After a slow start in allocating federal ESSER funds, most states have found ways to spend their COVID relief dollars. In Montana, the Office of Public Instruction (OPI) is directing its ESSER money to digital learning resources.

OPI Superintendent Elsie Arntzen announced a new partnership with Discovery Education, a provider of state-of-the-art digital resources that support instruction wherever it takes place. Through this multi-year partnership, OPI is providing all 496 public school districts statewide access to a curated collection of high-quality, grade level appropriate, digital content aligned to Montana’s rigorous K-12 Content Standards.

The partnership–which is funded through ESSER–supports core instruction across Montana. In addition, the collaboration supports the state’s workforce readiness, rural education, Native American tribal history and culture, and parent and family engagement initiatives. Montana School Superintendents can activate their school district’s Discovery Education account by visiting this website.

“This partnership grows student learning both in and out of the classroom,” said Superintendent Elsie Arntzen. “The parental and family engagement aspect of Discovery Education will strengthen our Montana students’ success. I encourage all of our schools to take advantage of this great teaching and learning opportunity.”

The partnership is also ensuring that students in rural areas, which often lack high-speed internet connections and the resources that come with those connections, will have access to digital learning resources. “Many of Montana’s rural are part of a rural cooperative. Discovery Education will allow all our students the ability to access the content provided. Learning together has always promoted education in our frontier state, this is just another tool for lead teachers,” Arntzen said.

Key points:

• Flexibility and ease of use should be important parts of decision making
• Meet today’s needs, but keep tomorrow’s needs in mind

Modern technological advancements affect virtually every area of daily life, and today’s educational institutions are looking to new digital tools to help improve student achievement and engagement while fostering collaborative learning environments for both in-person and remote learners.

To maximize a system’s effectiveness and ensure investments pay dividends for students and instructors, decision makers and school technology managers must maintain a strong understanding of all the available solutions, devices, and platforms that can meet their needs. While differences in location, age range, and budget naturally affect technology decisions and opportunities, there are several key factors central to any successful implementation.

Keep It Simple, Schools

This old adage may be a cliche, but it’s as true as ever. Ease of use is the most direct predictor of how often a classroom technology will be used, and how effective it will be. Given the strict class schedules followed by most institutions, educators may hesitate to plan lessons using a digital display or software solution if it proves to be unreliable or introduces disruptions to the classroom. It needs to work during every class, every day, without requiring special procedures or assistance that eats up class time.

Simplicity can come in many forms, including secure connections that eliminate the need to log in and out, broad support for various online communication platforms, wireless connections that reduce installation complexity, and device-agnostic compatibility that natively accommodates all users.

In a recent report by Populace (2022), 55 percent of American parents expressed their desire for educators to rethink how today’s K-12 schools are educating our children. The study found that, despite the widespread perception that American society wants K-12 schools to prepare students for college, college is not as important to parents as it used to be. Instead, the study reported, today’s parents would like to see their children develop practical skills “for both life and career” (p. 10), critical thinking skills that allow them “to problem solve and make decisions” (p. 8), and moral character traits such as “honesty, kindness, integrity, [and] ethics” (p. 20).

The Populace study reported that today’s parents want more individualized educational experiences for their children, with greater emphasis on students’ interests and personal/career goals than on a one-size-fits-all curriculum. Parents want their children to have learning opportunities across a variety of modalities, and they want learning to be assessed through demonstration of mastery as opposed to traditional assessments like standardized tests.

According to the Populace study, today’s parents believe that “better” (as in straight As and college bound) should not be the purpose of a K-12 education, but “different” (as in a customized educational experience for every student) should be. It seems that–at least for parents–the purpose of an American K-12 education is changing.

A Brief History

Educating our youth has been an American priority since our country’s beginnings. Focused on the basic skills of “the three Rs” (reading, writing, and ‘rithmetic), American education in the 1700s and 1800s generally concluded by age 12 or 13 and often excluded girls, minorities, and lower socioeconomic classes altogether. Over time, American K-12 education evolved from home schooling to one-room school houses to organized school systems, including high schools (Kober & Renter Stark, 2020). Throughout the decades, one by one, every state in the nation adopted a compulsory attendance law, meaning that all students must enroll in school from roughly age 6 to 16 (Education Commission of the States, 2023).

As organized school systems across the United States grew more sophisticated, Americans fought for every child to receive a quality K-12 education. In 1954, the landmark U.S. Supreme Court Case Brown versus Board of Education ruled that it was unconstitutional to segregate schools by race, and in 1975 Public Law 94-142 federally mandated that all children in the United States had a right to a free, appropriate public education, even if they had learning or physical disabilities (Dalien, 2022). Throughout history, Americans have always been willing to pay (through taxation) to educate our country’s youth. During the 2017-2018 academic year, for example, the average per pupil expenditure in the United States was $15,946 (Bouchrika, 2022). 

