Transylvania Hears Good News About Covid Learning-Loss Funds, and Bad News: Students Really Need It
The School Board received a report about the spending of $10.6 million in federal funds meant to address Covid-19 learning loss, which was documented by plummeting standardized test scores.
BREVARD — The Transylvania County School Board learned Monday how the district is spending $10.6 million in federal funds awarded to address Covid-19 learning loss — and discussed a report about plunging test scores that shows how badly these funds are needed.
“I think this is important,” Board member Kimsey Jackson said about the report, which documented significant learning loss both here and throughout the state.
“This is quite a loss.”
The money was provided in the most recent two rounds of Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funding, and will pay for some facility upgrades, the most expensive being new air handlers for several schools that carry a total price tag of $2.45 million.
Most of the money, however, has gone or will go to hire additional teachers, teaching assistants, tutors and counselors — and to expand educational programs. For example, the district allotted $500,000 in ESSER money for enhanced summer school instruction in 2021 and will reserve similar amounts for the next two summers.
This year, 24 percent of the district’s students attended summer sessions — a crucial opportunity to catch up on lessons. The district offered more classes and to a much wider range of students than usual, said Audrey Reneau, a Transylvania County Schools administrator whose job includes overseeing federal programs.
“At the end of the day, (the funded programs) are about looking at what we are doing to help our children, (to) close those learning losses and create the environments they need for learning,” she told the board.
She described the tight restrictions on receiving the funds, which explains why, for example, the federal money could not go towards new ventilation systems at Brevard High School and Rosman High and Middle schools.
The air units — justified to improve air quality that helps control the spread of Covid — could not be installed as part of existing capital improvement projects, such as the planned renovations at the Rosman and Brevard campuses.
And the district will only be able to receive money to improve the systems at other schools after documenting that it is following federal guidelines.
“This is not just a blank check, for us to say we need this so we can write it,” she said of the ESSER funding. “It’s monitored and we have to show the need.”
Because of such restrictions, the district still has not received about $3.1 million of the funds — all of which must be spent before Oct. 1, 2024.
The ESSER program also required the district to prove learning loss, which in Transylvania and across the state was demonstrated by dramatic drops in scores on standardized tests taken at the end of last school year compared to those from the spring of 2019.
The percentage of these scores at or above a “3” — the standard for grade-level proficiency — dropped 14.4 percent in Transylvania, slightly higher than the 13.4 percent dip documented statewide.
Fewer than half of the scores in these tests — covering math, reading and other subjects — demonstrated grade-level proficiency in Transylvania, though the percentage of passing tests in the county, 49.6, was higher than the statewide figure, 45.4.
The test scores from last school year were released in early September by the state Department of Public Instruction, and spread sheets compiling and comparing the scores were prepared by the EducationNC educational news website.
The site’s accompanying story stated “fears about academic performance during the pandemic were confirmed” by the scores.
But the numbers also contained a few bright spots for the county. Performance at high schools appeared to be little affected by Covid, and both Rosman High School and the alternative Davidson River School were two of the roughly 100 schools statewide that recorded improved scores in 2021 compared to 2019. These years are used for comparison among North Carolina’s more than 2,600 schools because the tests were not administered during 2020.
And the percentage of scores meeting the grade-level proficient standard dipped to 59.1 at Brevard High School, compared to 62.1 in the spring of 2019, a decline of only three percent, far less than the statewide average.
Younger students appeared to suffer more from school closures and other Covid-related disruptions, and two of the district’s highest performing schools in 2018-19 — T.C. Henderson Elementary and Rosman Middle School — showed the most dramatic scoring drops.
Jackson brought up the report at the end of Monday’s meeting.
“I would hope that in your principals’ meeting, you are talking about this and there is a plan coming out,” he said to Superintendent Jeff McDaris, who responded that the matter was a top priority.
“That’s pretty much a monthly conversation already at hand,” he said.