Area schools take ‘wait and see’ position on stimulus help

staff report

Area school superintendents have generally taken a “wait and see” position when it comes to the federal economic stimulus package and education.

The Senate version of the bill cuts out the $20 billion earmarked for public school construction that was contained in the House version, and that would reduce the Youngstown city schools’ share of the stimulus package immediately by about $7.8 million. The district had been earmarked for $17.6 million total in the House bill.

“I’m not doing any wishing until we see what comes down in that bill,” said Kathryn Hellweg, Warren schools superintendent.

Warren was to receive nearly $7.6 million under the House bill but would lose $3.3 million earmarked for construction under the Senate version.

The House version had directly allocated money to programs for disadvantaged children and special education.

The Senate bill sets aside $10.4 billion for education for the disadvantaged and about $13.5 billion for special education programs, but it isn’t clear if the breakdown per district is the same as the House bill.

Hellweg said she would like to be able to use federal funds to reduce class sizes, offer more targeted academic intervention, more preschool programs, more advanced programs and event to develop a community/business relationship that include provide internships for students.

Douglas Heuer, Austintown superintendent, said most of the superintendents he’s spoken with aren’t making any definite plans for money they don’t have yet.

What he’s doing, he said, is sitting down with his board to prepare a number of possible scenarios regarding federal stimulus funds — from the worst case that would include staff reductions to the best case that would involve increasing programming in the disadvantaged and special education areas.

Austintown was earmarked for $2.3 million and $600,000 of that was in construction funds that were cut in the Senate bill.

Youngstown State University has no wish list per se but is hoping the state of Ohio will get the share of funds requested by Gov. Ted Strickland, who intends to use it to balance the state biennial budget.

Part of that budget includes increasing state aid to public colleges and universities in exchange for a third year of tuition freezes in 2009-10.

YSU is supposed to get about $3 million under that plan.