Sorry, rural kids, you lose

I do believe the cruelty is the point with this administration.

More than 800 schools receiving federal funds under the Rural and Low-Income School Program could become ineligible due to a sudden change in bookkeeping, The New York Times reported Friday.

[...]

According to the Times, the letter said an audit of the program showed that districts had “erroneously” received funding when they had not met eligibility requirements outlined in the federal education law since 2002.

The Education Department argued that schools were not using the Census Bureau’s Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates to determine if at least 20 percent of the students at their schools were below the poverty line.

Instead, schools used a percentage of students who qualified for subsidized school lunches, which the Times noted follows the same guidelines for determining if a student is living under the poverty line, and is better than the Census at ensuring each student attending the district is counted.

The Education Department has allowed this form of reporting in the past 17 years since the laws governing who qualifies for these funds were created.

[...]

“When you discover you’re not following the law Congress wrote, you don’t double down; you fix it,” Hill told the Times. “If that’s what Congress wants, Congress should pass it, and the Education Department will happily implement it. We will also continue to look for ways to help ensure students are not unnecessarily harmed.”

  The Hill

Hey, I have a way: keep funding the kids' education and lunches while you work with Congress to get you a law you can honor.

The change comes less than a month after the Department of Education cut funding for the Rural Education Achievement Program, a fund created by Congress to assist rural schools.