School districts across Maine may wind up leaving a big chunk of the coronavirus relief money they got this year on the table because they can’t spend it fast enough.
In Poland, Regional School Unit 16 officials said this week that they may not be able to spend all of the nearly $3 million in coronavirus relief funds they received before a year’s end deadline.
“It will be very, very difficult” to spend all the money given the “short time frame,” Superintendent Kenneth Healey told the school board Monday.
“It’s absolutely a problem,” Lewiston Superintendent Jake Langlais said Tuesday. He said it’s one shared by any district that got a sizable allocation of the funding.
Aid provided in two rounds of funding through the CARES Act for some districts in Androscoggin, Franklin and Oxford counties.
That same time crunch is facing school districts across the state, leaving them scrambling to avoid leaving money on the table while they try to cope with the extra burdens imposed by the pandemic that hit the entire country last spring and shows few signs of abating.
Without an extension of the Dec. 30 deadline “not many people are going to be able to use that money” fully, Healey said.
“We’re going to try our best,” he added.
RSU 16, which includes Mechanic Falls, Minot and Poland, got $1.4 million in COVID-19 relief in July and another $1.5 million in late September, part of Gov. Janet Mills’ decision to allocate $329 million to the state’s schools from the coronavirus relief bill, funding provided by the federal government.
“This funding helps ensure that our schools are best equipped as they can be to meet the challenges they face now as well as any that may arise this fall,” Mills said in a prepared statement last month.
In Lewiston, the two rounds of funding added up to more than $11 million, which has been tapped for a ventilation project at Lewiston High School and to buy everything from Wi-Fi hot spots to iPads.
“It’s been a difference maker,” Langlais said.
Healey said his district has a list of items it would like to purchase that would help it deal with COVID-19.
It is already moving to put in more ventilation and other major projects that should be covered by the coronavirus relief bill.
But now it is searching for more that it can do in the time it has, officials from Poland, Mechanic Falls and Minot said.
Healey told the RSU 16 board that some of the things he is looking at include buses, a van, some facility improvements, security cameras for elementary schools that would help educators track student contacts in the building in case someone gets sick and food packaging.
Healey said his district might be able to buy two new school buses even though they are back-ordered most everywhere. He said he’s found two already in a dealer’s hands.
“They could be in place very quickly,” he said. “They don’t have our name on them but we could access them very quickly.”
Even so, Healey said, unless the government extends the deadline, it is unlikely that his district can spend all the available funds in time.
“They have to be in place” by year’s end, Healey said, not just ordered or in the works.
School districts must show they’ll spend the money according to the rules before the state approves using any of the money. That certification can take time, officials said.
But, Langlais said, “the hard part is the end date.”
He said that unless he can get something in place and in use by Dec. 30, it won’t qualify. That makes it hard to order items that might not come in quickly enough since if they aren’t ready by the cutoff, the school district would wind up with the bill for it.
Langlais said the cutoff means that money isn’t necessarily going to be spent as wisely as it could be since the best uses might not be possible in the time frame allowed.
The Dec. 30 deadline was set by Congress when it approved the measure last spring. The relief money funneled through the states was just a small part of a much larger bill that includes aid for businesses and checks for most Americans.
Maine and some other states agreed to use some of the coronavirus relief bill money to help schools, distributing the allocation based on a formula the state Department of Education developed in collaboration with superintendents across Maine.
The money is “critically important to address the immediate need for increased staffing, supplies and technology to ensure that schools can safely and flexibly meet the educational, social-emotional and nutritional needs of their students during these unprecedented times,” Pender Makin, commissioner of education, said in a prepared statement.
“These funds have been critical to schools’ ability to open safely,” Maine School Management Association Executive Director Eileen King said in a prepared statement.
“The first round of funds were frequently allocated to facility and technology upgrades that were needed for a safe and efficient return to school, where possible,” King said. “This second round of funding will assist school and district leaders as they address the continued needs that arise from evolving and flexible plans, and ensure they have the resources and staffing for a safe learning environment.”
The state said the aid can be used for a wide range of things, including substitute teachers, cleaning supplies, tutoring, medical technology, remote learning software and training.
There has been discussion of extending the deadline on Capitol Hill but relief bills have been held up by the inability of House and Senate leaders to agree on a new round of pandemic assistance.
Langlais said Lewiston’s congressional lawmakers, including U.S. Sen. Susan Collins and U.S. Rep. Jared Golden, “have been fantastic supporters” who see the need to push out the deadline.
One problem they face, he said, is that it is “not a 50-state issue,” since some states didn’t choose to put their CARES Act cash into education. Their leaders chose others avenues to spend the relief money they got, he said. That means some senators don’t see the deadline as a political problem.
Plus, Langlais said, from a federal perspective, “this is not big dollars.”
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