The Purpose of an American K-12 Education

Providing an accessible, high-quality K-12 education for every student is nothing new for Americans, but our world is changing, and the Populace study indicates that the purpose of an American K-12 education is changing too. When thinking about the purpose of education, it is important to consider both individuals and society as a whole. From an individual perspective, Meredith (2014) identified seven goals of education: 1) to have basic skills, 2) to be a critical thinker, 3) to be able to troubleshoot or strategize, 4) to be a moral person, 5) to be a good citizen, 6) to have a wide range of interests, and 7) to be happy.

From a societal perspective, Kasi(2018) identified eight functions of education: 1) transmission of culture, 2) social integration, 3) career selection, 4) techniques of learning skills, 5) socialization, 6) rational thinking, 7) adjustment in society, and 8) patriotism. All of these are important; the question is one of priorities.

As dust from the pandemic settles, students across America are facing another disruption to quality education. This crisis, however, shouldn’t be a surprise. It is two centuries in the making.

The most recent legislation introduced in Congress, which would see a minimum salary base of $60,000 for public school teachers, is certainly a welcome step in the right direction. However, it still misdiagnoses the problem; burnout will still occur, regardless of the paycheck. That’s why we need to fundamentally reimagine the role of a teacher in the modern classroom.

The teacher job description crafted in the 1800s by the Common School Movement led by Horace Mann served a one-adult-room-full-of-kids model with the goal of civilizing American children. Hopefully, in the year 2023, we can aspire beyond assimilation as the goal of education and aim for creating learning spaces that value diversity and support every student in reaching their full, authentic potential.

That higher goal requires recognizing that, today, we are asking one teacher to perform too many functions, in not enough time, and for too little compensation. As an educator, I know that we are asking individual teachers to be a content area expert, instructional designer, academic coach, family communicator, interior designer, and social-emotional monitor with limited support.

We rely on the teacher’s desire to make a difference to keep them in the profession, but we’ve maintained a system that makes it increasingly elusive to make that difference. Systemic burnout forces teachers to leave the profession, while stagnant pay and the plummeting reputation of the profession prevents promising educators from joining in the first place.

To address the shortage, I suggest we knock down the walls erected by the one room schoolhouse. My proposition, the “Teaching Without Walls model,” recognizes that teaching the whole child includes multiple roles: instructional designer, academic coach, and social-emotional monitor. Let’s not limit our classrooms by looking for one person who can fulfill all of those roles independently. Let’s build on the technology applications learned during pandemic remote instruction. In the same way that businesses have lowered geographic barriers to expand hiring opportunities, school districts can seek beyond local candidates to connect certified teachers with underserved classrooms.

Envision a classroom of students engaging with a dynamic teacher visible through movie-sized monitors. This certified teacher, with subject matter and research-backed instructional design expertise, can be across the district, country, or world. A qualified math teacher from North Carolina could describe algebra to students in Nebraska, while a physics teacher in Maryland could describe an exothermic reaction to students in Milwaukee. Technology can remove barriers to hiring teachers with expertise. When mathematics and sciences face the largest exodus, the importance of freeing this knowledge from the confines of geography shouldn’t be underestimated.

Education institutions are forced to do more with less, putting extra stress on employees. Without realizing it, schools often have processes that create even more work, particularly in the business office. Fortunately, accounts payable (AP) automation can cure fatigue from overwhelming manual workloads and give AP staff more time to focus on something much more important: the students.

Challenges in the business office:

Without the help of automation, AP specialists spend several hours each day on tedious, repetitive tasks such as keying invoice data, pushing paper, fixing typos, chasing down information, and responding to calls and emails from suppliers and stakeholders about the status of invoices and payments. All the while, school business officers also juggle additional responsibilities impacting their institution and student outcomes.

Many AP departments still use manual, paper-based AP processes, resulting in massive amounts of time allocations during a typical work week. You might be surprised to learn that as much as 17 hours per week – which is equal to 42 percent of a full-time employee’s workload – is spent on non-payroll spending.

Unfortunately, antiquated processes like those above lead to extreme fatigue in education AP staff. As a result, back-office departments can’t progress and suffer from high turnover rates, inefficiency, late payments, increased risk of fraud, and strained relationships with vendors.

