TEA: Texas Will Send $5.5B of Federal Stimulus Money to Schools

A little over a month after the state released the third batch of federal relief funds, the Texas Education Agency announced they will release $5.5 billion to address learning loss and some of it will be used to hold harmless school districts for pandemic-related enrollment declines.

This is the result of months of advocates pressuring state leadership to release all federal funds to school districts as quickly as possible and a tug of war between the Legislature and Gov. Abbott who ultimately controls the appropriation of this money.

It is unclear what this means for legislators who were expected to come back in a fall special session to help allocate the federal relief funds if they get released in the interim.

Some claim that using the federal funds to cover some of the hold-harmless funding for the 2020-2021 school year is considered supplanting state obligations because the funds are already available in the state budget with HB3 being fully funded.

Here is how much your school district would benefit from these funds today.