Latest news with #ElementaryandSecondarySchoolEmergencyReliefFund
Yahoo
04-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Look deeper into Monroe Public Schools' funding, enrollment, future plans
— In an effort to reduce its general fund expenditures by approximately $2 million for the 2025-26 school year, recently cut 25 district staff positions and plans to implement other changes, including changes to custodial cleaning. Andrew Shaw, MPS superintendent, said the efforts will help the district balance its budget and prevent it from having to spend more of its fund balance. Here's what officials had to say: The fund balance is essentially a district's savings fund. The balance fluctuates depending on the district's financial situation. According to slides presented during an April 28 financial update to staff, MPS expects to end this school year with $7,731,360 in fund balance. Shaw provided a recording of the call to The Monroe News. MPS's total budget for this year is approximately $75 million. 'We are set to spend approximately $3 million out of fund balance this year. And, the last couple years, we've been spending out of fund balance,' Shaw told staff on the call. 'That $3 million, if we make no changes, would go to next year, and then next year, we'll still be in the same spot because we have pay increases and normal increases due to all expenses out there and inflation, and then we also budgeted for a student loss. So, that's another $2 million to $2.5 million loss. We'd be looking at $5 million more of expenditures verses revenue. It just continues to multiply itself." 'Our conservative estimate at the end of this year is $7.7 million, using $3 million fund balance. Continuing to use that much of our fund balance is not sustainable, so we have to look at how we can prevent that from continuing,' said Cassandra Shook, the district's executive director of business and finance. "Our ultimate goal is a balanced budget," Shaw said. Shaw said in pervious years, Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund money helped with COVID-related issues, such as student achievement. It's federal money given to schools to address the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. 'ESSER helped us with summer school, interventions and (upgrades to improve) air quality,' Shaw said. 'We've used those funds up. We don't have that additional funding anymore,' Shook said. The State of Michigan provides school districts funds for every student each year. Shaw said the per pupil rate has been flat for two years. 'It sets the district behind. We get the same amount per pupil, but expenses go up because we have legacy costs with staff contracts and natural increases in the cost of items,' Shook said. For 2025, Michigan gave a per-pupil allowance of $9,608. That was a zero increase from the previous year, Shaw said. He said for next school year, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Republicans are discussing increasing the allotment by just over $400 per pupil. 'We're waiting on the Democrats for their number,' Shaw said. 'We fully expect that we'll see a nominal increase in our foundation this coming year. We need $600 a year (per pupil) just to break even. $400 is a big step in the right direction. With that, and changes we're making, we have the potential to get back to having a balanced budget." He said the district is also waiting to hear about federal funding. 'The fed, we get a nice amount through title funds. What will that look like? It's hard to say where that's going to land,' Shaw said. Shook and Shaw said declining enrollment is an issue for most schools in Michigan because of lower birth rates and families moving out of areas. Lower enrollment means less funding. 'This is the first year since 1942 with less than 100,000 live births in Michigan,' Shaw said. "It's a huge shift. These are numbers we're going to continue to watch.' Shaw said the district budgets each year for a 150-student loss. Last year, MPS saw only an 80-student loss. 'The sinking fund is a beautiful gift the community has given to MPS. The sinking funds get used for a lot of projects. If we didn't have the sinking fund, those costs would have come out of the general fund,' Shaw said. The current updates to Waterloo Elementary, for example, were funded by a bond and sinking funds. Previous Coverage: 'Waterloo's coming back' 'The technology milage (part of the general fund) ... is a gift from the county. We have two gifts in our community that have a huge impact on what we can do," Shaw said. Shaw said there is always a need to invest in the district, including buildings and staff. 'We have to always continue to move forward. All the work we've done since COVID, student achievement, behavior, social/emotional; we see all this great work that is happening. That work still must continue," he said. "We still have to invest in staff and programs. All the investment in professional development, if all of these great employees we have are not getting pay increases, they're going to another district. Then, it's all for not and it rolls us back. We have to continue to move forward." Support local news: Subscribe for all the latest local developments, breaking news and high school sports content. Shaw said the district is likely heading into some lean years. 'I wish that wasn't the case, but there are a lot of indictors. I would love to be wrong. I hope I am," he said. "We have to plan for what appears to be on the horizon.' — Contact reporter Suzanne Nolan Wisler at swisler@ This article originally appeared on The Monroe News: Look deeper into Monroe Public Schools' funding, enrollment, future plans
Yahoo
11-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
AG Torrez joins lawsuit over federal education funds
New Mexico AG Raúl Torrez on April 11, 2025 announced the state had joined another lawsuit against the Trump administration, this time over the U.S. Department of Education's revocation of funds. New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez on Friday announced the state has joined a coalition of 15 other AGs, along with Pennsylvania Gov. Democrat Josh Shapiro in a lawsuit over a recent U.S. Department of Education cancellation of funds for three programs funded through the American Rescue Act to help vulnerable school children recover from the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic: the Homeless Children and Youth; Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund; and Emergency Assistance to Nonpublic Schools programs. 'Cutting critical funding that students and schools are counting on is unacceptable and reckless,' Torrez said in a statement. 'These cuts will have a detrimental effect on our children, stunting their ability to learn in the classroom by rendering schools unable to provide essential resources like food, classroom supplies, special education for teachers and more.' The lawsuit notes that the U.S. Department of Education in late 2023 and early 2024, 'long after the federal government had declared that the COVID-19 pandemic was over,' had given the plaintiff states extensions to use the money they had been awarded to combat the pandemic's impact on vulnerable student populations. On March 28, 'with no advance notice or warning,' U.S Education Secretary Linda McMahon rescinded that extension, effective the end of the day. 'ED's drastic and abrupt change in position triggered chaos for state education departments…and local school districts,' the complaint says. 'If the rescission action is not vacated and the approved extensions are not reinstated, key programs and services that address ongoing and emerging education needs of Plaintiffs' students and local school districts to combat the long term effects of the pandemic will have to be dissolved or disbanded.' The suit asks for the court to find that the federal education department's rescission of funds violates the American Rescue Act, and to restate the original extension date of March 28, 2026. New Mexico, as of the date the federal education department cancelled the extension of the funds, still had about $778,000 unliquidated funds of the $6.4 million it received under HYC; $12.3 million of the $979.7 million it received under ESSER; and approximately $4.79 million of the $17.4 million it received under EANS.
