Questions regarding use of ESSER funds

The ESSER Funds were issued to local school districts out of various COVID Relief funds. For the ESSER 3 funds, or the ARP, HSCSD#1 had to have a written plan which included public meetings to see how the community wanted to spend the funds. The primary purpose of the funds was to help open schools safely after COVID and then to help with the learning loss that occurred during closures.  HSCSD#1 applied for $3.2 million. 

Solution Tree is a vendor who provides consultants to schools to teach them about the PLC Model. The PLC model is about a culture of a collaborative effort amongst teams, both horizontal and vertical, and although it may not have been called PLC, the concept is not new. It is common sense to collaborate with the people you work with for the best outcomes. A study done by the University of Arkansas, Barnes and McKenzie, May of 2024, states that there was…. “no statistically significant effect of PLC at Work participation on weighted student achievement or student value-added growth.”  https://arkansasadvocate.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Effects_of_PLC_at_Work_in_AR.pdf

How do we know that the money the school has spent on Solution Tree is helping our students to learn more and be more successful? My research shows we have spent over $146,000 of the ESSER funds with Solution Tree since January 1, 2021, which could have been used for an after-school program to actually address lost learning due to COVID. 

Our graduation rate for the 22/23 cohort was 78%, according to the Wyoming Department of Education at https://reporting.edu.wyo.gov/ibi_apps/run.bip?BIP_REQUEST_TYPE=BIP_LAUNCH&BIP_folder=IBFS%253A%252FWFC%252FRepository%252FPublic%252FGradRates%252F&BIP_item=DistrictGradeRatePHTML.htm . That means 10 students did not graduate while this program has been implemented.  For the previous years our graduation rates were 86.8% (21/22), 87.8%  (20/21) and 79.3% (19/20), while not great numbers, they are all  higher than the latest reported rate. 

One of the administrative employees of HSCSD#1 is a consultant for Solution Tree https://www.solutiontree.com which from what I have found out goes directly against policy CBF, which was reviewed 6/15/2023. The policy specifically states this school employee “will not perform any action in which he has discretionary authority which directly and substantially confers an economic benefit on a business or other undertaking in which he has a substantial financial interest or in which he is engaged as a counsel, consultant, representative or agent.” The policy can be found here:  https://docs.google.com/document/d/1P2EpACBs6pGes-L9c4pidZTN_OxPbuGUUlnEP6pYJ2g/edit 

How can the school board allow a leader in our district to knowingly violate their own policy?  Why were these funds not used directly to address the learning loss that occurred during COVID?

Sincerely, Jean Skelton