Friday, November 6, 2009 10:34 PM CST
School districts still await stimulus funds
By VALERIE WELLS, Staff Writer
LOVINGTON — Federal stimulus funds earmarked for schools are coming.
But as yet, they haven’t arrived.
“The state sent a letter and said here’s what you get,” said Superintendent Roy Smith of Lovington schools. “They took (money) away from other funds, so it’s a break even.”
Smith was told the stimulus funds could be used for building improvements such as the district’s plan to build some accessibility ramps and fix some doors to make them more accessible to students with disabilities. The district went ahead and did that work before the state informed Smith that stimulus money couldn’t be used for that, after all.
“We had to pay for it,” Smith said. “The ramps are up and the doors are in and after they said we’re going to pull (the funding) back, they also said don’t worry, we’ll find a way to reimburse you.”
The American Reinvestment and Recovery Act set aside $1.25 billion for Illinois schools. That money goes first to the state coffers and then is parceled out to individual districts. The stimulus funds are supposed to save jobs and shore up spending on special education and teacher training, among other things.
In Lovington, Smith said that because the district can’t use the money for the ramps and doors, they’re looking at using it for tuition payments for out-of-district special education instead. Stimulus funds were also supposed to pay for supplies for preschool students that, three months into the school year, still haven’t shown up, nor has the paperwork to apply for those funds, Smith said.
Sangamon Valley schools Superintendent Ernie Fowler, like Smith, knows the wheels of government grind exceedingly slowly, so he’s making plans cautiously. For their special education classes, the district decided to buy laptop computers and a cart so those computers could be shared among classrooms.
“We didn’t want to commit any funds until we had a guarantee that the money would actually arrive,” Fowler said.
He also wants to provide some professional development training for the teaching staff.
Richland Community College in Decatur doesn’t directly receive any stimulus funds, but federal money goes to the Illinois Department of Transportation and then to the Macon County Highway Department to landscape the roadsides around the college, said Greg Florian, vice president of finance for the college.
“Interestingly enough, we had a (different) grant two years ago, but because of the stimulus money, they bumped the grant and are using stimulus money instead,” he said. Total for the project is about $72,000.
Part of the college’s operating funds from the Illinois Community College Board is supposed to be coming through stimulus money, Florian said.
“I just e-mailed (the board offices in) Springfield, and they said we probably won’t see any money until February,” he said. “It’s designated to pay faculty salaries. All they did was take out state dollars and plug in stimulus dollars. It’s not additional funding. They just replaced it and took part of the burden off the state. I suppose that’s a good thing — we’re not as far in the hole.”
Contact Valerie Wells at vwells@herald-review.com or 421-7982.
Add your comments
Not already registered?
Then click Here.
Comment policy:
JG-TC.com encourages readers to engage in civil conversation with their neighbors. Comments that are submitted are not posted to the site immediately. They go into a queue to be moderated and may take several hours to be reviewed. Comments posted on Saturday may not be reviewed until Sunday afternoon.
In order to keep the page a set width, long lines (mostly long links) will be chopped. Try putting spaces in your links or consider using tinyurl.com to make a smaller link that you can include.
We will never edit or alter your comments, but we do reserve the right to remove comments that violate our code of conduct.
No comment may contain:
* Potentially libelous statements; such as accusing somebody of a crime, defamation of character, or statements that can harm somebody's reputation.
* Obscene, explicit, or racist language.
* Personal attacks, insults, threats, harassment or inciting violence.
* Commercial product promotions.
If you have any questions, please contact our moderator.
|
|
|
|
|
Harry Potter wrote on Nov 8, 2009 7:07 AM:
---------------------
It sounds like the same shell game our politicians played with the lottery revenue. "