Fayette schools get $45.2 million ‘lifeboat’ in COVID relief funds.

Kentucky will receive $928 million --and Fayette County schools $45.2 million of that--in a second round of pandemic emergency federal funding that one education group called “an emergency lifeboat.”

“This one-time allocation of funding is desperately needed if districts are to withstand a once-in-a-century crisis,” the Kentucky School Boards Association said this week in response to the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funding.

The money is intended to help address learning loss of students, to make building improvements that could cut coronavirus transmission, and to help schools cover personnel expenses from additional health staffing, COVID testing, and emergency leave for quarantined employees, according to the KSBA.

The money is the largest and most flexible allocation of discretionary K-12 funding in history, Robin Kinney, associate commissioner in the Kentucky Department of Education’s Office of Finance and Operations told superintendents at a January meeting.

It can be used for expenses dating back to March 13, 2020, -- when schools largely switched from in-person to remote learning -- and will be available through Sept. 30, 2023.

In addition to learning loss and building improvements, the money can be used to pay for nurses, mental health professionals and emergency leave days for employees, Kinney said. Schools are no longer required to provide extra COVID-19-related emergency leave, but are still allowed to do that.

The money also can pay teacher salaries to support intervention and remediation, and for substitute teachers when regular personnel are absent due to COVID-19 isolation or quarantine, said Kinney.

Fayette County Schools has a 2020-21 working budget of $575.2 million, according to the district website.

At the January Fayette school board planning meeting, district budget director Ann Sampson-Grimes discussed some of COVID-19’s possible impact on the fiscal 2022 draft budget.

If the district’s new Virtual Learning Academy, which opened after COVID shutdown in-person learning, continues into next year, it could cost the district $1. 9 million, she said. Citing a high number of coronavirus cases, Fayette schools officials haven’t returned to in-person learning since March 2020.

District officials know that there will be unemployment costs associated with COVID-19, but don’t have an exact dollar amount, Sampson-Grimes said. Some district staff have not had jobs during the COVID-19 crisis, she said.

As for the new federal funding, Fayette County Schools officials are waiting for more guidance from the Kentucky Department of Education “before identifying strategic investments that will benefit our students, “ district spokeswoman Lisa Deffendall said Wednesday.

“We are grateful to Kentucky’s leaders in Washington for recognizing the unexpected costs incurred by schools during the COVID-19 pandemic... “Deffendall said. The money will be available on a reimbursement basis, meaning that the district must first spend the funds before drawing down from the federal dollars.

The KSBA confirmed that the new federal money is intended to help shoulder expenses already incurred, all of which were unbudgeted and unforeseen. The federal funding is allocated among districts through a formula based largely on student poverty.

“The significance of this investment is not lost on education leaders,” the KSBA said, “but we must not lose sight of the challenges that predated COVID-19, challenges that will remain after the pandemic ends.”

The group’s statement noted that the one time relief does not address the need for an increase in base SEEK allocations or ensure funding for family resource and youth service centers.

It does not address the needs of thousands of students in foster care, nor the increasing number of students with special needs caused by neonatal abstinence syndrome which was largely a result of the opioid epidemic that occurred before COVID-19, the statement said.

KSBA officials said state lawmakers still need to make a substantial investment in Kentucky schools “if we are to press forward and come out of this pandemic stronger than when it began. “

“For us to consider the ESSER funding as anything more than acute pandemic relief meant to right the ship would be shortsighted. It should be viewed, rather, as an emergency lifeboat to supplement adequate, sustainable support,” KSBA officials said.