Oklahoma schools’ federal spending highlighted at meeting

Starting in 2020, the U.S. Congress accepted three rounds of federal COVID-bailout funding that directed greater than $2 billion mixed to Oklahoma faculty districts. That cash was purported to pay to mitigate viral unfold and handle challenges created by the pandemic, together with studying loss from COVID shutdowns.

The federal COVID cash was along with different federal funds already obtained yearly by Oklahoma faculty districts.

In the present day, a lot of the COVID cash stays unspent in Oklahoma and comparatively little data has been publicized on precisely how Oklahoma colleges have spent the funds which were used.

However paperwork from a handful of colleges that failed to satisfy state submitting deadlines, included within the August assembly of the State Board of Training, present a glimpse of how some districts are utilizing each their COVID-bailout funds and different federal funds.

The reported COVID bills of some late-filing colleges included utilizing federal cash to make present funds on new buses, whereas different federal funds have been used to ship dozens of employees to an occasion greater than 540 miles from the district. One faculty district requested for federal funds to reimburse a spread of distributors—together with itself on the record of distributors.

Some bills appeared to have little apparent relationship to COVID and will have concerned utilizing one-time federal funds to supplant state-and-local funds, a follow that might artificially inflate faculty spending in methods which might be tough to deliver again according to fiscal actuality as soon as COVID funding ceases. Different reported expenditures have been for companies that may have been obtained at a decrease price by means of suppliers that function in-state.

However the one function members of the State Board of Training held within the course of was to resolve whether or not to permit districts to obtain federal reimbursement regardless of submitting their requests after the deadline set in state rules.

One member, citing authorized steering from Brad Clark, normal counsel for the Oklahoma State Division of Training (OSDE), famous that federal steering barred the board from scrutinizing using federal COVID funds.

“There’s some authorized issues, Brad, that you just described, that based mostly on how the federal legislation was written that we are able to’t even ask what they’re spending the cash on or why,” stated State Board of Training member Trent Smith, who voiced concern about a number of objects.

Paperwork present that the Mosely faculty district sought reimbursement from federal COVID funds for fee of $26,204 to Jeff Lungren Chevrolet between July 1, 2021, and June 30, 2022.

OSDE officers indicated Mosely was utilizing federal funds to make funds on new buses.

A letter supplied by Mosely officers to the State Board of Training described that expenditure, together with a number of others, as “allowable expenditures associated to academic content material.”

The Lone Grove district sought reimbursement from federal funds supplied by means of the Elementary and Secondary College Emergency Aid (ESSER) portion of the federal “American Rescue Plan Act” that handed after Joe Biden turned president.

The expenditures for which Lone Grove sought reimbursement included salaries and worker advantages for educational companies, in addition to provides and supplies. Among the many entities on the record of distributors for which Locust Grove officers sought compensation with federal funds have been expenditures made by Locust Grove Faculties itself.

The Chickasha district sought compensation from federal Title II funding, which can be utilized to cowl the price of instructor coaching.

The district despatched a letter saying it had “despatched 48 key employees members” to St. Charles, Missouri (a suburb of St. Louis) on the finish of June to attend a Skilled Studying Communities Institute supplied by Resolution Tree. The coaching was greater than 540 miles from Chickasha. The variety of employees despatched to the far-off coaching was roughly equal to 40 % of all academics employed within the district in 2020, in line with state information.

All districts searching for an exemption from the state board on the group’s August assembly did not adjust to state rules guiding reporting necessities for the reimbursement course of.

That failure irked some members of the board.

“We’re asking youngsters to be on time for varsity. We’re asking them to show papers in on time,” Smith stated. “And we are able to’t get the administrations of a few of these colleges to easily submit receipts on time. I do know in my enterprise if I don’t submit a receipt on time or file a declare on time—I’m a federal contractor—they simply say, ‘Sorry. You’re not getting that cash.’”

He famous a number of the late filings concerned “very massive greenback quantities” and that in lots of circumstances the reasons for late submitting “mainly say, ‘My canine ate my homework.’”

And in districts that did have a greater excuse, the backstory concerned poor prior administration.

Rick Pool, govt director of finance and audits on the Oklahoma State Division of Training, famous that the previous superintendent of Mosely did not adjust to federal rules for some applications and was changed, together with one hundred pc of the members of the Mosely faculty board, inside the previous yr.

He stated the present Mosely administration is doing a greater job.

Board members thought-about tabling a lot of the requests offered by late filers, saying little time had been supplied to completely vet the late filings.

“We didn’t have entry to any of this data till lower than 48 hours,” stated state board member Brian Bobek. He stated he would favor to have extra time to raised assessment such claims, significantly provided that the colleges did not adjust to deadlines.

Pool stated one cause data was supplied simply two days previous to the Aug. 25 board assembly was that OSDE officers had further issues with some claims submitted by districts.

“We have been ready on a few of these districts to have approvable claims,” Pool stated. “They filed for reimbursement, let’s say, two weeks in the past, however a few of these claims had objects that we didn’t really feel like met the intent and normal of the legislation, so we despatched it again and had them amend a few of their justifications. So, we have been ready on a few of these amendments till Monday (August 22).”

