Local K-12 schools, colleges, and universities are receiving millions of dollars in funds from the American Rescue Plan, aid that legislators and school officials say will help educational institutions stay afloat as the pandemic rages on.
In Santa Barbara County, K-12 schools are receiving $208 million total, and in San Luis Obispo County, $68 million, U.S. Rep. Salud Carbajal, who voted in support of the plan, told the Sun. These funds are in addition to rescue plan money that’s going straight to local governments. He said the amount allocated is determined by the number of students and school districts in a county.
Carbajal said the money will go toward COVID-19 relief efforts such as the physical reopening of schools, preparing facilities for a safe return, improving air ventilation systems, technology, and mental health support.
“This pandemic really affected the mental state of many of our children, and they need some assistance in helping work through,” he said. “Mental health services are one of the many things in the funding that they need.”
The K-12 money will flow from the federal government through the state Department of Education before being allocated to individual schools.
Local colleges and universities are also receiving millions of dollars, though these institutions will receive the money directly from the Treasury. Carbajal said Cuesta College gets $14.4 million, Allan Hancock College gets $15.8 million, and Cal Poly gets $37 million.
The challenges that plagued higher learning institutions through the pandemic are different from those of K-12 districts.
“For higher education, it’s financial aid grants, as well as … testing, vaccines, PPE,” Carbajal said. “This is really just going to help institutions stay afloat, just like we did for businesses.”
Colleges and universities are required to spend at least half of the money they receive on emergency grants for students who suffered financial hardship due to the pandemic. Hancock said it plans to put as much of the money back toward its students as it can.
“We have a shared governance process on campus: All of this stuff gets vetted through our faculty and staff, and we all work on this together,” Hancock Superintendent and President Dr. Kevin Walthers told the Sun. “Our goal is to get as much money into student hands as possible, so that means we’re going to be expanding our Promise program for a couple of years, and we’ll be helping students pay for books or laptops. … We’re going to waive parking fees in the fall. Anything we can do to help our students be successful.”
Walthers said enrollment is down 16 to 18 percent since the pandemic started.
“Normally during these kind of situations, if your enrollment drops, the state pulls your money away,” Walthers said. “They didn’t do that this time, so we were able to keep our budgets and keep our staff working for students. From an institutional perspective, we’re still in a pretty good space, so what we really want to be mindful of is anything we can do to actually help the students financially.”
From the three federal stimulus packages combined, Hancock has received a total of $28.5 million. Not including the stimulus money, Walthers said Hancock’s general fund budget this year was about $81.4 million, so the aid amounts to about 35 percent of the school’s normal budget. But, Walthers added, the college has three years to spend the third and largest round of stimulus funds.
“We’ve got to be sure that we spend this money strategically, because it’s a lot of money,” Walthers said. “But when you think back on the historical underfunding of community colleges, it’s kind of nice.”
As the county races to vaccinate as many residents as possible and emerge from the pandemic, Carbajal commended Hancock for partnering with Santa Barbara County to run an accessible vaccine clinic in early April.
“When we look back on what happened, that’s going to be one of the things that we’re most proud of,” Walthers said of the clinic. “I think that ability for us to be able to tell people who may have family members who are undocumented, ‘Hey, come and get your vaccination at Hancock’—they know we’re a safe place for that. They know that this is a place where they can trust us.”
This article appears in Apr 22-29, 2021.