Schools spent hundreds of billhions of COVID-relief funds on expenses that had “little” impact on students, such as Las Vegas hotel rooms and the purchase of an ice cream truck, according to the Trump administration’s cost-cutting department.
The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by Elon Musk to purge wasteful government spending, revealed on Thursday that schools have spent nearly $200 billion in COVID-relief funds “with little oversight or impact on students.”
Granite Public Schools in Utah spent their COVID-relief funds on $86,000 in hotel rooms at Caesars Palace, a ritzy Las Vegas Casino, while Santa Ana Unified spent $393,000 to rent out a Major League Baseball stadium, according to a report by Parents Defending Education and shared by DOGE.
The cost-cutting department also revealed that schools spent $60,000 of COVID-relief funds on swimming pool passes, while a California district used its funds to purchase an ice cream truck.
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“All of this money was drawn with zero documentation,” DOGE wrote in a post on X.
DOGE highlighted that the Trump administration is implementing more thorough requirements for dishing out the $4 billion left from the funds, requiring that all grantees must “provide receipts for every purchase before funding is released.”
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While the Trump administration reworks the Department of Education’s issuing of funds, the revelations about where money has been spent have sparked outrage from local leaders and education groups across the country.
“Recall those school board meetings when the ruling elites of Covidstan branded mothers as selfish disruptors simply for challenging their interpretation of “The Science” and scrutinizing how they allocated ESSER Funds? Never let them forget that we were right about everything,” Moms for Liberty said in response to the findings.
Will O’Neil, chairman of the Orange County Republican Party, called the funds being spent on renting the MLB stadium “an absolute joke.”
“This is outrageous,” wrote the Republican Party of Bexar County.
DOGE has taken specific aim at cutting spending by the Department of Education (DoEd), slashing $370 million in taxpayer dollars being spent on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) just last week.
The department terminated 70 DEI training grants within the department, including one that funded training for teachers to “engage in ongoing learning and self-reflection to confront their own biases and racism, and develop asset-based anti-racist mindsets,” DOGE said.
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