to pursue at the moment, and more states should
look to emulate these efforts in the coming days. While there is an argument that
raising taxes in a recession has an economic cost, the economic and social costs of
cutting services and creating further suffering are far greater. We can afford to
make these investments, we cannot afford to fail.
Conclusion: a Living Document
This plan to reopen our society is a living document, guided by constantly evolving
expert advice about how best to keep our children, our workers and our commu-
nities safe from the continued spread of COVID–19 and what resources are needed
to put communities back on the road to recovery.
It rests on the fundamental belief that without a vaccine, we must take specific
steps to map out our new normal, which must include: some elements of physical
distancing; infrastructure for testing, tracing and isolation; deploying public health
interventions in our schools and workplaces and aligning them with the necessary
educational supports; involvement of workers and community in the development of
reopening plans; and significant investments in states, localities, schools, healthcare
and the Postal Service—the essential systems that have carried us through this cri-
sis and will need continued support.
Together, as the people on the frontlines of carrying our country through this cri-
sis, we will work to carry our communities through the recovery that follows.
NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION,
JUNE 9, 2020,
Washington, DC 20036.
Hon. LAMAR ALEXANDER, Chairman
Hon. PATTY MURRAY, Ranking Member
U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions,
455 Dirksen Senate Office Building,
Washington, DC 20510.
DEAR CHAIRMAN ALEXANDER AND RANKING MEMBER MURRAY:
On behalf of our 3 million members and the 50 million students they serve, we
would like to submit for the record the following comments in connection with the
June 10 hearing, ‘‘Going Back to School Safely.’’
Physically opening schools at the beginning of the 2020—21 school year is the goal
of most districts and states, but the decision to reopen must be rooted in health and
safety—not driven by an arbitrary start date. To reopen schools safely, we will need
to provide personal protective equipment (PPE) for students and educators; modify
classrooms, cafeterias, and school buses to permit social distancing; intensify in-
struction and support for students traumatized by the impact of the coronavirus on
their families and communities; and more. Doing so will require significant invest-
ments at a time when schools are facing budget cuts that are expected to far exceed
those during the Great Recession.
Looming state budget shortfalls
America officially entered a recession in February, according to the National Bu-
reau of Economic Research. More than 40 million Americans are jobless. The unem-
ployment rate is nearly 14 percent, the highest since the Great Depression. States
and localities are struggling to fund public education in the face of dramatically ris-
ing costs and sharply declining tax revenues as consumers dial back spending on
virtually everything except groceries and Netflix subscriptions.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, nearly 500,000 public education jobs
have already been lost. If the economic damage wrought by the coronavirus pan-
demic goes unchecked, nearly 2 million educators—one-fifth of the workforce—could
lose their jobs over the next 3 years, according to a new analysis by the National
Education Association.
These job losses would profoundly impact the 50 million students who attend pub-
lic schools, their families, and communities—especially low-income students whose
schools rely on Title I funding to lower class sizes, hire specialists, and offer a rich
curriculum. By comparison, 300,000 education jobs were lost during the Great Re-
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cession. In other words, the COVID–19 recession could be more than six times as
bad for education as the 2008 financial crisis.
Students need more—not less
The COVID–19 pandemic has shone a spotlight on a hard truth that our members
across the country already knew: Not all students have access to the educators, re-
sources, and tools they need. It has also fully revealed the long-standing digital di-
vide and exacerbated inequities like the homework gap—the inability to do school-
work at home due to lack of internet access. Nationwide, as many as 12 million stu-
dents are affected—roughly 1 in 5—and a disproportionate share are African Amer-
ican, Hispanic, live in rural areas, or come from low-income families.
To help contain the spread of COVID–19, public schools in nearly every state shut
down and abruptly switched to online instruction, putting students without access
to the internet at even greater risk of falling behind their peers. Taking into account
all these factors, McKinsey & Company estimates that African American students
could lose the equivalent of 10 months of learning, Hispanic students 9 months of
learning, and low-income students more than a full year of learning due the
COVID–19 pandemic.
Instead of addressing these issues, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has used re-
sources provided by the CARES Act to push her failed privatization agenda, which
has been repeatedly rejected by Congress. ‘‘Microgrants,’’ her latest scheme, are just
another name for vouchers that divert taxpayer dollars from public to private and
religious schools.
Next Steps
Decisions about reopening America’s schools should be grounded in health experts’
findings and recommendations, input from educators, access to protection, and eq-
uity—treating racial and social justice as an imperative, not an expendable aspira-
tion.
The HEROES Act recognizes this is the right approach. It includes $915 billion
in direct relief for state and local governments that can be used to pay vital workers
such as educators and $90 billion in additional education funding that could save
more than 800,000 education jobs at all levels from kindergarten to postsecondary.
The HEROES Act would also ensure that taxpayer dollars go where Congress in-
tended: to the public schools that educate 9 out of 10 students.
To help reopen schools safely, NEA urges Congress to provide at least $175 billion
more for the Education Stabilization Fund, at least $56 million in directed funding
for protective equipment, and at least $4 billion to create a special fund, adminis-
tered by the successful E-Rate program, to equip students with hot spots and de-
vices to help narrow the digital divide and close the homework gap.
We thank you for the opportunity to submit these comments and stand ready to
work with Congress to reopen America’s schools safely.
Sincerely,
BRIAN STANN,
Director of Government Relations
NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF SCHOOL NURSES (NASN),
SILVER SPRING, MD 20910,
June 30, 2020.
Hon. LAMAR ALEXANDER, Chairman
Hon. PATTY MURRAY, Ranking Member
U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions,
428 Dirksen Senate Office Building,
Washington, DC 20510.
Dear Chairman Alexander and Ranking Member Murray:
On behalf of the National Association of School Nurses (NASN) we appreciate the
hearing that you held on ‘‘Going Back to School Safely’’ on June 10, 2020. As you
remarked in your opening statement, school re-entry will bring many challenges for
students as they resume classes in school year 2020–2021. Students will experience
mental and behavioral health concerns that may present as physical health issues;
they will need support from school nurses. On behalf of the 56.6 million pre-kinder-
garten, elementary and high school students in the United States and their families,
the National Association of School Nurses (NASN) asks that you fund 10,000 school
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nurses for the upcoming school year as this country begins to open schools in the
recovery phase of the COVID–19 pandemic.
School re-entry is crucial for parents to go back to work; having children at home
and out of the classroom has caused undue economic and mental stress for families.
Placing additional school nurses in schools across the country provides a key solu-
tion to help parents resume full work capacity and re-opening of the economy. There
will be multiple challenges for students as they resume in person classes in school
year 2020–2021. For schools to address the ongoing impact of the COVID–19 pan-
demic, school nurses need to be in place when schools re-open and are central to
discussions of safe procedures for 2020–2021 school year.
School nurses are front line health care providers serving as the bridge between
the health care and education systems. Whether they are hired by school districts,
health departments, or hospitals, school nurses look after the physical and mental
health of students in schools. School nurses, as public health sentinels, engage
school communities, parents, families, and healthcare providers to promote wellness
and improve health outcomes for children. School nurses are essential in infectious
disease surveillance, identification and intervention for student physical and mental
health concerns, health screenings, school located vaccinations and immunization
compliance efforts. Historically children have been the first to show signs of an epi-
demic and the school nurse has been a bell weather of illness. As we look at the
2020–2021 school year that will also coincide with the next influenza season, the
need for new school nurses is paramount. School nurses support the academic suc-
cess of students by making sure they are healthy, safe, and ready to learn.
