It’s the Final Spend-down: Five Ideas for Any Remaining ESSER Funds

• Plant Seeds: Would this investment align with your strategic plan and accelerate the long-term shifts you want for your district? (AASA’s Learning 2025 Network can provide inspiration and resources!) 
• Center Equity: How can you use the remaining funds to provide resources to the students and schools with the greatest needs? 
• Use & Build Knowledge: What new evidence do you have about what’s effective, for whom, and under what circumstances? 
• Sustain Strategically: How can your final spending decisions help smooth your transition into the post-ESSER era? 

1. Extend Effective Supports for the First Half of SY24-25: If ESSER funds were yielding results last year, consider extending the relevant programming for the first several months of the new school year. Although these funds must be obligated by September 30, they can be liquidated (or spent) through January 28, 2025. For example, you could use additional ESSER funds to continue or even expand an effective high-intensity tutoring program or other people-powered student supports you are providing on your own or with partners. 
   
   
   
2. Buy Things You Need: One-time purchases avoid sustainability challenges, so they can be helpful during this final countdown to September 30. Perhaps you need to upgrade student devices or accelerate part of your laptop replacement cycle since you brought on so many devices at the same time during the pandemic. Consider replacing old classroom furniture with more flexible pieces that promote student engagement and collaboration. Are there HVAC projects you can still complete? 
   
   
   
3. Free Up Other Funds: You likely have expenditures in your SY24-25 budget that will be paid for with non-ESSER funds but that are also allowable uses of your remaining ESSER funds if obligated in time. Starting the school year paying for something with ESSER can then free up your other pots of funds for other purposes throughout the school year. On the personnel side, for example, perhaps you originally used ESSER funds over the past couple years to hire additional mental health or wraparound support professionals and now will sustain these still-essential resources by moving the positions over to your local funds starting this school year. Instead, consider keeping these personnel costs on your ESSER funds through September 30 before moving them to non-ESSER funds beginning on October 1. 
   
   
   
4. Support Your Recent Grads: The Class of 2024 likely needs even more support than prior graduating cohorts to avoid “summer melt”—the phenomenon whereby 10-40% of college-intending high school seniors don’t actually arrive on campus in the fall. This guide by AASA and the National College Attainment Network (NCAN) provides some evidence-based strategies for counteracting summer melt with your remaining ESSER funds.
   
   
   
5. Support Your Students Experiencing Homelessness: Districts can use regular ESSER funds as well as the targeted resources of the ARP Homeless Children and Youth (ARP-HCY) funds to support the identification, enrollment, and school participation of students experiencing homelessness. SchoolHouse Connection recently published this user-friendly spending guide that provides district teams with a menu of potential ways to leverage remaining recovery funds as the obligation deadline approaches (also see USED’s Dear Colleague Letter on allowable uses of ARP-HCY and pages 48-49 of this ESSER FAQ). 

Keep these questions and suggestions in your back pocket as September 30 approaches, just in case you need to make some relatively quick decisions about how to best use any remaining ESSER funds. And of course, although the timeline for ESSER spending is almost done, your students’, districts’, and communities’ recoveries are likely all on their own distinct timelines. AASA will continue to provide support to all our members as you continue to deliver on the promise of public education each and every day.