Orange school district worries about ‘funding cliff’ as COVID money dries up

Federal COVID-19 relief money has boosted the budget of Orange County Public Schools for more than three years, but that windfall ends in September, and school leaders already are worried about important services approaching a “funding cliff.”

They want to continue paying for about $28 million worth of initiatives — including “intervention” teachers and mental health counselors — now covered by the federal money but say there is no easy way to do that.

“I’m very concerned,” said Superintendent Maria Vazquez on Monday, as the Orange County School Board held a first discussion on managing the federal funding’s end. “It’s not like the pandemic is done, and we’re all fine. We’re not. We continue to see students who are struggling.”

But OCPS also cannot simply absorb $28 million into its regular budget, she said. “To be very honest with you if we are to look at any of these, they are going to come at the cost of cuts to another area,” Vazquez said.

Like school districts across the country, Orange schools received money from the federal Elementary and Secondary Emergency Relief Fund, getting more than $850 million of so-called ESSER money since March 2020 when the pandemic shut down schools and disrupted education.

OCPS used the money to pay for staff bonuses, hire extra teachers, counselors and social workers and implement programs to help students recover from the “learning loss” when schools closed and lessons shifted online.

The money also went to install water filters on campuses, improve services to children with disabilities and provide free “hot spots” and data plans to students whose families lacked reliable internet access at their homes, among other items.

Vazquez said district leaders knew the money would end in 2024 and plan to sunset some initiatives once the funds are gone.

But some programs have proved valuable, she said, and so the district must decide how to afford them in a 2024-24 school year budget they already fear will be a tight one. The school board has the final say on the district’s annual spending plan.

“The school board will need to make tough decisions,” said Doreen Concolino, the district’s chief financial officer.

Gov. Ron DeSantis’ proposed budget for the next fiscal year is not a robust one for OCPS, Concolino said, as it would not fully cover the 3% raises the school board wants to give all employees, for example, and would require OCPS to pay more for employees’ retirement plans at a cost of about $14 million.

“The ESSER funding cliff complicates the financial landscape,” Concolino added.

The Legislature, which goes into session on Jan. 9, approves the final state budget, but DeSantis has line-veto power and influences the spending plan lawmakers devise.

“Based on the governor’s budget that came out were not going to be close to having the level of funding we need,” said Teresa Jacobs, the board’s chair. “Which, to me, is alarming.”

The school board will likely discuss the OCPS budget and the end of federal funding again in late January or early February.

It is not alone in facing significant financial decisions in the coming year. Brookings, a Washington, D.C. think tank, in a September research brief wrote that districts across the country will be “staring down a massive fiscal cliff” that equates to an average loss of about $1,000 per student.

Among the initiatives Vazquez and her staff want to save are paying for “intervention” teachers who work with small groups of struggling students, often helping those behind while the regular classroom teacher keeps pace with the schedule needed to cover all the material by year’s end.

The district saw “substantial increases in student outcomes” in classes with those additional teachers, Vazquez said.

The district also used federal money to boost its roster of mental health counselors and social workers to help students with mental health issues and social problems, including poor attendance. Those counselors last school year saw more than 5,700 students with suicidal thoughts and more than 8,200 others considered at-risk.

School social workers checked in on more than 13,000 students, providing counseling to more than 5,000.

District staff worry that without these employees, other educators on campus would have to try to respond to students in crisis, though they lack the appropriate training.

“This investment we made with this money did really good things,” said board member Melissa Byrd of the mental health and social work efforts. “I’m 100 percent in favor of not cutting any of this.”

Another initiative district officials would like to save provides online lessons for students in algebra and geometry, giving extra help in key math classes. More than 60% of the students taking those two math classes used the IXL Learning program, which provides online math help, and the district saw gains in the percentage of students passing state exams in both math subjects.

Board member Alicia Farrant said she saw the benefits of the program firsthand as it was “extremely helpful” to one of her children taking algebra. “It gives immediate feedback,” she said, breaking problems down “play by play” to help students figure out what they missed.

In all, staff members shared with the board nearly 20 initiatives that ideally they would want to keep in place even after federal money dries up but also made it clear fitting them into the budget would not be easy.

“We’ve got to make some hard decisions, and everything should be on the table,” said board member Angie Gallo.

In early 2024, Vazquez said she and her staff will work to give the board recommendations that “ensure we’re providing the best for our students with the dollars we have allocated.”