For many children living in or near poverty, the school nurse may be the only
health care professional they access regularly. Additionally, children today face
more chronic and complex health conditions than ever before. Access to a school
nurse is a student equity issue. As schools prepare to reopen, school nurses provide
crucial input for school preparedness, prevention, and response to infectious dis-
eases.
As the current financial recession deepens, there will be less funds for schools to
be able to retain a school nurse. Currently, only 39 percent of public schools have
a school nurse all day, every day, while another 35 percent of schools have a school
nurse who works part time in one or more schools. This leaves 25 percent of schools
without a full-time school nurse. This fall, it is imperative that schools have school
nurses to provide for the safety and well-being of all students, especially with the
ongoing presence of COVID–19 and the upcoming flu season.
School nurses serve students and families in schools and in communities. During
the COVID–19 pandemic, school nurses continue to work by to checking in on stu-
dents with chronic conditions, either by phone or through telehealth; others provide
home visits. Some school nurses collaborate with school staff to ensure that children
receive needed meals in a manner that protects the health of students, families, and
staff. Other school nurses serve at COVID–19 testing centers and as contact tracers
to support local and state public health departments.
As you and other congressional leaders negotiate stimulus packages centered on
the COVID–19, keep in mind that 25 percent of the Nation’s schools have no school
nurse. Therefore, it is essential during this pandemic to add 10,000 new school
nurses for the upcoming school year. Healthy students learn better. When a school
nurse is present to meet student healthcare needs, parents and school administra-
tors know that children and youth can focus on learning.
Thank you for your consideration to address the health, safety, and learning read-
iness of students by increasing school nurse positions in U.S. schools. Please don’t
hesitate to contact me if I can be of assistance or put you in touch with NASN mem-
bers from your local communities. Additionally, you can contact NASN’s Director of
Government Affairs, Piper Largent at plargent@nasn.org if you have any questions.
Sincerely,
LAURIE COMBE, MN, RN, NCSN
President
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QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
RESPONSES BY PENNY SCHWINN TO QUESTIONS OF SENATOR SCOTT, SENATOR
MURKOWSKI, SENATOR SANDERS, AND SENATOR WARREN
SENATOR SCOTT
Question 1. As our Country continues to grapple with the devastating effects of
the COVID–19 pandemic, parents, educators, school leaders, and students are faced
with the difficulty of juggling persistent responsibilities of working from home and
school. To compound this, the unemployment rate is currently 13.3 percent, indi-
cating millions of Americans are still out of work or facing revenue declines as small
business owners. Many private schools, which serve about 5.7 million of the Nation’s
children, are in a crisis and potentially face disruptions to their education. Enroll-
ment and tuition revenues are plunging as family incomes decline, along with phil-
anthropic donations and church collections that help some religious schools operate.
Many of these schools serve low-income students. About 30 percent of the families
they serve have annual incomes below $75,000, and those families are most at-risk
without Federal aid. Under current Federal education law, school districts are re-
quired to use Federal funding intended for their poorest students to provide ‘‘equi-
table services,’’ such as tutoring and transportation, for low-income students attend-
ing private schools in their districts. Beyond private schools offering more choices
and competition for students and families, many private schools work as significant
economic engines in their communities.
Question (a). Do you believe in your professional opinion that we ought to use
COVID–19 Federal funds to support private schools reopening in the fall for all
their students, especially the most financially vulnerable?
Answer. As a department, our responsibility is to Tennessee students, regardless
of the educational option pursued by those students and their families.
While funding mechanisms, statutory requirements, and regulatory structures
may vary from public schools to private schools, our belief that all students deserve
a high-quality education is unchanging. This commitment to our students in non-
public schools takes shape in various forms; regarding Federal education funding,
this is most often exemplified through the provision of equitable services. Just as
our private schools have the opportunity to further support their students through
various equitable services provisions on other Federal funds, we believe that our fi-
nancially vulnerable students deserved to be supported across all types of school set-
tings.
Under new guidance from the U.S. Department of Education, local education
agencies (LEAs) will be able to make decisions based off their local community’s
needs. This could entail using ESSER funds to serve all public school students, with
a proportionate share given to private schools within the community to serve all of
their students, or LEAs could focus their efforts exclusively on those students expe-
riencing poverty, in both public and private schools. While decisions may vary across
the state, the department is focused on providing the strategies and supports that
all districts will need to ensure CARES Act funding is used to drive meaningful and
equitable outcomes for each and every child.
Question (b). Engage by EdChoice predicts if 30 percent of the private school pop-
ulation transitions back to public school, it would cost Nebraska $63,131,338 for the
state to absorb the cost of these students and $94,263,287 for the State of South
Carolina. Does your state education budget have capacity to support these students
and maintain providing high quality education? What suggestions or potential solu-
tions to ensure the education of private school students is not disrupted?
Answer. Should Tennessee experience a large transition of students from private
schools to public schools, the state currently has two paths to ensure proper funding
follows students. First, while the state’s education funding formula generally oper-
ates based on prior year data, the budget also includes a growth fund to capture
within-year increases in enrollment. This provides flexibility to fund rapidly expand-
ing enrollments in public school districts within the year the growth is experienced.
Second, the state may also consider requesting supplemental budget funds from the
Tennessee General Assembly during the year to account for enrollment expansion
beyond the standing growth fund. Regardless of the path, the expanded enrollment
and subsequent funding would become part of the state’s proposed budget for the
upcoming fiscal year. Tennessee has always fully funded its education funding for-
mula and would expect to continue to do so in the future.
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Private schools are an inherent part of the educational landscape in Tennessee,
providing choice to students and families across the state. To ensure public health
standards are supported in schools no matter their type, Tennessee has maintained
and will continue its commitment to ensure private schools have access to the same
Personal Protective Equipment supports, including noncontact thermometers, which
are being provided to public schools.
SENATOR MURKOWSKI
Question 1. Do your states and districts have enough school nurses and counselors
to meet your students’ needs when schools reopen? If not, what steps are you taking
to identify the professionals who can provide those services?
Answer. School nurses and counselors are critically important supports to stu-
dents in public schools, and districts have historically faced funding challenges in
staffing these positions for their schools. In the Tennessee Department of Edu-
cation’s 2018–19 Coordinated School Health annual report, 99 percent of districts
met the goal of one certified counselor per 500 students, but only 58 percent of
schools employed a full-time nurse. Only 20 percent of districts report meeting the
goal of one certified social worker for every 1,500 students.
Recognizing that students’ needs have and will continue to evolve throughout the
pandemic and the launch of a new school year, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee charged
Commissioner Penny Schwinn to convene the Child Well-being Task Force, a collec-
tive of 38 leaders representing the East, Middle, and West regions of our state and
various fields, including but not limited to mental health, telehealth, education,
interfaith, non-profit, healthcare, and law enforcement. The goal of this task force
is to support the whole child needs of Tennessee children by empowering local im-
plementation—identifying local infrastructure, relationships, and resources to de-
velop, connect, and promote supports for students and families. Also, as schools ap-
proach reopening for the new school year, the department will continue to build
awareness with state and local elected officials of the need for these critical supports
for students and schools. Collectively, Tennessee will continue to partner at the
state and local level to both identify need areas and develop solutions to ensure Ten-
nessee children are supported in their academic, physical, emotional, and mental
health.
