ESSER III

Colorado school districts have been able to provide more after-school programs, summer learning opportunities and focused studies on math and literacy thanks to $1.8 billion the state received in ESSER funding, according to Scott Jones, CDE's chief of staff. 

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.

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.

A $2 million ESSER grant is funding high-impact tutoring in Denver Public Schools that is resulting in higher-than-expected growth on students’ statewide assessments.

“We weren't looking for just scores. We were also looking at their confidence level, their engagement level, you know. And right now, all the data is pretty promising.” Susan Cheng, a program manager on the Expanded Academic Learning team at DPS

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.

Rural school districts in Colorado are being seen as a big part of the solution when it comes to the coming labor shortage that is being predicted in a wide variety of employment areas, including construction, education, health care, hospitality and transportation.

The Summer Arts & Culture Camp at Museo de las Americas, a program for low-income youth in downtown Denver for the past 13 years, has a waiting list 20 to 30 students every year, which is why organizers hope that pandemic funding through a CDE grant will help make the program more accessible.

For many urban school districts, students are able to tap into state-of-the-art career technical facilities such as St. Vrain Valley School District’s Innovation Center and Cherry Creek School District’s Innovation Campus.