The Trump administration released its proposed Department of Education budget Tuesday, boasting a $10 billion cut.
The budget would terminate public service loan forgiveness, eliminate Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants, and cut spending by the National Institutes of Health and National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities, reported Chronicle.
But the Department of Education will dedicate over $1 billion to school choice, according to a press release obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation.
Furthering Options for Children to Unlock Success (FOCUS) grants, which fund schools that employ open enrollment and consider the needs of individual students, will receive $1 billion. The department will also dedicate $250 million and $167 million to private school and charter school scholarships, respectively.
If approved by Congress, the budget will go into effect Oct. 1, 2018, the date that the 2018 fiscal year begins. But lawmakers, as well as education professionals, are already expressing their disapproval.
“Congress will write the budget and set the spending priorities,” said Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander, who chairs the Senate education committee, in a statement obtained by Chronicle. “Where we find good ideas in the president’s budget, we will use them. We should not pretend to balance the budget by cutting national laboratories, national parks, and the National Institutes of Health.” (RELATED: Report: Massive Cuts To Public Education In Favor Of School Choice)
“Thankfully, Congress has the ultimate responsibility for setting funding levels, and with the FY 2017 spending bills, it showed a willingness to reject similarly damaging proposals,” said Molly Corbett Broad, the American Council on Education president. “Colleges and universities and their students will work with Congress to continue the historic, bipartisan support for federal student aid and research funding.”
Carrie Warick, the National College Access Network’s director of policy and advocacy, said that the budget would impair first-generation, low-income, and minority students from obtaining higher education.
While the budget pumps more money into relieving financial need via Pell Grants, Warick said the allotment was not sufficient to combat inflation, and that the purchasing power of the Pell Grant would continue to decline.
“[The budget] reflects a series of tough choices we have had to make when assessing the best use of taxpayer money,” said Education Secretary Betsy DeVos Tuesday in the press release. “It ensures funding for programs with proven results for students while taking a hard look at programs that sound nice but simply haven’t yielded the desired outcomes.”
DeVos stated that funding for Historically Black Colleges and Universities, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, and other “critical programs” would be continued.
TheDCNF reached out to the Department of Education for comment on the school choice initiative and Pell Grant funding, but received no comment in time for press.
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