Fort Worth ISD scales Saturday program back as federal COVID relief money winds down

A program that brings students in the Fort Worth Independent School District to school on Saturdays for extra instruction and fun activities has helped students regain ground in reading and math, according to district figures.

But now, as the federal money that funds most of the district’s pandemic recovery efforts is set to run out, the district is scaling the program back, targeting it at the highest-needs campuses rather than opening it up to students at any elementary school in the district.

Saturday Learning Quest is one of several programs Fort Worth ISD created to help students make up academic ground they lost during the pandemic. The program brings students to school on about 14 Saturdays per year for extra instructional time in reading and math, plus a range of enrichment activities like building with Legos and flying drones. The district created the program using federal COVID relief money.

Many North Texas school districts used that money to hire tutors, buy new curriculum materials and add programs that created more learning time, including during the summer and on Saturdays. But with the second round of that funding set to run out in a few weeks and the last round scheduled to expire next year, districts in Texas and nationwide are looking at whether they can afford to keep successful programs they created using federal money.

FWISD scales back Saturday program as federal funding winds down

The program is open to students in kindergarten through fifth grade. During the program, students get reading and math instruction for part of the day, and a mix of special classes like art, music and P.E. They also get regular visits from the district’s STEM trailers, which they can use for science-related activities like flying drones and building rocket ships propelled by compressed air.

Last year, the district offered the program at 24 elementary schools, opening it up to students at all 81 elementary schools in the district. When this year’s program begins on Saturday, the district will only offer the program at five elementary schools: Western Hills, Rufino Mendoza, Westcreek, Richard J. Wilson and Oaklawn. The program will only be available to students at the 15 highest-need elementary campuses, said Linda Tucker, the district’s director of student academic support initiatives.

District officials can point to signs the program is working. Across all grades where the program is offered, students who attended nine or more of the 14 sessions last year were substantially more likely to meet growth targets on math assessments than their classmates who didn’t attend the program at all. Results in reading were more mixed, but students who attended more than nine sessions were generally at least on par with their classmates who didn’t participate in the program.

But it matters how many sessions students attend, Tucker said — those who come to all or nearly all the sessions get the most out of it. The program isn’t mandatory, so the best tools the district has for making sure students show up are campus principals’ relationships with their families, she said. A big part of a principal’s job is creating a campus climate that helps students and their families become invested in school, whether it’s on a Saturday or a regular school day, she said.

Tucker said district officials wanted to offer as much Saturday programming as they could with the federal money that was remaining. But because that money is nearing its end, the district had to be strategic about where it offered the program, limiting it to areas where it would do the most good, she said.

That change is a part of a larger shift in how the district provides support for its schools. At a school board meeting last month, Melissa Kelly, the district’s associate superintendent of learning and leading, outlined a three-tiered support structure under which the district’s lowest-performing campuses will get a range of extra support, including instructional coaches and more collaboration time for teachers. Higher-performing schools will get support that’s aimed at closing gaps between student groups. The schools where the district will continue to offer Saturday Learning Quest this year represent that highest-need tier of campuses, Tucker said.

Second federal COVID relief package expires this month

Congress approved three iterations of the Elementary and Secondary Emergency Education Relief, or ESSER, fund in 2020 and 2021. The money was intended to help districts bring students back to school safely and help them close gaps in their skills and knowledge left by months of remote learning.

Texas used the $1.3 billion it received in the first round of funding to replace state revenue districts lost during school shutdowns. The Texas Education Agency distributed the roughly $16.2 billion the state received under the second and third rounds to school districts to use on a wide range of projects, including HVAC upgrades, high-dosage tutoring and staff positions. Because the relief program was a one-time infusion of cash, districts were encouraged, though not required, to use the money for short-term expenses. The second round of funding expires at the end of this month. At that point, districts must send back any money they haven’t spent. The third round expires Sept. 30, 2024.

Fort Worth ISD has spent all of the $116.4 million it was allocated through the second package and about two-thirds of the $261.64 million it got from the third package. As the federal funding program winds down, district officials are evaluating the programs it funded to figure out which the district can afford to keep, and how they’ll pay for them.

During a Fort Worth ISD school board meeting on Aug. 22, Carmen Arrieta-Candelaria, the district’s chief financial officer, said district officials will be meeting over the next two months to come up with a list of which problems to keep once federal funding runs out, and which to end. Because the federal funding is nonrenewable, the district will need to find another way to pay for any programs it decides to continue, either by building them into its general fund or finding some other funding source.

Crowley ISD students will take a hit when funding runs out

Michael McFarland, superintendent of the Crowley Independent School District, said the end of COVID relief funding will have a negative impact on students in the district. Like most districts, Crowley used much of the relief money on one-time purchases like new curriculum materials and professional development for its teachers.

But McFarland said the programs that have made the most difference have been the ones that added extra learning time. The district used some of the roughly $36.2 million it received from the two packages combined to add school days to its calendar. That extra time has helped students make up some of the gaps left from online learning, he said, but it’s expensive. The district has to pay teachers, bus drivers, cafeteria workers and others more for working extra days. Without federal COVID relief funding, that’s extra money the district doesn’t have, he said.

District officials had hoped to find philanthropic money to replace the federal dollars once the relief program ended. But that’s been more of a challenge than school leaders expected, McFarland said. The district will likely be able to get enough money from donors to make up for some of the gap, but not all of it, he said. That means the district will most likely have to cut back on some of the services it offers students, he said.

Part of the fundraising challenge is getting potential funders to understand that Crowley ISD isn’t an outlying suburban district, McFarland said. Although the district includes the entirety of the city of Crowley, most of the land it covers is in the Fort Worth city limits. The district’s central office, one of its two high schools and all but three of its 15 elementary schools are in southern Fort Worth.

One source of additional funding the district still hopes to be able to tap into at some point is the state budget. Many school superintendents across Texas have asked lawmakers to change the state’s model for funding schools, moving from a formula based on average daily attendance to one based on enrollment. Under an attendance-based system, districts lose funding when students are absent. Most school districts across the country have struggled since the pandemic with a sharp uptick in absences, meaning school districts’ budgets are less predictable than ever. Moving to an enrollment-based system could give the district enough money to continue the programs that have made the most difference for students, McFarland said.

At the beginning of the legislative session, lawmakers sounded open to considering the change. During a Senate finance committee meeting in February, members asked Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath about how the change would affect the state’s education system.

Morath replied that an enrollment-based system gives school districts more predictable budgets, because enrollment fluctuates much less than attendance. But a system based on attendance gives districts an incentive to bring missing and chronically absent students back to school. He estimated the change would cost the state an extra $6 billion per budget cycle. But the state school funding system remained unchanged at the end of the legislative session.

McFarland said the federal money helped the district to begin the process of closing learning gaps created by the pandemic. But helping students get back on track is a long-term process, he said, and it requires a long-term investment. If schools can’t meet that goal, he worries many students will graduate unprepared for life after high school and without having the chance to develop their talents or reach their full potential.

In its first year, the program was open to students in first through third grade who fell in the bottom quartile in reading or math.