Higher Ground

That time in 2021 that I paid $10,000 for a GRAMA request because I knew Spencer Cox and state education officials were using COVID relief funds to implement a DEI and LGBTQ agenda in Utah schools. As an angry and concerned mom watching the mandates and the sudden flood of federal money, I suspected the pandemic was being treated as cover for preferred-pronoun policies, anti-racism training, equity offices, and identity-focused curriculum that parents never voted for. Once the records arrived, the steep price made sense; they showed exactly how the recovery dollars and the post-Floyd moment were leveraged to lock those practices in. ESSER stands for the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief fund. These were the main federal COVID relief packages for K-12 schools: the first round under the 2020 CARES Act, a second under the CRRSA Act, and the largest under the 2021 American Rescue Plan (ARP ESSER). The money was intended to address learning loss, improve school ventilation and technology, support student mental health, and cover other pandemic-related costs. Utah received more than $873 million in total ESSER funding across the three rounds; roughly $62 million in ESSER I, $250 million in ESSER II, and $562 million in ARP ESSER with the bulk distributed to local districts and charters based on Title I formulas. The records I obtained showed that while the funds were labeled for COVID recovery, state and local officials used portions of them to build equity infrastructure, stand up culturally responsive training, and advance related DEI initiatives, exactly the shift I had suspected when I filed the request. The pages detailed how the Utah State Board of Education planned to distribute ARP ESSER funds, 90 percent based on Title I allocations, with required Maintenance of Equity assurances while embedding equity structures throughout the recovery. An internal Culturally Responsive and Equitable Workplace Steering Committee was created. Quarterly Equity Leader Meetings, Equity Labs, and ongoing technical assistance to districts were listed as standing mechanisms. Committee notes recorded Chair Benally-Sagg stating that the governor supported the racial-equity and inclusivity training and wanted members to know the governor’s office backed it. The same records captured return-to-school discussions that treated the pandemic, economic fallout, and post-George Floyd racial unrest as simultaneous crises, with officials describing the need for leaders to examine their own implicit bias before schools could become “anti-racist” or “culturally responsive.” “Best practices” materials treated preferred names, pronouns, gender-inclusive forms, bathrooms, locker rooms, flags, and stickers as standard markers of support. Taken together, the documents show COVID recovery funds being used to institutionalize these practices inside Utah’s education system, with explicit state-level support noted from the governor’s office.