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Though the COVID-19 Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) Funds will be running out this year, Chambers County School District has maintained that there will be no staff cuts.

This September, the federal ESSER fund program for emergency funding to K-12 schools during the pandemic will no longer be available. Chief Financial Officer Cassandra Allen said that the district central office has been planning for the deadline for the past several years. 

“We’ve gotten to a point where we’re not actually going to lose any of our employees,” she said. 

Teachers’ salaries will remain the same. Teachers’ salary will still be based on their experience, responsibilities and degree. 

Though each year, Allen said, there is a routine turnover as staff retire or relocate, there are many positions that need to be filled. The district uses state funding a certain number of “teacher units,” the unit of teacher salaries funded, based on the student enrollment that CCSD has. 

Allen said that the school district will have to be more careful with other forms of funding they do have without the ESSER funds.

All of the district’s schools are considered title schools, she said. The district can utilize that title funding and their OCE (other current expenses) money to help offset the loss of the ESSER funds.

“We can use [OCE] money for operations and maintenance of the school,” Allen said. 

OCE funding can be used to help with the expenses like the school district’s child nutrition program.

“We can utilize those funds for several different things,” she said. “And it also pays for the salary of our support staff, like our custodians and our bookkeepers, secretaries…”

Since being distributed, the ESSER funds have helped pay for the school to purchase a new fleet of school buses. Allen said they are all within five and 10 years old. The CCSD also used the funding to provide Chromebooks to each student in the district.

“We’ve, in the past, been able to have Christmas, you know, every day,” Allen said. “It’s just going to be to where we’re not going to be able to have that anymore. [The schools are] aware of it.”

The school board is holding two public hearings on the proposed budget for fiscal year 2025, one on Aug. 21 and the other on Sept. 11. Both will be held at the central office at 1298 Vocational Drive in Lafayette beginning at 4 p.m. CT. 

There, they will work on and draft a proposed FY2025 budget.