How are North Carolina Schools Spending Covid Money? | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's Note: This post appears here courtesy of the John Locke Foundation. The author of this post is Bob Luebke.

    Since 2020, North Carolina has received -almost $6.1 billion in federal covid relief funds. North Carolina Department of Public Instruction (NCDPI) reports that state, public, charter, and specialized schools have spent $2.231 billion - or a little over a third of all covid allotted funds. That means about 64 percent of covid relief funds remain unspent. Spending figures are from February 2022.

    How are North Carolina Schools spending covid relief funds? To answer that question, NCDPI tracked .covid spending to one of six main areas. Here's how covid spending was divided:

    Salaries - 55 percent

    Employee Benefits - 8 percent

    Purchased Services - 6 percent

    Supplies and Materials - 27 percent

    Capital Outlay - 2 percent

    Other -2 percent

    Selected Highlights from Categories:

    Salaries - Total: $1.224 Billion

• $133 million for extended contracts
• $33 million for Instructional Support
• $26.6 million got for Teacher Assistants
• $19.4 million for drivers
• $25.4 million for cafeteria workers
• $718 million for "Bonus Pay"
• $10.2 million for "tutorial Pay"

    Employee Benefits - Total: $182.7million

• $92 million - Social Security Cost
• $69 million -Employer's Retirement Costs.

    Purchased Services -Total: $134.9 million

• Contracted Services - $84.9 million
• Workshop Expenses -$12.3 million

    Supplies and Materials - Total: $601 million

• Supplies and Materials $206.7 million
• Computer software and supplies - $90 million
• Furniture and Equipment - $35 million
• Computer Equipment - $241.8 million

    Capital Outlay - Total: $53.3 million

• HVAC Contract $12.2 million
• Furniture and Equipment - Capitalized -$14.8 million

    Other-Total; $34.6 million

• Indirect Costs $22.3 million

    By far the category with the largest expenditures was salaries. .Within that category, Bonus Pay accounted for.$718 million or about 32 percent of all covid spending to date.

    Let's remember, one of the main purposes of covid funds was to help redress the academic impact of lost instructional time.

    A growing body of research has found tutoring to be one of the most effective ways to redress learning loss.

    Meanwhile Tutorial pay, ($10.2 million) accounts for less than one half of one percent of all covid spending.

    Many feared that much of the covid relief aid would be used for staff bonuses and salary increases at the expense of helping those most severely impacted by the pandemic

    Sadly, it looks like those fears are being realized.