Dear Chief State School Officers and School District Superintendents: Maintenance of Equity Supports

Summary

On August 6, 2021, Secretary of Education Miguel A. Cardona writes to chief state school officers and school district superintendents about maintenance of equity under the American Rescue Plan Act, tying it to the Return to School Roadmap. The Department is updating its June guidance on which funding sources count, how enrollment is determined for per-pupil figures and which LEAs are excepted, plans a Request for Information, and says it will publish a notice requiring States to make maintenance of equity data public. It says preliminary analysis suggests as many as 70 percent of LEAs, generally very small ones, fall under size exceptions, and that LEAs certifying no aggregate per-pupil funding reduction in FY 2022 may qualify for a limited exception. The letter carries the typed name Miguel A. Cardona, Ed.D.

Summary drafted by a model from the document's text below and checked by script against that text before publication. It is a navigation aid, not a reading of what the document proves. Where AI is used

Full text

                                        THE SECRETARY OF EDUCATION
                                             WASHINGTON, DC 20202


                                             August 6, 2021


Dear Chief State School Officers and School District Superintendents:

As we start the 2021-2022 school year, schools and communities must address opportunity gaps
that were exacerbated by the pandemic, target resources and efforts to students who need them
most, and build our education system back even better than before. To help meet these needs,
earlier this week the U.S. Department of Education released the Return to School Roadmap. The
goal of the Roadmap is to support educators and school leaders, parents, families, and
communities and lead students on a path to return to in-person learning this fall where they can
heal, learn, grow, and thrive.

Equity in access to educational resources—including equity in Federal, State, and local
funding—is essential to achieving this vision for the success of our students. The American
Rescue Plan Act of 2021’s (ARP Act) historic investment of $130 billion in our Nation’s schools
and students is helping to safely reopen schools and support students’ academic, social,
emotional, and mental health needs as the new school year begins. Even with that new
investment, Federal funds are only one part of the solution and cannot meet the full range of
student needs on their own. That is why two other elements of the ARP Act are so important: 1)
“maintenance of effort,” which ensures that States continue to fulfill their overall commitment to
K-12 education funding and higher education funding as a share of their total State budget, and
2) “maintenance of equity,” which helps ensure that State and local funding supports the students
who have been subject to longstanding opportunity gaps in our education system and have also
experienced the greatest impact from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Maintenance of equity requirements were enacted for the first time in the ARP Act. These
protections safeguard school districts and schools that serve a large share of students from low-
income backgrounds against experiencing a disproportionate reduction in funding in fiscal years
(FYs) 2022 and 2023 (i.e., school years 2021-2022 and 2022-2023). These requirements also
ensure that school districts serving the largest shares of students from low-income backgrounds
do not receive a decrease in State funding below their FY 2019 level.

The Department is committed to supporting State educational agencies (SEAs) and local
educational agencies (LEAs) in implementing the ARP Act’s maintenance of equity provisions
with fidelity to the law. We also recognize that, with any new law that touches on fiscal issues,
there will naturally be questions and challenges applying a single set of legal requirements to the
specific circumstances of each State’s education finance system, and even more so during a
pandemic which has led to greater uncertainty in enrollment levels and other factors.

To support SEAs and LEAs as they implement these new provisions, the Department issued
maintenance of equity guidance in June. Since issuing the guidance, the Department has
Chief State School Officers and School District Superintendents
August 6, 2021
Page 2


continued to engage with a wide array of stakeholders to understand the opportunities and
challenges related to maintenance of equity implementation during a school year unlike any
other.

Today, the Department is pleased to announce the following additional supports to assist with the
successful implementation of these critical maintenance of equity requirements and to continue
to promote transparency at the SEA and LEA levels:

    •   Updating “Frequently Asked Questions”: In response to questions from SEAs and
        LEAs, the Department is updating the June guidance document in order to provide
        greater clarity and additional advice and options regarding technical implementation
        consistent with the law during this challenging time. Specifically, the updated guidance
        will assist SEAs and LEAs in applying the statutory maintenance of equity provisions to
        their specific education finance systems in three areas: 1) which funding sources must an
        SEA or LEA include when determining whether it maintained fiscal equity, 2) how an
        SEA or LEA should determine enrollment for purposes of calculating per-pupil funding
        levels; and 3) which LEAs are excepted from the local maintenance of equity
        requirements during the 2021-2022 school year, as described in greater detail below.

    •   Seeking Additional Input from the Field: The Department is eager to learn from the
        experiences and perspectives of SEAs, LEAs, and other stakeholders. We therefore
        anticipate issuing a Request for Information to invite public comment on a range of
        maintenance of equity implementation questions. In addition to promoting public
        dialogue on the vital issue of resource equity, the Department plans to use the comments
        it receives to inform future guidance and potential rulemaking if necessary to ensure
        appropriate clarity and flexibility in implementing the law consistent with the goal of
        maintaining equity.

