The COVID-19 pandemic brought to light not only how underfunded schools are, but also how unprepared they are for an emergency. In times of crisis, federal funds are a lifeline for schools and school children—they are used to address challenges that districts and states cannot, due to their very limited resources. The pandemic relief funds that Congress supplied helped states, districts, and schools make progress in responding to the disruption that the pandemic caused—work that is still ongoing.
On March 28, however, Secretary Linda McMahon sent a letter to state education chiefs bringing that progress to a close. The letter informed them that their previously promised extensions on contracts for projects and services students were counting on, about $3 billion nationally, have been canceled. Now, these students stand to lose the most.
What Is Being Clawed Back, and Why?
In 2021, Congress passed the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), which—among many other things—designated $122 billion through the Education Stabilization Fund (ESF) to help schools pursue their mission of educating students in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. While the ARPA was passed exclusively by Democrats in the first 100 days of the Biden administration, the funds in question were essentially from the same set of dollars, for the same purpose of a national emergency, with nearly the same set of rules as had been agreed to and passed under the Trump administration twice, in fully bipartisan fashion.
Congress wrote the ESF to provide stability to schools in the midst of a global crisis and to fund the sudden and urgent need to pivot teaching and learning in a way that most schools were not equipped to do at all, let alone adequately and equitably. ESF was modeled after another stabilization fund provided to schools during the 2009 economic recession. During the recession, states scaled back education funding, which caused layoffs of educators and other school staff and a reduction in services to students—actions that only hurt students and widened opportunity gaps. To avoid that impact on top of the devastation a health pandemic would inevitably cause, ESF funds could be used to cover schools’ regular expenses, such as educator and staff salaries, but also new expenses related to the crisis, such as sanitization and the transition to remote learning.
Over the years since, Republicans have been overly critical of how quickly or usefully states and schools have spent the collective emergency relief money—even though Congress designated usage of the funds pretty flexibly (and even described as such by a Trump I era FAQ) when crafting the legislation.
The challenge that schools faced was that, due to labor and supply shortages arising from the pandemic—not to mention unfamiliarity with how to manage such a funding windfall—schools found it difficult to spend an unprecedented amount of money on relatively quick timelines. To address this challenge, at the request of states and school districts, the U.S. Department of Education (ED) exercised limited authority to provide extensions to finish liquidating money on needs or services schools already committed to during the window allowed by Congress. ED approved requests from states on a case-by-case basis, ensuring that the projects complied with the law. These approvals weren’t done carelessly. A dedicated team of ED staff diligently poured over and responded to those requests as quickly as possible, so work could keep moving (these staff have all recently been fired).
The rationale for this cancellation of the extensions is murky. Trump ED officials have stated that remaining funds are not being spent on projects focused on closing learning gaps, but they have declined to publicly provide examples. One official anonymously commented about a $1 million window replacement project as an example of money ill spent, but that’s about it—and even that’s not a good reason.
A Misguided Effort
The idea that schools are somehow misspending federal pandemic relief dollars ignores reality—even if schools spend it on windows. First, physical building repairs—a significant chunk of how schools spent their relief money—are validly tied to the pandemic, as Congress required. The flexibility given to schools to spend the relief funds in this manner follows the mountain of research demonstrating direct links between safer, healthier, more accessible school buildings and student learning, attendance, and even teacher attendance.
To pull the rug out from under schools at the eleventh hour—while they are already in process of doing and paying for the work—is not only financially careless to these states and localities but also cruel to the students benefitting from these ongoing efforts.
Furthermore, the funds aren’t just being spent on necessary physical repairs (which schools have needed for decades); they are also funding tutoring, connecting homeless and foster youth to needed services, transportation to get to, and stay in school, teacher training, and new technology that’s making learning more accessible and relevant for students who are increasingly checked out. All of these challenges are directly related to the issues of chronic absenteeism and improving learning outcomes that are plaguing education circles right now. To pull the rug out from under schools at the eleventh hour—while they are already in process of doing and paying for the work—is not only financially careless to these states and localities but also cruel to the students benefitting from these ongoing efforts. It’s galling to purport that putting this $3 billion back into the Treasury is a better move for Americans than letting schools spend it in the manner in which it has been committed.
