The Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund, known as ESSER, was designed to address learning loss and repercussions from the COVID pandemic. The spending deadline for those funds is September 30th of this year, and any unspent funds must be sent back to the federal government.
“As a district, we used some of our ESSER funding to train and pay for our staff to provide in-person, high-impact tutoring for students.”
Lindsey Bolhouse is the State and Federal Program Coordinator for Hudsonville Public Schools.
“When we went looking for the virtual tutoring option for our students and families who were unable to attend in-person tutoring, that’s when we found K12 Connect, which is now called EQPD.”
Amirah Vosburgh is CEO of EQPD, a high-impact tutoring nonprofit headquartered in West Michigan.
“Teacher burnout is a real thing, especially post-pandemic, and so by partnering with an organization like EQPD, we’re able to come in and have the capacity to help design, build, and then provide the tutors to the students.”
Bolhouse says they’ve spent all their ESSER funding, so they’ll have to reduce the number of hours they can dedicate to tutoring. Still…
“We are able to move forward with providing in-person tutoring, just at a smaller scale, so we do feel grateful for that.”
