RPS Does Survey to Get Feedback on How to Best Spend ESSER Funds

Revere Public School Superintendent Dr. Dianne Kelley said RPS plans to apply for a $19,477,006 Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) grant but first sent a survey to families to get feedback on how the money should be spent.

In June, the Revere Public School Committee meeting committee voted to approve line items for the School Department’s $102,691,177 budget for Fiscal Year 22.

However, the money approved FY22 did not include the federal Covid relief money through ESSER grants that will fund a whole host of new positions and upgrades to Revere Schools.

RPS conducted the survey during the last week of September and was open online for families to fill out for a week. Results of the survey should be presented at the next week’s School Committee meeting.

Kelley explained that the survey was a “preliminary step” in applying for the ESSER grant.

“(The survey) gives a little bit  more information about the grant itself and how the money can be spent,” said Kelley.

The first area identified in the survey is core instruction. Kelley pointed out that if Revere receives the ESSER grant money could go towards creating an Early Learning Center in Revere for preschoolers.

“We’ve talked about this for a while,” said Kelley. “That’s one of the areas in the grant (application) that has language that says we (RPS) should look at creating an increased access to full day early childhood programming for students.”

Other parts of the survey include asking the public if priorities should be made to expand high quality instruction materials.

“We started to implement elementary math, elementary literacy, middle school science and middle and high school civics this year,” said Kelly. “So we would like to spend some of this money continuing that work.”

Some other examples of the survey include asking how the money can be used to find and cultivate talented staff and administrators at RPS.

“Other questions include asking about conditions for student success, including social, emotional, mental health support,” said Kelley. “We’ll be gathering that data over the next week, and use that to help guide our priorities, which we’ll share with the committee once we have that identified. We will then have 30 days to create our plan and then we’ll be back to the committee with more information, survey results, and hopefully have their input to finalize a plan that we can vote on.”