Stimulus funds: How much El Paso communities, schools will get
EL PASO, Texas -- While many in the Borderland will receive a one-time $1,400 payment from the Covid-19 relief bill, that is just one small piece of the pie that makes up the American Rescue Plan. The bill passed by Congress and signed Thursday by President Joe Biden aims at American economic recovery.
"We've lost businesses and dreams we spent years building," President Joe Biden said. "We've lost time with each other. and our children have lost so much time with their friends, time with their schools."
In the first prime-time address delivered by Biden, the president on Thursday evening was touting his first legislative win by passing the bill now known as The American Rescue Plan. The plan, worth $1.9 trillion overall, will see El Paso County receive $167.2 million in aid with the City of El Paso receiving $159.2 million.
A major effort by the Biden administration has been to reopen schools, and help children catch up on lost education.
"My announcement last month of a plan to vaccinate teachers and school staff including bus drivers, we can accelerate massive nationwide effort to reopen our schools safely," Biden said.
Local school districts are now also in line to receive help in the hundreds of millions of dollars. The El Paso Independent School District, El Paso's largest school system, is slated to receive nearly $209 million. Ysleta ISD will be getting about $145 million and Socorro ISD will receive over $115 million. These numbers reflect an analysis prepared by the U.S. House Committee on Education and Labor. There's no word on how the Texas Education Agency will proceed with the mechanisms to distribute the money to districts.
To date, YISD has received $9 million of the $18 million awarded it from the CARES Act last year. YISD tells ABC-7 they are expecting to receive the remaining funds awarded over the next 6 to 9 months.
This bill will also expand on the child tax credit by up to $3,600 per child. El Paso Democratic Congresswoman Veronica Escobar, who voted in favor of the bill, tells ABC-7 this portion will help children in poverty.
“Something that hasn’t been discussed very much is the child tax credit and advances on the child tax credit that include expansions on it, experts have said that it will cut child poverty in half,” saidEscobar.
Escobar's office tells ABC-7 the plan will also provide direct housing assistance, nutrition assistance for 40 million Americans, expand access to safe and reliable child care and affordable health care, extend unemployment insurance so that 18 million American workers can pay their bills and support 27 million children with an expanded Child Tax Credit and more than 17 million low-wage workers through an improved Earned Income Tax Credit.
