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ESSER Dollars Help the Davenport Schools

Davenport School District

Pandemic Coordinator Bill Schneiden says the district has spent, and can spend the money on a wide variety of programs, including broadband access for students, building repairs and air quality, and medical supplies.

"We hired online interventionists which were teachers who actually monitor students progress that are doing online learning and provide them with additional support or interventions on a regular basis."

Some of the ESSER money can only be spent on specific programs and needs.

"20 per cent of that money at a minimum, or in our case right at 10 million dollars, needed to be spent on what they were calling 'lost learning.' And that's the idea of giving kids opportunities to pick up what they lost during the pandemic in terms of achievement and learning."

Schneiden says the Davenport district has also spent money on replacing textbooks, new library books, headsets and webcams, and after school programs. And it's hiring new teachers for reading and early literacy.

The deadline to spend all this money is June of 2024.

A native of Detroit, Herb Trix began his radio career as a country-western disc jockey in Roswell, New Mexico (“KRSY, your superkicker in the Pecos Valley”), in 1978. After a stint at an oldies station in Topeka, Kansas (imagine getting paid to play “Louie Louie” and “Great Balls of Fire”), he wormed his way into news, first in Topeka, and then in Freeport Illinois. While a graduate student in the Public Affairs Reporting Program at the University of Illinois at Springfield (then known as Sangamon State University), he got his first taste of public radio, covering Illinois state government for WUIS. Here in the Quad Cities, Herb worked for WHBF Radio before coming to WVIK in 1987. Herb also produces the weekly public affairs feature Midwest Week – covering the news behind the news by interviewing reporters about the stories they cover.