Local education officials in natural disaster-affected areas told us the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has exacerbated mental health issues and contributed to lost instructional time, staff burnout, delays in recovery projects, and financial strain in their communities. These officials explained that after the natural disaster, restoring students' mental health was a top priority.

This supplement is a companion to GAO's report entitled Disaster Assistance: Additional Actions Needed to Strengthen FEMA's Individuals and Households Program (GAO-20-503). The purpose of this supplement is to present additional analysis of applicant data from the Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA) Individuals and Households Program (IHP) for 2016, 2017, and 2018. The additional analysi

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) obligated about $788 million in disaster assistance, as of May 2020, to the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), Guam, and Hawaii for response and recovery efforts following the 2018 disasters—most of which went to the CNMI. About $541 million (69 percent) of these obligations went to recovery projects in the CNMI, Guam, and Hawaii,

More than 94,000 compact migrants—that is, citizens of the Federated States of Micronesia (Micronesia), the Republic of the Marshall Islands (Marshall Islands), and the Republic of Palau (Palau) as well as their U.S.-born children and grandchildren younger than 18 years—live and work in the United States and its territories, according to Census Bureau data. Data from Census Bureau surveys cov

Our review of 15 selected state accountability systems—used to assess all types of schools—found that all 15 include at least one indicator that research organizations and relevant studies considered useful in capturing alternative school achievement. For example: (1) Eleven of the fifteen states use college and career readiness indicators. These indicators may capture achievements (e.g., ind

As GAO reported in September 2019, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) bolstered the capacity and performance of the Electronic Comment Filing System (ECFS) to reduce the risk of future service disruptions. FCC also implemented numerous information security program and technical controls for three systems that were intended to safeguard the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) data show that certain vehicle characteristics related to age, body type, and the speed of the vehicle at the time of the crash are associated with increases in pedestrian fatalities from 2008 to 2018. Specifically, the number of pedestrian fatalities during this time period increased more for crashes involving vehicles that were: (1) 11 year

Terrorism Risk Insurance Act (TRIA) reauthorizations through 2015 have decreased federal fiscal exposure, and insurers have adjusted by managing their increased risk. Changes in the TRIA program that the Department of the Treasury (Treasury) administers—particularly incremental changes since 2015—reduced the government's explicit fiscal exposure from a certified act of terrorism. For example,

What GAO Found The Coast Guard verifies that domestic commercial vessels comply with safety management system (SMS) requirements through activities that include conducting annual inspections of applicable U.S.-flagged vessels. In practice, the Coast Guard delegates primary vessel SMS compliance activities to third party entities, called Recognized Organizations (ROs). Among their responsibilities

The Census Bureau (Bureau) completed in-field address canvassing as scheduled on October 11, 2019, despite nationwide hiring shortfalls. The Bureau credits this success to better-than-expected productivity—the actual hourly productivity rate for the operation was 19.8 addresses versus the anticipated rate of 15.8 addresses. The total workload included more than 50 million addresses. GAO observa