RISON - Cleveland County Superintendent Craig Dupuy said he plans to move forward with a $1.2 million project to re‐place the air conditioning units at Rison High School after the Arkansas Legislative Council decided to unfreeze federal COVID relief money that was going to be used for the project.
In July, the Arkansas Legisla‐tive Council voted to freeze all school funding received through the American Rescue Plan’s Ele‐mentary and Secondary Schools Emergency Relief (ESSER) fund and use that money to pay teacher and staff bonuses. How‐ever, the Legislative Council re‐versed that decision in a subse‐quent meeting earlier this month, and is now allowing the money to be used for projects that the school districts had in‐tended to use it on.
Dupuy said he has asked to present the school district’s air conditioning project to the Leg‐islative Council for official per‐mission to move forward. He suspects it will be next week or the week after when he will be called to make the presentation. He said the council released about $124 million in funding ast week to schools that are us‐ing the oney on projects other than bonuses.
Dupuy said he will be combin‐ing some of the money from the American Rescue Plan with $452,004.36 the district re‐ceived in state partnership money to pay for the high school air conditioning project.