SENATOR SANDERS
Question 1. In a recent Politico survey, a majority of American voters now say
they’re concerned about sending kids back to elementary and high schools this fall.
In addition, during a recent hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee
on the Administration’s response to the COVID–19 pandemic, witnesses for the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services testified that ‘‘COVID–19 activity will
likely continue for some time.’’ The health officials also warned of a difficult fall and
winter because the U.S. health-care system will probably battle two highly con-
tagious, respiratory viruses then: the novel coronavirus and the seasonal flu. How
will you assure parents that your state will provide sufficient resources to strength-
en public schools and ensure that schools are safe for students, faculty and staff?
How will you ensure that schools will be regularly sanitized, and that personal pro-
tective equipment will be provided, as needed?
Answer. The priority of the Tennessee Department of Education, Commissioner
Schwinn, and Governor Lee will always be the health and wellness of students,
teachers, leaders, and staff across the state of Tennessee. The most significant com-
mitment to this end is that the Tennessee maintained full funding for its education
funding formula in its state budget, including a requirement in state law through
which counties must maintain funding to their respective school district(s) year over
year.
Additionally, Tennessee has ensured that all state agency are working collabo-
ratively to support a safe return to school, including significant collaboration with
the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency (TEMA) and the Tennessee Depart-
ment of Health (TDH). In working with local school districts and county emergency
management offices, TEMA was able to offer four cloth masks per school employee,
and if requested, four cloth masks or 40 disposable masks per student, and non-con-
tact thermometers to all schools across the state. Additionally, the Tennessee De-
partment of Education developed a series of over 20 reopening toolkits to support
districts in developing their reopening plans, including toolkits exclusively focused
on physical health and environments, based on recommendations from the Ten-
nessee Department of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
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(CDC). As districts move to reopen schools, the state will continue to gauge needs
to ensure safe and healthy school environments.
Tennessee has also implemented Continuous Learning Plans (CLPs) in which dis-
tricts define remote learning instructional strategies in case school buildings need
to be closed temporarily or indefinitely. These plans ensure that districts have strat-
egies in place to continue instruction in a robust manner, even if they need to tran-
sition to asynchronous instructional models. Many districts in Tennessee are plan-
ning to employ these remote learning strategies into their regular instructional op-
erations to maximize social distancing and limit building occupancy for students and
high-risk populations.
Question 2. Earlier in June, U.S. News and World Reports stated that estimates
of statewide budget cuts will likely decrease school budgets by 10 percent to 25 per-
cent for the upcoming academic year and cuts may go as high as 35 percent for the
2021–22 school year. According to the American Federation of Teachers, it is esti-
mated that at a minimum an average school district will need to spend $2 million
or an additional $490 per student to adhere to CDC guidelines. How are school dis-
tricts in your state preparing for these additional costs? With the loss of income and
budget cuts, how will your state prioritize safety and provide adequate staffing as
campuses reopen? How will your state ensure that every student, regardless of fi-
nancial status, students with disabilities, LGBQT+ students, students with unsafe
homes, students of color and students from low-income families will have free access
to testing and a vaccine, when available?
Answer. Due to the leadership of Governor Lee and the Tennessee General As-
sembly, state and county budgets are set to maintain funding levels compared to
prior years. School districts are still faced with additional costs to meet the unique
needs posed by the pandemic. This intentional focus on education as a funding pri-
ority ensures students are supported in their new academic year. Tennessee has
also ensured that Federal funds in response to the pandemic are prioritized for edu-
cation. In addition to the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief
(ESSER) and Governor’s Emergency Education Relief (GEER) funds, Tennessee is
prioritizing education needs in planning activities for the Coronavirus Relief Fund
(CRF). Governor Lee has committed a significant amount of CRF funds to education.
Beyond funding, the state has moved to provide supports at the state level to help
alleviate local costs, including through resources such as interim assessments and
through statewide procurements. These strategies, while supporting all districts,
also uniquely allow smaller, rural districts to better utilize local funds for essential
needs by leveraging the economies of scale of the state.
Tennessee Governor Bill Lee also committed that anyone who wants to be tested
could be tested for free. With over 900,000 tests conducted, Tennessee is conducting,
on average, upwards of 8,500 tests per day and was listed by the Harvard Global
Health Institute as one of seven states to reach a benchmark for COVID–19 testing.
The state remains committed to ensuring any Tennessean who wants a test has ac-
cess to a free and readily available test.
SENATOR WARREN
Question 1. The School Superintendents Association (AASA) has estimated that
an average school district will need to spend $2 million or an additional $490 per
student to adhere to CDC guidelines. At the same time, statewide budget cuts are
expected to decrease school budgets by 10 percent to 25 percent for the upcoming
academic year, and cuts could rise to 35 percent for the 2021–22 school year.
Question (a). Based on current projections in your state, how will funding for edu-
cation in the 2020–21 school year compare with funding in the past school year?
Answer 1, (a). Tennessee’s education budget for the 2020–21 school year fully
funds the state’s education funding formula, meaning that school districts in Ten-
nessee will continue to receive the same level of funding they did in the prior aca-
demic year (including accounting for potential student enrollment growth). Ten-
nessee law also requires counties to maintain funding to their respective school dis-
trict(s) year over year. Collectively, these funding implications mean that education
funding to school districts will be consistent with the prior academic year.
Question (b). If you project a cut to the education budget, how large will this cut
be?
Answer (b). While the state is reviewing opportunities to streamline its state edu-
cation agency and programs, the primary education funding formula will remain
consistent from the prior fiscal year.
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Question (c)1. Data from the 2008 recession showed that schools that relied more
heavily on state funding, which tend to be located in low-income communities, were
more likely to be negatively impacted by budget cuts and layoffs. What will be the
impact of these cuts on the lowest-income districts in your state?
Answer (c). The state’s education funding formula includes a fiscal capacity indi-
cator to level set the balance of state and local funding composition, but regardless
of whether a district has a high or low fiscal capacity, the maintenance of effort law
ensures ongoing budgeted funds to support schools. The law requires a local mainte-
nance of effort on education funding as counties must fund their respective school
system(s) at the same amount or more than the prior fiscal year. This law signals
that, even in times of economic hardships, education must remain a fiscal priority
for Tennesseans.
Question (d). Taking into consideration CARES Act funds already received, how
much funding from the Federal Government would be needed to reverse these cuts
and meet the increased costs of providing additional instructional, emotional, and
health supports for students and teachers in the 2020–21 school year?
Answer (d). As noted above, while Tennessee school districts will not experience
reductions in their state and required local funding, the state also recognizes that
there are additional needs during this unique pandemic response such as for per-
sonal protective equipment or to reconfigure schools. Additionally, a significant bar-
rier to high-quality remote learning is access to robust broadband. Governor Lee has
prioritized Coronavirus Relief Funds (CRF) to support improving student device ac-
cess, recognizing the importance of technology in learning experience. However,
connectivity remains a challenge for many districts across the state, and funding for
broadband access should be considered a priority for any future additional Federal
funding.
Question 2. The COVID–19 pandemic and recent protests following the police kill-
ing of George Floyd in Minneapolis have highlighted the systemic racism that stu-
dents of color face. Recently, 14 education and civil rights organizations including
the Alliance for Excellent Education, EdTrust, National Urban League, and
UnidosUS issued a comprehensive set of recommendations for prioritizing equity in
the response to COVID–19, which include equity in fiscal policies, addressing stu-
dents’ academic, social, and emotional needs, and much more. Please provide several
specific examples of what specific actions you are taking to address equity gaps as
a part of your strategy to reopen schools.
