FIGHTING FOR OUR STUDENTS

 

In January 2019 when Democrats took the majority in the House of Representatives, Bobby was elected chairman of the powerful Education and Labor Committee.  As chairman, Bobby is fighting to make sure that all children in America have access to a high-quality public education, regardless of their zip code.

 
 

K-12 Education

In 2015, Bobby was one of the primary authors of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), which was signed into law by President Barack Obama.  ESSA replaced the No Child Left Behind Act and updated the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.  Bobby fought to make sure that ESSA upheld the fundamental principles of the landmark Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education that education is a fundamental “right which must be made available to all on equal terms.”  While the Department of Education under Donald Trump has failed to implement the law as intended, Bobby is holding Education Secretary Betsy Devos to account for this administration's failure to uphold its obligation to our students.

 In 2016, Bobby worked to commission a Government Accountability Office (GAO) study to review the racial and socioeconomic segregation that still persists in our public schools 65 years after Brown.  That report found that America’s schools are more segregated today than they were in the 1960s.  Under Bobby’s leadership, the Education and Labor Committee passed two key bills to promote school diversity and protect the civil rights of all students.  The Strength in Diversity Act would ensure local communities and school systems have the necessary resources to address racial isolation and concentrated poverty by increasing diversity in our public schools.  The Equity and Inclusion Enforcement Act would restore students’ and parents’ rights to directly challenge in court discriminatory public school policies.

 
 

Rebuilding America’s Schools

Too many students are attending school in crumbling facilities that were constructed almost a century ago. Hampton Roads is home to some of the oldest public school facilities in the nation. Local school districts do not always have the necessary resources to renovate existing facilities or build new ones.  That is why Bobby introduced the Rebuild America’s Schools Act, which would invest $100 billion in public school renovation and construction and create 1.9 million jobs.  Bobby moved his Rebuild America’s Schools Act out of his committee in February 2019.  In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Bobby updated his bill to include resources to assist schools with responding to the pandemic. That bill -- the Reopen and Rebuild America’s Schools Act -- was included in the Moving Forward Act, which passed the House of Representatives in July 2020.

 
 

Making College More Affordable

Understanding the tremendous burden of financing and getting a college education, Bobby introduced the College Affordability Act.  The College Affordability Act is a comprehensive update to the Higher Education Act that will:

  • Significantly reduce the cost of college by requiring the federal government and states to invest more in public colleges and universities, increasing the maximum value of the Pell Grant, and making two years of community college free.

  • Improve the quality of higher education by going after unscrupulous for-profit colleges, and providing more flexible options and stronger support for individual students’ needs.

  • Make student loans more affordable and easier to pay back by simplifying repayment programs, fixing the public service loan forgiveness program, and allowing students to refinance their loans at lower interest rates.

 
 

Protecting Defrauded Students

Under Bobby’s leadership, the House of Representatives passed a resolution of disapproval to block Betsy DeVos’ Borrower’s Defense Rule that would deny students the ability to discharge their student loans, if they were defrauded by for-profit colleges.  Over the last few years, several large for-profit colleges have collapsed and several of these schools delivered false promises to hundreds of thousands of students, in many cases committing out-and-out fraud.  Bobby is committed to holding the Trump Administration accountable for denying these students the relief they are entitled to under the law.

 
 

Supporting our HBCUs

Virginia is home to several historical black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and the 3rd congressional district is home to Hampton University and Norfolk State University. HBCUs have been critical to providing students of color a quality college education.  In September 2019, HBCUs and other minority serving institutions were facing a $255 million shortfall in federal funding that would have cost jobs, important educational programming, and critical financial support for our students.  To address this shortfall and preserve this critical federal funding, Bobby helped author the Fostering Undergraduate Talent by Unlocking Resources for Education (FUTURE) Act and expeditiously moved it out of his committee and to the full House of Representatives.  Thanks to Bobby’s leadership, the FUTURE Act was signed into law by President Trump in December 2019.