.png)
September 13, 2023
Houston ISD Chooses SchooLinks for College and Career Readiness
College
Career / CTE
Finance
.png)
© SCHOOLINKS INC. • 2023
ESSER Is Ending: 4 Things Districts Can Do Now
April 12, 2024
April 12, 2024
The Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ESSER) has transformed school district budgets across the nation unlike any other funding program in recent memory. From the start, the federal government was clear that the funding program, and subsequent rounds, were a mechanism to provide school districts with financial support in response to the pandemic, and would be temporary funding streams.
The third and final round of ESSER, the American Recovery Plan (ARP), is approaching expiration, with an obligation deadline of September 30, 2024. This leaves only five months for districts to identify unallocated funds or to repurpose allocated funds that cannot be spent in a compliant manner or have been reprioritized. And, more importantly, marks a need for districts to reconsider their approaches to funding district needs and priorities.
Use these tips to act now to ensure your district can take advantage of any remaining ESSER funds and make a plan to maintain priorities beyond the funding windows.
Identify, understand, and allocate every last dollar.
Knowing whether a district has fully allocated all ESSER funds it is eligible to receive can be challenging for school and district personnel. With 53 billion left unspent nationally, it is possible that districts do, in fact, have remaining funds to spend. If a district has a grants department, they are usually the coordinators of the development, submittal, and compliance for state and federal grants. But many districts do not have full-time dedicated grant staff. The chief financial or business official must sign off on all grant applications and can provide comparisons of budgeted, received, and spent grant dollars. These departments can provide the most detailed and current district utilization of ESSER funds. District personnel can also search this resource from Georgetown University to find their ESSER expenditures.
The allowable use of these funds is much broader than previous legislation, enabling local districts to directly address the needs of students, teachers, and communities. Ensuring students are college and career ready is the top priority and requires high levels of student achievement, staffing stability, and district planning dedicated to continuous improvement. But with most “supplement not supplant” provisions found in ESSA Title 1 expenditures waived for these COVID-19 pandemic allocations, districts can be bold in undertaking improvement initiatives that have previously lacked sufficient resources.
Make strategic choices as you spend remaining funds.
Many districts across the country still have small amounts of ESSER funding available. Though the amount is likely not enough to make a substantial impact to a district’s overall budget, it can provide funding for tools, resources, and programmatic offerings. The near term expiration of these funds means that any initiative undertaken should be temporary supplementing of current programs with alternative funding sources or mitigating the cost of implementing a new system which will be sustained with non-ESSER funding.
Consider identifying tools and resources that can be reused year after year or multi-year contracts that can support students beyond the current school year. A multi-year CCR platform contract qualifies under other ESSER provisions to extend for up to four years of services beyond the deadline for obligation. That means services can be contracted until September 30, 2028. That is sustained support for students to mitigate the impact of the educational disruption. To qualify for the extended service, a district would need to pay for the length of service by the deadline for obligation and to assert that the extension is needed for student support and does not compromise district budgetary or grant oversight.
Identify and prioritize what uses of funding had the greatest impact on student learning and success.
Given the extensive amount of funding and unprecedented flexibility across the three rounds of ESSER, almost all aspects of district operations and functions were impacted by these resources either directly or indirectly. This includes operational matters including cleaning, security, staffing, technology, or direct support to students such as high-intensity tutoring, career readiness initiatives, and attendance tracking services. It is important for districts to identify what is ESSER-dependent and assess the effectiveness of these programs and resources in order to prioritize.
Once identified, these services need to be bucketed into what is no longer needed, what can be absorbed by other funding mechanisms, and what should be continued in place of current offerings. It is critical that programs, platforms, and resources that sustain support for college, career, and life readiness and work toward postsecondary success are maintained––especially those that students and staff have come to rely on. Simply canceling all ESSER-dependent initiatives without assessing the effectiveness of these programs prioritizes the past over the present at the cost of the future.
Make a strategic and community-informed plan for beyond ESSER.
Congress has made clear in its fiscal year 2024 budget that no additional supplemental funding will be provided to extend the federal support states and districts received via ESSER. Subsequently, funding amounts and the channels by which it is distributed have returned to the traditional and historical mix of block grants, competitive grants, and direct programmatic funding. With this backdrop, districts will need to make difficult choices to reduce spending by either eliminating whole programs or trimming the budget across the board. Making this challenge more difficult is that inflationary pressures have raised prices significantly, for commodities and utilities, compared to pre-pandemic levels.
