Some Republicans in Congress don’t like how some states are using their budgets to pay for “implicit bias training” and “LGBTQ+ cultural competency” programs.
Some House Republicans have said in private that COVID-19 relief funds are being misused to support “radical, left-wing agendas.” They have also asked that the Department of Education “be held accountable” for this supposed waste of government money.
The leaders of the House Oversight Committee, James Comer, the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, Virginia Foxx, and the House Committee on Crime, Violence, and Homeland Security, Brad Wenstrup and Virginia Foxx, wrote to Fox News Online. It was sent to the Secretary of Education, Miguel Cardona.
Lawmakers told Cardona that they are still looking into the “misuse of COVID-19 relief funds” to help schools start up safely, stop the spread of COVID-19, and make up for the terrible loss of learning.
In a joint statement, Comer, Foxx, and Wenstrup said that their committees would keep an eye on how the Department of Education spent the billions of dollars that were set aside for “Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief” (ESSER) programs.
With these “emergency relief funds to deal with the effects that COVID-19 has had and continues to have on elementary and secondary schools across the country,” it was hoped that local educational groups could start to recover from the devastating effects that COVID-19 has had on their communities. This was done with money from the state.
They wrote that some governments and school districts used ESSER money for “preferred social agendas” instead of helping kids make up for time lost in school because of closures.
Comer and Foxx say that one school system used ESSER money to help its workers do their jobs better by giving them “implicit bias training” and “LGBTQ+ cultural competency.”
They wrote that using taxpayer-funded COVID-19 relief programs for “activities that seem to have nothing to do with COVID-19 mitigation or learning loss” is a waste of money and a bad use of COVID-19 relief programs.
Comer and Foxx wrote to Cardona to ask for paperwork and emails that show how the US Department of Education spends ESSER money in California, New York, Illinois, and Massachusetts.
Legislators also asked for access to all letters and paperwork about the funding of “Critical Race Theory, diversity, equity, and inclusion, and/or other professional development on bias and/or programs.”
Comer told Fox News Digital that “using radical teachers unions to keep schools closed for longer has hurt a whole generation of students.”
What Comer called “radical, left-wing agendas in our schools” were paid for to be taught again.
He said, “That won’t work.” He said that Secretary Cardona should have to pay for the money that was lost.
Foxx told Fox News Digital in an interview that it is “disgraceful” that money meant to help students recover from a “learning loss epidemic” is instead being used by the Biden administration to push its “woke political agenda.”
She thought that it would be a long time before we could see how closing schools would affect American kids’ ability to learn in the long run. Don’t agree with the government’s terrible schooling plans and make them worse.
He said that the ESSER money were “useful, needed, and helpful” in making up for the damage caused by the long time schools were closed because of the epidemic. We owe it to American kids and their families to find out if the money from ESSER was used well or not. This includes the worry about “whether or not government officials misuse or waste government money on political pet projects, putting their own interests ahead of the children of America.”
Fox News Digital asked the U.S. Department of Education for a word, but they didn’t get back to them quickly.
In March 2021, Congress passed the American Rescue Plan (ARP) Act, which was backed by Democrats but not by the Republican Party. During the COVID-19 pandemic, they stressed how important it was to get back to school. Fox News Digital said at the end of 2017 that the law gave ESSER more than $122.0 billion.
Some school districts may think that a “culture shift” is needed to make sure that when schools resume, they are fair for all kids. Fox News Digital from 2021 says that in August 2021, the U.S. Department of Education put out a study with suggestions for how states can best use ARP money to help with in-person education.
Researchers suggested that states use ARP money to deal with problems like “fears of xenophobic and racist harassment,” which keep families of color from going back to regular schools.