Last Friday (4/16), the WASB Government Relations team hosted Bob Soldner from the DPI as a guest at our weekly noon-hour Capitol Chat webinar. Bob is the Assistant State Superintendent for School Finance and Management.
In his presentation Bob described the DPI resources available to help districts with potential uses of federal “ESSER” funds. (“ESSER” is an acronym that is short for Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief. These are the funds provided to K-12 education under the three main federal COVID relief packages.)
Mr. Soldner also spoke about the DPI’s plan for allocating the portion of the third batch of federal monies (the so-called “ESSER III” funds) over which DPI has discretion. The DPI’s plan must be approved by the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee (JFC). The JFC is currently reviewing the plan. We will provide more information about the DPI plan in a coming blog post.
Here is the Power Point that accompanied Bob Soldner’s presentation to WASB members at Friday’s (4/16) “Capitol Chat” webinar. We also recorded his presentation. You can view it here.
Here are some of the other DPI resources that are available to help you decide on possible uses for these funds:
- DPI has created a chart comparing the permissible uses of funds for all three ESSER programs.
- In addition, DPI has created a COVID Response and Relief Planning Recommendations webpage, to assist districts in thoughtful planning in the use of these one-time funds intended to provide COVID relief. The materials on this resource and planning webpages are best used in conjunction with district needs assessments for planning purposes.
We hope this information is helpful to you.
