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03/23/2021 03:36 PMThe Board of Education (BOE) clashed this past week over the injection of a roughly $1.24 million in grant monies set aside for COVID-related educational expenses, with some board members pushing to apply some of that to this year’s school budget as an offset against tax increases, while others argued the full amount should be reserved for the looming and unknown needs of staff and students post-pandemic.
Two grants—about $900,000 from the federal American Rescue Plan passed last week and $344,000 from the state Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) Fund—have been earmarked specifically for a range of pandemic-related expenses for local school districts, ranging from hiring interventionists for learning loss, adding mental health supports, and facility repairs.
Advocates and educators have been warning that the return to classrooms full time, which Madison is planning to do late this month, will not be easy, and will require addressing social-emotional health along with a complex set of factors, many of which won’t be clear until students set foot in buildings.
Some BOE members, as well as a handful of community members, called passionately for the money to be held for future years in anticipation of these hurdles. Others argued that a fraction of those grants could provide a significant offset for taxpayers in a still-uncertain financial climate today.
The Board of Finance (BOF) had informally suggested $100,000 be taken from these grants to offset this year’s budget, according to town officials. Turning that into a formal mandate requiring the BOE to find $100,000, from the grant or another source, must take place on or before March 24 (after press time), according to Finance Director Stacy Nobitz, when the BOF has another workshop.
Some BOE members questioned whether the cut was procedurally or even legally allowable. Superintendent of Schools Dr. Craig Cooke said the path to moving the grant money to this year’s budget under state or federal oversight remained unclear, though he added other districts are currently discussing similar moves.
The proposal for a $100,000 offset, which technically would only have been a recommendation to the BOF, was eventually defeated along party lines 3-5, with Republicans Diane Infantine-Vyce, Happy Marino, and Chair Galen Cawley in favor, and Democrats Greg DeSantis, Katie Stein, Tom Pellegrino, Emily Rosenthal, and Cathy Miller against. Republican Violet McNerney was absent from the meeting.
At a BOF workshop the day following the BOE meeting, the divide also appeared to fall along the same lines, both in terms of party and reasoning. The BOF eventually chose to continue their discussion to a further meeting.
BOF Chair Jean Fitzgerald said at that meeting she had seen misinformation on Facebook suggesting that the $100,000 was a cut rather than an offset. She made the point that grants used in this year’s budget would be addressing the same COVID needs for which they were intended, and also that the $344,000 had been finalized and was guaranteed.
“There are projects that are directly related to COVID issues,” she said. “I would like to see the funds used to help the children…[through] the plan the [BOE] had this year to help the children.”
Cooke clarified that $100,000 would by default actually “roll up” and automatically be applied to the next three budgets unless the BOE said otherwise.
Part of the lack of clarity came due to how fast things were moving as well as the timing of the grants. Both were received after the BOE voted on the budget last month, and schools were not informed of the specifics about federal grant through the American Rescue Plan until a little more than a week ago, according to Cooke.
Officials also made it clear the exact amount of the federal grant, about $900,000 of the potential $1.2 million anticipated, was not set in stone, and that technically none of the monies have been received yet.
Stein was maybe the most vocal opponent of using the grants as an offset, focusing on what she said was almost certainly an extremely difficult and potentially very long road back to health and academic normalcy for both students and staff.
“We don’t know what the needs of our students are, we don’t know what the learning losses entail, and we still have a lot of work to do,” she said. “We have not had all our students in the building yet. Our teachers are overworked and overwrought. They need our support and they need this extra personnel to support their work. I don’t want them ending up back in the classroom in September and having to be both social worker and teacher and tutor.”
She also questioned the specific number, calling it arbitrary, with Marino saying that $100,000 was a compromise that was viewed as palatable to the whole BOE.
Though at press time Cooke told The Source that administrators are still finalizing a draft plan to implement the grants, he has previously discussed adding both interventionists (specialist positions that focus on targeted help for students with increased needs) as well as classroom teachers.
Marino argued that the $100,000 was a “very tiny portion” of the total grant, saying she personally would have supported even more as the town contends with the continued financial impact of the pandemic on small businesses and taxpayers.
“It’s really not a significant amount, but it can significantly help people in the town,” she said.
That money would also be specifically earmarked for pandemic-related items in this year’s budget as well, she said—things like a summer program meant to address learning loss, or new technology supports, which the grant monies are explicitly meant to help fund, among other things.
Pellegrino, a lawyer with a doctorate in educational administration, objected specifically to the technical ability of the BOE to move the grants to serve as offsets, saying he interpreted the language in the relevant legislation to suggest “that this should be added onto and contemplated for the uncertainty of the future” rather than moved immediately to offset current issues.
“I don’t think it’s appropriate to have conversations around the offsets, completely separate and distinct from whether it’s fiscally responsible or not,” he said.
Cooke added that the $344,000 ESSER grant had more specific language in it that might restrict using that money as an offset, while the $900,000 from the federal package was a little more broad.
Infantine-Vyce pushed back against Stein’s characterization that an offset to help taxpayers would be at the expense of student health or school efficacy.
“I don’t think it’s an unreasonable ask. I think it’s fiscally responsible, and I don’t think by doing so it’s saying [that] we’re not supporting our students, we’re not supporting our administration, we’re not supporting our staff,” she said.
Infantine-Vyce added that she had “deep reservations” about investing too heavily in new positions that might carry on past the exhaustion of the grant money. Cooke has previously said there are ways the BOE can absorb or shed these positions when they are no longer needed or funded.
If grant money is eventually moved for an offset, Nobitz said the public will have a chance to weigh in and hear about the specifics through future BOF hearings and meetings as the larger budget process goes forward.
The BOF has budget workshops scheduled for Thursday, April 22 and Wednesday, April 28.