    •   Addressing Specific Implementation Challenges for FY 2022: The Department
        remains committed to ensuring that maintenance of equity is implemented with fidelity.
        We also recognize that some SEAs and LEAs may face barriers despite their best efforts
        to maintain fiscal equity.

        At the State level, as a matter of policy, the Department will work with SEAs to address
        technical limitations in their ability to fully implement aspects of the statute, while still
        fulfilling the central intention of the legislation to maintain equity. As an example of such
        a technical limitation, an SEA may be at risk of not maintaining fiscal equity due to the
        impact of funding changes in very small school districts or due to significant changes in
        enrollment resulting from the pandemic.




                                                   2
Chief State School Officers and School District Superintendents
August 6, 2021
Page 3


        At the LEA level, the statute includes two important types of exceptions that limit the
        number of LEAs that are required to implement the maintenance of equity provisions.
        First, the statute exempts LEAs that meet certain size criteria, including LEAs that enroll
        fewer than 1,000 students, that have only one school, or that have only one school per
        grade span. The Department’s preliminary analysis indicates that as many as 70 percent
        of LEAs will not be required to implement LEA-level maintenance of equity provisions
        as a result of these exceptions. It is important to note that these are generally very small
        LEAs that together enroll approximately 15 percent of the Nation’s students.

        Second, the statute allows exceptions for LEAs that demonstrate an “exceptional or
        uncontrollable circumstance.” For FY 2022 maintenance of equity determinations, the
        Department recognizes that LEAs may face certain one-time implementation challenges
        due to the enactment of the ARP Act in March 2021—when LEA budgeting was already
        underway in many places—and the impact of the pandemic that has resulted in
        significant ongoing uncertainty about school-level enrollment for the 2021-2022 school
        year. Given such unique timing and implementation challenges, the Department has
        determined that these specific circumstances are an example of “exceptional or
        uncontrollable circumstances” that justify a limited exception to the LEA maintenance of
        equity requirements for the 2021-2022 school year. Therefore, an LEA experiencing
        these circumstances may demonstrate that it is excepted from the maintenance of equity
        requirements for FY 2022 by certifying to the Department that it did not and will not
        implement an aggregate reduction in combined State and local per-pupil funding in FY
        2022 (i.e., is not facing overall budget reductions).

        In addition, in the June guidance, the Department indicated that it will consider other
        “exceptional or uncontrollable circumstance” requests for exceptions to the LEA
        maintenance of equity requirements on a case-by-case basis and invites LEAs, or SEAs
        on their behalf, to contact the Department to seek a necessary exception for particular
        circumstances, including those that are unique to the specific context of the pandemic.
        For example, an “exceptional or uncontrollable circumstance” might include an
        “exceptional circumstance” such as increased one-time expenditures in the baseline year
        (school year 2020-2021) due to the pandemic or a very small school where the
        maintenance of equity calculations do not result in meaningful information about
        resource availability, or an “uncontrollable circumstance” such as a significant change in
        the expenses of a school that no longer serves a student whose educational and support
        needs require services that have a particularly high cost.

    •   Promoting Transparency and Public Understanding: The Department’s June
        guidance was accompanied by an information collection for SEAs to submit baseline and
        initial maintenance of equity data for FY 2022. SEAs began submitting data to the extent
        available by July 30, 2021, and today the Department is posting all available data on its

                                                   3
Chief State School Officers and School District Superintendents
August 6, 2021
Page 4


        website and will continue to update this resource as additional submissions are received.
        (SEAs are invited to make any necessary revisions or updates to their submissions by
        emailing their OESE mailbox.) In addition, the Department anticipates publishing a
        notice of proposed requirements that each SEA make publicly available information on
        how each LEA in the State is maintaining fiscal and staffing equity. Requiring that
        maintenance of equity data be publicly available would allow parents, families, and local
        communities to access information on how each applicable LEA is maintaining equity for
        schools with high concentrations of students from low-income backgrounds. After
        publishing the notice in the coming weeks, the Department looks forward to receiving
        and responding to public comment.

    We hope that this additional information will support SEAs and LEAs as you implement
    maintenance of equity protections for the first time during this challenging period. Thank you
    for all that you are doing to promote resource equity at this critical time for the Nation’s
    students. The Department remains committed to working with and supporting all SEAs and
    LEAs.

                                                Sincerely,



                                                Miguel A. Cardona, Ed.D.




                                                   4


File and source

File

department-of-education-here-www-ed-gov-babfa1f5bf.pdf

Size

217,810 bytes

SHA-256

d23f4d3fee113bd870d71c51bf6808d8660657d380308699feb014f01731a8b0

Our copy

department-of-education-here-www-ed-gov-babfa1f5bf.pdf

Original

www.ed.gov