Sponsors
Introduced April 8, 2025 by Cory Anthony Booker · Last progress April 8, 2025
The bill aims to curb discriminatory and exclusionary school discipline and expand mental‑health supports and civil‑rights enforcement, but does so through large, ongoing federal spending and detailed reporting requirements that create privacy risks, administrative burdens for schools, and limits on some security and disciplinary tools.
Students—particularly students of color and girls of color—would face fewer discriminatory suspensions, expulsions, and pushouts as the bill strengthens prohibitions, prioritizes targeted interventions, and requires guidance to reduce biased discipline.
Students with behavioral or mental health needs would get expanded access to counselors, social workers, trauma‑informed services, and limits on harsh restraints/seclusion, improving safety and wellbeing.
Schools, families, and policymakers would gain annual, disaggregated, multilingual, ADA‑compliant public data and reporting on suspensions, expulsions, arrests, and other exclusionary actions—enabling transparency, accountability, targeted interventions, and civil‑rights enforcement.
Taxpayers and the federal budget would face substantial new, open‑ended spending (roughly $1B+ per year described across grant and enforcement lines) with no offsets or sunset, increasing deficit pressure and long‑term fiscal commitments.
Schools, districts, and state education agencies would incur significant administrative, training, hiring, and reporting burdens (data collection, policy revisions, compliance), diverting staff time and resources from direct classroom services unless additional funding is sustained.
Collecting and publishing highly disaggregated discipline data raises real privacy and re‑identification risks for students in small subgroups (including disability, tribal status, pregnancy), potentially exposing sensitive personal information.
Based on analysis of 7 sections of legislative text.
Mandates detailed federal discipline data collection and reporting, bans many exclusionary practices for grant recipients, creates a task force, and authorizes $1 billion/year.
Requires the Department of Education to collect and publish detailed, privacy-protected data on exclusionary school discipline and to identify schools or districts with patterns of overuse or discrimination. Creates competitive "Healing School Climate" grants that prohibit many exclusionary practices for grant recipients, establishes a joint HHS–Education task force focused on ending pushout of girls of color, and authorizes $500 million per year for data/Office for Civil Rights work and $500 million per year for grants and the task force (total $1 billion per year) beginning in the first fiscal year after enactment.