COVID-19 Costs: Public Funding for Pre K-12 Schools

Parents and educators, among other constituents, are responsible for the critical goal of educating our youth. The COVID-19 pandemic caused the closure of schools in the spring, and prompted the swift conversion from in class learning to remote learning. Students have returned to the 2020 - 2021 school year in a variety of scenarios including in class, remote learning and hybrid models. School organizations have and will continue to experience significant costs related to COVID-19 adaptations, while striving to support high achievement outcomes for their students. Costs related to COVID-19 - mobile devices and internet connectivity, facility sterilization, personal protective equipment - among many others - are causing stress on finite school budgets. Public funding streams exist to cover COVID-19 costs, like CARES. It is difficult for school superintendents and administrators to identify these funding streams while managing the more important goal of educating students. This project seeks to identify the public funding streams, such as current Congress deliberations for school funding, to maximize monies intended to support unanticipated and extraordinary costs incurred by schools as a result of COVID-19.