Kentucky School Advocate
February 2021

By Brenna R. Kelly
Staff writer

Kentucky school districts will receive a second round of federal coronavirus relief funds to help with the costs that come along with operating schools and keeping students, teachers and staff safe during the pandemic.

Kentucky’s total share of the funds from the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act (CRRSA) will be $928 million which will be distributed through the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) fund.

The new funding will be about four times the allocations districts received under ESSER I funding from last year’s Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act, Kentucky Department of Education Associate Commissioner Robin Kinney said during the department’s Jan. 12 Superintendent’s Webcast.“It is a significant amount of funding, so we are encouraging you to continue to be very strategic, as you have in the past, in your planning on the use of the funds,” Kinney said.

The ESSER II funding has more flexibility than the previous ESSER funding. In addition to personal protective equipment and cleaning supplies, the new round of funding can be used to address learning loss due to COVID-19 and for repairs and improvements to buildings related to health, indoor air quality reducing disease transmission, such as HVAC, she said. Under the learning loss provision, the funds could be used for paying for assessments, evidence-based activities, parent engagement, tracking attendance and improving student engagement, she said. The money can also be used for nurses, mental health professionals and employee emergency leave days.

The Kentucky Board of Education passed an emergency regulation last year that allows districts to grant unlimited emergency leave to employees because of COVID-19.

“And with the funds that would be coming from the ESSER II, you could consider to use some of those funds to support those emergency leave days,” Kinney said. “It is a local decision in that regard to use that funding and to utilize the emergency regulation provided.”

Under the CRRSA funding, districts are required, to the greatest extent practicable, to continue to pay their employees and contractors, she said. The new funds can be used for expenses from March 13, 2020 to Sept. 30, 2023.

While the federal funding to address the educational impact of COVID-19 is much needed and appreciated, KSBA Director of Advocacy Eric Kennedy cautioned that the funding, while significant, is limited in scope and duration.“We must not lose sight of the challenges that predated COVID-19, challenges that will remain after the pandemic ends,” Kennedy said. “We must consider that the federal funding is allocated through a formula based largely on student poverty. Our districts will receive widely variable amounts of this relief, even though no community was spared from the brunt of the pandemic.”

The federal relief money will not solve longstanding funding issues of both equity and adequacy which continue to impede the progress of the state’s constitutionally established system of common schools, Kennedy said.

Kentucky needs to increase the Supporting Education Excellence in Kentucky (SEEK) base allocations to restore some equity across communities, he said. That funding, which is recurring, unlike the one-time federal relief, is needed to support programming such as family resource and youth service centers, addressing the needs of students in foster care, and the increasing number of students with special needs caused by neonatal abstinence syndrome.

“This funding may help us supplement instruction and supports to close achievement gaps, but we must recognize that those existing gaps were exacerbated by the pandemic, not a product of it,” Kennedy said. “Our local communities needed help to address these and other crises before last March, and they continue to need state support in confronting them now.”

Education leaders were hopeful that lawmakers would include a SEEK increase in the one-year state budget they are expected to pass before the legislative session ends on March 30.

“For us to consider the ESSER funding as anything more than acute pandemic relief meant to right the ship would be shortsighted,” Kennedy said. “It should be viewed more as an emergency lifeboat to supplement adequate, sustainable support for the success of all students.”

Education Commissioner Jason Glass urged districts to use those emergency funds to address learning loss that may have occurred after many students spent much of the year in virtual instruction. Glass asked districts to consider programs before and after the school day, classes during summer break, starting the next school year early or other ways to create quality learning experiences for students.“We are going to be able to do some really exciting things for kids that have missed out on so much over the past several months,” Glass said.

But he urged districts not to focus on assessments, rote learning or online programming, but to be creative in their approach to getting students caught up.

“I advise and ask that all of us really start thinking about what are some ways that we can create meaningful, quality learning experiences for kids in Kentucky with these funds,” he said.

In addition to ESSER funds, Kentucky will also receive $40 million in Governor’s Emergency Education Relief (GEER) funds, $19.5 million of which will go to Kentucky public schools. The district allocations and what that money will be used for has not yet been decided, Kinney said. The state used the first round of GEER funding for technology and school food service programs.

Glass said KDE expects to release further guidance on the ESSER and GEER funding in February.