Flexibility Was the Point
In order to assess the Education Stabilization Fund’s effectiveness in achieving the shared goal of improving learning outcomes for all students, it’s important to remember where it all started. In the early days of 2020 nobody—including Congress—knew what the pandemic’s long-term consequences would be, whether children would be more or less susceptible, who would be more or less at risk, and importantly, how long the pandemic would keep everyone apart, teaching and learning from their homes. Still, Congress was charged with the rules of sending out relief money, even though legislators didn’t have crystal balls to know what needs would emerge over time. In that moment’s wisdom, flexibility was the answer: schools could use the funds consistent with the ways Congress has already allowed in law for education. And, consistent with decades of prior federal education policy, funds would be divided up to schools based on need, through Title I. Lastly, also consistent with established federal policy, states and districts needed to show their plans for how they’d use the funds.
That thinking formed the foundation on which Congress based their pandemic relief packages. Learning as time went on, Congress required at least 20 percent of the funds be spent on addressing lost instructional time, through efforts such as evidenced-based tutoring models, training educators on the science of reading, and funding more hours to help students catch up in out-of-school time—some of the very activities for which ED is now refusing to pay out. And to provide guidance at the time, the ED under the Biden administration distilled evidence-based practices and services to help states and schools focus the money on the best choices, producing three handbooks (see here, here, and here), FAQs, as well as countless other resources to spread the word on how to best use the funds. Congress also added a backstop on districts laying off teachers from the highest need schools to make up for fiscal cliffs like they had done in the 2009 recession. In fact, if anyone was considering more guardrails at the time, it was Democrats. But again, flexibility in the midst of chaos for already short-staffed districts and state education offices was a key bipartisan policy priority.
Looking Ahead
The Trump administration has made returning education to the states the centerpiece of their approach to education policy. Secretary McMahon’s letter ending states’ discretion on how and when to spend committed funds seems at odds with the administration’s flexibility-to-the-states argument—and it will hurt students the most.
Tags: department of education, The American Rescue Plan Act, education stabilization fund
Clawing Back School Dollars Will Only Harm Students
The COVID-19 pandemic brought to light not only how underfunded schools are, but also how unprepared they are for an emergency. In times of crisis, federal funds are a lifeline for schools and school children—they are used to address challenges that districts and states cannot, due to their very limited resources. The pandemic relief funds that Congress supplied helped states, districts, and schools make progress in responding to the disruption that the pandemic caused—work that is still ongoing.
On March 28, however, Secretary Linda McMahon sent a letter to state education chiefs bringing that progress to a close. The letter informed them that their previously promised extensions on contracts for projects and services students were counting on, about $3 billion nationally, have been canceled. Now, these students stand to lose the most.
What Is Being Clawed Back, and Why?
In 2021, Congress passed the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), which—among many other things—designated $122 billion through the Education Stabilization Fund (ESF) to help schools pursue their mission of educating students in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. While the ARPA was passed exclusively by Democrats in the first 100 days of the Biden administration, the funds in question were essentially from the same set of dollars, for the same purpose of a national emergency, with nearly the same set of rules as had been agreed to and passed under the Trump administration twice, in fully bipartisan fashion.
Congress wrote the ESF to provide stability to schools in the midst of a global crisis and to fund the sudden and urgent need to pivot teaching and learning in a way that most schools were not equipped to do at all, let alone adequately and equitably. ESF was modeled after another stabilization fund provided to schools during the 2009 economic recession. During the recession, states scaled back education funding, which caused layoffs of educators and other school staff and a reduction in services to students—actions that only hurt students and widened opportunity gaps. To avoid that impact on top of the devastation a health pandemic would inevitably cause, ESF funds could be used to cover schools’ regular expenses, such as educator and staff salaries, but also new expenses related to the crisis, such as sanitization and the transition to remote learning.
Over the years since, Republicans have been overly critical of how quickly or usefully states and schools have spent the collective emergency relief money—even though Congress designated usage of the funds pretty flexibly1 (and even described as such by a Trump I era FAQ) when crafting the legislation.
