Federal economic stimulus money is headed into school district coffers, but so far it has come without an instruction manual.
Last week, school district superintendents, including Emporia school superintendent John Heim, sat down with U.S. congressmen and senators to talk about what school districts should do with the funds.
The meetings came as an adjunct to the Advocacy Conference for the American Association of School Administrators, held last week in Washington, D.C.
By the time the advocacy groups finished their mission, Heim and his fellow administrators had talked with U.S. Reps. Dennis Moore and Lynn Jenkins and with aides of Sens. Pat Roberts and Sam Brownback and Reps. Jerry Moran and Todd Tiahrt.
“It was the same conversation with all six of them,” Heim said. “... I think there were some misconceptions among the congressmen and senators. They were thinking that the stimulus money was really like a cash flow issue for school districts and that we needed to get the cash immediately.
“And what we really need is the rules and regulations on how the money can be spent so we can do our budgets for next year.”
Budget discussions in the Emporia district will begin at next week’s board of education meeting.
Heim said there also were misconceptions about how the money can be spent.
“Some people are saying that the money needs to be used to save jobs, and others are saying this money we need to use on new initiatives and reform,” Heim said. “The point is, which is it?”
Heim said that different states have different laws and policies on how money can be used, which gives some states greater flexibility in spending.
“Kansas is using money to backfill cuts, so cuts won’t be so extreme,” he said. “You could argue that money’s being used to save jobs. But then there’s a different pot of money that is going to new initiatives and has to be spent on new things. So it really is kind of confusing.”
Some of the stimulus money will go to districts in the form of state aid, which will lessen the cuts Kansas has implemented because of its own budget problems.
“That’s one pot of money,” he said. “Then we’re going to get $400,000 a year for the next two years for ‘new and different’” programs.
Districts have been wary of beginning new projects with finite funding that causes local units to pick up the costs once the short-term federal funding ceases.
Heim speculated that Kansas’s new governor, Mark Parkinson, will wait to apply for the stimulus money until the legislature acts, so he will know how to fill out the application for the funds.
“For us, the bigger issue right now is what the rules are going to be on how we can spend it,” he said.
The school board has not yet discussed possibilities, Heim said, though he will recommend board members accept the results of the Performance-Based Budgeting council.
“The No. 1 thing that people thought we should add was to increase the number of instructional coaches in the buildings, so I think that’s where we’ll go if that’s going to be allowed by the rules,” Heim said.
The instructional coaches analyze data about students’ progress to provide feedback to teachers on how to structure their classes, provide interventions for students, and “move students along who already know and understand what the curriculum is,” he said. “They don’t work directly with students, but they do provide a lot of assistance to teachers.”
Heim and the administrators also talked with federal legislators about the effects of immigration laws on students and about the importance of early childhood programs, such as the one the Emporia district operates at the old Maynard school building.
“It was more about us talking to them than about them talking to us,” Heim said of the Kansas delegation. “They were good listeners.”
The advocates talked about the dilemma immigration laws place on both students and school districts when undocumented parents bring their children to the United States illegally.
“The kids really don’t have a choice on whether they’re going to be here,” he said.
Immigration status is moot when children are under 18 years of age, he explained; it’s when those children become adults that the problems surface immediately.
“When the kids turn 18, they’re illegal,” Heim explained. “In the K through 12 setting, we can’t ask questions about their documentation status. They can be 4.0 students — and many of those kids do very well — and think they have good options.”
Then reality strikes down their plans.
“They can’t get a job, they can’t go to school,” Heim said.
Though Kansas allows children of illegal immigrants to attend Regents schools at tuition rates paid by Kansas citizens, they cannot legally work to help pay their way through college.
The good options they believed they had turn into two options: staying in America illegally or returning to a country they did not grow up in.
“What are they supposed to do?” he asked. “So, it creates a real paradox for students when they turn 18 and get emancipated from their parents. We didn’t have any solutions for that.”