{"id":1230268,"date":"2022-01-21T16:07:54","date_gmt":"2022-01-21T21:07:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1230268"},"modified":"2022-01-21T16:08:31","modified_gmt":"2022-01-21T21:08:31","slug":"fact-check-jen-psaki-claims-florida-not-spending-covid-relief-properly-on-schools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/fact-check-jen-psaki-claims-florida-not-spending-covid-relief-properly-on-schools\/","title":{"rendered":"Fact Check: Jen Psaki Claims &#039;Florida&#039; Not Spending COVID Relief Properly on Schools"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">26<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Ffact-check-jen-psaki-claims-florida-not-spending-covid-relief-properly-on-schools%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1230268&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/Jen-Psaki-Getty-3-640x335-1.jpg\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" alt=\"image\" \/><\/div>\n<p class=\"subheading\">CLAIM: The State of Florida is not spending money from the American Rescue Plan on school safety for coronavirus.<\/p>\n<p>VERDICT: MOSTLY FALSE. Florida spent two-thirds of the money, and other states and districts had worse problems.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"D-ROS-B1\" class=\"a8d\"><\/figure>\n<figure id=\"M-ROS-B1\" class=\"a8d\"><\/figure>\n<figure id=\"gmxrevmore\" class=\"H\"><\/figure>\n<p>White House press secretary Jen Psaki was asked by a reporter Friday to identify which states and districts have not been spending coronavirus relief money properly, a claim made repeatedly by President Joe Biden to explain the lack of tests.<\/p>\n<p>Her response: \u201cFlorida.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Not only was that untrue, but Psaki ignored several glaring cases where Democrats\u2019 own allies in the teachers\u2019 unions have alleged that Democrat-run cities have failed to spend money appropriately on COVID school safety.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"M-ROS-B2\" class=\"a8d\"><\/figure>\n<p>Biden\u2019s American Rescue Plan, signed last year, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2021\/10\/04\/politics\/florida-schools-covid-relief-funding-plan\/index.html\">allocated<\/a> $122 billion for K-12 schools to deal with the coronavirus pandemic, $81 billion of which was available immediately \u2014 on top of funding that had already been provided by the Trump administration.<\/p>\n<p>As schools struggled to reopen around the nation in the midst of the ongoing coronavirus surge, the result of the omicron variant, many Americans have asked what happened to all the money that was to ensure school safety.<\/p>\n<p>In Chicago, San Francisco, and Oakland \u2014 all Democrat-run cities \u2014 teachers <a href=\"https:\/\/www.breitbart.com\/education\/2022\/01\/07\/20-of-san-francisco-teachers-skip-school-to-protest-reopening-conditions\/\">staged<\/a> unauthorized walkouts earlier this month to protest what they said was a lack of safety precautions. In several of these districts, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.breitbart.com\/education\/2022\/01\/07\/20-of-san-francisco-teachers-skip-school-to-protest-reopening-conditions\/\">such as San Francisco<\/a>, much of the relief money had been spent on teacher pay, hiring additional guidance counselors, and \u201cprofessional development.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Notably, Biden\u2019s law gave states and school districts until Sep. 30, 2024 to spend the money; there was little urgency.<\/p>\n<p>Psaki had clearly prepared for the question. She cited several districts that had spent the money, noting that \u201cdifferent school districts spend it in different ways.\u201d Some spent it on \u201cventilation\u201d; others, she noted cheerfully, spent it on retaining staff.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"M-ROS-B3\" class=\"a8d adSo\"><\/figure>\n<p>It was necessary for Psaki to establish that there are \u201clots of ways\u201d to spend the money, so that she could imply that those Democrat-run cities that spent the money on salaries instead of coronavirus tests had spent the relief money appropriately.<\/p>\n<p>She then singled out Florida \u2014 and only Florida \u2014 \u201cwhere they have done little to distribute money, little to no steps to distribute money across the state and to school districts.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure id=\"D-ROS-B2\" class=\"a8d\"><\/figure>\n<p>Her information was out of date, at best, and flatly wrong at worse.<\/p>\n<p>It is true that Florida was the last state, as of last October, to submit a plan to the U.S. Department of Education for the use of the American Rescue Plan funds. Therefore the federal government withheld $2.3 billion in funding.