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Stimulus funds shore up local schools

BY JEFF NACHTIGAL, Californian staff writer
jnachtigal@bakersfield.com | Wednesday, Sep 23 2009 06:06 PM

Last Updated Wednesday, Sep 23 2009 06:08 PM

As the budget turned from bad to calamitous last spring, many local school districts were set to hoard federal stimulus money as a buffer to future budget cuts.

But that thinking changed when the rules on how to spend the special "stabilization" funding become more clear.

"We shifted gears on this," said Robert Harte, Fruitvale School District business director. "Our initial thinking was to spread it over two years, but it developed to let us change how we spent it."

The bulk of Fruitvale's $1 million is going to fund a portion of the salaries for 21 elementary teachers.

Without the teachers, the district's class sizes would have grown significantly.

Fruitvale also brought back about 15 classroom aides, two music teachers and a custodian.

Other districts are using the money in all sorts of ways:

The Kern High School District will apply all of its allotted $18 million to cover 275 certificated positions through the end of the year, said Dennis Scott, associate superintendent of business.

Bakersfield City School District has spent $4 million of its $10 million on books and other instructional materials for the classroom.

Rosedale Union School District will use its $1.5 million to support 12 primary teaching positions it would have otherwise lost.

Keeping extra teachers means the district is holding primary grade class sizes to 24 students, instead of 30, said new Superintendent John Mendiburu.

Panama-Buena Vista Union School District is spending its full allotment of $5.4 million to maintain its music program and 16 full-time positions, hire aides for primary classrooms with big class sizes and maintain its Gifted and Talented Program for elementary students.

"It didn't save the jobs we laid off this year, and we still had to make a certain level of adjustments, but it would have been worse without it," said Panama's Michael Brouse, assistant superintendent of business services.

Brouse said the district was "hopeful" that the stabilization money would see them through a couple more years, by which time the economy might turn around.

At the Kern County Superintendent of Schools office, instructional programs are seeing dollars first, including the Community Day School, alternative education, and the Valley Oaks Charter School, said Mark Fulmer, assistant superintendent of district administration and finance.

Before deciding how to spend the federal dollars, districts had to figure out how to deal with a complex set of rules.

For instance, any interest accrued on the stimulus funding must be sent back to the government; districts are required to spend all of their first installment of their funding before they get another; and districts were concerned about a rule that obligates them to spend the same amount year-to-year on certain programs, because adding to a program this year with one-time funding would leave a hole in the budget for next.

"This is the most complicated budget year that we've faced. Not only is there less money, but there are many issues of complexity of how you use it," Fulmer said.