Thread by @TracyNovick

I LOVE this question, and I got so excited about it that I added slides to my presentation for Friday to be sure that School Committee members can answer it, and then I never came back here and answered it! Sorry! So:

https://twitter.com/JohnDoench/status/1478032538144632834

First up, let’s realize where we are with this money; this doesn’t stretch back to the beginning, but it does give an idea of where we are compared to when it needs to be gone; you are at the blue arrow, just about.

(The above slide borrowed from @Brian_E_Allen’s section of the ESSER presentation done with @awrsdsupt & @lexingtonsuper at the Joint Conference in November. I added the arrow.)

So while we keep reminding districts that the money is going to GO AWAY, there’s some time yet! If you’ve got three years to spend money, you’re not going to spend it all right away.

Also, can we get a handle on how much we’re talking about here? (This is also Mr. Allen’s slide).
This is just ESSER III, but that’s the big one:

We keep seeing these as totals, which is millions, but I’d invite us to think of this compared to annual operating costs.
And then divide by three years.

You’re probably not going to spend it that way—and yes, there’s ESSER I & II, too!—but this isn’t close to a patch on what it takes to run districts.

(This is why I find the ongoing “you can spend your federal funding on it!” maddening. It’s be spent ten or more times over.)

And while I am mentioning things I find maddening: retrofitting full HVAC systems into old school buildings isn’t cheap, isn’t quick, and may not make a ton of sense in the long run. Stop proposing this as the solution, please!

To go back to the earlier timeline point, though: if you are planning big faculties work with ESSER, guess what?
You probably haven’t spent that money yet. Public processes take time (intentionally, so we have red tape rather than headlines!).

If by chance you are hiring people with these funds, or even having stipends—for PD, for after school work—here’s where your budget cycle comes in:

As every school committee member whose been through at least a year can tell you, schools spend most of their money during the school year.

What does that mean? The fiscal year starts in July, but we don’t really start spending big money til September.

That’s because the bulk of our money goes to pay people. Schools take people to run. Those people get paid, but the vast majority of them get paid during the school year.

So, we’re close to halfway through the school year?
Anything having to do with paying school year staff is only half-spent.

That’s some of your “unspent money” in these arguments.

Now here’s the part where I had to go poke around a bit on (with ongoing thanks to those who answer my constant questions): how does Gov. Baker know?

The answer is kind of covered here in this December 2020 @Chalkbeat piece, which I keep going back to: chalkbeat.org/2020/12/8/2216…

This has some of the same comments I’ve made above, with another addition, which is about process.

We often think very concretely about money, right? We “have” the federal funding in our districts.

But this paragraph talks about how it actually gets spent.

I have pictured it like this:

You can track this here: covid-relief-data.ed.gov

…which I assume is more or less what Gov. Baker is doing.

So we haven’t actually PAID OUR BILLS with most of the money yet. We “have” plenty of money.

But that just means it hasn’t actually paid the bills yet, not that we haven’t committed it, or planned for its spending, or even already ordered with or contracted using it.

So, is he wrong that we haven’t spent the money?
No.
But by continuing to frame this way, he a) is discounting all the planning districts have done, and b) is demonstrating that he doesn’t know how local budgets work (or that he’d rather make an argument than get it right).

And MASC folks, some of the above is preview of a piece of Friday’s Learning Lunch!