Dive Brief:
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Most districts invested federal COVID-19 emergency funds from the American Rescue Plan on expanded learning time, including summer programming and after-school activities, according to survey results released Monday in a report by AASA, The School Superintendents Association.
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The next most common spending category was for mental health and behavioral supports for students through staffing, programming, professional development and curriculum.
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But, AASA said, the survey could not answer a key question on educators’, policymakers’ and taxpayers’ minds: Was the one-time, historical investment in K-12 schools well-spent? Because communities had different fiscal priorities and varying methods for investing the money, it is too difficult to generalize the best practice approaches for using the emergency funds, AASA's report said.
Dive Insight:
"When evaluating the success of ARP there is still much to learn," the report said, calling on researchers and policymakers to figure out how to measure the COVID emergency expenditures’ impacts and whether they were worthwhile.
Rupak Gandhi, superintendent of North Dakota's Fargo Public Schools, said the $44 million the district received in Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funds, including from ARP, generally fueled improvements to his district that included increased attendance, better academic performance, fewer disciplinary actions and other positive outcomes.
But, he said, to truly evaluate the effectiveness of the pandemic aid, the district looks at specific allocations, the goals the district set for those dollars, and whether the outcomes met or exceeded the goals. Gandhi said success shouldn't be measured against an arbitrary standard or metric that was unknown when districts were given the ESSER allocations.
"For me, success is defined by, ‘Do the dollars that you spend achieve the intended outcomes that they desired to do?’" Gandhi said. In measuring the effectiveness of the funds, he said, "We know that we can't group it all together, because not every dollar has the same purpose."
The 11,400-student district, like many school systems, invested ESSER dollars in a variety of ways depending on changing priorities in the first few years of the pandemic. Most districts, for instance, invested in safety measures and technology early in the pandemic in order to provide remote or in-person learning, while later allocations were heavily focused on learning recovery.
ARP funding for K-12 — the last and largest federal pandemic aid allocation at $189.5 billion — faces a Sept. 30 deadline when districts must obligate, or commit, to using the money, followed by a Jan. 28, 2025, deadline for spending those funds. Any unspent money must be returned to the U.S. Department of Education.
Collectively, K-12 received nearly $200 billion in federal COVID aid, with smaller allocations having earlier obligation and spending deadlines. Some states and districts have taken advantage of requesting extended spending deadlines from the Education Department. But as of Aug. 15, only Delaware and Puerto Rico received spending extensions for ARP funds dedicated to school districts. Nebraska had a request under review.
AASA's survey found that 15% of the superintendents polled said their district would need more time beyond the January 2025 deadline to spend down their ARP funds.
AASA also asked superintendents how their district would spend their ARP funds if it had an extra year to liquidate, and the most common answer was on mental health supports and personnel (28%). The next top investment was on additional instructional programming (20%).
This report was AASA's fourth in a series of superintendent surveys conducted regarding ARP funding. This latest survey is based on responses from over 600 superintendents from 46 states who were polled in June and July.