<\/p>\n<p>But that was only the&nbsp;<em>last third<\/em> of the funding that Florida had received. As even CNN <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2021\/10\/04\/politics\/florida-schools-covid-relief-funding-plan\/index.html\">noted<\/a>, Florida had already received two-thirds of the $7 billion of its funding under the American Rescue Plan. The reason for the delay in applying for the last third, according to Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) at the time, was that the state had enough money for its schools, and that \u201cno district has articulated a need for funding that cannot be met with currently available resources.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure id=\"M-ROS-B4\" class=\"a8d adSo\"><\/figure>\n<p>Regardless, Florida did submit a plan for spending the last third of the funding, and U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ed.gov\/news\/press-releases\/us-department-education-approves-floridas-plan-use-american-rescue-plan-funds-support-k-12-schools-and-students-distributes-remaining-23-billion-state\">approved<\/a> the funding earlier this month to great fanfare, noting that Florida would be able to spend on \u201cclosing gaps,\u201d \u201csummer learning,\u201d and after school programs.<\/p>\n<p>Psaki should have known that. She provided no evidence that Florida, or its school districts, had failed to spend federal money on testing or safety. In fact, many Florida school districts had <a href=\"https:\/\/miami.cbslocal.com\/2022\/01\/02\/miami-dade-broward-school-districts-distribute-at-home-covid-tests\/\">distributed<\/a> at-home COVID tests to students ahead of schools returning from winter break.<\/p>\n<p>Christina Pushaw, spokesperson for Gov. DeSantis, pushed back sharply on Twitter, noting that while Florida schools had been completely open since the fall of 2020, schools in many Democrat-run jurisdictions had not been open, even today:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Florida public schools have been open to 100% of K-12 students since the Fall 2020 semester. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of many Democrat-run areas that received billions of dollars to &#8220;safely reopen schools&#8221; but are still forcing kids to do ineffective Zoom classes. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/Q9nFrDcqul\">https:\/\/t.co\/Q9nFrDcqul<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Christina Pushaw \ud83d\udc0a (@ChristinaPushaw) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ChristinaPushaw\/status\/1484591338708516871?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">January 21, 2022<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>That is not to say everything has gone smoothly in Florida: in Broward County, 75,000 tests distributed by the school district turned out to include some <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2022\/01\/11\/us\/schools-covid-testing.html\">expired<\/a> tests. But Florida is hardly the biggest problem.<\/p>\n<p>Psaki likely singled out Florida because it has refused to go along with the administration\u2019s draconian mask and vaccine mandates, and because DeSantis is considered a political threat to Biden and the Democrats. But her claim was misleading.<\/p>\n<p>Later, Psaki assured the reporter that the Biden administration was making sure there was no \u201cwaste, fraud, and abuse\u201d in spending the funds. That seems doubtful, if she equates spending on teacher salaries with spending on ventilation and tests.<\/p>\n<p><em>Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of <\/em>Breitbart News Sunday<em> on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Neither-Free-nor-Fair-Presidential-ebook\/dp\/B08PNN54BB\">Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election<\/a>. His recent book, <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.centerstreet.com\/titles\/joel-b-pollak\/red-november\/9781546099840\/\">RED NOVEMBER<\/a><em>, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at <a class=\"x5l\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/joelpollak\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener external\">@joelpollak<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>CLAIM: The State of Florida is not spending money from the American Rescue Plan on school safety for coronavirus. VERDICT: MOSTLY FALSE. Florida spent two-thirds of the money, and other &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1230268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1230268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1230268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1230268\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1230268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1230268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1230268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}