- A recent Education Week headline read, “Schools Are Heading into a Perfect Storm.” The reason: Their federal COVID-19 relief funds will start expiring this coming autumn—and must be all spent one year later. The result: lost jobs, fewer special programs such as tutoring, summer initiatives, and mental health resources.
- Speaking of Covid-19, back in January 2022, the Biden administration launched its free giveaway of text kits. In just six months, four such kits went out to 737 million households at a reported cost of $6 billion. Recently, the program was relaunched, and although I neither ordered, need, or want them, four just arrived in my mailbox…
- Biden’s fiscal year 2024 plan includes $90 billion for the U.S. Department of Education—a 31.6% increase that translates to $10 billion over current spending and includes:
** $20.5 billion Title I funding for high-poverty schools;
** $6.8 billion for pre-kindergarten special education services;
** $500 million for “a new demonstration program to expand access to fee pre-school;
** $578 million for more school-based counselors, psychologists, social workers and the like. - In 2020 alone, $35.8 billion was spent on education technology, with the average number of school-related tech products tripling during the last few years. However, just 25% of the most-used tech tools used in schools DO NOT meet the requirements of The Every Student Succeeds Act, signed into law in 2015 by then President Obama and intended to ensure all students are prepared to succeed in the 21st century.
- The average cost of college now stands at $35, 551 per year and continues to rise. Currently, the average cost of in-state, public colleges/universities is $25,707 per year, adding up to $102,828 in four. The average cost of private, non-profit college/universities is now $54, 501 per academic year, adding up to $218,004 in four.
- Whether in favor of or opposed to reducing former students’ college debt, doing so reportedly “will reduce cash flows to the federal government by more than $300 billion over the next 10 years.”
- In the last quarter of 2022, our collective credit card balances rose by $61 billion to $986 billion, a record high.
And so it goes money-wise nowadays…
~ With good wishes, Carol