ESSER II

The Fremont School District Re-2 had a sick building. A transfusion of ESSER funds cured it.

Working to keep the schools open during the pandemic, it became increasingly clear that the district’s oldest school building, Fremont Elementary, built in 1967, was not the healthiest place.

Nearly 13,000 Colorado teachers applied for and received more than $11 million in classroom supplies in an initiative that used ESSER II funding to help pre-K through 12th grade public school educators address COVID-19 learning loss.

Colorado school districts have been able to provide more after-school programs, summer learning opportunities and focused studies on math and literacy thanks to $1.8 billion the state received in ESSER funding, according to Scott Jones, CDE's chief of staff. 

A $100,000 Education Workforce Grant enabled Holyoke School District in northeast Colorado to hire an additional counselor during the 2022-23 school year to help students and teachers in need of mental health support in the wake of the stress caused by the pandemic.

Poudre School District in Fort Collins spent $100,000 from an Education Workforce Grant to diversify its workforce while at the same time attempting to fill more open positions than the district had in pre-pandemic years.
The majority of the grant paid for a full-time bilingual recruiter with the rest allowing the district to implement an intentional recruitment strategy to increase the number of teachers, which didn’t used to be a problem for the district before the pandemic.

CDE has created an interactive graphic that allows the user to see the common uses of ESSER funds, including ESSER I-3. CDE will be adding different features on its webpage to help provide an easier understanding of how ESSER money has been used in Colorado. 

Find the interactive graphic on the main ESSER webpage.