The most innovative and most equitable districts on gender disparity are creating policies offer adequate childcare, allow for more flexible work hours, foster a family-first culture and explicitly provide mentoring and networking.
"The ESSER money is a lot, but it’s not as much as everybody thinks," says Bernard McCune, Denver Public School's associate chief of academics. "Everyone thinks that schools are just flush with money and they throw everything at schools without intentionality. What we’ve done is use ESSER as an opportunity to innovate."
States and school districts have now spent less than half of their Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funds, according to the latest federal data — and the rest of that money must be allocated or spent by September 2024, or it will be lost.
The last few years showed us that it's time to embrace flexible learning environments, like online, blended, and hybrid learning, because they empower parents and students to take control.
At the moment, school districts are essentially sitting on a gold mine to spend at their discretion, as long as it's used to provide relief in an area that was impacted as a result of the pandemic. But while most suffered some sort of toll—whether in student academics, staffing, or mental health—they've been slow to spend these funds.
