Kentucky Department of Education officials said federal education officials won’t be reimbursing $56 million in federal coronavirus relief money that it had previously told schools it would cover.
On March 28, the U.S. Department of Education sent state education officials notices that it wanted to claw back unspent coronavirus relief funding dollars. That means that the federal government won’t reimburse $18 million to the Kentucky Department of Education and $38 million to 14 school districts that had allocated or had spent the money, according to information provided by state education officials.
Almost all the $38 million for 14 local school districts was set aside for construction or new school buses, said Jennifer Ginn, a spokeswoman for the Kentucky Department of Education. In a Friday news release, Ginn noted the March 28 letter said the U.S. Department of Education will consider an extension to the liquidation period on an individual project-specific basis.
KDE has collected that information from the districts and has submitted the request for the districts and the unspent funds KDE had remaining, she said.
“While we still hope to have these projects approved so our districts can move forward, they should not have to go through this extra step and the uncertainty because these projects had already been approved by” the U.S. Department of Education, Commissioner of Education Robbie Fletcher said in the news release. “We expect the federal government to honor its commitments to our schools and districts.”
Read the rest at the Herald-Leader.