Navigating this reality well, without crises and disruptions to students, requires community discussion, intentional planning, and a focus on key district goals like college, career, and life readiness and student success. For districts that used ESSER funding for recurring costs–such as hiring new positions or adding in student supports–it is important to determine how to maintain staffing and programming moving forward. And if position or program reductions are necessary, districts must reject simply returning to the pre-pandemic model as a default. In this decision-making, it is critical that schools and districts respect the experiences, the successes and the failures, and the lessons learned over the past four years in order to inform the future.
ESSER was the largest infusion of supplemental federal dollars into our schools in history. These funds mitigated the impact and supplemented local efforts to respond to unprecedented challenges. But the funds were temporary, while the impact is ongoing. The need for student support has evolved and grown over the past four years. Multiple data sources have documented that achievement gaps are wider, attendance patterns are different, and that the social and emotional needs of students are more profound now. This means that schools must do more than make well-informed choices about how to spend limited funds; they must approach student learning and growth with innovation and creativity and ensure that the services, resources, and tools that are procured will engage students, serve a broad diversity of the student population, and truly work to catalyze postsecondary success across the student body.
The Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ESSER) has transformed school district budgets across the nation unlike any other funding program in recent memory. From the start, the federal government was clear that the funding program, and subsequent rounds, were a mechanism to provide school districts with financial support in response to the pandemic, and would be temporary funding streams.
The third and final round of ESSER, the American Recovery Plan (ARP), is approaching expiration, with an obligation deadline of September 30, 2024. This leaves only five months for districts to identify unallocated funds or to repurpose allocated funds that cannot be spent in a compliant manner or have been reprioritized. And, more importantly, marks a need for districts to reconsider their approaches to funding district needs and priorities.
Use these tips to act now to ensure your district can take advantage of any remaining ESSER funds and make a plan to maintain priorities beyond the funding windows.
Identify, understand, and allocate every last dollar.
Knowing whether a district has fully allocated all ESSER funds it is eligible to receive can be challenging for school and district personnel. With 53 billion left unspent nationally, it is possible that districts do, in fact, have remaining funds to spend. If a district has a grants department, they are usually the coordinators of the development, submittal, and compliance for state and federal grants. But many districts do not have full-time dedicated grant staff. The chief financial or business official must sign off on all grant applications and can provide comparisons of budgeted, received, and spent grant dollars. These departments can provide the most detailed and current district utilization of ESSER funds. District personnel can also search this resource from Georgetown University to find their ESSER expenditures.
The allowable use of these funds is much broader than previous legislation, enabling local districts to directly address the needs of students, teachers, and communities. Ensuring students are college and career ready is the top priority and requires high levels of student achievement, staffing stability, and district planning dedicated to continuous improvement. But with most “supplement not supplant” provisions found in ESSA Title 1 expenditures waived for these COVID-19 pandemic allocations, districts can be bold in undertaking improvement initiatives that have previously lacked sufficient resources.
Make strategic choices as you spend remaining funds.
Many districts across the country still have small amounts of ESSER funding available. Though the amount is likely not enough to make a substantial impact to a district’s overall budget, it can provide funding for tools, resources, and programmatic offerings. The near term expiration of these funds means that any initiative undertaken should be temporary supplementing of current programs with alternative funding sources or mitigating the cost of implementing a new system which will be sustained with non-ESSER funding.
Consider identifying tools and resources that can be reused year after year or multi-year contracts that can support students beyond the current school year. A multi-year CCR platform contract qualifies under other ESSER provisions to extend for up to four years of services beyond the deadline for obligation. That means services can be contracted until September 30, 2028. That is sustained support for students to mitigate the impact of the educational disruption. To qualify for the extended service, a district would need to pay for the length of service by the deadline for obligation and to assert that the extension is needed for student support and does not compromise district budgetary or grant oversight.
Identify and prioritize what uses of funding had the greatest impact on student learning and success.
Given the extensive amount of funding and unprecedented flexibility across the three rounds of ESSER, almost all aspects of district operations and functions were impacted by these resources either directly or indirectly. This includes operational matters including cleaning, security, staffing, technology, or direct support to students such as high-intensity tutoring, career readiness initiatives, and attendance tracking services. It is important for districts to identify what is ESSER-dependent and assess the effectiveness of these programs and resources in order to prioritize.
Once identified, these services need to be bucketed into what is no longer needed, what can be absorbed by other funding mechanisms, and what should be continued in place of current offerings. It is critical that programs, platforms, and resources that sustain support for college, career, and life readiness and work toward postsecondary success are maintained––especially those that students and staff have come to rely on. Simply canceling all ESSER-dependent initiatives without assessing the effectiveness of these programs prioritizes the past over the present at the cost of the future.
Make a strategic and community-informed plan for beyond ESSER.
