State Senator Doris Turner announced that school districts in Central Illinois received nearly $125 million in additional funding to help address challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic. Senator Turner is hoping that students and teachers now see the end in sight on the pandemic and that the schools use this money to produce “higher test scores, and increased graduation rates.”
The funding was received as part of federal COVID-19 relief packages. Some local schools included is Morrisonville which received $438,516, Taylorville which received $6,435,198, Edinburg which received $673,771, Pana which received $4,976,666, South Fork which received $995,486, Nokomis which received $3,533,859, and Central A & M which received $1,769,680.
Funding came from the American Rescue Plan which allows flexibility in how they can use the money over the next 3 ½ years. 20% of the funding must be used to address learning loss, but schools have quite a bit of flexibility when it comes to where they spend the money on. The State Board of Education produced a guide for local school districts to help guide them on how to spend the money. In total, Illinois has received over $7 billion to support local school districts.
