How are schools planning to spend billions in COVID relief money

New staff, new tech and even new classrooms – that’s just some of what school superintendents across the country are buying with the windfall of COVID-19 relief dollars Congress has sent their way since the pandemic began. Those are the findings of a new survey of hundreds of school leaders put together by the national School Superintendents Association, or AASA.

Before we get to the survey, though, some context:

Congress has approved essentially three big buckets of money for K-12 schools to help cover their pandemic costs: $13 billion from the CARES Act of March 2020, $54 billion from a December follow-up relief package and a whopping $122 billion from the American Rescue Plan, passed in March.

The American Rescue Plan is “huge,” said Georgetown University’s Marguerite Roza, who studies school finance. “It is for sure the largest one-time federal investment in public education in this country.”

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