Congress has made clear in its fiscal year 2024 budget that no additional supplemental funding will be provided to extend the federal support states and districts received via ESSER. Subsequently, funding amounts and the channels by which it is distributed have returned to the traditional and historical mix of block grants, competitive grants, and direct programmatic funding. With this backdrop, districts will need to make difficult choices to reduce spending by either eliminating whole programs or trimming the budget across the board. Making this challenge more difficult is that inflationary pressures have raised prices significantly, for commodities and utilities, compared to pre-pandemic levels.
Navigating this reality well, without crises and disruptions to students, requires community discussion, intentional planning, and a focus on key district goals like college, career, and life readiness and student success. For districts that used ESSER funding for recurring costs–such as hiring new positions or adding in student supports–it is important to determine how to maintain staffing and programming moving forward. And if position or program reductions are necessary, districts must reject simply returning to the pre-pandemic model as a default. In this decision-making, it is critical that schools and districts respect the experiences, the successes and the failures, and the lessons learned over the past four years in order to inform the future.
ESSER was the largest infusion of supplemental federal dollars into our schools in history. These funds mitigated the impact and supplemented local efforts to respond to unprecedented challenges. But the funds were temporary, while the impact is ongoing. The need for student support has evolved and grown over the past four years. Multiple data sources have documented that achievement gaps are wider, attendance patterns are different, and that the social and emotional needs of students are more profound now. This means that schools must do more than make well-informed choices about how to spend limited funds; they must approach student learning and growth with innovation and creativity and ensure that the services, resources, and tools that are procured will engage students, serve a broad diversity of the student population, and truly work to catalyze postsecondary success across the student body.
Request a demo
Students
Schools
Years with SchooLinks
The Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ESSER) has transformed school district budgets across the nation unlike any other funding program in recent memory. From the start, the federal government was clear that the funding program, and subsequent rounds, were a mechanism to provide school districts with financial support in response to the pandemic, and would be temporary funding streams.
The third and final round of ESSER, the American Recovery Plan (ARP), is approaching expiration, with an obligation deadline of September 30, 2024. This leaves only five months for districts to identify unallocated funds or to repurpose allocated funds that cannot be spent in a compliant manner or have been reprioritized. And, more importantly, marks a need for districts to reconsider their approaches to funding district needs and priorities.
Use these tips to act now to ensure your district can take advantage of any remaining ESSER funds and make a plan to maintain priorities beyond the funding windows.
Identify, understand, and allocate every last dollar.
Knowing whether a district has fully allocated all ESSER funds it is eligible to receive can be challenging for school and district personnel. With 53 billion left unspent nationally, it is possible that districts do, in fact, have remaining funds to spend. If a district has a grants department, they are usually the coordinators of the development, submittal, and compliance for state and federal grants. But many districts do not have full-time dedicated grant staff. The chief financial or business official must sign off on all grant applications and can provide comparisons of budgeted, received, and spent grant dollars. These departments can provide the most detailed and current district utilization of ESSER funds. District personnel can also search this resource from Georgetown University to find their ESSER expenditures.
The allowable use of these funds is much broader than previous legislation, enabling local districts to directly address the needs of students, teachers, and communities. Ensuring students are college and career ready is the top priority and requires high levels of student achievement, staffing stability, and district planning dedicated to continuous improvement. But with most “supplement not supplant” provisions found in ESSA Title 1 expenditures waived for these COVID-19 pandemic allocations, districts can be bold in undertaking improvement initiatives that have previously lacked sufficient resources.
Make strategic choices as you spend remaining funds.
Many districts across the country still have small amounts of ESSER funding available. Though the amount is likely not enough to make a substantial impact to a district’s overall budget, it can provide funding for tools, resources, and programmatic offerings. The near term expiration of these funds means that any initiative undertaken should be temporary supplementing of current programs with alternative funding sources or mitigating the cost of implementing a new system which will be sustained with non-ESSER funding.
Consider identifying tools and resources that can be reused year after year or multi-year contracts that can support students beyond the current school year. A multi-year CCR platform contract qualifies under other ESSER provisions to extend for up to four years of services beyond the deadline for obligation. That means services can be contracted until September 30, 2028. That is sustained support for students to mitigate the impact of the educational disruption. To qualify for the extended service, a district would need to pay for the length of service by the deadline for obligation and to assert that the extension is needed for student support and does not compromise district budgetary or grant oversight.
Identify and prioritize what uses of funding had the greatest impact on student learning and success.
Given the extensive amount of funding and unprecedented flexibility across the three rounds of ESSER, almost all aspects of district operations and functions were impacted by these resources either directly or indirectly. This includes operational matters including cleaning, security, staffing, technology, or direct support to students such as high-intensity tutoring, career readiness initiatives, and attendance tracking services. It is important for districts to identify what is ESSER-dependent and assess the effectiveness of these programs and resources in order to prioritize.
