Fort Worth schools have millions of federal COVID relief dollars left to spend
The infusion of millions of dollars of federal relief money has left Fort Worth-area school districts with a pair of challenges: how to get the money out the door before deadlines to spend it arrive, and how to sustain successful programs after that deadline passes and the money is gone.
Districts nationwide received that money to help with the challenges of reopening schools safely and helping students recover the academic ground they lost during school closures. But spending the money has proven more of a challenge than expected for some districts: Supply chain issues have hampered their ability to purchase educational materials, and workforce shortages have left them struggling to find candidates for new positions funded by federal dollars.
School districts in Tarrant County have more than half a billion dollars in federal COVID-19 pandemic relief money left to spend, according to figures from the Texas Education Agency. Meanwhile, deadlines to spend that money are approaching.
“We want to spend 100% of this money by the deadline,” said Carmen Arrieta-Candelaria, the chief financial officer for the Fort Worth Independent School District.
Tarrant County districts have money left to spend
The federal relief money came in three packages. Texas used the first package, roughly $1 billion, to offset cuts in state funding. The second and third packages flowed directly to school districts. Districts must spend the money they received under the second package by September 2023. The third package must be spent by September 2024. Any federal money not spent by those deadlines must be sent back.
Fort Worth ISD has spent all $116.4 million it was allocated through the second package, Arrieta-Candelaria said. By the end of June, it had also spent $61.9 million and committed another $19.5 million of the money it was allocated under the third package, meaning it had either spent or committed about 32% of its $261.64 million allocation. District officials had expected to have about 50% of that money spent by that point, Arrieta-Candelaria told the district’s school board at a meeting on Aug. 23.
The district encountered start-up issues and staffing shortages last year that hampered its ability to spend as much as expected, Arrieta-Candelaria said. Among other issues, Fort Worth ISD — like many other districts statewide — struggled to find enough tutors to comply with a new state law requiring that districts provide small group tutoring to students who fail a section on the STAAR exam.
Fort Worth ISD plans backup projects for extra federal money
Arrieta-Candelaria told the Star-Telegram the district has a plan to spend its entire allocation. She holds monthly meetings with each administrator who controls a piece of the plan to make sure that spending is on track, she said. The district also has a list of backup projects that it could begin work on if any piece of the plan comes in under budget, or if it finds itself with unspent money shortly before the deadline, she said.
The district’s plan for spending the allocation it received under the third package is broken out into five major categories: supporting teachers, providing rigorous instructional materials, creating more time for learning, empowering parents and supporting blended instruction, which combines online learning with classroom instruction.
Much of the money the district has spent so far was on one-time expenses like new instructional materials that the district won’t need to continue buying each year after the money is exhausted. The district also used some of the money to offer sign-on bonuses to attract new teachers to the district, Arietta-Candelaria said. District officials hope that, by the time the federal money is exhausted, the workforce situation will normalize enough that those sign-on bonuses won’t be necessary, she said.
The district also used federal money to hire freshman success coaches at each high school in the district, Arietta-Candelaria said. Those positions, and every other position funded by federal money, came with the understanding that the jobs were contingent on grant funding, she said, so the people hired for those jobs know the positions may be temporary.
The district has also used federal money to pay for a new Saturday learning program and an expanded summer school program. Once the federal funding runs out, district officials can reevaluate those programs, she said. District officials will be able to decide whether to build successful programs into the district’s budget once the COVID relief money is gone, she said.
Castleberry adds school days, shores up WiFi infrastructure
The Castleberry Independent School District has spent about half of the roughly $11 million it received from the two rounds of federal relief money combined, said Renee Smith-Faulkner, the district’s superintendent.
Among other priorities, the district has used that money to add more school days to its calendar, Smith-Faulkner said. About a quarter of the students in the district participated in summer school last summer, she said. The district also used federal relief money to buy updated curriculum for use during summer school.
The district also used federal money to pay for a program that helped equip parents to work with their kids on reading, she said. The program, called early parent involvement, brought parents to school for a one-day training session on accelerated reading instruction during summer school. At the end of the training sessions, parents got backpacks full of educational materials to take home and use with their kids, she said.
The district also used federal money to update its wireless internet infrastructure, Smith-Faulkner said. Castleberry was the first district in the area to provide free WiFi to students and families. Some of the district’s wireless routers were aging and needed to be replaced, she said.
