Vegas Hotel Rooms, MLB Stadium Rentals, & More: DOGE Finds Schools Misused Billions In COVID Funds

Schools misused hundreds of billions in COVID-relief funds on questionable expenses with minimal student impact, according to the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by Elon Musk, according to Fox News.

A report by Parents Defending Education, shared by DOGE, highlighted spending such as $86,000 on Las Vegas hotel rooms by Utah’s Granite Public Schools and $393,000 by California’s Santa Ana Unified to rent a Major League Baseball stadium.

DOGE also found schools spent COVID-relief funds on swimming pool passes and even an ice cream truck:

The cost-cutting department also revealed that schools spent $60,000 of COVID-relief funds on swimming pool passes, while a California district used its funds to purchase an ice cream truck.

The Fox News report says that the Trump administration is tightening oversight on the remaining $4 billion in funds, requiring receipts before release.

DOGE wrote in a post on X: “All of this money was drawn with zero documentation.”

Mom’s For Liberty wrote: “Recall those school board meetings when the ruling elites of Covidstan branded mothers as selfish disruptors simply for challenging their interpretation of “The Science” and scrutinizing how they allocated ESSER Funds? Never let them forget that we were right about everything.”

“This is outrageous,” said Will O’Neil, chairman of the Orange County Republican Party, who called the money spent on an MLB stadium “an absolute joke”. 

DOGE has cut $370 million in Department of Education (DoEd) spending on DEI programs, axing 70 grants, including one for anti-racism training for teachers.