The U.S. government allocated $190 billion dollars to schools for pandemic response[0][1]. Some school districts updated their athletic facilities.
There is no single solution to the current problem. Remote learning is a heavy burden on families with two working parents or single parent families that are not afforded the ability to work remotely (and even remote work is challenging -- my teammate can really only work from 8pm-2am without distraction because his two young kids are home and his wife has to go to the office). Yet, because of the current surge, many, many teachers are sick. Administrators are put into awful positions because nothing is going to work at the moment.
[1] NB: I don't agree whole cloth with the opinions in the article, but it does a nice job outlining that the Federal government handed out large sums of money to local school districts with almost no oversight for how that money was spent.
The money was given out as a lump sum with I believe a 3-year deadline to use it or lose it. With those restrictions it pretty much had to be spent on capital-intensive projects that could be done in 3 years.
Athletic facilities fit that requirement very nicely and would be useful for quite a long time in the future.
There is no single solution to the current problem. Remote learning is a heavy burden on families with two working parents or single parent families that are not afforded the ability to work remotely (and even remote work is challenging -- my teammate can really only work from 8pm-2am without distraction because his two young kids are home and his wife has to go to the office). Yet, because of the current surge, many, many teachers are sick. Administrators are put into awful positions because nothing is going to work at the moment.
[0] https://theweek.com/us/1008705/how-america-could-have-kept-s...
[1] NB: I don't agree whole cloth with the opinions in the article, but it does a nice job outlining that the Federal government handed out large sums of money to local school districts with almost no oversight for how that money was spent.