A report notes that OSPI has not yet established a process to measure outcomes of ESSER spending and there is insufficient state-level detail to identify how much money is being spent

Brett Davis
The Center Square Washington

In an annual update on the state’s K-12 education system, Washington State Superintendent of Public Instruction Chris Reykdal said on Monday morning his office is doing what’s required to track nearly $3 billion in one-time federal aid, but will do more if that’s what the state Legislature wants.

According to a Joint Legislative Audit and Review Committee preliminary report released last week, OSPI received $2.9 billion in federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Funds related to the COVID-19 pandemic, distributed in three rounds in July 2022, March 2021, and July 2021.

The report goes on to note that OSPI has not yet established a process to measure outcomes of ESSER spending and there is insufficient state-level detail to identify how much money is being spent – $1.2 billion as of September 2022 – on specific interventions.

“These federal dollars came through at $2.9 billion over three years over three different waves,” Reykdal said during his address, which was held two hours before the opening ceremonies of this year’s legislative session. “Our districts have spent every penny of the first wave of funds, as you might imagine, because in the beginning this was masks, this was rapid tests, these were gowns, these were thermometers, these were all the things we needed to do in the beginning to make sure that our students and staff were safe.”

Reykdal explained this was an allowable use of federal dollars so that OSPI didn’t contribute to increasing the unemployment rate at a time when a possible recession was looming.

In other words, he said, OSPI is expected to invest in maintaining existing staff and service levels.

“There’s been lots of folks writing on why $2.9 billion didn’t change the world or reinvent things or create more, or hire tens of thousands of new staff,” Reykdal said. “It’s because we lost enrollment.”

When you go from 24 students to 23 students in a classroom, he said, a teacher is still required even though some funding has been lost because of one less student.

“And I want to be abundantly clear that every single dollar of federal funds is accounted for in exactly the manner we use in the state of Washington – our accounting codes – and we’re going to continue to report on it and continue to report on that,” Reykdal said.

He was critical of the idea that OSPI isn’t doing enough in terms of tracking federal dollars.

“There are folks who now after the fact would like us to report on activity level,” Reykdal said. “How do we know where the tutoring was? How do we know exactly who did the after-school supports? How do we know exactly the interventions that were made for students?”

Nevertheless, if lawmakers want more detailed tracking of how the money is spent, Washington’s top education official said he would accommodate them.

“This state has never accounted in that way, though we are pushing through to try to understand that better,” Reykdal said. “That was not the expectation when these dollars rolled out. And we will support our legislators and anyone else who wants to go further if the investment in that infrastructure is there. We cannot recreate codes and we cannot ask districts to spend tens of thousands of hours imaging and reimagining what they did two years ago with dollars that they spent at the time.”

Last year, OSPI submitted a $6 billion biennial budget request for the 2023 legislative session.

This report was first published by The Center Square Washington.