The child care and universal pre-K proposals in President Joe Biden’s social spending plan have survived efforts to slash the original $3.5 trillion price tag down to a figure more acceptable to two fiscally conservative Democrats in the Senate.

But the new $1.75 trillion released Thursday, leaves out some programs that would have directly impacted the K-12 system, such as funding for school construction, while reducing original amounts reserved for student’s at-home internet access and teacher and principal preparation. Progressive leaders in the House say they still want to see the of the reconciliation bill before agreeing to vote for a separate $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill — another major piece of Biden’s first-year agenda. That leaves both bills in jeopardy for now.

“No one got everything they wanted — including me,“ Biden said after meeting Thursday with Democrats at the Capitol.

Two years of free community college, another signature Biden campaign promise, has been eliminated from the package. It extends an increase in the child tax credit, but just for one year, instead of the four Biden wanted. There will be enough to expand free school meals to 8.7 million students for five years and provide 29 million children with $65 per month for food during the summer.

The bill is a “commentary on what is achievable with such a small and slim majority in the Senate and the House,” said Sean Worley, a senior policy associate at EducationCounsel, a consulting firm advising districts on policy and legal issues. The Biden administration, he added, proposed a “very robust … new vision for what education speeding could and should be. They just ran headfirst into some political headwinds.”

The hard-won agreement over the size of the legislation was expected to be a step toward getting a vote on the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill, which includes electric school buses, broadband access and eliminating lead pipes from schools. But progressives have repeatedly threatened to withhold their support for the infrastructure bill until they have a guarantee that the social spending package will pass. With a budget process known as reconciliation, the president doesn’t need any Republicans to vote for the plan, but he’s had a hard time getting consensus within his party. It took multiple meetings with Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona to reach this point. Experts note that just because some of the family and education programs have been cut from the legislation doesn’t mean they won’t resurface in a future bill, and Congress still has other unresolved budget issues to address in early December: approving a budget for fiscal year 2022 and lifting the federal debt limit to continue paying for past spending bills. 

For now, however, Biden is aiming for a win with an early-childhood proposal that would reduce families’ costs for child care and allow states to launch or expand universal pre-K programs for 3- and 4-year-olds

“This is a fundamental shift in education,” he said Monday while visiting at East End Elementary School in New Jersey’s North Plainfield School District. “We’re going to make sure it’s available for everybody.” 

The fact that the plan — paid for with taxes on corporations and those earning over $400,000 a year — still includes $400 billion for both child care and pre-K “speaks to the recognition of early care and education as critical to our nation’s infrastructure and the well-being of families,” said Lea Austin, executive director of the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment at the University of California, Berkeley. She said both working mothers and those with a background in the field — including Senate education committee Chair Patty Murray — have come together “to change the conditions.”

The child care provision promises to limit costs to no more than 7 percent of a family’s income and increase wages for staff. But Austin said she wants to see pay and working conditions for providers match those for preschool and elementary school teachers.

Some experts say it doesn’t make sense to expand pre-K without also improving preparation programs for K-12 educators. Biden’s original plan would have included $197 million for grow-your-own programs that recruit and train young people to become teachers in their own communities, as well as $198 million each for teacher residency and principal preparation programs. Those three provisions have been reduced to $112 million each. 

“It would be a head-scratcher to pump all this money into pre-K but not also bolster the educator pipeline – it’s core to successfully expanding high-quality pre-K,” said Danny Carlson, assistant executive director for policy and advocacy at the National Association of Elementary School Principals.

In a statement, American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten said the plan makes “historic down payments” on pre-K and child care, but she didn’t address the lack of K-12 programs in the plan. 

“Any transformational change is hard to get done, and this historic compromise is no different.” the statement said.

Mary Filardo, executive director of the 21st Century School Fund, which advocates for modernizing schools, was more direct.

“We are deeply disappointed that funding to repair or replace crumbling schools in our most underserved communities has been left out of the final [Build Back Better Act],” she said in a . “The disparities in conditions result in disparities in education delivered and student achievement.”

