Granite School District officials say they received threats after DOGE alleged they misused COVID relief money
Feb 27, 2025, 10:09 AM
FILE: A Granite School District sign is pictured at the district's offices in South Salt Lake on Monday, April 26, 2021. (Scott G Winterton/Deseret News)
(Scott G Winterton/Deseret News)
SALT LAKE CITY — Officials with the Granite School District said they received threats after the Department of Government Efficiency claimed they misused COVID relief money.
A post from DOGE last week read, “Schools have spent nearly $200B of COVID-Relief funds with little oversight or impact on students. $393K to rent out a Major League Baseball stadium, $86K in Caesars Palace hotel rooms, $60k in swimming pool passes, and even an ice cream truck. All of this money was drawn with zero documentation.”
The $86,000 at Caesars Palace refers to money spent by the Granite School District in 2022.
In a statement, the district said that money was to house 123 district employees for, “a three-day professional educational convention hosted by Solution Tree.”
The district said they conducted a comprehensive needs assessment and submitted their plan for the trip to the Utah State Board of Education, which approved the trip on the basis that the money would be used for professional learning.
The statement went on to say the $86,000 covered the standard government rate for each attendee at an average of $220 per night.
Fox News published its own article about the DOGE post. The article read, “Granite School District in Utah spent their COVID-relief funds on $86,000 in hotel rooms for an educational conference at Caesars Palace, a ritzy Las Vegas casino.”
Granite School District says damage has been done
Granite School District spokesperson Andrea Stringham called the DOGE and Fox News reports, “misleading.”
Stringham said they received a lot of angry phone calls and messages in response to the reports, some of which included threats.
“A lot of accusations… saying that we were wasting government taxpayer money… that we were doing financial fraud… we should be in jail… we should get off the streets… things like that,” Stringham told KSL NewsRadio. “It was completely false information, it (the DOGE post) was an intentionally misleading social media post and it did a lot of damage.”
She also said they had to get police involved in regards to one threat made from an out-of-state caller. Police later determined the threat was unfounded.
Stringham also said the district has never been under any state or federal investigation in regards to the money they spent in Las Vegas.
And while the angry calls have calmed down since this happened at the tail end of last week, “the damage had kind of already been done,” she said. “It’s just really frustrating.”
