Welcome
Pop quiz, NC GOP hotshots.
President Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress have no plans to extend over $1 billion in temporary education funding for the upcoming school year. What do you do? What do you do?
Bulletin Board
- Early April marks a major milestone for college-bound high school seniors: the end of a long college search. That task may be easier in the future, thanks to a new website created by the John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy. NC College Finder (nccollegefinder.org) provides a wide range of information on 54 accredited 4-year universities in the state.
- The North Carolina History Project would like educators and homeschool parents to submit lesson plans suitable for middle and high school courses in North Carolina history. Please provide links to NC History Project encyclopedia articles and other primary and secondary source material, if possible. Go to the NC History Project website for further information.
- You will find wisdom, knowledge, and purpose at our research newsletter archive.
CommenTerry
The public has heard much about the expiration of the 1-cent, temporary sales tax, but the media has ignored the fact that federal stimulus and EduJobs funding is set to expire at the end of the current school year. Policy folks call it the "funding cliff." According to the NC Department of Public Instruction, the state’s public district and charter schools will lose $877.4 million in stimulus funds and nearly $300 million in EduJobs funds in a matter of months. The loss of these funds will force school districts to reduce faculty and staff.
School districts were alerted to the inevitability of the "funding cliff" when the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), or stimulus bill, passed, but many district officials used the temporary money to fund essential teaching positions anyway. Perhaps many of them believed that the state and/or federal government would bail them out when the funding expired in 2011. Yet, the nation’s slow economic recovery means that neither the Obama administration nor the NC General Assembly is in any position to do so.
The federal Education Jobs Fund (EduJobs) bill was enacted a year later. According to the U.S. Department of Education, the purpose of the legislation was to "help stabilize State and local budgets to avoid or minimize reductions in education and other essential services, in exchange for a State’s commitment to advance essential education reforms." NC DPI analysts reported that districts and charters used nearly $300 million in EduJobs funds to support nearly 5,400 teaching positions. EduJobs funded school-based personnel positions for the current academic year only.
After two years of stimulus funding and one year of EduJobs funding, the "funding cliff" has officially arrived. In a feature article it published two weeks ago, Education Week examined how New Hanover County (NC), Fort Worth (TX), and Orleans Parish (LA) school districts planned to cope with the impending loss of stimulus funds:
While the Education Department has touted the jobs saved or created by money from the 2009 stimulus legislation, it also advised districts to be cautious in using the money for staffing because of the funding cliff ahead when the aid ran out.
"Because ARRA funds are available for only two years, [local education agencies] should consider how to use these short-term funds to build organizational and staff capacity for sustaining reform efforts when ARRA funding ends," the department’s guidance reads.
Now, New Hanover County is among the districts at the very precipice the Education Department warned about. Special education teachers or specialists in Fort Worth, Texas, and Orleans Parish, La., are facing similar job cuts as the stimulus money runs out.
District leaders in New Hanover proposed cutting 132 stimulus-funded faculty and staff positions. Of those, about half are special education teachers, special education assistants, or related jobs. Half are jobs at low-income schools. In addition to the stimulus windfall, New Hanover used $4.8 million in temporary EduJobs funds to employ 88 teaching positions for the 2010-11 school year.
Despite the inevitable loss of millions in stimulus and EduJobs funds, school districts like New Hanover conducted business as usual. Should we continue to blame Republicans for their poor choices?
Random Thought
Yesterday, Representative Tricia Cotham (D — Mecklenburg) tweeted, "I just love Lady GaGa!" That is fascinating.
Facts and Stats
Over the last two years, school districts across the state rapidly poured federal stimulus and EduJobs money into teaching positions. Years before passage of the stimulus, federal funds supported between six and seven percent of the North Carolina teaching workforce. The following year, that is, the year that the stimulus funds arrived, the percentage increased to nearly 10 percent. With the addition of EduJobs funds, the federal government funded 12 percent of North Carolina’s teachers this year. In two years, North Carolina’s public schools shifted funding for 6 percent of its teaching positions from state and local sources to temporary federal sources.
Mailbag
I would like to invite all readers to submit announcements, as well as their personal insights, anecdotes, concerns, and observations about the state of education in North Carolina. I will publish selected submissions in future editions of the newsletter. Anonymity will be honored. For additional information or to send a submission, email Terry at [email protected].
Education Acronym of the Week
ARRA — American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009
Quote of the Week
"You [Democratic Legislators] also used $1.6 billion in Stimulus money — one time money for ongoing expenses. How many of you said no to that? Let’s put the blame where it needs to be. Don’t come back now crying about jobs. You should have done something last time when you could have done something more about it."
– Sen. Bob Rucho (R-Mecklenburg), February 4, 2011 floor speech
Click here for the Education Update archive.
