Yet so much help is out there, untapped. (Phil Roeder)
By the spring of 2020, reality was setting in that the Covid-19 pandemic would stick around for quite some time, and Florida’s school districts were confronting an unknown education world.
Districts started talks about the next school year, considering mask mandates, staggered classroom schedules and other measures to bring struggling students up to par — all of which would need money.
On May 18, 2020 the U.S. Department of Education under the Trump administration released $770 million dollars to Florida schools to address the impacts of Covid-19.
More than a year later, and now under President Joe Biden’s administration, the amount has spiked to some $15 billion — a largely unused stockpile of federal relief funds designated to pull Florida schools out of the Covid pandemic and mitigate its effects for this school year as well as the next few school years, according to data from the U.S. Department of Education.