News
House chairman asks CDC director to testify on reopening schools during pandemic
by Cristina Marcos
07.09.20 House Education and Labor Committee Chairman Bobby Scott (D-Va.) on Thursday asked Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Robert Redfield to testify before his panel later this month to discuss how schools can safely reopen this fall. Scott asked Redfield in a letter to testify before the panel's subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary and Secondary Education on July 23 so that lawmakers could "engage directly with you concerning the CDC's guidance to schools on how to s… Continue Reading
DeVos issues rule steering more virus aid to private schools
by Collin Binkley
06.25.20 The Trump administration on Thursday moved forward with a policy ordering public schools across the U.S. to share coronavirus relief funding with private schools at a higher rate than federal law typically requires. Under a new rule issued by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, school districts are ordered to set aside a portion of their aid for private schools using a formula based on the total number of private school students in the district. The policy has been contested by public school offi… Continue Reading
Education Dept. Rule Limits How Schools Can Spend Vital Aid Money
by Cory Turner
06.25.20 In a new rule announced Thursday, U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos signaled she is standing firm on her intention to reroute millions of dollars in coronavirus aid money to K-12 private school students. The CARES Act rescue package included more than $13 billion to help public schools cover pandemic-related costs. The move comes nearly two months after the Education Department issued controversial guidance, suggesting that private schools should benefit from a representative share of the… Continue Reading
Whistleblower: Education Department Killed Website That Made Applying for Loan Forgiveness Too Easy
by Lauren Camera
06.23.20 THE TRUMP administration rejected a website that the Education Department's Federal Student Aid office designed to help students who have been defrauded by their colleges apply for loan forgiveness, arguing the tool made the process too easy, according to a whistleblower complaint. The development of the website was part of a $90 million federal contract to build one main hub for all federal student aid needs that modernized existing loan servicing portals and made them more user-friendly - i… Continue Reading
National Middle-income and rural families disproportionately grapple with child-care deserts, new analysis shows
by Amanda Becker
06.22.20 When Cathy Belair was searching for child care a couple of years ago for her two young granddaughters in Fletcher, N.C., the middle school math teacher said she found only two "quality" options that had space for the girls and also opened early enough for her to drop them off before work. So Belair, 56, and her husband, a 60-year-old school custodian, "dipped considerably" into their retirement savings to cobble together more than $1,500 a month for child care. After months on a waiting list,… Continue Reading
Why Is OSHA AWOL?
by The Editorial Board
06.21.20 As states and municipalities relax shelter-in-place orders, the nation seems to be racing to get the economy back to something resembling the pre-pandemic era. Restaurants, malls, cinemas, day care centers and retail stores are reopening sooner than most medical professionals think is wise. The risk is obvious to many businesses that stayed open as the coronavirus swept the country. Meat processing plants, for instance, have had among the highest rates of infection. Employees continued to show … Continue Reading
Schools Plan to Reopen as Federal Watchdog Finds Major Facility Problems
by Lauren Camera
06.04.20 WHEN THE PHILADELPHIA Federation of Teachers sent its 13,000 members a survey about their biggest concerns for reopening schools, it was inundated with a recurring theme: If school facilities aren't in better condition, I'm not coming back. "To use the sinks in the bathroom, one must hold the faucet on with one hand, making it impossible to thoroughly wash hands," one teacher replied, with others commenting that some faucets didn't work at all and that bathrooms almost always lacked soap. … Continue Reading
Trump Officials Defend Their Handling Of Worker Safety During Coronavirus
by Brian Mann
05.28.20 Trump administration officials defended their handling of worker safety during the COVID-19 pandemic at a congressional hearing Thursday in Washington, D.C. But they acknowledged a grim new tally of deaths among doctors and nurses is "likely to be an underestimate," according to testimony from Dr. John Howard, head of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, a division of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This week the CDC raised dramatically its assessment of h… Continue Reading
DeVos Funnels Coronavirus Relief Funds to Favored Private and Religious Schools
by Erica Green
05.15.20 Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is using the $2 trillion coronavirus stabilization law to throw a lifeline to education sectors she has long championed, directing millions of federal dollars intended primarily for public schools and colleges to private and religious schools. The Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act, signed in late March, included $30 billion for education institutions turned upside down by the pandemic shutdowns, about $14 billion for higher education, $13.5 billi… Continue Reading
OSHA has issued no Covid-19 citations
by Rebecca Rainey
05.14.20 Since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, the federal agency that polices workplace safety has initiated inspections into only about 7 percent of the Covid-19-related complaints that it's received - and issued citations in none. Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia, whose Cabinet department includes that agency - the Occupational Safety and Health Administration - says he stands ready to punish employers who don't protect workers sufficiently from the coronavirus. "We recognize," Scalia said May 1… Continue Reading