Once identified, these services need to be bucketed into what is no longer needed, what can be absorbed by other funding mechanisms, and what should be continued in place of current offerings. It is critical that programs, platforms, and resources that sustain support for college, career, and life readiness and work toward postsecondary success are maintained––especially those that students and staff have come to rely on. Simply canceling all ESSER-dependent initiatives without assessing the effectiveness of these programs prioritizes the past over the present at the cost of the future.
Make a strategic and community-informed plan for beyond ESSER.
Congress has made clear in its fiscal year 2024 budget that no additional supplemental funding will be provided to extend the federal support states and districts received via ESSER. Subsequently, funding amounts and the channels by which it is distributed have returned to the traditional and historical mix of block grants, competitive grants, and direct programmatic funding. With this backdrop, districts will need to make difficult choices to reduce spending by either eliminating whole programs or trimming the budget across the board. Making this challenge more difficult is that inflationary pressures have raised prices significantly, for commodities and utilities, compared to pre-pandemic levels.
Navigating this reality well, without crises and disruptions to students, requires community discussion, intentional planning, and a focus on key district goals like college, career, and life readiness and student success. For districts that used ESSER funding for recurring costs–such as hiring new positions or adding in student supports–it is important to determine how to maintain staffing and programming moving forward. And if position or program reductions are necessary, districts must reject simply returning to the pre-pandemic model as a default. In this decision-making, it is critical that schools and districts respect the experiences, the successes and the failures, and the lessons learned over the past four years in order to inform the future.
ESSER was the largest infusion of supplemental federal dollars into our schools in history. These funds mitigated the impact and supplemented local efforts to respond to unprecedented challenges. But the funds were temporary, while the impact is ongoing. The need for student support has evolved and grown over the past four years. Multiple data sources have documented that achievement gaps are wider, attendance patterns are different, and that the social and emotional needs of students are more profound now. This means that schools must do more than make well-informed choices about how to spend limited funds; they must approach student learning and growth with innovation and creativity and ensure that the services, resources, and tools that are procured will engage students, serve a broad diversity of the student population, and truly work to catalyze postsecondary success across the student body.
The Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ESSER) has transformed school district budgets across the nation unlike any other funding program in recent memory. From the start, the federal government was clear that the funding program, and subsequent rounds, were a mechanism to provide school districts with financial support in response to the pandemic, and would be temporary funding streams.
The third and final round of ESSER, the American Recovery Plan (ARP), is approaching expiration, with an obligation deadline of September 30, 2024. This leaves only five months for districts to identify unallocated funds or to repurpose allocated funds that cannot be spent in a compliant manner or have been reprioritized. And, more importantly, marks a need for districts to reconsider their approaches to funding district needs and priorities.
Use these tips to act now to ensure your district can take advantage of any remaining ESSER funds and make a plan to maintain priorities beyond the funding windows.
Identify, understand, and allocate every last dollar.
Knowing whether a district has fully allocated all ESSER funds it is eligible to receive can be challenging for school and district personnel. With 53 billion left unspent nationally, it is possible that districts do, in fact, have remaining funds to spend. If a district has a grants department, they are usually the coordinators of the development, submittal, and compliance for state and federal grants. But many districts do not have full-time dedicated grant staff. The chief financial or business official must sign off on all grant applications and can provide comparisons of budgeted, received, and spent grant dollars. These departments can provide the most detailed and current district utilization of ESSER funds. District personnel can also search this resource from Georgetown University to find their ESSER expenditures.
The allowable use of these funds is much broader than previous legislation, enabling local districts to directly address the needs of students, teachers, and communities. Ensuring students are college and career ready is the top priority and requires high levels of student achievement, staffing stability, and district planning dedicated to continuous improvement. But with most “supplement not supplant” provisions found in ESSA Title 1 expenditures waived for these COVID-19 pandemic allocations, districts can be bold in undertaking improvement initiatives that have previously lacked sufficient resources.
Make strategic choices as you spend remaining funds.
Many districts across the country still have small amounts of ESSER funding available. Though the amount is likely not enough to make a substantial impact to a district’s overall budget, it can provide funding for tools, resources, and programmatic offerings. The near term expiration of these funds means that any initiative undertaken should be temporary supplementing of current programs with alternative funding sources or mitigating the cost of implementing a new system which will be sustained with non-ESSER funding.
Consider identifying tools and resources that can be reused year after year or multi-year contracts that can support students beyond the current school year. A multi-year CCR platform contract qualifies under other ESSER provisions to extend for up to four years of services beyond the deadline for obligation. That means services can be contracted until September 30, 2028. That is sustained support for students to mitigate the impact of the educational disruption. To qualify for the extended service, a district would need to pay for the length of service by the deadline for obligation and to assert that the extension is needed for student support and does not compromise district budgetary or grant oversight.
