Stockton Unified sets a date to shed light on what's become of $241M in ESSER funds

Ben Irwin, The Record
·3 min read

Long-awaited financial transparency from Stockton Unified School District on how officials have spent $241 million in federal COVID relief funds is happening later this month.

The school district has scheduled a Jan. 24 meeting at 4 p.m. to get details on the spending. It is the first of several public study sessions that will take place an hour before school board meetings at the Arthur Coleman Jr. Administrative Complex.

The session will include an accounting of everything the school district has spent so far of their allotment of Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Funds (ESSER). It will also detail the district’s plan for future ESSER spending, SUSD’s spokesperson Melinda Meza confirmed.

The district had initially planned the finance session for Jan. 10 but had to reschedule it after classes and the school board meeting got canceled due to storm damage. A special meeting will be held Jan. 19 to address time-sensitive business before the board turns its attention to ESSER the following.

In addition to covering the district's past and present expenses, the Jan. 24 meeting is expected to review acceptable uses of ESSER funds.

New SUSD board trustee Kenneth Steves, left and incumbent trustee AngelAnn Flores take their places on the dais after being sworn in at the board meeting on Dec. 13, 2022.
New SUSD board trustee Kenneth Steves, left and incumbent trustee AngelAnn Flores take their places on the dais after being sworn in at the board meeting on Dec. 13, 2022.

SUSD rehired their school safety coordinator on a six-figure salary in July 2022 despite a warning from now-Board President AngelAnn Flores against the use of one-time funds to bankroll vital staff positions. She warned the district would be forced to pay back any money that might be deemed improperly spent.

Interim Chief Business Official Joanne Juarez will be leading the public Jan. 24 session for board members, Meza said. In addition to ESSER funds, Juarez will give a general overview of SUSD’s Business Services Budget Department, according to the agenda.

An October 2022 letter to SUSD from County Superintendent of Schools Troy Brown states he’d “lost confidence in the accuracy of the actual financial data and the projections” of Stockton Unified’s 2022-23 budget because of technical errors overstating the ending fund balance, software issues improperly reporting and maintaining staff positions and discrepancies in the Local Control and Accountability Plan (LCAP).

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Juarez stepped into her current role after former district CBO Marcus Battle resigned in August 2022.

Battle was hired in 2021 against board policy without a search, screening process or interviews, according to a June 2022 San Joaquin County Grand Jury report that found financial mismanagement and dysfunction at Stockton’s largest school district.

The grand jury report said SUSD had no plan that shows how ESSER funds are or will be spent, and that the Business Services Department was unable to provide data and accounting for ESSER expenditures.

Jan. 24 would be the first public accounting of ESSER funds since the report was released last year.

The state’s Financial Crisis and Management Assistance Team (FCMAT) is midway through an AB139 Extraordinary Audit of Stockton Unified to determine fraud, misappropriation of funds or other illegal fiscal practices.

The San Joaquin County Office of Education hired FCMAT in response to the school district’s projected deficit of at least $30 million by 2024. 

This article originally appeared on The Record: Stockton Unified to detail $241M in ESSER spending, plans on Jan. 24