Worley said there’s a chance Democrats would either try to add those initiatives to the fiscal year 2022 appropriations bill — which Congress has to address by Dec. 3 — or revive the proposal next year in a fiscal 2023 budget. But he notes that the administration already  faced a tough time winning support for proposed increases to Title I for low-income schools. And that bill would have to win support from Republicans, who have so far rejected most of Biden’s attempts to increase government spending.

Biden’s free community college plan could also make a comeback in a reauthorization of the HIgher Education Act, which is now 13 years past due, said Carrie Warick, director of policy and advocacy at the National College Attainment Network.

During a last week Biden said it looked like he would still be able to get a $500 Pell Grant increase into the bill.

“Increasing the Pell Grant is meaningful to … recipients, but the size of the bump will determine how much so,” Warick said, adding that “an emergency as low as $300 can lead to a student dropping out.”

The nonprofit’s shows a gap of $855 between the current Pell Grant award of $6,495 and the average community college student’s expenses. A $500 increase, plus another $400 proposed increase in the fiscal 2022 appropriations bill, would cover that gap.

Another signature piece of Biden’s plan would have been a four-year extension in the higher child tax credit that was included in the American Rescue Plan last March — $3,600 a year for  children under 6 and $3,000 for older children. Now the increase will last for one year.

Any extension is good, said Chris Swanson, who leads the Institute for Innovation in Development, Engagement and Learning Systems at Johns Hopkins University. But he added, “The reality is things are not getting better for the American people. We still are in the midst of a pandemic coupled with major shifts in economics and employment.”

The House will resume consideration of the $1.2 infrastructure bill Friday morning after Thursday night slipped away without a vote. 

Negotiations that would secure moderate Democrats’ support of President Joe Biden’s separate social spending bill — the deal that progressives are waiting for in order to vote for the infrastructure package — are continuing.

 â€œA great deal of progress has been made this week, and we are closer to an agreement than ever,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement. â€œBut we are not there yet, and so, we will need some additional time to finish the work, starting tomorrow morning first thing.” 

Meanwhile Biden signed a continuing resolution Thursday night, avoiding a government shutdown and giving the Senate until Dec. 3 to work on the fiscal year 2022 budget. The president’s proposed budget includes significant increases for Title I, special education and community schools.

“There’s so much more to do,” the president said in a statement. “But the passage of this bill reminds us that bipartisan work is possible and it gives us time to pass longer-term funding to keep our government running and delivering for the American people.”

Democrats, however, wanted to include language that would lift the debt ceiling, which the government will hit Oct. 18. Republicans voted against that plan.

With Congress tackling overlapping budget issues this week, advocates are most focused on saving President Joe Biden’s bold agenda for schools and families.

The proposed $3.5 trillion “Build Back Better” plan, which would lower costs that are “squeezing families month after month and year after year,” includes major increases for early-childhood education, teacher and principal preparation, school construction and community college. But Democrats don’t have enough support to pass it, even though they’re using a process known as reconciliation, which doesn’t require a single Republican vote.

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Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who along with fellow Democrat Krysten Sinema of Arizona to such sweeping legislation, made it clear in a statement Wednesday night that he can’t be convinced otherwise.

“Since the beginning of this reconciliation debate, I have been consistent in my belief that any expansion of social programs must be targeted to those in need, not expanded beyond what is fiscally possible,” Manchin . “While I am hopeful that common ground can be found that would result in another historic investment in our nation, I cannot — and will not — support trillions in spending or an all or nothing approach that ignores the brutal fiscal reality our nation faces.”

The debate over the president’s agenda has revealed sharp divides among Democrats, while Republicans have held a united front against compromise proposals. Disagreement among Democrats is most obvious over the $1.2 trillion infrastructure package, which House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was weighing whether to bring to a vote Thursday. Moderates have demanded a vote on the funding for roads, bridges and broadband, while progressives have said they won’t support the infrastructure bill unless they first get a vote on the larger reconciliation bill.

It’s not the infrastructure bill THEN maybe the Build Back Better package down the road. That wasn’t the deal.

Progressives won’t back down. We’re fighting the people’s fight and we’re going to deliver the entire Build Back Better agenda.

