The Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Funds (ESSER) are sections of three Acts passed by the United States Congress to address the impact that COVID- 19 has had, and continues to have, on elementary and secondary schools across the Nation.

ESSER grants are one time funding so the district looked at allowable projects that would not create a fiscal cliff when the grants ended. For the ESSER III grant a minimum of 20% of the funding was required to be budgeted for Evidence Based Improvement Strategies used to respond to students’ social, emotional, and academic
needs due to the impact of the pandemic. Due to significant Facility needs throughout the district allowable facility projects were identified to use the grant funding towards.

Allowing use of Federal Grant funds for construction activities is rare among federal grants and federal grant funded construction and remodeling activities over $2,000 are governed by very specific federal regulations regarding construction. These include Davis-Bacon and related acts which require payment of prevailing wage to all laborers and mechanics including contractors and subcontractors.

This project was selected for use of ESSER funding to create Facility Equity among the three middle schools in Janesville. Marshall Middle School was built in 1997 and included conditioned air when built. Edison Middle School utilized the Act 32 Energy Exemption (which is no longer available to Wisconsin Districts) to make facility improvements including adding conditioned air in 2018.

The district considered the eleven middle and elementary school sites that do not have conditioned air, but the funding source was not large enough to cover more than one school. The $8 million of the ESSER III funding is being used for the air quality improvements at Franklin Middle School. The decision was made to bring Franklin Middle School into alignment with the other two middle schools in Janesville.

Career and Technical Education (CTE) improvements were a focus at the federal level of ESSER funding especially regarding improving social distancing for interactive learning environments. The district selected to build two new larger greenhouses at each of the main high schools to upgrade the facilities for Agricultural programming and bring them into alignment with work environments students may transition into after graduation.

The school district explored CTE Culinary Arts improvements at both Craig and Parker High Schools, but the ESSER funding allocated for the project ($2.2 million) was not enough to remodel the spaces to align with social distancing and educational adequacy improvements.