Sedgwick County will allocate $2 million of its federal funding to schools to help kids learning at home alone.
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Sedgwick County has granted $2 million in federal funding to help school districts provide child care and supervision during the COVID-19 crisis, which has shut down in-person classroom learning in many county schools.
The commission gave only vague outlines to the plan, but the underlying idea is to help the schools assist working parents who are struggling with a lack of affordable child care options now that instruction has moved, in many cases, back to remote online learning only.
There are about 80,000 public-school students in Sedgwick County, 50,000 in Wichita USD 259 alone.
The Wichita school board voted Monday to move 13,000 elementary school students who had been attending live classes to online learning, because of spiking coronavirus cases and contacts that have put 16 percent of the district’s workforce in quarantine.
But that creates problems for parents who have to go to work and can’t stay with their children during the school day.
“We have 10 school districts that are headquartered in Sedgwick County and 20 that come into Sedgwick County,” said Commissioner Jim Howell, who made the motion to allocate the funding. “The schools have to be part of the solution here.
“I understand they have challenges, especially with staff, but they have the places, the spaces, they have a lot of staff that are still available, so if they need additional support to help solve this problem, I think that’s what we need to hear.”
Decisions on how to spend the money will be made by a task force to be quickly assembled by County Manager Tom Stolz, with representation from the county government and local school boards and administrations.
The money will come from the county’s $99 million grant from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security — CARES — Act. The county and school districts will have to move quickly to spend the funding by a Dec. 31 deadline.
Spending will have to comply with federal guidelines or the county risks having to pay it back to the federal government.
The vote on funding school programs came minutes after the commission rejected a motion by Commissioner Lacey Cruse to dedicate $1 million to day care in the community.
Her motion died for lack of a second and was replaced by Howell’s proposal to work with the school districts.
