Texas school districts may get stimulus money

Texas school districts are slated to receive taxpayer money from the federal economic stimulus package, pending governor Rick Perry’s acceptance.

Royse City ISD and all districts would receive extra money under programs called “State Stabilization Fund”; “Department of Education” which includes three areas: “Education for the Disadvantaged”, “School Improvement Program”, and “Special Education”; and Infrastructure Financing Tools, which include no- and low-interest bonds. This is information available on the Texas Education Agency website, posted March 2.

Per the latest information of Royse City ISD’s chief financial officer, Jimmy Butler, Royse City ISD may receive 28 percent more than the normal state allotment for special education, and 36 percent more for Title 1.

“We don’t have any specifics on any strings on spending: whether it be spending on supplies or equipment or salaries or strictly up to the schools. We don’t have the rules yet,” Butler said.

If hiring and salaries are stipulated, that is a bit of caveat, he said.

The next year after stimulus money, the district would have to have to “step up and pay that out of our money, or let them go,” he said.

The most beneficial use of the money is for hiring and salaries, he said, so it could be a double-edged sword.

Title 1 is a supplement for reading, math and “those types of programs,” Butler explained. “We use a lot of ours for reading, primarily in the elementary schools,” he said. That includes a reading teacher in each school.

Normally, Royse City ISD gets $200,000 for Title 1. Taxpayers nationwide would be providing an additional $57,000.

For Special Education, Royse City normally gets $600,000. The proposed stimulus, or economic recovery money, would be an additional $220,000.

As far as the other distributions of economic recovery money, the district has received no significant information.