Federal Stimulus Money Is Running Out
One of the reasons why so many school districts are having financial difficulties is that federal money is running out and the needed cuts in public schools that those funds stopped, will have to be given consideration along with the huge mismanagement of funds that occurred when those federal monies hit the states school districts. Actually, federal stimulus money helped school districts to put off needed cuts in public school according to Kevin Lamarque a reporter for Reuters, but turned school districts that were facing huge cuts due to the recession into spending fiends when the deluge of federal monies found their districts. His report also includes the fact that most school districts were hoping to be given funds to stay afloat by the end of President Obama’s first term in office. But, many of the nation’s schools will have used up the federal stimulus monies that they were given long before that.
States Will Have To Find Other Sources Of Revenue When Stimulus Money Runs Out
According to Bruce Baker, professor at Rutgers University, states will have a serious financial problem by the end of this school term in finding means to replace the billions that Congress sent them in stimulus money. They will either have to make the needed cuts to the school system from Kindergarten through Twelfth or find some way of getting those billions that will have been spent replaced.
Reckless Spending Of Stimulus Money Is Being Blamed For Financial Crisis
When Education Secretary Arne Duncan cautioned states about actually spending the billions infused into school districts, the largest ever in the history of the United States, many school districts scoffed and actually added 250,000 more jobs to their rosters. While the stimulus money was to be used to prevent the dire effects of recession from forcing out already existing jobs, school districts spent their share by actually creating more jobs that will have to find some source of continued revenue.
Many of these states who found the windfall of federal money too enticing will be faced with massive lack of funds to meet their payrolls for the 2010 to 2011 school year.