The American Rescue Plan (ARP) requires school districts receiving ARP funds to obtain public comment, and to engage in meaningful consultation with stakeholders, on the use of the ARP funds.  We know APS never did this.  But worse, we have now learned that the School Board itself never voted to approve spending $10.5 million on the Virtual Learning Program (VLP), the amount allocated to VLP in APS’ ARP application to the state. 

When APS voted in May 2021 to create a VLP program, it did not know how much the VLP program would cost, and disclosed to the public only a small fraction of the eventual costs of that program.  It also suggested that those program costs would be paid by county funding rather than ARP funds.  Thus, it is difficult to understand how APS can certify that it obtained public comment and engaged in meaningful consultation with stakeholders regarding spending $10.5 million of ARP funding on the VLP program.  

Specifically, APS disclosed in spring that it was seeking an additional $2 million in funding from the County to pay for summer school incentive payments and for the Fall 2021 VLP, two items it later claimed would be funded by ARP funds.  APS’s budget at the time estimated that Distance learning would cost $767,500, to which APS added $120,592 on May 6.  The Board’s budget vote on May 6, 2021  thus implied a VLP cost of $888,000; the vote was not on the $10.5 million ultimately allocated to the program.  We asked when the Board voted to approve spending federal rescue money on VLP, and APS pointed us to a budget dated October 2021 that does contain $10.5 million for VLP—but this version of the budget was not released for community input and the Board did not vote on it.  In this way, APS spent on VLP many multiples of what it suggested to the community it would spend, and over 58% of its allocated ARP/ESSER funds—all without any community input nor a School Board vote.  

These expenditures represent a direct tradeoff with things like teacher compensation, intensified tutoring, extended school day programming, or any number of other measures to help address learning loss and students’ social and emotional health – recovery and educational services to which ARP funds were intended to be devoted.  In fact, APS confirmed this direct tradeoff:  “If the funds had not been used for the VLP (mostly staffing), they would have been used for staffing but at the schools.”  APS does not know whether the community supports its use of the ARP funds for those programs because APS never asked.  It is not too late.  APS is revising its application as a result of our investigation, and should take the opportunity now to engage the community around what is most important to students, parents, and teachers. 

Read on for the details. 

Background: In July 2021, APS posted a plan reflecting its intended use of the ARP funds.  Among other things, that plan reflected that APS intended to use $10.5 million out of $18.9 million in federal funds for VLP.  At that time, parents raised concerns that APS had failed to engage the community as required.  APS responded that the “School Board held six public work sessions over two and a half months to develop the budget and to determine how the ARPA/ESSER III funds would be used in the budget in support of students, staff, and school operations.”  This was never a satisfactory answer, because the budget never reflected “how the ARPA/ESSER III funds” would be spent and the School Board did not discuss it.  

Board Fails to Approve:  In the course of our investigation into APS’ formal ARP application (during which we identified errors that APS must now correct), APS informed us that the VLP costs were broken down in the budget for the 2021-22 school year, and pointed us to the School Board’s 2021 Adopted Budget, which was dated October, 2021.  This was odd, because those VLP costs had not appeared in the Superintendent’s Proposed Budget in February, nor in the budget approved by the Board on May 6 2021. We asked APS when the October 2021 budget was approved by the Board – including the $10.5 million being spent on the VLP program.  APS’ FOIA office pointed us to the budget documents from February through May, none of which included the $10.5 million for the VLP program.  The October 2021 (and operational) budget, which includes $10.5 million for the VLP program, was never voted on by the Board. In other words, in addition to not voting on whether school should be virtual for most of last year, the school board also did not vote on whether to expend $10.5 million to fund a virtual learning program this year.  

An APS spokesperson notes that at the time of budget adoption on May 6, funding for the additional school-based positions for distance learning was included in the home-school staffing allocations, and that APS still maintains that VLP would draw down staffing at the schools the students came from.  This may help explain why APS failed to adequately plan for staffing of the VLP program, because, as it turned out, home-school teachers could not readily be moved to VLP (which is why VLP started the school year with over 40 vacancies).  But it also confirms that neither the Board nor the public knew the full cost of the VLP program at the time the Board voted on the budget.  

Parents Misled:  The APS FOIA office also told us that parents did have notice that VLP would be funded with ARP funds.  It pointed us to a release from April 9, 2021 that purportedly disclosed that ARP funds would be used “to fund Summer School incentive payments for staff, [and] the Distance Learning Program for the fall 2021 . . . .”  This is not true.  That release said that APS was requesting $2.06 million “from the county” to fund those programs.  The APS FOIA office also pointed us to an April 12, 2021 Joint School Board/County Board work session where APS sought from the county (among other things) $580,000 for the distance learning program for fall 2021; and to the final Board approval document, reflecting a one-time transfer of $2.8 million from the county.  While an APS spokesperson now claims that those amounts were only for one-time costs associated with VLP, the budget documents at that time stated that they funded the “Distance Learning Program for fall,” and no documents informed the public that the VLP program would cost $10.5 million or that APS would use its ARP funding to fund that program.  In fact, they suggested that the modest cost of the VLP would be funded by county funds.  It is nonsensical to suggest that parents had a meaningful opportunity to consult on the use of $10.5 million in ARP funds for a new VLP program, when parents were told that the program would cost much less and be paid for with county funds. 

APS Response:  A spokesperson for APS responding to us about this issue, stated that APS “had to use the [ARP] funds to close our budget gap and therefore had to allocate ARPA funds to items in the budget – not new projects or services” (like after school tutoring or increased teacher compensation).  Further, he stated that APS “stated many times that the ARPA funds would be used to balance the budget.”   This response suffers from several defects.  First, APS did not “have to use” the ARP funds to close the budget gap – rather, the ARP funds served as a convenient means of avoiding otherwise required tradeoffs, like whether to fund a brand new virtual learning program when the state already offered two such programs.   Second, aside from listing the ARP funds as a source of revenues, APS never disclosed in its budget documents its intent to use those funds to balance the budget, such that a meaningful consultation with stakeholders about that use could ensue.  Third, even if it had, this would not meet ARP requirements.  Under DOE regulations, APS must develop and submit to the state a detailed plan that describes how the funds will be used for prevention and mitigation strategies, how it will be used to address the impact of learning loss, and how those interventions will address academic impact of lost instructional time and respond to SEL needs.  The application APS submitted did not say that APS used the funds to “close its budget gap” (nor did APS submit its budget documents as part of its ARP application) because had it done so, it would not comply with the ARP requirements.  APS’s application stated that specific funds would be used for VLP, summer school, and other items.  It is that plan about which APS was required to engage in meaningful consultation with stakeholders, including students and families, but did not.  

Such consultations are not mere formalities.  As one commentator has noted, the consultation requirements were the only meaningful control inserted into the ARP, and reliance on the normal budget approval process is not what the ARP anticipated.  The DOE explains that school system “plans are necessary to ensure transparency and accountability for use of the funds.” “The public, and in particular students, their families, and educators have a vested interest in understanding a [school system’s] priorities and plans for the funds and whether and how the [school system] will use the funds to address their students’ academic, social, emotional and mental health needs.  Requiring the development and posting of the [school system’s] plan will result in important transparency.”  

In submitting its revised ARP application, APS will include in that application a certification from Dr. Durán that APS has complied with the public comment and stakeholder consultation requirements of the ARP.  We hope APS will take compliance with the ARP requirements more seriously this time so that Dr. Durán can have confidence in his certification.  We ask that APS have a robust discussion about the use of those ARP funds, and truly consult with parents and other stakeholders about how those funds can be used to remedy the dramatic learning losses resulting from last year’s school closures.