Schools look to spend $63 million in pandemic relief funds

Apr. 14—The Meridian and Lauderdale County school districts are working to spend more than $63 million they collectively have been allocated in federal pandemic relief funds on technology, improving infrastructure and air quality on campuses, as well as catching up students who fell behind academically during the pandemic.

Clay Sims, director of operations for Meridian Public School District, said the district generally follows a 10-year plan in upgrading schools' heating and cooling systems, roofing, plumbing and other physical infrastructure needs depending on the greatest need.

"We generally work through that plan as we can with district funding, but not at the rate we are able to do right now. It has given us the ability to upgrade to some state-of-the-art systems much more quickly than we would have been able to do otherwise," Sims said of the pandemic relief funding.

In March 2020, Congress set aside approximately $13.2 billion in relief funds for public schools across the nation through the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) Fund.

A second pandemic relief package for schools, known as ESSER II, was included in the second stimulus bill approved by Congress, called the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act.

A third round of aid, known as ESSER III, was provided through the American Rescue Plan and allocated nearly $123 billion in relief to the nation's K-12 schools, one of the largest investments ever made at one time in federal spending to public education.

The money is a windfall for schools in Mississippi, which have long gone underfunded by the state Legislature based on the formula it created to fund public schools.

Altogether, the Meridian School District is set to receive more than $47 million from the three pandemic relief packages. Initially, the district received $3.1 million in ESSER I funds and has been allocated $13.6 million and $30.6 million, respectively, from ESSER II and ESSER III, according to the state Department of Education.

Since Congress allocated ESSER funding based on the formula used for federal Title 1 programs, the money is being distributed to schools based on the number of low-income students enrolled.

Meridian, as a result, will receive almost three times as much as the Lauderdale County School District.

The Lauderdale County School District is set to receive more than $16 million from the three aid packages, including about $1.1 million initially with allocations of $4.6 million and $10.5 million, respectively, in ESSER II and ESSER III funds.

The initial relief funds both districts received in 2020 were used to purchase personal protective equipment such as masks, hand sanitizer, disinfecting wipes, disinfectant fogging equipment and desk shields, things the districts needed to make in-person learning safe for students and teachers, school officials said.

"We spent every single penny of it," said Ken Hardy, director of federal programs and accountability for the Lauderdale County School District.

"We paid for increased cleaning at each campus," he said. "We contracted for companies to come in and do deep cleaning at campuses with outbreaks of Covid, where we had to shut down for two weeks."

The county school district also has spent millions in ESSER I and II funds to purchase iPads for all of students in kindergarten through 12th grades to help with distance learning.

"It was something we had been brainstorming how to do it, but absent a bond issue or absent some other funding source, we would not have been able to do this," Hardy said. "It would have been a big undertaking financially."

While ESSER I funds were more about preparing schools for reopening and helping districts provide distance learning for students at home, the second and third relief packages were more flexible.

School are allowed to fund renovation and repair projects to improve air quality in buildings, increase social distancing among students, and install doors and plumbing fixtures that require minimal touching to use.

Meridian Public Schools is using nearly $4.6 million of its ESSER funds to upgrade the HVAC control system at Meridian High School and to completely replace the outdated HVAC system at Ross Collins Career and Technical Center.

The district also is installing new energy efficient HVAC systems in the gyms at Northwest Middle and Magnolia Middle.

"These new systems will be significant upgrades for those spaces and will meet CDC guidelines for air quality," Sims said.

ESSER funding is also being used to construct classroom modules at Northwest Middle and West Hills Elementary.

"West Hills is consistently at capacity, so we knew immediately when we started looking at our numbers and our buildings post-pandemic it was one that was going to need some additional space in order to social distance effectively," Sim said.

Roofing projects at West Hills and Carver elementary schools, as well as plumbing upgrades at most of the campuses to add touchless fixtures are also planned. Renovations to the girls' locker room at Meridian High will open up the space for social distancing and improve air quality, as well as add touchless fixtures in the restrooms.

Lauderdale County, too, has added HVAC systems to all four high schools and the two middle schools, Northeast Middle and Southeast Middle, at a cost of more than $2 million.

"We have added HVAC to all of our gymnasiums at the middle and high schools where they play volleyball and basketball," Hardy said. "We never could have done this without a bond issue."

Another large expenditure with ESSER funding was the purchase of eight new county school buses at a cost of $800,000.

"When we originally budgeted for buses, they were running about $90,000 apiece and we had budgeted for nine but because of price increases we were only able to afford eight," Hardy said.

The county school district has also used the funds to hire about 20 new staff members at its campuses, including an instructional technologist to help teachers with digital learning, a computer technician to assist the schools, more school nurses, as well as interventionists and graduation coaches to work with students who may be behind academically due to the pandemic.

ESSER funding "has given us a good start to get some things done in our district. The one-to-one initiative is the big one, to be able to give each student an iPad," Hardy said. "That is one initiative we found we cannot do without, so going forward that is going to be a priority for us is to fund the iPads absent ESSER funds because we feel it is a necessity for our students to have a device."

ESSER I money expired on Sept. 30 of last year. Schools have until this Sept. 30 to obligate ESSER II funds and Sept. 30, 2024 for ESSER III funds.

Contact Glenda Sanders via phone @ 601-693-1551