NCSD receives CARES Act funding

NEWBERRY COUNTY — Susan Dowd, chief financial officer for the Newberry County School District, said during the last Newberry County School District Board Meeting that the district received $1,720,467 million in CARES Act funding.

Dowd said through the CARES Act they had to indicate, out of 12 possible uses, how they wanted to use the funds and where they would budget those funds. Out of the 12 possible uses, Dowd said they chose four.

The first selection was Category Three, the provisions for principals and other school leaders, with $153,899 budgeted there.

“The description of activities we provided to them is to provide personal protective equipment to each school in the district and to provide personal protective equipment to each staff member. As well as the purchase of items and services needed to assist each high school move graduations from inside to outside, in order to social distance,” Dowd said. “We had to purchase services that we budgeted there, as well as supplies and materials. The purchase of services was actual rentals of the stages and additional items we had to actually rent to have the graduations. We had to purchase some deep cleaning services, during all the time we were out.”

The next use was the sanitation services and supplies, under Category Seven. Dowd said this use is basically for the purchase of cleaning and sanitation products for each school in the district.

The total budgeted for this selected use was $180,525.

The next use, which Dowd said was really a much larger share of funding, was the purchase of educational technology, which was under Category Nine.

“As you all know, there is the high likelihood we are not going to learn in the usual way, and have not been learning in the usual way since all of this began. There are going to be needs for distance learning and online learning, because we are going to have times where students are going to have to learn from home,” Dowd said. “We want everybody to have a device and we were told by the Department of Education that this area needs to be a high priority. Therefore, we are planning to purchase, and have already submitted purchase orders, for devices including iPads, laptops, cases and carts.”

Dowd said this will allow students to receive instructions and assignments at home or in areas that are outside of the classroom setting. This cost for devices is $526,709.

Additionally, Dowd said they know their teachers are going to need a good platform in order to do online teaching.

“For that reason, we are going to purchase a learning management system, so that we do have a better platform for our teachers to be able to instruct from home,” she said.

This platform will cost $55,000.

The final category of use is other activities, falling under Category 12, this is an area that will allow the district to make sure they have other areas of need covered.

“One area we felt could possibly be a need, if we are going to be transporting students to our schools we were told we’d have to look at a 50 percent capacity on buses. In order to do that, we felt the need to potentially have some more bus aids on our buses. In order to get additional bus aids, we will need some salaries and fringe benefits, and at a minimum could need 25 bus aids,” Dowd said.

Dowd added that if they get back to the classroom, there is one school that does not have a nurse and has around 700 students a day — the Newberry County Career Center. She said they will potentially need to look at hiring a nurse at that location.

So the cost for this use is salary and fringe benefits for the bus aids and a potential nurse, she said they’ve also budgeted purchase services, instruction and support services.

Dowd said they were also told they had to provide funding to local private schools. She said this is something they have to do with their federal funding and there is always a potential to have to provide funding from their Title One allocations. However, she said they (the local private school) doesn’t typically request it, but in this instance they have.

“They have about 208 students, we had a formula we had to go through to calculate how much they would potentially be allocated, and that total was $58,273,” she said. “We also had to meet with them and come up with their plan. They plan on using that money for contracted educational services — like tutoring for students falling behind, sanitation services and supplies, and educational technology.”

Dowd added that the educational technology devices they purchase will actually belong to the Newberry County School District.

“Anything we purchase for them stays our property. We will actually purchase for them and send to them. That is the requirement from the Department of Education,” Dowd said.

The total budgeted for this selected use was $804,334.

Dowd added that additional supplies and materials will be about $210,000 and the district may have other needs for continuity of district operations. She also said their plan can be changed at any point in time.

“We have until 2022 to expend these funds, I don’t anticipate it’ll take that long, I think we will be done (expending the funds) in 2021,” she said.