By COLLIN BINKLEY and RYAN J. FOLEY

IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — One Wisconsin school district built a new football field. In Iowa, a high school weight room is getting a renovation. Another in Kentucky is replacing two outdoor tracks — all of this funded by the billions of dollars in federal pandemic relief Congress sent to schools this year.

The money is part of a $123 billion infusion intended to help schools reopen and recover from the pandemic. But with few limits on how the funding can be spent, The Associated Press found that some districts have used large portions to cover athletics projects they couldn’t previously afford.

Critics say it violates the intent of the legislation, which was meant to help students catch up on learning after months of remote schooling. But many schools argue the projects support students’ physical and mental health, one of the objectives allowed by the federal government.

Rep. Bobby Scott, the top Democrat on the U.S. House education committee, said the money shouldn’t be used to fund athletics at the expense of academics. It was meant to help students, he said, not sports programs.

“I suspect you can make a case for anything, but the purpose is clear: It’s to open safely, stay open safely and deal with learning loss,” Scott said. “These are targeted resources needed to address the fact that a lot of children just didn’t achieve much for about a year.”

Robin Lake, director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education, said every dollar of pandemic relief spent on sports could be used to expand tutoring, reduce class sizes and take other steps to help students who are struggling academically.

“Can these districts show that all their kids are ready to graduate at the end of this year — college- and career-ready?” she said. “If not, then stop the construction. Stop it right now.”

In some parts of the country, exercise equipment companies have tried to capitalize, contacting school coaches and superintendents to suggest upgrades.

It’s impossible to know exactly how many schools are using pandemic relief on athletics. Districts are required to tell states how they’re spending the money, but some schools are using local funding for sports projects and then replacing it with the federal relief — a maneuver that skirts reporting requirements.

The funding is part of the American Rescue Plan signed in March by President Joe Biden that sent money to schools, giving larger shares to those with higher poverty. It’s the latest of several rounds of funding Congress funneled to the states to address education needs. The AP has tracked more than $157 billion distributed so far to school districts nationwide.

Schools have wide flexibility in how they use the money but only three years to spend it, a deadline that has led some to look for quick purchases that won’t need ongoing funding after the federal money is gone.

When school officials in Whitewater, Wisconsin, learned they would be getting $2 million in pandemic relief this year, they decided to use most of it to cover their current budget, freeing up $1.6 million in local funding to build new synthetic turf fields for football, baseball and softball.

Athletics officials in the district of 1,800 students said the project was sorely needed to replace fields prone to heavy flooding. They touted the federal money as a chance to solve the problem without asking local taxpayers for funding.

“If we don’t do it now with this money, I’m not sure when we would ever do something like this,” athletic director Justin Crandall told the school board in May. “I don’t see us being a district that would go to a referendum for turf fields.”

Two school board members objected, with one raising concerns that just $400,000 was being used to address student learning loss — the minimum to meet a requirement that at least 20% goes toward that purpose.

The board approved the plan over those objections, and the new football field had its grand opening in September. District Superintendent Caroline Pate-Hefty declined to answer questions about the project.

In the Roland-Story Community School District in Iowa, there were no objections when the school board voted in May to use $100,000 in pandemic relief on a high school weight room renovation. That allowed the district to double its weightlifting platforms to 12 and add new flooring with customized school branding.

Superintendent Matt Patton called it a “major health and safety improvement,” saying the new floors can be disinfected more easily. He said most of the district’s federal aid went to other costs, including a full-time mental health therapist, special education teachers and expanded summer learning options.

Like many others in rural Iowa, the district of about 1,000 students has tried to return to normal operation: It’s back to full in-person learning and, just weeks before approving the weight room overhaul, dropped a mask mandate.

The project is seen as a boon for wrestlers and the football team, which recently boasted that 39 players put in more than 3,300 workouts in the off-season. The old equipment will be used at the middle school.

“More kids will be able to lift at the same time with better equipment,” said high school wrestling coach Leland Schwartz. “Anytime we can offer more opportunities for our athletes, those athletes will get better, which makes all of our programs better.”

The school board in East Lyme, Connecticut, recently approved a plan to put some of its federal relief toward annual operating costs, freeing $175,000 to renovate a baseball field with poor drainage. Some board members called for quick action to get the work finished in time for games in the spring.

In September, the Pulaski County school board in Kentucky allocated $1 million in pandemic aid to resurface two outdoor tracks. Superintendent Patrick Richardson called it a health-and-wellness project that falls within the scope of the federal funding, saying it will “allow our students to be taken out for mask breaks, by class, in a safe environment.”

