A Texas-Sized Workaround?
How do you solve a problem like Rick Perry?
As we all know, last year Congress made $787 billion available to the states, in the name of economic stimulus, to help unstick many of the funding streams that states were stuck on. Chief among these streams is K-12 education, as states were handed buckets of cash to jumpstart education spending, fill funding gaps, and ensure that school budgets did not face measureable cuts in the name of the economic downturn.
Most states put the money to use as intended (though Eduflack still offers that the original intent of ARRA was NOT to spend stimulus dollars on one or two years' of teachers' salaries, but I've clearly lost that argument). But a few, including Texas, didn't quite do as they were told. Just as Texas refused to apply for a Race to the Top grant citing its independence and general superiority to every other state in the union, the state's governor, Rick Perry, chose to violate the strings attached to those original stimulus checks.
When dollars were electronically transferred to the states in 2009, each state had to pledge that, when it came to K-12 education, the money was to boost education funding. States were not to take the federal handout and then cut the state's own contribution to education, essentially playing a short-term funding shell game. The worry, of course, is if the states cut their share this year, and there is no federal support in the following year,
As we all know, last year Congress made $787 billion available to the states, in the name of economic stimulus, to help unstick many of the funding streams that states were stuck on. Chief among these streams is K-12 education, as states were handed buckets of cash to jumpstart education spending, fill funding gaps, and ensure that school budgets did not face measureable cuts in the name of the economic downturn.
Most states put the money to use as intended (though Eduflack still offers that the original intent of ARRA was NOT to spend stimulus dollars on one or two years' of teachers' salaries, but I've clearly lost that argument). But a few, including Texas, didn't quite do as they were told. Just as Texas refused to apply for a Race to the Top grant citing its independence and general superiority to every other state in the union, the state's governor, Rick Perry, chose to violate the strings attached to those original stimulus checks.
When dollars were electronically transferred to the states in 2009, each state had to pledge that, when it came to K-12 education, the money was to boost education funding. States were not to take the federal handout and then cut the state's own contribution to education, essentially playing a short-term funding shell game. The worry, of course, is if the states cut their share this year, and there is no federal support in the following year,