When Angela Dominguez took the helm of Donna Unbiased Faculty District in Texas in 2021, she thought the district’s unique choice to make use of most of its federal Elementary and Secondary Faculty Reduction (ESSER) cash to pay for present fourth- and fifth-grade trainer positions was short-sighted.
“I used to be like, ‘Did you guys suppose that we have been going to only do with out fourth and fifth grade after ESSER?’” she recalled.
Dominguez had a long term imaginative and prescient for the remaining rounds of pandemic emergency funding: Rent educating assistants for early elementary school rooms to assist the district’s youngest learners, who have been scuffling with math and studying on account of uneven publicity to highschool throughout distant studying.
“My perception about a lot of these funds is [they] come round one time, and the funding wanted to be in issues that have been tangible, that might be lasting for our college students, our workers and our neighborhood,” stated Dominguez, who created a committee to make sure ESSER investments aligned with these objectives.
Congress rolled out almost $190 billion in ESSER funds in three phases to states between 2020 and 2022 to assist faculty districts tackle tutorial and social-emotional hardships of the COVID-19 pandemic on college students.
Districts usually had flexibility in how they used the cash to assist pandemic-related restoration on all fronts, from getting college students again to in-person studying to supporting pupil tutorial and social-emotional restoration.
Districts used ESSER funds in myriad methods and with various outcomes. EdSurge talked to a few districts — in Donna, Texas, Fulton County, Georgia and Guilford Nation, North Carolina — which can be seeing positive factors regardless of the emergency funds’ expiration. They made educated, data-driven bets on learn how to greatest assist their college students and academics by investing in instructional infrastructure and assist methods, from high-dosage tutoring to trainer teaching {and professional} improvement on new, streamlined literacy and math curricula.
Their information present their bets are paying off. What’s extra, these districts have discovered methods to maintain these enhancements regardless of ESSER’s ending.
Sasha Pudelski, who directs advocacy efforts for AASA, the college superintendents affiliation, which did a complete survey of district leaders about their pandemic emergency fund spending, stated the method these three districts took resonates with the survey findings and fulfilled what she known as the federal government’s “holistic imaginative and prescient” of funding long-term pupil wants.
Superintendents noticed ESSER “not simply as a chance to satisfy the pressing and quick wants of their college students, but in addition as an opportunity to spend money on systemic, long-term enhancements that might make an enduring impression on college students and educators,” she stated.
Not all districts have been in a position to keep their pandemic emergency-funded initiatives and packages.
“There are high-poverty communities which have decrease property tax bases and decrease business property revenues and declining populations and better pupil neighborhood wants,” Pudelski stated, that forestall them from reallocating assets now that ESSER is over. These districts “disproportionately felt the impression of the expiration of the funds.”
In-Class Assistants
Underneath Dominguez’ management, Donna, Texas, refocused its ESSER spending to assist its youngest learners. Pre-pandemic evaluation scores confirmed that greater than 90 % of third graders weren’t studying at grade stage and 95 % have been beneath grade stage in math. So the district used reduction funds to recruit, rent and practice classroom assistants for concentrated studying and math instruction in pre-kindergarten via grade 2.
That call paid off: In two years, from 2021 to 2023, exams confirmed third graders studying at grade stage jumped from 9 % to 31 %, and people reaching math proficiency went from simply 5 % to 27 %. Dominguez known as the outcomes “outstanding.”
These positive factors prompted the district to prioritize this system in its annual finances. Dominguez stated Donna is utilizing a mix of state and different federal funds to retain the assistants.
“That funding actually did get us numerous traction round college students attending to some [level of] restoration,” she added.
Give attention to Literacy
Enjoying the lengthy sport additionally drove Fulton County, Georgia, colleges’ ESSER spending technique. Nevertheless it was tempting to direct all of the emergency funds towards quick wants, based on Fulton’s chief tutorial officer Brannon Gaskins.
“There have been two colleges of thought round utilizing the ESSER funds,” Gaskins recalled. “How can we reopen colleges as quickly as potential? And what’s the long-term plan for these funds?”
Dedicating most of its ESSER funds to supporting college students’ literacy improvement made essentially the most sense to the district’s leaders, Gaskins stated. Recognizing the excessive likelihood of pupil studying declines on account of distant studying, Fulton used the cash to speed up pre-pandemic plans to reorganize literacy instruction round scientific studying rules.
“We knew there was a approach to make use of these funds in an revolutionary approach that might actually impression us 5, 10 years after the pandemic,” Gaskins stated.
