This article is open to all free of cost, as the reporting for this entire series was made possible by a grant from the Poynter Institute with support from the Joyce Foundation.
Read all of our reporting on the American Rescue Plan Act’s impact in Ashland County here. And if you have any questions for the reporter, send him an email at dillon@ashlandsource.com.
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ASHLAND — Keeping qualified, seasoned teachers in their classrooms became one of the myriad challenges for public school districts during the COVID-19 pandemic.
That’s why the second-largest American Rescue Plan Act expense in Ashland County schools ended up being salaries and retirement fringe benefits.
The six public schools Ashland Source investigated for this series spent a total of $4,310,774.96 on salaries and fringe retirement benefits.
The figure represents district expenditures that have already been reported to the state's Department of Education. Black River and Loudonville-Perrysville schools have yet to report final expenditures. They have until Dec. 2 to do so.
That $4.3 million number represents 32% of the total amount in ARPA ESSER dollars that came to public schools in Ashland County between 2022 and 2024.
Nationally, Ashland County school districts followed a similar trend. FutureEd, a think tank on public policy out of Georgetown University, found 27% of ARPA ESSER dollars went toward staffing needs across 5,004 districts.
One Ashland County district’s salary expenditures stood out among the rest, however.
Ashland County Community Academy spent 87% of its $255,330 on salaries and retirement fringe benefits, a proportion that represents the highest across the county’s school districts.
| School district | ARPA ESSER salary expenditures | Percent of total allocation |
| Ashland City Schools | $2,484,362.42 | 40% |
| Ashland County Community Academy | $221,954.60 | 87% |
| Black River Local Schools | $12,692.59 | 0.6% |
| Hillsdale Local Schools | $201,352.39 | 19% |
| Loudonville-Perrysville Exempted Village Schools | $396,210.44 | 21% |
| Mapleton Local Schools | $994,202.52 | 53% |
Administration there did not respond to repeated requests for interviews, but budget details from 2022-24 provide some insight.
In 2024, for example, the district reported hiring three full-time employees — a general education teacher, a tutor and a non-instruction support staff person, according to the state’s Comprehensive Continuous Improvement Plan (CCIP). The district also hired a part-time “maintenance person for cleaning/sanitizing.”
The state's CCIP database is limited to the figures shown in categories such as “Salaries” and “Retirement Fringe Benefits,” shown below.
Getting those specifics required in-person interviews with individual administrators after combing through multiple years' worth of CCIP reports.
Mapleton Local Schools
Mapleton spent $994,202.52 of its ARPA money, or 53% of the total allocation, on salaries and retirement fringe benefits.
Kate Wiley, the district’s treasurer, said a lot of that money went to pay for existing salaries. The food service workers, for example.
“Our food service always runs in the deficit,” she said.
So the district shifted food service workers’ salaries to ESSER funds to “build some money into our food service fund. It actually worked and kept us in the black.”
Wiley said the district did this with salaries for bus drivers and guidance counselors, too.
“That helped us to take a little bit of the pressure off our general fund,” she said.
The money also led to new positions, such as a nurse, a counselor, a school community liaison, a school-based liaison. Some of those positions, however, are now either funded with different funds, gone, or different, officials said.
Skip Fulton, the district’s curriculum director, said Cassie Swanson started at the district as a literacy coach for the middle and high schools. Her salary was funded by ESSER dollars. She now works as the district’s elementary principal.
Sometimes, “you don’t fill position as you move on,” Fulton said.
“To me, it’s not much different than you see anywhere else,” he said. “You have an initiative, you have a program and you throw everything you have at it. And then once you’re implemented, and things are working the way they need to be working, you back off and reallocate some of those resources.”
Ashland City Schools
Ashland City Schools spent $2,484,362.42 on salaries and retirement fringe benefits, or 40% of the district’s ARPA dollars.
