Public schools used COVID spending for staff bonuses

Back in 2021, Congress passed what became known as the American Rescue Plan. The nearly two trillion dollar spending behemoth had funds in for nearly everything under the sun and it was touted as a way to minimize the damage from the pandemic and the shutdowns. But there was money in there designated for many other things as well. In more recent news, a new report from the National Assessment of Educational Progress showed that math and reading scores among American students are at the lowest levels seen in decades.

What do these two things have in common? After the bad news hit, Joe Biden’s Education Secretary, Miguel Cardona, was rushed out to apply some spin to the report. Don’t worry, he told us. Help is on the way, thanks to the President. Funds from his American Rescue Plan are going to the schools and they will turn these low scores around. That all sounds great except for one minor problem. As the Free Beacon reports this week, the money already went to the schools. And a large chunk of it didn’t go to the students. It went to lucrative bonuses for teachers and administrators.

Decades-low eighth-grade reading and math scores are no reason to be discouraged, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said Wednesday, because the Biden administration’s “historic” COVID-era school spending is poised to turn the tide. In many districts, a large portion of those funds have already been spent on lucrative staff bonuses.

A National Assessment of Educational Progress report published Wednesday found that math and reading scores among U.S. 13-year-olds are at their lowest levels in decades. Cardona responded to those findings by praising “positive results” in student achievement, arguing that the “historic investments and resources” provided by President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan would “reverse the damage.” In school districts across the country, however, a large portion of those funds did not go to more tutoring or new school materials. Instead, they funded bonuses for teachers and administrators.

So the teachers’ unions clearly must have gotten together and observed that a lot of money would be coming their way as part of “COVID relief.” And that seemed like a great time to start handing out bonuses, even though many of the teachers weren’t even teaching at the time and their unions were fighting to keep the schools closed. But they took the money anyway because of course they did.

The Free Beacon has plenty of examples to back up these claims. For example, in Wake County, North Carolina, the school system spent 78.5 percent of its pandemic relief funds on “salaries and employee benefits.” In the Chicago Public School System the figure was 77%. And keep in mind, Chicago was one of the places that fought the longest and the hardest to keep the schools closed.

In Lincoln, Nebraska, they attempted to use the COVID money for across-the-board bonuses for all of the teachers. Fortunately, someone in the state Board of Education found out about it and put an end to the plan. That person must have either been honorable enough to know better or at least realized how awful they would all look if they had done it.

All of this wealth redistribution for the schools is only one small part of a larger story. The federal government shoveled out trillions of dollars to the states that was ostensibly supposed to only be used for “pandemic relief.” But plenty of states realized that had a lot of “leftover” money. Did they send it back to cover the deficit? Don’t be silly. They found other things to spend it on.

You can read a report here where a partial list of all of these spending hijinks has been compiled. COVID money went to the construction of luxury resorts. $12 million went to the renovation of a minor-league baseball park. Some of it went to build a ski slope. None of that had anything to do with providing actual relief to real people who were impacted by the lockdowns. They just blew the money on pet projects.

So why wouldn’t the teachers’ unions hand out the pandemic relief money to their teachers and school administrators? It’s not like anyone else was being honest about it and there is still no honor among thieves.