As a part of a three-year plan to assist college students get well from pandemic-related studying setbacks, Fulton created Each Little one Reads. The initiative included coaching district leaders, principals, early elementary academics and workers on the science of studying, putting in a devoted literacy coach in each elementary faculty, organising high-dosage tutoring and changing dozens of disparate studying packages throughout the district with high-quality educational supplies.
Much like Donna, Texas, Fulton devoted a district finance director to supervise ESSER spending, which Gaskins stated helped the district spend its funds effectively.
Later, the district evaluated Each Little one Reads and located that Fulton outpaced state averages in literacy achievement — a feat state assessments confirmed. The findings persuaded Fulton to get rid of or reduce packages that weren’t working or not wanted, similar to small-group tutors and high-dosage tutoring, and complement or broaden packages that confirmed outcomes, similar to a devoted literacy coach in each faculty.
“Though our budgets are tight, our superintendent stated we’ll deprioritize different issues in our finances to ensure we’ve got the literacy coaches that we’d like,” Gaskins stated.
He added that enhancing academics’ literacy instruction “can have generational results.”
“When you concentrate on a brand-new trainer or a novice trainer 5 years in…they usually nonetheless have 25 extra cohorts of scholars to show [over their career], that has a big impact on generations of scholars,” Gaskins stated.
Excessive-Dosage Tutoring
Even earlier than the pandemic, schooling leaders in Guilford County, North Carolina, have been involved about center grade math proficiency. That concern, coupled with an outpouring of neighborhood assist for and analysis on the facility of high-dosage tutoring, drove the district’s ESSER focus, stated chief tutorial officer Jusmar Maness.
The distinction in Guilford’s program in comparison with different districts’ high-dosage tutoring, she added, is that it was “house grown.” The district established a division to supervise this system and recruited and skilled tutors from the native universities it already partnered with for different packages.
“We knew the funding wanted to be on the pupil stage,” Maness stated. “However we additionally wanted to construct capability inside our district to have the ability to proceed this work.”
At its peak, Guilford’s tutoring program supported greater than 17,000 college students from kindergarten via eighth grade. The district additionally launched teaching {and professional} improvement aligned to new, high-quality math educational supplies to reinforce academics’ math instruction.
“Expanded trainer capability has been important,” Maness stated. “These efforts have been designed to make sure that each single one in every of our academics had the assist and instruments they wanted to have interaction college students in that grade-level content material and speed up studying.”
By scaling this system rapidly and broadly and constructing academics’ educational capability in math, Guilford helped its fourth-grade college students maintain regular in math achievement by the 2023 faculty yr. These college students additionally recovered a lot quicker than their friends in massive U.S. cities.
Maness stated the addition of tutors through the faculty day additionally deepened college students’ emotions of connectedness at school.
“They don’t solely have the trainer, however additionally they have a tutor [who] is one other trusted grownup that they’ve a relationship with,” she stated.
Maness added that the tutoring program and trainer improvement have been unequivocally the suitable investments for his or her pandemic emergency funds, which the district exhausted.
“I don’t know that there’s one thing we might have modified,” she stated. “We have been in a position to actually attain so many college students and supply them what they wanted.”
Focusing its ESSER funds on a program fueled by neighborhood assist has meant that, with some modifications, Guilford has been in a position to maintain its tutoring program via native philanthropy after ESSER dried up. The district now offers high-dosage tutoring in literacy for kindergarten to grade 3 and math for grades 6 to eight, and helps highschool college students via out-of-school studying hubs.
“We had assist from universities. Now we have assist from the neighborhood. It’s because of these relationship and philanthropic companions we’ve been in a position to proceed the work past ESSER,” Maness stated, including that the district continues to advocate for state and federal funding.
Unsure Future
However districts throughout the nation are additionally bracing for different federal cuts after President Donald Trump’s government order to dismantle the Division of Schooling.
“We might simply not even be capable to operate if we misplaced federal funding,” Dominguez in Donna, Texas, stated. “We must lay off workers throughout the board.”
She added that state-level priorities in Texas have shifted, making budgets tighter. Her district is rounding out this faculty yr $8 million brief.
“The state isn’t any higher proper now than the federal [funding]. Faculty vouchers simply handed, and cash for public ed has been type of held hostage,” Dominguez stated. “We’re lucky to have a really wholesome fund steadiness, however we are able to’t maintain dipping into financial savings perpetually and count on it to remain that approach.”
Maness in Guilford hopes policymakers take into accout the necessity for continued funding in public colleges.
“We would like the individuals which can be making the choices on funding to grasp how important investments like these are for our college students,” she stated.
