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Students take part in a rally and march to protest New York City Mayor Eric Adams’s budget cuts, May 24, 2023, in New York. Adams, who is responsible for the city’s school system, has cut school budgets two years in a row.
Since the spring of 2020, the Department of Education’s Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ESSER) has distributed nearly $190 billion in COVID relief funds to states for public-school districts’ use, with a small percentage of the funds going to summer learning and enrichment. In areas of the country where creating summer programs may have felt too daunting, ESSER funds helped districts create curriculums, partnerships with community-based organizations and field trip programs to expose students to interesting career choices, and generally get them excited about learning.
But this historic federal investment in summer learning programs for public-school students, especially those who live in areas most affected by the pandemic, is about to end. Strict spending guidelines mean school districts must use their COVID funds by March 2025 or sooner if a state failed to apply for an extension. The debt ceiling deal in Congress cut nondefense discretionary funding, making it very unlikely that new federal funds will replace the disappearing monies.
The School Superintendents Association, a national advocacy and professional learning organization, published a survey last summer showing that 57 percent of district leaders plan to reduce or eliminate summer learning as the ESSER spending deadline looms. Nearly 45 percent of the administrators said they would keep these programs if they were given more time to spend the funds.
A survey conducted by the Afterschool Alliance found that 94 percent of Democrats and 85 percent of Republicans support funding for summer programs.
Until COVID recovery money streamed in, these programs barely existed for the ten million students in the country’s high-poverty schools, where more than 75 percent of young people receive free or reduced-price lunch, who need those opportunities the most. Students who are required to attend summer school to catch up on academics have very different experiences than kids in programs that combine play and exploration with some academic time. While the recent federal investment is impressive, it did not expand enough to offer every deserving student a seat.
For parents, summer programming can mean the difference between finding or keeping a job. A 2019 Center for American Progress survey found 57 percent of families said “a lack of child care in the summer means that at least one parent plans to make a job change that will result in reduced income.” A 2022 Morning Consult poll also indicated that 57 percent of parents were “somewhat” to “very” concerned about paying for summer activities.
Reflecting on ESSER’s summer learning expansion, Paul Reville, a former Massachusetts secretary of education, says, “It seems like a huge opportunity to overcome the main resistance to making summer learning an entitlement, which is ‘it costs too much, we can’t afford it.’”
The country’s profound partisan divide does not extend to publicly funded summer learning. A survey conducted by the Afterschool Alliance found that 94 percent of Democrats and 85 percent of Republicans support funding for summer programs.
Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), the House Committee on Education and Labor vice chair, maintains that supporting public education and the institutions charged with protecting it is not a priority for Republicans in the House. “The feds can help; I don’t think the feds will help,” he says. “You get the wrong people into office, who don’t prioritize education [and] you’re going to have these problems.”
Summer is an ideal time to build children’s social capital. But not all families are able to pay for rock music or design and engineering camp or have the paid vacation time to go on a family trip that includes a few stops at museums or historical sites. Some college campus summer programs for high school students can cost over $10,000.
“A lot of these programs are designed to create a sense of belonging and interest and discovery,” says Reville, now a Harvard Graduate School of Education professor. Describing a Harvard Medical School program that gives high school students a medical emergency case to solve as a team, he adds, “They see themselves someplace where they never thought they had a place.”
As the dollars shrink, boosting programs where they are most needed will be key. In 2017, the RAND Corporation published a report that studied summer learning programs for youth in Pittsburgh. As part of their research, the team cross-referenced program locations with neighborhood income levels. “We found there’s this community that has a lot of families living in poverty and no summer program that the kids could walk to,” says Catherine Augustine, a RAND senior researcher.
States are trying to find the money to keep these programs going. Prior to the pandemic, Oregon’s Department of Education’s summer programs had been serving approximately 14,000 students across the state, but ESSER funds helped them serve 100,000 students in 2021 and 2022—a roughly $375 million investment they cannot sustain with diminishing funds, according to Marc Siegel, a state education department spokesperson. However, there are two bills pending in the Oregon legislature’s Joint Committee on Ways and Means that may restore some of the funding.
(UPDATE: An early literacy bill that includes funding for pre-K through 3rd grade summer programs in Title I schools recently passed in the Oregon Senate. A second summer learning bill that focused on rural schools and historically underserved students did not pass, despite Governor Tina Kotek and Oregon Department of Education director Colt Gill’s advocacy.)
Shino Tanikawa, a member of New York’s Board of Regents, which oversees the state’s universities and education department, notes that summer learning could be added to the next budget request that the board sends to the state Senate. She plans to advocate for “completely needs-based programs” that “include social, emotional learning, creativity, playtime, all that wonderful stuff.”
New York City’s “Summer Rising” program offered 62 percent more spots to K-8 students in 2023 than in 2019. Randi Levine, the policy director for Advocates for Children of New York, praised the city for setting aside seats for some of the district’s most vulnerable students. She said 29,000 students were in shelters last year and over 100,000 New York City students experienced homelessness.
This year, the city’s 110,000-seat program admitted all the students in temporary housing and foster care who applied, two groups of children who greatly benefit from the stability a summer program can provide. About 8,000 seats went to charter and non-public-school students. Another 45,000 students were not placed; their parents are now scrambling for care. The city’s Independent Budget Office reports the city would need over $200 million to sustain the current program in fiscal 2026. Advocates also aim to prioritize students with disabilities, and English-language learners, Levine says. “I think it’s important for elected leaders to start working now to figure out how we’re going to sustain this program when the COVID-19 funding runs out, much less expand it.”
While the Department of Education looks to the city council to fill this gap, Mayor Eric Adams, who controls the schools, could play a major role in the continued expansion of summer learning. Yet he has cut school budgets two years in a row, but level funded the police department. Last year’s cuts were particularly deep, and schools laid off arts and music teachers.
Setting up reliable annual federal or local funding streams would allow districts to shift their focus from triaging their budgets to making sure their programs are truly accessible to families that need them most. “We need to invest in education, and we need to invest in mental health, and we need to invest in enrichment programs,” says Rep. Bowman, who was a public-school principal in the Bronx before running for Congress. “If we’re not doing that and we’re only investing in law enforcement, then we’re not serious about public safety for the long term.”
