MAGA’s Budget Will Harm Kids, Too
So many stand to lose so much from the MAGA budget recently signed into law– but children may stand to lose the most.
The MAGA budget slashes SNAP, the food assistance program that helps feed over 600,000 children in our state. It cuts Medicaid and CHIP, the health insurance programs that serve over 1.4 million NC kids. It even cuts funding for public schools– schools that are struggling to get by.
Things are already tough right now for North Carolina public schools. Trump recently froze $6 billion in public school funding, including $165 million for North Carolina. That funding is meant to support teacher training, before and after-school programs, services for English language learners, and programs for migrant students.
The funding freeze is hurting because North Carolina public schools are already underfunded. They are so underfunded that NC teachers are among the nation’s top spenders on classroom supplies– spending an average of $1,632 annually. This is especially brutal given that NC ranks 43rd in teacher pay.
This week, we’re going to look at how this bill will affect kids– the quality of their schools, their access to health care, and their ability to eat. They didn’t vote for the MAGA agenda, but they could be burdened with its consequences for years to come.
Diverting Money from Public to Private Schools
Under-resourced schools could lose even more money as a result of the MAGA budget. This is because the bill creates a national private school voucher program– something that North Carolinians know all too well.
Voucher programs have become welfare for the wealthy. They take money meant for public schools, and give them in the form of a “scholarship” to families who choose to send their kids to a private school. The catch is that this money disproportionately gets funneled to rich families.
In 2013, the Republican-led General Assembly established a school voucher program. They have significantly expanded its eligibility requirements since then, recently allowing the state’s richest families to qualify. By 2033, this voucher program will have cost NC taxpayers $6.5 billion. Much of that will be going straight into the pockets of the state’s wealthiest families.
This past academic year, 87% of new school vouchers went to families who have never attended a public school. The number of affluent families getting a voucher could rise even more next year. 42% of the 40,089 new applicants are in the two highest income tiers.
Similar to North Carolina, the newly-established federal voucher program will be open to high-income families. It’s just another way that MAGA is taking money away from the working class to make the rich even richer.
Less Health Staff in Schools
Medicaid is the fourth largest source of funding for K-12 schools. Public schools receive this money to help provide health services for all students, including low-income students and students with disabilities.
The services can include physical, mental, and behavioral health care, including routine health screenings, preventive care, and speech therapy. Most school districts (86%) said that Medicaid supports the salaries of health staff such as nurses and speech-language pathologists. More than half said Medicaid helps fund mental and behavioral health services.
Medicaid cuts mean more children going undiagnosed and untreated– no support for children working through a stutter, no counseling to process the challenges of growing up in a tough home, no health staff to administer potentially life-saving vaccines, no health care for kids who may not be able to access it otherwise.
Hungry Students
SNAP helps pay for groceries for over 600,000 children in NC, and the program is looking at roughly $186 billion in cuts over the next ten years. On average, SNAP families are looking at losing $146 per month in food assistance. That’s a lot of food being taken off of kid’s plates.
When children lose access to SNAP benefits, they also lose their automatic enrollment in free meals at school. This is a huge problem in a state where 1 in 5 children are dealing with hunger. Less food at home and more expensive meals at school– it’s not a great combination for a country dealing with rising food insecurity.
Fighting Back
Like many of you, school was my safe haven while growing up. It’s where kids escape from their problems at home, where they can get a balanced (albeit not always delicious) meal, where they can make lifelong friends, where they can begin learning and writing and growing out of the circumstances they were born into.
I have full faith that public schools will find a way to make it work– our educators are too good to let children fall behind. But it shouldn’t be this hard.
Our kids are depending on us to stand up for them in this pivotal moment. North Carolina Democrats are doing this through the courts– Attorney General Jeff Jackson recently announced that he’s joining 22 other state attorneys general and two governors in a lawsuit against the Department of Education to unfreeze federal funds. No dollar will be taken away from our schools, from our children, without a fight.
Fighting back can also be as easy as having a single conversation. Many folks still haven’t heard about this bill. Keep talking to the people in your life. Build momentum. We’re going to need to ride it all the way to the ballot box in November.
