A national webinar hosted on Wednesday highlighted how two North Carolina rural school districts — Polk and Bertie — used federal COVID-relief funds to respond to student and community needs during the pandemic.

The webinar, hosted by the Rural Education Special Interest Group of the American Education Research Association, focused on the needs and strengths of rural school districts, along with the impact and sustainability of interventions following the end of COVID-relief funds.

“(The federal funding) was the catalyst for the work that’s happening,” said webinar panelist Dr. Jenny Seelig, senior research scientist at the University of Chicago’s NORC. “What we’re hearing about on this webinar is that there are passionate people, there are relationships that have been developed, and there are truths that have been shared around what that funding was and where it can go to support rural schools and communities.”

During the height of the pandemic, states received nearly $122 billion in Elementary and Secondary Schools Emergency Relief (ESSER III) funds to address student academic, social, emotional, and mental health needs. North Carolina received $3.6 billion, on top of previous federal COVID-19 relief dollars.

ESSER III funds were largely intended to support academic and mental health at schools as they recovered from COVID-19. Funding could go toward four categories: physical health and safety; students’ academic, social emotional and other needs; mental health support for
students and staff; and operational continuity.

“We got very creative about what could fall into those categories,” Polk County Schools Superintendent Aaron Greene said during the webinar. “Our regional support director at that time made a comment during our work session that, while the funds are temporary, the impact can be permanent — so think big. That was profound for us.”

States and districts must encumber all ESSER funds by Sept. 30 — a deadline coming to be known as “the funding cliff.” As of Aug. 31, North Carolina school districts had an average of 2.75% of ESSER funds remaining, totaling $172,113,767, according to data from the Department of Public Instruction (DPI).

With the deadline quickly approaching, panelists focused on sharing lessons learned and what comes next after such a large influx of funding.

“We spent a lot of time thinking about two things. Number one, what’s going to move the needle for our kids instructionally?” Greene said. “And then, how are we going to do things in a way that we can sustain after that ESSER funding goes away?”

Here are the other panelists who spoke during Wednesday’s webinar:

• Bertie County Schools Superintendent Dr. Otis Smallwood
• Dr. Ereka Williams, vice president at Dogwood Health Trust Foundation
• Dr. Julie Trenter Marks, education policy researcher and professor at UNC-Chapel Hill
• Dr. Kristen Cuthrell, Clemson University College of Education’s chair of the Department of Education and Human Development

In North Carolina, Williams noted that ESSER funding came as the state also experienced large population growth. At the same time, she said that North Carolina recently ranked 48th for its per-pupil funding level of public school students, $4,695 below the national average.

Williams noted that districts across the state have seen learning loss from before the pandemic. Test scores have improved since a record-low the first year of the pandemic, but most are still below pre-pandemic levels.

While work remains to be done, Williams emphasized strong leadership in North Carolina.

“We have some absolutely exceptional rural leaders in this state,” Williams said. “It’s an honor to share an hour with these two (superintendents) and the other 90-some-plus rural supers in our state. I’m grateful for you all.”

How was the money spent?

Across North Carolina, Williams said the majority of ESSER funds went toward salary and benefits, followed by supplies and materials.

In Polk County Schools, Greene said the district also tried to put funds toward staffing resources for family check-ins, along with a communication system for families.

“We are a small district, which means relationships are hugely critical to us,” he said.

Polk County, in the western part of the state, is not very racially and ethnically diverse, Greene said, but does have diversity when it comes to socioeconomic status.

To help address poverty within the county — that was exacerbated by the pandemic — Greene said the district also invested in ways to support food security for students and their families. Like many other rural districts, Polk also purchased technology devices and hot spots to help address broadband challenges.

“Without us going through what we went through, and having the extra funding and the opportunity to marry that part with the instructional part, I don’t think we’d be doing as much for kids as we are today,” he said. “So our future plans absolutely were impacted by how we used that money and the results we saw.”

In both Polk and Bertie County Schools, the superintendents said they also put federal relief funds toward summer programs, which had big impacts for students.

“That was an integral part of our learning recovery,” Smallwood said.

Other large investments in Bertie County Schools included learning loss recovery and addressing infrastructure needs — including air quality in aging buildings.

