How Minnesota schools are spending an unprecedented $2.7 billion in federal pandemic aid

Christopher Magan, Pioneer Press
·10 min read
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Minnesota’s public schools have been awarded nearly $2.7 billion in federal aid to respond to the coronavirus pandemic, which sparked two years of learning disruptions through extended school closures, masking and social distancing mandates and quarantine orders.

School district leaders hope that money — much of it yet unspent — will help them address a long list of challenges, from startling drops in learning to the deteriorating mental health of students and staff, declining enrollment and widespread staffing shortages.

“We are in an education crisis,” said Josh Crosson, executive director of Ed Allies, which advocates for students historically underserved by public schools. “We need to step on the gas, full throttle, right now. Kids are behind.”

The $2.7 billion sent to Minnesota schools is just a fraction of the roughly $73 billion Minnesota received from the five different coronavirus response bills approved by Congress since 2020. The Pioneer Press is working to track where those funds went and how they are being used.

About $53 billion went straight to residents as economic aid. Much of the rest was earmarked for specific pandemic responses, including education.

The first two bills — the CARES Act and CRRSA Act — sent the state $1.3 billion primarily to address the immediate fallout from the pandemic, such as purchasing medical protective gear and transitioning classes online. The third, the America Rescue Plan, offered $1.4 billion for returning to school safely and addressing lost learning.

Education Commissioner Heather Mueller said that without the money, schools never would have been able to repeatedly transition during the ever-changing outbreak. They have become important hubs for their communities, she said, providing not just education but critical food, child care and health services.

“There’s a belief that education is slow to change, but in a time of crisis, it is possible,” she said. “Now we need to think about how to do it when we are not in crisis.”

STUDENTS STRUGGLE

Student mental health has emerged as one of the direst struggles of the pandemic, with upset routines, isolation and uncertainty affecting students of all ages.

Minnesota already has one of the worst student-to-counselor ratios in the nation, and school leaders have seen demand skyrocket with few ways to address it. In May, the state Legislature failed to pass a sweeping education funding bill that would have paid for additional mental health resources.

Students and parents now wonder what supports will be available when classes resume in the coming weeks.

Khulia Pringle, a St. Paul resident who is tracking how Minnesota districts spend federal coronavirus aid as part of a project with the National Parents Union, says mental health is a top concern, especially among parents of color.

Not only do mental health supports need to be more widely available, she said, they need to be culturally relevant to students who are trying to deal with ongoing trauma. She said a lot of services now available are “white-washed” and ineffective for students of color.

“The situation before COVID for Black kids was horrible. During COVID it was worse than horrible,” Pringle said. “It is just going to get worse if they have no plan. We have kids who are failing and we need to do something about it right now.”

Meanwhile, the percentage of Minnesota students testing proficient or better fell by 11 points in math and seven points in reading in 2021 compared to 2019.

While many students experienced “learning loss” of one kind or another, Crosson said students with special needs suffered the most. Staffing and logistical challenges made it harder for schools to work with students learning English, those experiencing homelessness and those who have disabilities.

Now that so many students are behind, educators need to be innovative to help them catch up, Crosson said.

“As a state, we need to stay curious about what is working, measuring those interventions and using the data,” he said.

DISTRICT PLANS

St. Paul Public Schools got more federal coronavirus aid than any other Minnesota district. That’s due both to its size and the number of students who qualify for meal subsidies because of their family income.

More than $340 million has been allocated to the district from the three federal pandemic response bills — roughly $10,173 per student.

Like most districts and charter schools, St. Paul initially was focused on moving learning online and dealing with the fallout of not having students in school each day. That included accommodating students who relied on school for things like food, shelter and other necessities.

“It was very much unknown territory,” Superintendent Joe Gothard said. “Our three main focus areas were feeding our kids and community, providing child care for essential workers and having online learning opportunities.”

“Those are three things we do every day, but in a pandemic, we were not prepared to do it day one,” Gothard added.

It was also quickly evident in St. Paul and across the nation that online schooling brought its own challenges. Many Minnesota districts struggled to connect online with students, and even when the technology was there, remote learning was not the same, especially for those with special needs.

“Online learning for all students was not a good thing,” Gothard said. “It was for some; some students did great, (but) in general, we need our students in school.”

As the pandemic wore on, school leaders had to figure out how to safely resume in-person classes. Once students finally were back, teachers and administrators had to gauge how far behind they were and how to catch up.

Catching up, or addressing “learning loss,” is the focus of districts’ plans for the final and largest round of money from the American Rescue Plan. In order to get their share of the $1.4 billion, school districts, charter schools and the state Department of Education had to produce detailed plans for how they would spend it.

