What is LEA Maintenance of Equity?

ESSER III contains new LEA Maintenance of Equity requirements regarding Per-Pupil Funding and FTE Staff in the highest poverty schools served by the LEA. These requirements must be met to receive ESSER III funds from the American Rescue Plan (ARP) Act. LEAs may not reduce per-pupil funding (from combined state and local funds) or FTE staff in High Poverty Schools more than the rate that may be reduced across all schools in state FY2022 (SY21-22) and FY2023 (SY22-23)

NOTE: Rate=Total Reduction/Total LEA Enrollment

These requirements do not apply to all LEAs. LEAs with less than 1,000 students that operate a single school or that serve all students within each grade span with a single school are excluded from these requirements.

Based on these exceptions, Maintenance of Equity is only a requirement for 108 LEAs in Arizona. See the list of LEAs.

However, the U.S. Department of Education has provided an additional exception pathway for SY2021-2022 for LEAs that did not have an aggregate reduction in combined State and local per-pupil funding in FY2022.

Based on this additional exception pathway, no LEAs were required to identify “high poverty schools” and meet MoEquity requirements for SY2021-2022 based on a review of FY 2022 School Finance data. ADE further projects that this will continue for SY2022-2023 based on a review of preliminary FY2023 data. 

The following information was submitted to the U.S. Department of Education for LEA Maintenance of Equity (MoEquity), per the requirements of 2004(c) of the American Rescue Plan Act:

• View the list of all SY2022-2023 excepted (and projected to be excepted) LEAs
• Read Arizona's LEA-Level FY2023 Maintenance of Equity (MoEquity) Plan
• View the list of all SY2021-2022 excepted LEAs
• Read Arizona’s LEA-Level FY2022 Maintenance of Equity (MoEquity) Plan

Data reporting requirements for LEAs who received ESSER I, II, and III funds

The U.S. Department of Education has released updated required data reporting requirements for all ESSER fund (I, II and III) grantees. These requirements include fiscal, programmatic and personnel data that will need to be submitted from LEAs regarding their ESSER (I, II and III) funded activities that occurred between July 1, 2021 – June 30, 2022 (state fiscal year FY22). 

When is the deadline to submit these required data?
The deadline for LEAs to submit their ESSER reporting data is April 21st, 2023.
 

Please review the following new training video and slide deck on applicable federal reporting requirements if your LEA received ESSER I, II, or III funding:

ESSER LEA Data Reporting Overview - PowerPoint

If you still have questions after watching the training video, please email the ESSER Inbox at [email protected].  We will call you with an answer as soon as possible.

On Monday, March 27, 2023,  ADE and our partners at the Arizona School Boards Association (ASBA), Arizona School Administrators (ASA), Arizona Association of School Business Officials (AASBO), and the Arizona Charter Schools Association (ACSA) is hosting a live, joint webinar on the next steps for LEAs on ESSER Data reporting:

Click Here to Register

Data reporting requirements for ADE ESSER funded projects and ARP School & Community Grantees

This section is for LEAs and community-based organizations that received a portion of funds from the Arizona Department of Education's set aside allotment of ESSER I, II, and III funds. Those who received ADE's ESSER III set aside dollars are American Rescue Plan (ARP) School and Community Grantees. ARP School and Community Grantees will need to meet certain data reporting requirements.