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Pleasure Hofmeister objected to delaying approval of the late-filed requests and likewise objected to board members’ suggestion that extra data ought to be supplied.

“If we have been to have given you data 30 days in the past—as a result of, bear in mind, we do these as soon as a month—you’ll have had an inventory so lengthy you couldn’t have completed the assessment that you just’re ,” Hofmeister stated.

She stated it will be “jeopardizing the necessary monetary standing” of the late-filing faculty districts if the board delayed approval.

“I don’t know find out how to discover for you the steadiness that you really want with out overwhelming you,” Hofmeister stated.

OSDE Monetary-Oversight Considerations

Watchdog entities have twice criticized the credibility of economic oversight at OSDE beneath Hofmeister’s watch.

In July, officers with the Legislative Workplace of Fiscal Transparency stated they’d recognized vital irregularities in colleges’ monetary reporting after performing solely a cursory assessment of the Oklahoma Price Accounting System (OCAS), an OSDE program that compiles monetary information from all public-school districts. Amongst different issues, LOFT officers discovered that Oklahoma faculty districts reported spending practically a quarter-million {dollars} on firearms that have been recognized as vitamin companies and different non-weapon classes.

The workplace of the Oklahoma State Auditor & Inspector has additionally criticized monetary oversight at OSDE beneath Hofmeister’s management.

A 2020 state audit of Epic Constitution Faculties stated that the OSDE usually “accepted at face worth” any information reported to the company by faculty districts “with out on-site follow-up,” and that in some situations “a course of to confirm the accuracy of the reported data didn’t exist” on the Oklahoma State Division of Training.

The audit stated the Oklahoma State Division of Training had “no course of in place to guage precise compliance with the written insurance policies and procedures, or with relevant legal guidelines, statutes, or Administrative Guidelines” that govern using funds [emphasis in original].

The LOFT report got here shortly after Hofmeister had balked at Oklahoma Secretary of Training Ryan Walters’s request for the division to offer data, together with copies of reviews on a program’s spending and outcomes, earlier than he would log off on a $12 million contract. Electronic mail information present the Oklahoma State Division of Training initially wished Walters to log off on that contract with out offering such data.

It was not instantly clear if the reimbursement requests made by late-filing districts are typical of requests from different colleges. If that’s the case, the amount of cash concerned is critical.

Kathy Dodd, deputy superintendent of federal applications and chief innovation officer on the Oklahoma State Division of Training, stated the quantity of federal funding flowing into Oklahoma colleges by means of her division “exploded” in roughly one yr from about $250 million to $2.3 billion.

Previously yr, she stated OSDE officers had signed off on 11,404 claims totaling $948,000,615.

The deadline for colleges to make use of at present unspent federal COVID-bailout funds extends as far out as Sept. 30, 2024.

Regardless of their considerations, board members in the end voted to approve the reimbursements for the late-filing colleges amidst claims these districts could be left in vital monetary peril if funds have been delayed.

Fiscal Cliff

If colleges are utilizing federal COVID-bailout funds for routine bills, consultants have warned that colleges may face vital monetary issues inside two years as soon as the additional federal funds have been depleted.

Throughout a current webinar, Marguerite Roza, director of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown College, stated, “Proper now the monetary shock is a optimistic one the place faculty districts are spending greater than they’d usually have, all else equal, someplace effectively over 4-percent extra,” Roza stated. “So, the monetary shock is one in every of elevated spending.”

She stated that elevated spending is “largely” pushed by ESSER funds, however she famous by the 2024-2025 faculty yr that cash will not be obtainable. Resulting from that reality, together with different unfavourable developments reminiscent of a recession and inflation, Edunomics officers predict “issues get, actually, fairly ugly” for colleges nationwide as they face a monetary “bloodletting,” Roza stated.

“Clearly, ESSER is boosting spending, however then it ends abruptly in September ’24,” Roza stated. “And anytime you’ve gotten a bunch of cash you could spend, after which it stops, you’ve gotten what you name a ‘fiscal cliff.’ After which that’s a little bit of a shock. So we have now the shock of this extra cash, after which the shock of it stopping. So, the districts which might be most in danger when that stops are the districts which might be utilizing ESSER for recurring monetary commitments.”

Nationwide, the federal authorities reviews that $130 billion in federal COVID-bailout funds stay unspent at college districts, however Roza stated colleges are anticipated to burn by means of that cash shortly within the months forward, saying there are indications faculty spending of ESSER funds is “selecting up with a vengeance.”

“Spending it down goes to require, at this level, $5 billion a month in spending, or $60 billion a yr,” Roza stated.

She stated that may imply most districts nationwide will enhance spending by practically 8 %—after which the federal COVID funds will stop.

“That’s what we’re calling an ESSER hangover,” Roza stated. “We make these commitments. The cash, the income supply, runs out, however the commitments proceed on.”