In a July 2022 survey of 226 Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) conducted by Gartner, Inc., digital acceleration was the top spending priority for CFOs over the next 12 months and that most all of them planned to protect their digital investments as they cut costs elsewhere in the business. In fact, 98 percent of respondents said they will protect digital investments and of those, 66 percent stating they plan to increase their investments in the category. Among technology priorities, CFOs have particularly prioritized back-office automation as a key to driving down costs in the face of ongoing inflation.

Here are 7 factors causing burnout in education finance departments–and 7 reasons AP automation is the antidote:

1. Antiquated processes and manual workarounds:

Outdated processes are making finance teams less efficient and secure. According to the BakerHostetler 2021 Data Security Incident Response Report, the education sector is the highest-targeted industry for payment fraud. Additionally, the FBI predicts ransomware attacks will become an even bigger threat to the industry, according to a news article published last September.

Streamlined invoice and payment automation saves finance departments thousands of hours annually by eliminating tedious manual tasks and increasing efficiency. Simultaneously, users benefit from enhanced security as best-in-class providers have internal security teams that help them mitigate the risk of fraud. This means that users save 80 percent of their time on invoice and payment processing while benefitting from more protection against fraudulent attempts.

2. Wasted staff time on manually sorting and handling paper invoices:

The average education AP department processes between 6,000 to 20,000 invoices a year, which can be exhausting for finance teams with only 1-2 employees.  

Invoice automation eliminates manual data entry and creates faster invoice approvals, allowing you to take advantage of early pay discounts. Also, with invoice automation implemented, users can process invoices 5 times faster than manual processing.

3. Lack of modern software:

If you’re suffering from heavy turnover, staffing shortages, or staff burnout, a lack of automation software may be why.

Automation eliminates the manual, repetitive tasks like cutting checks and stuffing envelopes that overwhelm AP staff. With these eliminated, staff can focus on more student-facing activities and projects while exploring new ways to run their schools more strategically and profitably. Automation also enables AP departments to efficiently scale their operations without the need to hire and train additional staff. Employees also benefit from career advancement.

This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters.

For the past couple of years, the Detroit Public Schools Community District has been able to tap its share of federal COVID relief aid to fund after-school enrichment programs that help students recover from learning lost during the pandemic.

But those funds will soon run out, and Detroit and other districts face some tough decisions about which programs and employees they can afford to keep once federal support is gone. 

Detroit parent Aliya Moore said she is concerned that her daughter’s newly funded after-school debate team will be “snatched,” along with funding for new positions such as parent outreach coordinators.

“That’s my biggest fear,” said Moore, who is a frequent critic of the district. “Just going into (next) school year, and a lot of these people are not there.”

For districts, there’s an added challenge: Looming deadlines attached to the federal aid put them under time pressure to map out their spending and use up the remaining funds quickly and effectively, while also figuring out how they’ll manage without it. 

What they’re eager to prevent is a so-called fiscal cliff, where a steep drop in funding forces sudden and severe budget cuts that could ripple throughout the school system.

Superintendents in Michigan are generally optimistic that their districts can avoid that scenario, especially given the prospect of increased state funding. But experts say it will take work.

“Districts need to plan now, so students don’t face chaos at the start of the 2024 school year with classrooms and teachers shuffled, programs abruptly dropped, demoralized staff, and leaders focusing on nothing but budget woes,” wrote Marguerite Roza, a professor at Georgetown University who studies school finance, in a recent article.

What is federal COVID aid?

Michigan hasn’t seen anything like this: more than $6 billion in federal funds aimed at helping students recover from the pandemic, by far the largest one-time federal investment in schools in state history. Most of it was distributed based on poverty levels in each district’s community. The Detroit district alone received $1.27 billion.

Congress gave districts plenty of leeway on how they could spend the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief money, or ESSER funds. So far, they have used it for a wide array of projects, including summer school expansions, staff bonuses, air filtration improvements, building renovations, tutoring, and mental health programs.

But they’re on a tight schedule to spend it. The federal government wants the funds deployed quickly to accelerate the recovery from the pandemic.  So districts have only until 2024 to get state approval for all their spending plans. Much of the spending itself must be complete by 2025, though districts may apply for extensions through 2026.

Districts aim to reduce spending without affecting the classroom

Having such a massive spending initiative roll out — and wrap up — so quickly was never going to be easy for Michigan districts. The state’s highest-poverty districts, which received by far the most funding per student, are taking the longest to spend the funds amid supply chain disruptions and a tight labor market.

Even districts that budgeted carefully and avoided long-term spending commitments that couldn’t be sustained without federal support will see disruptions from the loss of short-term programming that has been critical to the COVID recovery effort.