Identify and prioritize what uses of funding had the greatest impact on student learning and success.
Given the extensive amount of funding and unprecedented flexibility across the three rounds of ESSER, almost all aspects of district operations and functions were impacted by these resources either directly or indirectly. This includes operational matters including cleaning, security, staffing, technology, or direct support to students such as high-intensity tutoring, career readiness initiatives, and attendance tracking services. It is important for districts to identify what is ESSER-dependent and assess the effectiveness of these programs and resources in order to prioritize.
Once identified, these services need to be bucketed into what is no longer needed, what can be absorbed by other funding mechanisms, and what should be continued in place of current offerings. It is critical that programs, platforms, and resources that sustain support for college, career, and life readiness and work toward postsecondary success are maintained––especially those that students and staff have come to rely on. Simply canceling all ESSER-dependent initiatives without assessing the effectiveness of these programs prioritizes the past over the present at the cost of the future.
Make a strategic and community-informed plan for beyond ESSER.
Congress has made clear in its fiscal year 2024 budget that no additional supplemental funding will be provided to extend the federal support states and districts received via ESSER. Subsequently, funding amounts and the channels by which it is distributed have returned to the traditional and historical mix of block grants, competitive grants, and direct programmatic funding. With this backdrop, districts will need to make difficult choices to reduce spending by either eliminating whole programs or trimming the budget across the board. Making this challenge more difficult is that inflationary pressures have raised prices significantly, for commodities and utilities, compared to pre-pandemic levels.
Navigating this reality well, without crises and disruptions to students, requires community discussion, intentional planning, and a focus on key district goals like college, career, and life readiness and student success. For districts that used ESSER funding for recurring costs–such as hiring new positions or adding in student supports–it is important to determine how to maintain staffing and programming moving forward. And if position or program reductions are necessary, districts must reject simply returning to the pre-pandemic model as a default. In this decision-making, it is critical that schools and districts respect the experiences, the successes and the failures, and the lessons learned over the past four years in order to inform the future.
ESSER was the largest infusion of supplemental federal dollars into our schools in history. These funds mitigated the impact and supplemented local efforts to respond to unprecedented challenges. But the funds were temporary, while the impact is ongoing. The need for student support has evolved and grown over the past four years. Multiple data sources have documented that achievement gaps are wider, attendance patterns are different, and that the social and emotional needs of students are more profound now. This means that schools must do more than make well-informed choices about how to spend limited funds; they must approach student learning and growth with innovation and creativity and ensure that the services, resources, and tools that are procured will engage students, serve a broad diversity of the student population, and truly work to catalyze postsecondary success across the student body.
Download Your Free eBook
Fill out the form below to access your free download following submission.
The Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ESSER) has transformed school district budgets across the nation unlike any other funding program in recent memory. From the start, the federal government was clear that the funding program, and subsequent rounds, were a mechanism to provide school districts with financial support in response to the pandemic, and would be temporary funding streams.
The third and final round of ESSER, the American Recovery Plan (ARP), is approaching expiration, with an obligation deadline of September 30, 2024. This leaves only five months for districts to identify unallocated funds or to repurpose allocated funds that cannot be spent in a compliant manner or have been reprioritized. And, more importantly, marks a need for districts to reconsider their approaches to funding district needs and priorities.
Use these tips to act now to ensure your district can take advantage of any remaining ESSER funds and make a plan to maintain priorities beyond the funding windows.
Identify, understand, and allocate every last dollar.
Knowing whether a district has fully allocated all ESSER funds it is eligible to receive can be challenging for school and district personnel. With 53 billion left unspent nationally, it is possible that districts do, in fact, have remaining funds to spend. If a district has a grants department, they are usually the coordinators of the development, submittal, and compliance for state and federal grants. But many districts do not have full-time dedicated grant staff. The chief financial or business official must sign off on all grant applications and can provide comparisons of budgeted, received, and spent grant dollars. These departments can provide the most detailed and current district utilization of ESSER funds. District personnel can also search this resource from Georgetown University to find their ESSER expenditures.
The allowable use of these funds is much broader than previous legislation, enabling local districts to directly address the needs of students, teachers, and communities. Ensuring students are college and career ready is the top priority and requires high levels of student achievement, staffing stability, and district planning dedicated to continuous improvement. But with most “supplement not supplant” provisions found in ESSA Title 1 expenditures waived for these COVID-19 pandemic allocations, districts can be bold in undertaking improvement initiatives that have previously lacked sufficient resources.
Make strategic choices as you spend remaining funds.
