(The Center Square) – South Carolina’s 79 public school districts have received, or anticipate collecting soon, a combined $2.94 billion in federal pandemic assistance with local school boards accorded wide discretion in how to spend the “unprecedented” plug of one-time money.
State legislators have little authority to intervene in how boards spend the direct allocations to districts, nor can the federal money – three times what South Carolina schools collectively received the previous year – be used to supplant state education funding.
The South Carolina Department of Education (DOE) has requested districts submit plans on how they will spend the money, to ensure the allocations are legal, with emphasis on academic recovery for students that fell behind because of the pandemic’s disruption.
At least 20% of the federal relief money must be funneled into programs to help students catch-up academically. Only 30% of the state’s third-through-eighth graders are projected to meet grade-level […]
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