The Detroit Public Schools Community District, for instance, has notified as many as 100 staff members, including central office staff, master teachers, deans of culture, and attendance agents, that their positions paid for in part using federal COVID aid may be cut or consolidated by the end of the school year. 

Neighboring Ecorse Public Schools will end a tutoring program designed to help students manage the effects of the pandemic.

One challenge school administrators face is how to keep funding in their districts, especially as enrollment in public schools continues to decline. As public school funding is often directly tied to student enrollment, administrators around the country are having to make difficult decisions to ensure there is no delay in student learning like combining classrooms, laying off staff, and in some instances, closing schools entirely.

As someone who has worked in a variety of administrator roles from a principal in Miami-Dade County Public Schools to the President and Chief Executive Officer of Florida Virtual School (FLVS), I know what that pressure feels like, especially when our ultimate goal is to do what is best for our students and staff.

While there were certainly enrollment declines pre-pandemic, COVID-19 has continued to exacerbate the issue, as more than half of all parents considered or are considering choosing a new school for their children, with 17 percent of parents indicating they chose a new school for their children within the past year, 11 percent considered new schools, and 26 percent are currently considering new schools. Additionally, 48 percent of parents said their community does not offer enough education options for them.

My recommendation for school leaders is to develop online or blended learning programs. By doing so, they can keep students enrolled in their school or district by providing them with alternative forms of education that best fit their needs. And, right now, school administrators have access to a time-sensitive resource to help create these programs – Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds.

ESSER Funds to Support Digital Programs

ESSER funds were established as part of the Education Stabilization Fund in the CARES Act to address the impact that COVID-19 had on elementary and secondary schools across the nation. And while some of these funds have helped with initial impacts brought on by the pandemic – like sanitization efforts, the purchase of PPE, like masks, hand sanitizer, and more, there are even more ways schools and districts can use the funds to innovative, invest, and improve their technological infrastructure and digital tools.

Each year, we share our 10 most-read stories. Not surprisingly, many of this year’s Top 10 focused on innovative ways to engage students, digital resources, and online and hybrid learning strategies related to post-pandemic teaching. This year’s 3rd most-read story focuses on edtech insights from every part of a school and district.

In this episode of Innovations in Education, hosted by Kevin Hogan:

• Why back-office systems are an essential element to successful learning
• 9 priorities for a future-focused education system
• Some good news (sort of) on post-pandemic learning gains

Over the past several years, K-12 school districts experienced the limitations of legacy systems. With the recent government funding available for pandemic recovery, a window of opportunity opens for K-12 schools to modernize and bring resilience to their spend management systems.

Automating your school district’s spend management solution should be a top priority. Market uncertainty has shown that faculty and staff spending data is often dispersed and hard to track, meaning you are missing complete spend visibility. This lack of reliable, consistent data is leaving school districts vulnerable to risks.

Join an eSchool News panel of experts as they discuss understanding and managing your school expenditures with a single platform that captures employee spend, when and how it happens, and how investing in a digital spend management solution can help enable school districts to increase efficiency, transparency, compliance, and control.

Key Topics:

• Streamline processes and eliminate manual tasks and piles of paper
• How automation helps reduce risk associated with managing and tracking employee expenditures
• Improve compliance utilizing proactive strategies and policies
• Establish trust though transparency and fiscal accountability
• Manage your cash flow and all parts of your accounts payable process in one system

School districts continue to prioritize expanding summer learning and enrichment offerings, adding specialist staff such as mental health personnel and reading specialists, and investing in high-quality instructional materials and curriculum, according to a survey administered by AASA, The School Superintendents Association.

The School District Spending of American Rescue Plan report is part of a multi-series survey focused on how district leaders across the country are utilizing American Rescue Plan (ARP) funds in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and, in particular, address student learning recovery.

This survey also sought information about what issues districts are experiencing in spending ARP funding and how they would change their spending decisions if they had more time to drawdown federal COVID-relief funds.

“Superintendents know best how to maximize the academic impact of the funding. It costs nothing for Congress to give districts additional time to extend the additional resources they have in place—reading specialists, tutoring programs, enrichment offerings and social-emotional supports—for students for an additional two years,” said Daniel A. Domenech, AASA executive director. “We call on Congress to extend this arbitrary deadline and enable students to get the additional time with these professionals and programs they need to recover from the pandemic.”

Districts’ ARP spending priorities have remained consistent from the 2021-2022 school year to the 2022-2023 school year. Improving instructional practices, expanding learning opportunities and learning time, hiring staff and addressing the social-emotional needs of students remain top priorities of public school system leaders, regardless of state, district size or locale.

