The Advocate December 2022: Looking Ahead Post-Midterms

The 118th Congress will be another divided governing body with Democrats controlling the Senate and Republicans re-taking the House. As Republicans assert their power, expect lots of public statements, speeches and promises of action. The House will likely introduce and pass many pieces of legislation to fulfill those promises and strengthen their party’s base leading into the Presidential election. In particular, the House will have many hearings to conduct oversight on hot-button issues including the NSBA-Garland probe of parents at school board meetings, ESSER spending and the participation of transgender students in athletics and other Title IX-adjacent issues.

The first major order of business for Congress in December is passing the FY23 appropriations bills and extending the debt ceiling. There will likely be a good-faith effort to meet the new government funding deadline of December 16 and to try and only do a short-term “continuing resolution” for a few days or weeks. 

One exciting development for the K-12 community is that the new Senate Appropriations Chair will be none other than Patty Murray of Washington, who has long led or co-led the Senate Health Education Labor and Pensions Committee, and the Senate Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations Subcommittee. She is also a champion for increased funding for Title I and IDEA among other K-12 spending priorities. Sharing the dais with her will be Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, a moderate Republican with a willingness to spend money on K-12 priorities she supports such as the Rural Education Achievement Program and legislation to address the teacher shortage. She is also a well-respected negotiator and dealmaker. Both women have a friendly, collaborative relationship, which should bode well for alignment on K-12 funding levels in the future. 

On the House side, the House Appropriations Committee is expected to also be led by two women again: Reps. Kay Granger of Texas and Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut. DeLauro, who also chairs the House Labor-HHS-Education subcommittee, is an outstanding champion for additional K-12 funding and was instrumental in pushing for the $120 billion for districts in the American Rescue Plan. At this point it’s not clear whether Tom Cole of Oklahoma, the current ranking member on the subcommittee, will become the chairman or whether a new chair would step in. Regardless of who is running the committee, expect K-12 COVID relief funds to be an issue that both sides are eager to explore in hearings. 

On the authorization side, the picture on the House side is a bit murkier. Rep. Virginia Foxx of North Carolina, who has served as chair and ranking member of the House Education and Labor Committee over the past decade, would like to re-take the job as chair. It is unclear whether anyone will challenge her for the position and whether she would receive a waiver from Republican leadership to continue in the top slot. 

Rep. Bobby Scott will be the ranking member for the committee. Foxx or whomever leads the committee will likely follow McCarthy’s policy agenda, which includes advancing his “Parents’ Bill of Rights,” bills to restrict transgender minors’ access to gender-affirming care and prohibit schools from addressing students by different pronouns without parental consent. For example, the Empower Parents to Protect Their Kids Act would apply to all schools that receive federal funding and would allow parents to sue schools that use pronouns they believe are incorrect. Foxx also promised to increase oversight on how Covid relief funds are being used to address learning loss and will fight to expand federal “school choice” programs via a $10 billion tuition tax credit voucher bill known as the Educational Choice for Children Act. 

On the Senate side, there will be new leaders on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont will serve as the chairman of the committee and Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana will be the ranking member. Given that both men are intensely focused on healthcare issues, there is speculation that the other areas of jurisdiction (like K-12 education!) for the committee will receive scant attention. Very few education issues are likely to rise to the top of the heap for the committee aside from student loans although Cassidy has expressed a desire to work on issues related to improving the identification of dyslexia (his wife founded a charter school for students with dyslexia).

And of course, there’s the Presidential election looming large, which always means more politicking and less policy work in Washington. There is roughly one year left for the Biden Administration to utilize Democrats in Congress to its advantage before re-election politics completely consumes the political parties. Will Republicans have any real desire to demonstrate they can work across the aisle and forge common ground with Democrats? Will there be any attempt to address overdue reauthorizations like the child nutrition or Head Start? At this point, it’s hard to see how meaningful K-12 policy conversations get any traction in the divided Congress. The best we can hope for is more robust funding.