Ohio schools receive more than $6 billion in pandemic relief
COLUMBUS – In Cincinnati, the school district expanded its summer education program to 11,000 students. Dayton hired 85 new teachers to ensure two certified teacher in every first, second and third grade classroom. And Youngstown bought 20 additional buses to improve social distancing.
Schools across Ohio have spent tens of millions of dollars on additional staff and computers and have beefed up summer school offerings, thanks to federal pandemic aid to schools meant both as a lifeline to districts and an opportunity to think about big changes to their educational mission.
“I would call it a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reshape education in a compressed period of time,” said Kadee Anstadt, superintendent of Washington Local Schools in northwestern Ohio.
Since March 2020, the federal government has provided $190 billion in pandemic aid to schools, an amount that is more than four times what the U.S. Education Department spends on K-12 schools in a typical year.
The Associated Press, relying on data published or provided by states and the federal government, tallied how much money was granted to nearly every school district in the country. The AP tracked more than $155 billion sent to states to distribute among schools since last year, including general pandemic relief that some states shared with their schools. Some districts will receive sums amounting to 50% or more of the cost to operate their schools for a year.
The aid averages nearly $2,800 per student, but it varies widely by district and state, according to the AP’S analysis. In Ohio, the overall allocation is about $6.2 billion. The study found that the Ohio median total per district is $2.7 million and the median spending per student is $3,252.