About $100 billion of the nearly $800 billion of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funding was allocated to retain teachers and help improve and stabilize schools across the nation. By most accounts, those dollars did just that. But many school districts are wondering, what now?
"The ARRA dollars run out July 1, 2011," Connecticut Department of Education spokesman Thomas Murphy said. "Local and state budgets will be facing some losses and deficits unless other aid is forthcoming."
In 2009, the Department of Education developed specific plans for how it would allocate its Recovery Act funds, awarding the money in the form of grants and contracts, in some cases, directly to schools. Like many states, the troubled economy had New York schools on the verge of teacher layoffs and program cuts in 2009. Because of the state's financial problems, instead of delivering the funds to the school districts as grants throughout two years, the stimulus money was used to soften already planned state aid reductions to school districts. In a move labeled the "spin-up", the state Legislature decided to use most of the ARRA funds in the 2009-10 state budget.
"Because of the 'spin-up,' we had to make cuts this school year (2010-11) that we weren't expecting to make until next year," said L. Oliver Robinson, who heads up the Shenendehowa Central School District, a suburban school system with nearly 10,000 pupils about 15 miles north of Albany, N.Y., in Saratoga County.
Robinson, who is president of the New York State Council of School Superintendents, describes the end of the ARRA funding and the expected state aid cuts that will follow as "the funding cliff." As boards of education begin their 2011-12 budget discussions, Robinson said board members and superintendents are focusing on what effects the funding cliff could have.
Superintendent Greg Aidala, of South Glens Falls, N.Y, characterized the ARRA funding as a short-term fix.
"It postpones by one year some very difficult decisions that will have to be made regarding future staffing," he said. "With the stimulus funding drying up, we will need to explore other approaches to maintain programs, or the district will likely be facing the very real possibility of staff layoffs in 2011-12."
Although not a long-term answer to budget problems, the stimulus money prevented some layoffs, at least for this school year. However, there seems to be looming concern of what happens next.
In Chester County Pennsylvania's Avon Grove School District, nearly half of the $1.7 million in stimulus funding was used to either create new positions or continue to fund positions that would have otherwise been eliminated. In all, eight positions were either created or funded again, district business manager James Asciutto said.
"(Stimulus funding) helped a lot. Without it, we wouldn't have been able to do certain things," he said.
Ascuitto said it "remains to be seen" as to what the district will do if ARRA funds are not renewed. He said the district will have to "look across the board" for potential cuts.
In Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, the Norristown Area School District, used the largest portion of money to fund special education teacher salaries, reducing local real estate taxes over the two-year period. Whether that tax relief will be extended remains to be seen.
"District jobs were subsidized by the stimulus money," the district's Chief Financial Officer Ann Rohricht said. "It certainly helped us."
Rohricht said replacing the federal subsidy money in the Norristown Area school budget would be difficult unless the national economy picks up.
"We will have a lot of tough decisions to make going into the 2011-12 school year," Rohricht said. "My hope is the economy picks up and the local tax base can assume those tax burdens."
Some of the stimulus funds that seem to have the most staying power are the cases in which the money was invested in new technology.
In Saratoga Springs, N.Y., the stimulus funds allowed the district to set up and staff two Nova Net labs, one at the high school and one at the middle school, where students who are falling behind in their classes can go to catch up on their coursework. The lab allows them to catch up during regular school hours and is meant to prevent them from going to summer school or repeating a grade.
In the Souderton Area School District in Pennsylvania, every regular classroom in the Lower Salford Elementary School now has a Smartboard, thanks to the district's stimulus funding.
"They really help teachers connect different ideas together, like say an English teacher diagramming part of a sentence, and at the end of class everything can be saved and printed out, so our teachers know every student has the same thing," Principal Donna Huff said.