[Baltimore Sun] Maryland must allocate $450M in federal education funding by Monday — or give it back
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Maryland could lose up to $450 million in federal education funds meant to combat learning loss and other difficulties stemming from the coronavirus pandemic if the state fails to designate the funds for use by Monday’s deadline.
State-level school officials said Friday that they and local school districts had committed $1.5 billion of the total $1.95 billion Maryland was set to receive from the third round of Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund allocations. The federal program, known as ESSER, was set up in stimulus legislation to assist schools as they shut down due to pandemic.
Education officials could still enter contracts using the funds through Monday and have until at least next year to make payments. But as things stood last week, Maryland was on track to spend far less of the influx of cash than some other states. And although the funds have proved helpful in rebounding schools from academic issues caused by the pandemic, education districts across the nation are preparing for how to keep that momentum going as that money dries up.
“We’re beginning to see the impact on academic achievement from this funding,” said Joanna LeFebvre, a research associate with the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities who focuses on states’ fiscal policy.
A Maryland State Department of Education spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment Friday about what action state education officials might take in preparation for the funds expiring.
The large influxes of federal cash helped schools safely return to in-person learning amid the pandemic and have allowed them to invest in school-based mental health supports and programs such as additional tutoring interventions, LeFebvre said.
Now, school districts must attempt to keep that momentum while the funding pipeline shuts off. That’s especially true in higher-poverty school districts, which were allocated more federal dollars but have only recently begun to rebound from learning loss, LeFebvre said.
“We know because of the impacts that ESSER has had on academic achievement that it is possible to close those gaps, and we also know that from prior research on education funding as well,” she said. Without continuing those investments, the disparities will continue, she said.
LeFebvre wrote in an August report that states should build on the progress brought by ESSER funding by raising their own revenue through progressive taxes, rather than going back through tax cuts and private school vouchers, which divert money away from public schools.
Monday’s deadline is only for designating the funds states received from the third round of ESSER funding, a $122 billion package authorized by the American Rescue Plan Act. The deadline for spending it is in January, though that can be extended into March 2026.
Any remaining ESSER money that Maryland and other states don’t spend will go back to the federal government, though LeFebvre said more recent spending figures have made her center “less concerned that districts will not spend down all their funding.”
Although state-by-state figures on spending were incomplete last week, and the deadline had not passed, Maryland school districts’ rate of allocating the third round of funds was still lower than that of several other states, many of which had already obligated a higher percentage of their share by the end of July. At that point, only about a dozen other states and Washington, D.C., had spent less than 75% of their ESSER funds, according to U.S. Department of Education data.
The data from the Education Department also indicates that Maryland had allocated only 89.6% of the $868 million it received in the second round of ESSER funding — though state education department spokesperson Raven Hill said those figures were not accurate. That would have made Maryland the state with the lowest rate of spending the second infusion of federal cash.
But Maryland had actually spent 99.74% of its second award, Hill said, adding that the federal dashboard’s number was off due to a late liquidation request by one school district. That puts Maryland among the states with the highest rates of spending during the second round, which had its use-it-or-lose-it deadline last September.
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