Home Minority Chief Kevin McCarthy and Home Training Committee rating member Virginia Foxx despatched a letter to Training Secretary Miguel Cardona Wednesday demanding copies of emails between his DOE, the White Home and the lecturers’ unions.
Within the letter, obtained by Fox News, the Congressional Republican leaders blasted federal training officers for “radical spending” throughout the pandemic and accused them of mishandling college closures and billions of {dollars} of COVID-19 training reduction.
“We famous Congress had already appropriated practically thrice the funding the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention stated was wanted to function faculties efficiently,” the Republicans wrote.
“Sadly, fairly than persevering with Congress’s bipartisan method to addressing COVID-19, Democrats superior their partisan agenda, approving greater than $120 billion in extra funding for faculties” in final yr’s $1.9 billion American Rescue Plan COVID-19 relief bill.
McCarthy and Foxx wrote that Democrats argued “radical spending was mandatory for faculties to reopen safely for in-person instruction,” however stated the claims have been confirmed false by information that confirmed solely 4 p.c of the reduction funds have been used because the overwhelming majority of US faculties reopened within the fall, according to the report.
“Regardless of Democrats’ claims on the contrary, these funds weren’t wanted to reopen faculties,” the lawmakers reportedly wrote. “Due to this, some faculties are greedy at any mission they’ll discover on which to waste these taxpayer funds, together with indoctrinating college students and employees with racist and divisive ideologies.”
As they accused the Training Division of misappropriating funds, McCarthy and Foxx additionally known as the Biden administration’s dealing with of educational disruptions “appalling,” as “a million public college college students throughout the nation have been impacted by district-wide school closures” as 2022 started.
“Your tepid response to the return of college closures is tragically insufficient,” they wrote. “Through the Committee’s consideration of the ARP final yr, Republicans supplied 5 completely different amendments that will have required faculties to keep up in-person instruction as a situation of receiving ARP help. Sadly, Democrats blocked every of these proposals.”
The lawmakers known as on the DOE to sentence “political allies blocking the schoolhouse doorways,” and demanded “transparency” from federal college officers within the type of an inventory of conferences or calls about college closures over the past 14 months, copies of emails between the administration and union reps or college districts relating to closures, and paperwork associated to closures and restricted “entry to ARP funds.”