Answer. Recognizing that students’ needs have and will continue to evolve
throughout the pandemic and the launch of a new school year, Tennessee Governor
Bill Lee charged Commissioner Penny Schwinn to convene the Child Well-being
Task Force, a collective of 38 leaders representing the East, Middle, and West re-
gions of our state and various fields, including but not limited to mental health,
telehealth, education, interfaith, non-profit, healthcare, and law enforcement. The
goal of this task force is to support the whole child needs of Tennessee children by
empowering local implementation—identifying local infrastructure, relationships,
and resources to develop, connect, and promote supports for students and families.
Additionally, the department has made available $7 million dollars in grant funds
to districts to support students with special needs, including $5 million to support
needs for compensatory services; $1 million to support implementing innovative
ways to remediate for the loss of instruction during school closures for students with
disabilities; and $1 million for assistive technology needs as a result of COVID–19
school closures. As schools approach reopening and the new school year, the depart-
ment will continue to prioritize supporting districts to support all students.
Question 3. How have you considered the health and safety of school employees
and contractors, including support staff, in your reopening plans? Please describe
the role that representatives of teachers and support staff have played in your plan-
ning process.
Answer. The Tennessee Department of Education developed a series of over 20
reopening toolkits to support districts in developing their reopening plans, including
a toolkit focused exclusively on staffing considerations. This toolkit lays out consid-
erations related to human resources, staffing decisions and ideas to create an inclu-
sive environment for all school and district staff. Further, the Tennessee Depart-
ment of Education is working with the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency
to provide districts with supplies and Personal Protective Equipment, including
thermometers and four cloth face masks per employee, to support their plans for
school reopening. The department has also engaged with former Tennessee teachers
of the year as well as other teachers across the state and superintendent engage-
ment groups to discuss reopening plans and hear their ideas and feedback to inform
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department strategy, and this feedback is reflected in the toolkits and other guid-
ance that the department has developed.
Question 4. In your state, does the testing capacity currently exist to regularly
test every student and school staff member who will be present in school buildings
in the fall? If not, how are you prioritizing who will receive tests?
Answer. Tennessee Governor Bill Lee also committed that anyone who wants to
be tested could be tested for free. With over 900,000 tests conducted, Tennessee is
conducting, on average, upwards of 8,500 tests per day and was listed by the Har-
vard Global Health Institute as one of seven states to reach a benchmark for
COVID–19 testing. The state remains committed to ensuring any Tennessean who
wants a test has access to a free and readily available test.
RESPONSES BY MATTHEW BLOMSTEDT TO QUESTIONS OF SENATOR SCOTT, SENATOR
MURKOWSKI, SENATOR WARREN, AND SENATOR SANDERS
SENATOR SCOTT
Question 1. The term, ‘‘homework gap’’, has been jostled recently in numerous con-
versations as stakeholders engage in coronavirus response discussions. As I under-
stand, the ‘‘homework gap’’ refers to the amount of students that can access the
internet to complete their studies at home, versus the amount of students that are
unable to complete their studies through an online platform at home. Students who
lack stable and sufficient internet access are unable to perform as well on their
studies. This inequity is now exacerbated by the COVID–19 pandemic and the ex-
pansion of remote learning. Currently, broadband access remains a major hurdle for
far too many students, particularly in rural areas. According to a 2015 FCC report,
53 percent of Americans living in rural areas could not reach 25 mega-bites-per-sec-
ond download speed, which is the minimal benchmark for broadband speed set by
the FCC. I think, the key to a successful reopening this fall for all our K–12 schools
is bolstering the technological infrastructure for our most vulnerable students.
A) Dr. Blomstedt, as a leader in a rural state, such as the one I represent, what
are some cost effective ways for us to expand rural broadband access in states like
Nebraska and South Carolina in an effort to close the homework gap?
Answer. Broadband access and the homework gap exist in at least two distinct
ways in Nebraska. The first is simply the technical connectivity issue where
broadband service is not sufficiently available for remote-or sparsely populated
areas of the state. Nebraska tends to have strong broadband in Nebraska schools
but outlying residential service in small communities and remote households is a
barrier. The second barrier is one of income and cost to individual households. In
areas where service by wireless or wired home access is technically possible we still
have an income hurdle preventing families from being able to afford the broadband
service necessary to meet the needs of remote learning on a regular basis.
On the technology side, I would implore the FCC and Congress to consider options
to allow for unique applications of the Education Broadband Spectrum (EBS) for
both remote households and small communities to make better use of the fiber con-
nections to schools for the benefit of educators and students. We have Nebraska ex-
amples of the EBS efforts that work with our Tribal Nations who were allowed ac-
cess to the existing network through a public investment in wireless technology.
Additionally, I would suggest we re-examine e-rate or similar programs to ensure
educational broadband to households would qualify as a support to educators and
students working from home. I believe Nebraska has developed a system where pub-
lic and private interests work well together to serve this need and can take advan-
tage of existing public infrastructure to expand access to broadband most effectively.
SENATOR MURKOWSKI
Question 1. Do your states and districts have enough school nurses and counselors
to meet your students’ needs when schools reopen? If not, what steps are you taking
to identify the professionals who can provide those services?
Answer. Frankly, we had a shortage of necessary nurses and counselors prior to
the pandemic. We are unable to properly address behavioral and mental health
needs in schools and communities. Nebraska had developed several partnerships to
address the concerns by working closely with the Department of Education, Depart-
ment of Health and Human Services, post-secondary institutions including the Uni-
versity of Nebraska Medical Center, private non-profits, and schools, as well as in-
termediate education agencies. Among the many efforts there continues to be a part-
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nership (grant funded) to build a ‘‘System of Care’’ collaborative. A System of Care
is a framework which helps state agencies and private providers work in partner-
ship to design and deliver mental health services and supports. The System of Care
connects and coordinates the work of state child-serving agencies, nonprofits and
local governments, behavioral health care providers, and patient advocates and it
empowers individuals to fully participate in their care plan. It creates a preventa-
tive approach to treatment so that life’s challenges can be addressed prior to the
need for a higher level of care and helps individuals function better at home, in
school, in the community, and throughout life.
During the pandemic we have continued to meet community-level needs through
a partnership of existing public and non-profit partners. Included in this partner-
ship is the Nebraska Children and Families Foundation who has been a key con-
vener in identifying areas of concern and leveraging the network of professionals
who can provide additional assistance. Longer term, there is a need to improve serv-
ices through this partnership but anticipate that we will continue to use the net-
work to assist schools and communities through the pandemic and beyond.
SENATOR WARREN
Question 1. The School Superintendents Association (AASA) has estimated that
an average school district will need to spend $2 million or an additional $490 per
student to adhere to CDC guidelines. At the same time, statewide budget cuts are
expected to decrease school budgets by 10 percent to 25 percent for the upcoming
academic year, and cuts could rise to 35 percent for the 2021–22 school year.
Question (a). Based on current projections in your state, how will funding for edu-
cation in the 2020–21 school year compare with funding in the past school year?
