CHARLESTON, W.Va. — School districts in West Virginia are being encouraged to
submit funding plans for critical COVID-19 relief money before students and
teachers head back to school this fall.
Melanie Purkey, the executive
director of the state Department of Education’s Office of Federal programs,
said, so far, they’ve heard from 35 counties about their plans on how they
propose to spend the funding from the American Rescue Plan.
The state is
receiving more than $761 million overall. The U.S. Department of Education last
week approved West Virginia’s plan and announced the funds would be released in
the coming months.
Purkey said most counties want to use the money to
hire more staff.
“Particularly more counselors, social workers and
experts who can help students with social and emotional behaviors when they come
back to school,” she said. “Secondly, more instructional support in the
classroom, so more teachers or aides.”
The process of getting the
federal funding included the state outlining how they would support local school
districts during their return to in-person learning.
“For the
requirements of the grant, they had to spend certain amounts of the funding on
learning loss, after school programs and summer program, so we had to describe
how the state would support that effort,” Purkey explained.
Part of the
funding includes bolstering existing and new technical assistance centers around
the state. The critical funding runs through Sept. 2024.
County school
boards have to present an entire plan up front for the whole three years, but
can submit revisions if they want to add or subtract new activities over time,
Purkey said.
“They would need to tell us we’re going to take funding from
this activity that maybe didn’t take as much as we budgeted and we’re going to
do something else with that,” she said.
The deadline for county school
districts to submit their written plans to the state is Aug. 1.