— Pramila Jayapal (@PramilaJayapal)

Adding to the tension, Congress will try to avert a government shutdown Thursday by passing a continuing resolution that keeps the government open past the end of the fiscal year. Democrats are also faced with meeting an Oct. 18 deadline to keep the U.S. from defaulting on its loans.

The House on Wednesday passed, along party lines, a bill to raise the government’s $28 trillion debt limit — the total amount the government can borrow to cover its obligations. But the bill is not expected to pass in the Senate. Defaulting can lead to , hinder and make it much harder to cover the costs of the reconciliation bill if it passes.

Democrats argue that the Trump administration was partially responsible for the increase in spending, so Republicans should bear some of the responsibility for raising the limit. But Republicans have said as long as Democrats control Congress and the White House, they can add it to their reconciliation bill.

The ongoing stalemate has some wondering whether the bill will survive.

“You’ve got to figure there’s now a chance, very small but real, that the bill stalls out,” Rick Hess, a senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said about the proposed $3.5 trillion package.

Dropping the total price tag, perhaps as low as , could “set off some brutal intramural battles among the [Democrats],” Hess said, and would “certainly offer a stress test of various Democratic priorities.”

Mary Filardo, executive director of the 21st Century School Fund, which advocates for modernizing schools, is among those lobbying to keep their priorities in the final package. She’s been meeting with Senate staff members about the $82 billion slated for school construction and repairs.

“They seem pretty subdued, like they don’t really know what is going on,” she said, adding that they “support the issue, but it doesn’t seem to be a must have.”

Cutting school construction funding, she said, could impact another key priority in the package — universal preschool. While Biden’s $200 billion plan would put some classrooms in community-based centers, schools would also need to accommodate more pre-K students.

‘Could still be effective’ 

Some observers suggested there’s room to negotiate amounts over the big-ticket provisions, such as pre-K, child care and free community college.

“All of these could still be effective even if the top line numbers go down,” said Julia Martin, legislative director at Brustein and Manasevit, a law firm specializing in education.

But Shantel Meek, a professor at Arizona State University and director of the Children’s Equity Project, said she hopes lawmakers don’t trim the preschool proposal by “pitting access and quality against one another. In order for [universal pre-K] to meet the promise we know it can, we need access to quality — that means supporting the whole child, whole family.”

Others are concerned whether some of the smaller provisions would get cut from the package, such as the $4 billion to continue the Emergency Connectivity Fund, which addresses the digital divide for students learning at home.

“We want to make sure the connectivity [and] devices provided … aren’t in a position to go dark and disconnect students,” said Noelle Ellerson Ng, associate executive director for advocacy and governance at AASA, The School Superintendents Association.

Originally part of the American Rescue Plan, the $7 billion program allows school districts to purchase devices for students and cover the cost of at-home internet service. According to the , more than $1.2 billion in funds have been awarded so far to 3,040 schools, 260 libraries and 24 organizations that include both. A second application window runs through Oct. 13.

Even if all of the education-related proposals stay in the package, Martin warned that one way negotiators could lower the final figure is to increase states’ share of the cost. The for example, currently calls for the federal government to pick up 100 percent of the cost of serving all 3- and 4-year-olds for the first two years, with states contributing increasing percentages of the cost over time.

“My concern would be if the state matches were to go up,” Martin said. “I think that would result in a patchwork implementation at best, and may make it more difficult for states to access funds.”

Linda Smith, director of the Bipartisan Policy Institute’s Early Childhood Development Initiative, said another option would be to limit the number of years covered by the legislation or to limit the program to children with greater needs. But she said that would be hard to do after the president pledged it would be universal.

Nonetheless, she remains hopeful that the early-childhood proposals would remain a centerpiece of the final plan.

“It always gets a little crazy when the sausage-making gets into high gear,” she said. “I still think something will come out of this.”

Funding for federal programs expires on Sept. 30, but that’s just one budgetary challenge facing Democrats in the coming weeks as they seek to pass President Joe Biden’s massive agenda for schools and families.

