Schools exhaust pandemic aid as federal aid dries up

This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Subscribe to their newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters.

Over the past three years, the influx of pandemic aid has been transformative for many schools.

Some were able to hire social workers or give each child a laptop for the first time. Others fixed up old buildings, tutored struggling students or revamped summer school programs.

But that era is quickly coming to an end. And this month marks an important stop on the road to ending COVID relief.

Schools have to say later this month how they plan to spend the last $123 billion of the American Rescue Plan, the third and final batch of COVID aid for schools from the federal government. They will then have until January 28, 2025 to spend the money.

The late September deadline is very important: Schools that have unallocated money by then could eventually have to return the funds to the federal government. And some states have said they are concerned that schools are at risk of missing that deadline.

Schools can request an extension to spend their remaining aid through March 2026, but that won't give them more time to officially decide how to use it, leaving some scrambling to come up with a plan before the deadline in 11 days.

“We have been in contact, in many cases multiple times, with districts and charter schools to remind them of their responsibility to commit these funds,” Arizona State Superintendent Tom Horne said in a news release earlier this week. “The majority are showing the ability to do this, but several of them are at great risk of reversing the funds.”

Some Arizona school districts or charter schools had not yet committed any of their funds to a specific purpose, Horne said, and many others have committed only a fraction of their aid.

Michigan said it expected schools to return some of the federal aid, but noted it had left less than 1% of the first two aid packages on the table.

“We anticipate that some school districts and subrecipients will not be able to commit funds by the end of the month and may revert funds to the federal government,” Colorado Department of Education spokesperson Jeremy Meyer told Chalkbeat in an email.

Still, federal officials told reporters Thursday that they were confident that little or no money was at risk of being returned by schools. Schools across the country have already spent and been reimbursed 87% of American Rescue Plan dollars, officials said. Much of the remaining money has also been spent, but is not yet showing up on spending trackers due to record-keeping delays.

Schools will not be able to use the aid to pay staff salaries after this month. But they can still use it to do things like pay tutors to work with their students, finish a construction project, or hire a community organization to help with outreach.

Federal officials have said they will look especially favorably on requests to spend the money beyond the usual deadline in Biden administration prioritiessuch as intensive tutoring, efforts to increase attendance, and additional instructional time.

Delaware, Kansas, Kentucky, Nebraska and Puerto Rico have already requested and received spending extensions on behalf of some districts and schools. These extensions cover about $1.1 billion in aid, federal officials said.

Several other states, including Colorado, Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, Mississippi, New Jersey, New York, Tennessee and Washington, D.C., told Chalkbeat they intended to request spending extensions in the coming weeks or months.

Nationally, schools have already spent about $1.5 billion beyond original deadlines after getting extensions on their first two aid packages, federal officials said.

Schools have struggled for various reasons to spend their pandemic aid, though often not for lack of need.

Construction delays held up spending in Mississippi, where schools spent a large portion of aid on construction projects. Meanwhile, supply chain issues slowed spending in Tennessee and Illinois.

In Colorado, some schools had trouble filling certain educator positions amid the national shortage, or they planned to hire a company to provide training and were still waiting for that service to arrive, Meyer wrote.

In other cases, certain activities such as summer school or after-school programs did not attend as many students or staff as originally anticipated, so they ended up costing less than expected.

chalk beat is a nonprofit news organization that covers public education.

Related:
Federal COVID Relief Dollars Improved Student Test Scores, Two New Studies Find
As deadlines approach to spend COVID aid, one district moves forward with unusual technology plan
For more news on pandemic relief, visit eSN's Educational Leadership hub