Every Thursday, REL-NEI highlights state-based resources, press releases, and news around the Northeast and Islands Region related to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). For a listing of REL Issues & Answers Reports categorized under ARRA topics and domains, click here.
Obama Unveils $49.7B Education Budget for 2011
The Obama administration on February 1st released its proposed budget for fiscal year 2011. It includes
$49.7 billion for the U.S. Education Department (ED), an increase of $3.5 billion or 6.2 percent from this year. The plan includes proposals for rewriting the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), known as No Child Left Behind, to provide more competitive funding, greater flexibility, higher academic standards, a new accountability system, and support for innovative reforms. About $1.35 billion of the increase would continue the Race to the Top competitive grant program. Another $500 million is slated for the Investing in Innovation Fund, with the rest going toward school turnarounds, charters, school safety, and programs for preparing, retaining, and rewarding effective teachers and leaders.
Also on February 1st, ED announced that education funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) supported more than 300,000 education jobs in 2009, including teachers, principals, librarians, and counselors.
The press release also stated: “In total, the Department of Education funding supported approximately 400,000 positions including corrections officers, public health personnel, and construction workers.”
The Connecticut State Department of Education posted on its website an ARRA Quarterly Report Summary for the Period Ending December 31, 2009. According to the summary, ARRA funds created or retained nearly 5,400 jobs in the state during the last quarter of last year.
New York and Massachusetts are among six states partnering with Mass Insight Education and Research Institute, a Boston-based nonprofit group, to turn around their lowest-performing schools. Funded by ARRA, private philanthropy, and participating states, the Partnership Zone Initiative, spearheaded by Mass Insight, will allow states to set up protected school “zones” free of traditional rules and operating conditions, such as restrictions on the length of the school day or central-office hiring practices. States and school districts will oversee the work of local “lead” partners—which can be local groups dedicated to school improvement, charter-management organizations, or in-house turnaround specialists—who manage a cluster of three to five low-performing schools and supervise the services needed to reverse the schools’ downward slide. Learn more by reading the New York State Education Department press release or an EdWeek article.
One ED program dedicated to improving the nation’s most chronically underperforming schools is the Title I School Improvement Grants program, or SIG. For FY 2009, $3.5 billion in SIG grants are available to states to make subgrants to local districts—an unprecedented amount thanks to a $3 billion ARRA infusion. The deadline for applications to SIG is February 8th.
On February 2nd, the Maine Department of Education hosted a conference call to discuss SIG. View the announcement or listen to an audio file (mp3) of the call.
On January 26th, the Vermont Department of Education posted a request for public comment on a state request for a waiver to extend the availability of SIG funds for the state and local districts to September 30th, 2013, rather than September 30th, 2011. On January 21st, New York Education Commissioner David Steiner announced 57 schools in the state identified as “persistently lowest achieving” and, therefore, eligible for SIG grants. To receive funding, Steiner said districts with identified schools must agree to do one of the following:
- Redesign or replace the school (Turnaround Model),
- Convert the school to a charter school (Restart Model),
- Transform the school (Transformation Model), or
- Close the school and transfer students to higher performing schools in the district.
In other ARRA news, both Massachusetts and New Hampshire have posted their Race to the Top proposals. View the Massachusetts application here and the New Hampshire plan here. Also, The New Hampshire Department of Education announced on January 14th that 22 districts in the state have been awarded grants of approximately $145,000 each—for a total of $3.2 million—from the federal Enhancing Education Through Technology Program as part of ARRA.
The grants are to develop technology-rich learning environments as part of the state’s 21st Century Classrooms Initiative.
For more information, visit these ARRA-related websites across the Northeast and Islands Region:
U.S. Department of Education
http://www.ed.gov/policy/gen/leg/recovery/index.html
State Recovery Sites
http://www.recovery.gov/?q=content/state-local-tribal-and-territorial-resources
State Education Agency Recovery Sites
Education Week’s “Schools and the Stimulus”
http://www.edweek.org/ew/collections/schools-stimulus/index.html
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