Among education advocates, the athletics spending is seen as a breakdown at all levels of government.

Federal officials failed to provide clear funding guidelines, while state education departments didn’t police their schools’ spending, said Terra Wallin, an associate director of the Education Trust. She also questioned whether districts spending on athletics have considered what’s best for students.

Wallin said the U.S. Education Department should issue new guidance and intervene before more districts make similar decisions.

“There are going to be districts next spring that are going to be considering things like this,” she said. “There’s still time to influence them and make sure districts are doing the right thing.”

In a statement, the Education Department said it has made clear the funding must be used on “reasonable and necessary” expenses responding to the pandemic. It said there’s “ample evidence” of districts using the relief to keep schools safe, including by increasing access to vaccines, implementing virus testing and improving ventilation systems.

“We continue to strongly encourage every district to use these funds to help address these issues, including by using our Return to School Roadmap and by providing guidance on how to use these funds,” the department said.

So far, there’s been little pushback on athletic spending. In August, education officials in Illinois rejected a school’s plan to use federal money on a football field. But other states say it isn’t their place to challenge school spending decisions.

Iowa’s education department approved the weight room project in Roland-Story, saying the federal guidelines allow “capital expenditures for special purpose equipment.”

Heather Doe, a spokesperson for the agency, said funding priorities are local decisions. The department doesn’t have authority to reject a district’s spending, she said, unless it’s “definitely unallowable.”

In Congress, lawmakers from both parties say it’s wrong to use the money on sports. Democrats say it’s not what it was meant for, while Republicans say it’s a sign it wasn’t needed.

“Congress allocated billions more than the CDC estimated was necessary to safely reopen schools, paving the way for rampant waste and abuse,” said Rep. Virginia Foxx of North Carolina, the top Republican on the House Committee on Education and Labor.

Meanwhile, fitness companies are ramping up sales pitches.

Chad May, CEO of Commercial Fitness Equipment in Eugene, Oregon, said he’s averaging five new school projects every week. So far, his company has taken on $25 million in weight room updates funded with pandemic aid, he said.

Often, the calls are from underfunded districts that want the kind of facilities their wealthier peers have, May said. But some are just looking for ways to spend their federal relief within the three-year deadline.

The high school weight room overhaul in Story City, Iowa, is being done by Push Pedal Pull, a South Dakota company that’s taking on similar projects elsewhere in Iowa and Nebraska.

Luke Reiland, a company representative in Ames, Iowa, said he’s been calling schools to let them know the funding can be used for those kinds of costs. He sees weight rooms and fitness centers as increasingly important for schools in smaller towns as they look to keep students from leaving for larger districts.

“I’m right in the battle … to get this money allocated,” Reiland said. “I think a lot of these small schools are trying to use this money to really upgrade a bunch of stuff, and I am just trying to get my piece of the pie.”

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AP Education Writer Binkley reported from Boston.

By BRIAN MELLEY, MATTHEW BROWN AND STEFANIE DAZIO

HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif. (AP) — The U.S. Coast Guard received the first report of a possible oil spill off the Southern California coast more than 12 hours before a company reported the major leak in its pipeline and a cleanup effort was launched, records show.

Oil spill reports reviewed Monday by The Associated Press raise questions about the Coast Guard’s response to one of the state’s largest recent oil spills as well as how quickly Amplify Energy, the company operating three offshore platforms and the pipeline, recognized it had a problem and notified authorities.

Two early calls about the spill came into the National Response Center, which is staffed by the Coast Guard and notifies other agencies of disasters for quick response. The first was from an anchored ship that noticed a sheen on the water and the second, six hours later, from a federal agency that said a possible oil slick was spotted on satellite imagery, according to reports by the California Office of Emergency Services.

The spill sent up to 126,000 gallons (572,807 liters) of heavy crude into the ocean off Huntington Beach and it then washed onto miles of beaches and a protected marshland. The beaches could remain closed for weeks or longer, a major hit to the local economy. Coastal fisheries in the area are closed to commercial and recreational fishing.

Gov. Gavin Newsom proclaimed a state of emergency in Orange County, directing state agencies “to undertake immediate and aggressive action to clean up and mitigate the effects” of the spill.

Experts say it’s too early to determine the full impact on the environment but that so far the number of animals found harmed is minimal.

Investigators are looking into whether a ship’s anchor may have struck a pipeline on the ocean floor, Coast Guard officials said Monday.

