Better late than never: Governor Kristi Noem has announced that she will send about $75 million in coronavirus relief funds to South Dakota’s K-12 schools. That’s 6% of the $1.25 billion South Dakota received from Uncle Sam and mostly sat on all summer while schools were scrambling to come up with pandemic-mitigation reopening plans. As of July, our K-12 schools had received another $41 million in coronavirus assistance. Noem is promising to chip in another $5.7 million in state funds later. Noem’s promise brings total coronavirus assistance for our K-12 schools to about 46% of what superintendents and business office organizations say schools need to properly tackle the pandemic.
Lest she break her record of half-assed governance, Noem should stop her coronavirus help to schools right there.
For perspective, $500 per student is maybe a 4% increase on what we spend per student in K-12 education.
In a memo to legislators, Noem’s senior policy advisor Tiffany Sanderson explains that the state will distribute the money based on student enrollment, giving each district $500 per student, the maximum amount schools may receive without requirements that they document how the funds are used. The state will write checks soon based on 90% of Fall 2019 enrollment; come early November, the state will issue final payments based on Fall 2020 enrollment, which schools count on September 30. So this month, Aberdeen and Harrisburg school districts will each get checks for over $2 million; Rapid City will get $6 million; Sioux Falls will get $10.9 million.
Noem is giving this money to private schools, too: Bishop O’Gorman Catholic School will get $1,004,400 right away and around $110K in November. Private K-12 schools will receive $3.93 million this month and, with the November adjustment, about $4.32 million, about 5.8% of the total $75 million aid package.
The CARES Act allows schools to use coronavirus relief funds for costs related to distance learning and in-person classes. Schools can’t just use it to cover budget shortfalls; they have to use it for expenses not accounted for in whatever budget they passed as of March 27, and they have to use it for costs incurred between March 1 and December 30 of this year. So schools, when you do get these checks, you can’t sock the funds away for use next year. That’s problematic if the schools want to use the money to hire nurses or tutors or ed tech specialists, because the schools could only promise salaries through December 30.
Beyond this cash assistance, Sanderson’s memo says that the state is using coronavirus relief funds to pay for coronavirus testing for asymptomatic adults in schools. 63 school districts reaching 36% of our K-12 student population have opted into that program. The state Department of Education has also negotiated a three-year contract with Zoom to secure licenses for K-12 teachers and administrators at $7.50 per user per year. Figure about 9,700 teachers and another 1,000 instructional staff, and that annual Zoom subsidy could run $80,000. The state is using coronavirus dollars for this year’s Zoom licenses, then will spot years two and three from the Department of Education’s technology dollars.
School districts should welcome this assistance from the federal government. They’d have welcomed it even more back in June, when they could have incorporated this assistance in their planning for this challenging school year.
Well, it’s about time she cut loose some more of this ‘socialized’ dollars from the Feds to help with this pandemic! She’s been loathe to part with it, hoping to use it instead to ‘back-fill’ the budget in next years legislature session. Granted, the SD economy fares fairly well compared to some states, but ‘her people’ like those on unemployment and residents of the 7 Reservations are feeling the brunt of all this, not to mention some of the small businesses that can’t produce enough ‘donations’ to her campaign chest.
While she’s letting this $ go to private schools, and I don’t think she should, are all reservation schools getting their fair share as well?
South Dakota should do well during the pandemic compared to other states considering it is rural and sparcely populated. If however you have a governor that doesn’t have it in her to lead there becomes a problem. Because of her leadership we are now facing the very same scary sicknesses and deaths that bigger more populated states have faced. We will have doctor shortages for people who need care that do not have anything to do with the virus because of her reckless decisions. It would not have been hard to show the citizens of South Dakota that she had their best interests in mind. Wear a mask when shopping. Wear a mask to protect the children that go to school in our state. Have common sense when having large gatherings in our state. Do enough testing to have some kind of plan for what is happening. Our governor has disrepected the people who live here by not following science and making it some kind of political game. The children that go to school with asthma or some other complication that they were born with and the people who have died in this state deserve better. South Dakota has no clue to what they face in the weeks ahead.
The reason for corona’s lack of spread is that they couldn’t get enough fake PCR tests done. The covid 19 hoax is over. Will we now see another bio-agent released, or some other kind of false flag?
My sources indicate Trump’s presidency ferreted out this plan about 10 years early.
Also, it is worth noting that we are pretty sparse on the 5G here. Wuhan went live on October 31, 2019, which is exciting to satanists and witches, and disturbing to the rest of of sane folks.
Dusty should compensate home schoolers. Teaching is the most important job we can do, and for parents who do it well, we should compensate them.