Government opens competition for grants to poorest school districts, By Josh Lederman (AP), Seattle Times: “Hoping to build on state-level reforms aimed at closing the education achievement gap, the Education Department opened its Race to the Top competition to school districts on Sunday, inviting the poorest districts across the country to vie for almost $400 million in grants. Following four months of public comment on a draft proposal, the Education Department unveiled its final criteria for the district-level competition, which will award 15 to 25 grants to districts that have at least 2,000 students and 40 percent or more who qualify for free or reduced-cost lunches – a key poverty indicator…”
Tag: School funding
Education Funding – Florida
Restored education funds fail to make up for earlier cutbacks, By Ben Wieder, March 5, 2012, Stateline.org: “A walk through Northwood Elementary School in this small city shows almost at a glance the privations that tight Florida budget years have imposed on K-12 education. There is an up-to-date science lab at Northwood waiting for customers, but there is no science specialist competent to take advantage of it. So it remains empty for much of the day. ‘If funding were available, we’d have a hands-on science teacher,’ says Principal Jacqueline Craig. ‘We have the facility, but unless the teachers bring their students over here, there’s no one to teach in this classroom.’ Science teacher isn’t the only position Craig has been unable to fill. ‘We had a media specialist,’ she says, ‘then we had a media assistant. Now we have nothing.’ Declining property taxes contributed to a $1.3 billion statewide cut to education last year, Republican Governor Rick Scott’s first year in office. Now Scott wants to put money back into education. He made headlines in December when he announced that he would reverse course and make increased education funding a priority in his second year…”
High-Poverty Schools and School Funding – Florida
Many high-poverty schools ‘shortchanged’ in Central Florida, By Lauren Roth, January 12, 2012, Orlando Sentinel: “At Hiawassee Elementary in Orange County, where nine out of every 10 students lives in poverty, the school district spent about $2,065 per student on teachers and other staff during the 2008-09 school year. By contrast, the county’s Lake Whitney Elementary, where only about 10 percent of the students are poor, spent about $2,710 on staffing per student that year – nearly a third more. Across Central Florida, school districts spend less per pupil to staff many of their highest-poverty schools despite federal rules intended to make sure every poor school gets its fair share, according to an Orlando Sentinel analysis of federal data…”