The $200 Billion Question: How Much of Federal COVID-19 Relief Funding for Schools Will Go to COVID-19 Relief?

Between 2020 and 2021, Congress appropriated nearly $190 billion in Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funding for K-12 schools. Passed in three waves, ESSER is by far the largest federal infusion ever provided to K-12 schools--more than 11 times annual Title I spending and almost five times as large as total federal K-12 spending in the previous year. Congress placed few limits on what ESSER funding can be used for. Although ESSER funds were advertised as supports for school reopenings and pandemic recovery, initial estimates presented in this report suggest that less than 20 percent of total ESSER district funding will go to reopening, on average, and less than 40 percent will go to recovery. All told, $78 billion-$123 billion, out of nearly $190 billion, could go toward spending not directly related to COVID-19. A majority of these remaining funds will be spent over seven years. Expansive permissible uses for ESSER funds raise several questions. At the federal level, they raise the questions of whether the federal spending was intentional and how an excess of unspent federal funds might affect Democratic ambitions to provide a more permanent federal funding increase to schools through Title I. At the district level, they raise questions about how districts might avoid ineffective, unnecessary, or otherwise undesirable expenditures. This report comes at the end of the first full school year completed under the shadow of the pandemic and provides an overview of the current state of federal COVID-19 relief funding for K-12 schools. It provides a cumulative accounting of ESSER funding, including the distribution of funds to states and school districts, an initial look at the amounts states reported as spent at the end of the school year, and an estimate of the proportion of ESSER funds used for reopening, recovery, and non-pandemic purposes.