Amplify Energy CEO Martyn Willsher said company divers were inspecting the area of the suspected leak reported Saturday, and he expected that by Tuesday there would be a clearer picture of what caused the damage. Willsher said an anchor from a cargo ship striking the pipeline is “one of the distinct possibilities” behind the leak.

Cargo ships entering the twin ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach routinely pass through the area. Backlogs have plagued the ports in recent months and several dozen or more of the giant vessels have regularly been anchored as they wait to enter the ports and unload.

“We’re looking into if it could have been an anchor from a ship, but that’s in the assessment phase right now,” Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Jeannie Shaye said.

Shaye said the Coast Guard was not notified of the disaster until Saturday morning, though records show its hazardous spill response hotline received the first report of a possible oil slick Friday evening.

A foreign ship anchored off the coast witnessed an “unknown sheen in the water near their vessel” at 6:13 p.m. and the report was called into the response center just after 8:22 p.m., according to the state report.

Lonnie Harrison Jr., vice president of Colonial Compliance Systems Inc., which works with foreign ships in U.S. waters to report spills, said one its clients reported the sighting.

Harrison, a retired Coast Guard captain, said the ship was not involved in the spill and was later given clearance over the weekend to enter the port to refuel after determining it wasn’t contaminated by the slick.

About six hours after the first report was received, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that satellite imagery spotted a possible oil slick more than 3 miles (5 kilometers) long. The report by the National Response Center said the image of a “possible oil anomaly” was probably associated with the first report.

“Although there were numerous vessels within immediate proximity to the anomaly, none were clearly associated with the anomaly,” the report said. “These factors prevented the possible identification of a point source. Still, the NRC report allows for high confidence that this was oil.”

The company that operates the pipeline first reported the spill to the Coast Guard’s response center at 8:55 a.m. Saturday. However, the report said the incident occurred at 2:30 a.m.

Federal and state authorities require rapid reporting of a spill. Failure to do so led to criminal prosecutions against Plains All American Pipeline, which caused a coastal spill near Santa Barbara in 2015, and Southern California Gas Co. for a massive well blowout later that year.

A 2016 spill response plan for the Amplify platforms submitted to federal regulators called for immediate notification of federal officials when more than one barrel of oil is released into the water. Releases greater than five barrels — or that threaten state waters or the shoreline — require immediate notification of the state fire marshal and California wildlife officials.

The pipeline was supposed to be monitored under an automated leak detection system that would report problems to a control room staffed around the clock on the oil platform known as Elly.

The system was designed to trigger an alarm whenever a change in the flow of oil is detected. But how fast it can pick up on those changes was expected to vary according to the size of the leak. For a large leak — 10% or more of the amount of oil flowing through the pipeline — the detection time was estimated at 5 minutes. Smaller leaks were expected to take up to 50 minutes to detect, according to the response plan.

The spill plan warned that a break in the pipeline could cause “substantial harm to the environment” and that in a worst-case scenario 3,111 barrels (131,000 gallons) of oil could be released from the pipeline.

Willsher said required agencies were notified “instantly” when the company recognized the leak was from its pipe. Records show the spill was not reported by Amplify Energy, but by Witt O’Brien’s, a crisis and emergency management firm listed on the spill response plan as the point of contact to notify the NRC.

The report said the leaking pipe had been shut off but containment was not confirmed. The cause of the rupture was unknown.

Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer said he has investigators looking into whether he can bring state charges for the spill even though the leak occurred in waters overseen by the U.S. government. Other potential criminal investigations were being pursued by the U.S. Department of Justice, the Coast Guard and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, officials said.

Safety advocates have pushed for years for federal rules that would strengthen oil spill detection requirements and force companies to install valves that can automatically shut down the flow of crude in case of a leak. The oil and pipeline industries have resisted such requirements because of the high cost.

“If the operator had more valves installed on this line, they’d have a much better chance at having the point of failure isolated by now,” said Bill Caram with the Pipeline Safety Trust, an organization based in Bellingham, Washington.

The pipeline was built using a process known as electric resistance weld, according to a regulatory filing from the company. That welding process has been linked to past oil pipeline failures because corrosion can occur along seams, according to government safety advisories and Caram.

Annual reports filed with federal regulators in 2019 and 2020 showed inspections for the inside and outside of the pipe revealed nothing requiring repairs.

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Associated Press writers Michael Biesecker in Washington, Bernard Condon in New York, and Amy Taxin in Huntington Beach, California, contributed to this report.