Federal COVID relief funds help, but NC schools need more long-term support

COVID cases are declining sharply, but one pandemic effect will be with us for years – learning loss among students who endured long periods without in-person instruction.

Now a report from the state Department of Public Instruction (DPI) offers the first measurement of the toll on students. Its findings include this broad assessment: ”Negative impact for all students, for all grades, for almost every subject.”

State Board of Education member Jill Camnitz, who chairs the board’s student learning and achievement committee, said of the findings, “A week ago when we first got a look at this material, I think we both felt like crying. It sort of confirms what you knew was coming, but seeing the reality is very painful.”

What’s especially troubling about the situation is that North Carolina’s public schools were struggling before the pandemic. Cutting off in-person instruction to blunt the spread of COVID exacerbated the already serious problems of teacher shortages, a lack of teacher assistants and too few school nurses, social workers and psychologists.

North Carolina’s state lawmakers should have used this crisis as motivation to rebuild the public schools, but much of the energy in the Republican-led legislature was directed at resisting a court-order to increase public school funding, fighting school mask mandates and banning curriculum and books involving race and sexuality.

As for actually doing something structural to help the schools, the legislative majority was happy to pass on about $6 billion in federal COVID relief funds to DPI and the local school districts and let them shape their responses to what the pandemic wrought. In some ways, that is a welcome approach, since it gives DPI and local school leaders – the people who actually know something about education – the flexibility to set up new programs and respond to local needs.

But that flexibility has been limited by pre-pandemic staffing problems caused by years of inadequate state funding. Local school districts have spent a large share of their relief funding on bonuses aimed at slowing a loss of teachers who have been discouraged by low pay, COVID stress and political attacks on the curriculum.

Federal COVID relief for schools has been generous, but it is one-time money. The relief should have been coupled with a commitment by the state – now awash in tax revenue – to provide ongoing funding to improve pay for teachers and principals, a change it could accomplish by complying with the Leandro court order.

Indeed, schools may soon face a cut in funding if the legislature decides to tie school funding to actual public school enrollment, which has fallen by 5 percent, or about 60,000 students, since the pandemic hit.

In the absence of a state commitment to rebuilding public schools, DPI and local districts have been enterprising, but also careful not to spend all the relief money until the direction of the pandemic and state funding became clear.

DPI established the Office of Learning Recovery and Acceleration to initiate statewide programs and help districts with their own efforts. Summer school programs and tutoring have been expanded and more support personnel have been brought into schools through short-term contracts.

Michael Maher, DPI’s executive director of DPI’s Office of Learning Recovery and Acceleration, said bringing students back up to speed will take years, but the effort to innovate and focus on students most in need could improve public schools. “Four years from now we may emerge with a stronger system,” he said. “It has been the worst time for kids, but there’s so much potential to build out something that is going to help the system overall.”

Maher’s optimism is welcome. Maybe a one-time surge in federal funding can generate lasting improvements. But it would be even better if the surge was coupled with a lasting state commitment to provide every child with what Leandro demands: “a sound, basic education.”

This story was originally published March 15, 2022 at 4:00 AM with the headline "Federal COVID relief funds help, but NC schools need more long-term support."