Although the district used most of the money on one-time expenses, it also used federal money to hire instructional coaches to work with teachers and intervention specialists to work with students who are struggling in reading, Smith-Faulkner said. Those programs have shown signs of success, she said, so now district officials are working to move those positions slowly into the district’s general operating budget so that the district can keep them once the federal money is gone.
Northwest ISD banks on continued revenue growth
The Northwest Independent School District received about $3.3 million through the second package and another $7.4 million through the third package, according to TEA records. By Aug. 18, the district had spent all of its allocation from the second package and had about $4.4 million remaining from the third, records show.
Gilberto Prado, the district’s chief financial officer, said much of that funding went toward staffing. Last year, the district used that money to hire English and math teachers to reduce student-teacher ratios at its high schools, Prado said, as well as counselors and academic interventionists. This year, the district expects to use federal money on similar positions, as well as for recruitment and retention efforts, he said.
Northwest ISD was one of four districts in the Fort Worth area that received a supplement on top of the allocation it received in the third round of COVID relief funding. The district’s supplemental funding amounted to $12.1 million, according to TEA. District officials expect to spend that money on staffing, as well as summer school programming, Prado said. The district also plans to use some of it to pay for custodial contract work, he said, to free up money in the district’s general operating fund.
Most districts have tried to avoid using one-time COVID relief money to pay for salaries, because those salaries will be an ongoing expense after the federal money is gone. But Northwest ISD is the fastest-growing district in North Texas, adding about 1,500 to 2,000 students each year.
Revenue is growing quickly, as well, Prado said: Last year, the district took in about $40 million more in revenue than it did the year before. So, barring something unexpected, the district should be able to absorb those extra positions by the time the federal money runs out, he said.
School districts could face financial ‘perfect storm’
Marguerite Roza, director of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University, said a combination of factors could make the 2024-25 school year a financial “perfect storm” for school districts. During an Aug. 18 webinar, Roza said the end of federal funding could coincide with a series of other financial shocks, including enrollment declines, labor scarcity and a potential economic slowdown.
“This is where things get, really, pretty ugly,” she said.
Districts that could be most vulnerable are the ones that used federal money to pay for ongoing financial commitments, Roza said. Some districts have used that money to backfill their budgets, she said, because they don’t quite have enough revenue from other sources to meet their financial commitments. Some of those districts may have found themselves in that situation because of years of enrollment declines that they haven’t addressed, she said. When that federal money goes away, those districts could find themselves in a bind, she said.
Large urban school districts could be among those most vulnerable to enrollment declines over the next three or four years, Roza said. Because school districts receive state funding on a per-pupil basis, fewer students generally means less revenue. Many districts have already seen their enrollments drop off as a result of the pandemic, but those recent declines could be a part of a longer-term trend: Total public school enrollment nationwide is expected to decrease by 4% by 2030, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
A combination of high inflation and teacher shortages could also lead districts to institute permanent salary raises beyond those that they would typically offer, Roza said. While those raises could help those districts keep teachers in their classrooms, they can also leave them strapped for cash when federal money runs out.
Crowley ISD seeks grant money to replace federal dollars
Michael McFarland, superintendent of the Crowley Independent School District, said the district is using the roughly $36.2 million it received from the two federal packages combined to add school days to the calendar, pay for professional development for teachers, buy new curriculum and build social-emotional support on its campuses.
The district also used some of the federal money to hire more family engagement coordinators to work with parents of students in the district. Those coordinators bring parents to schools to find out more about what’s going on there and provide resources to families who need them, he said. Parent engagement became more important during the pandemic, he said. Parents took on an expanded role in their children’s education during remote learning, and many needed support to help keep their kids from falling behind, he said.
Many of the staff positions the district added may not be necessary once the funding is exhausted, McFarland said. But the district is already at work finding other grant money to try to keep some programs in place after the federal relief program ends, he said.
As important as the money has been for the district, the plan for what to do with it has been equally important, McFarland said. Without that plan, the money would do little good, he said. And once that money is gone, district officials will have to find a way to continue to move forward with that plan, he said.
“If (federal relief funding) dries up tomorrow, our responsibility to educate kids doesn’t change,” he said. “So we still have to figure out a way to get it done. And we will.”
