ESSER stands for the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund, a federal program administered by the Department of Education in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The program provides emergency financial assistance to public school districts across the country. K-12institutions may use ESSER funding to address pandemic learning loss and invest in infrastructure and programs to remain open and to operate safely.
ESSER grant funding was authorized in three pieces of legislation, totaling $189.5 billion.
There are three ESSER programs administered by TEA as separate grant programs. An ESSER side-by-side comparison is under development.
• ESSER I was approved in March 2020 for $13.5 billion
• ESSER II was approved December 2020 for $54.3 billion
• ESSER III was approved in March 2021 for $123 billion
Considering that the most recent funding batch approved was in 2021, new applications for funding relief may require an extraneous effort in order to achieve what was much simpler to achieve a mere 24 months ago.
Although ESSER administrators have created multiple checklists and online tools to analyze your specific funding opportunity situation, often grant facilitators have little insights into the unique challenges that most K-12 institutions face at this stage of the post-pandemic world of EdTech needs.
When approaching ESSER with questions specific to a school’s unique needs, the prominent take-away impression is that the administrators are many months obsolete with regard to current challenge trends.
That, combined with the ever-increasing speed of new EdTech technologies emerging anyway, and it’s common to walk away feeling that those pursuing ESSER funding are the ones actually educating ESSER administrators on what’s best for the existing EdTech marketplace. This can be exhausting.
In summary, ESSER analysis can be time consuming and distracting from the many day-to-day and critical IT tasks that consume a typical day as an internal Education Technology professional.
Intech Southwest Services, already experienced in the development of Edtech infrastructure, is the perfect custom IT services firm to help your team move from unclear ESSER funding approaches to a strategic departmental upgrade for your school.
Intech is currently underway with multiple education IT enhancement projects that were custom designed for that particular school’s system and education programs.
Whether your education center has already accessed ESSER funding or whether your institution is just now ready to apply, we encourage you to contact the Intech Southwest Services team to review your school’s specific situation, so that you can focus on what you do best - running your institution.
