Interim Superintendent Iline Tracey: Buying laptops would be first priority.
Laptops are a yes, teacher salaries likely a no.
These are some of the early guidelines for which gaps $8.5 million in federal Covid-19 relief dollars can fill, New Haven Public Schools administrators explained to the Board of Education Finance and Operations (F&O) Committee on Monday.
“We’re going to sink a lot of that into a 1:1 student to technology ratio, so we’re not having problems of students without devices. That for me is the number one priority,” said Interim Superintendent Iline Tracey.
Gov. Ned Lamont announced on Thursday that Connecticut has received $111 million through the federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Security (CARES) Act to distribute to school districts throughout the state.
This announcement unleashed confusion in New Haven, according to the members of the F&O committee. Committee Chair Matthew Wilcox said that his neighbor thought the CARES dollars settled the gap between the draft budgets proposed by district and city leaders.
Zoomed-in Board of Education Finance and Operations meeting.
This perception particularly worried the F&O committee, given that Board of Alders Finance Committee recently proposed slimming the district’s budget further. The district has been planning to handle the mayor’s proposal by eliminating teacher positions after resignations and retirements, which would mean larger class sizes and fewer electives, among other measures.
“We need to make sure that every alder knows that a vote for the funding amount that the Finance Committee recommended is a vote for everything on our mitigation list, plus,” Wilcox said. “If you vote for it, you’re voting for fewer teachers.”
Chief Financial Officer Phillip Penn said that clearing up the misunderstandings around the CARES Act dollars would help with that mission. The district still needs to apply to receive the grant earmarked for them, Tracey said.
“We probably do not want to spend the whole grant at once. We don’t know whether there will be a second wave [of infections],” Penn said.
Penn explained that schools are supposed to spend the Covid-19 relief aid on certain focus areas, like technology for distance learning, supplemental programs to decrease learning gaps between students and mental health support.
“The intent of the grant is to cover Covid-19 related costs and the recovery/restoration process. It’s not intended to be a replacement for general education funding,” Penn said in a follow-up email to the Independent.
The parent and teacher group NHPS Advocates wrote to the Board of Education before Monday’s meeting to ask that the process of deciding how to spend CARES Act dollars be transparent and inclusive. That could mean a public presentation on the district’s plans plus a public comment period, the email said.
On Monday evening, Penn said that administrators would not have a plan for how to spend the money until they saw the grant application guidelines. This is unlikely to happen by the full board meeting next Monday, he said.
Wilcox asked Penn and Tracey to update the full board on Monday regardless of whether they have new information.
Very professional looking group of people making decisions on my child's education in that pic.