DPI to hire employees to administer K-12 stimulus funds

The North Carolina Department of Public Instruction will hire 24 temporary employees, largely to help distribute federal COVID-19 stimulus funds across the state’s schools.

The State Board of Education approved the hires at a specially called meeting Wednesday afternoon.

The hires will last though September 2024 and cost about $9 million.

The approved measure also gives more than $800,000 temporary pay to 37 individuals that have been administering funds and sets aside another $800,000 for contract and temporary employee services.

The positions will be paid for using the federal stimulus money.

“We are looking at unprecedented amounts of funding that far exceed our normal funding that we need to work through,” DPI Director of Learning Recovery and Acceleration Michael Maher told the board during a special call meeting last week.

Maher and other DPI officials noted extensive administrative tasks associated with overseeing the funds, such as accounting and auditing of the funds, compliance and monitoring of the funds’ use, communications with schools, support for schools and budget management.

But three of the positions, in Maher’s office, will go toward researching longer-term learning recovery programs. Those employees could evaluate different initiative’s impacts to guide teaching beyond 2024, Maher said.

North Carolina received $396.3 million from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act (CARES Act) last spring, $1.6 billion under the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act passed in December, and will receive $3.6 billion under the most recent stimulus, the American Rescue Plan.