DeVos says she will force public schools to spend C19 aid on private school students

[Demovictory9]

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/27/us/politics/betsy-devos-coronavirus-private-schools.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos says she will force public school superintendents to share coronavirus rescue funds with private schools, some of which are facing ruin.

WASHINGTON — Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, defiant amid criticism that she is using the coronavirus to pursue a long-sought agenda, said she would force public school districts to spend a large portion of federal rescue funding on private school students, regardless of income.

Ms. DeVos announced the measure in a letter to the Council of Chief State School Officers, which represents state education chiefs, defending her position on how education funding from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act, or CARES Act, should be spent.

“The CARES Act is a special, pandemic-related appropriation to benefit all American students, teachers and families,” she wrote in the letter on Friday. “There is nothing in the act suggesting Congress intended to discriminate between children based on public or nonpublic school attendance, as you seem to do. The virus affects everyone.”

A range of education officials say Ms. DeVos’s guidance would divert millions of dollars from disadvantaged students and force districts starved of tax revenues during an economic crisis to support even the wealthiest private schools. The association representing the nation’s schools superintendents told districts to ignore the guidance, and at least two states — Indiana and Maine — said they would.

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Ms. DeVos has been unabashed in her use of coronavirus funding to further her decades-long effort to divert public dollars to private and parochial schools. In a radio interview last week, first reported by Chalkbeat, the Roman Catholic archbishop of New York, Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, asked Ms. DeVos if she was using “this particular crisis to ensure that justice is finally done to our kids and the parents who choose to send them to faith-based schools.” She responded “Absolutely.

[smirkymonkey]

1. I really fucking hate that bitch.

May she burn in hell for eternity.

[Hekate]

2. She really is a bitch. One of Trump's most "successful" appointments, in that she set out to destroy

...the department she "manages," and by golly, she is gonna do it. POS.

[Celerity]

3. +100000

she is amongst the worst, and has been doing massive, long term systemic damage since she came to power. Much of it will not manifest itself for years.