Summer Camp Starts in Spring

Summer starts in Spring. Really. Today’s dismissal bell is tomorrow’s summer bridge camp. Both are opportunities for high-quality OST.

Out-of-school-time (OST) is like rocket fuel for learning gains through experiential learning (Powers, R. B. & Kirkpatrick, K., 2012). Students learn critical skills, attitudes and knowledge that will be successful not only in school, but also in their future lives and in their careers, and community and civic engagement (DePaoli et al., 2018; Jones et al., 2015).

Smart leaders recognize OST meets the American Rescue Plan (ARP) 20 percent rule. Post-ARP, consider the evergreen formula grant: 21st Century Community Learning Centers, authorized by the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA).

21st Century Community Learning Centers are state administered grants carried out at the local level that support OST programs to provide academic enrichment opportunities during non-school hours for almost 2 million children, particularly for students who attend high-poverty and low-performing schools. The program helps students engage in a broad array of enrichment activities that can complement their regular academic programs; and offers literacy and other work-ready skill development services to the families of participating children.

Commissioned by the Wallace Foundation, the RAND Corporation report Hours of Opportunity,  is a comprehensive study of youth development within the context of OST. The report offers findings within six communities (Boston, Dallas, Denver, Palm Beach County, Tacoma, and Tulsa).

Key District Learnings:

  1. Increase the number of available slots in OST programs and actively recruit local families.
  2. Remove barriers such as transportation through braided funding.
  3. Promote the use of culturally responsive, not just culturally informed, programming with bidirectional and authentic communications with families served.
  4. Elevate students’ cultural assets, voice, and agency by including participant feedback on the quality of their experiences in programs.
  5. Commit to publishing disaggregated program enrollment data and use program enrollment data as an indicator or criteria for future grant awards.

High quality OST programs are intentionally designed optimizing grant resources for learning gains. As state and district leaders continue to adapt post-pandemic learning environments, OST is the rocket fuel to equip students for academic, emotional, and lifelong learning.

Rainy Days and Mondays

Tax revenue in states outperformed their pre-pandemic growth trajectory in most states. That’s good; right? Maybe. Consider that annual revenue growth rates continue to slow and is on track for negative growth by the close of FY23 and into FY24 when Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ESSER) funding will all but dry up.

The cut-off from COVID-19 federal investments and weak economy are creating a perfect storm for shortfall in state and local public education agencies1.

Many states experienced tax revenue gains for the second year in a row in fiscal 2022, but annual growth rates cooled when compared with the record pace set in the previous fiscal year. What feels like a surplus now will feel very different as slow growth intersects with the end of federal budget subsidies. The National Association of State Budget Officers (NASBO) reports rainy day fund balances continued to grow in fiscal 2022 after increasing 58% in fiscal 2021, and the median balance as a share of general fund spending is projected to be 12% in fiscal 2023.

The rainy day for most states may be upon us as NASBO is also anticipating a 3.1% annual decline in general fund revenue amid weakening economic conditions. This decline will hit the coffers of local school districts and schools hard in FY25.

So What?

School funding is a blend of federal, state, and local dollars. Local funding largely comes from property taxes. Formula federal money typically targets low-income students or other distinct groups and has steep compliance requirements that will reactivate once ESSER ends. State funding is where things get complicated, and states will need to get thrifty.

What should school districts do?

  1. Recognize states may adjust their public education funding formula. All but four states have a fixed formula that hasn’t been adjusted in the current economy. Connect your legislative agenda to preserve or increase the formula now, before the conversations start without you.
  2. Conduct a first wave of cuts using creative approaches like shortened instructional staff annual calendars or shortened school weeks.
  3. Consider step-back planning now to proactively budget for the eventuality of the end of ESSER.
  4. Prioritize ROI and LOI based on which investments produced the greatest yield.
  5. Save the people = hiring talent is particularly tricky in the public education sector now, so retain staff, but realize that federal compliances on qualified and certified requirements kick in as soon as 18 months from now.

The plan to step back from big budgets is becoming more and more critical as annual revenue growth rates respond to a slowing economy.

Now is the time to prepare for the rainy day before the bell on Monday.

National Center for Education Statistics. (2022). Public School Revenue Sources. Condition of Education. U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences. Retrieved [date], from https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cma.

ESSER spending is a journey: How can ed leaders invest to keep the trip running?

A former superintendent and a policy expert write that coordinated spending and braiding funds are essential steps to maintain the ESSER “road trip.”

Robert Avossa is the former superintendent of Palm Beach County School District in Florida and Fulton County Schools in Georgia. He is founder of consultancy firm K-12 Leadership Matters, LLC.

Dana Godek is senior policy and research manager at the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning. She is an expert on federal funding, structures and system design.

As a funding cliff and other realities loom in the wake of massive education recovery spending, education leaders are now facing concerns over sustaining temporary, supplemental programs. Like going on a summer road trip, the ESSER journey is marked out with a clear start and stop, but it’s unclear for many which are the most effective routes, rest stops and sites to see and learn from along the way.

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What is Adult SEL

What is Adult SEL? 

 As practitioners and facilitators of learning, it would be almost impossible to instruct a lesson on a subject one is unfamiliar with. Whether the subject is considered core curriculum (Math, Science, Language Arts, etc.) or supplemental (physical education, performing arts, etc.) the adult facilitating instruction must have at least a foundational understanding of the subject. The same is true for social emotional learning (SEL) (Jennings & Greenberg, 2009; Hamilton & Doss, 2020). When teachers begin with understanding and applying their own social emotional skills, while also deepening their personal practice, they are able to model and reinforce the use of SEL competencies (Schonert-Reichl, 2017; Jennings & Greenberg, 2009). This real-time use and modeling of SEL skills and strategies support not only the teacher’s capacity for social emotional learning, but also reinforces the integration of SEL in a student’s everyday life. (Schonert-Reichl, 2017; Jennings & Greenberg, 2009). 