Many districts across the country still have small amounts of ESSER funding available. Though the amount is likely not enough to make a substantial impact to a district’s overall budget, it can provide funding for tools, resources, and programmatic offerings. The near term expiration of these funds means that any initiative undertaken should be temporary supplementing of current programs with alternative funding sources or mitigating the cost of implementing a new system which will be sustained with non-ESSER funding.
Consider identifying tools and resources that can be reused year after year or multi-year contracts that can support students beyond the current school year. A multi-year CCR platform contract qualifies under other ESSER provisions to extend for up to four years of services beyond the deadline for obligation. That means services can be contracted until September 30, 2028. That is sustained support for students to mitigate the impact of the educational disruption. To qualify for the extended service, a district would need to pay for the length of service by the deadline for obligation and to assert that the extension is needed for student support and does not compromise district budgetary or grant oversight.
Identify and prioritize what uses of funding had the greatest impact on student learning and success.
Given the extensive amount of funding and unprecedented flexibility across the three rounds of ESSER, almost all aspects of district operations and functions were impacted by these resources either directly or indirectly. This includes operational matters including cleaning, security, staffing, technology, or direct support to students such as high-intensity tutoring, career readiness initiatives, and attendance tracking services. It is important for districts to identify what is ESSER-dependent and assess the effectiveness of these programs and resources in order to prioritize.
Once identified, these services need to be bucketed into what is no longer needed, what can be absorbed by other funding mechanisms, and what should be continued in place of current offerings. It is critical that programs, platforms, and resources that sustain support for college, career, and life readiness and work toward postsecondary success are maintained––especially those that students and staff have come to rely on. Simply canceling all ESSER-dependent initiatives without assessing the effectiveness of these programs prioritizes the past over the present at the cost of the future.
Make a strategic and community-informed plan for beyond ESSER.
Congress has made clear in its fiscal year 2024 budget that no additional supplemental funding will be provided to extend the federal support states and districts received via ESSER. Subsequently, funding amounts and the channels by which it is distributed have returned to the traditional and historical mix of block grants, competitive grants, and direct programmatic funding. With this backdrop, districts will need to make difficult choices to reduce spending by either eliminating whole programs or trimming the budget across the board. Making this challenge more difficult is that inflationary pressures have raised prices significantly, for commodities and utilities, compared to pre-pandemic levels.
Navigating this reality well, without crises and disruptions to students, requires community discussion, intentional planning, and a focus on key district goals like college, career, and life readiness and student success. For districts that used ESSER funding for recurring costs–such as hiring new positions or adding in student supports–it is important to determine how to maintain staffing and programming moving forward. And if position or program reductions are necessary, districts must reject simply returning to the pre-pandemic model as a default. In this decision-making, it is critical that schools and districts respect the experiences, the successes and the failures, and the lessons learned over the past four years in order to inform the future.
ESSER was the largest infusion of supplemental federal dollars into our schools in history. These funds mitigated the impact and supplemented local efforts to respond to unprecedented challenges. But the funds were temporary, while the impact is ongoing. The need for student support has evolved and grown over the past four years. Multiple data sources have documented that achievement gaps are wider, attendance patterns are different, and that the social and emotional needs of students are more profound now. This means that schools must do more than make well-informed choices about how to spend limited funds; they must approach student learning and growth with innovation and creativity and ensure that the services, resources, and tools that are procured will engage students, serve a broad diversity of the student population, and truly work to catalyze postsecondary success across the student body.
Speakers
No items found.
Join the free webinar.
Fill out the form below to gain access to the free webinar.
The Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ESSER) has transformed school district budgets across the nation unlike any other funding program in recent memory. From the start, the federal government was clear that the funding program, and subsequent rounds, were a mechanism to provide school districts with financial support in response to the pandemic, and would be temporary funding streams.
The third and final round of ESSER, the American Recovery Plan (ARP), is approaching expiration, with an obligation deadline of September 30, 2024. This leaves only five months for districts to identify unallocated funds or to repurpose allocated funds that cannot be spent in a compliant manner or have been reprioritized. And, more importantly, marks a need for districts to reconsider their approaches to funding district needs and priorities.
Use these tips to act now to ensure your district can take advantage of any remaining ESSER funds and make a plan to maintain priorities beyond the funding windows.
Identify, understand, and allocate every last dollar.
Knowing whether a district has fully allocated all ESSER funds it is eligible to receive can be challenging for school and district personnel. With 53 billion left unspent nationally, it is possible that districts do, in fact, have remaining funds to spend. If a district has a grants department, they are usually the coordinators of the development, submittal, and compliance for state and federal grants. But many districts do not have full-time dedicated grant staff. The chief financial or business official must sign off on all grant applications and can provide comparisons of budgeted, received, and spent grant dollars. These departments can provide the most detailed and current district utilization of ESSER funds. District personnel can also search this resource from Georgetown University to find their ESSER expenditures.
