Ector County ISD is breathing a sigh of relief after it was announced that millions in federal stimulus funding will be heading the district’s way.
In his media call Wednesday, Superintendent Scott Muri said the announcement had been made just a few minutes before by Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and members of the state House and Senate.
This is the third round of federal stimulus funding and Muri said about $55.9 million would be released in the coming months.
“… That money will be used to invest in supporting our students as we recover from this pandemic. We recognize that there is a significant amount of unfinished learning on the part of students pre-k through 12th grade and we will use those dollars to invest in the students of ECSID to make sure that we can meet not only their academic needs, but their social-emotional needs as well,” Muri said.
A news conference was planned for Thursday at Permian High School to talk about the importance of federal funding. Muri said it would feature members of chamber of commerce, the school board president and members of the local community.
“We’ll also talk about ESSER 2 funds,” Muri said. “ECISD has approximately $25 million embedded in ESSER 2 that we are still waiting to receive from the state.”
Muri said the district isn’t sure when it will receive the ESSER 3 funds.
He added that they aren’t sure where the ESSER 2 funds are right now.
“We’ll continue to work with our state legislature, governor and lieutenant gov to better understand what the timeline is for those funds,” Muri said.
He added that he doesn’t know what forms the district will have to complete to get the funding, what process they will have to go through, “or even the timeline.”
However, Muri said ECISD feels relieved by the announcement.
“We really appreciate members of our community. Our school board as you know was actually the first school board in Texas that completed a resolution and sent that to our elected officials. Many members of our community, moms and dads, business leaders in the community, many folks have championed the cause of ECISD to make sure that we would have those federal dollars. We’re grateful for the governor, lieutenant governor and our representatives for seeing fit to make sure those dollars will transition from the federal government directly into ECISD. We feel good about where we are today, but also are aware that there are further opportunities. Again, ESSER 2 money is still out there and we are uncertain as to what the future is for those dollars,” Muri said.
