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 her an email at mariah@ashlandsource.com.
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NANKIN — At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, administrators remember students sitting in cars in Mapleton Local Schools’ parking lot, attempting to access the school’s Wi-Fi.
With school completely remote during spring 2020, some students in the rural district didn’t have internet access or the necessary technology for classwork at home, according to Supt. Scott Smith.
The district had a five-year plan in place, with a goal to purchase a Chromebook for every student. But that need became even more apparent once COVID hit.
Enter ESSER, or Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief programs. The grants, part of the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), offered short-term support for disruptions caused to education by COVID-19.
At Mapleton Local Schools, the funding received from ESSER allowed an opportunity to speed up its five-year plan. The district used part of its funding to purchase the Chromebooks it needed to have a 1-to-1, Chromebook-to-student ratio.
The district also purchased several hotspots, which act as Wi-Fi routers. They were distributed to students who didn’t have internet access at home.
Skip Fulton, Mapleton’s director of curriculum and instruction, said the Chromebooks serve a larger purpose moving forward. With more K-12 curriculums moving online, having that type of software has become key for student learning.
Smith said those types of leaps forward, at least at Mapleton, wouldn’t have been possible without the help of ARPA ESSER.
By the numbers
In total, Ashland County school districts spent $1,922,503.99 of the money they received from ARPA ESSER on “supplies” between 2022-2024. Here’s how much each district spent on “supplies.”
| School district | Amount spent on “supplies” between 2022-2024 |
|---|---|
| Ashland County Community Academy | $10,000 |
| Ashland City Schools | $786,240 |
| Black River Local Schools | $0.00 |
| Hillsdale Local Schools | $420,014.65 |
| Loudonville-Perrysville Exempted Village Schools | $9,905.86 |
| Mapleton Local Schools | $696,343.71 |
Ashland County school districts also spent $1,029,156.28 on “purchased services” between 2022-2024. That funding went to “supplemental services rendered by personnel who are not on the payroll of the school district, and other supplemental services which the school district may purchase.”
Below, a table shows how much each district spent on “purchased services.”
| School district | Amount spent on “purchased services” between 2022-2024 |
|---|---|
| Ashland County Community Academy | $10,000 |
| Ashland City Schools | $528,049.28 |
| Black River Local Schools | $0.00 |
| Hillsdale Local Schools | $272,974.93 |
| Loudonville-Perrysville Exempted Village Schools | $175,620.71 |
| Mapleton Local Schools | $42,511.36 |
Districts didn’t have to specify what they spent their money on in the final expenditure reports they shared with the state’s Comprehensive Continuous Improvement Plan.
However, they did offer details about their plans for the funds in budget detail pages. Those were shared with CCIP before districts had funds in hand. Ashland Source reporters used districts’ proposals to question administrators about how they spent their ARPA ESSER money.
Most local districts’ budget detail pages revealed plans to spend some of those funds similarly to Mapleton Local Schools, hoping to position their districts for a brighter technological future. Districts also used funds to deal with the immediate impacts of COVID.
In the pandemic’s wake
When the pandemic first hit, in April 2020, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine ordered all schools to shut down.
But in fall of 2020, around half of the state’s schools had returned to in-person instruction. By the end of the 2021 school year, almost all the state’s schools were back in person.
Still, throughout the fall of 2020, schools had to adhere to mitigation protocols to curb the spread of the disease: social distancing, masks and more stringent sanitation measures.
Those protocols came with costs for the school districts.
Several districts’ budget detail pages stated districts planned to use ARP ESSER dollars to help pay for sanitation supplies, facility repairs aimed at preventing viral transmission and developing and implementing protocols in line with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines.
In total, Ashland County districts’ budget detail pages revealed they’d planned to spend $4,375,768.39 in those three categories between 2022-2024. Those expenditures would fall under supplies, purchased services and capital outlay.
By 2023, most school districts had stopped listing plans to spend funds on supplies for cleaning and sanitizing facilities on their budget detail pages.
But even as schools spent less on sanitation supplies moving forward, the impacts of social distancing measures and the like lingered. They just didn’t always have monetary costs associated with them.
For example, at Black River Local Schools, the district had to temporarily close its pre-K services to account for social distancing. The pre-K program has since returned.
Still, its closure served as a challenge post-pandemic. The district’s budget detail pages stated that kindergarten screening tests — which assistant supt. Jill Beiser said are standard for students starting school — showed worse results than in years past.
Black River adapted by bringing on more kindergarten teachers and lowering class sizes. It also had to build new modular classrooms so smaller classes could exist, Beiser said.
What did districts buy with money for purchased services & supplies?
Revisiting Mapleton
Mapleton administrators said its funds for purchased services and supplies, in addition to funding the purchase of Chromebooks, also went toward efforts to improve literacy and help assess student progress.
read more about literacy at Mapleton Local Schools
Three literacy coordinators were added: Shelby Ortiz, Cassie Newcomer and Cassie Swanson. Each worked with different grade levels and trained teachers in the science of reading.
The district also purchased the “Amplify: Core Knowledge Language Arts” curriculum, which is based in the science of reading. Plus, part of those funds also went toward a benchmarking program, which helps assess students’ abilities in the classroom.
“I think that money hit at the right time for what we were already planning on doing, and then we were able to maximize those dollars to get a lot of support for our kids, both inside and outside the classroom,” Fulton said.
Without that money, the district has worked to keep the literacy coordinators in the district. But their roles look different now. They’re no longer as focused on literacy, and are splitting their time between training teachers and doing interventions for students.
But Newcomer, one of the literacy coordinators, explained the lasting impact of that money comes with the district’s ability to address students’ individual needs. It’s better-equipped to do that now, even with staffing and financial challenges the district anticipates facing in the coming years.
Other districts spent funds similarly
At Ashland City Schools, new curriculum also became a push. Kyle Klingler, the district’s treasurer, said around $500,000 of the district’s funds went toward purchasing a new math curriculum.
The district’s budget detail pages also revealed plans to spend “supply” funds on classroom supply, software and computers.
Loudonville-Perrysville Exempted Village Schools also pushed some of its “supply” funds toward technology. It listed classroom supply, software, office supply, computer and health and hygiene as purchases it planned to make.
The district listed plans in its budget detail pages to bring in additional teachers and tutors to help students academically recover from the pandemic. Budget detail pages stated purchased services funds would go toward substitute teachers.