In the last two years, an unprecedented increase in funding has flooded into schools around the country courtesy of the Elementary and Secondary Schools Emergency Relief (ESSER) package. While ESSER’s primary intent was to help mitigate the effects of COVID-19 on schools and students, it may also be illuminating a much bigger truth.

What if the lesson we are supposed to learn from ESSER isn’t about the power of one-time relief or struggles to spend it, but instead about the necessity of an increased, recurring investment in our schools that educate those who have been historically underserved?

The first two rounds of federal ESSER funds are posing challenges for the 6,988 school leaders who must allocate the dollars, a recent report from the Association of School Business Officials finds. The reasons aren’t as simple as one might think. These challenges are directly connected to the chronic underfunding of our schools across the country — especially those in underserved communities — which is an issue with implications far beyond ESSER funding, according to a July 2022 report from the Economic Policy Institute. 

First, the primary challenge faced by school districts was that this was an entirely new opportunity for many of them. Many public school districts receiving ESSER funding are historically underfunded relative to student need. They are rarely, if ever, faced with the problem of having extra money to spend. Shifting away from a mindset of scarcity takes training and time — none of which they were given. Everything from their budgeting processes, to their prioritization of resources, to their strategic planning is framed around the question of: how do we do more with less? When new resources suddenly become available, district leaders don’t have the experience or infrastructure to plan for that money and spend it quickly. 

On top of that, there were real questions around the nature of the funding itself and the parameters in which the money must be spent. ESSER funds are finite. Many leaders rightfully felt wary of allocating these one-time, non-recurring funds to long-term initiatives or fixed expenses, such as reducing class size or salaries, for fear of running into significant deficits down the road. Combine that concern with a pandemic landscape that was evolving daily, significant learning recovery needs, teacher shortages, and enrollment declines — it’s no wonder that school districts struggled to make the best use of these funds. 

Related:
5 ways to use ESSER funds to create cleaner environments
What’s keeping districts from spending COVID relief funding?

Funding is often schools’ biggest obstacle when it comes to enhancing the learning environment beyond the basics.

The Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) fund is providing a significant influx of resources for schools across the nation. However, an interesting problem revealed itself as schools find themselves struggling to decide how to spend the largely unexpected funds. In fact, according analysis of the federal ESSER data by the National Conference of State Legislatures, only 19.1 percent of the program’s funding has been used as of Feb. 28, 2022.

The relief package, which provided nearly $190.5 billion to the ESSER Fund through three separate stimulus bills, is incredibly helpful and impactful in addressing the impact that COVID-19 has on schools across the U.S. For many schools, which are historically underfunded and lacked resources, this money gives them the opportunity to make facility updates that have been needed for years.

And as the pandemic continues to burden schools for more than two years into the initial outbreak, many schools are choosing to allocate resources towards cleaning, disinfection, and other safety measures that will prevent the spread of disease and ensure there is a plan in place should a case occur at their school. The hope is that these measures will reduce the frequency of at-home learning, which is difficult for teachers and students alike.

Truth is in the Numbers

Extensive research from organizations including the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) revealed how a healthy school environment affects attendance, concentration, and overall education outcomes. Indoor air quality, the use of safe chemicals for cleaning and disinfection, and mold and mildew management are just a few facilities maintenance categories that drastically impact students.

The CDC also revealed asthma to be one of the leading causes of school absenteeism, resulting in nearly 14 million missed school days annually. Yet, proper facilities maintenance can reduce the number of irritants and allergens in the air that exacerbate asthma symptoms and trigger attacks.

Regular facilities maintenance is critical to preventing the spread of viruses like COVID-19 and ensuring safe and healthy environments on the whole.

Creating Cleaner, Safer Schools Using ESSER Funds

From thorough cleaning to indoor air quality improvements, there are many ways schools can use their ESSER funding to create a safer learning environment for students and staff. But to ensure that schools are taking the best first step forward, and one that will be attainable for the long-haul, school operations should zero in on five key areas of focus regarding regular cleaning and disinfection, deep cleaning, periodic disinfection, long-lasting surface protection and indoor air quality.

By strategically budgeting for each of these categories, schools can minimize disruptions by ensuring all necessary measures are taken to prevent the spread of illness and restore a safe environment quickly if an outbreak does occur. Specifically:

1. Regular Cleaning and Disinfection

How effective is your school’s current cleaning routine? Do you have regular disinfection practices in place to remove the germs that spread illness? Ensuring a routine is in place is important, but equally critical is the need to use tools and chemicals that are both safe and effective, especially in learning environments. The EPA provides a list of disinfectants, List N, which are proven to kill the virus that causes COVID-19.

