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When the state doled out a bit more than $5 million in &ldquo;Continuing Education Equity Grants&rdquo; &mdash; designed to help school districts pay for things like laptops and internet hot spots for students learning at home due to mandates school closings &mdash; only one Luzerne County District got any money: $10,000.
				That would be Wyoming Area, winning a scant 0.2 percent of the total awarded.
				By comparison, a single Lackawanna County District &mdash; Scranton &mdash; nabbed $500,000, just shy of 10 percent of the total.
				Only two other districts in the state got that much money: Philadelphia and Reading. A third district &mdash; Upper Darby &mdash; fell shy of half-a-million by $8,650. In fact those four districts combined received nearly 40 percent of the total.
				The rest of the money was divvied in much smaller chunks among 93 other grant recipients, while 403 other districts got nothing at all.
				Several Luzerne County superintendents voiced disappointment, conceding that $5 million could not go far among 500 districts, but noting they were given no explanation for losing out on the grant completely.
				Crestwood Superintendent Robert Mehalick was particularly blunt.
				&ldquo;We applied for $500,000 expecting much less, but absolutely expecting some,&rdquo; he said adding that he had hoped for at least $25,000 of the $5 million. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not sure how Scranton came up with $500,000 and Crestwood gets nothing.&rdquo;
				Northwest Area Superintendent Joseph Long said the district had applied for a relatively modest $15,000 and &ldquo;it was disappointing that we did not receive it.&rdquo;
				&ldquo;That money would have been used to help our most neediest students that were not connected to the internet get service, we also would have used the money to defray the costs of repairs and replacement chrome books, defray the cost of the infrastructure needed to boost our WIFI signals in all schools, and defray the costs of packet production for the students that wanted pencil and paper work.&rdquo;
				Northwest Area is Luzerne County&rsquo;s smallest district by enrollment.
				On the other side of that coin, Hazleton Area is the largest in enrollment while sprawling geographically. Superintendent Brian Uplinger said the district had applied for $750,000 to assist the purchase of Chromebook computers and hot spots for students.
				&ldquo;We&rsquo;re not sure why we did not receive, at least, a small portion of the money. I know of a district that has over $70 million in their fund balance and also received $500,000 in grant money. They have very similar demographics as HASD. This is certainly not equitable to others who desperately need the dollars to continue COE plans.&rdquo;
				While he didn&rsquo;t name the district, Uplinger apparently referred to Reading, which &mdash; according to budget documents on its website &mdash; had a total fund balance in 2016-17 of $69.6 million, though much of that was assigned for specific spending in a district routinely struggling financially in recent years.
				Uplinger said Hazleton Area shifted money from other budget items to buy Chromebooks, but is still short about 4,000 of the computers.
				&ldquo;We are not wavering in our commitment to provide an education to our students,&rdquo; he said in an email. &ldquo;They are very important to us.&rdquo;
				Superintendent Ronald Grevera said Greater Nanticoke area applied for some money, and that it needs &ldquo;approximately $308,000 in state funding, which would allow us to purchase 1,100 Google Chromebooks.&rdquo;
				The district &ldquo;unfortunately&rdquo; got nothing, but even if it had received that much, &ldquo;we still have issues with connectivity in some of our rural areas in the district.&rdquo; In an effort to mitigate the problem, he said, the district &ldquo;released a list of companies that are providing free internet access over the time of the pandemic to our families located within the internet provider&rsquo;s connectivity area.&rdquo;
				Superintendent Kevin Booth said via email that Pittston Area applied for $21,500 and was denied, but that &ldquo;It has not affected our bottom line or our Continuity of Education plan as of today.&rdquo; Lake-Lehman Superintendent James McGovern said an application for $10,000 to buy Chromebooks was denied, and &ldquo;We were not provided an answer as to why we did not receive the grant.&rdquo;
				At Hanover Area, Superintendent Nathan Barrett said the district sought &ldquo;just over $24,000 and were denied.&rdquo; He noted the $500,000 awarded to Scranton and Reading, and that he did ask &ldquo;for clarification of the denial&rdquo; and was told it was &ldquo;based on poverty rates.&rdquo; There was a silver lining, he said. Hanover Area was notified that federal money &ldquo;came through the same day of the Equity denial.&rdquo;
				Wilkes-Barre Area applied for $385,000, Superintendent Brian Costello said, but got nothing.
				The district has provided Chromebooks if needed to all students from grade three through 12, he added, but connectivity is still a problem in more rural areas of Bear Creek and Buck Townships. And internet hot spots have become hard to buy as districts and students scramble to deal with the state-mandated closure and a push by the department of education for districts to offer rigorous online lessons during the closure.
				&ldquo;We were most certainly disappointed,&rdquo; Costello said. &ldquo;We believe our demographics certainly qualified for some assistance.&rdquo;

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Luzerne County School Districts largely shut out of state ‘equity’ grants