One of the final vestiges of pandemic relief is set to end on Monday, with states scrambling to finalize their spending plans for Covid-era federal education block grants and reckoning with a future without additional funds. As school districts face compounding crises—including persistent learning loss among students, lower enrollment, inflationary pressures, and difficulty retaining teachers—the looming loss of these emergency funds could have far-reaching consequences.
In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, Congress approved billions of dollars for Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief program funds, commonly known as ESSER. The third and largest round of ESSER grants were implemented by the American Rescue Plan Act, the nearly $2 trillion coronavirus relief measure approved by Congress in 2021, appropriating around $122 billion to help schools recover from the pandemic. The law required schools to dedicate at least 20 percent of the funds to addressing learning loss from students’ extended time away from school.
States and school districts were required to obligate the funds by September 30, 2024, and spend the money by January 25, 2025. (States may seek a 14-month extension to liquidate the funds by March 30, 2026.) Four states and Puerto Rico have seen their extension requests approved, but many states are not expected to seek extensions. After the September 30 deadline, states and school districts can no longer use the funds for employee expenses, such as teacher salaries—instead, that money must be dedicated to vendor contractors.
The money from ESSER grants amounted to roughly $2,500 per student nationwide, but higher-poverty districts received more funds, amounting to an even larger amount of spending per student. A 2023 report by the Brookings Institute estimated that the end of the program would result in a significant fiscal cliff, with an average of $1,000 less being spent per student across school districts; this effect would be particularly dramatic for students in high-poverty districts, where the end of ESSER will have a 6 percent impact on school budgets.
“As this funding expires, the disparities in achievement that widened during the pandemic have not closed yet,” said Joanna LeFebvre, a research associate at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. “States will need to step in and make up for some of that funding loss in order to sustain the growth that was made possible [by the grants].”
The reduced........