By Dave Fidlin
Correspondent
As with most organizations and businesses, officials from the Whitewater Unified School District say they are trying to navigate the unknowns linked to COVID-19.
While the coronavirus has upended traditional classroom learning with the rollout of a virtual model, Matthew Sylvester-Knudtson, director of business services with WWUSD, discussed the fiscal impact the pandemic has been having at a recent School Board meeting.
Because the road ahead is uncertain, Sylvester-Knudtson prefaced his remarks by stating much of the short- and long-term financial forecasting is filled with a bevy of unknowns.
“There’s not a whole lot that’s known at this point,” Sylvester-Knudtson said at WWUSD’s most recent regular board meeting, held virtually March 30. “There’s so much uncertainty of when we’ll be back in school and what that will look like.”
Based on preliminary figures, through the end of April, Sylvester-Knudtson said the district is anticipating cost savings because the physical school buildings are not currently in operation.
From his preliminary number crunching, Sylvester-Knudtson said he anticipates WWUSD’s utilities expenses being trimmed $8,000 through the end of the month and substitute teaching expenses being reduced $100,000 though the same time period.
Whitewater Unified is shouldering one upfront cost specifically related to COVID-19. In an effort to ensure virtual learning is available to all students served by the district, Sylvester-Knudtson said $3,000 in expenses related to mobile hot spots was added to the ledger for families lacking Internet access.
At the recent board meeting, Sylvester-Knudtson also discussed how federal-level legislation in response to the coronavirus could impact the district’s bottom line in the future.
While it needs to pass through several channels — from the federal to state government, and then state government to the district — Sylvester-Knudtson said he projects Whitewater Unified receiving $200,000 to $250,000 through the CARES Act.
Sylvester-Knudtson described the dollar range as a “very approximate estimate,” based on federal funding linked to such programs as Title I and Part A.
Based on his knowledge of the timeline for using CARES Act proceeds, Sylvester-Knudtson said he projects the funds potentially arriving in the next several months. They would need to be allocated toward specific expenses by September 2021.
“The uses for this money, I would say, are pretty unlimited at this point,” he said.
During his discussion with the board, Sylvester-Knudtson also shared how the teachers and other district employees can take care of critical issues related to COVID-19 through the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, which went into effect April 1 and sunsets Dec. 31.
The federal legislation gives a full-time WWUSD employee the ability to take up to 80 hours of paid leave related the coronavirus if he or she is unable to perform duties — even remotely — due to quarantine, isolation or addressing symptoms related to COVID-19.
Sylvester-Knudtson said the use of the paid time off would not impact existing allocations offered through the district’s benefits package.
