Sponsors
Introduced April 8, 2025 by Cory Anthony Booker · Last progress April 8, 2025
The bill shifts K–12 discipline policy away from exclusionary and coercive practices toward data-driven, supportive alternatives and sustained federal funding—but it imposes substantial new federal spending and administrative burdens, raises privacy and local control concerns, and may require local trade-offs around on-site security and resources.
Students (especially young children and girls of color) will face fewer exclusionary suspensions and expulsions, increasing instructional time and reducing school-to-prison pipeline harms.
Federal programs and enforcement (Office for Civil Rights and programs under sections 4–6) receive predictable annual funding (~$500M per program), enabling sustained grants, oversight, and program delivery to reduce discriminatory discipline.
Students will gain greater access to counselors, social workers, mental-health services, and evidence-based alternatives (PBIS, restorative practices, MTSS) through grant funding, improving support for behavioral and trauma needs.
Taxpayers will face roughly $1.0 billion in new annual authorized spending with no offsets or specified end date.
School districts and LEAs will incur substantial administrative, training, data-collection, and program costs to comply with new definitions, reporting, and to implement alternatives to exclusionary discipline.
Students and families face privacy risks because highly disaggregated, cross-tabulated reporting could increase the chance of identifying individual students in small subgroups despite FERPA protections.
Based on analysis of 7 sections of legislative text.
Requires the Department of Education’s civil rights office to collect and report detailed, disaggregated annual data on exclusionary school discipline (suspensions, expulsions, arrests, referrals, restraints, transfers, and placements). Creates competitive "Healing School Climate" grants to fund alternatives to exclusionary discipline, ban many practices for grant recipients (broad limits on suspensions/expulsions for young children, bans on corporal punishment, seclusion, many restraints), and prohibits grant funds from hiring school-based law enforcement or buying surveillance. Creates a joint federal task force (Education and HHS) to study and recommend actions to end the pushout of girls of color and related student groups. Authorizes $500 million annually for grants and task force activities and $500 million annually for civil rights data collection, with reporting, privacy, and public-access requirements.