The American Rescue Plan (ARP) includes another EANS opportunity that State’s will be able to access on behalf of their private schools. The ARP-EANS will allocate additional funding using two different requirements:
- The State educational agency (SEA) may only provide services or assistance to non-public schools that enroll a significant percentage of low-income students and are most impacted by the COVID-19 emergency.
- Eligible schools cannot use funds for reimbursement of past expenditures; funding must be used for expenses that will be incurred related to safely reopening schools.
Other parameters established by CRRSA and applicable to the ARP EANS funding are well outlined in MPPI’s EANS brief.
Allocations:
Under the ARP EANS program, grants will be awarded by formula to each Governor with an approved application based on the State’s relative share of children ages 5-17 who are from families at or below 185 percent of the poverty level and enrolled in non-public schools, as determined by non-public school enrollment data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS) Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS) for 2015-2019. The amount available to each State will be published at: https://oese.ed.gov/files/2021/04/Final_ARP-EANS-Methodology- and-Table-3.16.21.pdf
Because the Department of Education has not fully defined how to determine low-income regionally nor what being “most impacted” by COVID-19 means, they are taking comment regarding definitions through April 26, 2021. The application for the package by State Governor’s will become available around May 21, 2021. The application deadline is July 15, 2021.
Projected use of funds:
- Cleaning educational facilities
- Obtaining PPE
- Improving ventilation systems
- Training and professional development to help educators implement new safety practices
- Physical barriers to facilitate social distancing
- Coronavirus testing and contact tracing
- Educational technology
- Redeveloping instructional plans
- Leasing additional space to ensure safe social distancing
- Transportation costs
- Supports for remote and hybrid learning
- Remediating learning loss
- Other coronavirus-related costs.
