For all the pressing education matters facing students, parents, and educators, the proposed American Jobs Plan (often referred to as “the infrastructure bill”) can at first glance appear to be unimportant: what does highway and bridge construction have to do with the classroom? But if the contents of the proposed bill are carried out, it would be one of the most transformative education bills in a generation. Let’s walk through some of the details to learn how.

Constructing a Loving Schoolhouse

The clearest way that the American Jobs Plan (AJP) would improve the lives of children is in the school itself. While they sat empty for much of the past year, the conditions of public schools remain reflections of society around them: students in wealthier areas will be greeted by top-of-the-line buildings, extensive science labs and the latest technology, while BIPOC and low-income students are much more likely to return to schools with inadequate heating and cooling, lead pipes, and air quality issues.

It’s for good reason that the American Society of Civil Engineers gave our school infrastructure a “D+.” Decades of disinvestment and budget crises created by property tax dependency have added up to billions of dollars in needed school repairs, improvements, and expansions. The White House released infrastructure fact sheets on all 50 states, DC and Puerto Rico, detailing the gap in funding for necessary school infrastructure work: for example, the gap in Massachusetts is $1.39 billion, New York’s is $2.91 billion, and California’s is $3.22 billion.

This is a gap that we can and must close. The AJP would allocate $100 billion to modernize existing public schools and construct new ones, covering everything from air quality to better school meals, classrooms to technology labs. Low-income and majority-BIPOC communities would significantly benefit from that investment. And 100% of lead drinking water pipes in the country, be they in schools or neighborhoods, would be replaced thanks to a $45 billion investment in plumbing replacement.

Constructing a Loving City

For all the benefits that school improvement will bring, the factors that impact a child’s future extend far beyond the schoolhouse. As Schott has detailed since 2018 with our Loving Cities Index, we found twenty-five key indicators in four domains that determine whether children and their families have the supports they need to thrive and succeed. In the twenty cities we studied, not one offered more than 55% of those necessary supports. The AJP would directly improve at least seven indicators, with positive spillover effects improving most others.

• Access to Early Childhood Education 
  $25 billion would be allocated to adding and improving child care in high-need neighborhoods, creating both new facilities and new jobs in the sector.
• Exposure to Air Toxins 
  The AJP not only dedicates funding to improve indoor ventilation in schools, but outdoors too. It would increase the number of zero-emissions vehicles and strengthen mass transit to cut on car emissions, decommission dirty power plants and seal orphaned oil and gas wells. Its “Healthy Ports” program would mitigate fumes impacting residents nearby. In a country in which the racial and economic divide is so severe that even our air is segregated, in which low-income, Black and Latinx neighborhoods show disproportionately high rates of asthma and related disorders, this would be a literal life saver.
• Access to Parks 
  The ability for children and adults alike to visit and recreate in safe and well-maintained green spaces has been shown to improve mental health, knit communities together and even reduce local temperatures during summer heat waves. The AJP proposes a $10 billion Civilian Climate Corps, which among its tasks would focus on maintaining and expanding access to public parks.
• Livable Wages 
  It shouldn’t be a surprise that with a name like “American Jobs Plan” a significant effect will be the creation of jobs, but it also would require these jobs pay prevailing wages, come with worker protections, and require that they’re filled by workers in the communities where projects are located. If a child can’t expect three meals every day, or parents and guardians who can spend time with them between working hours, we can’t expect them to reach their full potential in education or in life. Increasing wages is one of the most straightforward methods for improving child and family success. (Increasing the federal minimum wage and enhancing collective bargaining rights would push wages upward even further but are outside the scope of the AJP.)
• Public Transit Accessibility 
  Public transportation increases the mobility of children and families who don’t own cars, allows students in high school to more easily obtain summer jobs, and reduces both localized pollution and greenhouse gases. The AJP would dedicate $85 billion to modernize existing transit and expand train and bus systems, effectively doubling present Federal spending in the sector, completing backlogged repairs and relieving upward pressure on fares.
• Affordable Housing 
  The AJP would invest $213 billion in producing, preserving, and retrofitting more than two million housing units, and would expand rent assistance programs. And in what is possibly the most impactful housing reform, $40 billion would go to improve the nation’s public housing infrastructure. (A related measure that passed the House last session and could be included in the Plan is a repeal of the Faircloth Amendment, which limits local housing authorities from owning more units of public housing than they did in 1999.)
• School Economic Integration 
  More than a half-century after Brown v. Board of Education, our public schools are more segregated, by both race and class, than they’ve been in decades. The AJP tackles that problem with provisions like urban brownfield remediation, building critical civilian infrastructure in underserved areas, and incentivizing the construction of new high-density housing. Rebalancing housing access and affordability within and between communities would, in tandem with the rest of the Plan, help stem and ultimately reverse the tide of school segregation.

The American Jobs Plan’s investments to modernize and construct public schools would be utterly transformative by themselves: from the business generated, to the jobs created, to the better conditions for students. But the proposal is even more visionary and ambitious, urging us to reimagine our neighborhoods and cities as loving systems that prioritize well-being of those who live there.

But with bills of this scope, the difference between status quo and justice often comes down to implementation at the state and local level. For example, the rezoning incentives described in the AJP could be used to provide new affordable housing, or it could be used to accelerate gentrification and property speculation.

That’s why Schott’s theory of change from the start has been twofold: children and families need transformational policy change to achieve equity, but to win that change and see it carried out we also need grassroots organizations and movements rooted in our schools, workplaces, and communities.

Read More

Learn about the Loving Cities Index
Read our call for a Racial Equity Stimulus