Notes on the $2,400,000,000 in redistributed federal taxpayer funds sent to Wisconsin K-12 systems
Bookmobiles. Online mental health. Reading coaches. Robots. Therapy dogs.
These are all things Wisconsin school districts have been able to bring to students because of the $2.4 billion in federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief, or ESSER, funding.
ESSER dollars were meant to help students make up for learning loss brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. Whether that’s been accomplished is hard to measure. But there’s no question the millions of dollars that went to schools over the last three years provided educators with an opportunity to hire staff and create programs they wouldn’t have been able to otherwise.
