WASHINGTON WATCH

Continued from page 8 multilingual education.

• $10 million for post-secondary fellowships to improve the quality of multilingual educator preparation.

New initiatives

• $100 million to fund a grant program supporting voluntary community efforts promoting racial and socioeconomic diversity in local schools.

• $500 million for a competitive Preschool Incentive Demonstration grant program for local education agencies to expand access to high-quality preschool in school and community-based settings.

Post-secondary education

The Biden administration’s budget proposal increases the maximum Pell Grant by $820, for a maximum $8,215 for award year 2024-25 and a proposal to double the Pell Grant by 2029. In addition, the department wants Congress to ensure the inclusion of DACA students into federal student aid programs. The budget proposal also outlines a free community college opportunity for first-time students and workers based upon a partnership between the federal government and states.

Budget process

Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray (D-Washington) and Vice-Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) said they hoped to quickly move through the FY 2024 budget approval process in a bipartisan manner, but they will certainly meet resistance as Republicans have indicated an unwillingness to subsidize program increases based on increasing revenues from new taxes.

In fact, Republicans are seeking to roll back overall spending to FY 2022 levels, which would require a 25% decrease from the current fiscal year. Both the House and Senate Appropriations Committees will work to craft their appropriations bills over the summer and seek an agreement on top-line spending levels.

Teacher compensation legislation

Outside of the appropriations process, Senate Education Chairman Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) introduced the Pay Teachers Act (S 766) in early March. It would ensure public school teachers earn at least $60,000 annually along with pay increases over the course of their career. House Education Chairwoman Virginia Foxx (R-North Carolina) said she agrees that teachers deserve a raise, but this should not be dictated by the federal government.

The Pay Teachers Act is estimated to cost $450 billion over 10 years, essentially tripling federal Title I funding, and would be paid for by increasing estate taxes on higher income individuals.

House Democrats introduced a similar bill last year, the

American Teacher Act, in which states could opt in to a federally funded short-term grant program that would raise teacher salaries over a four-year period.

Some members of Congress said teacher compensation should be tied to performance and not provided across the board. Republicans and Democrats disagree with how teacher pay should be handled and generally look to states to take the lead in addressing this issue. Congressional members often remind governors that the COVID relief funds provided under the American Rescue Plan could have been used to increase teachers’ salaries.

Social Security GPO and WEP

In January, Reps. Garret Graves (R-Louisiana) and Abigail Spanberger (D-Virginia) reintroduced the Social Security Fairness Act (HR 82). The bill eliminates both the government pension offset, which reduces Social Security benefits for spouses, widows and widowers who receive a government pension for work in which they did not contribute to Social Security, and the windfall elimination provision, which reduces Social Security retirement payments for those who earned Social Security benefits through their own employment but who qualify for a government pension for non-Social-Security work. The bill, which TCTA supports, has over 200 co-sponsors in the House, including 18 members from the Texas delegation.

The Congressional Research Service recently published a new report, which summarized that the Social Security benefit formula generally cannot distinguish between workers who worked for many years at low earnings in Social Securitycovered employment and workers who held jobs not covered by Social Security.

The CRS analysis suggests that the WEP reduces benefits disproportionately for lower-earning households, although agreement on a fix has been elusive.

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Collins introduced a Senate version of the Social Security bill in March. Despite consistent bipartisan support in the House and the Senate, the legislation has been difficult to advance due to the increase in mandatory costs and concern about the solvency of the Social Security trust fund.

Parents Bill of Rights

The Parents Bill of Rights Act (HR 5) passed the Republican-led House in March on a 213-208 vote. While the bill does not dictate curriculum or access to educational materials, it would require local schools to notify parents of various policies and activities, conduct parent-teacher conferences twice annually and increase transparency of the school’s curriculum. It is highly unlikely that the Democraticcontrolled Senate chamber will take up the measure, but it will be a point of reference in the next election cycle.