Sponsors (2)
The bill significantly expands NOAA-led climate and environmental education and monitoring—providing broad educational, workforce, equity, and environmental benefits—while requiring meaningful federal spending and creating risks of uneven access, administrative burdens, and local political resistance.
Students and learners (K–12, college, and lifelong learners — millions annually) will gain substantially improved climate literacy, hands‑on projects, and curriculum that teach science, impacts, adaptation, mitigation, and climate careers.
NOAA and coastal/marine communities receive sustained funding and capacity (about $50M/year 2027–2032) to expand environmental literacy, monitoring, forecasts, and ocean/water programs, strengthening federal science-based education and environmental services.
Workers and the public gain access to green-economy training, CTE pathways, workforce upskilling, and clearer pathways into climate and sustainability jobs through grants and continuing-education support.
Taxpayers fund roughly $300 million over six years (about $50M/year), increasing federal outlays and modestly affecting the federal budget/deficit.
Large minimum grant sizes, allocation formulas, and $5M appropriations thresholds risk concentrating funds with bigger state agencies, universities, or agencies and excluding small, rural, or under‑resourced school districts and applicants.
Mandating terms and priorities such as "climate justice" and emphasizing particular climate perspectives may prompt political and legal pushback in some states or districts, delaying or complicating implementation.
Based on analysis of 7 sections of legislative text.
Creates a NOAA Climate Change Education Program with a competitive grants program to expand climate literacy, educator training, applied research, and youth projects, and authorizes $50M/year for 2027–2032.
Official title: To require the Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to establish a Climate Change Education Program, and for other purposes.
Introduced April 21, 2026 by Debbie Dingell · Last progress April 21, 2026
Creates a NOAA-run Climate Change Education Program to expand climate literacy across K–12, higher education, and nonformal settings and to fund education, training, applied research, and community projects that teach actionable mitigation, adaptation, resilience, and climate-justice approaches. It requires NOAA to stand up the program within one year, run a competitive grants and cooperative agreement program with set recipient categories and allocation rules, report annually on effectiveness, and authorizes $50 million per year for fiscal years 2027–2032. The program emphasizes educator training, curriculum integration, career and technical education pathways, campus-community applied projects, professional continuing education, and youth corps activities, with specific set-asides and prioritization for environmental justice communities and defined reporting and funding thresholds for local educational agency participation.