Barbara Lee Announces Over $34 Million for Schools in California's Ninth District
For Immediate Release
April 3, 2009
Contact: Nicole Y. Williams
(202) 225-2661
Recovery funds to help Students, Teachers and Families
Washington, D.C. – Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-CA) announced today that over $34 Million in emergency education funding has been released for schools in the Ninth Congressional District of California to help save education-related jobs and maintain programs for low-income students and students with disabilities. Specifically, California’s Ninth District schools will receive $17,716,994 Million in Title I funds and $17,045,000 Million in IDEA funds immediately.
Nationwide, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act provides $13 billion in Title I funds, which helps low-income students, and $13.5 billion in IDEA funds, which helps students with disabilities. This is the first of two installments of direct funding for Title I and IDEA programs that for school districts will receive under President Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act; the second installment of funds will be released to districts in the fall of this year.
“The greatest investment we can make is in the education of our young people,” said Congresswoman Barbara Lee. “These funds will go a long way in help our teachers, students and their families through jobs and programming that will strengthen our school districts. I applaud President Obama and my colleagues in Congress for working so quickly and diligently to get these recovery funds to the people that need it most.”
In addition to the Title I and IDEA investments, the economic recovery plan also created a state stabilization fund to help stabilize state and local budgets and restore harmful cuts to education. Along with announcing the release of funding for local districts, the Obama administration also issued guidelines today to clarify how these funds must be used to help clear up recent confusion over whether the state can decide how local districts and colleges use those funds. States can also now apply for this funding.
The guidelines confirm that while states allocate the funds, it should be up to local school districts and colleges and universities to decide how to use this emergency aid, not up to states. The guidelines also reaffirmed that state stabilization funds should be used for three purposes: to backfill harmful cuts to k12 and higher education, to stave off teacher layoffs, and to modernize school facilities – which could create new jobs.
IDEA is the major federal program that provides funding for special education and related services to students with disabilities. The Title I program provides funds to low-income school districts that are in even greater need during the economic downturn. The funds appropriated through the Recovery Plan are distributed through the previously defined IDEA and Title I formulas.
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