The House has already , known as a continuing resolution, to keep funding programs at the same level through early December. That would give lawmakers more time to work on the fiscal year 2022 budget.

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On Thursday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi appeared open to removing a provision to increase the debt limit, which Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, has threatened to block. The standoff was leading to a potential . To pass in the Senate, the bill would need 60 votes — or 10 Republicans in addition to the 50 Democrats.

“We will keep government open by Sept. 30 …and continue the conversation about the debt ceiling,” she said.

Democrats will need to find compromise as well in order to pass Biden’s “Build Back Better” plan to lead the nation out of the pandemic — even though they control both houses of Congress and the White House. Majority leaders in the House and Senate are trying to balance competing priorities among progressive and more fiscally conservative wings of their parties. Those differences could impact two major pieces of the president’s agenda apart from the fiscal year 2022 budget — a $1 trillion infrastructure package that is scheduled for a House vote on Thursday and a much larger $3.5 trillion proposal that includes universal preschool, school construction and free school lunches for more children.

Democrats are using what is known as a budget reconciliation process for the $3.5 trillion plan, which means they can pass the package without a single Republican vote in the House or the Senate. But experts say they still may have to scale back the size of the package in order to secure enough Democratic votes.

Biden met with leading Democrats Wednesday in an effort to to bridge some of their differences, but according to the White House, “there is more work ahead in the coming days.”

‘Game of chicken’

While federal law dictates timing for the annual budget, Democrats are also treating Biden’s legislative agenda with a sense of urgency. Sean Worley, a senior policy associate at EducationCounsel, a consulting firm advising districts on policy and legal issues, suggested that it would get harder, politically, to pass either package if they drag into next year because of mid-term elections.

First up is the infrastructure package. That plan includes $200 million over five years to replace lead pipes in school, $5 billion for electric school buses and an increase in funding to $1 billion a year to improve safety for students biking and walking to school. Another $65 billion would go toward improving the nation’s broadband access and making the internet more affordable.

Pelosi originally scheduled the vote for Monday as part of a deal with moderate Democrats who said they would withhold their support for the $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill unless the infrastructure bill made it to the president’s desk first. But  have issued their own ultimatum, arguing they won’t support the infrastructure legislation unless they simultaneously vote on the larger reconciliation package. Now a floor debate is expected Monday.

Worley predicted this “game of chicken” could lead to the infrastructure bill’s failure.

“I would expect progressives to vote against the bill and an insufficient number of Republicans will vote in favor,” he said. “This could deepen rifts within the party and will make intraparty negotiations on the [$3.5 trillion] bill that much more difficult.”

The infrastructure deal with Republicans does not include facility improvements for the nation’s schools. But the current version of the reconciliation bill — what Biden calls a “human infrastructure” proposal — would provide $82 billion for school construction and renovation projects. The plan’s $3.5 trillion price tag, however, looks shaky with Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Krysten Sinema of Arizona breaking with their fellow Democrats over the cost.

Manchin, earlier this month, called for a on the plan, saying it’s not smart policy to pass such a large package amid rising inflation. In addition to funding for school construction, the package proposes almost $200 million each for teacher residencies and , more than $100 billion for two free years of community college, $35 billion to provide free meals to more children and $450 billion for child care and preschool.

So far, early-childhood education advocates aren’t ready to settle for less.

“It’s sizable, but it’s sizable for a reason, because there is that much need,” said Sarah Rittling, executive director of the First Five Years Fund, which focuses on federal early-childhood policy.

Biden’s plan seeks to limit the cost of child care to no more than 7 percent of a family’s income, increase wages for child care providers, and work with states to make universally available to 3- and 4-year-olds.

Rittling said she doesn’t expect the early-childhood provisions in the package, which have broad support among Democrats, to get cut. “It is so incredibly popular on top of being so incredibly necessary,” she said.

The reconciliation bill includes much of Biden’s agenda for social and education programs.The also features major increases for programs such as Title I, special education and Head Start.

The House passed the 2022 appropriations bills at the end of July, but Worley suggested that even without the debt limit debate, those increases “were going to be difficult to see across the finish line.”