House Bill Backs SEP, COBRA, Cost-Free COVID Treatment
by Amy Lotven
05.13.20 House Democrats' $3 trillion coronavirus response bill unveiled Wednesday (May 12) would require HHS establish and promote an eight-week special enrollment period for healthcare.gov, would fully subsidize COBRA coverage, and would mandate that group and individual health plans provide COVID treatment cost-free to enrollees. It also would pump an additional $100 billion into the Health Care Provider Relief Fund created by the CARES Act and designate $75 billion for testing and contract tracing, … Continue Reading
K-12 school leaders warn of ‘disaster’ from huge coronavirus-related budget cuts as layoffs and furloughs begin
by Valerie Strauss
05.07.20 Just as they face unprecedented new challenges and financial costs, leaders of K-12 public school districts around the country are warning of dire consequences from sharp budget cuts from state legislatures attempting to deal with the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic. The alarm was sounded by school superintendents in 62 cities, who sent a letter to Congress through the nonprofit Council for the Great City Schools, asking Congress for billions of dollars in new federal education … Continue Reading
Trump orders meat plants to stay open in pandemic
by Taylor Telford, Kimberly Kindy, Jacob Bogage
04.28.20 President Trump signed an executive order Tuesday evening compelling meat processors to remain open to head off shortages in the nation's food supply chains, despite mounting reports of plant worker deaths due to covid-19. Trump invoked the Defense Production Act to classify meat plants as essential infrastructure that must remain open. Under the order, the government will provide additional protective gear for employees as well as guidance, according to a person familiar with the action who sp… Continue Reading
House chairman calls on Trump administration to appoint medical supply coordinator
by CRISTINA MARCOS
03.20.20 House Education and Labor Committee Chairman Bobby Scott (D-Va.) on Friday called on the Trump administration to appoint a designated official to coordinate the efforts to distribute adequate protective gear and supplies to health workers across the United States. In a letter to Vice President Pence, the chairman of the coronavirus task force, Scott and Rep. Alma Adams (D-N.C.) argued that having someone dedicated to addressing the nationwide shortage of medical supplies would help improve coor… Continue Reading
Senate Rejects DeVos Rule Restricting Debt Relief for Bilked Students
by Erica L. Green and Stacy Cowley
03.11.20 WASHINGTON - In a bipartisan rebuke, the Senate voted Wednesday to overturn a major Trump administration rule that would sharply limit debt relief for students misled by schools that lured them in with false claims about their graduates' career and earning prospects. In a 53-42 vote that included 11 Republicans, the Senate struck down a revised Education Department rule finalized in September by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. The House passed a companion resolution in January. The legislation… Continue Reading
This regulation could protect health-care workers from the coronavirus. It hangs in limbo.
by Kimberly Kindy
03.05.20 As more than 100 hospital workers remain in self-imposed quarantine in California, a proposed regulation designed to protect them from infectious diseases such as the coronavirus languishes inside a federal agency. The draft regulation would require employers to provide protective gear for health-care workers and to create infection-control plans, which could include building isolation rooms. The Obama administration was working to adopt the regulation, but the Trump administration in 2017 … Continue Reading
“Lax Oversight” Threatens Health Fund For Miners With Black Lung, Watchdog Finds
by SYDNEY BOLES
02.27.20 Just three bankruptcies of American coal companies have added more than $800 million in costs to a federal government program that funds health care for disabled coal miners, the Government Accountability said in a report released Wednesday. The report comes after a 2018 analysis by the same agency which found the Black Lung Disability Trust Fund faced significant financial challenges, and had borrowed taxpayer money to cover necessary expenses nearly every year since 1979. This new research sh… Continue Reading
House passes bill to rewrite labor laws and strengthen unions
by Eli Rosenberg
02.07.20 One of the most significant bills to strengthen workers' abilities to organize in the past 80 years passed the House on Thursday, the latest sign of momentum for the labor movement. The Protecting the Right to Organize Act, known as the PRO Act, would amend some of the country's decades-old labor laws to give workers more power during disputes at work, add penalties for companies that retaliate against workers who organize and grant some hundreds of thousands of workers collective-bargainin… Continue Reading
Business Congress’s most ambitious attempt to strengthen unions in years is set for a House vote next week
by Eli Rosenberg
01.29.20 One of the most significant bills to strengthen workers' abilities to organize in the past 80 years is headed to a vote next week in the House, where it will probably pass amid a newfound momentum for progressive legislation. The Protecting the Right to Organize Act would amend some of the country's decades-old labor laws to give workers more power during disputes at work, add penalties for companies that violate labor law, and grant potentially hundreds of thousands of workers collective-b… Continue Reading
Supreme Court Allows Trump’s Wealth Test for Green Cards
by Adam Liptak
01.27.20 The Supreme Court on Monday allowed the Trump administration to move forward with plans to deny green cards to immigrants who are thought to be likely to make even occasional and minor use of public benefits like Medicaid, food stamps and housing vouchers. The vote was 5 to 4, with the court's conservative justices in the majority. The court's brief order gave no reasons for lifting preliminary injunctions that had blocked the new program. Challenges to the program will continue to move forward… Continue Reading