ESSER funding is top of mind for school districts across the country as we enter the 2024-2025 school year: how to spend their remaining ESSER funds, how to maximize their impact, and how to continue these improvements or initiatives once the funds have been spent. We’ve compiled the answers to these and other ESSER FAQs to ensure that districts can effectively address the needs of students, such as English learners, most impacted by COVID-19 and build stronger systems of support moving forward.

What are ESSER funds?

The Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) fund is a program funded by the federal government and intended to help schools and communities recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. The purpose of the funds is to help schools address issues including learning loss and mental health challenges that came about as a result of the pandemic and distance learning. In particular, these funds can provide critical support to the groups of students most significantly affected by the pandemic, including English learners, low-income students, foster or homeless youth, and those attending rural schools. It is important that schools use these funds effectively, but also plan ahead for how to continue these efforts after the funding has run out.

What can ESSER funds be used for?

It is important when using ESSER funding to address the needs of students that have been most impacted by COVID-19, to choose evidence-based solutions, and to promote equity and inclusion in education. ESSER funding was unique in that there were no “supplement, not supplant” provisions (meaning add to rather than replace other state or local funds in providing general education services), so districts could effectively use the funding for any purchase they needed.

Some of the more common ways schools and districts have used ESSER funds include:

• Additional staff: Some schools hired additional support staff or teachers and used ESSER funding to help pay for the salaries. Across the country, schools and districts are facing teacher shortages as well as a mental health crisis, all necessitating an increased number of interventionists, counselors, and social workers in schools. Yet if schools are unable to find the budget to continue to pay these professionals, many will be laid off at the end of the calendar year - or even before the 2024-2025 school year to avoid mid-year vacancies.
• School structure/physical improvement: Many districts used ESSER funds to pay for construction projects or other improvements to school buildings, like improving indoor air quality or sanitizing. This is one use where there is an option for extended time to liquidate the funds if there are extenuating circumstances.
• Implementing evidence-based interventions: After-school programs, summer school, or additional intervention services to address learning loss from the pandemic have been  common uses of funds.
• Supporting activities allowable under ESSA: Anything allowable under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESSA), which aims to close the achievement gap, is also an allowable use of ESSER funds - and this made programs like Ellevation that address the needs of English learners an easy purchase under ESSER.

When do ESSER funds expire?

ESSER funds were broken up in three rounds; the first two have already passed, and the final round or ESSER III funding has a deadline of September 30th, 2024 to be obligated, or for districts to document their commitment of how to spend their ESSER funds. Districts then have a 120 day liquidation period, meaning those funds must be fully spent by January 28th, 2025. To note - the benefits received from what was purchased should not extend past the end of the liquidation period.

Many schools who budgeted for recurring costs with ESSER funds now face a funding cliff, meaning they must return to their normal budgets now that the one-time funding ESSER funds are running out, and determine how - and if - to continue paying for previously ESSER-funded initiatives.

What are alternative funding sources districts can turn to?

In an EdWeek survey, one in four respondents believed they would not have any funding sources for expenses they have been covering with the federal relief aid. However, there are a variety of alternative funding sources that they can consider, such as state or private grants that may be offered for professional development, innovative technology, or other education initiatives. There also may be creative ways to strategically rearrange general funding or existing budgets. For example, if there are teachers who are planning to retire later in the school year, some staff added during ESSER funding could be slotted in to replace the retired teachers and absorb their budgeted salary.

A focus for many districts during COVID and post-COVID has been improving support for their English learners. For programs or products purchased with ESSER funds specifically to address the needs of ELs, some alternative sources of federal funding include:

• Title III: These federal grants are aimed at providing supplemental funding to help states and districts improve their services and support for ELs. 
  • Products such as Ellevation Platform, which uses data to drive instruction and improve support for language learners, are allowable under Title III.
  • Title III also has a required activity to purchase professional development that is of the right intensity and duration to cause a lasting impact - meaning Ellevation Strategies is allowable as well.
• Title I: With ESSER, accountability for the language proficiency of English learners was moved from Title III to Title I - which opens the door for Title I as additional funding for English learner support, and as a funding stream with almost 20 times more funding than Title III, is certainly worth pursuing. Title I is a great source of funding to use to purchase Ellevation.
  • Additionally, if ELs are underperforming in a district, they can also use the school improvement funding under Title I to purchase programs that will better support these students.
• Title II: This federal program has requirements for providing professional learning for educators, and specifically professional learning for educators of ELs. There are also allowable activities around using data to drive instruction under Title II.
  • Both Ellevation Platform and Ellevation Strategies are purchasable with Title II funding.

• Title IV, Part A: This grant has funding available for the use of technology, and while a smaller pot of funds, school districts often struggle with exactly how to use it. Ellevation Platform and Strategies are purchasable under Title IV, Part A.

These different Title funding sources can be combined to cover the total cost of a program or other purchase - to learn more about the different funding sources and for support for filling out a grant application(s) to purchase either Ellevation Solution, click here.

This blog was written in partnership with Dr. David Holbrook, who earned his Ph.D. in linguistics at the University of the West Indies in the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago and has more than 25 years of experience working with speakers of other languages. He has lived in five countries and worked in more than 15. He spent nearly six years at the Wyoming Department of Education, where he held positions as Federal Programs Division Director, Title I Director, Title III Director, and for six months was Director of both the Federal Programs and Assessment Divisions. Dr. Holbrook also served as the state’s Native American Education Consultant working with the Northern Arapaho and Eastern Shoshone Tribes on the Wind River Indian Reservation. Dr. Holbrook trained with the U.S. Department of Education and participated in federal monitoring of Title III in five states. Dr. Holbrook is also the Director, State Partnerships with Ellevation Education.