Richmond school board questions how federal funds distributed

The Richmond Board of Education is wondering why the school district got $65,000 less in federal funding than expected.

The school district was told some of the funds were distributed based on COVID-19 exposures in schools, but the explanation didn’t satisfy trustees.

The board voted unanimously to seek clarification from the ministry of education on how the money was allocated.

“It’s unclear, especially when districts of similar sizes received a higher allocation with perhaps not a significantly higher number of cases that we’re aware of,” said board chair Sandra Nixon at Wednesday’s board of education meeting.

Trustee Donna Sargent said using exposures isn’t “good criteria” to allocate funds, since the Richmond School District has spent a lot of money to keep schools safe.

“Not to say other districts haven’t worked hard, but we’ve worked really hard and allocated funds to ensure that we create safe places and that costs a lot of money,” Sargent said.

The federal “Safe Return to Class” funds were distributed via the provincial ministry of education, half in the fall and half in February.

The school district received $3.7 million in September.

At this time, the province held back $11.1 million across the province and then allocated it later in the fall, at which time the Richmond School District received another $416,000.

However, in the new year, after receiving an initial $3.7 million of “Phase 2” funds, again a small portion was held back.

But, unlike in the fall when the funds were distributed based on enrolment, the money was given out to school districts based on “incremental COVID-19 exposure cases,” explained secretary-treasurer Roy Uyeno.

The Richmond School District received just under $64,000.

If it had been based on enrolment, Richmond would have received about $130,000, Uyeno explained.

“It was quite a bit lower than what we were expecting and it was, when we compared it to other districts in the province, it was significantly lower than many districts, comparable in size or even smaller in size to our district,” Uyeno told the board of education.