Day: September 13, 2023

This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters.
It’s an ominous phrase that is top of mind for many school district officials: the “funding cliff.”
This refers to the imminent end of billions of dollars in federal COVID relief money that schools have been relying on during the pandemic. “The feds pushed a lot of money into the K-12 system,” said Lori Taylor, an education finance researcher at Texas A&M University. “Now the districts are being weaned off of that funding — they’re losing that shock absorber, that cushion.”
This has educators and experts nervous: the money might be gone before students have fully recovered academically and could lead to painful layoffs and other budget cuts. Some schools have already begun cutting back on recovery programs including tutoring, summer school, and extra staff, like college advisors.
But what is not yet clear is how steep the fall from the funding cliff will be. That’s because there ..