Some Kentucky school districts are being forced to pivot after more than $10 million in expected COVID relief funding for projects was denied.
These denials follow another round of unexpected denials of relief funding in March. Though some projects – including two in Boone County – weren’t on the chopping block for federal COVID-19 relief extensions, Kentucky’s education commissioner said the government should “honor its promises.”
“While I am pleased that [the Department of Education] will allow for Boone County to continue spending money on these two projects that were previously approved by the department last year, it is unfortunate that Kentucky has been denied more than $10 million – so far – to provide resources and improve the learning environment of our students,” said Kentucky Commissioner of Education Robbie Fletcher in an announcement last week. “We expect the federal government to honor its promises to states and to our students.”
The federal government issued COVID-19 relief funds during the lockdowns to help cushion schools against the economic downturn brought about by the pandemic.
The Kentucky Department of Education was informed in September 2024 that districts had until March 2026 to expend COVID-19 dollars, which was an extension of the previous funding period. Then, on March 28 of this year, a letter from new U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon informed districts that they were halting reimbursements for extended projects on the same day the letter was delivered.
“The extension was a matter of administrative grace,” McMahon writes. “You were entitled to the full award only if you liquidated all financial obligations within 120 days of the end of the period of performance. You failed to do so. Any reliance on a discretionary extension subject to reconsideration by the agency was unreasonable.”
The letter concludes by saying districts could request COVID fund extensions on a case-by-case basis, and the Kentucky Department of Education sent extension requests for projects in 13 districts in early May.
As reported by the Kentucky Lantern, Fletcher worried that districts would be left out in the lurch, given that some had already approved contracts for the work.
“Compounding the problem is that in order to get the extension to spend this money from USED, school districts and KDE have signed contracts that obligated how the money would be spent,” Fletcher said earlier this month. “Those contracts still exist, and some hard decisions have to be made about how to pay for these projects if USED does not honor its previous commitments.”
The two Boone County projects extended were one valued at roughly $26,000 for an interactive online learning platform and another for about $18,600 to extend Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library for one year, which provides free books to program subscribers.
Denied programs in Northern Kentucky include an online formative assessment tool for tracking student academic progress in Boone County Schools, as well as electrical upgrades for heating and ventilation systems at Holmes High and Middle Schools in Covington.
The following projects were denied, according to the Kentucky Department of Education:
- Boone County: $167,566.27 for an online formative assessments
- Christian County: $7,983,326.94 to construct a new Christian County High School
- Clinton County: $149,864 for outdoor classrooms at the Clinton County Early Childhood Center and Albany Elementary School
- Clinton County: $290,904.18 for district-wide security cameras.
- Clinton County: $958,472.71 for mold removal in roofs across district buildings
- Clinton County: $135,469.31 for upgraded auditorium lighting
- Covington Independent: $567,357.58 electrical component upgrades to ventilation and heating on the Holmes campus, which includes the middle and high schools
- Jefferson County: $340,347.96 for student homelessness services
- Knox County: $276.12 ventilation system upgrades at Girdler Elementary School
LINK nky reached out to Boone County Schools and Covington Independent for comment. Boone County declined to make a statement, but a representative from the district informed LINK nky that Boone County and the other districts plan to work with the Kentucky Department of Education to appeal the federal government’s decisions. Covington Independent was not immediately available to comment, but we will update this story if they do in the coming days.
Updating the HVAC system infrastructure at the Holmes campus has been a bit of a sore spot for Covington. The buildings are old and updating them would require specialized knowledge that’s difficult (and expensive) to come by, and the best way to go about funding such work, of which the electrical components are only one part, has been a source of debate among district leadership.
Fletcher affirmed the plan to appeal the decisions in the department’s press release.
“While we hope for more good news in the coming days, we stand ready to appeal the projects that have been denied,” Fletcher said later in the press release. “We will continue to fight for the resources our schools and districts have been promised by [the Education Department] to continue their mission of providing the best education possible to Kentucky’s students.”
The timeline for making the appeals is not currently clear.