Why is it so important in the workplace?

Let’s face it, we spend at least half of our lives at work. The average worker spends 60 hours + either onsite on the job or thinking about work. The workplace is ripe for supporting mental wellness and shaping our social and emotional skills. According to Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy, The COVID-19 pandemic brought the relationship between work and well-being into clearer focus for many U.S. workers. According to recent surveys:

As educators, we need to learn from this guidance by being good to ourselves so we can be great to our students.

What are practical steps I can take now in my school or classroom?

For leaders, try tapping into the Signature Practices: 

The SEL 3 Signature Practices are one tool for fostering a supportive environment and promoting SEL. They intentionally and explicitly help build a habit of practices through which students and adults enhance their
SEL skills. While not an SEL curriculum, these practices are one concrete example of a way to help people understand and practice the goals of an overall systemic SEL implementation plan. The linked playbook offers examples and resources to draw from as you build your repertoire of SEL practices. It also offers insights about how to make planning and facilitating the Signature Practices a fluid, natural part of your work. You and your colleagues are each other’s richest data sources, so we encourage you to dialogue regularly about how you consistently build these Signature Practices into your daily work, and to learn from one another! 

For teachers, consider how you model your own SEL competencies in the classroom. This video is a great example of a teacher modeling Self-Management in a classroom. 

If the goal is to have our students gain the capacity to be self-aware, and manage those emotions, we as adults must model what we expect from them.  As teachers, we set an expectation that we must appear all-knowing and infallible.  But, in fact, when we don’t allow ourselves the opportunity -in the moment- to identify our feelings and process how we are going to manage those emotions, we miss an opportunity to share our own productive struggles with our students. 

 

The developing federal budget is a quiet win for needed programs

As states and school districts begin to think about life after ESSER, the current bipartisan government spending agreement is poised to increase federal education spending. In K12 it provides $45 billion, an increase of $2.4 billion over the fiscal year 2022 enacted level, for K-12 and special education programs.

Here are some highlights:

Formula Funding

Title I is set for a 5% increase or roughly $850M. Be on the lookout for changing allocations based on pandemic-related enrollment and population shifts.

IDEA and Special education will realize a much-needed increase of $934 million, for a total of $15.5 billion.

Competitive Funding

Full Service Community Schools that positions school campuses as community hubs grows to $150 million.

21st Century Community Learning Centers program would see $1.3 billion under the bill, an increase of $40 million above fiscal year 2022 funding levels.

Project AWARE is a mental health and wellness program designed to identify and help children and youth who need mental health care as part of funding for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. This grant will see a $12M increase, well timed considering the ongoing youth mental health crisis documented by HHS and the Surgeon General.

Edu.Solve recommends three important considerations to make now, ahead of an approved federal budget:

  1. Plan now. Conduct a comprehensive needs assessment to document the current need and organize your plan with community partners.
  2. Consider competitive grants as part of your ESSER “step back plan”.
  3. Consider the ROI and LOI of what worked well in reopening and protect those resources from budget cuts.

For more information on comprehensive needs assessments or step back planning, contact me at Edu-Solve.com

 

The 2022 snapshot that reveals a trend of increased diagnoses of anxiety and depression

The effects of COVID-19 pandemic are coming to light, confirming what educators and administrators have experienced on their campuses and across their districts: increased need for mental health awareness, interventions, and services.

The Surgeon General calls this a Youth Mental Health Crisis and warns that young people are facing “devastating” mental health effects as a result of the challenges experienced by their generation, including the coronavirus pandemic.

The report cites significant increases in self-reports of depression and anxiety along with more emergency room visits for suicide attempts, which rose 51 percent for adolescent girls in early 2021 as compared to the same period in 2019.

A Health & Human Services (HHS)[1] sponsored study, published in the Journal of American Medicine, and conducted by Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), reveals 5-year trends over a variety of categories. Of note is the 5-year upward trend of increased diagnosis of anxiety and depression:

 “With respect to pre-pandemic trends, there was a significant increase in diagnosed mental health conditions, specifically a 27% increase in anxiety and a 24% increase in depression, between 2016 and 2019. These findings are consistent with reports from other data sources.  The direction of these trends continued into 2020, representing 5.6 million children with diagnosed anxiety and 2.4 million children diagnosed with depression” (Lebrun-Harris, et al., 2022) [2]

Of additional note was the “a significant (21%) increase in behavior or conduct problems between 2019 and 2020”.[3]  

Part of HHS’ response to the need for increased attention to mental health is $35million in grants to increase healthcare availability and access, nationally. 

What school districts do, when faced with the increased need for attention to mental and behavioral health, will matter this year, and beyond.

As part of budgeting and planning, EduSolve recommends that district administrators focus on evaluating and implementing the following: 

  • A current or planned assessment of campus climate & wellness for both students and faculty.
  • A clear and documented MTSS approach to mental heath.
  • A collaborative approach to maximize the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act.

 

 

[1] See: 2022 HHS announcement  

[2] Lebrun-Harris, L. A., Ghandour, R. M., Kogan, M. D., & Warren, M. D. (2022). Five-Year trends in US children’s health and well-being, 2016-2020. In JAMA Pediatrics, (176), e220056. American Medical Association (AMA). https://doi.org/10.1001/jamapediatrics.2022.0056

[3] Ibid