The tide is shifting when it comes to funding in U.S public school districts. Come September 2024, they’ll stop receiving money from the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ESSER).
ESSER is a $190 billion funding program that was started by the federal government to address the impacts of the pandemic on K-12 education. This drop in funding will occur after Sept. 30, 2024 (although some schools have asked for and received extensions), which is the deadline for districts to allocate funding they’ve received. But extension or not, the fact remains that they’ll be faced with the after-effects of a pandemic and shrinking budgets.
It’s important to note that ESSER was a federal stimulus act in response to a one-off event. It wasn’t a regular source of funding prior to the pandemic. Now that most schools have opened, one could argue that they shouldn’t need the money. Can’t they go back to doing things the old way?
Not exactly. While it’s true that district leaders didn’t have access to ESSER funding before, they also weren’t dealing with the lasting, long-term effects of a global pandemic, including a rise in mental health and behavioral issues for students and a lack of new teachers entering the profession. Add to that a reduction in state budgets and a jump in inflation and it’s no wonder district leaders are going to have to be more strategic about what they spend and where.
How School Districts Have Allocated ESSER Funds to Date
While the relief funds were welcomed, the breakdown of how money was spent and its impact remain unclear. A New York Times piece reported that while recovering from the effects of remote learning should have been the logical priority for school districts, it’s unclear how much of the funding was being used to help students catch up. They also reported that national data on how the money was spent is scarce.
It makes sense. Different school districts have different priorities, which shifted over the pandemic. The same NYT article found that:
“Some districts have invested more in extending learning time or offering intensive small-group tutoring focused on math or English, which research has shown to be among the most powerful interventions. Others have used much of their funds on facility upgrades, online tutoring services, across-the-board bonuses for employees and other measures that education experts have argued are less effective for helping students catch up.”
According to Education Week, the Missoula district in Montana spent $5 million on staffing salaries, hiring more full-time teachers, behavior interventionists and social workers.
There has never been a one size fits all solution for school districts. There is a wealth of things at play that affect school success, including socioeconomic factors, ethnicity, state funding etc. But one thing is clear: educators are worried about what will happen come September.
A Brookings Institution paper from researchers at the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University highlights the potentially calamitous scenarios for schools encountering the funding drop. As the authors shared in American School & University:
“Many districts will need to right-size their budgets,” say the authors, Marguerite Roza and Katherine Silberstein. “This is likely to involve painful cuts…especially challenging in districts that used relief money to add staff or maintain excess capacity that they would not have been able to afford otherwise.”
Micah Hill, Missoula’s district superintendent, knows this only too well. As Hill told MTN News “When those funds go away, there’s nothing to replace that.”
How K-12 District Leaders Are Thinking About Budgets
Since the pandemic shuttered schools, the U.S education system has struggled with a number of issues, including, but not limited to, declining enrollment, learning loss, mental health, teacher attrition and student behavior. There’s no shortage of challenges that need addressing, so how are district leaders choosing what to focus on? With less funding on the horizon, what are their top priorities?
As expected, discussions around future budget allocation in the wake of the upcoming fiscal cliff have been underway for months. A 2023 McKinsey report based on a survey of 487 US K–12 public and charter school district administrators found that districts were prioritizing teacher retention and student well–being to tackle the pandemic’s effects. As stated in the report:
“As district leaders plan for the drop-off in available funds, certain categories of spending are expected to be more resilient to budgetary declines than others. These sustained priority-spending categories include student mental health and social–emotional curriculum. Other categories—such as analytics and reporting tools—are resurging in importance.”
At the recent ASU GSV summit educational consultancy Tyton Partners surveyed approximately 100 K-12 superintendents. Nearly everyone agreed that the looming fiscal uncertainty on the horizon has forced them to reevaluate how they’re managing their respective budgets. Like what McKinsey found, the teacher staffing and student well-being crises were top of mind. The top three strategic priorities over the next three years from those surveyed at the summit were:
- faculty and staff (43%)
- classroom learning software (42%)
- student support services (39%)
A Renewed Interest in Technology
A key point of interest from both surveys is the interest in using funding for classroom learning software and analytics and reporting tools. But there are a few things district leaders will want to keep in mind when evaluating and implementing software.
A survey conducted by the EdWeek research center found that almost two-thirds of teachers, principals, and district leaders were experiencing technology fatigue. District leaders who can minimize the number of single-use technology applications being used in classrooms could potentially see a reduction in staff burnout. The benefits don’t stop there, either. Consolidating technology tools could also save school districts money (fewer tools = less expenditure). Rather than using a mishmash of freemium services and applications, districts could instead look to implement an all-in-one learning management system (LMS) as a solution.
A tried and tested learning management system (LMS) can act as a partner to a school district, empowering staff to personalize learning at scale for their students. When searching for the right LMS, there are several factors to consider. Some of these include:
- does the LMS allow for scalability across classes and schools?
- can an LMS do the work of several other single-usage technology apps, consolidating the time, resources, and spend while delivering the same—or better—outcomes?
- what does the future roadmap look like? What types of features and functionalities are on the horizon?
- with cyberattacks on the rise, what security and privacy measures does the company have in place?
- does the LMS have accessible and equitable learning experiences baked in or do instructors need to use third party add-ons?
Another rising challenge that technology could help with is the sharp spike in chronic absenteeism in K-12 schools. A study from the American Enterprise Institute found that across the country, “chronic absenteeism—the percentage of students missing at least 10 percent of a school year—surged from 15 percent in 2018 to 28 percent in 2022.”
Lakisha Young, the chief executive of parent advocacy group Oakland REACH, was interviewed in a New York Times article about chronic absenteeism. Young cited a possible solution to students not being able to physically attend classes could be to offer a rigorous online learning option they could access as well. That way, when an emergency such as a student missing the bus or having to care for a family member arose, they’d still be able to catch up on their schoolwork remotely. LMSs are more than a piece of technology. When used to their full potential, they extend and augment learning and act as a bridge between educators and the families of at-risk students.
In the absence of stimulus funds to bulk up their budgets, schools are at risk of seeing the solutions they put into place during the pandemic start to fade. By proactively thinking about how best to address the key priorities and by utilizing the right technology solution, K-12 district leaders can ensure a greater chance of student success down the road.
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