Use of Funds

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis today announced additional funding for Colorado teachers to access the DonorsChoose Program funding. This opportunity was created by the Governor’s allocation of $6.7 million from the Governor's Emergency Education Relief (GEER) fund to the DonorsChoose program which provides $1,000 to teachers for classroom supplies and resources to improve students’ learning experiences.

Nearly 13,000 Colorado teachers applied for and received more than $11 million in classroom supplies in an initiative that used ESSER II funding to help pre-K through 12th grade public school educators address COVID-19 learning loss.

The Colorado Department of Education is using $125,000 of federally allocated ESSER III funds to plan and deliver professional development opportunities for math teachers in the San Luis Valley.

Poudre School District in Fort Collins spent $100,000 from an Education Workforce Grant to diversify its workforce while at the same time attempting to fill more open positions than the district had in pre-pandemic years.
The majority of the grant paid for a full-time bilingual recruiter with the rest allowing the district to implement an intentional recruitment strategy to increase the number of teachers, which didn’t used to be a problem for the district before the pandemic.

Jefferson County Public Schools is providing free mental health services for students at 155 schools throughout the county with about $1.5 million from the district’s third round of ESSER funds. 

To provide the services, Jeffco is partnering with Hazel Health, a physical and mental telehealth provider, to help students develop coping skills, learn how to self-regulate and increase their resilience.

The Council of Chief State School Officers asked state education chiefs how COVID relief funds had made an impact on their state. Colorado Education Commissioner Katy Anthes explains in this video how she learned of the funds' effectiveness when a school leadership team extolled the funds and how they have helped align math standards to math curriculum for the first time. 

Theatre SilCo in Silverthorne, formerly Lake Dillon Theatre Company, is filling an urgent need for after-school care in Summit County with $528,432 in grant funding from the ESSER III Expanded Learning Opportunities Grant Program.

Kwiyagat Community Academy, the first Colorado charter school on an American Indian reservation, is using $55,000 from the state’s High-Impact Tutoring Grant to help students in populations most affected by the pandemic recover from devastating learning loss.

Project Launch, a full-day summer program that is a collaboration between St. Vrain Valley Schools and four rural districts, is using a $2 million Expanded Learning Opportunities grant from ESSER III to expand the program over the next two years.

The Colorado Department of Education is using $125,000 in ESSER funding to pay for a summer learning series for teachers called CoLabs that will be offered in June in Grand Junction, Greeley and Pueblo.