Bertie County, located in the northeastern corner of the state, has a lot of poverty, Smallwood said. The school system is less diverse than the county overall — about 83% of students are Black, 10% are white, and 3% are Hispanic, compared to the county overall, which is about 62% Black and 34% white.

Declines in the general and school population have also been a challenge for the district, Smallwood said, which has closed three buildings in recent years.

“We certainly were grateful for the federal dollars that we received, because a lot of things we would not have been able to do,” Smallwood said. “What the funds allowed us to do what be creative with our local dollars.”

As a result, the district saved “a pretty substantial fund balance,” Smallwood said, which now they can use to try to keep some of the people they hired with federal relief dollars. Smallwood said they also put relief funds toward bonuses for faculty and staff, to thank and retain employees.

To address learning recovery, the district used relief funds to hire interventionists, instructional coaches for teachers, and high-dosage tutors. Bertie also hired liaisons to connect with students who had stopped attending class, in an effort to combat chronic absenteeism in the district.

“Coming out of COVID… some schools have reached their pre-pandemic scores,” Smallwood said. “As a district, we’re a little bit short in reading and math, but we certainly are in a better place.”

In the webinar Zoom chat, Greene said that Smallwood is respected by his peers “for being student-centered, innovative, and an advocate for small, rural districts.”

“So thankful to have Dr. Smallwood leading schools in my hometown,” Williams added in the chat. “The community is so appreciative of your vision.”

Evaluating impact

Cuthrell shared some insights from her work studying the statewide impact of summer learning programs in North Carolina with East Carolina University’s (ECU) Rural Education Institute.

ECU was one of four research institutions in the UNC System that partnered with DPI to “evaluate the impact and implementation of summer learning programs across various regions in the state.”

Cuthrell said her research, which focused on the eastern region of North Carolina, was largely guided by two things: seeking to involve as many different voices as possible — including children — and focusing on rural cultural wealth.

“We define our communities by what is, not what isn’t, there,” she said. “We have exceptional rural school leaders in NC and so much to share as we keep moving forward. Kudos to Superintendents Greene and Smallwood.”

The researchers also wanted to provide local leaders with as many data points as possible, so they could make evidence-based decisions. Last spring, DPI also published a “ESSER Funding Cliff Toolkit” to help districts with “data-driven financial decision making for post-ESSER spending.”

Trenter Marks was involved in the research on the western part of the state, with the Education Policy Initiative at Carolina (EPIC).

EPIC approached the research with an “active implementation” framework, she said, which emphasizes the interaction between three key elements: effective practices, effective implementation, and enabling context.

This approach is helpful, she said, because it guards against only measuring outputs during the evaluation process. She said researchers must strive for “equitable evaluation” of interventions and best practices.

“This framework had this emphasis on local context, which we know in the west there was geographic isolation, economic distress, limited resources in terms of internet and connectivity,” Trenter Marks said. “That really allowed the evaluation to respect and elevate the rural voice, and recognizing that the knowledge and expertise that local educators bring is really the number one thing that we can bring back to Raleigh.”

Moving forward from the ESSER cliff

After Sept. 30, the work to support students and families will continue, panelists said.

Trenter Marks encouraged school leaders to continue reaching out to funders to address student needs.

Cuthrell said there is an opportunity for the state to review investments made with federal relief funding to see what should be prioritized moving forward.

“North Carolina has the opportunity over the next five years to look at a statewide scaling opportunity,” she said. “And see if we should be taking these pieces of information we’ve learned about summer learning and afterschool care, and look at it holistically, systematically, integrated, and see if there’s other ways to kind of pour into the hub of the community, the schools, and the families.”

Greene and Smallwood emphasized the need for continued partnerships, particularly in rural districts.

In Polk County, Greene said he wants to continue finding new ways to support high school students, after seeing benefits from ESSER investments in things like career accelerators.

“Small, rural school districts are often the centers of our communities… from de facto social services functions to the largest employers in the county. This funding helped us keep our communities moving forward,” he said. “Education is a collective responsibility of our community, and we can’t do it without those partners.”

Smallwood said that his district is focusing on relationships moving forward, noting that the district reengaged many parents during the pandemic, and wants to continue that trend.

“So that’s that’s what we’re focusing on, relationships and engagement,” he said. “And in a sense, taking the schools back out to the community, because it’s going to take us all to make sure these kids experience positive outcomes.”

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Editor’s note: Dogwood Health Trust supports the work of EdNC.