When Angela Dominguez took the helm of Donna Impartial 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 current fourth- and fifth-grade instructor positions was short-sighted.
“I used to be like, ‘Did you guys suppose that we had been going to only do with out fourth and fifth grade after ESSER?’” she recalled.
Dominguez had a long run imaginative and prescient for the remaining rounds of pandemic emergency funding: Rent instructing assistants for early elementary lecture rooms to assist the district’s youngest learners, who had been scuffling with math and studying on account of uneven publicity to high school 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 had been tangible, that may be lasting for our college students, our workers and our neighborhood,” mentioned Dominguez, who created a committee to make sure ESSER investments aligned with these targets.
Congress rolled out almost $190 billion in ESSER funds in three phases to states between 2020 and 2022 to assist college districts handle educational 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 scholar educational 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 beneficial properties regardless of the emergency funds’ expiration. They made educated, data-driven bets on how you can finest assist their college students and lecturers by investing in academic infrastructure and assist techniques, from high-dosage tutoring to instructor teaching {and professional} improvement on new, streamlined literacy and math curricula.
Their knowledge 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, mentioned 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 scholar wants.
Superintendents noticed ESSER “not simply as a possibility to satisfy the pressing and rapid wants of their college students, but additionally as an opportunity to put money into systemic, long-term enhancements that may make an enduring affect on college students and educators,” she mentioned.
Not all districts have been capable of preserve their pandemic emergency-funded initiatives and applications.
“There are high-poverty communities which have decrease property tax bases and decrease industrial property revenues and declining populations and better scholar neighborhood wants,” Pudelski mentioned, that stop them from reallocating sources now that ESSER is over. These districts “disproportionately felt the affect 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 degree and 95 % had been beneath grade degree 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, checks confirmed third graders studying at grade degree jumped from 9 % to 31 %, and people attaining math proficiency went from simply 5 % to 27 %. Dominguez known as the outcomes “exceptional.”
These beneficial properties prompted the district to prioritize this system in its annual finances. Dominguez mentioned Donna is utilizing a mix of state and different federal funds to retain the assistants.
“That funding actually did get us lots of traction round college students attending to some (degree of) restoration,” she added.
Concentrate on Literacy
Enjoying the lengthy sport additionally drove Fulton County, Georgia, faculties’ ESSER spending technique. Nevertheless it was tempting to direct all of the emergency funds towards rapid wants, in accordance with Fulton’s chief educational officer Brannon Gaskins.
“There have been two faculties of thought round utilizing the ESSER funds,” Gaskins recalled. “How can we reopen faculties as quickly as doable? 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 mentioned. Recognizing the excessive chance of scholar studying declines on account of distant studying, Fulton used the cash to speed up pre-pandemic plans to reorganize literacy instruction round scientific studying ideas.
“We knew there was a method to make use of these funds in an progressive method that may actually affect us 5, 10 years after the pandemic,” Gaskins mentioned.
As a part of a three-year plan to assist college students recuperate from pandemic-related studying setbacks, Fulton created Each Youngster Reads. The initiative included coaching district leaders, principals, early elementary lecturers and workers on the science of studying, putting in a devoted literacy coach in each elementary college, establishing high-dosage tutoring and changing dozens of disparate studying applications throughout the district with high-quality tutorial supplies.
Just like Donna, Texas, Fulton devoted a district finance director to supervise ESSER spending, which Gaskins mentioned helped the district spend its funds effectively.
Later, the district evaluated Each Youngster Reads and located that Fulton outpaced state averages in literacy achievement — a feat state assessments confirmed. The findings persuaded Fulton to remove or reduce applications that weren’t working or now not wanted, corresponding to small-group tutors and high-dosage tutoring, and complement or increase applications that confirmed outcomes, corresponding to a devoted literacy coach in each college.
“Though our budgets are tight, our superintendent mentioned we are going to deprioritize different issues in our finances to ensure we’ve the literacy coaches that we’d like,” Gaskins mentioned.
He added that enhancing lecturers’ literacy instruction “may have generational results.”
“When you consider a brand-new instructor or a novice instructor 5 years in…and so they nonetheless have 25 extra cohorts of scholars to show (over their profession), that has a big impact on generations of scholars,” Gaskins mentioned.
Excessive-Dosage Tutoring
Even earlier than the pandemic, training leaders in Guilford County, North Carolina, had been involved about center grade math proficiency. That concern, coupled with an outpouring of neighborhood assist for and analysis on the ability of high-dosage tutoring, drove the district’s ESSER focus, mentioned chief educational officer Jusmar Maness.
The distinction in Guilford’s program in comparison with different districts’ high-dosage tutoring, she added, is that it was “dwelling 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 applications.
“We knew the funding wanted to be on the scholar degree,” Maness mentioned. “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 tutorial supplies to reinforce lecturers’ math instruction.
“Expanded instructor capability has been important,” Maness mentioned. “These efforts had been designed to make sure that each single one in every of our lecturers had the assist and instruments they wanted to interact college students in that grade-level content material and speed up studying.”
By scaling this system shortly and broadly and constructing lecturers’ tutorial capability in math, Guilford helped its fourth-grade college students maintain regular in math achievement by the 2023 college yr. These college students additionally recovered a lot quicker than their friends in massive U.S. cities.
Maness mentioned the addition of tutors through the college day additionally deepened college students’ emotions of connectedness at school.
“They don’t solely have the instructor, however additionally they have a tutor (who) is one other trusted grownup that they’ve a relationship with,” she mentioned.
Maness added that the tutoring program and instructor improvement had been unequivocally the precise investments for his or her pandemic emergency funds, which the district exhausted.
“I don’t know that there’s one thing we’d have modified,” she mentioned. “We had been capable of 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 capable of maintain its tutoring program via native philanthropy after ESSER dried up. The district now gives 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. We have now assist from the neighborhood. It’s because of these relationship and philanthropic companions we’ve been capable of proceed the work past ESSER,” Maness mentioned, 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 Training.
“We might simply not even be capable of perform if we misplaced federal funding,” Dominguez in Donna, Texas, mentioned. “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 college yr $8 million quick.
“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 mentioned. “We’re lucky to have a really wholesome fund stability, however we are able to’t maintain dipping into financial savings ceaselessly and count on it to remain that method.”
Maness in Guilford hopes policymakers bear in mind the necessity for continued funding in public faculties.
“We would like the individuals which can be making the choices on funding to know how important investments like these are for our college students,” she mentioned.
