D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser announced tens of millions of extra dollars for education in her next budget, which city education leaders say will help schools manage rising costs.

The increase, which would boost the city’s public education spending by about $200 million, is driven mostly by a nearly 6 percent increase in the amount of money D.C. will spend per student. The city’s overall budget for schools is $2.2 billion.

“This increase will make sure our schools have the resources they need,” Bowser said during a press conference on Monday.

The District would spend at least $12,419 for every child in the 2022-23 academic year, which is about $690 more than it currently spends, according to the mayor. The city educates nearly 100,000 students in its public schools, traditional and charter.

She also promised $36 million to help with pandemic recovery over the next two years, which schools can use to contend with higher costs.

In D.C. Public Schools, it also means campuses will not receive less money than they did for the 2021-22 academic year, even if enrollment drops (schools typically expect to receive fewer dollars if their enrollment is projected to fall).

“We recognize the impact of operating schools in a pandemic,” said D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Lewis Ferebee. “We will continue all our health and safety protocols and ensure that we accelerate learning and also provide immediate academic and social supports for our students.”

The District will also boost pay for the school system’s substitute teachers to at least $20 an hour in coming weeks. Substitute teachers have lobbied for pay increases for several years but the issue has generated more attention amid chronic teacher staffing challenges during the pandemic.

It is the second pay increase for substitute teachers that Bowser announced this year. The first, which set the minimum pay for the position at $17 an hour, was dismissed as too little by a group representing substitute teachers.

The extra money will be drawn from local coffers, the mayor said.

D.C. is still in the early stages of its annual budget process. It is still unclear if the spending boost – the largest increase in several years – would cover cost increases that have forced some schools to cut positions in the past.

At the start of the budget process last year, the District also announced increased spending for schools. But those extra dollars were not enough to keep pace with staffing cost increases in D.C. Public Schools, prompting community members to push for extra money to try and spare jobs.

Over the next two weeks, principals and teams of parents and staff at each DCPS school will pore over proposed spending plans for individual campuses. It’s during that process that school communities will develop a more clear picture of what Bowser’s announcement means for them – and if the increases are enough.

Some education advocates expressed cautious optimism.

Qubilah Huddleston, an education policy analyst at the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute, which conducts research on budgets, said the spending increases sound “great overall.” But she said she wants more information about how the money will be spent.

“We don’t necessarily know what it’s going to mean for schools in actuality,” she said. “There are still a lot of questions and we have to unpack the numbers.”

Mary Levy, a local watchdog who has studied D.C. schools budgets for four decades, said the increased funding could mean that schools will no longer have to misspend dollars intended for its most vulnerable students to pay for core services.

“We will know a lot more after we work over the individual school budgets,” Levy said.

The D.C. Charter School Alliance, which advocates for the city’s charter campuses, lauded the spending increases. The organization has pushed D.C. to boost the amount of money it spends per student by at least 3.6 percent.

“We’re encouraged by her announcement of historic increases in public education and for supporting continued, increased, and equitable investments in our students,” said Shannon Hodge, the organization’s executive director.