Answer. Funding for the 2020–2021 school year for public schools is mostly estab-
lished based on the state’s biennium budget and appropriation process. At this point
do not anticipate a reduction in the current year. However, changes are being pro-
posed and considered as the Nebraska Legislature has not yet completed the session
that was interrupted by COVID–19 this spring. Out years are my primary concern
as Nebraska, like many states, may expect an economic downturn that will impact
general revenue sources and the agricultural economy that is already experiencing
downturns. Nebraska has a strong reliance on the property tax base for funding
schools with a finance system designed to equalize tax burdens and address wealth
gaps. However, as state resource projections are potentially further limited and with
calls to address property tax burden, I believe funding over the next couple years
is a concern.
Question (b). If you project a cut to the education budget, how large will this cut
be?
Answer. Nebraska has a biennium budget process and I anticipate that we will
have to project possible cuts for future years and schools are likely experiencing in-
creased costs in the current year due to the pandemic. Increased costs in some areas
will lead to budget cuts to transition funding. Typically in down years the Nebraska
Department of Education has been asked (per state budget projections) to address
the potential for cuts. I anticipate that we will project cuts of at least 10 percent
for each of the next 2 years in the biennium unless revenue projections are more
positive than expected.
Question (c). Data from the 2008 recession showed that schools that relied more
heavily on state funding, which tend to be located in low-income communities, were
more likely to be negatively impacted by budget cuts and layoffs. What will be the
impact of these cuts on the lowest-income districts in your state?
Answer. Nebraska weathered the 2008 downturn fairly effectively as agricultural
income helped to balance other sectors of the economy. School spending and state
funding supplemented by the ARRA funds at the time helped sustain schools across
the state and mitigate negative impact. Currently I am concerned that the combined
effects of economic sectors most impacting low-income children and families coupled
with concerns about agricultural income will create a structural imbalance for the
state which will not allow state resources to address. Service jobs and family in-
comes are likely to take a hit and schools will be addressing consequences for chil-
dren and families. Various Nebraska agencies are working together through Bring
Up Nebraska and the Nebraska Children and Families Foundation to leverage re-
sources to address key needs for food security, housing, and other economic sup-
ports.
Question (d). Taking into consideration CARES Act funds already received, how
much funding from the Federal Government would be needed to reverse these cuts
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and meet the increased costs of providing additional instructional, emotional, and
health supports for students and teachers in the 2020–21 school year?
Answer. Nebraska has not completed a study of needs but have started to esti-
mate costs of $500 per student on average. Roughly, that is $150 Million across the
state with the CARES Act Funds accounting for about $65–80 million largely ex-
pended to address technology and contingency plans. However, this does not account
for addressing unfinished learning, compensatory education under IDEA, and the
increasing costs of managing the pandemic while possibly depleting reserves. I re-
main concerned that the full impacts on students and families are not yet realized.
I also believe that the costs of fully implementing the mitigation necessary as out-
breaks take place or schools have to be fitted with other possible strategies for ad-
dressing challenges yet unknown. I believe a prolonged pandemic will require large-
scale changes in the development of curriculum and instructional materials that is
more suitable for remote learning and professional development and extra duty pay
for teachers who are now going to be required to be multi-modal with preparations
both for remote and in-person instruction. This is the ‘‘perfect storm’’ I referenced
in previous testimony as I see a number of challenges to address the pandemic
while, at the same point, states and schools are likely to see a downturn in other
revenues. Estimates for this over the next 2 years are difficult to pin down specifi-
cally but an overarching 20 percent of current budget impact (again, over the next
couple years) would approach a billion dollars. Even without a cut in state or local
resources the increased costs to districts will be substantial. The challenge will be
addressing potential cuts while also shifting other funds to pandemic priorities. The
opportunity cost for this transaction will have lasting impacts on the ability to re-
cover. I believe it is important to return to school safely and with the necessary pre-
cautions so that schools are able to sustain their role in the public health crisis as
well as the economic recovery. However, without precautions in place I am con-
cerned about waves of closures that will further disrupt the recovery. I am also con-
cerned about the liability exposure for schools as has been discussed in the higher
education arena and believe there is a need for a better understanding of the likely
expenditures to address this pandemic challenges.
Question 2. The COVID–19 pandemic and recent protests following the police kill-
ing of George Floyd in Minneapolis have highlighted the systemic racism that stu-
dents of color face.
Recently, 14 education and civil rights organizations including the Alliance for Ex-
cellent Education, EdTrust, National Urban League, and UnidosUS issued a com-
prehensive set of recommendations for prioritizing equity in the response to
COVID–19, which include equity in fiscal policies, addressing students’ academic,
social, and emotional needs, and much more. Please provide several specific exam-
ples of what specific actions you are taking to address equity gaps as a part of your
strategy to reopen schools.
Answer. In part, the Nebraska Department of Education has been addressing the
issue of inequity with commitments to address all such fronts and that work con-
tinues. Additionally I shared a public letter to superintendents across the state that
concluded with ‘‘The Nebraska Department of Education (NDE) is committed to
leading and supporting all Nebraskans in learning, earning, and living. This starts
with an unabashed commitment to action for racial justice. Here’s how we plan to
do that in the education space: 1. Engage students, educators, families, and commu-
nities who are historically marginalized. 2. Promote active anti-racist teaching and
leading and commit to culturally relevant standards, pedagogy, and materials. 3.
Provide resources to support productive conversations and safe and welcoming envi-
ronments at the classroom level. 4. Emphasize future investments to address trau-
ma-informed care and restorative justice. 5. Continue to insist upon accountability
for student group performance, and supporting schools in tailoring services for stu-
dent groups. 6. Address the goal of racial parity at NDE and in the educator work-
force statewide.’’ As we reopen schools it has been with an understanding that
bringing students back to school must address the gaps that persist and are made
more obvious in the current pandemic.
Question 3. How have you considered the health and safety of school employees
and contractors, including support staff, in your reopening plans? Please describe
the role that representatives of teachers and support staff have played in your plan-
ning process.
Answer. Nebraska’s approach convenes partners and schools to build plans locally
and provide support from the state. The NDE’s Launch Nebraska website has in-
cluded professional development as well as model plans that encourage local engage-
ment of all stakeholders including staff. We also continue to address concerns to
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protect the school workforce, as it will be critical to maintain the school environ-
ment. Specifically, schools are looking to address issues with physical distancing, en-
hanced cleaning, and specific accommodations for teachers and workforce in the
schools that protect from widespread contagion. Schools are also now working with
local health officials to understand how to best accommodate for staff that become
sick and manage contact tracing and quarantine procedures. We are also in ongoing
discussions about maintaining safe conditions for certified and non-certified staff
and accommodating employees with vulnerabilities.
Question 4. In your state, does the testing capacity currently exist to regularly
test every student and school staff member who will be present in school buildings
in the fall?
Question (a). If not, how are you prioritizing who will receive tests?
Answer. There is not enough capacity to test every student and state and local
health officials are working with schools on necessary testing, contact tracing, and
response to positive cases. Both state and local efforts to provide testing exist in-
cluding Governor Rickett’s efforts for Test Nebraska to help alleviate the national
shortage of available tests. Ideally, we would have testing that could ensure that
students and staff are free of the virus to provide confidence for education settings.
Short of that, local health officials are helping schools establish screening protocols
to work with families and staff to further prioritize for testing and minimize risk
of spread in schools.
SENATOR SANDERS
Question 1. In a recent Politico survey, a majority of American voters now say
they’re concerned about sending kids back to elementary and high schools this fall.
