Education Week reporter Christina A. Samuels says the federal stimulus special education boost, providing an extra $6.1 billion now and another $6.1 billion to come later this year, comes with restrictions that limit the ways local districts can use the money.

Since the additional funds will only be available for two years, and a provision of the IDEA legislation requires districts to avoid making large cuts in programs from year to year, Samuels says “it’s unwise for districts to use the added funding to start new programs or hire new teachers.”

The stimulus funds will more than double the federal contribution of $11 billion previously appropriated for special education this year.

Guidelines recently released by the U.S. Department of Education suggest that the funds be used for “short-term investments that have the potential for long-term benefits.” U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said, “There’s a huge opportunity to help train regular education teachers to better work with special education children.”

But spending on short-term projects may leave school administrators in the position of buying equipment with one pot of money, while laying off teachers at the same time, said Bruce Hunter, the associate executive director of advocacy and policy for the American Association of School Administrators, in Arlington, Va.

Federal regulations require that every federal special education dollar be spent on special education, but districts are allowed to divert some local special education funds for other uses when they get an increase in federal dollars.

See also:

See earlier post here.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 2nd, 2009 at 9:08 am and is filed under economics, education, funding, IDEA, NOT2BEMISSED, public policy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.