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With the help of nearly $2 billion in federal COVID-19 relief funding, state funding allocations for higher education during the 2021 fiscal year remained roughly the same as last fiscal year, according to the latest Grapevine higher education funding report.
Total state support for higher education edged up by 0.3 percent to $96.7 billion in the 2021 fiscal year, which began July 1, 2020, and will end on June 30, 2021. Without federal dollars, direct state funding levels would have declined by 1.3 percent this fiscal year.
“The results suggest that budgets have not been wrecked to the extent we feared they might be by the pandemic,” said Jim Applegate, visiting professor at Illinois State University s Center for the Study of Education Policy and editor of the Grapevine report. “Part of the reason for that is the federal government did step up.”
While people are still struggling from the coronavirus pandemic and its economic consequences, the economy and the fight against the virus have improved dramatically over the worst months of 2020.
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Federal COVID relief plan includes $130 billion to help schools reopen
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By Kaitlyn Cupelli
WASHINGTON (March 2, 2021) President Joe Biden s $130 billion school reopening plan focuses on making schools safer for teachers and students, although returning to school remains a contentious and difficult issue.
Reopening the majority of K-8 schools within his first 100 days in office is a key part of the president s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan passed by the House on Friday on a party-line vote and now under consideration in the Senate. We can do this if we give the school districts, the schools themselves, the communities, and the states the clear guidance they need, as well as the resources they need that they can t afford right now because of the economic dilemma we are in, Biden said in January.