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Senate Majority Leader McConnell began circulating a draft plan yesterday for a new stimulus package and, depending on who you listen to, it either has $82 billion or $105 billion for education.

Both of those amounts are less than the $150 billion the White House offered in the last negotiations they did with Speaker Pelosi but, nevertheless, it’s still not chump change.

At this point, I think the odds are better than even that a package will get passed this month.

Then the question will be how states and districts will actually use the education money – I’m hoping they use it to provide social services and connections to the the ten percent or so of students who have completely gone off the grid this year, as well as providing extra services to vulnerable students, like ELLs, this year.  In addition, I hope it’s used to fund extra support in the fall:

My sense is we’re talking too much about 2020-2021 school reopenings and not enough about 2021-2022 school reopenings.

— Paul Bruno (@Paul__Bruno) October 28, 2020

One thing I hope many districts in high-infection don’t waste this money one: throwing more good money after bad in futile efforts to move from distance learning next semester to a hybrid model (see This Is The Question So Many Districts Need To Asked – & Challenged On – Right Now… and Many Districts Should Forget About Pipedreams Of Effective Hybrid Models & Focus On Improving Online Instruction).