This morning’s New York Times has an important article about schools and the expensive implications of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The stimulus provided about $80 billion to the nation’s schools designed to primarily help our K-12 education system weather the recession. Districts and schools used this money to preserve jobs and existing programs (something I’ve lamented since they were also supposed to use it for reform). At the local level, these funds were seen as a godsend—quick, easy money that enabled schools to largely continue going about their pre-downturn business.
However, state budgets typically continue to suffer long after a national recession ends and education budgets can take even longer to bounce back. So districts’ and schools’ need for quick, easy federal money will extend into the future. The problem is that this $80 billion has almost entirely been used up already.
A number of new studies referenced in the article found that some states used their entire allotments virtually immediately. Others spread it over last school year and this school year. According to one analysis, on average, states have only 14 percent of their funds left to apply to the school year that will begin this fall.
So we should fully expect a growing chorus advocating for a second schools stimulus. They’ll note that the first one saved hundreds of thousands of jobs—thereby contributing to the economic turnaround—and that unless we repeat it, those jobs and maybe more will be lost. At the end of last year, House Democrats introduced such a bill (with a $23 billion price tag), but it didn’t move very far. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a committee hearing and vote in short order.