Use stimulus money as Congress intended: for schools

By Kitty Boitnott

There they go again!

Federal dollars specifically intended to assist struggling school divisions during these difficult economic times are once again falling off the truck between Washington, D.C., and our local schools. As a result, hard-working educators who have been dealing with stagnant salaries and rising health care costs for multiple years are about to get shortchanged. Again.

While school employees all over the country have had their jobs saved, layoffs reduced, salaries unfrozen or benefits restored, Virginia's unique way of funding schools allows that money to be diverted from the very people the money was intended to help.

During the summer, the Virginia Education Association joined the National Education Association to push through Congress the $10 billion education jobs bill. Its sole purpose was to address draconian cuts experienced across the country in K-12 education. The VEA and NEA were gravely concerned about the impact of those cuts on the quality of classroom instruction.

Virginia had also suffered deep cuts in K-12 funding last year, so the $250 million in federal money allocated in the jobs bill seemed a lifeline for school divisions forced to lay off teachers and support professionals en masse, eliminate important programs and dramatically increase class size.

Some school divisions have used the money to restore salary cuts and eliminate furlough days. Some have passed the funds on to the employees, for whom they were intended, in the form of one-time bonuses.

Others are being more cautious with the money because they know that Virginia's school funding system allows the state to supplant its money with federal funding. Virginia also allows county supervisors and city councils to take the federal funds and then reduce local funding to the schools. That kind of financial shell game has occurred before.

When Congress enacted the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in 2009, many school divisions in Virginia received less than they were allocated. Instead, local authorities used the school jobs funds to reduce taxes, pay down debt or increase reserves.

While politicians are scheming to misuse the federal funds, Virginia's teachers and support professionals are losing their jobs. At the end of the day, however, the real victims are our students, who are being crowded into classrooms with too many classmates with needs going unmet due to drastic cutbacks in school funding - at the very time they need to be preparing for jobs in an increasingly competitive global economy.

To do right by our students, local education associations need to lobby for appropriate use of the federal money. School boards must use the money to restore jobs and salary cuts and prevent layoffs. Local taxing authorities should assure school boards that the federal money will be passed to them, and legislative leaders should disavow any suggestion to use the federal money to replace state education funds.

Finally, parents and others who know the value of our public schools should begin looking for a better way to ensure that our schools are properly funded in the future.

Kitty Boitnott, Ph.D., is president of the Virginia Education Association.