For most districts, the ESSER era is over. By the 2026–2027 school year, nearly every district will be operating without ESSER support. That means elementary leaders will need to decide what happens to the positions, programs, and software the funding temporarily made possible.
In practice, decisions will need to be made about a handful of concrete line items: the reading interventionist added in 2022, the tutoring contract, the K–2 software license, and the summer learning stipend. None of those costs will disappear on their own. District leaders must decide whether to fund them another way or let them go.
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Are ESSER funds still available?
Mostly no. However, districts covered by late-liquidation extensions faced several policy reversals in 2025, so a small number of districts should verify their status before treating the matter as closed.
ESSER III, the final and largest round, required districts to obligate funds by September 30, 2024, and spend them by January 28, 2025. Forty-one states, plus Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico, had been approved for extensions that would push that spending deadline to March 2026. In March 2025, the Department of Education rescinded those already approved extensions with immediate effect. Several states sued, and a federal judge ordered the extensions restored for plaintiff states that May. By late June 2025, the Department of Education reversed course again, allowing states to reapply for late liquidation, with March 28, 2026, set as the final deadline without any further extensions.
Practically: if your district had ESSER funds tied up in that back-and-forth, it’s worth confirming your specific status with your state education agency rather than assuming either the original deadline or the extension applies. For nearly everyone else, the issue has been settled for some time. ESSER III funds have either been spent, returned, or are being liquidated under a specifically approved extension.
What could ESSER funds be used for?
The categories were broad, which is part of the reason why the wind-down looks different in every district:
- Staffing — reading specialists, interventionists, counselors, instructional coaches
- Tutoring and extended learning — high-dosage tutoring contracts, summer programs
- Technology — devices, software licenses, connectivity
- Facilities — ventilation and health-related upgrades
- Instructional materials — curriculum purchases and supplemental resources
The staffing and software categories tend to be the hardest to unwind, since they created recurring costs (a salary, a subscription renewal) rather than one-time purchases. A ventilation upgrade doesn’t need a second decision next year. A literacy interventionist’s contract does.
What this means for elementary schools, concretely
This is where a general framework has to turn into a real decision. Here are a few of the questions elementary leaders are actually working through right now:
- Is this a recurring cost or a one-time purchase? One-time technology or facilities spending doesn’t need replacement funding. Staffing and subscriptions do.
- Is there evidence it worked? Not every ESSER-funded program was equally effective. If a tool or intervention did not produce meaningful results in your own schools—not merely in the vendor’s case studies—that should weigh heavily against renewing it.
- Did staff actually adopt it? A tool with strong research behind it that teachers never fully implemented isn’t worth the same investment as one that’s embedded in daily practice.
- What happens if you can’t afford the paid tier next year? Some ESSER-funded tools have a free core version with paid add-ons; others revert to zero without continued payment. Knowing which one you have changes how urgent the funding search is.
Where to look for funding instead
None of the categories above require finding a dollar-for-dollar ESSER replacement. Here are some options worth checking, depending on what you’re trying to fund:
- Title I, Part A — can often cover instructional staffing and materials for eligible schools, subject to supplement-not-supplant rules
- State-specific literacy or early-learning grants — vary by state, and some are specifically designed to pick up where COVID relief left off
- Philanthropic microgrants (DonorsChoose, NEA Foundation, local community foundations) — useful for smaller, classroom-level costs rather than a full staffing line
- Vendor pricing tied to nonprofit or foundation funding — some tools built by nonprofits or university research teams offer a free core product specifically because their funding model was never tied to a single grant cycle in the first place
The Post-ESSER Playbook for Elementary Administrators
We put together a longer list of specific tools in this last category, information about what the independent research says about each, and details about the four questions above applied to real examples.
Download the Post-ESSER Playbook
Facts Only
* By the 2026–2027 school year, nearly every district will operate without ESSER support.
* Elementary leaders must decide what happens to positions, programs, and software funded by ESSER.
* Concrete line items requiring decisions include reading interventionists added in 2022, the tutoring contract, K–2 software license, and the summer learning stipend.
* ESSER III required fund obligation by September 30, 2024, and spending by January 28, 2025.
* Forty-one states, plus Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, had approved extensions pushing the spending deadline to March 2026.
* The Department of Education rescinded approved extensions in March 2025, leading to state lawsuits and subsequent reversals.
* By late June 2025, the Department of Education allowed states to reapply for late liquidation, setting March 28, 2026, as the final deadline without further extensions.
* ESSER categories included Staffing (reading specialists, interventionists), Tutoring and extended learning, Technology, Facilities, and Instructional materials.
* Staffing and software categories are identified as having recurring costs, unlike one-time purchases like ventilation upgrades.
* Funding alternatives include Title I, state grants, philanthropic microgrants, and vendor pricing tied to nonprofit funding.
Executive Summary
The end of the ESSER era means that most districts will operate without federal support by the 2026–2027 school year, requiring elementary leaders to make decisions regarding positions, programs, and software established during the relief period. Decisions must focus on concrete line items like reading interventionists, tutoring contracts, K–2 software licenses, and summer learning stipends, as these costs will not disappear automatically.
There remains some uncertainty regarding past ESSER funding availability; while most funds are gone, specific districts with late-liquidation extensions faced policy reversals concerning ESSER III spending deadlines, which involved legal challenges and subsequent state actions. The categories for ESSER funds included staffing, tutoring, technology, facilities, and instructional materials, with staffing and software being noted as the hardest to unwind due to recurring costs.
Elementary leaders must evaluate previous investments by considering if programs produced meaningful results, whether staff adopted the tools, and whether they were one-time purchases or recurring expenses. Funding alternatives exist through Title I, state grants, philanthropic microgrants, and vendor pricing tied to nonprofit funding.
Full Take
The narrative surrounding the wind-down of ESSER funding highlights a tension between the temporary nature of relief spending and the long-term structural costs it imposed on educational systems. The most significant implication is that expediency in ending federal support forces local leaders into making consequential decisions about sustained programmatic investment rather than simply managing temporary disbursements. This structure reveals an underlying pattern where short-term fiscal maneuvers—like shifting funding deadlines through legal and administrative reversals—create persistent, unresolved uncertainty for the implementers on the ground.
The prioritization framework suggested by the text—asking if spending was recurring, if evidence of effectiveness exists, and if staff adoption occurred—points toward a necessary shift from compliance management to evidence-based stewardship. This moves the focus from simply tracking grant money to critically assessing the sustained value derived from specific interventions, suggesting that metrics of success must evolve beyond immediate expenditure tracking to include pedagogical impact and workforce integration. The available funding alternatives, such as leveraging Title I or philanthropic sources, suggest a structural opportunity for districts to reallocate resources based on internal needs rather than being constrained by the remnants of temporary relief mandates.
The core tension lies in balancing federal timelines and policy reversals against the professional responsibility of local administrators to ensure continuity of critical educational services. The lack of consensus on how categories should be unwound underscores a systemic challenge: large-scale, temporary funding streams often create complex, lingering obligations that require bespoke, context-specific accountability mechanisms rather than uniform directives. Future planning must address not just where money is coming from, but what enduring pedagogical and operational systems are worth maintaining regardless of immediate federal mandates.
Sentinel — Human
The text reads like a synthesis of complex policy changes presented with practical, administrator-focused analysis, leaning toward human expert writing rather than synthetic generation.