In addition, during a recent hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee
on the Administration’s response to the COVID–19 pandemic, witnesses for the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services testified that ‘‘COVID–19 activity will
likely continue for some time.’’ The health officials also warned of a difficult fall and
winter because the U.S. health-care system will probably battle two highly con-
tagious, respiratory viruses then: the novel coronavirus and the seasonal flu. How
will you assure parents that your state will provide sufficient resources to strength-
en public schools and ensure that schools are safe for students, faculty and staff?
How will you ensure that schools will be regularly sanitized and that personal pro-
tective equipment will be provided, as needed?
Answer. The work to address conditions for learning includes health guidance for
schools as they build their local plans and communicate those efforts to parents and
the community at large. The Nebraska Department of Education continues to de-
velop, maintain, and enhance Launch Nebraska (www.launchne.com) to manage
guidance and best practices to address the pandemic in schools. Local school and
health officials are also collaborating across all levels and agencies. I believe filling
voids is necessary from state and Federal partners but driving the response for the
local level is critical. For instance, Nebraska is working with state partners to iden-
tify local needs and then gathering resources to disperse such items as masks and
hand sanitizer to each school that requests resources. This will continue to be the
model to address the supply chain needs as well as listen to the local needs. Al-
though early in the process, I believe this will be the persistent approach to address
local needs.
Question 2. Earlier in June, U.S. News and World Reports stated that estimates
of statewide budget cuts will likely decrease school budgets by 10 percent to 25 per-
cent for the upcoming academic year and cuts may go as high as 35 percent for the
2021–22 school year. According to the American Federation of Teachers, it is esti-
mated that at a minimum an average school district will need to spend $2 million
or an additional $490 per student to adhere to CDC guidelines. How are school dis-
tricts in your state preparing for these additional costs? With the loss of income and
budget cuts, how will your state prioritize safety and provide adequate staffing as
campuses reopen? How will your state ensure that every student, regardless of fi-
nancial status, students with disabilities, LGBQT+ students, students with unsafe
homes, students of color and students from low-income families will have free access
to testing and a vaccine, when available?
Answer. At this point I would concur with the concerns of the combined impacts
of cuts and the need to deploy resources differently that will impact school budgets.
I am most concerned about the out years and the likely impacts in 2021–2022 and
2022–2023 as we anticipate economic impacts in multiple sectors. Schools are also
scrambling to address immediate needs, which will provide a barrier to addressing
the need to build reserves for potential future cuts, or the need to freeze resources
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while incurring increased costs. That is the ‘‘perfect storm’’ I anticipate. I have said
many times that our first mission is now one of public health and I am proud that
local school officials are playing a significant role in addressing student, employee,
family, and community health. Yet, this has always been part of the need in schools.
Additionally, operating schools has proven critical for family and community com-
munication about the importance of ensuring all of our students needs are met. I
continue to meet regularly with state and local health officials to offer Department
support in addressing testing. I am especially concerned about broad vaccination
against seasonal flu as a strategy to prepare for any eventual vaccine that becomes
available for COVID–19. I am not currently privy to the state strategy on vaccine
distribution but do hope that the intervening time will allow schools to assist with
the equitable access to both tests and possible vaccinations.
RESPONSES BY JOHN B. KING JR. TO QUESTIONS OF SENATOR MURKOWSKI, SENATOR
SANDERS, AND SENATOR WARREN
SENATOR MURKOWSKI
Question 1. I noted in your testimony that you talked about the inequity experi-
enced by Black and Hispanic students and their families. You were right to do so—
those inequities have lasted for decades in a variety of forms, from access to good
housing, good schools, internet connectivity, nutritious food, and many other aspects
of life that are important for children to grow strong, confident, and safe. But I
noted that you left out Native Americans in your testimony. In Alaska, as well as
in many other parts of the country, Alaska Natives, American Indians and Native
Hawaiians are also beset by inequality that can be deadly. Communities that have
no running water for handwashing. Incredible distances to travel to purchase
healthy food. No broadband whatsoever. Overcrowded, substandard housing. Schools
with high teacher turnover and low measures of student success that have not un-
derstood the Native ways of knowing and learning so important to Native students’
success. I could go on and on. What is The Education Trust doing under your leader-
ship to understand and advocate for our Nation’s first peoples?
Answer. The challenges facing Native students in our Nation’s education system
are just as daunting as those facing Black and Latino students. For example, school
districts with the most Black, Latino, and American Indian students receive roughly
$1,800, or 13 percent, less per student in state and local funding than those serving
mostly White students. It is also worrisome that rates of high school degree attain-
ment for students who are Black, Latino, American Indian, and Alaska Native are
all lower than the national average. Furthermore, a majority of American Indian
and Alaska Native families live in child care deserts; American Indian and Alaska
Native children disproportionately lack access to home internet when compared to
their peer groups; and Native students are more likely to be suspended, expelled,
and arrested at school. For example, Native girls were 3 times more likely to be sus-
pended from school than their White peers.
The Education Trust has highlighted disparities in higher education through our
analysis of the college degree attainment rates of Native American, Alaska Native,
and Native Hawaiian students and made recommendations to address that issue;
shared the voices and policy recommendations of a Native American student and a
former educator who is Native American; and published a full issue brief examining
the state of education for Native students. This work has informed the policy rec-
ommendations contained in our testimony, specifically the need for improved,
disaggregated data collection, due to the challenges of properly measuring Native
student success, increasing investments in early childhood education and the Pell
Grant, and investing in broadband expansion to ensure that Native students have
access to online learning during the pandemic and beyond. We recognize the urgent
need to address the challenges facing Native students prior to, during, and after
them pandemic has run its course. As an organization, we appreciate Sen. Murkow-
ski’s leadership and look forward to working with her office to close equity gaps for
Native students.
SENATOR SANDERS
Question 1. In a recent Politico survey, a majority of American voters say they’re
concerned about sending kids back to schools this fall. In addition, during a recent
hearing of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce about the Administra-
tion’s response to the COVID–19 pandemic, witnesses for the U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services testified that ‘‘COVID–19 activity will likely continue
for some time.’’ The health officials also warned of a difficult fall and winter because
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the U.S. health-care system will probably battle two highly contagious, respiratory
viruses then: the novel coronavirus and the seasonal flu. Your experience in edu-
cation and your recent testimony focused on ensuring that states address gaps in
access to equitable education. Other than providing full funding to address budget
cuts due to the pandemic, what else should Congress do to strengthen public schools
and ensure that schools are safe for students, faculty and staff? How should states
assure parents that schools will prioritize safety and that every student, regardless
of financial status, students with disabilities, LGBQT+ students, students with un-
safe homes, students of color and students from low-income families will have free
access to testing and a vaccine, when available?
Answer. In addition to providing the necessary funds to allow schools to reopen
safely either in part or in whole, Congress should take additional steps to strength-
en public schools in the face of this pandemic:
First: Funds that are allocated by Congress to help states and school districts
should be accompanied by strong maintenance of effort and maintenance of equity
provisions to ensure we do not repeat the job losses and funding cuts seen in the
wake of the Great Recession. Together, these requirements would maintain edu-
cation spending at the same percentage of state spending as before the pandemic
and shield the highest need schools and districts from the worst cuts.
