Global Courant
California school districts are largely on track to spend billions of dollars on pandemic relief before the 2024 deadline — with much of the funding focused on summer and after-school learning — but questions remain about how well the money is being spent to help students catch up academically, researchers conclude.
The report, released Wednesday, examines the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Act (ESSER III) — the third, final and largest tranche of federal aid that went to schools to offset the damage from the COVID-19 pandemic. This round of support in total $122 billion nationwide, including about $15.1 billion for California. That is an amount equal to about 19% of what the state provides to its schools annually.
School systems had wide leeway for using the money, but there were also reporting requirements, especially in California – and these disclosures were reviewed in detail by researchers at Future Eda think tank at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy.
While schools used much of their previous federal health and safety and distance learning pandemic aid, “the hope was that ESSER III would promote academic recovery,” the researchers wrote. “We found both encouraging trends and cause for concern.”
from California 1,018 school districts serving more than 5.8 million students will need to spend or commit about $1 billion per quarter by September 2024, but the vast majority seem able to do so, even if they got off to a slow start.
By the end of March, San Francisco Unified, with about 50,000 students, had used nearly 80% of its $94 million in federal aid. Los Angeles Unified, the second largest school district in the country with about 429,000 students, had spent about 37% of that $2.6 billion. Long Beach Unified School District, with about 67,000 students, had spent 5% of its $212 million. Districts serving poor communities received more money per student.
Los Angeles district officials have said they are confident the district will spend or commit its funding to a contract or program by the deadline. In LA Unified the money has paid for 451 mental health workers, 336 intervention teachers and assistants for young learners who have difficulties with math and reading, 291 additional specialists for learners with disabilities, 242 carers and 222 technical support workers for school staff and learners. The district also ramped up education and organized optional “acceleration days” for students across the district.
While Long Beach’s state reporting reflects only $11 million in spending out of the district’s $212 million allocation, district plans the money for the next year and a half as part of a $500 million six-year improvement blueprint that draws on money from a variety of sources, the report said.
Long Beach made sure to issue earlier COVID-related aid first.
“I put them in order, first in, first out, by due date,” Renee Arkus, Long Beach Unified’s executive director of tax services, told investigators.
But elsewhere, notably Stockton Unified, slow spending has been characterized as both a sign of dysfunction and alleged corruption. Through March, that district had spent 2% of its ESSER III money. Individual, independent accountants asked questions about millions of dollars in potential fraud in government officials’ use of pandemic stimulus funds. District officials have denied the wrongdoing.
Researchers noted that because pandemic aid arrived in successive waves, it’s difficult to assess how everything was or is being spent, especially as previous reporting requirements were more limited. For that reason, the researchers focused on the pot of money with the most detailed reporting requirements, which was also the largest and last major distribution of federal funds.
This money started flowing in the second quarter of 2021 — well into the pandemic, which closed campuses across California in March 2020. other funding sources for this. As a result, only about 7% of ESSER III COVID assistance has been used for COVID safety and 9% for educational technology.
LA Unified, which spent far more on health measures than other school systems due to a groundbreaking district-wide weekly coronavirus testing effort, has pulled back such spending. The district previously planned to spend $272 million in emergency aid this year on coronavirus testing, contact tracing and vaccinations. Instead, the actual expenditure is estimated at $26 million.
Across California, the largest spending has been on academic recovery efforts, which have consumed 31% of spending so far. Many observers want this percentage to be higher, but the figure is well above the federal requirement of 20%.
Spending trends showed relatively little money being spent on mental health – a major concern raised by experts across the country. Part of the problem is a nationwide shortage of mental health professionals. Spending in this area has increased – from $24 million in the last quarter of 2021 to $105 million in the first quarter of 2023.
For academic recovery, the largest amount went to summer and after-school education. Spending on tutoring increased after a slow start. Extending the school day or school year never took off as a primary destination for this funding.
When Congress originally approved the money, it was assumed that school systems would be so bad financially that a large chunk of the dollars would be needed to keep district budgets afloat.
Instead, strong tax revenues, at least in California, have propelled school funding to new heights over the past two years. Still, about 21% of the funding spent to date has been used to sustain operations.
“While federal law specifically allows for such spending, the language offers little insight into how districts use the money,” the researchers wrote. The researchers were repeatedly hampered by such vague language in their ability to evaluate spending, though they were able to obtain more details by contacting school officials. And many school districts, including Oakland Unifiedhave posted additional information online for their constituents.
The researchers gave San Francisco Unified mixed reviews, even though the district did well not to put money on the table.
At the end of March, the district had spent $74 million of its $94 million allocation. “But almost all of that falls under the broad category of ‘other activities necessary to maintain the operation and continuity of the services … and to retain existing staff,'” the report said.
It was unclear to the researchers how well San Francisco has followed through with extensive leather restoration efforts the district had originally sketched. District officials insist they are following their plan.
District criticshowever, are dissatisfied.
“Instead of taking the funds and directing them where they were most needed – to address learning loss, student well-being and the dire impacts and widening equity gap we saw as a result of the pandemic – San Francisco chose Unified to close our structural budget deficit,” said Meredith Dodson, co-founder and executive director of San Francisco Parent Coalition. The district “just used them to kick the can further down the road.”
In announce their spending planofficials acknowledged that most of the funds “will be used to maintain core district and school operations, stabilize services and resources for students, and retain school and district staff.”
That strategy “was based on community feedback that the loss of school site services due to budget cuts would exacerbate the trauma and challenge students face during and because of COVID-19.”
Study co-author Phyllis Jordan noted that “this kind of spending is certainly a permissible use case. But as the end of the spending window approaches, using this money to keep the lights on will leave the districts with a lot of unsustainable spending. means all sorts of cuts after funding ends.
This issue has also surfaced in LA Unified, with Supt. Alberto Carvalho says about 2,000 district jobs depend on the one-time COVID money. LA officials said they plan to consolidate services over the course of two years with no layoffs.
Andrew Thomas, director of the district’s Independent Analysis Unit, expressed concern at Tuesday’s Board of Education meeting.
“There are some real risks that we haven’t dealt with as much in the past as we do now,” Thomas said. “One time money disappears.”