In St. Paul, innovation office director Leah Corey is overseeing the district’s plans for more than $200 million in ARP money. The district intends to get students caught up academically while also addressing their overall well-being and improving teaching and learning strategies.

“The additional resources have allowed us to think more creatively about new ways to recover learning,” Corey said. “There is more support and more individualized support.”

Students who are behind can attend summer classes to catch up or might be offered a more experiential opportunity to absorb the content. The district also is expanding after-school programming and taking other steps to rebuild connections with students.

One full-day program at Highland Park Elementary this summer placed English learners in afternoon activities through the YMCA that they could talk about during morning instruction with their district teacher.

Kristen Longway, a principal who led the summer program at Highland, said teachers working closely with small groups of students was essential for addressing lost learning time.

“English is a hard language to learn,” she said. “There’s a lot of engaging things you can do with technology. When the child is sitting right beside you, that makes it more powerful.”

This school year there will be more literacy teachers in elementary schools so more students can meet one-on-one with educators, Corey said.

The district also is adding 11 more social workers and nine school counselors to help address students’ mental health and social-emotional needs. Some teacher training will be aimed at helping staff better understand the cultural differences between students.

“Think about your needs as a person,” Corey said. “If you don’t feel safe, that your needs are not being met, it will be much harder to engage in complex, rigorous, academic work.”

PAYMENTS, OVERSIGHT

As the Twin Cities’ second-largest district with one of the metro’s highest poverty rates, St. Paul schools face unique challenges. But many other Minnesota districts are trying to tackle similar pandemic problems, and not every district got the same proportion of federal aid.

In the rush to send money out, the federal government relied primarily on a formula driven by students in poverty to calculate how much money schools would receive. (A list of federal aid estimates for every Minnesota district and charter is here.)

“There are wide disparities in how much districts received,” said Scott Croonquist, executive director of the Association of Metropolitan School Districts. “There’s a general perception in the public that all districts got this boatload of money from the federal government. Some districts got very little federal funding because they had fewer students that qualify.”

That means some districts had to tap their operating funds to cover the cost of providing day care for front-line workers or for remote learning technology, he said.

The money was disbursed to districts and charters through three phases of the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund, or ESSER, and two rounds of Governor’s Emergency Education Relief Fund, or GEER. The vast majority had to go to public schools, but some funds went to private schools, and the state received money for administration and providing academic supports.

The American Rescue Plan, the most generous of the federal spending bills, required at least 20 percent of the funds be used to address “learning loss.”

The Minnesota Department of Education allocated the money through roughly two dozen funds, dedicated from everything from COVID-19 testing to helping homeless students to replacing state aid lost to enrollment declines.

Denise Anderson, chief financial officer for the education department, said the state’s complex accounting system allows officials to track “every nickel.” Districts and charters receive federal funds through a mix of upfront payments, grants and reimbursements for services.

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“It was a lot of money that came into the state to properly respond to the pandemic,” Anderson said. “We have to identify where every nickel went.”

That oversight is especially important after Feeding Our Future, the state’s largest independent sponsor of federal food programs, was accused in January by the FBI of a “massive fraud” in the tens of millions of dollars for inflating the number of people it fed through U.S. Department of Agriculture pandemic nutrition programs.

State education officials began questioning the nonprofit’s numbers more than a year before it was raided by the FBI. No criminal charges have been filed.

CHALLENGES AHEAD

Despite generous federal resources, Minnesota districts and charters enter the coming school year again facing a lot of uncertainty.

Students continue to struggle, both mentally and academically, while most schools face staffing shortages that raise questions about whether they will be able to meet the needs of students.

Some districts have tapped federal aid for cash bonuses to reward employees who stayed through the pandemic or as incentives for new hires. But that has some parents and advocates fearing there won’t be enough left over to give kids the help they need.

District leaders have to balance the need for new, innovative programs with a limited federal funding window — the last of the money must be spent by spring 2026 — and no guarantee there will be money to continue the efforts that work.

“It’s a real tightrope,” says Croonquist, who lobbies for metro districts at the Capitol and watched a deal for $1 billion in new state education funding fall apart in May. “The federal money, as important as it is, it’s one-time money. Schools have to be careful not to create a funding cliff.”

Finally, some in the community, such as Reggie Evans, a father of two and a pastor on St. Paul’s East Side, worry that the rush to return to normalcy may lead many to lose sight of pandemic programs that had a positive impact and ought to continue.

“Bad times are a good opportunity for us to evaluate what is most important,” he said. “The more we can put people at the center of that, the better off we all will be.”

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