School District Keeps $4.2 Million Covid Funds Secret

On Nov 10, at the WBCSD#83 school board meeting,I publicly asked the Superintendent of Schools and the Board if they had received Covid-19 II and III Federal Funding. A State Representative told the public they would be receiving this in early July at a public meeting back last June. Superintendent Anselmo said the answers to my three questions were all Yes.

From that point I was flabbergasted because they had withheld information of having received those funds of some 4.2 MILLION dollars plus from the public. I have watched every local media in print and asked around amongst my friends if they had heard anything about them receiving any of this funding since the middle of July. I could have missed it but as much as I was searching for any information on it the odds would be pretty big against missing that kind of information the media would have surely mentioned for a week or two at least.

We are going to be hearing a myriad of reasons why they held back informing the public but I am somewhat tainted by the fact they had just received a YES vote from their Levy supporters for more than three million dollars a year for the next two years before receiving that 4.2+ Covid II and III Funding from the Federal Government to spend any way they wanted. This is the same funding Sheriff Wheeler of Bonner County just returned back to the Federal Government because of the Strings that Went With those funds.

I was told by another person attending the meeting that he had just looked at their online propaganda page and they only listed having a little over 3 million in the bank ? If this is transparency I will eat my hat !

In my opinion this is grounds for REMOVING Superintendent Anselmo as well as his Board of Trustees (?).

It bothers me that they would not announce receiving this 4.2 Million dollars for any reason because they have declared themselves as transparent in everything they do, but now that the secret is out in the open it is going to be interesting to see how they run damage control on holding back that information from the public. I can’t help but wonder how long Anselmo and his board of trustees (?) would have continued to keep it a secret if I had not asked the questions at their Board Meeting of Nov. 11. 4.2 Million just happens to be a sizeable sum of money that most school districts would announce to the media within days of even getting word it was on the way and even sooner once it was in their bank accounts. Why the big secret ?

Bill O’Neil
Priest River

*Update, 11/13/21 – A well informed friend told me today the 4.2 million WBCSD#83 is said to have received is supposed to be paid upon receipt of funds spent, up to 4.2 Million Dollars, some of which may have already been spent on a cafeteria remodel that is in the making. ~Bill O’Neil

Related: WBCSD Cost Per Student

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