Boston schools have struggled with soaring infection rates, absenteeism and staff burnout as the district approaches year three of the pandemic this spring. The difficult situation has many parents wondering what happened to the federal funding windfall that was supposed to bring relief to the city's beleaguered schools.
"What are they doing with it right now?" asked Jason Lambright, a father of two. "I couldn't even tell you."
"There's money like there's never been seen before. But we haven't seen any," said Dorchester parent Mike Ritter, who has two young daughters.
"They need a way better PR team, because I have no idea," said B. Chatfield, mother to a kindergartner.
Those everyday Boston parents are referring to the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund, the epically large sum of $190 billion being sent to schools nationwide for pandemic recovery and improvements. Massachusetts schools will receive more than $2.6 billion, including $400 million to Boston schools. Officials and pundits have touted the funding as game-changing for exhausted teachers and hurting students. In particular, the aid was supposed to help students and families of color, who have suffered higher coronavirus infection rates and more job losses — as well as more lost learning time — to regain academic ground.
The district has already received its first two installments of funding, totalling $155 million, excluding city contributions.
GBH News looked at how the funds have been spent so far in Boston, but determining how much money went where is no small task. That problem is not unique to the city, said Anne Hyslop, policy director for All4Ed, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit. Hyslop has reviewed many districts' spending plans to see if they're equitable to students of color. She said parents might find the process tricky.
"A lot of the details about how funds are being spent are not especially transparent. It's on, buried on a state or district website where you may have to make 10 clicks to find it. And then the document itself is just full of jargon," she said. "That's another just challenge with this. It's not that the funds are being misused or being misspent. But it's not really being presented to parents in a user-friendly way."
The BPS website implores parents to "Return, Recover, Reimagine" with the funds and touts the district's outreach to stakeholders. A BPS spokeswoman called the recently updated site "robust and resourceful." It includes a three-year funding plan still in draft form and links to other broad information. For example, a $61 million allocation to schools is buried within the site, but it does not include details on how individual schools are spending the money.
Paul Reville, a former Massachusetts education secretary who now teaches at Harvard's Graduate School of Education, said districts need to be able to point to improved educational outcomes from the funding.
"This is a lot of money," he said, "and people are going to say, what did we get for it?"
The funds, which were first authorized in 2020 by the Trump administration as part of the CARES Act, had few stipulations. So GBH News requested Boston's state-approved budget worksheet, which is not posted on the BPS website, for the first two ESSER installments.
Some highlights:
- $61 million directly to schools (see what your school received)
- $20 million for professional training days for teachers and staff
- $15 million for instructional materials
- $5 million to hire 100 paraprofessionals and instructional assistants
- $14 million in stipends for employees who take on extra duties
- $13 million for teacher professional days related to teaching students with disabilities and those learning the English language
- $4.5 million for academic recovery and instructional coaches
- $1 million for custodian overtime for cleaning
- $200,000 for portable sinks for handwashing at 30 schools
The district's initial allocations funded efforts early in the pandemic, including PPE, testing, vaccines, food for students, window upgrades and technology. Later funding benefitted special needs students and English language learners who risked significant academic setbacks or needed access to district services. Hyslop applauded the district's attention to those expenditures.
Other budget line items were vague or raised questions, like what exactly is an "academic recovery coach"?
The district has said it based its spending on recommendations from meetings with more than 1,000 parents, students, teachers and activists as well as a 31-member ESSER Commission convened last May, June and July. (Reville was a member.) Teachers also submitted a report highlighting the need to focus on facilities as well as health and safety.
Last summer's meetings left Dorchester parent Jasen Lambright wanting.
"I know that most of the schools had what was called like 'equity roundtable' or some type of discussion of like about how should we spend this money," he said. "You're having these theoretical conversations, but you don't know how much money your schools getting? So it's like, well, how much money are we getting? They're like, 'Oh, we don't know.'"
The district says it released a school-by-school list of funding on July 30. But it does not include the total amount for each school because BPS has yet to receive or allocate the third installment.
The ESSER Commission met six times to discuss the funding bonanza, but no final report or summary of its recommendations is available. A district spokesperson said that a summary was never considered a "deliverable."
Parents at the Lee Academy Pilot School in Dorchester had been wondering when promised funding would arrive. When the school's before- and after-school care program fell apart, the school's paraprofessionals, or teacher aides, agreed to step in to fill that urgent void. Parents were grateful, and everyone expected that the aides would be paid in short order from ESSER funds.
Not so. The paraprofessionals did the work for nearly five months without getting paid for the extra work until earlier this month.
That incensed Ritter, a parent who complained for months about the problem.
"You're sitting there, you've got piles of money, and you just have to streamline it into the schools that need it," he said.
Reville said he sympathized with the burdens placed on district leaders during the pandemic, especially when the district is also facing a hiring crunch due to shortages of teachers, teacher aides, bus drivers and cafeteria workers.
"If we have the kind of reaction that you're talking about in the general public, let alone in the policy community that, you know, 'We put the money in, we don't know where it went, and we can't tell if it's made any difference,' it's really going to undermine the idea that we should invest further in education when these monies fall away," he said.
The government process of approving funding can also be cumbersome and slow. District officials said Boston Public Schools' review process involved "an ESSER school lead as well as Finance, Office of Human Capital, Facilities, and School Superintendent review," followed by a state review.
Kim Parker, president of the Black Educators' Alliance of Massachusetts, said it's hard to "reimagine" priorities when funds move slowly and no one is sure how much money their school will receive. She said parents and the general public would be amazed to see what teachers and staff can do to ease the pandemic burden when they have the resources they need.
"It just is infuriating that people don't get what they need at a time when we need it the most," she said, "because we're still in a pandemic."
That accountability will be even more important when the district receives the biggest and final round of ESSER funds: more than $245 million.
The budget documents for those funds are currently under state review.
