USA: Estimated 41-65% Of Federal COVID19 Relief Funding For K-12 Schools Could Go Toward Spending That Isn't Directly Related To COVID19. Schools Didn't Need $190 Billion To Reopen In Person

New Report: An estimated 41% to 65% of federal COVID-19 relief funding for K-12 schools could go toward spending that isn't directly related to COVID-19.

— Corey A. DeAngelis (@DeAngelisCorey) August 4, 2021

"Although ESSER funds were advertised as supports for school reopenings and pandemic recovery, initial estimates presented in this report suggest that $78 billion–$123 billion [of $190 billion] could go toward spending not directly related to COVID-19."https://t.co/EZkPWZfee7

— Corey A. DeAngelis (@DeAngelisCorey) August 4, 2021

public schools didn't need $190 billion to reopen in person

school closures were more about power dynamics than resources

if anything that money should've gone directly to families instead of bloated bureaucratic institutions

fund students, not systems.

— Corey A. DeAngelis (@DeAngelisCorey) August 4, 2021

American Enterprise Institute, AEI.org

The $200 billion question: How much of federal COVID-19 relief funding for schools will go to COVID-19 relief?

written by Nat Malkus, Senior Fellow and Deputy Director, Education Policy Studies

Wednesday August 4, 2021

Key Points

• Between March 2020 and March 2021, Congress appropriated nearly $190 billion in Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funding for K–12 schools, by far the largest federal infusion ever provided to schools.
• Although ESSER funds were advertised as supports for school reopenings and pandemic recovery, initial estimates presented in this report suggest that $78 billion–$123 billion could go toward spending not directly related to COVID-19.
• Expansive permissible uses for ESSER funds raise questions around whether the funds will be spent in ways that effectively benefit students and mediate COVID-19 learning loss.

Executive Summary

Between March 2020 and March 2021, Congress appropriated nearly $190 billion in Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funding for K–12 schools. Passed in three waves, each significantly more generous than the last, ESSER is by far the largest federal infusion ever provided to K–12 schools—more than 11 times annual Title I spending and almost five times as large as total federal K–12 spending in 2019–20. (Combined with Governor’s Emergency Education Relief funds, allocated along­side ESSER, emergency education funding approached $200 billion.)

Remarkably, Congress placed few limits on what ESSER funding can be used for. Although ESSER funds were advertised as supports for school reopen­ings and pandemic recovery, initial estimates pre­sented in this report suggest that, even with generous assumptions, less than 20 percent of total ESSER district funding will go to reopening, on average, and less than 40 percent will go to recovery. All told, $78 billion–$123 billion, out of nearly $190 billion, could go toward spending not directly related to COVID-19. A majority of these remaining funds will be spent over seven years.

Expansive permissible uses for ESSER funds raise several questions. At the federal level, they raise the questions of whether this overly abundant fed­eral spending was intentional and how an excess of unspent federal funds might affect Democratic ambi­tions to provide a more permanent federal funding increase to schools through Title I. At the district level, they raise questions about how districts might avoid ineffective, unnecessary, or otherwise undesir­able expenditures.

Being flush with funding and searching for respon­sible ways to use it are strange situations for many districts to find themselves in at the end of the first full pandemic year. Whether taxpayers’ funds are responsibly used—and whether students will benefit from them—hangs in the balance.

Introduction

The coronavirus pandemic was the most disrup­tive event in American education in the past 100 years. On March 15, 2020, Mike DeWine of Ohio became the first governor to close schools statewide in response to the pandemic. Within a few weeks, every other state followed suit, and many school districts remained closed for a full year or more. The immense financial challenges associated with retooling school operations to deliver remote instruction, and later managing reopening while the pandemic played out, prompted nearly unanimous support for a robust fed­eral response.

The response that came was more than robust. Unfolding in three steps, each called Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER I, ESSER II, and ESSER III) and each substantially larger than the last, the cumulative federal COVID-19 support for elementary and secondary schools was far and away the largest federal infusion ever provided to schools. Totaling approximately $190 billion in direct aid for K–12 education, with significantly more indirectly available through funds allocated to state and local governments, that federal support has left many dis­tricts in an unexpected position: flush with funding and in search of prudent ways to use it.

This report comes at the end of the first full school year completed under the shadow of the pan­demic and provides an overview of the current state of federal COVID-19 relief funding for K–12 schools. It provides a cumulative accounting of ESSER fund­ing, including the distribution of funds to states and school districts, an initial look at the amounts states reported as spent at the end of the school year, and an estimate of the proportion of ESSER funds used for reopening, recovery, and non-pandemic purposes.

Read the full report.