Education Law

$7,082,502,544.32

That's the amount of money ready to be invested in schools in America's cities. The U.S. Conference of Mayors has released a report outlining all the projects that are "ready to go" that could potentially be funded by the Stimulus Package that is being put together right now in Congress with guidance from the Obama Administration. Ready to go meaning that the project would begin in 2009 and would be finished by the end of 2010. Also, remember, this is not all the school projects across the U.S., it is just those in cities with populations over 30,000 (the required population to be a member of the U.S. Conference of Mayors). 

The list of school projects is quite interesting. There are 1066 line items, but the line items vary greatly from projects under $10,000 to projects over $100,000,000. The descriptions of the projects also vary widely. I've included some comparisons below so you can get a sense of the requests.

Overall, I think there are wide differences in the types of Stimulus spending requests. I am concerned that the list is populated with a lot more fixing roofs and a lot fewer installing fiberoptic networks, but I was impressed with some of the requests. There were a lot of projects that were meant to green schools, and it is hard to see how those will not be funded under the Stimulus Package. While I understand that school infrastructure is a necessary operation and in tight budget times upgrades to facilities are few and far between. But, I would much rather see these Stimulus dollars going to projects that change the operation of the school (such as solar panels, wireless access, fiberoptic connections), rather than projects that just maintain the status quo (new boilers, roofs, busses, etc.).

Anyway, feel free to check it out and see what your city is asking for.

Full post as published by Edjurist on January 17, 2009 (boomark / email).