Education Week - May 31, 2023 - 8

6 Tips for Making the Most of ESSER Dollars
Before They Expire
By Mark Lieberman
The Upper Moreland school district wanted to
use federal COVID-19 relief dollars to contract
with a speech therapist. So the district sought
services from outside contractors that employ
speech therapists.
The only problem? " They face the same staffing
challenges we face, " said Matthew Lentz,
chief financial officer and board secretary for
the 3,300-student district in the suburbs of
Philadelphia. " If they can't staff it, you're back
to square one. "
Lentz's team eventually hired someone inhouse,
but that process took a while, and that
person started in their role six months later than
planned. For all that time, the district had committed
to spending ESSER dollars but couldn't
actually get them out the door.
Districts across the country are eyeing spending
deadlines for the money Congress sent them
in three rounds during the first year of the pandemic.
The due date for the first round, known
colloquially as ESSER I, has already passed.
ESSER II expenses must be committed by Sept.
30 and spent by January 2024. ESSER III expires
one year later-which means the upcoming
school year will be the last during which districts
can use pandemic relief aid to pay for services and
make strategic investments.
Some districts are already well on their way
to spending their full allotment. The Mansfield
district in Texas, for instance, has allocated all
$29.5 million it received for ESSER III to priorities
like curriculum support, tutoring programs,
instructional coaches, summer schools, technology
tools, and bonuses for staff, said Michele
Trongaard, the district's associate superintendent
for business and finance.
The district still has roughly $10 million of that
sum to spend, mainly on the remaining paychecks
for ESSER-funded staff members.
But many districts are further behind, with
thousands or even millions of dollars left to allocate
and spend. As of earlier this month, federal
data showed schools nationwide had spent
nearly all of their ESSER I money, roughly
three-quarters of ESSER II funds, and slightly
more than one-third of their ESSER III allocation,
according to a FutureEd analysis. That
doesn't account for the likely billions of dollars
schools have committed but not yet spent,
and it likely reflects a data lag of at least several
months.
Most district leaders are eager to find productive
uses for those funds, if they haven't already.
" I know there's a perception that, 'We're going
to leave all this money on the table.' I can guarantee
you I'm not leaving a penny on the table, "
Susan Enfield, superintendent of the Washoe
County schools in Nevada, said during a March
panel at the SXSW EDU conference in Austin.
(Enfield is chair of the board of trustees for Editorial
Projects in Education, the nonprofit publisher
of Education Week.)
But, she added, " I also won't spend to spend. "
Here are some tips on how to avoid doing just
that.
1. Concentrate on one-time investments
that will pay dividends for years to come
The U.S. Department of Education has expressed
some willingness to offer flexibility to
districts to spend remaining funds on construction
contracts after the spending deadline has
passed. But districts will likely have to endure a
District leaders
recommend planning
for the future and
finding big, one-time
investments with
long-lasting impacts
lengthy application process and a deluge of paperwork
to make that work.
Instead, district leaders say, remaining ESSER
funds should go to one-time purchases that will
pay off down the road. For instance, technology
that addresses school security concerns will be
useful for years after it's installed, as will replenishing
school libraries and upgrading learning
management systems, according to an ESSER
strategy guide from Education Resource Strategies,
a consultant that works with school districts
on finance issues.
2. Use data to make decisions
and keep track of investments
District leaders argue that data can serve as a
powerful tool to help decide where investments
are most needed.
Lentz said his team has been scrutinizing information
on academic achievement and behavior
from school leaders as well as preschool
providers that will be sending students to the
district in the coming years, and from students
who migrated to cyber charter schools during
the height of the pandemic but are starting to
trickle back to their neighborhood schools.
" Students are not coming to us on the same
level that they were previously, " a finding that
has prompted the district to make major ESSER-funded
investments in programs that help
with foundational skills like math and reading,
Lentz said.
Meanwhile, decisions on how to invest remaining
ESSER dollars are most effective when
they take into account insights gained from prior
spending, said Joe Gothard, superintendent of
St. Paul Public Schools in Minnesota.
Gothard's district used a sliver of its ESSER
funds to establish an Office of Innovation. The
team's sole purpose was to develop a progress
monitoring system that could easily show administrators
and the public what federal funds
8 | EDUCATION WEEK | May 31, 2023 | www.edweek.org
were fueling, and whether those investments
were proving worthwhile, Gothard said.
3.
Reallocate funds originally set aside
for things you didn't end up needing
The St. Paul school district expected to need
far more personal protective equipment (PPE)
than ended up being necessary, said Gothard.
Similarly, some planned hires didn't work out,
leaving more money than expected left over.
That freed up funds to pay for additional reading
programs and social-emotional support for
students.
" I don't want our team to find out too late it's
far less than we anticipated [and] there's this
large sum of money waiting to be spent, " Gothard
said. " Trying to manage it in the day by
day is really important for us. "
4. Be mindful of ripple effects from
worthwhile investments
ESSER funds in St. Paul paid for 70 of the district's
teachers to take on a new assignment: offering
courses to young students using the " science
of reading " approach, for which they had
all previously been trained.
" In doing so I created a 70-person vacancy in
a workforce that's already challenged, " Gothard
said.
He ended up using additional ESSER money
to offer signing bonuses and other incentives to
attract new workers.
5. Don't wait to start long-term planning
September 2024 might feel like a long way off,
but it takes time to figure out how best to spend
one-time funds; find contractors, vendors, or
job candidates who can fulfill your needs; and
submit the required paperwork to prepare for a
clean audit later.
It also requires long-term planning to figure
out how to sustain ESSER-funded investments
after the funds dry up.
To that end, the Upper Moreland district plans
to take advantage of an unexpected decline in
the overall cost of special education services by
reallocating some money from that line item to
cover the cost of staff members' compensation
once ESSER funds run out.
6. Set expectations and take notes
on the biggest successes
Not every investment will work exactly as
districts hope. Education Resource Strategies
recommends being honest with community
members when the district takes a gamble on a
new strategy.
" We already know that some district initiatives
won't work in the way leaders hoped, " the
group writes in its guide to spending remaining
ESSER funds, which it released earlier this year.
" But district leaders can get out ahead of this
inevitability and engage their communities in
learning from and evolving their work, rather
than declaring promising efforts as failures too
quickly. "
Lost in the chaos wrought by the pandemic,
and examples of ESSER investments that didn't
work out as hoped, are success stories of using
temporary increased investments in education
to make a positive difference for students.
Gothard recommends district leaders keep
track of their biggest ESSER-era accomplishments
and make them a central component of
advocacy for additional education funding down
the road, whether from local taxpayers or state
legislators.
" A lot of heartbreak came out of the pandemic,
but to be able to tell the positive stories, could
really serve to help answer the question of what
does school funding look like from here, " Gothard
said.
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Education Week - May 31, 2023

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