School districts across the nation have been hit hard by unexpected expenditures due to the COVE-19 pandemic. In March of 2020, the federal government tried to ease some of these burdens by issuing money for schools to purchase COVID-related items. The Eagle Grove Area School District received $173,000 from this first round of what is known as The CARES Act. According to Superintendent Jess Toliver, the district spent all of the money on immediate needs like face shields for every student and teacher, hand sanitizer, cleaning supplies, wifi for buses that could be moved around town for students without internet access and in need for virtual learning, technology and more. The money went quickly and Toliver said he is grateful for another, much larger, round of CARES Act II emergency relief money issued recently from the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) Fund II within the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act – $756,968 to be exact.
The amount allocated to each school district was based on the amount of free and reduced lunch students. That’s why communities like Des Moines got $40+ million.
“$756,968 is a lot of money, but it has to be spent on things related to the pandemic. You can’t pay things like my salary, put it in the bank…you have to have approved expenses for it,” said Toliver.
As for the EG School District, Toliver says they will use a portion of the money for continued purchases of building cleaning supplies and cleaning equipment.
“Because of the virus we’re cleaning more often. We’re cleaning more deeply, where in the past we would have one scrubber we would use between the two buildings now we will have a scrubber in each building because we can get more done and we can clean more with it,” explained Toliver.
Just as some of the CARES Act I money was spent for the purchase of more elementary reading series (needed to accommodate those students who fell behind in reading levels because of missing one-third of last school year, some of the CARES Act II money will be spent on other curriculum expansion for if and when they go with school online.
“There’s a good chance we could do (online) school again this year. There’s a good chance we could even do it yet next year,” said Toliver.
According to what he’s heard, it appears as though all adults will be vaccinated by the end of August, but there is no plan yet as to when all children will receive the shots.
“So even if I have all my adults healthy, what if I have an outbreak amongst my students and we have to go virtual again?” he said about the need for an advanced online curriculum. “We need to have the infrastructure and online curriculum and materials in order to do that.”
One of the other things Toliver said they will discuss spending some of the CARES Act II money on is summer school. However, he hesitates because of the challenges they’ve already faced this school year going all day, every day.
“Am I going to have staff that want to continue to do that? Am I going to have students that want to continue to do that? It’s not like a normal school year…the burnout is higher this year than it has been in past years, especially if you’ve been ill or are worried about getting ill,” Toliver pointed out.
He is also playing with the idea of spending some of the money on the transportation fleet. Because of the limited number of students that are allowed on a bus at one time, (normally 50 – 60 on a bus now down to about 25 on a bus because of COVID) they are looping around, or running the buses twice to get all the kids home.
“When you have activities that are out of town, or leaving for different things, we actually run out of buses,” said Toliver.
For that reason, he has contacted the State to see if purchasing more busses or maybe even a suburban would qualify for the CARES Act II money expenditure.
Toliver said he will also look a “little bit” at ventilation systems, but he thinks the cost will prohibit the installation. For example, putting one in the high school you’re looking at $4 million.
“This money’s not going to touch that…but if you have individual rooms or areas you might be able to do something,” he said.
As an example, with the CARES Act I money, the school district put an air conditioning unit in the server room to keep it cool from all the computers running in there.
The good news is the school district has 23 months from the date of issue to spend the money.
“The problem you always have in an event like this, and it’s a good problem, is that you have a large amount of money that you weren’t anticipating, and so you’ve got to make sure that you spend it, and that you spend it wisely, because it’s one time, one done. You can not put it towards recurring cost or you will be broke in no time. Once the money runs out, you have nothing to support it,” said Toliver.
He added that with this money you could hire an additional teacher to help catch kids up from last year, but it would have to be for only one year because this CARES money will not be there to pay the bill the second year.
According to Toliver, when they got ESSER money the first time, they got the cash to spend. This time around, the school districts are being required to spend the money and then send them a ledger for which they will be reimbursed.
“You have to be able to tie it somehow to COVID,” said Toliver.
While some purchases have already been decided, others will be assessed and considered over the course of the next few months.
“We have to see what exactly we can spend it on and what our needs are,” said Toliver.
The ultimate goal is to prepare to be on-site and be with kids as much as possible.
“Anything we’re doing, we’re trying to set ourselves up for what we would do on our normal plan, so we have it in place not only for next year, but for the future,” concluded Toliver.
