Superintendent Curtis Jones asked his principals what each of them would do with $1 million. A more engaging summer school program and the return of field trips were two key initiatives that emerged as leaders at Bibb County Schools in Georgia decided how to spend COVID relief funds.
The first is meant to quickly address learning loss while the other should help students reacclimate after the isolation of the pandemic, Jones said during a webinar on COVID spending hosted by FutureEd, a Georgetown University think tank. “Our focus was to create summer learning opportunities that are more like summer camp than summer school to get students to come back,” said Jones, the 2019 superintendent of the year. “We also wanted to look at students who were already behind academically and personalize their learning experience.”
Bibb County has hired about 250 people with relief funds and, like districts across the U.S., is now deep into the process of allocating the third round of ESSER funds from the American Rescue Plan. The Macon-based system has also ramped up school-based tutoring and homework assistance, although, like many districts, finding tutors and volunteers has been a challenge. Supply chain disruptions have also made it harder to spend funds on computers for its 1-to-1 program and equipment to upgrade school ventilation systems, Jones said.
Another concern is sustaining some of these programs when American Rescue Plan money expires in two years. Bibb, like other K-12 leaders, hopes to build a track of record success behind tutoring, summer school and other recovery initiatives, and convince federal and state policymakers to extend the funding.
Previous rounds of relief funding have allowed Bibb County to finally stand up a long-planned 1-to-1 program, vastly expand ed-tech training for teachers and implement personalized learning more extensively. “The argument that school hasn’t changed in the last 50 years will no longer be true,” he said. “Now when you come into our classrooms you see students with individual devices and an interactive panel and a teacher who knows how to use it.”
Some clear trends are emerging as Jones and other superintendents set their spending plans. Leaders in urban districts, for instance, are spending ESSER relief funds differently than administrators in rural school systems. There are also marked variances between more and less affluent districts.
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High poverty districts are more likely to upgrade HVAC systems and buy new instructional materials while more affluent districts are enhancing summer school and mental health care, said FutureEd Associate Director Phyllis Jordan, who has been tracking ESSER spending plans. Rural districts are spending more on transportation as suburban school systems are expanding social-emotional learning initiatives.
Among these disparities is that high-poverty schools are likely repairing aging buildings and replacing outdated instructional materials. With the two items not being major issues for affluent schools, those administrators can focus on added services such as tutoring and summer school.
Still, when the entire K-12 system is considered, several post-COVID-spending priorities are emerging across the board when it comes to American Rescue Plan funding: facilities upgrades, academic intervention, staffing, technology and the mental health of children and adults, according to research by FuturedEd and Burbio, a firm that aggregates school, community and government data. Here’s a breakdown of the spending plans in 3,000 districts:
- Academic recovery: $14.3 million
- Facilities and operations: $12 million
- Staffing: $11.9 million
- Technology: $5 million
- Mental and physical health: $2.7 million
“A lot of people feel facilities projects are divorced from academic success,” Jordan said. “Students learn better when classrooms aren’t too hot or too cold. If a student has asthma, mold in the classroom can lead to absenteeism, which leads to learning loss.”
Administrators can also use the following U.S. Department of Education resources as they plan ESSER spending:
- Improving ventilation in schools
- Summer Learning & Enrichment Collaborative
- Addressing teacher shortages
- Addressing staff shortages
- Best Practices Clearinghouse
