Schools to see $200M in COVID-19 relief funds
Money will mostly go to public school districts
Schools across Wisconsin have been awarded more than $200 million in COVID-19 relief funds, according to a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel analysis of state and federal data.
Most of that, about $155 million, is to go to traditional public school districts — more than a third of it to Milwaukee Public Schools, based on the number of students in poverty it serves.
But other education sectors also have benefited. More than 110 private and independent charter schools and organizations that operate them have received between $50 million and $122 million in low-interest, forgivable loans under the Payroll Protection Plan.
And a small group of charter school operators has qualified for both pools of money, totaling at least $3 million.
The infusion of cash, through the federal CARES Act, comes as schools struggle to quantify what it might cost to reopen in the fall amid a host of unknowns created by the coronavirus pandemic. One national study estimated the additional cost of reopening for an average district with about 3,600 students and eight buildings at almost $1.8 million.
Milwaukee Public Schools, the state’s largest district with almost 75,000 students, said Thursday that it has spent more than $20 million in COVID-related costs since the pandemic began.
“The situation is fluid,” said Dan Rossmiller of the Wisconsin Association of School Boards. “Our goal is to reopen if possible five days a week. Whether that’s realistic or sustainable will depend upon infection rates, the spread of the virus and people’s perceptions about how dangerous that is.”
The analysis by the Journal Sentinel looks at two pools of money: The Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund, or ESSER, which is distributed to schools based on their percentage of students in poverty; and the Payment Protection Plan, which was created to help businesses, nonprofits and other organizations pay employees and keep their businesses afloat during the pandemic.
As such, private schools qualify for that money.
Under the ESSER fund, the state Department of Public Instruction is expected to distribute about $158.5 million. Most of that, about $154.9 million, will go to traditional public school districts. Another $3.6 million will go to almost two dozen public charter schools that are operated by independent organizations.
MPS would receive the largest single allocation, at almost $56 million. Fifteen other districts would get at least $1 million each, including Waukesha, West Allis-West Milwaukee, Kenosha and Racine.
Under the Payroll Protection Plan, at least 115 private and public charter schools, or organizations that operate
them, qualified for loans ranging from $150,000 to $5 million, according to recently-released data from the Small Business Administration.
At least seven organizations received loans of $2 million to $5 million, including Carmen Schools of Science and Technology, Milwaukee College Preparatory Academy, Seton Catholic Schools and the Lutheran High School Association of Greater Milwaukee. Most of the schools that received PPP loans are private religious schools, many of which take students under one of the state's taxpayer-funded voucher programs.
A small group of charter schools qualified for both sources of funds, including Seeds of Health, Dr. Howard Fuller Collegiate Academy and One City Expeditionary School.
The number of schools receiving PPP loans may be higher; the analysis looked only at those entities that were identified as a school or known to operate schools. The Journal Sentinel analysis excluded early child-care providers.
Exactly how much was awarded in PPP loans is not clear because the SBA provided the dollar figures in ranges. A spokeswoman for the agency said that approach was intended to strike a balance between transparency in the spending of taxpayer dollars and privacy for the borrowers.
Districts must use a portion of the ESSER dollars to provide “equitable services” to private schools within their geographic areas.
But just how much is now under dispute. On Tuesday, Wisconsin joined a group of states and the District of Columbia in suing the U.S. Department of Education, arguing its new policy dictating how schools distribute those dollars is unconstitutional. The new policy, announced in late June, would require districts to calculate the private school's total enrollment, rather than just those students in poverty.
Critics argue that would redistribute dollars from low-income children to their more affluent peers in public and private schools alike.
The distribution of CARES Act funds has reignited a longstanding debate in Wisconsin and across the country over taxpayer funding for private, often religious, schools and independent charter schools, which critics argue bleed resources from public schools and are exempt from many of the laws and policies that govern traditional public schools.
Many believe U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, a staunch supporter of school choice, is using the pandemic to shift more public dollars into private and public charter schools.
Critics note that traditional public schools cannot avail themselves of the PPP funds and take issue with private and charter schools that receive taxpayer funding through vouchers and other mechanisms being allowed access to a pot of money that traditional public schools cannot dip into.
“They need to pick a lane,” said Julie Underwood, former dean of the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and former legal counsel for the National School Boards Association.
“If you're going to be a corporation doing the business of private schools, then get your money from sources for private corporations. You shouldn't come to the Department of Education.”
Libby Sobic, director of education policy for the conservative public interest law firm Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, said the schools applied to programs they were legally entitled to and did nothing improper.
“When Congress created the PPP loan program, it identified a wide variety of entities that could participate ... including schools,” she said.
“The CARES Act, on the other hand was designed to help all schools — public and private — reopen in the fall.” Eric Litke of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel contributed to this report.
Contact Annysa Johnson at anjohnson@ jrn.com or 414-224-2061. Follow her on Twitter at @JSEdbeat. And join the Journal Sentinel conversation about education issues at .facebook.com /groups/Wisconsin Education.