Providing all schools—particularly underfunded, high-poverty schools—with the
resources they need to implement the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) consider-
ations or their local health authority’s guidance for keeping students and staff safe
(e.g., adequate testing and contact tracing, use of personal protective equipment
(PPE), protections for at-risk staff and students, social distancing, etc.) can help
mitigate the harm caused by the pandemic and create the possibility of allowing
some schools to fully reopen, but that decision ultimately will rest with individual
states and districts. Recommendations sourced from stakeholders like the American
Federation of Teachers, the National Education Association, the Council of Chief
State School Officers, and the AASA, The School Superintendents Association are
all valuable guidelines to help local officials create their own reopening plans. It is
also essential that provisions that extended health coverage to individuals within
the CARES Act are extended to ensure individual access to testing and eventual
treatments and a vaccine.
Second: Congress should act to ensure that online learning is possible for every
student. Before the pandemic, 79 percent of White households had broadband ac-
cess, compared with only 66 percent of Black families and 61 percent of Hispanic
families. The lack of equitable access to broadband is not only an immediate dis-
tance learning issue and an obstacle to effective implementation of hybrid models
in the fall, but an emergency preparedness issue in the event of further widespread
closures. To ensure that students have home access to broadband, Congress should
allocate at least $4 billion to the Federal Communications Commission’s E-Rate pro-
gram to provide hotspots and devices for students who need them. In the interest
of inclusivity, Congress should also encourage districts to implement multilingual
digital learning platforms and provide professional development opportunities for
educators, so they can effectively teach, assess, and connect with their students re-
motely. Congress should also encourage private companies to provide free home
broadband access to students that would not otherwise have it during the pandemic.
Third: Congress should help schools offset the significant learning loss caused by
the pandemic.
Congress should allocate dedicated funds to help schools facilitate expanded learn-
ing time, via summer school (online or in-person, based on the most recent public
health guidance available), extended day or year initiatives, intensive tutoring or
other evidence-based approaches that support students in completing unfinished
learning and accelerating new learning.
This additional funding must be targeted toward closing the equity gaps that have
been exacerbated by COVID–19 and should prioritize students, especially students
from low-income backgrounds, students with disabilities, English learners, and stu-
dents experiencing homelessness or in foster care, who have been most directly im-
pacted by lost in-person instructional time. Additionally, educators will need suffi-
cient time to prepare for the next school year and the substantially different work
environment that they will face, which may include altered or expanded school
schedules, additional remote instruction, and curricular changes. This professional
learning and planning time comes at a cost; Congress must allocate funding to pay
for it.
Finally: Congress must extend and expand the Pandemic EBT program to enable
more children to receive meals while not in school, and ensure that students’ and
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educators’ socioemotional and mental health needs are met by providing additional
funding for counselors and other mental health professionals in schools.
Twenty million students depend on schools for meals every day. Congress can re-
duce food insecurity for students and their families through the Pandemic Electronic
Benefits Transfer (P-EBT) program, which can help ensure that students’ nutri-
tional needs are met throughout this summer and into the next school year. The
program must also be expanded to cover children under 5, who do not qualify for
this program under the current free-and-reduced-price lunch eligibility metric.
Beyond these basic needs, we know that over 75 percent of students who receive
mental health services rely on schools to provide these supports. In order to provide
these supports to students, schools must have a positive and welcoming school cli-
mate, as well as quality dropout prevention and re-engagement programs—espe-
cially for the most vulnerable students. Therefore, it is critical that Congress allo-
cate additional Federal funding to support school counselors, mental health workers,
psychologists, and social workers in the highest-need districts, and allocate re-
sources to train teachers to understand and help mitigate the negative impacts of
COVID–19 on students, especially those of color and from low-income backgrounds.
In addition to student health, it is critical to remember that we must ensure the
safety and well-being of administrators, educators, support personnel, and parents.
Educators are experiencing greater stress and anxiety during COVID–19, and al-
most half of parents of children under 18 reported having high stress levels. We
must also help our educators and parents by providing them with emotional support
and mental health resources.
Question 1. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, nearly 500,000 public
education jobs have already been lost. If the economic damage wrought by the
coronavirus pandemic goes unchecked, nearly 2 million educators—one-fifth of the
workforce—could lose their jobs over the next 3 years, according to a new analysis
by the National Education Association. If Congress is unable to provide the addi-
tional funding that schools need to keep students, teachers and school staff safe,
how should schools prioritize their needs: maintenance of equity, distance learning,
address students’ learning loss or protect students’ nutritional, social, emotional,
and mental health needs?
Answer. As a former teacher and school leader, I am acutely aware of the chal-
lenges that educators, school administrators, and staff will face in providing services
and supports to meet students’ needs, especially if Congress fails to provide addi-
tional funding. While all of those policy needs are essential, which ones are
prioritized will ultimately depend on the given context—that is, which needs are
most acute at the state and district levels. For example, over 75 percent of teachers
in Tennessee cited technology and internet access as their greatest needs to keep
teaching through the pandemic, and the largest portion of state CARES Act funds
were allocated to address that need. Ed Trust helping advocates to ensure that
states and Governors deploy CARES Act dollars in the most effective and equitable
ways possible.
SENATOR WARREN
Question 1. You’ve spoken about the ways that this crisis has exacerbated edu-
cational inequality. A new study estimated that the average student will fall 7
months behind academically as a result of this year’s school closures, which rises
to 9 months for Latinx students and 10 months for Black students. What will the
long-term effects of this crisis be for low-income students and students of color?
Answer. The long-term effects of this crisis could be incredibly detrimental for
low-income students and students of color, who, as noted in the study above, are
at greater risk of learning loss, thanks to the digital divide and socioeconomic in-
equities that can leave some parents with less time and fewer resources to put to-
ward students’ academic success. Though all students are at risk of falling behind
amid the pandemic, we’re seeing troubling trends in real time: A recent survey of
teachers found that student learning time generally has dropped to 3 hours a day
since schools closed, down from six previously, and that lower-income students are
down to 2 hours a day. A study of online math participation showed that student
progress in math through late April decreased by about half in classrooms located
in low-income ZIP codes, by a third in classrooms in middle-income ZIP codes, and
not at all in classrooms in high-income ZIP codes. Statewide polls in California,
Texas, Washington, and New York revealed that nearly 90 percent of parents there
are worried that their children will fall behind because of school closures. There is
no doubt that pre-existing inequities in education are being amplified by the pan-
demic.
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That is why Congress should allocate dedicated funds to help schools facilitate ex-
panded learning time, via summer school (online or in-person, based on the most
recent public health guidance available), extended day or year-long initiatives, in-
tensive tutoring, or other evidence-based approaches that support students in com-
pleting unfinished learning and accelerating new learning. This funding should
prioritize closing the equity gaps we know have been exacerbated by COVID–19 and
prioritize students, especially students from low-income backgrounds, students with
disabilities, English learners, and students experiencing homelessness or in foster
care, who have been most directly impacted by lost in-person instructional time.
Learning loss is also exacerbated by teacher layoffs, since a student’s connection
with their teacher is central to learning. Unfortunately, students of color are at
higher risk of losing their teachers, as we learned during the last downturn. While
funding cuts to education were widespread following the Great Recession, an anal-
ysis of layoffs in Los Angeles found that Latino elementary students were 26 per-
cent more likely than their White peers to have their teacher laid off; Black elemen-
tary students were 72 percent more likely to have their teacher laid off. If we ignore
the lessons of the last economic slowdown, students of color and students from low-
income backgrounds will bear the brunt of cuts to public education that are looming
on the horizon. Parents are concerned. An Ed Trust poll of New York parents re-
vealed that 95 percent of them want regular contact with or access to their child’s
teacher, though only 52 percent said their child’s school has made that available.
