Education Week - September 9, 2020 - 2

Backpedaling USDA
Extends Waivers
For Student Meals

Miami-Dade County
schools Superintendent
Alberto Carvalho greets
students remotely during
a visit last week to
Vanessa Acosta's 1st
grade class at Bob
Graham Education
Center. The Florida
district has been the
victim of more than a
dozen cyber attacks
since the school year
began, and a high school
junior in the district was
arrested in connection
with the crimes.

Carl Juste/Miami Herald/AP

The U.S. Department of Agriculture did some backpedaling last week when it extended waivers from federal meal requirements for children through the end
of this year.
Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue had initially
told Congress that he would require schools to shift
back to specified requirements of the National School
Lunch and Breakfast Programs, and that flexibility
under those summer meal programs would lapse with
the start of this new school year. Barely more than a
week later, Perdue did an about-face. 
The waiver extension will allow schools and community groups to continue feeding students with
fewer restrictions than are typically in place under
lunch and breakfast programs, and enable organizations that serve students meals in the summer months
to continue doing so in the fall.
To justify his initial decision to revoke the waivers,
Perdue said he believed Americans were a "generous people" and would help offer a variety of opportunities to provide children with meals, while the
waiver extensions would represent a step toward a
"universal meals program" not authorized or paid
for by Congress. 
That didn't sit well with school officials and others,
including GOP members of Congress. They had argued that food insecurity brought about by the pandemic made such flexibility for schools all the more
essential. They also said the fact that many schools are
starting the school year with all-remote instruction
made it more important for them to provide students
with meals quickly and easily. 
Perdue expressed the agency's new sentiment in
announcing the waiver extension. "This extension
of summer program authority will employ summer
program sponsors to ensure meals are reaching all
children-whether they are learning in the classroom
or virtually-so they are fed and ready to learn, even
in new and ever-changing learning environments."
The extensions will last until Dec. 31, "or until available funding runs out," the USDA said. 
Perdue had previously extended other waivers from
meal requirements initially granted to help schools
and families deal with the pandemic. Those waivers
were first extended until Aug. 31, then were extended
again and are now in affect until June 30, 2021.

Novel
Welcome

Private and Charter Schools Get COVID-19 Relief Aid
From Places Traditional Public Schools Can't Tread
Here's some math to ponder: About 85 percent of K-12 students attend traditional public schools, recent federal data
show, while 9.5 percent go to private schools, and 5.2 percent
are in charter schools.
Add to that this information: When the federal government
dished out coronavirus relief aid to the K-12 sector, private and
charter schools got nearly half the money that public schools
did. And public schools have to share some of that money with
private schools.
That's what the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget
turned up for a report released last week.
Private schools as well as charter schools have received $6 billion in Paycheck Protection Program aid in the form of forgivable
loans, says the study by the nonprofit group. Meanwhile, states
and K-12 school districts got roughly $13 billion in separate aid
under the CARES Act. Traditional public schools are not eligible
to apply for PPP money. 
What's more, the CARES Act says charter schools that function
as local education agencies are also eligible to receive subgrants

Fear of Deportation Grips Latino Students, Leading
To Mental-Health Problems and Altered Lifestyles
When President Donald Trump took office in 2017, immigration advocates and school officials braced for the prospect that
he would undertake unprecedented immigration-enforcement
measures that could upend the lives of millions.
Turns out, they were right.
Nearly four years later, the nation's Latino schoolchildren are
bearing the mental and psychological brunt of the president's
campaign to curtail immigration: A majority of Latino high
school students who were part of a study of communities in two
states fear that someone close to them could be arrested and deported, a new Migration Policy Institute study reveals.
More than half the students surveyed in both Rhode Island
and Texas, states with vastly different immigration-enforce-

ment climates, reported experiencing symptoms of anxiety,
depression, or post-traumatic stress disorder at levels significant enough to warrant treatment. The students who feared
immigration enforcement most acutely and changed their behaviors to avoid detection, reported the most significant challenges with mental health.
To support their Latino students, schools in both states took
similar steps: ensuring students had access to counseling and
therapy services, making public statements in support of students and their families, and amending discipline policies to
reduce the potential for interactions with school police officers.
Researchers from the Migration Policy Institute, the University
of Houston, and Rhode Island College analyzed results from a

BRIEFLY STATED CONTRIBUTORS: Associated Press, Corey Mitchell, and Andrew Ujifusa. Edited by Karen Diegmueller.
2  |  EDUCATION WEEK  |  September 9, 2020  |  www.edweek.org

under the $13 billion in the law for K-12 schools, just like traditional school districts.
Charter school skeptics say the PPP loans underscore how
the schools straddle the line between being public and private entities in ways that traditional public schools cannot
and charters are taking advantage of money that should instead be going to small businesses and other entities as the
economy struggles. 
The CARES Act also included $3 billion in education aid for
governors to allocate to K-12 and higher education. At least a
few governors have directed some of that money to private
K-12 schools. 
Just how much of the $13 billion in CARES relief must be set
aside for private school students is up in the air. That fight is ongoing in the courts. 
Overall, the group says COVID-19 relief legislation has provided $42 billion to the education sector, including K-12 and
higher education. Just over half-55 percent- has gone to public
schools in both K-12 and higher education. 

survey of Latino students in several Rhode Island cities and in
Harris County, Texas, which includes Houston, examining the
links between immigration enforcement and the related fears
and mental health of Latino youths enrolled in 11 Latino-majority
high schools during the 2018-19 school year.
ICE made more arrests in Harris County in fiscal 2018 than
any other county in the country. Rhode Island, by comparison,
has a relatively low level of Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity and has policies restricting local law-enforcement
cooperation with the federal agency.
Overall, one-third of students in the survey feared that ICE
agents would come for them, including 12 percent of students
born in the United States. Nearly as many, 30 percent, reported
taking extreme measures to dodge potential deportation, including avoiding such activities as driving, getting medical
checkups, attending religious services, or taking part in afterschool activities. They took alternative routes to school and
stayed home more often.
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