By Juan Perez Jr.

With help from Bianca Quilantan

SEEKING ANSWERS — Educators who work with homeless students are in a bind.

— The American Rescue Plan included $800 million for state governments and local schools to spend on supporting unhoused K-12 students. The money can ease an array of needs. Schools can hire people to find and provide transportation. They can buy eligible students cell phones, personal care products, prepaid debit cards, gas, even brief motel stays for emergency housing.

— But as a September 2024 deadline to spend the money approaches, some schools are having trouble distributing funds — if they have any left. Advocates and school coordinators for homeless students report several challenges: competing demands from governments, spending constraints that can limit the money’s impact, and no updated guidance from Washington.

— The problem is playing out in communities as a new school year gets underway, including Virginia towns near the nation’s capital. High-profile education organizations are meanwhile pushing the Education Department to urgently issue new guidance that addresses how federal funds for homeless children and youth can be used — and prohibits state governments from restricting local school spending.

— Unnecessary barriers are leaving students without needed services, the groups said in a recent letter to the Biden administration, and now federal dollars “are very likely to be unspent.”

— New guidance from the Biden administration is expected to arrive this month in the form of a “Dear Colleague” letter to state and local school administrators, the department told Weekly Education.

— “I don’t think it's a lack of concern, it’s not that they don’t care,” said Barbara Duffield, executive director of homelessness nonprofit SchoolHouse Connection, of the Education Department. “I just think that, in the realm of things they’re dealing with, this has not taken the front seat. And that’s just obvious.”

— “There are two challenges that we face in these next twelve months,” Duffield said. “One is making the best use of these critical dollars to meet urgent needs at a time of great need. Then the second piece is the sustainability piece … the work to make sure that there isn’t a [fiscal] cliff.”

IT’S TUESDAY, SEPT. 5. WELCOME TO WEEKLY EDUCATION. POLITICO’s video gurus assembled a quick-hit summary of where Republican presidential hopefuls stand on education, from parents’ rights to critical race theory.

Reach out with tips to today’s host at [email protected] and also my colleagues Michael Stratford ([email protected]), Bianca Quilantan ([email protected]) and Mackenzie Wilkes ([email protected]). And don’t forget to follow us on whatever it is people call Twitter now: @Morning_Edu and @POLITICOPro.

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Food pantry and essentials are pictured at Frye Elementary School in Chandler, Ariz. on May 23, 2023. | AP

SHORT-TERM FIXES — Near the Blue Ridge Mountains outside of Washington D.C., school staff responsible for homeless students are hampered by insufficient affordable housing and shelter space. In some cases, they’ve also been waiting months for answers on the proper spending of federal funds.

— “I was one of the lucky ones and I got just under $300,000 to spend,” said Tyler Thompson, who is responsible for roughly 200 housing-insecure children that attend Virginia’s Frederick County Public Schools system. “But so far I've only been able to spend about half of it, and I only have a year left because of all the strings and lack of answers that we've gotten on how we can spend the money.”

— One concern centers on motels. Roughly 70 miles south of Frederick County, officials in rural Culpeper, Va., plan to use their few remaining emergency funds on students who might need a temporary motel if they’re living in shelters or bouncing between places as their families try to secure housing. But schools are bumping against limits on the length of stays they can purchase.

— “One of the frustrations that I had last year is that we were able to use this money to pay for short-term motel stays, but all the feds would authorize was three days,” said Russell Houck, the Culpeper County Public Schools system’s executive director of student services.

— Education groups say paying for short-term stays promotes school attendance, but that limits on district motel purchases do not allow families enough time to arrange longer-term housing. It can take three days simply to get a phone call returned from community housing organizations, much less find actual housing.

— “We had a family that had housing waiting for them, but they needed a two-week motel stay and we couldn't pay for that,” Houck said. “I know that’s not a long-term solution. … But emergency stays, when you’ve got kids? Three days is just not enough.”

— Advocates want the Education Department to let schools spend American Rescue Plan funds on up to two-week motel stays, when emergency housing is the only reasonable option to help students fully participate in school.

— It’s not yet clear how educators’ concerns will be addressed in the department’s forthcoming guidance.

CRA STARTS TODAY — Congressional Republicans will introduce legislation today that aims to overturn President Joe Biden’s new student loan repayment program.

— Republican Sens. Bill Cassidy (La.), John Thune (S.D.) and John Cornyn (Texas) said they are bringing forth a Congressional Review Act resolution to overturn Biden’s income-driven repayment rule. Rep. Lisa McClain (R-Mich.) is set to introduce a companion resolution in the House, congressional Republicans said. POLITICO reported this was coming last month.

