This 90-second video can be used to help your system explain your efforts to invest your ESSER funds with a sustainable “Do Now, Build Toward” approach. It begins by walking you through three approaches to ESSER spending and then digs into what sustainability looks like in this moment — thinking beyond using ESSER dollars for one-time investments, to also thinking about how the funds can be used as part of a three-year runway for redesigning underlying cost structures and restructuring necessary investments in ways that help defer or better optimize longer-term costs.

But the work of investing ESSER funds with this type of sustainable approach is easier said than done. So we crowdsourced some specific examples from two of our leading CFO partners to share ideas about the types of investments that can target underlying cost structures and better optimize long-term costs.