A New Strategy for Returning American Children to School
COVID-19 relief funds should flow to parents where schools remain closed.
Congress is considering spending nearly $130 billion on K-12 education to help schools reopen and continue to serve students during the pandemic. But what can lawmakers do to ensure that this new expenditure will cause schools to reopen or help students currently learning remotely in 2021?
It is clear that the answer is not to provide additional direct aid to state education bureaucracies. Since March 2020, Congress has awarded more than $60 billion in emergency funding to state education agencies. But the Department of Education reports that states have spent a small fraction of those funds so far. According to our analysis, between $53 billion and $63 billion of those funds remain unspent halfway through the current school year. Much of that unspent funding has likely been distributed to school districts. For example, in Florida, where most public schools have been open for in-person learning since September, districts have spent about 40 percent of their CARES Act funding from March.
CBO projects that $90 billion of the proposed $130 billion won’t be used until after 2022
Based on what remains unspent, it’s unlikely that new federal funding will help schools reopen. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office analyzed what Congress appropriated for education in emergency packages last year and what it is now considering in the Congressional Democrats’ proposed reconciliation package. CBO predicts that only $6.4 billion of the proposed $128.5 billion in new funding for the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) fund will be spent in 2021. In fact, CBO projects that $90 billion of these new funds would be spent between 2023 and 2028.
But American students need immediate assistance today, either the opportunity to return to the classroom or to support their outside-of-school learning needs. Millions of children have not been in the classroom for nearly a year. Nearly a third of the nation’s schools were operating remotely as of December. Many disadvantaged children, such as those from low-income households or special education students, have likely suffered significant academic setbacks during the pandemic. Researchers have projected that many children will have lost up as much as a year’s worth of learning while schools have been closed.
Congress should provide direct assistance to encourage public schools to reopen
Rather than providing more funding to state education bureaucracies, Congress could provide immediate assistance to American students by providing direct grants to public schools that have reopened or direct aid to students who are assigned to or enrolled in public schools that remain closed.
There are roughly 98,200 public schools across the country. If the $128.5 billion in new funding was distributed to schools that choose to reopen, schools on average would be eligible to receive about $1.3 million in direct aid. (Congress could structure grant amounts based on schools’ enrollment or other factors including Title I program eligibility to promote equity.) School leaders could use those funds to implement the CDC’s recommendations for safely reopening, which it estimated to cost between $55 to $440 per student. More than a million dollars in new funding should be more than enough for schools to implement these safety measures.
Alternatively, schools could use those funds to upgrade their heating, air conditioning, and ventilation systems, which have been discussed as a barrier to safely reopen. In 2020, the Government Accountability Office reported that “an estimated 41 percent of districts need to update or replace heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems in at least half of their schools, representing about 36,000 schools nationwide that need HVAC updates.” GAO pointed to evidence from a Maryland school district to estimate that fully replacing a ventilation system could cost more than $1 million. Nevertheless, a $1.3 million direct grant to a school should pay for significant improvements to ventilation systems. Schools could request additional aid from the state department of education, including unspent ESSER funds, to cover any funding gaps.
Importantly, Congress could restrict eligibility for these school-based grants to schools that have reopened or will reopen by a certain date. A program could be structured to provide direct grants to public schools that have reopened by a certain deadline, such as April 1st, and commit to providing at least 90 days of in-person instruction during the second half of the current school year. This would provide school leaders, school districts, state and local elected officials, and teachers unions with a transparent deadline for deciding whether to reopen. Once the federal funding has been authorized, school leaders could quickly implement mitigation strategies to safely reopen if they have not already done so.
Congress could structure the reopening incentive to account for potential public health concerns and to allow schools flexibility. Public schools may need to close temporarily if the virus begins to spread within the school or community at unacceptable levels, or if a new variant creates new, unanticipated public health risks. But Congress could require that participating schools extend the school year to account for days of lost in-person learning to comply with the requirement of 90-days of in-person learning.
Congress should provide ESA grants to students attending closed public schools
Since many school districts remain closed, and anticipating that many public schools would not choose to reopen by April 1st, Congress should also authorize the Treasury to distribute remaining funds directly to students who are enrolled in public schools that remain closed. This would ensure that funds are immediately used to help children learn this year.
According to the Department of Education, the average public school’s enrollment was 528 students as of 2017. Therefore, approximately $1.3 million in per-school grants would be enough to provide, on average, about $2,500 directly to students. To improve equity and prioritize assistance for at-risk children who have been most affected by prolonged school closures, Congress could distribute direct student grants based on a funding formula that reflects students’ need, such as socioeconomic status, learning disabilities, or other factors.
Congress could direct the Treasury Department to provide these direct grants to students attending closed public schools using a debit card or education savings account. Either mechanism could be designed in a manner to require that funds be spent on students’ learning needs. Congress could set parameters for how funds could be used, such as to pay for tuition at a reopened public or private school, tutoring, forming pandemic pods, summer school, or education technology. Delivering direct aid swiftly to millions of children who have been or remain out of school would ensure that their parents have resources to support their immediate learning needs in 2021.
Federal emergency aid should be used in 2021 to reopen schools and help students now
To be clear, the nation’s public schools do not need any additional funding to safely reopen. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Academy of Pediatrics have stated that schools can safely reopen when they implement mitigation practices, such as mask wearing. The more than $53 billion in currently available funding should be more than enough if state education bureaucracies quickly distribute funding and public school districts commit to use that existing emergency aid to help public schools reopen.
But if Congress intends to spend another $130 billion on K-12 emergency education relief, lawmakers should ensure that new funding is used in 2021 to address American students’ immediate needs. Providing an incentive and financial support for public schools to safely reopen while awarding direct assistance to children assigned to closed public schools is a promising strategy to reopen American education and begin to reverse learning losses caused by a year of prolonged school closures.
