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Indiana would redirect $25 million in annual federal school improvement funding away from low-performing schools under a state proposal for more flexibility in how it spends federal funds.

State education officials that Indiana intends to ask the U.S. Department of Education for its federal Title dollars in a block grant with fewer requirements on how the state must spend the money. School districts also would have more flexibility to use their federal funds to support more kinds of programs. The money currently supports specific student groups like English learners and specific activities like professional development and out-of-school-time care.

On Thursday, the Indiana Department of Education shared about which grants would be affected and how the state intends to use the funds instead.

Among the changes would be a significant shift in School Improvement Grants, competitive grants that currently fund improvement plans at district and charter schools identified as low performing under the Every Student Succeeds Act.

The state is proposing to instead give these funds to any school that’s “actively seeking to serve students that would have otherwise enrolled in the eligible school,” including microschools, charter schools, and “partnerships with industry or postsecondary institutions.” The new beneficiaries would not need to be considered low-performing.

The proposal says this new approach is not intended to “abandon efforts to improve existing schools, but rather to complement them by ensuring students and families have timely access to better options when needed.” The department would still consider investments in low-performing schools.

“This flexibility ensures students and families no longer depend solely on political will for innovative opportunities to materialize,” the draft says.

The draft proposal also says that the current framework for the School Improvement Grants has failed to produce meaningful results, and that receiving the funds has often come with stigma.

“Expanding eligibility through an innovation grant model allows [local education agencies] and partners to seek support without this public designation,” the proposal says.

Other changes to grants, school grading

Under the flexibility request, school districts would be able to use some of their federal funds as a block grant rather than adhering to the specific requirements of each Title fund.

The state would still calculate and distribute specific Title funds to schools but remove the requirements of each fund, allowing schools to use any of the dollars to fund any activities allowable under ESSA.

The change would reduce administrative reporting requirements associated with each program fund and allow schools a larger pool of money to support programs, according to the draft proposal.

Indiana is also seeking the flexibility to use a single performance system for schools rather than a separate one to meet federal requirements. That new system would be the A-F model that’s

The department is accepting feedback on its proposal through Aug. 25. Officials intend to submit the waiver request in September, and if approved, the flexibility would go into effect in 2026-27.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.

Michigan’s public schools have billions of dollars in emergency COVID-19 federal funding to spend — but they may be in danger of losing some of it if it goes unallocated by the end of September.

In 2021, President Joe Biden signed a stimulus bill that pushed funding into communities to help address economic challenges posed by COVID-19. The American Rescue Plan included funding for schools and education agencies.

Michigan in Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funding in 2021, on top of previous, smaller stimulus checks. In total, the state has over $5.6 billion in federal funds to spend on education projects. The 2021 money must be allocated to schools or state education agencies for a specific project by Sept. 30.

But some Michigan districts and agencies may be in danger of not meeting that deadline and losing the funding, according to .

A (DOE) indicates there is $740.4 million remaining for schools to reimburse. While some schools may have already spent their allocated money without receiving reimbursements, there are probably millions of dollars left available for claiming in the next few months.

Local educational institutions, or public and charter schools, were allocated a bulk of this money. Public schools that received the federal funding ” caused by the pandemic, in addition to addressing inequalities that were exacerbated during this period. This could look like additional after school or summer programs for students, something educational advocates have .

Additional ESSER money can be used for other health and education-related projects, including work-from-home or classroom technology, additional staff, improved air quality and mental health services.

Addressing long-term challenges

The one time payments may be difficult for schools to find projects for because they will only receive the funding once, according to Anne Kuhnen, the Kids Count policy director for the Michigan League for Public Policy. For example, if a district hired a mental health professional and paid their first year salary using the stimulus check, the district would have to use its own budget going forward, since the federal funds are not recurring.

“Expiration of the funding will be especially difficult for those districts that felt as if they had no other choice than to use some of the funds for recurring expenditures—and didn’t plan or plan well for this moment,” Michigan State Superintendent, Michael Rice said in a .

Michigan children were not exempt from learning challenges during the pandemic. Grade schoolers are less proficient in key subjects like math and reading than they were in 2019, before the pandemic, according to from the Annie E. Casey Foundation. In the same report, Michigan received its lowest education ranking in 35 years. Michigan ranked 41 out of 50 states for education in the 2021-22 school year.

Biden’s stimulus plan hopes to address some of these academic challenges, especially as the economy could struggle with a new workforce that is not equipped with academic proficiencies.

For example, students in the United States enrolled in K-12 education during the pandemic could collectively lose $900 billion in income if math proficiencies continue to be low, according to a study from the . This is attributed to the correlation between increased earnings and rising math scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress in the thirty years prior to the pandemic.

