Part 1 of a primer on Federal COVID relief funds to schools, in which the federal government tricked our state government into selling our kids to them for the price of cheap Chinese-made masks and dangerous, investigational COVID shots.
by A.J. DePriest and Tennessee Liberty Network
School board meetings throughout the U.S. are the new battlegrounds for medical freedom. Prior to the COVID “pandemic,” parents rarely doubted the intentions of government-run schools regarding their children’s health. It turns out they should have.
The internet is teeming with videos of irate, unhappy parents crying and begging school boards all over the country to unmask their kids. We see the panels of stone-faced school board members, silent behind masks (at least while the cameras are rolling) and seemingly uncaring while tears and pleas for help flow.
It is time for every parent and every taxpayer to understand that school boards have no teeth. School boards are powerless over what is happening in America’s government indoctrination camps.
They know how cruel it is to mask, isolate, quarantine, test and contact-trace kids—all in the name of “health and safety.” They know the “science” behind masking children has crumbled like Anthony Fauci’s credibility.
If COVID accomplished anything over the last two years, it opened our eyes to the stark reality that our government education system is a bloated bureaucratic babysitter with no accountability and no transparency. Backed by teachers’ unions, it has an insatiable hunger for power over the minds and bodies of our children—and a hunger for the money attached to each child.
Here is the real story of why COVID mandates are hurting children and destroying what little faith we have left in the U.S. public school system.
First, we need to understand where billions of dollars in COVID blood money originated and how it has been used to hold our children ransom across America.
Follow the Money
On March 27, 2020, federal legislation established a three-layer shroud called the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) Fund to support K–12 school re-openings and “pandemic” recovery.
The ESSER package is the most money ever given to public education—11 times more than annual Title I spending and five times more than total federal K–12 spending in 2019–20, according to the American Enterprise Institute.
Phase I of federal K–12 pandemic relief funding (ESSER I) was implemented under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act and released in Spring 2020. Most schools had closed by the end of March 2020, and few offered remote learning. The U.S. Department of Education said the $13.2 billion in ESSER funds were supposed to help schools address these challenges and assist in safely re-opening.
The CARES Act also established the $2.95 billion Governor’s Emergency Education Relief (GEER) fund, allocated to states alongside ESSER funds.
On April 21, 2020, the U.S. Department of Education issued the State Plan for the ARP ESSER Fund. All state education departments then executed a Certification and Agreement for ESSER funding.
Part B of this Agreement contains vague and ominous compliance requirements language:
The SEA will comply with all reporting requirements, including those in Section 15011(b)(2) of Division B of the CARES Act, and submit required quarterly reports to the Secretary at such time and in such manner and containing such information as the Secretary may subsequently require. (See also 2 CFR 200.327200.329). The Secretary may require additional reporting in the future, which may include: the methodology LEAs (local education agencies) will use to provide services or assistance to students and staff in both public and nonpublic schools . . .
ESSER II funds (3.5 times more than ESSER I funds) were allocated on Dec. 27, 2020, as most children still attended school remotely (if at all), despite drastically lower COVID cases in most states over the summer and fall and studies showing children have an almost 100 percent chance of surviving COVID and are the lowest candidates for spreading the disease. Even though U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said schools could and should reopen without fear, fears were stoked to a fever pitch by Big Tech, the media, Hollywood elite, and alarmist figureheads like Fauci and Gates.
Also in December 2020, Donald Trump signed the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations (CRRSA) Act, expanding COVID relief funding an additional $900 billion. The CRRSA Act gave K–12 schools another $54.3 billion under ESSER II funds and $4 billion in GEER II funds.
This brought total ESSER funds to $67.5 billion. ESSER II funds released to states on Jan. 5, 2021, are still being collected by K–12 schools, and are available through September 2023, even though the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a study in December 2020 showing the total cost for safely reopening all schools would cost approximately $25 billion—for the entire nation.
The Department of Education released its COVID-19 Handbook for states on Feb. 12, 2021.
Joe Biden signed The American Rescue Plan (ARP) Act into law on March 11, 2021, as a $1.9-trillion economic stimulus bill. The ARP Act allocated another $122 billion in ESSER III funds to K–12 schools, which are available through September 2024.
ESSER III funds were released to states on March 24, 2021. The Rutherford County School District received $43,774,580 in this round of funding, while Murfreesboro City Schools received $12,671,280, according to Tennessee Department of Education reporting of $2.2 billion of ESSER III Allocations.
By spring 2021, all ESSER I funds were to be awarded and any unused ESSER I funds refunded to the Department of Education for re-allocation.
On April 9, 2021, the Department of Education updated its COVID-19 Handbook to include the “Roadmap to Re-opening Safely and Meeting All Students’ Needs.”
Interim Final Requirements (Finally, the STICK)
The U.S. Department of Education distributed interim final requirements for all states to ESSER III fund recipients on April 22, 2021. Among these requirements for receiving ARP ESSER III funds, school districts finally discovered what they must do to make good on ESSER funds they accepted and how to receive future ESSER funds:
“ . . . the requirement clarifies that a Local Education Agency (LEA) plan must include how it will maintain the health and safety of students, educators, and other school and LEA staff, and the extent to which it has adopted policies, and a description of any such policies, on each of the CDC’s safety recommendations including:
• Universal and correct wearing of masks
• modifying facilities to allow for physical distancing (e.g., use of cohorts/podding)
• handwashing and respiratory etiquette
• cleaning and maintaining healthy facilities, including improving ventilation
• contact tracing in combination with isolation and quarantine, in collaboration with the State, local, territorial, or Tribal health departments
• diagnostic and screening testing
• efforts to provide vaccinations to school communities
• appropriate accommodations for children with disabilities with respect to health and safety policies
• coordination with State and local health officials.
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Now that we know the sleep-inducing details of how fast and loose our government behaves with our tax dollars, let’s connect the dots between the most money ever doled out to schools by the federal government and the real issue: our children’s health and why schools continue to push COVID mandates as if COVID is a life-threatening illness that can only be assuaged with draconian measures like masks and quarantines. Have we seen the tip of the iceberg, or is there something worse hiding under the surface?
Think about this: If COVID is such a deadly disease that cheap surgical masks made in China are the only way to keep kids in schools safe, why is there not a single OSHA-regulated hazardous waste disposal bin anywhere in any public school classroom, library, playground, gym or office?
Why aren’t kids and teachers required to change their masks and dispose of them per OSHA regulations every hour and a half?
Why aren’t hazmat bins being collected daily and taken to certified hazardous waste facilities for proper disposal of deadly pathogen-ridden materials?
The answer is simple: COVID is not deadly, especially to children. School boards know it. Our mayors and governors know it. Our departments of education know it. ESSER and GEER funds are the “carrot” for schools to collect millions in COVID relief money—but these funds also carry a very big stick. And all 50 states are holding our kids ransom for money.
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ARP ESSER State Plans to prove how each state will comply with interim final requirements were due June 7, 2021. To date, all 50 states submitted their plans (Tennessee Liberty Network has all plans). All plans have been approved by the Secretary of Education in the swamp (Tennessee Liberty Network has all approval letters). All states have allocation tables showing how much money each school district in America receives (Tennessee Liberty Network has all allocation tables).
Stay tuned for more on the Tennessee Department of Education’s unholy commitment to big Fed money in exchange for masking, contact tracing, isolating, quarantining, and vaxing students, teachers and staff.
