Education Law

Stimulus, stimulus everywhere . . .

Our friend Jay Mathews over at the Washington Post recently asked readers how schools should spend the $100 billion in stimulus funds, here are the top five suggestions he received. BoardBuzz generally agrees that these are good suggestions, particularly in helping students who are lagging behind academically.  That should always be a top goal in what schools do. 

NSBA, too, asked our school districts how they planned to spend the stimulus funds. Here are what we heard (in no particular order):

• sustain jobs;
• implement innovation for student achievement;
• provide additional support for at-risk students;
• renovate/repair “green schools”;
• add math and writing programs in Title I schools;
• establish all day kindergarten;
• hire literacy/math coaches; and
• modernize classroom technology.

But none of these suggestions would matter if schools don’t receive the money in time to do what  they had planned to do.  In some cases, states have been slow to apply for stimulus funds, (see here) and the U.S. Department of Education is urging more states to apply for the stabilization fund.

But in the end, BoardBuzz would like to take exception (and respectfully, though forcefully disagree) with the suggestion by Mathews’ readers’  that most school board members are “ignorant and incompetent.”  BoardBuzz knows an awful lot of school board members, and we certainly wouldn’t characterize them as such.  In fact, our view is that school board members who volunteer their time to be policymakers for their local school districts are, in many cases, unsung heros. Do they need help understanding all the issues involved at the local, state and federal levels? Absolutely. But so do members of Congress and state lawmakers.   The bottom line: there is always room for improvement, but all parties  have to work togather.

For more information on the stimulus, be sure to check out NSBA’s economic stimulus resource center .

Full post as published by BoardBuzz: NSBA's Daily Weblog on May 20, 2009 (boomark / email).