Regular cleaning and disinfection keep students and staff safe from germs, dirt, and dust that cause adverse health effects. It includes removing dust, dirt, and germs from high-touch surfaces and high-traffic areas.

2. Deep Cleaning

A deep cleaning should be completed periodically to address any areas that are difficult to clean while school is in session. Some of these services require wait periods in which the surfaces can’t be walked upon or would otherwise disrupt students and staff, which is why they should be completed over breaks. A deep cleaning usually includes carpet cleaning and extraction, strip and floor wax, high dusting, and tile scrubbing, among several other services.

Related:

What’s keeping districts from spending COVID relief funding?
Key steps to keep indoor air clean in classrooms

If your school or district is anything like many others across the country, it has undergone transformational changes at a rapid (perhaps even dizzying) pace over the past two years. The challenges you continue to face demand that you influence more change, driven by creative problem solving and a bit of risk.

While innovation takes a unique form in every school, I’ve drawn upon my experience collaborating with innovative thinkers across the PreK-12 landscape to gather a few key practices that I believe will be critical this year. Consider how these changes can impact your daily work and influence outcomes for the teachers and learners you serve:

Reframe your understanding of personalized learning.

While it has undoubtedly become a buzzword in the industry, misused and misunderstood, personalized learning remains a non-negotiable goal for the future of PreK-12 education. Dylan Arena, VP of Learning Science on my team, recently wrote an op-ed on the evolution of the term where he asserts that a modern understanding of personalized learning requires us to know more about our students and use carefully designed technology to accommodate a wide range of student needs from a holistic lens.

Consider: What does your district qualify as successful personalized learning now? The definition likely includes something around meeting every student’s academic needs. But over the past two years, we’ve seen that learning happens in context, and that academic needs are inextricably linked to social, emotional, and cultural needs. The Learner Variability Project from Digital Promise does excellent work in this space. Be innovative in the way that you view the students in your community, in the way that you encourage teachers to respond to them, and in the systems you put in place to enable personalization.

Elevate teacher and student voices.

As a leader, innovative changes must be rooted in actions that you take, not those that rely too heavily on an increased workload for your staff. But this doesn’t mean that change shouldn’t be influenced by the perspectives, experiences, and voices in your community. Truly active and empathetic listening is, in its own way, an innovative practice.

Develop secure, anonymous lines of communication for feedback. Create a culture of agency where both students and teachers are empowered to take risks, be creative, and learn from failures. Make room for educators to share the innovative practices they’ve tried in the classroom and create outlets for peer coaching and collaborative learning among staff. Ensure that students also have a channel to voice their experiences and provide feedback about their needs with both educators and building leaders.

Challenge curriculum and edtech providers to be purposeful in design.

School leaders face no shortage of edtech purchasing options. New apps and solutions appear on the market constantly. Be innovative in your selection of tools not simply by seeking out exciting technological capabilities, but by challenging providers to identify how their technologies have been shaped by learning science and how they support the standards and objectives aligned to your school’s needs. Demand purposeful design informed by what we know about how learning happens in even the most cutting-edge emerging technologies, like augmented reality and voice recognition.

Draw on the feedback you’ve received from teachers and students in your conversations with edtech developers, elevating their voices and experiences throughout the procurement process. Seek out solutions that empower teachers to embrace their personal styles, enable students to own their learning, and even foster deeper relationships between students and teachers. Edtech doesn’t have to be flashy to enable true innovation and teaching in learning – but it must be purposeful.

Broaden your circle of inspiration.

Finally, seek out innovative practices by forging connections beyond your learning community. Read blogs by other district leaders, join networking groups online or in-person, and build relationships with leaders. Strive to make connections with those who lead learning communities that are far different from your own – either in demographics, location, or resources – for more valuable exposure to varied ways of thinking and doing. If you don’t already belong to organizations like NASSP, NAESP, or AASA, there’s never been a better time to get involved and connected.

If you’re looking for an opportunity to connect with peers and thought leaders in the industry, I invite you to attend the upcoming McGraw Hill Innovation Conference. Available in person or virtually through the Metaverse, we’ll be collaborating with school leaders and hearing from some of the most prominent voices in edtech on the future of innovation in PreK-12 education. Details regarding the location and date are coming soon – be sure to stay tuned.

2020 and 2021 saw $190 billion in federal relief funds go to schools through the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ESSER).

But why aren’t schools spending the money? The answer–or, more accurately, answers–offers a glimpse into the complicated state of post-COVID education.

