The Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) Fund grant program has provided billions of dollars in funding for school districts to use for equipment and services. While it’s helped schools maintain a balanced budget, the funds must be spent by fall 2024. With this funding expiring soon and state and local governments not necessarily adapting to what school districts need, we are quickly approaching the “fiscal cliff.”
The fiscal cliff refers to the period right after the funding expires, where a significant amount of your budget is unaccounted for and not easily replaced. It creates this period of making tough decisions on how to secure more funding or what programs to cut to get to a balanced budget. This budget crunch always threatens any organization when the funds you’ve used to create new jobs or programs expire.
With the fiscal cliff occurring for most districts and schools in the 24-25 school year, what can you do to prepare yourself, your staff, and your community? In every situation, you want to approach these situations cautiously and carefully.
Develop a long-term plan, particularly for future referendums
What you’re spending your ESSER funds on is locked in, but you can figure out what life is like without them. Adapt your plans to see where you can save money for future years. Are there areas you can reduce or cut to make the future more manageable? Think creatively. This can include cutting a day from the school week, closing administration buildings a day or two during the week, and other non-staffing cuts. Reducing hours or pay decreases for teachers is another option if you need to.
That said, do your best to keep staffing cuts to a minimum. Studies show that teacher layoffs can correlate to negatively impacting student achievement. Decreases in per-pupil funding will generally have a negative effect, but even the chance of teacher layoffs leads to stress and decreasing job commitment to a district, still leading to lower-quality academic progress. It can lead to a cycle of quality teachers avoiding joining your district or teaching in general due to job insecurity. The fewer and less experienced teachers you have, the lower the chance of your students to succeed.
Collaborate with other districts and organizations
You’re not alone in these struggles for funding. Many other districts and schools are suffering from the same issues. Can you collaborate with other schools to see some solutions that worked well for them? Perhaps they found a way to share maintenance services with other districts, or they had a community initiative that worked well for them.
The more you work with other districts, the more opportunities may become available. If you can unify with other districts to work on a common goal, you might be able to bring funding initiatives to your community or the state. Such popular multi-district-backed support could include more funding for special education, more flexible spending authority, and other widely-supported initiatives.
Be transparent about the situation
With declining enrollment, inflation, and other problems, it will be hard to maintain current budgets and adapt for future expenses no matter what you do. As such, now is the time to inform your community of what changes will occur at your school(s). As of this publication, you still have about a year to use your ESSER funding, so use the time and let any parties know the likely future of your budget. By promoting transparency regarding the situation, you can gain the community's respect with forward thinking and open communication, which may earn you favor with future referendums and support. Make sure you frame how this loss in funding will affect them, your staff, and the children in the community and what you can gain through their support.
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Navigating the ESSER Fiscal Cliff will involve a lot of tough choices. The Great Recession of 2008 and other financial downturns have brought these same worries of insecurity. However, as a school or district leader, the community will look to you to guide them through these difficult times, just as they did in times before. Use the tools and knowledge you have to help your school or district get through this fiscal cliff and help navigate away from the next one, whenever that may be.