Expiration of ESSER Funds: So Much Money, So Little Time
School districts must have their Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) III, also referred to as American Rescue Plan (ARP), funds obligated by September 30, 2024, and liquidated by January 28, 2025. So, how much money are we talking about? The three rounds of ESSER fund awards to state education agencies were proportional to the funding each state received under Title I, Part A of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, as amended, in fiscal years 2019 and 2020, respectively. To put the amounts received by each of the three states served by the Region 7 Comprehensive Center (R7CC)—Alabama, Florida, and Mississippi—in perspective, on average, ESSER I (March 27, 2020) was 81% of these states’ 2020 Title I grant; ESSER II (December 27, 2020) was equivalent to three times these states’ 2020 Title I allocation; and ARP ESSER (March 11, 2021) was equivalent to almost 7 times these states’ 2020 Title I grant amount.[1] So, school districts in these states are trying to spend the equivalent of almost 11 years of Title I funds by the first half of the 2024-2025 school year (Figure 1).
Figure 1. Total ESSER Funds and 2020 Title I Funds Received by States Served by the Region 7 Comprehensive Center
Source: Author’s calculations based on data from: https://oese.ed.gov/files/2020/04/ESSER-Fund-State-Allocations-Table.pdf; https://oese.ed.gov/files/2021/01/Final_ESSERII_Methodology_Table_1.5.21.pdf; https://oese.ed.gov/files/2021/06/Revised-ARP-ESSER-Methodology-and-Allocation-Table_6.25.21_FINAL.pdf; ESEA Title I LEA Allocations—FY 2020 (ed.gov); U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Common Core of Data, “Public Elementary/Secondary School Universe Survey,” 2020–21, Provisional Version 1a.
The 2024-2025 School Year Budget: Haste Makes Waste
School districts around the country are working on their 2024-2025 budgets while considering multiple lingering challenges associated with the COVID-19 pandemic—staff shortages, high rates of absenteeism, mental health issues affecting students and educators, decreasing student enrollment, and significant decreases in academic achievement in reading and math (TNTP, 2023; U.S. Department of Education, 2023). The 2024-2025 budgets are particularly important, as they are the last opportunity for districts to access ARP ESSER funds. Among R7CC states, half of the districts in each state reported spending at least 55% of their ESSER allocations (Figure 2). In Alabama, 57 out of 140 districts have spent less than 50 percent of their total ESSER funds as of last week (Edunomics Lab, 2023). In Mississippi, 36 out of 146 districts were in a similar situation as of mid-October; and in Florida, such was the case for 23 districts back in mid-April. Therefore, school boards across R7CC states wanting to do what is best for kids are working harder and smarter to allocate these dollars to uses that generate learning gains in the most cost-effective way. The need to spend remaining funds quickly, a lot of it in some cases, must be balanced with an impending fiscal cliff due to the combination of the ESSER allocation deadline and declining enrollment. But wait! Rushing to allocate these funds to programs, resources, or projects without asking if there are any indicators that suggest these are effective would not be prudent.
Figure 2. Median Percentage of Total ESSER Funds Spent by Districts in R7CC States
Source: Author’s calculations based on Total ESSER Summary data for Alabama (last updated 12/11/23), Florida (last updated 4/18/23), and Mississippi (last updated 10/13/23) downloaded from Edunomics Lab at Georgetown. FL Total ESSER Summary | Tableau Public.
You Can’t Always Get What You Want, but We Want to Help You Get What You Need
R7CC seeks to build on the National Comprehensive Center Strategic Planning for Continued Recovery effort by providing a series of asynchronous sessions that will focus on specific topics directly related and applicable to allocating resources in the most cost-effective way. This will help address the urgent school district need for smart guidance on the allocation of larger-than-usual and expiring funds. In Table 1, we provide an overview of the three upcoming sessions along with topics to be covered, key questions to address, and a timeline for delivery.
Table 1. Upcoming Sessions
In the short run, we hope these sessions on allocating ESSER funds help school districts in their urgent quest to allocate available resources in a way that maximizes gains for the greatest number of students in 2024-2025. And in the long run, we hope districts use these lessons to drive their district budget strategy every year.
Author: Verónica Ruiz de Castilla, PhD, Region 7 Comprehensive Center
References
Edunomics Lab. (2023). ESSER Expenditure Dashboard. Georgetown University. https://edunomicslab.org/esser-spending/
Frank, S., & Hovey, D. (2014). Return on Investment in Education – A “System-Strategy” Approach. https://www.erstrategies.org/cms/files/2466-return-on-investment-in-education.pdf
Levenson, N. (2022). Smarter Budgets, Smarter Schools (2nd ed.). How to Survive and Thrive in Tight Times. Harvard University Press.
U.S. Department of Education. (2023). School Pulse Panel 2023-24. Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Statistics. https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/spp/results.asp
TNTP. (2023). False Signals. How Pandemic-Era Grades Mislead Families and Threaten Student Learning. https://tntp.org/publications/view/student-experiences/false-signals
[1] Author’s calculations based on state allocation tables for ESSER I, ESSER II, ARP ESSER, and on states’ 2020 Title I allocations.
