Students and families receive packaged meals from Tucson Unified School District workers who are distributing meals along the district’s bus routes during closures associated with the COVID-19 pandemic.
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During the pandemic, federal relief helped Tucson Unified School District survive an unprecedented crisis. The money, more than $267 million, allowed the district to build an online learning platform, provide tablets to over 40,000 students, and hire hundreds of staff to help children recover from lost classroom time.
But that money was never meant to last forever. And now it’s gone.
Nearly $27 million of the relief was used to assist academic recovery for positions like classroom aides, interventionists, and reading specialists. TUSD Superintendent Gabriel Trujillo says the goal was to give students personalized support, especially in the lower grades, where early reading skills are essential…