Teacher Funds In Danger
by CHARLES LUSSIER - Advocate (excerpt)

Louisiana is in line to receive an estimated $147 million in federal money so public schools can preserve an estimated 2,200 teaching jobs, but a federal requirement may mean Louisiana won’t qualify for some or all of this funding.

State Superintendent Paul Pastorek, in an e-mail sent Thursday night to superintendents throughout the state, said strings attached to the jobs legislation approved Wednesday — unofficially called the EduJobs law — “may deny LA funding.” Pastorek was initially positive on the bill, which the U.S. Department of Education estimates could prevent as many 2,200 teacher layoffs in Louisiana alone. In a statement after the bill passed Wednesday, Pastorek said, “this legislation will provide immediate and temporary assistance so that our local districts and schools will not be forced to cut back on one of the most significant classroom resources, our teachers.”

But in his Thursday e-mail, Pastorek said that, upon closer inspection, the legislation has problems. A big mandate, he said, is that states need to show “maintenance of effort.” This was also a requirement of the 2009 federal stimulus act. The mandate is supposed to prevent states from pocketing the federal money and then cutting their spending further than they would have otherwise. Instead, the states have to try to maintain funding levels that existed before the economic downturn. Louisiana ended up applying for a waiver in order to avoid violating the federal stimulus act’s maintenance-of-effort provision because of higher education cuts in January.