Billions in School Covid-Relief Funds Remain Unspent
Categories: US Education News
U.S. school districts are struggling to spend billions of dollars in federal pandemic-relief money before the funding expires.Districts have yet to spend 93% of $122 billion sunk into the K-12 education system last year as part of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, according to data compiled by the U.S. Department of Education.The short-term nature of the money has made it harder to use, school officials said, because any new staff may have to be laid off when the money expires. Workforce shortages and supply-chain issues have also posed challenges, officials said. The district, the nation’s second-largest, has yet to spend a penny of the $2.57 billion in American Rescue Plan money it received last year. It is still trying to use up a few hundred million dollars from earlier stimulus packages.In January, 32 organizations from across the U.S. sent a letter to Education Secretary Miguel Cardona asking for a two-year extension on the September 2024 deadline, citing supply-chain issues causing delays with the installation of ventilation systems to inhibit the spread of the virus. State and local governments are required to detail what their American Rescue Plan money will be used for, with 20% of the funding meant for programs addressing learning loss caused by the pandemic.Marguerite Roza, director of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University, said federal efforts to track spending have failed to capture whether programs are working and warned that districts that use relief money to hire school staff might not have the means to continue paying them when the funding runs out.In Los Angeles, board member Mr. Melvoin said the district has faced some of the same challenges as the rest of the country around staffing and hesitancy to use the funds on long-term positions. A push to add a psychiatric social worker to every school, for instance, has resulted in about half the jobs being filled, Mr. Melvoin said. Partnerships and short-term contracts to provide assistance with nursing, tutoring and counseling could be a better way to spend money faster, he said.“The thing we want to avoid is having to spend quickly and irresponsibly,” Mr. Melvoin said.The district put out a request for bids last October to hire tutoring providers. The initial timeline said companies would be picked by January, but the process has stalled for months because procurement staff were being redeployed to work in classrooms, according to district staff. Last week, the district told bidders it will seek school board approval in June to hire 33 tutoring companies, with contracts worked out after that. The district planned to spend $54 million this school year on tutoring and small-group instruction but lowered estimates to $21 million, according to a presentation the district’s chief financial officer gave the school board in March.Deputy superintendent Megan Reilly said, “It’s expected that we’ll spend every dime that we have in the next two years.”