Do States Have Enough Federal Funding to Safely Reopen Public Schools?

They haven't spent money that was doled out in the spring, and Congress allocated more in December. There are better uses for any new federal funding.

By Dan Lips

Feb 3, 2021

A central question at today’s confirmation hearing for Miguel Cardona, President Biden’s pick for education secretary, will be whether the nation’s public schools have enough funding to reopen during the pandemic.

Biden has proposed $130 billion in new emergency funding to help schools meet his goal of reopening within 100 days as part of his $1.9 trillion stimulus plan. On Monday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer initiated the budget reconciliation process, which could be used to pass much of the administration’s spending package without support from Republicans as soon as next week.

Biden has described his plan as a necessary step to reopen the nation’s schools and economy.

The sooner that we get our kids and educators back in the classroom, the sooner parents can go back to work — but we need the funding to do it. My American Rescue Plan will deliver much-needed support to our nation’s schools to help them reopen and operate safely.

Keep reading with a free account

Create a free Dispatch account to keep reading Get Started ALREADY HAVE AN ACCOUNT? SIGN IN

Conversations (10)

Comments (10)

Join The Dispatch to participate in the comments.

Sort by:

Ell 2 years ago

Well done. > $1,000 per student, we have allowed incompetence to educate our children.

Collapse

Beth 2 years ago

I'm not able to find good information on why the federal funds haven't been spent. I've seen a few articles where districts have insisted they have spent the funds but are waiting for reimbursement from their respective states for qualifying expenses. These funds may show up as "unspent" on the federal dashboards, but they are in effect already committed and not available for current or future expenses to deal with COVID costs.

As a higher education financial administrator - I can attest that while we have recognized a number of expenses for COVID, we haven't yet received our share of institutional funding from the federal government.

I'm wondering how much of the "unspent" portion of the K-12 funds represent actual slow reimbursement, not lack of qualifying expenses. More reporting on this would be helpful in truly understanding the current state of K-12's ability to deal with pandemic related costs.

Collapse

Bob W 2 years ago

This is an interesting take.

Collapse

Rajeev 2 years ago

Not sure what Secretary Cardona can do in this situation. Coordination certainly helps but if the choice of schools to be open or closed is made by the states, then how can the federal government do more? Their increased efforts at vaccine distribution certainly will help as many teachers aren't going back without vaccination. I think that vaccination is unnecessary for younger healthy teachers given the setup of most schools especially 8th grade and higher. But each state is having this battle and once teachers are getting the vaccinations this will no likely longer be an issue.

Collapse

Patrick 2 years ago

This is depressing. I’m not sure which is worse.
Federal is unaware that the States haven’t spent? (incompetence)
Or Federal is aware and wants to send more money purely to score political points? (dishonesty)

Collapse

Theirn Scott 2 years ago

Excellent, thank you.

Collapse

Kevin Johnson 2 years ago

Three cheers. I predict that in a year or less, the destructive extremism keeping schools closed against the best science available will be seen as one top scandal in the covid disaster.

Collapse

Shawn Gallagher 2 years ago

Yes. The answer is yes. Most schools have plenty of money, it flows to extravagant construction projects and duplicating bureaucrats.

As a former teacher, this has been my experience.

Collapse

Will Bates 2 years ago

This is actually really eye-opening for me. I had been supporting the state assistance portion of the stimulus specifically because of how much each State’s resources go toward education funding (33% as of 2017, or so I’ve read).

If capital is not the limiting factor/resource here, then it seems more of it wouldn’t do any good.

Thanks for the gut-check.

Collapse

Beth 2 years ago

Please see my comment above. It's actually not at all clear to me that the funds are "unspent." Most states operate on a reimbursement system to local districts. I've come across numerous reports of districts that have incurred significant COVID related expenses above their normal operating expenses, but have not yet received reimbursement for those expenses. If this is the case, those funds that are showing as "unspent" on federal dashboards may already be obligated/committed and are not available for any additional costs currently being incurred or yet to be incurred by local school districts. It's also not clear to me, if reimbursement is indeed all or part of the problem, why the reimbursement is so slow. Is it due to bureaucratic inefficiencies at the state level? Are the processes for local districts to get the monies too cumbersome? I think before we definitively say that school districts don't need more money, we need to understand the current lay of the land.

I work in higher ed. We can draw funds down directly from the DOE without a state middleman and we still haven't received our institutional portion of the CARES act in cash. We are projecting to spend several million dollars on direct COVID costs alone, never mind the costs we incurred last year due to having to close campus early.

Collapse