COLOMBIA – South Carolina’s K-12 public schools will share $ 2 billion from the latest federal aid package COVID-19, in addition to the more than $ 1 billion already allocated that largely hasn’t been spent, according to the Department of Education of the state.
The spending package approved by Congress this month represents “the largest influx of federal dollars for public education in the history of our state,” said state superintendent Molly Spearman on March 17.
The money must be spent to “keep our schools open safely and deal with the immediate and long-term impacts of COVID-19 that our students and school communities face,” she added.
But Spearman has little to say about how most of the money is spent.
Of the $ 2.1 billion the federal government sends to its agency – bypassing the legislature entirely – at least 90 percent must be distributed to local school districts.
How much each will receive is still being determined.
Whatever that portion, school councils elected locally have until September 2023 to spend it.
And they have ample freedom of choice as to where the money goes to meet the law’s general objectives of reopening schools, keeping them open safely and meeting students’ social, emotional, mental and academic needs. Twenty percent of the districts’ share should be allocated to dealing with learning loss, regardless of how they decide to do so.
The $ 3 billion allocated in federal aid in the past year is more than three times what the federal government typically sends to South Carolina elementary and high schools annually.
“Obviously, these are transformational and generational amounts of money. This is an absolute game changer,” said Patrick Kelly of the Palmetto State Teachers Association. “Teachers expect it to be invested wisely to pay benefits in the short and long term.”
That means funding innovations so that performance jumps from where they were before the pandemic, and not just reaching students with intensive classes and summer learning, he said.
“We would love to see districts be creative and do aspirational things that we have said for years that would be good,” said Kelly. “It gives us an opportunity to put these goals into practice.”
Examples include pairing a first-year teacher with a veteran classroom teacher and offering extended learning in after-school programs, he said, which would replicate the model that Sherman Financial founder Ben Navarro launched in 2014 in a public-private partnership with Charleston Municipality.
Teachers also want to see long-term building maintenance problems resolved, especially in new heating and air conditioning systems in old schools that have made patchwork corrections year after year, contributing to mold problems that cause health problems long before the COVID-19.
Fixing this problem forever would fall under the objective of the federal law to “improve indoor air quality”.
Spearman encouraged districts to do this.
“It is one of the first times that we have resources available to work on these problems,” she told reporters last month, recognizing that old ventilation systems are the reason some teachers are reluctant to return to classrooms full-time.
At the time, she was handling the $ 900 million allocated to schools in South Carolina by the last Congressional aid package in December. Districts must submit plans to Spearman’s agency before they can spend part of their share. Plans are still coming up for this round, said Spearman spokesman Ryan Brown.
At least part of the $ 195 million that Congress sent to school districts last spring was also not spent. Quarterly reports from districts to be reimbursed for this pot are not yet due, he said.
What teachers don’t want money to be spent on is “the flashy new product that promises immediate results with minimal work,” said Kelly.
But they know that the temptation exists, and that school board members and administrators are already being bombarded by companies eager to sell their products to them.
“Historic amounts of money are going to flow into the hands of the districts without having to be administered at the state level and we are excited about it, but also concerned about it,” said Sherry East, president of the South Carolina Education Association.
follow Seanna Adcox on Twitter at @seannaadcox_pc.