Investment Sustainability Strategies

As ARP ESSER III funding comes to an end, many LEAs are left wondering how they can sustain successful activities that were funded through ARP ESSER III. 

LEAs can take several steps to ascertain whether currently funded activities are successful and should be continued. Once this work is done, LEAs should review current budgets and determine whether they can continue to provide these activities by more effectively allocating the funds they already receive or seek out other available funding sources. 

• Step 1: LEA reviews its current ESSER III and ESEA budgets and categorizes each activity requiring funds into one of these three broad categories or “buckets.”
  • Educator Recruitment and Retention
  • Student Wellbeing, Engagement, and Belonging
  • High-Impact Investments
• Step 2: Analyze all available data for other activities in that same bucket to determine whether these activities are effective and serving their intended purposes. The CCNetwork ESSER Spending: Connecting Investments and Outcomes training information can support you through this step. 
• Step 3: Complete a Comprehensive Needs Assessment to determine your students’ current needs. WestEd's Guide to Comprehensive Needs Assessment can support you through this step.
• Step 4: Select which evidence-based interventions the data show to be successful and supportive of students’ needs that the LEA wants to continue to fund.
• Step 5: Determine how the selected activities are currently being funded. 
  • What are the funding sources?
  • How much money is being allocated from each funding source?
• Step 6: Return to the overall LEA budget and look for currently unallocated funds.
• Step 7: Review federal regulations around allowable uses for any unallocated funds and determine whether they can be spent on activities the LEA wants to sustain that have been financed, to this point, by ARP ESSER III.
• Step 8:  If the LEA wants to fund activities that are not eligible for unallocated funds or has no unallocated funds, it is time to explore other sources of money, including title programs or grants for which the activity/LEA may be eligible.

Completing this 8-step process will help LEAs use data to determine which investments should be sustained and how to fund them. This companion document can help LEAs work through this process.

• CCNetwork Strategic Planning for Continued Recovery
• USDE’s Guidance on Using Evidence to Strengthen Education Investments
• CCSSO’s State Actions and Opportunities to Sustain High-Impact Investments in Education

For more information about the federal regulations surrounding the allowable use of funds, and other funding sources that may be available, visit the various resources available on ESSER Sustainability Toolbox Funding Sources.

Sources

• U.S. Department of Education, Non-Regulatory Guidance: Using Evidence to Strengthen Education Investments document
• Comprehensive Center Network (CCNetwork), Strategic Planning for Continued Recovery webpage and documents
• Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), Sustain High-Impact Investments in Education document