State School Districts Moving Forward as ESSER Funds Come to End

Friday, September 20th, 2024 -- 10:00 AM

(Corrinne Hess, Wisconsin Public Radio) Bookmobiles. Online mental health. Reading coaches. Robots. Therapy dogs.

According to Corrinne Hess with Wisconsin Public Radio, these are all things Wisconsin school districts have been able to bring to students because of the $2.4 billion in federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief, or ESSER, funding.

ESSER dollars were meant to help students make up for learning loss brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. Whether that’s been accomplished is hard to measure. But there’s no question the millions of dollars that went to schools over the last three years provided educators with an opportunity to hire staff and create programs they wouldn’t have been able to otherwise.

School districts will finalize their budgets in October without the benefit of that money. “It’s hard to say what the real impact is going to be losing these dollars,” said Roxanne Filtz, director of curriculum and instruction in Wisconsin Rapids Public Schools.

“That impact is going to be felt probably in a year when we notice the things that we can’t bring back.” Wisconsin Rapids has about 4,700 students. The district received just over $7 million in ESSER III funds, some of which went toward hiring nine elementary school teachers so class sizes could be reduced.

“It really helped with one-to-one reading and math loss that occurred, and the social skills that were lost during COVID,” Filtz said. Those teachers will remain on staff despite ESSER funds drying up. That’s because of attrition over the last three years, Filtz said.

The money was also used to help alleviate a pressing community issue. Before the pandemic, many Wisconsin Rapids parents who had to go to work before their children started school relied on the area Boys & Girls Club.

The club provided a morning program and transportation to one of the school district’s seven elementary schools. It worked great for the students who got in. But there were nearly 200 families on the waiting list.

The school district used ESSER funds to hire Boys & Girls Club employees to provide the program at the schools, so all the students on the waiting list could be served.

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