State Superintendent Tony Thurmond Disburses Second Payment of Nearly $4 Billion for Learning Recovery

SACRAMENTO—State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond this week announced the availability of nearly $4 billion more in funding to county offices of education, school districts, and charter schools for learning recovery initiatives. This second payment follows an initial payment of nearly $4 billion for learning recovery in November 2022.

Under Thurmond’s leadership, California has worked proactively to provide additional resources to help our students beyond 2024, when the federal relief funding expires. These efforts include the $7.9 billion Learning Recovery Emergency Block Grant available to schools in this year’s state budget. These one-time funds are to be used through 2027–28 on strategies to support academic learning recovery that include intensive tutoring, additional instructional time, accelerated learning strategies, early literacy intervention, other learning supports, and staff and student social and emotional well-being following two-and-a-half challenging years of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The second of the two equal apportionments began to go out this week to county offices of education, and local educational agencies (LEAs) should start receiving funds shortly thereafter to help with learning recovery through the 2027–28 school year. Total allocation amounts for fiscal year 2022–23(XLSX) for each LEA are available on the CDE Learning Recovery Emergency Block Grant Funding Results web page. County superintendents were notified of the second apportionment in a letter from the CDE on March 29, 2023.

“We pushed hard for these historic state investments because we know that California students—along with everyone in the nation—have been through a very difficult time and faced many challenges,” said Superintendent Thurmond. “Now that the state has provided these unprecedented resources, we want to turn dollars into impact, work with our schools so they learn about best practices for learning acceleration and recovery, and highlight research and proven strategies for improving the lives of all students.”

Additional state resources for districts to support learning recovery efforts include an extra $3 billion for expanded learning (for an ongoing total of $4 billion) to lower staff-to-pupil ratios and increase time during the school year, summer school, and intersessional programs as well as $250 million to develop literacy programs and hire and train reading and literacy coaches and specialists.

The CDE has also created an online resource for LEAs to support their efforts to promote learning recovery. The CDE Learning Acceleration and Recovery Resources web page centralizes information for several programs that can be used to support learning recovery efforts and includes highlights of what LEAs have done with multiple funding sources to accelerate learning.

For more information, LEA staff should contact the CDE School Improvement and Support Office at LREBG@cde.ca.gov. Read more about the grant on the CDE Learning Recovery Emergency Block Grant web page.

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Tony Thurmond — State Superintendent of Public Instruction
Communications Division, Room 5602, 916-319-0818, Fax 916-319-0100