Morning Report: Where Sweetwater's COVID-19 Funds Went

By The Voice of San Diego, the Voice of San Diego

March 15, 2021

For months, parents and other stakeholders in South Bay have been trying to figure out where state and federal relief money has gone during the pandemic.

In answering this question, Ashly McGlone dug through the public records and found that while the district has spent emergency funds on things like personal protective equipment and air filters, administrators have also used the relief to pay employees — $6.7 million and counting.

The district has defended this decision as legal and appropriate. State and federal rules for coronavirus money give schools a lot of discretion over what constitutes a COVID expense.

Still, locals who’ve kept tabs on the district’s finances contend that every dollar should be spent on COVID safety and mitigation measures. Those government funds were intended to help Sweetwater reopen and meet the unique challenges of the moment, not to backfill an existing budget deficit.

A state audit last year suggested that the former superintendent and two financial officials may have committed criminal wrongdoing by misrepresenting the district’s finances. The district miscalculated its budget by more than $30 million in 2018, leading to cuts and attracting the attention of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

And … There Will Be School?

Sunday, San Diego Unified School District Superintendent Cindy Marten sent an email to parents alerting them that a “tentative deal” had been made with the teachers union to open schools six hours a day, four days per week April 12 in a hybrid online/in-person model. And that in the fall, the district would create a separate online platform for students who wish to remain at home so teachers would not have to balance a live and online class.

For April 12, there are still many open questions.

“The default school site model is four days per week of in-person instruction with precise schedules to be set based on the number of students who wish to attend in person, available space, and existing health and safety guidelines,” she wrote. In other words, principals and teachers now have a lot of work to do to translate the plan into how classes and schedules will actually function.

Many parents were worried about plans for the next school year and if partial service or hybrid plans would continue then. Marten addressed those concerns like this:

“We have already taken steps to make hybrid learning models unnecessary in the fall. Specifically, we plan to create a specialized online instruction model for students who do not want to return to campus, while employing enough educators to make in-person instruction available to all students who choose that option,” she wrote.

More Policy

• On this week’s podcast, hosts Scott Lewis, Sara Libby and Andrew Keatts explain what “opening” schools may actually mean. They recorded the show before this latest news. They also check in on San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria’s campaign promise to rein in police officers’ encounters with the homeless.
• Students in Carlsbad Unified and San Dieguito Union High School District are headed back to school for some in-person instruction beginning this week. (NBC San Diego)
• Gloria also announced late last week that he’s hired former Port of San Diego real estate chief Penny Maus to lead the city’s embattled real estate department. The city’s previous real estate director resigned last year amid scrutiny over the 101 Ash deal.

In Other News

• A devastating New York Times investigation on nursing homes that evade responsibility for serious incidents includes a San Diego facility in which a resident was raped by an employee, an incident that was rated as a “low-level problem.” The facility maintained a perfect rating.
• The city must spend millions to buy green waste bins for single-family home customers thanks to a new state law requiring recycling of organic waste. (Union-Tribune)
• Beginning Monday, San Diegans over 16 with these underlying health conditions are eligible for COVID-19 vaccines. (Fox 5)

The Morning Report was written by Jesse Marx, and edited by Sara Libby.

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