The clock is ticking for schools to spend one-time federal COVID relief funds. The grant is called the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief fund, or ESSER for short. Throughout the pandemic, the federal government gave out three waves of it, and the third is about to expire.
“Arizona schools were allocated $2.3 billion dollars. That's a huge number,” said Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne.
The money is meant to help kids catch up from COVID learning loss. Schools were able to use that money however they pleased with a few requirements, as long as 20% of the funds they were allocated must be used toward addressing learning loss through interventions, tutoring or other programs.
Schools also used the funds to give stipends to staff, buy HEPA filters and more. Some schools also used it to fund staff, and ABC15 has reported several districts that have had to cut those positions now that the funds are ending.
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If districts do not use all of their ESSER funds, it will be reverted back to the federal government. The deadline for schools to obligate those funds is September 30. Districts and charters have until December 31 to spend the dollars.
“We have good reason to think that everyone will obligate, but they're way behind on their spending and they have to get their spending done by the end of the year, that's our concern,” Horne said.
ABC15 went through a list of schools that received ESSER money. The state’s dashboard showed quite a few districts that have at least 25% or more of their funds unspent and it ranged from small to large school districts like Deer Valley, which showed it had about $10.5 million left. ABC15 reached out to several of these districts about the remaining funds, and of those that responded, they said they had already made commitments to spend that money.
“Our funds are spent and so even though it may show on the dashboard that not all of the ESSER have been allocated, in actuality they have,” said Gary Zehrbach, the deputy superintendent of the Deer Valley Unified School District.
So, why does the Arizona Department of Education’s dashboard show otherwise? Districts have to ask the department for reimbursements, which several districts tell me they’re in the process of doing so by the deadline this month.
“There is a time delay between when we spend the funds and then when we are reimbursed and for that to be updated on the dashboard,” Zehrbach said.
Horne sent out a press release earlier this week, specifically calling on three Pima County schools that have not spent any of their COVID-relief dollars this round. ABC15 reached out to the three, and one, which was the Pima County Accommodation School District, says it has.
“This assertion made regarding our school district in the ADE press release are not accurate,” the Pima County School Superintendent’s Office interim chief financial officer told ABC15 in an email.
The amount that districts don’t use and go back to the federal government won’t be known until at least the end of this year or early next year.
