SALT LAKE CITY (
ABC4) — The Granite School District has responded to allegations of the misuse of COVID-relief funds — specifically, spending $86,000 on hotel rooms at Las Vegas’ Caesars Palace during an educational conference.
The allegations are part of an Elon Musk-led initiative to reduce government spending. Under Musk, the Dept. of Government Efficiency (DOGE) alleges that there were a number of cases of misuse, in which schools “spent nearly $200B of COVID-Relief funds with little oversight or impact on students,” DOGE posted on X.
“$393K to rent out a Major League Baseball stadium, $86K in Caesars Palace hotel rooms, $60k in swimming pool passes, and even an ice cream truck. All of this money was drawn with zero documentation,” the post reads.
DOGE said shortly after that the U.S. Dept. of Education will require all grantees to provide receipts of their purchases prior to receiving funding for those purchases. This means any and all expenditures must be paid by the states in advance and then submitted to the Dept. of Education for reimbursement.
The Granite School District responded to the allegations in a statement released Friday afternoon, refuting any impropriety on behalf of its educators. District officials said the funding was used to participate in an educational conference held in Las Vegas.
The district listed the following reasons defending the use of funds:
- The funding in question was used to pay for hotel rooms for 123 educators from our district to attend a three-day professional educational convention hosted by Solution Tree in Las Vegas in 2022. Solution Tree is a highly reputable organization that provides effective professional development for educators from across the nation.
- In advance of getting approval for use of these funds in this way, the district conducted a comprehensive needs assessment and submitted our plan which was accepted by Utah State Board of Education (USBE). Our plan outlined that we would spend these funds on professional learning.
- While the host hotel had some resort functions, our participants had standard rooms at the government rate. The average hotel cost for each participant was $220 per night.
- At the time, the closest available conference location was in Las Vegas, which was also the most cost-effective option being only several hours from Salt Lake City. Other locations offered at that time were much further away and would have resulted in more costs for participation.
- To replicate the quantity and quality of speakers and resources provided at the conference in-house would be significantly more expensive than sending our educators to this nearby conference.
- This was a successful and beneficial conference for our educators. Due to positive feedback from attendees and continued high interest, we were able to convince Solution Tree to bring the conference to Salt Lake City in the summer of 2024, allowing more local school districts to participate and providing even more teachers access to this valuable instructional training.
- Prior to today, we have not been contacted by any members of the media with respect to this expenditure and refute that the district has not been transparent with our budgets and expenditures. The Fox News national story contains many factual errors and no one from their organization has ever contacted us to verify the facts of the report.
- To be clear, there is no investigation into the use of these funds, which were approved by the Utah State Board of Education in full compliance with all applicable state and federal guidelines. Granite School District has NOT been contacted or questioned by any state or federal regulatory agency about the use of these funds. We first heard of this concern on social media. As such, we were surprised to be accused of fraud without having some contact from anyone to verify the legitimacy of the expense.
- We have and continue to be committed to providing high-quality professional development for our educators, and we’re confident that opportunities like the Solution Tree conference lead to better outcomes for Granite students.
The public school district represents areas across central Salt Lake County, including West Valley City, Millcreek, Taylorsville, South Salt Lake, Holladay, Kearns, and Magna, as well as parts of West Jordan, Murray and Cottonwood Heights.