Ernst Backs Amendment to Safely Get Students Back in School

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) is supporting an amendment to the Democrats’ partisan $1.9 trillion spending proposal to ensure that school reopening dollars are going to support in-person learning. Specifically, the amendment would reward schools that are prioritizing students and taking steps to offer in-person instruction five days a week.

 

“Keeping our classrooms closed is leaving a generation of students behind and having a devastating impact on our families—particularly women who have lost more jobs during this pandemic than their male counterparts,” said Senator Joni Ernst. “It’s past time to follow the data and the science, put our kids ahead of Left-wing political interests, and safely reopen schools, just like Iowa has done. Incredibly, the money in this massive, 628-page bill has little or nothing to do with getting kids back in school right now. That is simply wrong. If Democrats are going to spend billions of dollars on pandemic relief funds for schools that will not use the money until the pandemic is over, the least we can do is require those schools to safely reopen now.”

 

The amendment, authored by Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), comes during today’s “Vote-a-Rama” on Democrats’ $1.9 trillion “COVID relief” bill, which is full of items and projects that are unrelated to the COVID-19 pandemic. Under this proposal, schools that are completely closed would get 25 percent of funding under the bill’s formula, whereas schools that provide an in-person option five days a week would get 100 percent.