In a prior blog post, I shared a video and link to a recorded webinar about how PACEs & Resilience coalitions can partner with School Districts to tap into their ESSER funding--encouraging the school districts to pay for the 2022 ARRCC Action Network along with funding for backbone support, stipends for organizations and individuals, and a summer intern.
This would likely use some of the ESSER III (also called ARP ESSER) funding that has already been allocated to school districts. As I continue to talk with education system stakeholders around the country, I continue to refine some of the recommendations and materials to share with PACEs coalitions. I've created a new 8-minute video that is designed for sharing with school district leaders. It defines a plan that includes paying $5,600 to a local "backbone organization" working with children and students (such as any of the PACEs Connection coalitions).
https://insightformation.dubb.com/v/ECMgnT
Here's the expanded idea. A large source of ESSER III funding in every state is the State Education Agency's ESSER III Reserve fund. This are the most flexible dollars received by the states.
- 10% of each state's ESSER III funding goes into the Reserve Fund, of which 0.5% is for administrative costs.
- The remaining 9.5% is to be allocated to school districts or sub-recipients that serve students and families.
- States Education Agencies (SEAs) and school districts (called LEAs) have an extra year to obligate funds in this reserve account--which means that they can be obligated by September 30, 2024 and spent the following school year.
“A wide range of entities, including LEAs and organizations serving students and families, may be a ‘subrecipient’ of funds from the SEA Reserve,” according to the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education.
My recommendation for maximizing the odds of getting those funds and increasing the value the community gets from those funds is for clusters of school districts to work together in the ARRCC Action Network program and develop plans for the priority student groups (or other relevant issues). The cluster of school districts can propose that some of these ESSER III Reserve Funds can be used for implementing the strategies. The following year, a larger group of school districts can go through the ARRCC Action Network's 2023 program, building on the work done by the 2022 cohort.
With this collaboration, everyone wins. Each participating school district taps into additional funding, and those dollars go further and do more good because the participating districts are sharing and leveraging much of what the money is used for. This means that more students (and families) are helped via better strategies and better sustainability plans. The people in the SEAs will be seen as brilliant stewards of public funds, and they will get more positive results with less money and less work.
ESSER II and ESSER III funds are largely unspent at this time. The graphic below shows one state's spending as of January 25, 2022.
Even if school districts feel that the uses of their allocated funds are not flexible enough for creative community strategies, the dollars in the SEA Reserve Funds are almost certainly untapped and more flexible.
Learn more about the ARRCC Action Network a this website. https://www.insightformation.com/2022arrccan
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