The allowable use of these funds is much broader than previous legislation, enabling local districts to directly address the needs of students, teachers, and communities. Ensuring students are college and career ready is the top priority and requires high levels of student achievement, staffing stability, and district planning dedicated to continuous improvement. But with most “supplement not supplant” provisions found in ESSA Title 1 expenditures waived for these COVID-19 pandemic allocations, districts can be bold in undertaking improvement initiatives that have previously lacked sufficient resources.
Make strategic choices as you spend remaining funds.
Many districts across the country still have small amounts of ESSER funding available. Though the amount is likely not enough to make a substantial impact to a district’s overall budget, it can provide funding for tools, resources, and programmatic offerings. The near term expiration of these funds means that any initiative undertaken should be temporary supplementing of current programs with alternative funding sources or mitigating the cost of implementing a new system which will be sustained with non-ESSER funding.
Consider identifying tools and resources that can be reused year after year or multi-year contracts that can support students beyond the current school year. A multi-year CCR platform contract qualifies under other ESSER provisions to extend for up to four years of services beyond the deadline for obligation. That means services can be contracted until September 30, 2028. That is sustained support for students to mitigate the impact of the educational disruption. To qualify for the extended service, a district would need to pay for the length of service by the deadline for obligation and to assert that the extension is needed for student support and does not compromise district budgetary or grant oversight.
Identify and prioritize what uses of funding had the greatest impact on student learning and success.
Given the extensive amount of funding and unprecedented flexibility across the three rounds of ESSER, almost all aspects of district operations and functions were impacted by these resources either directly or indirectly. This includes operational matters including cleaning, security, staffing, technology, or direct support to students such as high-intensity tutoring, career readiness initiatives, and attendance tracking services. It is important for districts to identify what is ESSER-dependent and assess the effectiveness of these programs and resources in order to prioritize.
Once identified, these services need to be bucketed into what is no longer needed, what can be absorbed by other funding mechanisms, and what should be continued in place of current offerings. It is critical that programs, platforms, and resources that sustain support for college, career, and life readiness and work toward postsecondary success are maintained––especially those that students and staff have come to rely on. Simply canceling all ESSER-dependent initiatives without assessing the effectiveness of these programs prioritizes the past over the present at the cost of the future.
Make a strategic and community-informed plan for beyond ESSER.
Congress has made clear in its fiscal year 2024 budget that no additional supplemental funding will be provided to extend the federal support states and districts received via ESSER. Subsequently, funding amounts and the channels by which it is distributed have returned to the traditional and historical mix of block grants, competitive grants, and direct programmatic funding. With this backdrop, districts will need to make difficult choices to reduce spending by either eliminating whole programs or trimming the budget across the board. Making this challenge more difficult is that inflationary pressures have raised prices significantly, for commodities and utilities, compared to pre-pandemic levels.
Navigating this reality well, without crises and disruptions to students, requires community discussion, intentional planning, and a focus on key district goals like college, career, and life readiness and student success. For districts that used ESSER funding for recurring costs–such as hiring new positions or adding in student supports–it is important to determine how to maintain staffing and programming moving forward. And if position or program reductions are necessary, districts must reject simply returning to the pre-pandemic model as a default. In this decision-making, it is critical that schools and districts respect the experiences, the successes and the failures, and the lessons learned over the past four years in order to inform the future.
ESSER was the largest infusion of supplemental federal dollars into our schools in history. These funds mitigated the impact and supplemented local efforts to respond to unprecedented challenges. But the funds were temporary, while the impact is ongoing. The need for student support has evolved and grown over the past four years. Multiple data sources have documented that achievement gaps are wider, attendance patterns are different, and that the social and emotional needs of students are more profound now. This means that schools must do more than make well-informed choices about how to spend limited funds; they must approach student learning and growth with innovation and creativity and ensure that the services, resources, and tools that are procured will engage students, serve a broad diversity of the student population, and truly work to catalyze postsecondary success across the student body.
Get In Touch
Download your 1-pager
The Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ESSER) has transformed school district budgets across the nation unlike any other funding program in recent memory. From the start, the federal government was clear that the funding program, and subsequent rounds, were a mechanism to provide school districts with financial support in response to the pandemic, and would be temporary funding streams.
The third and final round of ESSER, the American Recovery Plan (ARP), is approaching expiration, with an obligation deadline of September 30, 2024. This leaves only five months for districts to identify unallocated funds or to repurpose allocated funds that cannot be spent in a compliant manner or have been reprioritized. And, more importantly, marks a need for districts to reconsider their approaches to funding district needs and priorities.
