4 UC School Districts Recognized For Academic Spending Of COVID Funds

Tennessee Department of Education recognizing Putnam, DeKalb, Fentress and Jackson Counties Friday for prioritizing academic gains with COVID 3.0 money.

The Best for All district means a school system spent 50 percent or more of its federal COVID funds to raise academic achievement. Putnam County Schools Communications Supervisor Hannah Davis said the district focused on intervention with its money.

“It takes a lot of people to come together to strategically come up with the best ways in intervention and plans to help our students achieve where the pandemic brought in some learning loss,” Davis said. “Closing those gaps are important to our students.”

Davis said through the funding, the school system introduced the Tennessee All Corps tutoring program to the district, a partnership with Tennessee Tech that uses College of Education students to tutor.

“They are giving them an extra high dose of academics in a low ratio setting,” Davis said. “We see that this is beneficial. That is currently going on in a few of schools.”

Davis said the district also added response to intervention instructors to work one on one with students as well as technology and program purchases.

Best for All Districts will receive financial, operational, celebratory and resource benefits in appreciation for districts’ planned investments to spend their share of the $3.58 billion in federal COVID-19 relief and stimulus funding directly on services, resources and supports that will help students achieve academically