Districts received funds based on their Title I funding, and ESSER funds must be spent by September 2024. While many districts have planned how they’ll use their funding, they have not actually spent it to date.

COVID continues to throw a wrench in plans

New COVID variants causing new waves of infections have continued to complicate districts’ plans.

According to a report from AASA, superintendents must collaborate with numerous stakeholders as they develop spending plans. While they’re able to reconsider spending decisions, it’s complicated–many districts may wait until late spring when they must finalize local budgets to reconsider or adjust their ARP spending priorities as well.

The AASA report notes that “the Delta and Omicron variant complicated many districts’ plans to potentially shift gears in the 2022-23 school year since learning recovery efforts were complicated during the fall and winter of 2021 due to labor shortages, short-term school closures and the need to continue investing heavily in PPE and other pandemic-related supplies and needs.”

Continued waves of infection have forced many districts to alternate between in-person, hybrid, and fully-online learning. Many districts still have not fully assessed where learning gaps exist and what students need to catch up academically, emotionally, and socially. Until a clearer pictures emerges–a picture that constantly changes as COVID changes–spending COVID relief funds to close learning gaps remains unpredictable.

“We’ve spent all of this year determining where the gaps are, what our kids did or didn’t learn during the closures, what they need now, what the social and emotional issues are, and where the challenges to their learning are,” said Dr. Kenny Rodrequez, superintendent of Missouri’s Grandview C-4 School District.

“We had a good plan, and a pretty good idea, but we had to continually plan and adjust based on what we saw with our kids. You’re making a plan for something that’s constantly in motion and constantly changing,” he said.

Supply chain issues make it difficult to spend the funds before their September 2024 expiration

AASA’s report also notes that districts are having trouble spending their relief funds on HVAC and capital improvements in school and district buildings. A majority of district leaders say they plan to use the funding for such improvements, but more than half say using the funds for infrastructure and HVAC upgrades will be difficult given supply chain issues, labor and material shortages, and current timelines and project paces.

States are slow to get the money to districts

The funds come with requirements, and following and documenting those requirements can be an involved process.

“The dollars have so many regulations and record-keeping–they can only be spent a certain way, so there has to be coordination with all of the oversight,” said Dr. Curtis Finch, superintendent of Arizona’s Deer Valley Unified School District.

School district leaders across the country are cautiously looking forward to post-pandemic teaching and learning–but they are also eyeing what may be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to upgrade their technology infrastructure and classrooms with interactive displays, laptops, and more.

In 2020 and 2021, Congress passed three COVID relief packages that added up to over $190 billion for public and private schools. Billions more are slated to arrive shortly.

The potential for this funding is great. How to effectively secure and implement it can be daunting, and you may feel that you need a bit of guidance. Join eSchool News and a panel of the country’s most insightful analysts as they discuss the state-of-play of federal and state edtech funding programs and what districts can do to take advantage.

As we enter into another winter season living with the pandemic, special education services are not where schools hoped they would be, with many feeling that they are still falling behind rather than beginning to catch up.

New York City recently announced delays to its academic recovery program for students with special needs. New York, like many others, is stretching limits to get programs activated, even allowing for educators not specifically trained in special education to staff programs. In addition to the urgency they are feeling every day to serve parents and children, there’s another good reason to expand programs right now: funding.

It was good news when states and districts received $190 billion in federal aid from three relief packages in the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) Fund. But it’s a jaw-dropping amount of money, with limits on when and how to use it for special education. For once, the challenge on the ground for schools is not how to manage a tight budget. It’s how to manage the rush of money that’s available: when to get it, how best to use it, and how to be accountable for it.

If used well (and before the clock runs out), it could be a game changer for schools.

Identify the highest needs.

More than ever, directors of special education and counseling are taking stock of their challenges at this point in the year and are seeking advice on how best to use their funding to address them. 

“It’s time to determine your highest priority needs,” advised Mike Lowers, former executive director of Central Kansas Cooperative in Education. “What are the ones that are keeping you up at night?”

There’s no one-size-fits-all way for schools to get it right. What will delay children in recovering skills? What are the challenges that will hold back your program next year? What could potentially take you off track?

Prior to the pandemic, many schools, colleges, and universities had indoor air quality challenges, but the past 18 months has brought a heightened awareness to a growing problem. Forty percent of the nation’s school systems need to replace at least half of their HVAC systems, according to a 2020 study by the Government Accountability Office.

Proper ventilation is a key prevention strategy for mitigating pathogens such as SARS-CoV-2, as well as reducing dust, allergens, and VOCs to improve health and well-being.

Many school, district, and higher education leaders are working to improve indoor air quality for their facilities and the government has offered funding to supplement those costs.

