The U.S. Department of Education (USDOE) last week issued an interim final rule regarding the use of CARES Act K-12 emergency relief funds for private schools. The rule is in response to disagreement over the method to distribute CARES Act funds to private schools for equitable services.
The CARES Act requires equitable services to be provided “in the same manner as” Title I equitable services, which means that services should be provided based on the number of low-income students living in the local education agency who attend nonpublic schools.
However, the interim final rule provides districts with two options for implementing the CARES Act's equitable services requirement:
(1) If a district chooses to use CARES Act emergency funding only for Title I-eligible students, then it may elect to only set aside funding for equitable services for Title I-eligible students that attend private schools.
(2) If a district wishes to use CARES Act funding for all students, then the district must set aside funding to provide equitable services to all students that attend private schools in their region.
This application of USDOE’s rule would result in nonpublic schools receiving a substantially larger amount of funding, much more than Congress intended, and much more than school districts anticipated based on the federal legislation. The USDOE’s misinterpretation of the federal legislation in its interim final rule directs a disproportionate and inequitable amount of funding to private schools that were intended for public K-12 school districts.
The interim final rule took effect on July 1 and has a comment period that expires on July 31. We strongly recommend you submit a comment on the rule. Comments should note that allocations of CARES Act funds to public schools were based on Title-I eligible students, and the same should be true for private schools, instead of allocating funds to private schools based on their total population. Click here to read the rule and to provide a comment on the rule. District leaders should also share your comments with your U.S. House of Representatives member and both Ohio U.S. Senators.