The challenge that schools faced was that, due to labor and supply shortages arising from the pandemic—not to mention unfamiliarity with how to manage such a funding windfall—schools found it difficult to spend an unprecedented amount of money on relatively quick timelines. To address this challenge, at the request of states and school districts, the U.S. Department of Education (ED) exercised limited authority to provide extensions to finish liquidating money on needs or services schools already committed to during the window allowed by Congress. ED approved requests from states on a case-by-case basis, ensuring that the projects complied with the law. These approvals weren’t done carelessly. A dedicated team of ED staff diligently poured over and responded to those requests as quickly as possible, so work could keep moving (these staff have all recently been fired).
The rationale for this cancellation of the extensions is murky. Trump ED officials have stated that remaining funds are not being spent on projects focused on closing learning gaps, but they have declined to publicly provide examples. One official anonymously commented about a $1 million window replacement project as an example of money ill spent, but that’s about it—and even that’s not a good reason.
A Misguided Effort
The idea that schools are somehow misspending federal pandemic relief dollars ignores reality—even if schools spend it on windows. First, physical building repairs—a significant chunk of how schools spent their relief money—are validly tied to the pandemic, as Congress required. The flexibility given to schools to spend the relief funds in this manner follows the mountain of research demonstrating direct links between safer, healthier, more accessible school buildings and student learning, attendance, and even teacher attendance.
Furthermore, the funds aren’t just being spent on necessary physical repairs (which schools have needed for decades); they are also funding tutoring, connecting homeless and foster youth to needed services, transportation to get to, and stay in school, teacher training, and new technology that’s making learning more accessible and relevant for students who are increasingly checked out. All of these challenges are directly related to the issues of chronic absenteeism and improving learning outcomes that are plaguing education circles right now. To pull the rug out from under schools at the eleventh hour—while they are already in process of doing and paying for the work—is not only financially careless to these states and localities but also cruel to the students benefitting from these ongoing efforts. It’s galling to purport that putting this $3 billion back into the Treasury is a better move for Americans than letting schools spend it in the manner in which it has been committed.
Flexibility Was the Point
In order to assess the Education Stabilization Fund’s effectiveness in achieving the shared goal of improving learning outcomes for all students, it’s important to remember where it all started. In the early days of 2020 nobody—including Congress—knew what the pandemic’s long-term consequences would be, whether children would be more or less susceptible, who would be more or less at risk, and importantly, how long the pandemic would keep everyone apart, teaching and learning from their homes. Still, Congress was charged with the rules of sending out relief money, even though legislators didn’t have crystal balls to know what needs would emerge over time. In that moment’s wisdom, flexibility was the answer: schools could use the funds consistent with the ways Congress has already allowed in law for education. And, consistent with decades of prior federal education policy, funds would be divided up to schools based on need, through Title I. Lastly, also consistent with established federal policy, states and districts needed to show their plans for how they’d use the funds.
That thinking formed the foundation on which Congress based their pandemic relief packages. Learning as time went on, Congress required at least 20 percent of the funds be spent on addressing lost instructional time, through efforts such as evidenced-based tutoring models, training educators on the science of reading, and funding more hours to help students catch up in out-of-school time—some of the very activities for which ED is now refusing to pay out. And to provide guidance at the time, the ED under the Biden administration distilled evidence-based practices and services to help states and schools focus the money on the best choices, producing three handbooks (see here, here, and here), FAQs, as well as countless other resources to spread the word on how to best use the funds. Congress also added a backstop on districts laying off teachers from the highest need schools to make up for fiscal cliffs like they had done in the 2009 recession. In fact, if anyone was considering more guardrails at the time, it was Democrats. But again, flexibility in the midst of chaos for already short-staffed districts and state education offices was a key bipartisan policy priority.
Looking Ahead
The Trump administration has made returning education to the states the centerpiece of their approach to education policy. Secretary McMahon’s letter ending states’ discretion on how and when to spend committed funds seems at odds with the administration’s flexibility-to-the-states argument—and it will hurt students the most.
Notes
Tags: department of education, The American Rescue Plan Act, education stabilization fund