Most recently, the Department of Education introduced the American Rescue Plan (ARP), allocating funds which can be used specifically to improve indoor air quality in schools- specifically including system upgrades, filtering and  purification, as well as inspection, testing, maintenance, repair, replacement, and upgrading of projects in school facilities.

The ARP provides $122 billion for the Elementary and Secondary Schools Emergency Relief (ESSER) Fund. The ESSER funds and Governors Emergency Education Relief (GEER) funds provided under earlier appropriations can also support this work. The original ESSER and GEER funds are available until 9/30/2022 while a second round of funding is available until 9/30/2023.

But there remains a lot of confusion about expectations of these devices; what they truly are – and aren’t – capable of. Here’s what you want to consider before installing these devices in your facility:

What do air purifiers really do?

Air purification is the improvement of indoor air quality by bringing in fresh air, filtering the air in a room at least 3 times every hour, and/or using advanced technologies such as BPI or PCO to actively reduce pollutants in the space.

Air purifiers were originally designed to eliminate volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and reduce odors such as those caused by bacterial and mold, pollen, dust, pet dander and other pollutants.

More recently, many companies are testing their air purifiers ability to specifically eliminate SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19. While many air purification devices have been proven effective at inactivating SARS-CoV-2 and other viruses, it’s important to note no device or filtration system is 100% effective and therefore air purification should be considered as one part of a larger cleaning and disinfecting plan.

The incoming Biden administration and Congress should focus on innovation, flexibility and more relevance to teaching and learning when it comes to assessment policy, according to NWEA.

Following the release of NWEA’s research on the impact of COVID-19 school disruptions on learning, the nonprofit research and assessment provider announced K-12 assessment policy recommendations for the incoming administration.

“The pandemic has illuminated persistent inequities and while statewide assessment and related accountability systems have helped to move the needle somewhat over the past 20 years, these systems have not eliminated opportunity and achievement gaps,” said Aaliyah Samuel, Executive Vice President of Government Affairs and Partnerships at NWEA. “Given the impacts of the pandemic, it’s time – now more than ever – to modernize the system to one that is focused on action.”

NWEA’s assessment policy recommendations include:

1. Require statewide assessments in spring 2021 but provide flexibility
This is not the year to use assessments for high-stakes decisions such as school ratings and teacher evaluation, but it is also not the year to cancel state assessments. Spring testing may need to look different and the use of the data should not be “as usual.” Along with opportunity-to-learn data and community input, information from spring tests can shed light on the pandemic’s impact on systems of learning and inform decisions about support and intervention as well as equitable funding and resource allocation.

Ten new recommendations from the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE) address critical state policy changes necessary to support innovative improvement in educator preparation programs and education during the global COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.

The policy recommendations are outlined in AACTE’s new report, Teaching in the Time of COVID-19: State Recommendations for Educator Preparation Programs and New Teachers.

Related content: Do teacher prep programs need an overhaul?

Increased barriers to developing the educator workforce during the health crisis, coupled with the national teacher shortage, create demands for acute collaboration between educator preparation programs, state education agencies, and PK-12 schools to reinvent systems for producing high-quality teachers to meet the growing needs of diverse learners.

AACTE reviewed and analyzed COVID-related state guidance to educator preparation programs in pursuit of three goals: (1) to understand what states are doing to help prepare teachers for the classroom during this crisis, (2) to understand any extant trends in state guidance and (3), to identify recommendations for state leaders to enhance the support of new teachers impacted by program and policy disturbances stemming from the coronavirus crisis.

A new report from the Aurora Institute examines the top 10 K-12 education policy issues that have surfaced in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The report, Education Policy Issues for the COVID-19 Era: Policy Actions and Responses to Leverage the Moment for Future Readiness, offers insight into effecting high-level systematic change for the future of teaching and learning.

“Calls for a redesigned education system are growing in number and volume,” says Susan Patrick, Aurora Institute President and CEO and report co-author. “In this unprecedented time, we will do well to acknowledge that our long and firmly held beliefs about school, teaching, and learning will never be the same again. Our educators and students have a daunting year ahead as the pandemic persists. We are fortunate to have the liberty to seize the moment, share strategic guidance on education policy issues to rewrite the narrative, and fundamentally reshape this public good.”

Related content: 3 steps to help students’ learning after the pandemic

K-12 system leaders report that they are both contending with and leveraging the following 10 issues to transform schooling:

1. Using Blended, Competency-Based Learning as an Entry Point for Innovation

2. Moving Away from Seat Time Credits to Awarding Credit Based on Demonstrated Mastery