CHARLESTON, W.Va. — School districts in West Virginia are being encouraged to submit funding plans for critical COVID-19 relief money before students and teachers head back to school this fall.
Melanie Purkey, the executive director of the state Department of Education’s Office of Federal programs, said, so far, they’ve heard from 35 counties about their plans on how they propose to spend the funding from the American Rescue Plan.
The state is receiving more than $761 million overall. The U.S. Department of Education last week approved West Virginia’s plan and announced the funds would be released in the coming months.
Purkey said most counties want to use the money to hire more staff.
“Particularly more counselors, social workers and experts who can help students with social and emotional behaviors when they come back to school,” she said. “Secondly, more instructional support in the classroom, so more teachers or aides.”
The process of getting the federal funding included the state outlining how they would support local school districts during their return to in-person learning.
“For the requirements of the grant, they had to spend certain amounts of the funding on learning loss, after school programs and summer program, so we had to describe how the state would support that effort,” Purkey explained.
Part of the funding includes bolstering existing and new technical assistance centers around the state. The critical funding runs through Sept. 2024.
County school boards have to present an entire plan up front for the whole three years, but can submit revisions if they want to add or subtract new activities over time, Purkey said.
“They would need to tell us we’re going to take funding from this activity that maybe didn’t take as much as we budgeted and we’re going to do something else with that,” she said.
The deadline for county school districts to submit their written plans to the state is Aug. 1.