Week of 1/30: States of Facilities

1.  As we have noted, Burbio has analyzed and categorized over 6,000 ESSER III spending plans from across the US, with over $93 billion of planned spending.  We are growing the database to 7,000 plans and tracking plan changes and spending rates. 

In the overall U.S. we find just over 22% of ESSER III planned spending dedicated to facilities and operations.  That figure varies widely across states. Below are examples of some states above that average from our database:

2.  Facilities spending is also broken out in CapEx budgets that we tabulate.  Publicly available CapEx budgets typically show three to five years of planned spending and they cover a variety of categories.  Below is an example from one state, a chart showing the CapEx breakout for districts representing over 70% of Florida's K-12 student population. The bulk of spending is against new construction, at over $3.6 billion, with facilities upgrades and maintenance at $1.58 billion.

With CapEx budgets, even the small numbers are material, as furniture and equipment spending is $265 million, technology spending is $239 million, and security spending (at 1.7%) is over $110 million. 

3.  One of the largest categories of spending in ESSER III is Afterschool, Summer and Extended Day programs.  Our dataset shows over $6.5 billion being spent in this category.  As written by local districts, these parts of the ESSER plans often cover everything from staffing to program elements in one spending figure, but don’t break out specifics for each piece. When we work with partners with services that are included in extended day/year programs we direct them to those districts as opportunities. In addition to academic and support programs, we note arts and STEM programs designed to engage students.   Some examples:  

• Miami-Dade County Public Schools, FL notes that "social and emotional learning will be a component of each academic afterschool program. Funds will support required hourly personnel (curriculum support specialists, site coordinators, paraprofessionals, teachers, and security), as well as program materials and transportation . . . "

• Bangor School Department, ME   "The Bangor School Department will expand after-school learning at all ten district schools. . . . expenditures would include transportation, meals, resources for performing arts, computer science, AV, newspaper, eSports, robotics, photography, ceramics, etc"

• In Palmdale Elementary School District, CA participants in summer school  "will be provided with activities grounded in core curriculum and arts education during summer Intersession . . ." 

• Fredonia Central School District, NY as part of their extended day offerings notes, "The Fredonia CSD has begun the steps of creating an aviation/drone course for high school students. The instructor is receiving on-going training, materials are purchased, and the first pilot course is anticipated to begin . . .”

• Jefferson County Public Schools, KY summer programs will provide "weeklong programs that paired literacy with high-interest activities, such as karate, swimming, and chess.  . . . . We also included art and music activities in addition to other engaging activities  . . . .. Our community feedback . .  .requested more extracurricular and arts activities, and this is a good place to include those."

• Brevard Public Schools, FL is running a secondary school summer program that features the following: "Students will have the opportunity to participate in enrichment programs for the arts, world languages, science research, math acceleration, SAT/ACT preparatory classes, STEM programming, CTE and other similar academic programming."

• In Montgomery County Public Schools, MD the district's summer and after school program summaries describe multiple tutoring programs, Math/ELA programs, and professional development programs.  

4.  This week Nebraska released their 2022/23 enrollment figures. Enrollment is up 0.5% versus 2021/22.    Below are grade-level comparisons.   As noted two weeks ago we continue to see increases in first grade this year (in yellow) due to higher kindergarten enrollments in 2021/22 (in red).  Nebraska is a state where eighth graders were held back in 2021/22 and we see the resulting increase in 9th grade this year.