The U.S. Senate Committee on Energy held a hearing in January on the nomination of former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm to become the U.S. secretary of energy. At the hearing, Granholm made a number of dubious statements about her track record on creating jobs in Michigan. Here is one of them:

“I’m really proud actually of my record in Michigan in terms of seeding the area for battery technology,” Granholm said at the Jan. 27 hearing.

There were 40,654 battery manufacturing jobs in the U.S. in 2019, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Michigan accounted for 1,751 of them, or 4.3%.

The figure includes jobs in manufacturing all types of batteries, not just those made for electric vehicles. That classification also includes small batteries, such as those used for watches, transistor radios and flashlights.

In September 2010, Granholm set the bar much higher when she predicted the number of jobs that would flow from the many subsidies she authorized for battery makers. In a conversation with the one of those company’s CEO, LG Chem’s Peter Kim, she said the following:

“During our meeting, Mr. Kim remarked that Michigan is becoming a world capital for advanced batteries,” Granholm said, according to a state press release. “We now have 16 advanced battery companies building facilities in Michigan and hiring people in Michigan, representing $5.8 billion in capital investment and projected to create almost 62,000 new jobs.”

The Detroit school district will get nearly seven times more federal COVID relief money on a per-student basis than the average Michigan school district or charter school.

The Detroit Public Schools Community District is set to receive far more extra federal COVID relief money than the average Michigan school district. Flint will get even more than that.

Altogether, when all the money is disbursed, Detroit district schools will have received $446.8 million in extra federal COVID relief funding since the pandemic began last year.

That comes to $8,933 in increased per-pupil federal funding for the Detroit district. By comparison, the average Michigan school district will receive an extra $1,282 per student in extra federal COVID money.

Statewide, the median increase in federal support to public school districts due to the pandemic was $1,048 per student (half got more and half got less).

On a per-student basis, Flint received an increase in federal funding at $13,407 for each student. That comes to $49.6 million overall for the smaller district.

Congress has authorized two rounds of federal COVID grants for school districts. Most of the money from the first round has already been disbursed. The second round has been approved but has not been distributed to the Michigan Department of Education as of Jan. 29.

The extra federal money comes with a condition that it be spent by September 2023.