September 11, 2023 

The not everyone back to school edition. It’s September, and our children really should be back at school. But millions are missing – described as chronically absent. Why? Part of the explanation may be academic disengagement during the pandemic. Another part is the nation’s youth mental health crisis – the two causes are probably related, although the youth mental health crisis existed before the pandemic began.  

In the week following Labor Day, there were other reasons for not being in school. Students in at least ten states, particularly in the Northeast and Upper Midwest, were sent home early because their schools either completely lacked air conditioning, or their systems were not up to the task of dealing with the country’s dangerous heat wave. In Baltimore and Pittsburgh, students were told not to show up at all – they were instructed to log in remotely.  

It is clear that our students and our schools need more in the way of investments – having working air conditioning, enough teachers, adequate resources to address mental health issues, and investments focused on the post-pandemic academic gap hardly seems too much to ask. But some House right-wingers want to cut education spending. They’ve proposed an 80 percent cut from schools located in low-income neighborhoods, harsh enough to force the loss of 224,000 teachers, despite existing serious teacher shortages. They’ve also proposed cutting 51,000 kids from Head Start, and eliminating English Language Acquisition services for more than 5 million English learners – a direct attack on immigrant families. These deep cuts come after federal investments in education and youth mental health have lost ground over the past decade because of budget caps. Meanwhile, millions of children and youth are also at risk of losing health coverage – more below.  

Click here to write to your representative and demand that Congress reject cuts to education.