Colorado schools got nearly $2 billion in COVID aid. Now the money is ending and districts face tough budget decisions

Denver Public School students at Ellis Elementary School follow their 1st grade teacher Megan Westmore to her classroom for the start of the 2022-23 school year on Aug. 22, 2022, in Denver.

DENVER — Nearly $2 billion in federal aid flowed into Colorado school districts’ coffers during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and, with that money, they expanded tutoring for children, started after-school and summer programs and increased mental health services.

But that temporary funding is drying up and if districts haven’t already spent the money, they must do so by a Sept. 30 deadline.

Colorado received $1.8 billion in federal pandemic aid through the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund to help schools respond to the pandemic, including the move to remote learning in 2020, and to help children recover learning losses.

The influx of so-called ESSER funds came in three installments, with the last one, in 2021, being the largest payment at almost $1.2 billion, according to the Colorado Department of Education.

Most district officials said they knew the funding wouldn’t last forever, but unless they are able to find money elsewhere in their budgets for the positions they filled and programs they started with ESSER funds, those will end as well.

“It will be a big loss not to have it, but we always knew it was a grant,” said Chuck Carpenter, chief financial officer of Denver Public Schools, which received more than $325 million in ESSER funds, according to tracking by the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University.

DPS spent the aid money on summer programs to help address students’ learning losses from the pandemic. Money also went to other projects, such as improving and tracking air quality in schools.

“We tried to deploy the money in a way that was one-time in nature and not put it in recurring costs,” Carpenter said.

DPS is now going to have to scale back on summer programs and incentives the district gives when hiring for open positions, he said.

“One-time funding has been spent”

At the same time ESSER money is going away, school districts also are facing another financial hurdle: PK-12 public school enrollment is declining as fewer Coloradans are having babies and high housing costs, especially in metro Denver, are reshaping neighborhood demographics.

The state’s two largest districts – DPS and Jeffco Public Schools – already have started closing schools because of low enrollment. DPS’ school board passed a policy this summer that paves the way for more closures should Superintendent Alex Marrero decide they’re necessary. And other districts, including the Douglas County School District, are eying potential closures in the coming years.

Jeffco Public Schools used a portion of its ESSER money to maintain staffing levels in schools even as enrollment dropped in recent years, which delayed reductions, wrote Mary Parker, president of the district’s Board of Education, in a newsletter to parents last week.

“With the pandemic now in the rearview mirror, this one-time funding has been spent,” she wrote. “The district also went through the difficult process of closing schools over the past two years to improve student experiences, use financial resources more efficiently and better position itself financially.”

Jeffco Public Schools received more than $105 million in ESSER money, according to the Edunomics Lab. A spokeswoman for the district did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

But Parker wrote that Jeffco Public Schools projects it will run a budget deficit during the 2025 fiscal year and plans to use money from its reserves to make ends meet.

Parker noted in the newsletter that such a strategy isn’t feasible for the long term, and that the school board has directed Superintendent Tracy Dorland to “identify and recommend structural adjustments to the district budget.”

She also hinted at the possibility the district will cut staff as soon as the next fiscal year, saying that a majority — more than 80% — of the district’s budget goes to employee salaries, so “it will be important for the district to analyze and adjust staffing levels to the realities of our declining student enrollment.”

Most school districts used the federal ESSER money as they would a grant, knowing it had an expiration date — meaning the so-called “financial cliff” isn’t as steep as expected. Still, unless they were able to find other funding sources, it does mean that some programs and jobs will be eliminated, said Frank Reeves, director of operations and strategic partnerships at the Colorado Rural Schools Alliance.

Schools also used the money to hire for positions that assisted teachers in the classroom, including interventionists who can provide more one-on-one instruction for students. Most districts would like to keep these roles, but if they end, they aren’t positions that would affect a school’s ability to operate, he said.

“One thing we are going to see get lost the most are those summer school and after-school programs, because there’s just no funding for that,” Reeves said.

Summer school programs helped improve learning losses for students in Aurora Public Schools — so much so that the district has created a budget for the next fiscal year that will allow summer school to continue even with the end of the pandemic relief money. The district is also continuing tutoring, although it will be pared down, said Brett Johnson, Aurora Public Schools’ chief financial officer.

“The big question moving forward is what is worthy of continuing,” he said.

Cutting mental health program

In Denver, DPS ended a pilot program it funded with ESSER dollars that provided mental health services to students who don’t regularly see a school psychologist or social worker and who don’t have a disability.

That pilot, which provided intensive clinical training to kids with trauma and anxiety, was something the district “really got right,” said Joe Waldon, who was a therapeutic support specialist in the program.

“I’m just baffled by why a program that has been so successful would be discarded,” he said.

With ESSER funds running out this year, the mental health department at DPS had to reevaluate the services it provides, said Courtney Sommer, the district’s senior manager of behavior and mental health.

The program Waldon was a part of saw strong results, but it served a small population of students, Sommer said, adding that the district wanted to find a way to expand that work more broadly across the district.

“It was really unfortunate that ESSER ended and it had to go away,” she said. “There was no possible way to sustain it (financially).”

The department also had another program, made up of mental health coaches, that was also poised to lose ESSER funding, she said.

DPS decided to create a hybrid of those two roles that will provide both coaching and training to the department as well as two days of direct services to students. These roles will be in place for at least a year, Sommer said.

But Waldon, who is moving back into a traditional school social worker role, questioned whether the new model will provide the same quality of service to students and noted that it also won’t do much to relieve school psychologists and social workers of their already heavy workload.

“We’re not going to be able to provide the same level, the degree and quality of service that we were able to provide under the pilot program that we were doing,” he said. “…What’s being lost is kids’ services.”

-------

©2024 MediaNews Group, Inc. Visit at denverpost.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.