Additionally, predicts Michigan students will make roughly 5.4% less than if there had not been a pandemic due to learning loss. This could contribute to a loss in overall gross domestic product, the dollar amount of goods and services produced, of around $300 billion for Michigan.

The researchers of the study from Hoover Institution, Eric A. Hanushek and Bradley Strauss, write that much of the ESSER funding has been used for additional tutoring or education time for students to combat learning losses, but the best way to attack the problem would be through incentives for teachers to “take on more demanding classroom tasks.”

Rice said Michigan’s last two helped with pandemic and pre-pandemic era issues in the state, like the teacher shortage. He said recurring funding from the state budget will help address challenges like lack of literacy, transportation and teachers long-term.

“That’s not to say that we are where we need to be from a funding perspective,” Rice said. “It’s simply to say that we’ve made huge strides in the last two years, in the last two budgets, and I anticipate that this budget, we are going to make significant strides as well.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Michigan Advance maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Susan J. Demas for questions: info@michiganadvance.com. Follow Michigan Advance on and .

The state department of education failed to adequately monitor school districts’ use of millions of dollars in federal pandemic relief funds, and more misuse of the money is likely to emerge as spending reviews continue.  

A state , which reviewed only a sample of purchases made since 2020, found that the West Virginia Department of Education lacked “adequate capacity” to monitor how local school districts used the federal funds.

Of the 54 school districts reviewed, 37 school districts were deemed “noncompliant” in their use of federal funds, including improper purchasing procedures or using funds for unallowable activities.

In , the school district spent $60,000 of federal funds on pool passes.

Other funds were spent on private school expenses, food and a student choir trip out of state.

“It seems like there’s a massive problem and we should be looking at everything — but that’s not ever going to happen,” said Del. Kayla Young, D-Kanawha.

State lawmakers were notified of the audit’s results on Monday in Wheeling.

West Virginia has already seized control of two school districts — Upshur and Logan — due to issues that included misspending of the funds. As the state has until September 2024 to spend more than $400 million remaining in federal funds, the audit recommended that the WVDE increase its oversight of school districts’ spending by adding staff. But that’s unlikely to happen, the audit said.

“The WVDE indicated that it has no intention of increasing capacity since the deadline to spend [federal] funds is 10 months away,” said Brandon Burton, research manager for Performance Evaluation Research Division, who presented the audit.

The COVID-19 relief funds, passed down from the federal government, were supposed to be used to help schools safely reopen and help students recover from pandemic-incurred academic and emotional needs. Federal and state auditors found that states across the country spent millions in COVID-relief funds since 2020.

Beginning in March 2020, the WVDE has received nearly $1.2 billion in money from the federal funds.

Burton told lawmakers that, although state and federal monitors signed off on the school districts’ spending plans, the lack of a fiscal monitoring system within the WVDE failed to detect problems with the spending.

“Consequently, there are violations that the system did not detect,” he said.

‘I think the school systems were in a panic’

According to the audit, there were a number of reasons as to why the WVDE failed to detect the misuse of funds and improper purchasing procedures, including a lack of staff who could monitor spending.

“It’s a large amount of information that you’re having to go through,” said Burton, who added that in some counties only one person was reviewing financial transactions.

Additionally, there were issues with school districts not following proper bidding procedures and buying from vendors who weren’t registered with the state.

Schools have been permitted to purchase items from unregistered vendors, which Burton said increased the likelihood of school boards interacting with fraudulent vendors.

“ … The vast majority of [Local Education Authorities] made federal grant purchases with unregistered vendors totaling over $2.1 million,” the audit said. Most of the vendors were located out of state.

Melanie Purkey, WVDE senior officer for federal programs, told lawmakers that during the height of the pandemic, school districts were using the funds to quickly buy items like hand sanitizer, masks and laptops for remote learners. The procurement wasn’t “proper,” she said.

“I think school systems were in a panic, and thought, ‘We found a vendor who’s going to provide this, so we’re going to buy it,’” she said.

The WVDE is working on updating internal policies to emergency purchasing procedures, according to Purkey.

Reviews are ongoing of how school boards spent pandemic relief funds, and the state still has more than $476 million of those funds to spend by deadline. Unspent money will be returned to the U.S. Department of Education.

Del. Kathie Hess Crouse, R-Putnam, emphasized that the missteps would ultimately fall back on tax payers in counties where school boards must pay back misspent funds.

“There’s no consequences to them when we have to pay for that,” she said.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. West Virginia Watch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Leann Ray for questions: info@westvirginiawatch.com. Follow West Virginia Watch on and .