It's almost July – what’s the status of spending and COVID relief bills in Congress?

Summer has officially arrived and that normally means Congress is deeply immersed in appropriations bills and counting the days until August recess. However this year has been anything but normal and instead appropriations bills have not yet been introduced or marked up, and Congress has a lot of work yet to do in not a lot of time (reminder – the fiscal year ends on September 30). But it is still a good time for a status check:

• Where do FY2021 spending bills stand?
• What is going on with additional COVID relief and recovery legislation?
• And how can you share with Congress the successes and challenges of afterschool and summer programs?

Glad you asked - let’s get into it.

FY2021 Appropriations Update

On the House side, the individual subcommittees of the House Appropriations Committee are scheduled to start marking up their FY2021 spending bills the first full week of July, with the Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies (LHHS) scheduled for July 7th at 5PM ET. After markup at the subcommittee level, the full House Appropriations Committee is expected to pass the 12 spending bills in mid-July before the bills make their way to the House floor for votes.

On the Senate side, the Senate Appropriations Committee was expected to start marking up their spending bills in June, however lack of bipartisan agreement on a number of issues is slowing the process. The Committee may start work on spending bills in mid-July.

The Next Covid Relief Package

In May, the House of Representatives passed the HEROES Act providing much needed support for states responding to and recovering from the pandemic. The $3 trillion partisan bill included more than $55 billion in additional K-12 education relief and $7 billion in additional child care support. Shortly after the bill passed the House, Senate leadership made clear however that they would craft their own Covid-19 relief package and would not take up the HEORES Act.

Since May, the Senate has been tracking the funding provided through CARES Act and the three other COVID-19 relief bills to determine what additional support is needed for individuals, impacted industries, the education sector, and the nation as a whole. This week in an interview with CNBC, Senate HELP Committee chair Lamar Alexander (R-TN) reiterated support for more education pandemic relief funding, noting the importance of getting students back in classrooms this fall and stating “If we need more money for that, I’m for that.” While Senators have yet to release a draft of a new comprehensive relief bill, a number of stand-alone marker bills that could be included in a comprehensive relief package have been introduced. Several of these would impact afterschool and summer learning providers including:

• The Child Care is Essential Act: which would provide an additional $50 billion through CCDBG to support early learning and school-age child care providers,
• The WORK NOW Act: legislation to help nonprofit organizations, including youth development and out of school time providers, meet an increase in demand for their services due to the coronavirus pandemic while helping newly unemployed Americans find work in nonprofit organizations.
• The CORPS Act: bipartisan legislation to expand national service programs significantly to help the country respond to and recover from the public health, economic, and social crises facing the nation in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak.

While Senate negotiations continue, the White House has indicated they are still weighing possible priorities for the next Covid-19 relief bill. Treasury Secretary Mnuchin recently stated, “We're talking about a bunch of different ideas that we may need to do in another bill, and we want to take our time and make sure we're thoughtful…so whatever we do it will be much more targeted, much more focused on jobs, bringing back jobs and making sure we take care of our kids."

Share your afterschool and summer experiences with us and with Congress

What does all of the above mean? It means Congress needs to hear from you. Whether by phone or email, now is the perfect time to spend a few minutes reaching out to your Senators and Representative to share how the spring went, what summer learning programs look like in summer 2020, and the challenges ahead when school resumes in the late summer and early fall. Share the impact of virtual and in person programs on students and families; the successes, and also the challenges around sanitation and safety, local funding shortages, and the uncertainties ahead. Your elected officials at all levels – local and state as well – want to know how your students and families are doing, how the program is fairing, and what they can do to ensure students are supported by afterschool and summer in the fall. Check out our action alert tool here for a template and then be sure to add your own experiences.

If you haven’t already, please take a moment to complete our survey on how afterschool programs responded and innovated in the face of COVID. Your responses will be critical to our ongoing hill outreach. The deadline for completing the survey is June 30 at midnight PT. 

Start the survey here: https://3to6.co/survey. To thank you for your time, 50 respondents to the survey will be randomly selected to win one of two prizes: a $25 cash prize OR a STEMfinity gift card that can be used to purchase a STEMfinity STEM kit. The survey should take no more than 10-15 minutes to complete. (If you start and do not finish in one sitting, you can return and pick up where you left off.) All responses are anonymous.