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.