— The resolution under the Congressional Review Act would allow Republicans to force a vote on the measure in the Democrat-controlled Senate. That law gives Congress a fast-track tool to repeal recent executive branch rules.

— The income-driven repayment program, which the administration has dubbed the “SAVE” plan, caps interest accrual and lowers monthly payments for many borrowers.

BUDGET ANOMALY DETECTED — The White House last week sent Congress a 28-page list of extra money it wants lawmakers to tack onto a stopgap funding patch to keep the government funded beyond the Sept. 30 shutdown deadline.

— That includes $2.3 billion for the Student Aid Administration to ensure federal student aid isn’t held up.

— The White House list of “anomalies” kicks off debate over what programs will get a funding bump beyond the static spending levels in a stopgap. POLITICO’s Jennifer Scholtes and Adam Cancryn have more.

‘NOT ONE THING’ — The Supreme Court’s recent decision to gut affirmative action in college admissions means “not one thing” for K-12 schools, a top Education Department official says.

— “That Students for Fair Admissions decision was about Harvard and University of North Carolina admissions practices, and it doesn't address issues outside that area,” Assistant Education Secretary for Civil Rights Catherine Lhamon said last week during an event hosted by the Center for American Progress.

— In 2007’s Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School Dist. No. 1 case, the high court ruled schools cannot use race-based student assignment practices to pursue diversity and integration. “Following this decision, K-12 schools have already been operating under the guidelines similar to those announced for colleges in the SFFA decisions,” the ACLU noted in July.

— But Lhamon’s comment comes as the Supreme Court considers taking up a case that could shake-up race-neutral admissions at Virginia’s Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, one of the nation’s most selective public high schools.

— Other tidbits: Lhamon reiterated that her office has seen a record year of civil rights complaints and added that the allegations are “astonishing.”

— “When we think about sending our kids to school, they have a new backpack, they may get a new lunchbox, you think about ‘I hope you like your teacher; I would like you to sit up straight in class,’” Lhamon said. “We aren’t thinking necessarily that we have to say, ‘I want to steel yourself against the things somebody might call you; the things someone might say to you in school.’”

— She noted an incident in Iowa where, shortly after the police killing of George Floyd, a “white student knelt on a Gatorade bottle and looked at this Black student and said ‘it can't breathe’ as a way of harassing the student.” The principal at the time “didn't view that as racial harassment,” Lhamon said.

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NO STRIKE FOR NOW — New York City’s school bus driver union says it will not strike when school starts Thursday, easing a bit of tension for a city education department that drew up contingency plans in anticipation of a walkout this week.

— The Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1181’s announcement that there will be "no disruption" to transportation when school starts comes after union members this past June voted to permit a strike that could still affect 80,000 students (including 25,000 students with disabilities) as well as 4,400 citywide bus routes.

— Chancellor David Banks said he was "hopeful" a strike wouldn't take place, POLITICO’s Madina Touré reports.

— “Any time you have a strike, it will be a challenge and it will be a major, major inconvenience for all our kids and their families. So we're doing everything we can to avert it," he said during a public safety briefing at City Hall.

— Union President Tomas Fret said talks between the labor group and bus companies remain ongoing, but confirmed a strike during the first couple of weeks of school is being put on hold.

— “I did it for the city of New York, for the parents, for the children of New York,” Fret told Gothamist.

— Virginia Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin appointed Nicholas Kent, the chief policy officer at Career Education Colleges and Universities, to serve as the state’s deputy secretary of education. Kent will help develop and implement Youngkin’s postsecondary education strategy.

— “Grade inflation” for high schoolers is on the rise, according to a report from ACT. The percentage of students assigned B and C grades declined from 2010 to 2022, while the number of students who were assigned A grades increased. But the higher grades were not associated with improved scores on the ACT exam. “Grade inflation” was most pronounced in mathematics.

— A new report from Upwardly Global concluded that community colleges face substantial gaps and barriers in programs that prepare immigrants and refugees for the U.S. workforce, even though nearly one third of the institutions’ students are of immigrant origin.

— The American Federation of Teachers and Educators Thriving published a series of strategies to improve teacher stress and burnout.

— Affirmative action is over. Should applicants still mention their race? The New York Times

— Biden fights back against GOP onslaught on education — cautiously: The Washington Post

— A looming child care funding crisis threatens Biden’s economic recovery: POLITICO

— Coach who lost his job for praying on field kneels again in first game after years of legal battles: The Associated Press

— Virginia’s Largest School Districts Won’t Adopt Gov. Youngkin’s New LGBTQ Edict: The 74

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