There is a federal funding source sitting in your district’s accounts right now that was specifically designed to pay for enrichment programs — STEM, arts, SEL, and more. Most districts receive it automatically. Many don’t use it to its full potential. It’s called Title IV-A, and it may be the most underutilized grant in K-12 education.
What Title IV-A Actually Is
Title IV-A, formally called the Student Support and Academic Enrichment (SSAE) program, was created under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) in 2015. It replaced a patchwork of narrower federal programs with a single flexible block grant intended to give districts freedom to invest in student wellness, enrichment, and technology.
Unlike competitive grants, Title IV-A flows to districts through a formula allocation based on enrollment and poverty levels. Your district almost certainly receives Title IV-A funds every year — the question is how they’re being used.
What Title IV-A Can Fund
The statute organizes allowable uses into three broad buckets:
Well-Rounded Educational Opportunities
This is the broadest category and the most relevant for enrichment programs. It explicitly includes:
- STEM education programs, including computer science and coding
- Arts and music education
- College and career readiness programs
- Entrepreneurship education
- Environmental education
- Accelerated learning opportunities
- Foreign language instruction
Safe and Healthy Students
This category covers school climate, mental health, physical education, and student wellness programs. After-school programs that incorporate SEL, physical activity, or student wellness goals can be funded here.
Effective Use of Technology
Technology infrastructure, devices, and digital learning programs qualify under this bucket. STEM enrichment programs with technology components can often draw on both the first and third categories.
How Title IV-A Flows to Schools
Title IV-A funds go to the Local Education Agency (district), not directly to schools. The district then decides how to allocate the funds across schools and programs. This creates a practical challenge for school leaders: you need to know what your district is receiving and how it’s being allocated.
Steps to access your district’s Title IV-A funds:
- Contact your district’s federal programs coordinator and ask: “How much Title IV-A funding does our district receive, how is it currently allocated, and is there any unspent carryover?”
- Make the case for enrichment programming within the Title IV-A framework — connect your program proposal to the “well-rounded educational opportunities” language in the statute
- Identify whether carryover exists — many districts have unspent Title IV-A funds from prior years that can be redirected
- Get the program into the district’s consolidated application — Title IV-A allocations are part of California’s consolidated application process and need to be planned annually
Districts Under and Over the $30,000 Threshold
Title IV-A has a set-aside provision that matters for smaller districts: districts receiving less than $30,000 in Title IV-A funds may use the money for any allowable purpose without restriction. Districts receiving $30,000 or more must allocate at least 20% to each of the first two buckets (well-rounded opportunities and safe/healthy students) and at least 5% to effective technology use.
For most districts serving significant numbers of students, the $30,000 threshold is easily exceeded — which means the allocation requirements apply. But those requirements still leave substantial flexibility for enrichment programming.
Stacking Title IV-A With Other Funding
Title IV-A is designed to supplement, not supplant, other education funding. This means you can’t use it to replace existing programs — but you can use it alongside ELOP, 21st CCLC, and other funding sources to build a more comprehensive enrichment program than any single stream could support.
A common and effective approach: use ELOP or 21st CCLC funds for the core program structure and staffing, and use Title IV-A for specific enrichment components — a coding program, an arts residency, an entrepreneurship curriculum — that the core program funding doesn’t cover.
What to Do This Week
Call or email your district’s federal programs coordinator with three questions: How much Title IV-A does our district receive? How is it currently allocated? Is there unspent carryover from prior years? Those three answers will tell you whether there’s an opportunity here — and most of the time, there is.