Last month, school districts across the state received written notice of a requirement from the California Department of Education that districts are expected to complete a report for years of expenses purchased with ESSER 4 and GEER funding, which are the COVID monies that were given to school districts during the pandemic.

We have reported on these expenses annually and accurately. This funding purchased a variety of things small to large, including cleaning and sanitizing supplies, Chromebooks, hot spots and cameras all the way to large expenses such as new air conditioning systems.

The expenses were many and important, and we diligently reported on them annually. State guidance when the funds were dispersed was limited and reporting requirements were changing, it seemed week by week.

Now, years later, CDE is asking all districts across the state to pull every single invoice that was spent for anything that was bought with the COVID money and then calculate demographically what children benefited from that expense in a broad range of categories including: Did they have a disability? Were they socio-economically disadvantaged? Were they English language learners? By CDE’s own admission this will take every single district office across the state 152 hours to complete, and it has to be done in March. More importantly, it has no direct benefit to kids today.

I am not bashful for pointing out when things are inequitable to poor, rural small school systems. CDE needs to realize what a disproportionate burden this is. We are not LA Unified with an accounting staff of 300 people. Every hour our district office staff takes away from our district operations to complete unnecessary paper is an hour we take away from work that benefits our kids in the district today. The district has made huge growth post-COVID in refocusing our students on expectations and work ethic and in improving facilities, and I don’t need an accounting staff to be doing busy work for paper pushers in Sacramento.

We have reached out to contacts far and wide down the state to activate our district lobbyists. Congressman Jared Huffman’s office has supported our request to look into it, and our trade organizations for school district administrators are fiercely protesting this ill-advised requirement. This needs to be unwound. It gets even worse, that this report is supposed to be completed in the month of March.

California needs to re-evaluate CDE structures and get their personnel out in the field and see what school systems with four or five people in a district office do before they mandate pointless, time-consuming, and probably never-read reports that have no direct impact on the success and achievement of kids.

Louise Simson is superintendent of Anderson Valley USD in Mendocino County.