The Advocate September 2024: School District Spending of American Rescue Plan Funding Part V

When the COVID-19 pandemic crippled our country, Congress provided an unprecedented amount of money to support students and educators in public schools. Reporting how this funding was spent by districts has been an ongoing project for AASA over the past 3 years. Through five distinct surveys, we meticulously documented how districts have planned to use these funds to support academic recovery in the 2020-2021, 2021-22 and 2022-23 school year. With the deadline to obligate ARP funds this month, we sought to understand how superintendents spent the totality of their ARP funding through our latest report. 

But the reality of implementation is that while superintendents reported consistent funding priorities throughout the duration of the COVID funding spend down, we could not collect good data that reflect those districts spent similar proportions/rates of their funding on similar uses. While respondents detailed spending in similar categories, there was enormous variation in the rate of spending in any given category, reflecting the reality of infusing a significant amount of funding into an extremely decentralized education system. In retrospect, this variation should be expected given that the ARP statute encouraged flexibility at local level in a super decentralized system where there were enormous differences in the amount of ARP funding that each district received and could utilize to address the unique and diverse needs of their students. 

While we failed to get new easily bulleted expenditure data by category, we did succeed in demonstrating that since July 2020 there were very consistent spending priorities for superintendents and that the desire to prioritize these dollars on adding instructional time was always at the top of the list.  Based on our repeatedly reported data, the idea spouted by pundits and think-tankers that districts failed to use COVID relief money to address learning loss just simply isn’t true. The second top priority was addressing mental health needs, behavioral needs, and other physical, social and mental health needs of the child.  The third most common expenditure was buying tech/devices and providing kids with internet access and the ability to do their schoolwork at home. Fourth was high intensity tutoring and fifth was improvements to school facilities to increase air quality and enhance conditions for learning came.

Another major theme throughout our reports was the desire for a longer runway to spend the ARP funding. In 2022 nearly half of superintendents we surveyed were worried about this September’s obligation deadline. Fast forward to this summer and we see that 15% of our respondents said they would need to utilize a process through the US Department of Education known as late liquidation to extend their dollars beyond January 2025. Nearly half (48%) of district respondents would have liked another year to invest their ARP funding. Of those who wanted more time, 28% would have spread out their investments in mental health supports/personnel while 20% would have extended their funding for instructional programing. Eighteen percent for infrastructure, and 17% for supports and programs to reduce chronic absenteeism.

While ARP is fresh in their minds, we also wanted superintendents to reflect on the implementation of these dollars and what they would have preferred. Late guidance, changing guidance and definitions, long waits to receive funding and reimbursement approvals, mixed messages on use of funds, and complicated templates and reporting were frequently cited as major implementation hurdles. Another major implementation issue cited by superintendents was the use of Title I formula to distribute funds. Until we have a better more accurate Title I formula, using it to distribute emergency funding will disproportionately hurt high-poverty rural districts.

We also asked superintendents questions about this year’s fiscal picture to get a sense of how their budgets looked for this school year now that ARP funding was no longer available. We found mixed results when we asked about state and local funding increases and decreases. One thing we did discern is that given the expiration of ARP funds, over 60% of districts would not be able to sustain ARP programming with their local funds which are either decreasing or level.

Finally, we wanted to better understand how superintendents felt their ARP investments benefited students. At the end of the day this is what these funds were meant to do. Like last year’s results about what subgroup of students benefited most from ARP funding, we found that most district leaders didn’t choose a subgroup– they believe all student equally benefited from ARP investments and will be equally impacted by the end of ARP funded programs and services. 

What did we learn from all these reports? We learned that ARP funding enabled superintendents to address both immediate & longstanding systemic underinvestment by the federal government in K-12 education. While the full impact of ARP remains to be seen, the significance of the funding is undeniable.