The Covid Money Trail It was the largest burst of emergency spending in U.S. history: Two years, six laws and more than $5 trillion intended to break the deadly grip of the coronavirus pandemic.“The excuse in education has always been, ‘We don’t have enough money,’” said Keri Rodrigues, president of education advocacy group the National Parents Union.“Now we have a historic amount of spending, like never before, and you’re not even spending the money.” Advertisement The money was not spent for a variety of reasons — including delayed access to funds, a nationwide educator shortage that has made it hard to fill new positions, and a desire to make the money last, according to interviews with school officials and education experts in six states.Kimberly Hoffman, executive director of data monitoring and compliance for the school district of more than 77,000 children,said 14 percent of the grant has now been spent.“A lot of our planning on using that third pot of ESSER funds is really what’s going to happen this year in the ’22-23 school year and next year, in 2023-24.” Using factors including test scores, family poverty data and the number of weeks students spent in remote learning, Edunomics estimates that children in Baltimore have lost an average of 18 weeks of learning in math and 15 weeks in reading."