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For the past two years, the Detroit Community Public School District has been able to leverage its share of federal COVID relief aid to fund after-school enrichment programs that help students recover from learning lost during the pandemic.
But those funds will soon run out, and Detroit and other districts face some tough decisions about which programs and employees they can keep once federal support runs out.
Detroit mother Aliya Moore said she is concerned her daughter’s newly funded after-school debate team will be “snatched away,” along with funding for new positions, such as parent outreach coordinators.
“That’s my biggest fear,” said Moore, who is a frequent critic of the district. “I just started the (next) school year, and a lot of these people aren’t there.”
For districts, there is an added challenge: the looming deadlines attached to federal aid put them under time pressure to plan their spending and use the remaining funds quickly and effectively, while also figuring out how they will manage without it.
What they are eager to avoid is the so-called fiscal cliff, where a sharp drop in funding forces sudden and severe budget cuts that could affect the entire school system.
Michigan superintendents are generally optimistic that their districts can avoid that scenario, especially given the prospect of increased state funding. But experts say it will take work.
“Districts need to plan now, so students don’t face chaos at the start of the 2024 school year with classrooms and teachers in turmoil, programs abruptly canceled, staff demoralized, and leaders focused on nothing more than budget issues,” wrote Marguerite Roza, a professor. from Georgetown University studying school finance, in a recent article.
What is federal COVID relief?
Michigan hasn’t seen anything quite like this: more than $6 billion in federal funds earmarked to help students recover from the pandemic, by far the largest single federal investment in schools in state history. Most of it was distributed based on the poverty levels in the community of each district. The Detroit district alone received $1.27 billion.
Congress gave districts wide leeway on how they could spend the money from Emergency Relief for Elementary and Secondary Schools, or ESSER funds. So far, they have used it for a wide range of projects, including summer school expansions, staff bonuses, air filtration upgrades, building renovations, tutoring, and mental health programs.
But they have a tight schedule to spend it. The federal government wants the funds deployed quickly to speed recovery from the pandemic. Therefore, districts only have until 2024 to get state approval for all of their spending plans. Much of the spending itself must be completed by 2025, though districts can request extensions through 2026.
Districts aim to cut spending without impacting the classroom
Getting such a massive spending initiative implemented, and finalized, so quickly was never going to be easy for Michigan’s districts. The state’s poorest districts, which received by far the most funding per student, are taking longer to spend the funds amid supply chain disruptions and a tight job market.
Even districts that budgeted carefully and avoided long-term spending commitments that could not be sustained without federal support will see disruption from the loss of short-term programming that has been critical to the COVID recovery effort.
The Detroit Community Public School District, for example, has notified up to 100 staff membersincluding central office staff, master teachers, deans of culture, and assistance officers, whose positions paid in part with federal COVID relief may be cut or consolidated by the end of the school year.
Neighboring Ecorse public schools will finalize a tutoring program designed to help students manage the effects of the pandemic.