Use these tips to act now to ensure your district can take advantage of any remaining ESSER funds and make a plan to maintain priorities beyond the funding windows.
Identify, understand, and allocate every last dollar.
Knowing whether a district has fully allocated all ESSER funds it is eligible to receive can be challenging for school and district personnel. With 53 billion left unspent nationally, it is possible that districts do, in fact, have remaining funds to spend. If a district has a grants department, they are usually the coordinators of the development, submittal, and compliance for state and federal grants. But many districts do not have full-time dedicated grant staff. The chief financial or business official must sign off on all grant applications and can provide comparisons of budgeted, received, and spent grant dollars. These departments can provide the most detailed and current district utilization of ESSER funds. District personnel can also search this resource from Georgetown University to find their ESSER expenditures.
The allowable use of these funds is much broader than previous legislation, enabling local districts to directly address the needs of students, teachers, and communities. Ensuring students are college and career ready is the top priority and requires high levels of student achievement, staffing stability, and district planning dedicated to continuous improvement. But with most “supplement not supplant” provisions found in ESSA Title 1 expenditures waived for these COVID-19 pandemic allocations, districts can be bold in undertaking improvement initiatives that have previously lacked sufficient resources.
Make strategic choices as you spend remaining funds.
Many districts across the country still have small amounts of ESSER funding available. Though the amount is likely not enough to make a substantial impact to a district’s overall budget, it can provide funding for tools, resources, and programmatic offerings. The near term expiration of these funds means that any initiative undertaken should be temporary supplementing of current programs with alternative funding sources or mitigating the cost of implementing a new system which will be sustained with non-ESSER funding.
Consider identifying tools and resources that can be reused year after year or multi-year contracts that can support students beyond the current school year. A multi-year CCR platform contract qualifies under other ESSER provisions to extend for up to four years of services beyond the deadline for obligation. That means services can be contracted until September 30, 2028. That is sustained support for students to mitigate the impact of the educational disruption. To qualify for the extended service, a district would need to pay for the length of service by the deadline for obligation and to assert that the extension is needed for student support and does not compromise district budgetary or grant oversight.
Identify and prioritize what uses of funding had the greatest impact on student learning and success.
Given the extensive amount of funding and unprecedented flexibility across the three rounds of ESSER, almost all aspects of district operations and functions were impacted by these resources either directly or indirectly. This includes operational matters including cleaning, security, staffing, technology, or direct support to students such as high-intensity tutoring, career readiness initiatives, and attendance tracking services. It is important for districts to identify what is ESSER-dependent and assess the effectiveness of these programs and resources in order to prioritize.
Once identified, these services need to be bucketed into what is no longer needed, what can be absorbed by other funding mechanisms, and what should be continued in place of current offerings. It is critical that programs, platforms, and resources that sustain support for college, career, and life readiness and work toward postsecondary success are maintained––especially those that students and staff have come to rely on. Simply canceling all ESSER-dependent initiatives without assessing the effectiveness of these programs prioritizes the past over the present at the cost of the future.
Make a strategic and community-informed plan for beyond ESSER.
Congress has made clear in its fiscal year 2024 budget that no additional supplemental funding will be provided to extend the federal support states and districts received via ESSER. Subsequently, funding amounts and the channels by which it is distributed have returned to the traditional and historical mix of block grants, competitive grants, and direct programmatic funding. With this backdrop, districts will need to make difficult choices to reduce spending by either eliminating whole programs or trimming the budget across the board. Making this challenge more difficult is that inflationary pressures have raised prices significantly, for commodities and utilities, compared to pre-pandemic levels.
Navigating this reality well, without crises and disruptions to students, requires community discussion, intentional planning, and a focus on key district goals like college, career, and life readiness and student success. For districts that used ESSER funding for recurring costs–such as hiring new positions or adding in student supports–it is important to determine how to maintain staffing and programming moving forward. And if position or program reductions are necessary, districts must reject simply returning to the pre-pandemic model as a default. In this decision-making, it is critical that schools and districts respect the experiences, the successes and the failures, and the lessons learned over the past four years in order to inform the future.
ESSER was the largest infusion of supplemental federal dollars into our schools in history. These funds mitigated the impact and supplemented local efforts to respond to unprecedented challenges. But the funds were temporary, while the impact is ongoing. The need for student support has evolved and grown over the past four years. Multiple data sources have documented that achievement gaps are wider, attendance patterns are different, and that the social and emotional needs of students are more profound now. This means that schools must do more than make well-informed choices about how to spend limited funds; they must approach student learning and growth with innovation and creativity and ensure that the services, resources, and tools that are procured will engage students, serve a broad diversity of the student population, and truly work to catalyze postsecondary success across the student body.
Related Content
All Resources
Blog Post