Experience
In 2019, Texas blazed a new trail in expanded learning by adopting a dedicated funding stream for expanded school year models: summer, intersession, and year-round. Knowing the potential impact of high-quality summer experiences on student learning and well being, the Wallace Foundation and Communities Foundation of Texas contributed resources to help LEAs design and implement research-aligned programs, including by giving them access to support from Design and Implementation Partners (of which FourPoint was one) and a statewide learning community with standardized planning tools and other full-group supports.
From its work in other communities, Wallace also recognized the importance of financial planning for programs – a need that grew as federal Covid relief money augmented the state’s source and districts were tasked with creating budgets that leveraged all available resources and were sustainable beyond ESSER’s time-limited infusion.
With deep experience supporting district and non-profit financial and sustainability planning, FourPoint gladly worked to meet this need.
Insight
Expanded learning programs have enormous potential to accelerate student learning in a non-traditional way. It’s no wonder the Department of Education made them a funding focus for Covid recovery resources. But creating a non-traditional program requires non-traditional thinking – a new mindset and new partners to enable a new type of learning model that blends academics and enrichment and keeps kids and parents wanting more.
Wallace and its evaluation partners have uncovered a recipe for an impactful summer program: 6 hours a day, 20-25 days per summer, with 3 hours of academics (math and reading) and 3 hours of enrichment. LEAs can structure a program that ticks these boxes in myriad ways. For example, they could have current teachers lead academic programming; partner with local universities to have aspiring teachers either lead or support academics; hire teachers to lead enrichment programming; partner with enrichment providers like Boys & Girls Clubs, local businesses, or parks and recreation departments to manage enrichment; have teachers design enrichment offerings; adopt free or for purchase enrichment curricula, etc.
Each of these choices has cost implications. FourPoint wanted to be sure LEAs understood their options from the start, were considering and counting all of their associated program costs, and planning with sustainability in mind.
Action
FourPoint built a budgeting tool that could accommodate a range of models, connecting it as much as possible to the main summer planning tool used by LEAs to minimize the need for double entries and errors across sheets. Detailed financial planning was new for many summer project managers, especially those representing academic departments. Initial trainings on the budgeting tool focused on supporting PMs’ financial acumen – and encouraging them to engage members of their finance and leadership teams at key junctures to make sure everyone was on the same page about their program costs.
We also built in budget check points to identify common blind spots and tailor trainings around those. For example, initial budget reviews showed that LEAs tended to only account for their instructional staff, leaving out security, transportation, attendance, and other key staff members. Often, PMs didn’t know to or how to factor in benefits and professional development time for staff, and missed other big-ticket costs related to transportation, materials, and food. Looking at early budgets also allowed us to flag misunderstandings about funding streams and when and how they could be accessed.
Using this information, FourPoint provided whole group trainings and 1:1 coaching to LEAs to make sure that everyone was starting their programs with a full accounting of their costs.
To aid future-focused planning, we also created a sustainability planning tool that allows LEAs to consider the impact of program modifications on their costs and easily see revenue gaps to drive development efforts. We were also able to share some general principles of sustainability. Perhaps the biggest lesson: money matters, but building a program that stakeholders (especially students and parents) love and that meets social, emotional, and academic student goals is the best way to set it up for the long term. If something works and people love it, it’s much easier to attract the money that will be needed to continue it on.
Impact
For many, that’s just what’s happened. LEAs across Texas developed beloved programs that transformed perceptions of summer learning. Annual testing data show that LEAs who undertook intensive summer planning and implemented research-aligned programs outpaced growth of those that did not in Summer 2023. Many have plans for repurposing district funds or finding new ones to continue programming once Covid relief money winds down.
From a financial lens, we saw PMs develop a nuanced understanding of the implications of various staffing and program design decisions on a full set of program costs. Having consistent budgets from nearly 50 LEAs allowed FourPoint to make apples-to-apples comparisons of program costs and revenues, generate benchmarks for per pupil costs, and create other metrics that LEAs in and outside of Texas can use to create or modify their program designs.
The budgeting process was simplified all thanks to FourPoint’s expertise on the topic. Budgeting in advance and including all possible expenditures and revenues is a priority that can sometimes be overlooked when building a new program.
— Texas summer program manager
In Covid’s wake, summer learning has proven its potential for closing opportunity and learning gaps for students. As LEAs across the country design and refine their summer programs, FourPoint can help by:
- Customizing tools to organize their financial data so that they can make decisions about program design and think about sustainability from the beginning.
- Providing coaching and training to build the financial acumen of design teams to inform decision making.
