Utah receiving $205 million for school funding; local agencies to apply for grants
A first grade student at Fremont Elementary School in Sunset works on a laptop on Jan. 14, 2021.
A nurse at Syracuse High School motions for a student to be tested for COVID-19 at her table as part of the "Test to Stay" program on Monday, Dec. 7, 2020.
Signifying another step toward getting back to normal after the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Utah’s American Rescue Plan Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief plans have been approved, the Department of Education announced Wednesday.
With this final $205 million allocation, the state has received $615 million in total funding from the federal government for programs focused on helping schools reopen fully and students adjust after the tumultuous 2020-21 school year. The original $410 million was released to the state on March 24.
The Utah State Board of Education outlined three top priorities for the funding: addressing student mental health, literacy and missing/disengaged students. With the funds released to the state, the responsibility for crafting specific usage plans now falls to local education agencies and community-based organizations.
“The approval of these plans enables states to receive vital, additional American Rescue Plan funds to quickly and safely reopen schools for full-time, in-person learning; meet students’ academic, social, emotional, and mental health needs; and address disparities in access to educational opportunity that were exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona in a press release.
Referenced in the plan highlights from the USBE, local agencies are required to invest in both summer learning and after-school programs that can be used by students to make up for any potential learning lost amid the pandemic.
For those students who may have disengaged during the hybrid school year, new Ogden School District Superintendent Luke Rasmussen highlighted the district’s summer bridge programs which keep students invested in academic activities between school years.
“I haven’t checked the numbers for a couple days, but we’ve already recovered like 900 quarter credits of work over the summer for students that failed classes or didn’t engage in classes during the school year,” he said.
Each local education agency will, in their applications to the state, outline the ways they hope to spend any funds diverted to them and how much they are requesting for each program.
In the released highlights of the plan, it is stated that local agencies “will not only be required to support students’ academic needs, but also students’ social, emotional, and mental health needs to be awarded the ARP funds.”
Ultimately, the decision on how to spend the funds comes to the local education agencies. The list of “unallowable costs” in the USBE application include capital expenses, construction costs, taxes on purchases and more.
According to the USBE grant proposal agreement, the federal funds are a one-time occurrence which must be used by Sept. 30, 2023.
There will be a webinar for local education agency plan developers held on Tuesday, July 13. Use of Funds Plans from LEAs will be due on Aug. 20, with award decisions expected by the week of Sept. 20.
“The Utah State Board of Education and the state’s school districts and charter schools intend to put this much-welcome funding to work mitigating the pandemic’s impacts on students, teachers and families and create educational success for the long term,” said Utah State Superintendent Dr. Sydnee Dickson in a press release. “Utah’s plan builds upon the existing state actions to keep students in school as we seek to address their personalized needs for the future.”
The dispersal of federal funding was based on total enrollment — Utah’s preliminary statewide enrollment for 2020-21 was 680,659 students. Five other states and the District of Columbia also had their plans approved Wednesday. Texas will receive the most money of the group at $4.1 billion. Thus far, only 40 states have submitted plans to the DOE for approval.