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Vermont education officials scramble after federal "liquidation extension" letter imperils some ESSER reimbursements
Summary
At an April 10 Senate Education Committee meeting, state education leaders said a late federal letter narrowed the window for COVID-era ESSER reimbursements and changed waiver criteria, leaving districts and the state with an estimated $10–16 million of potential exposure and paused contracts for literacy supports.
Jill Brooks Campbell, deputy secretary of the Vermont Agency of Education, told the Senate Education Committee on April 10 that a federal letter released Friday at 5:03 p.m. put previously approved extensions of COVID-era grant reimbursements in doubt and imposed a shortened window for reimbursement requests.
The change matters because Vermont school districts and the state rely on three federal COVID-era funding streams — primarily ARP ESSER — to pay for interventions, summer programming and contracted services. Campbell said districts received about $256,000,000 in ARP-related funds overall and that, after accounting for earlier spending, state officials currently estimate between $10,000,000 and $16,000,000 in possible reimbursement exposure; the state itself has about $800,000 in incurred invoices that cannot be requested until a new waiver process is completed.
State officials described three groups of projects: (1)…
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