Admission of Failure, Said the Head of the California School Board About Newsom’s Decision to Give $2 Billion to Cover Covid Learning Loss
A head of the Chino Valley school board told Fox News Digital that Gov. Gavin Newsom’s approval of the $2 billion to fix the problem of lost learning due to COVID lockdowns is a “stark admission of failure.”
California recently agreed to spend $2 billion to help kids who lost out on learning and had mental health problems because of the school closings. Sonia Shaw, President of the Chino Valley Unified School District Board, told Fox News Digital that this was a clear admission of failure.
Because of the settlement of Cayla J. v. California in February, California has to pay $2 billion to help students make up for lost learning. Newsom signed off on the distribution of funds on June 29 through Senate Bill 153.
During the early stages of the COVID-19 outbreak, almost all schools in California were closed for in-person learning. Instead, students went to school from home.
Public Counsel, a non-profit law company that worked on the case, says that the Golden State will use what COVID-19 relief funds are left on tutoring and other programs to help students who lost learning during the pandemic get back on track.
A lawyer from Morrison Foerster, another law company involved in the lawsuit, told Fox News Digital in February that they had shown that students from low-income families and students of color who lost time at school because of the coronavirus pandemic were hurt by the closures.
“Unfortunately, the damage is done,” Shaw, who has two kids in the Chino Valley Unified School District, said. “This should have been a priority for the Department of Education and the Governor.” Thank you to everyone who never gave up on making sure that resources are used to help kids.
She went on, “This wound was caused by bad policymaking and bad leadership.” These choices caused our kids a huge amount of harm, and it’s outrageous that it took a case to show and fix the problem.
A father of four whose children are currently enrolled in the Wheatland School District told Fox News, “Instead of recognizing how our state’s elected officials have consistently failed millions of children in our public schools, the legislature passed and the governor signed a bill that will not only send more money into our subpar government schools but also have no real accountability other than reports that no one will read or seriously consider.”
He also said, “It’s time for the legislature to cut ties with teachers’ unions that consistently block efforts to improve education.” When kids go to public schools that don’t do well, parents who don’t have many means or choices for their kids will see their money go to bureaucrats instead of programs they know will help their kids.
The lawsuit went on to say that from March 2020 to March 2021, the federal government gave public school systems more than $190 billion to help them deal with learning loss.
The plaintiffs said California didn’t make sure that the money went to the kids who needed it the most.
As a result, the settlement says that existing funds from the Learning Recovery Emergency Block Grant must be used to hire teachers and do other things to assist students in recovering from learning loss.
The money will be used to help students who are already having a hard time in school. These students are usually kids from low-income families and races.
Jason Bedrick, an education policy research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, told Fox News Digital that the problem was made by California politicians.
“This problem was made by California’s leaders who kept schools closed for too long. “They are now throwing money at the problem to try to fix it, but it won’t work,” he said.
“A far better use of this money would be to directly empower families to choose the learning environments that work best for their children—whether private schools, district schools, or home schools.”
“One of the largest education-related settlements in U.S. history,” according to Public Counsel, California has also agreed to propose a new law that would let money go to “community organizations with a proven track record of improving student success.”
Local education agencies are required by law to follow a Local Control and Accountability Plan. This plan requires them to report on the results of any program they make to help students who are losing their learning.
A spokesperson for the California Department of Education said that the plan includes changes that the administration thinks are “appropriate at this stage coming out of the pandemic to focus on the students who were most affected and continued to need support.”
A senior fellow at the American Federation for Children told Fox News Digital that Newsom is “now essentially an arsonist pretending to be a firefighter.”
“He let teachers unions shut down California’s public schools, and now he’s rewarding them for what they did wrong.” California’s kids’ education was held hostage by teachers’ groups. Gavin Newsom is now giving them more ransom money as a reward for making the prisoners’ lives worse, he said.