Our California poll revealed that Black parents were less likely than parents of all
other racial groups to have been contacted by their child’s teacher. Research shows
that teachers are the single greatest in-school factor influencing student success, so
preventing further disruption for students over the long term means keeping teach-
ers in the classroom.
Question 2. What will the long-term effects of this crisis be for students with spe-
cial needs?
Answer. The inequities outlined above, which tend to be disproportionately borne
by students from low-income backgrounds and students of color, may hurt many
students with disabilities as well. Before the pandemic, students with disabilities
were already twice as likely to live in poverty, more likely to experience homeless-
ness, more likely to experience anxiety and depression, and less likely to graduate
than their peers without disabilities. All of these disparities may become worse dur-
ing this crisis. Distance learning has been particularly difficult for many students
with disabilities. Only 20 percent of parents of children with disabilities reported
that their children were receiving special education services guaranteed to them
under IDEA, and 39 percent said their children were receiving no support at all.
Parents were also twice as likely to report having increased concerns about the
mental health of their children with disabilities, and reported significantly higher
stress, anxiety, and depression themselves during the pandemic compared to par-
ents of children without disabilities. The impact of limited special education services
could extend into students’ adulthoods, as employment training and work experi-
ences during high school are critical factors in successful postsecondary transitions
for students with disabilities, and have become much more difficult to provide dur-
ing the pandemic. We need robust supports to ensure these risks don’t increase and
to uphold IDEA and Section 504 [of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973] to protect stu-
dents’ rights to a free and appropriate education.
Question 3. In an op-ed in the Hill with AFT President Randi Weingarten, you
proposed a ‘‘bridge program’’ this summer. How would this proposal support at-risk
students?
Answer. Some of our most vulnerable students—including students of color; stu-
dents from low-income backgrounds; students with disabilities; English learners;
and students experiencing homelessness, in foster care, or who are impacted by the
juvenile justice system—are likely to be disproportionally impacted by school clo-
sures during the coronavirus pandemic. Given this reality, districts and schools
should be looking for ways to provide students with extended learning opportunities
through summer learning experiences, bridge programs, or by beginning school ear-
lier to make up lost instructional time. Given what we know about learning loss,
these opportunities must be made available, even if they are offered remotely
throughout the summer. When brick-and-mortar schools are back in session, school
leaders should look to add hours to the school day or year, as a way to boost student
achievement—particularly for students who are most at risk of failing—since this
would provide opportunities for students to accelerate their learning in subjects in
which they are struggling.
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Additionally, as we prepare for the upcoming school year, district and school lead-
ers should consider other ways to deliver additional learning time to students who
are most impacted, such as:
• Meaningfully extending the school day or year;
• Scheduling twice as much time for subjects that students are struggling
in—also known as ‘‘double-blocking;’’
• Significantly reducing class and group sizes (e.g., reductions of 8 to 15
students per class), particularly for students in grades K–3, since this
may enable teachers to provide more individualized attention to students;
and
• Using more targeted interventions, including intervention blocks, within-
class groups, or one-on-one tutoring.
Beyond those direct academic interventions, district and school leaders should
also consider how they will reach out to families about these additional supports;
assign mentors to returning students; and partner with national and/or community-
based organizations that have a proven record of success, offering systematic, coordi-
nated services to meet students’ social-emotional, physical, and mental health needs.
The impact of closures will vary widely, but, at a minimum, the result will be bil-
lions of hours of lost learning time. Initial estimates from NWEA suggest that stu-
dents will return to school in the fall with ‘‘roughly 70 percent of the learning gains
in reading and less than 50 percent of the normal learning gains in math relative
to a typical school year.’’ This learning loss will be felt most inequitably by students
with higher needs and students of color. We are confident that dedicated Federal
investments to provide extended learning opportunities and summer bridge pro-
grams as a means to assess and address learning loss can help get our Nation’s
most vulnerable students back on track.
Question 4. What mental health supports do you believe will be needed for stu-
dents when schools reopen?
Answer. There was already tremendous student need for mental health services
in schools before the pandemic: We know that over 75 percent of students who re-
ceive mental health supports rely on schools to provide those supports. Students will
need even more support now that families are under increased economic strain, free-
dom of movement has been restricted for months, and anxiety about the health of
loved ones has taken a toll. Therefore, it is all the more important that schools pro-
vide a positive and welcoming climate, as well as quality dropout prevention and
re-engagement programs—especially for the most vulnerable students. Therefore, it
is critical that Congress allocate additional Federal funding to support school coun-
selors, mental health workers, psychologists, and social workers in the highest-need
districts, and allocate resources to train teachers to understand and address the
negative impacts of COVID–19 on students, especially those of color and from low-
income backgrounds.
Question 5. What is your estimate of the additional funding that would be re-
quired for these and other efforts to support low-income and at-risk students?
Answer. While Congress took initial action to provide critical resources and sup-
ports to states, schools and districts, and higher-education institutions through the
CARES Act, it is clear that this investment is not enough to meet the needs of
schools, especially those serving students with the greatest need, which are facing
many new costs associated with safely reopening schools this fall amid a still ongo-
ing pandemic. Safety measures like providing personal protective equipment (PPE),
altering school day operations, making available additional support staff to address
students’ social, emotional, and mental needs do not come cheap. Current estimates
for reopening range from $2 million per district (which could easily add up to at
least $30 billion) to $116.5 billion. The Council of Chief State School Officers
(CCSSO) has recently projected that schools might need as much as $245 billion to
reopen this fall.
As I outlined in my testimony before the Committee, Ed Trust, along with 70
other organizations, urge Congress to provide at least $500 billion total in additional
state stabilization funds, including at least $175 billion for K–12 schools, in recogni-
tion of both the cost increases and revenue reductions facing states, schools and dis-
tricts during this time. That money should also be allocated in an equitable manner.
Specifically, the Federal Government must include maintenance of effort provisions
that require state education spending levels to remain constant (i.e., at least at the
same percentage of the state’s total spending), even if the state’s overall budget
shrinks. Furthermore, if spending cuts are necessary, the Federal Government must
use a maintenance of equity provision to protect our highest-need schools by requir-
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ing both states and districts that receive additional Federal funding to show that
any necessary cuts are smaller per student in the highest-need districts and schools
than the rest of the state or district. Congress should also prevent the U.S. Depart-
ment of Education (ED) from steering funding away from low-income, public school
students through its interpretation of the equitable services provision.
Question 6. What is your estimate of the Federal funding needed to avoid cuts
to education budgets and fund these needed additional supports?
Answer. As mentioned above, it is clear that additional Federal funds are needed
to account for both the decreases in state revenue that support schools and districts,
as well as the increases in the cost of operating schools this fall. In 2008, we learned
a great deal about what happens at the state level when a recession occurs—state
budgets are cut and those cuts disproportionally impact schools and districts serving
students from low-income backgrounds and students of color. In order to prevent
that from happening in the wake of the economic damage caused by COVID–19, Ed
Trust encourages lawmakers to ensure that any additional Federal dollars include
maintenance of effort and maintenance of equity requirements to protect students
in high-needs schools and districts from cuts. As an organization committed to edu-
cational equity, we would like to underscore the urgent need for Congress to both
allocate additional resources, as well as ensure that states do not abdicate their re-
sponsibility to provide more resources and supports for our highest-need students
during this uncertain time.
[Whereupon, at 11:58 a.m., the hearing was adjourned.]
Æ
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