Trump administration quietly cuts funding to the nation’s poorest schools

https://news.yahoo.com/trump-administration-quietly-cuts-funding-090641332.html?soc_src=hl-viewer&soc_trk=fb

Andrew Naughtie
,The Independent•March 3, 2020

Thanks to an under-the-radar bookkeeping change at the Department of Education, hundreds of rural schools across the US are set to lose vital funds.

As reported in the New York Times, the department has changed the eligibility criteria for the Rural and Low-Income School Programme, which provides funding for school districts in some of the poorest parts of the country.

The change will make it harder for districts to demonstrate their eligibility, meaning hundreds of them will lose tens of thousands of dollars – and in some cases much more.

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To qualify for the programme, school districts must prove that at least 20 per cent of their area’s school-age children live in poverty.

Officially, they are required to do so using census data, but because the census often leaves out many people living in rural areas, they have in practice been allowed to cite the percentage of their pupils who qualify for free or subsidised meals.

The department has now abruptly decided that it will only allow districts to use census data, meaning districts will struggle to account for all children in their local areas who would qualify.

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The Department of Education is led by Betsy DeVos, who was one of Mr Trump’s most controversial cabinet appointees at the start of his administration. She has drawn fire both for her lack of experience in schools and her past statements advocating a religious agenda for public education.