Federal COVID-19 funding has helped prop up special education services in the Warren County School District the past few years.

That aid starts to go away in June – and now district officials are trying to pick and choose services that children need but that the district can’t pay for on its own.

Federal COVID dollars have paid for recovery services, an additional psychological counselor, art therapy, an elementary student assistance program and a virtual home school visitor. District officials are trying to preserve some of those offerings but there was enough need for the services that it’s hard to pick which stay and which go.

This was always the issue with the federal dollars that flowed into schools after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Flush with dollars and a mandate to use those dollars quickly, school districts created new programs and positions that ended up being very helpful to children and families both in Warren and throughout the rest of the country. But as those dollars go away, families are now faced with the prospect of going back to the way things were because school districts – especially ones in largely rural areas – can’t sustain such spending on their own.

There will be a lot of eyes on the state Legislature as it continues negotiations over school funding after a state Supreme Court ruling said schools in the state have been underfunded. But we can’t always be looking to the state to solve our problems for us, and there is no guarantee the legislature is going to send more money to rural districts like Warren.

If the positions created with COVID money are really important – and we don’t doubt they are – then something else will have to go. These are tough decisions for members of the county Board of Education, because the decision to keep programs means other programs have to be cut – and either choice will upset someone.