SALT LAKE CITY — The Granite School District is calling out inaccuracies in accusations made by the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency over its use of COVID relief funds for Las Vegas hotel rooms.
In a social media post this week, DOGE said schools "have spent nearly $200B of COVID-Relief funds with little oversight or impact on students," and highlighted the Granite district using "roughly $86,000" for rooms at Caesars Palace in 2022 for local teams to attend a conference.
The district shared a statement on Friday in which it denied any suggested impropriety for its use of the funds, also calling out a FOX News report that it accused of containing factual errors, including the use of an incorrect name for the district.
The statement also said that no one from FOX News contacted the district to verify the facts of its report.
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According to the district, the travel to the Solution Tree professional educational convention was approved by the state Board of Education and was in "full compliance with all applicable state and federal guidelines," adding that it has never been contacted or questioned about the trip by state or federal agencies.
"We were surprised to be accused of fraud without having some contact from anyone to verify the legitimacy of the expense," the district wrote.
In the release, the district said the Las Vegas conference was the closest location to Salt Lake City and that other locations would have resulted in higher costs.
Due to positive feedback from the conference, Granite officials said it convinced Solution Tree to bring its conference to Salt Lake City last year, "allowing more local school districts to participate and providing even more teachers access to this valuable instructional training."
"We have and continue to be committed to providing high-quality professional development for our educators," the statement finished, "and we’re confident that opportunities like the Solution Tree conference lead to better outcomes for Granite students."