Yahoo
02-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Cost to go to summer school increasing at Albuquerque Public Schools
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) – The Albuquerque Public Schools district is raising the price of summer school. It's all due to the end of a federal COVID-19-era program called the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund. Hummingbirds take flight to Albuquerque: How to attract, where to find the tiny flyers Since 2021, summer school has been free for all current APS high schoolers. Students who are not a part of the district had to pay $250 per half-credit. This summer, every student will have to pay that $250 fee per half-credit unless they are receiving federal assistance. In that case, they would have to pay just over $62 per half credit. The cost is the same whether the class is in person or online. Summer school starts on June 5. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
29-01-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Nation's Report Card spurs calls for change as reading and math scores circle the drain
The Nation's Report Card is sparking calls to action as dismal scores on reading and math show students across the country have failed to academically recover from the pandemic. Data released Wednesday in the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), commonly referred to as the Nation's Report Card, showed reading scores have fallen even further for fourth and eighth graders than they did in 2022, while math scores show only slight progress for fourth graders but still not enough to catch up to prepandemic numbers. 'These results are both heartbreaking and tragic,' said Alicia Levi, president and CEO of Reading is Fundamental. 'We need to take action. … We are calling on, leaders from all sectors, public and private, to join us in this fight.' Increasing investment, preparing educators with new ways to teach subjects and acknowledging students are moving up grades without the fundamentals are all crucial for fixing the problems, according to experts. Reading scores took the biggest hit, with the percentage of eighth graders able to read at NAEP's basic line at the lowest in the assessment's history. The news is even worse for the lowest-performing students: Those in just the 10th and 25th percentiles for both fourth and eighth grade had the lowest scores since NAEP's first reading assessment in 1992. Brandon Cardet-Hernandez, president of Mrs. Wordsmith, a group that seeks to improve children's literacy outcomes, called it 'a state of emergency.' 'We know that 70 percent of incarcerated people read below fourth grade level. We know that literacy is deeply tied to our economic opportunities and our health outcomes. So, particularly coming out of $190 billion in ESSER funds, it's a tough day to hear that we have not made progress and actually lost ground in our reading proficiency across the country,' Cardet-Hernandez said, referring to the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ESSER). Seeking to combat the problem, numerous school districts and states in recent years have required educators to switch how they teach reading to a method called the 'science of reading.' Previously, those educators used the 'balanced literacy' method, which focused on teaching students how to read using cues or context in the text. The science of reading instead focuses on ensuring students understand phonics when learning to read. Whether NAEP's flagging scores are an indictment of the method cannot yet be determined, according to experts. New York City, which holds the largest public school district in the country, switched to the science of reading in 2023, giving only one academic year between the concept's implementation and the NAEP's assessment. 'It's way too soon to have expected to see the trickle down from state level policy initiatives being implemented and then actually enacted at the school level in ways that would support faster development on the part of a student,' said Karyn Lewis, director of the Center for School and Student Progress at NWEA, an education research group. 'I think in education we are often way too reactionary and want to pull back before we have full evidence about whether a policy or an initiative is working,' Lewis added. Math scores saw somewhat better outcomes, though they are little cause for celebration. Fourth graders had a 2-point gain in math but were still unable to overcome the 5-point drop that was seen in the subject when the pandemic began. Eighth graders had no significant changes in their math scores. Math has been assisted by extra federal dollars going toward tutors and after-school programs, and critics say that type of investment was not made for reading. 'We're not making the investment,' Levi said. 'I see today that there is such public and private sector investment in STEM — the idea that science and math and technology are the future and that we need to double, triple, quadruple our investment — and you are seeing the results of that is reading has been left behind.' Experts say reading is also a harder subject to play catch-up on when students fall behind, and how teachers are trained for this problem needs to change. 'We know that math is made of more discrete skills that are probably much easier to target for intervention,' Lewis said. 'You can identify, for instance, that a student is struggling with long division, and then you know the specific steps to intervene there and get them caught up with that specific skill set. In contrast, reading is cumulative.' Adult literacy has also fallen, according to numbers released last month. The National Center for Education Statistics, part of the Department of Education, released data in December showing 28 percent of adults in the U.S. are ranked at the lowest levels of literacy, compared to 19 percent in 2017. As students' progress through the grades, reading goes from a subject that is taught to a subject that is assumed. After third grade, students are expected to be expanding their knowledge through reading in new subjects, and educators are not expected to teach how to read the material. 'I think we are seeing the effects of the fact that early elementary students, early elementary teachers, they're the most well-prepared to teach those foundational skills,' said Lewis. 'And we've got students leaving those early elementary grades missing some of those foundational skills due to the school disruptions, and they're coming into the classroom of more advanced teachers who may not be prepared to support those foundational reading gaps.' 'I think we're seeing a mismatch between the needs of students and the preparation of our teacher workforce,' she added. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