This money came in the form of contracted stipends for teachers, classified staff and substitute teachers, and compensation for extra work completed during summer school and tutoring services.
| Description | Amount |
| Salaries & benefits for teaching staff (summer school and tutoring) | $165,861.65 |
| Salaries & benefits for teaching staff (contracted stipends) | $1,523,760.00 |
| Salaries & benefits for classified staff | $426,739.74 |
| Salaries & benefits for substitute teachers | $197,908.45 |
| Salaries & benefits for director of technology innovation and integration | $170,092.58 |
Breaking down the salary spending by school building shows most of the money going to teachers at the high school, followed by teachers at the middle school, then Taft, Edison and Reagan.
| Position | Building | Amount spent |
| Teachers | High School | $620,154.92 |
| Teachers | Middle School | $604,920.45 |
| Teachers | Taft Intermediate | $303,933.82 |
| Teachers | Edison Elementary | $282,343.67 |
| Teachers | Reagan Elementary | $266,416.00 |
The district’s ARPA ESSER dollars also helped fund a new position created in April 2020, the director of technology innovation and integration. At the time, the job paid $70,000. Ben Spieldenner now has that position.
District records show the district spent $170,092.58 of ARPA ESSER funds to help pay for Spieldenner’s position. That money, however, dried up in September. Going forward, the position will be paid for through the district’s general fund, Klingler said.
Klingler said this money helped the district achieve two significant challenges throughout the pandemic. First, it helped educators achieve continuity of service. Second, the money helped maintain staffing levels.
“We wanted to make sure we were keeping staff,” he said. “It’s very important to keep up with the level of service we provide and not constantly losing staff and having to re-train.”
Loudonville-Perrysville Exempted Village Schools
A fifth of L-P’s ARPA money has gone toward salaries and retirement fringe benefits.
The district has yet to file its ARPA ESSER final expenditure report for 2024. It, along with school districts around Ohio, has until Dec. 2 to do so.
In 2022 and 2023, the district reported spending $396,210.44 on salaries and retirement fringe benefits.
Jennifer Allerding, L-P’s superintendent, said in an email that “a variety of salaries and portions of salaries were offset by these funds.”
Specifically, the money went to district-wide mental health counselors and liaisons, reading specialists, and “a small portion” of other staff members, Allerding said.
But when the ARPA ESSER funding was exhausted, the district eliminated a reading specialist and a mental-health counselor — a move made to reduce expenditures going into the 2024-25 school year, Allerding said.
The district still utilizes two full-time and one part-time reading specialist at McMullen. Budd Elementary also has two reading specialists, two counselors and two liaisons.
“We work in collaboration with Appleseed (Community Mental Health Center) to service students with more significant mental-health concerns,” Allerding said. “The county currently assists with funding for the liaisons making the district portion minimal for the services being provided.”
She said the district’s reading specialists “play a tremendous role in assisting students struggling with reading. We are looking at other funding opportunities for these critical roles, in addition to the general fund.”
Hillsdale Local Schools
Ashland Source did not request further interviews with Hillsdale officials because the school district is not located within a disadvantaged area, according to the Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool.
Nevertheless, the school district, which enrolled 840 students in the 2024-25 school year, spent $201,352.39 in the category, or 19% of its total allocation.
According to the district’s final expenditure report for ARPA ESSER expenses in 2024, Hillsdale spent:
- $30,000 to counseling and guidance
- $27,866.79 to a professional development consultant
- $15,000 to training/software/licenses
- $53,057.11 to hiring/mandatory training of school security personnel/resource officers
Black River Local School District
Black River has spent the least amount of its ARPA ESSER dollars on staffing. The district, located on the northeast corner of Ashland County, has not yet filed its ARPA ESSER final expenditure report for 2024.
In 2023, however, it reported spending a total of $12,692.59 in this category, or 0.6% of its total ARPA allocation.
Most of the district’s ARPA ESSER dollars — $1,913,767.85 to be exact — went toward capital projects.
The district used ARPA Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) money to fund positions that aligned with the guidelines under that federal pot of money. To review, ARPA was the umbrella term. Under that umbrella were various funds — IDEA was one of those funds.
In 2022, the district reported spending $55,171.91 of its ARPA IDEA funds on salaries and retirement fringe benefits. That money, according to the district’s CCIP report, went to “paying our special education teachers.”
Black River cut 13 positions through a reduction in force back in May. The RIF included six teachers, four paraprofessional, two food service workers and a custodian.