LM May 2023

The End of ESSER Funding

Now What?

By Ralph Grimm IASA Field Services Director

that evolved through our response to the pandemic. We would like to see all of our superintendents begin to think about how to both plan for and communicate what the future looks like when ESSER revenues are no longer a part of our operating revenue. That lens should include both a budgetary perspective and a programmatic perspective. Now is the time to do the work necessary to go forward in the post-ESSER era. September 30, 2024. First and foremost, it is very important for each Superintendent or Business Manager to review how the ESSER funds were spent and determine if the spending was associated with something that will need to be sustained in successive budget cycles or was more reflective of one time expenditures. If you are a Superintendent new to your district this is a critical step. Review the narrative that was used when introducing the spending plans for each round of ESSER funding. Share that narrative with new board members. Remind your staff about those decisions and why they were made the way they were. A lot has transpired over the course of the last three years and this information will be important as you plan for the post-ESSER-funding era. Determine How the Money Was Spent It is important to do a few things between now and

September 2024 will see the end of the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) grants. These grants have provided billions of dollars to Illinois school districts in response to the COVID pandemic. The grants were designed to provide funding to enable schools to operate safely during the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic, provide resources to attend to the social/emotional challenges facing our students and staff and attend to the unfinished learning following the pandemic. It is essential for local school districts to take advantage of the next 17 months to evaluate the end of ESSER funding on your district’s budget and programs. Now is the time to do the work necessary to make well thought out, informed decisions on how best to go forward in the post-ESSER era. If you haven’t already, superintendents should begin to have conversations with your Board of Education about how to move forward in a post-ESSER environment. Whether districts made decisions to supplant existing spending for programming and services that already existed or supplemented the growth of programming and services in order to be responsive to the growing and unique needs created by the pandemic, we all have some decisions coming for fiscal year 2025. It seems reasonable to think of our fiscal planning with a two-year perspective. How do we unwind from the additional revenues and associated programs over the next two years? We don’t want any of our school districts to begin the process of budgeting for FY 2025 only to find out that they don’t have the operating revenues to cover the programs and services

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LM May 2023