SPRINGFIELD — Thanks to stimulus funding, Clark-Shawnee Local Schools hired staff to work one-on-one with struggling students and maintain four classroom teachers and a classroom aide.
“It provides added support to those students who have been identified as needing more one-on-one and small group instruction in the core areas,” Superintendent Debbie Finkes said.
State governments are expected to credit the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act with saving or creating 250,000 education-related jobs locally and nationwide, according to a press release from the White House. In Ohio, more than 7,200 jobs were created or saved in education through the funds, according to the Ohio Department of education.
Locally, several districts in addition to Clark-Shawnee were able to use the funds for jobs in addition to some other programs. The money came with strict rules about how it could be used, although jobs creation and retention was one focus. Significant portions of the money were distributed to local districts through the formulas used to allocate funds for Title I — money targeted at low-income students — and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.
Northeastern Local Schools maintained employment or hours for 11 employees through the funding, according to Superintendent Rick Broderick. Springfield City Schools attributed 12.5 jobs through the stimulus dollars, according to Treasurer Chris Mohr, while Champaign County’s Triad schools was able to avoid cuts in hours to two teaching positions and eliminating a third position, said Superintendent Craig Meredith.
Many school systems used the funds to maintain jobs, said Finkes, who spoke to superintendents at the fall annual meeting of the Buckeye Association of School Administrators, the state superintendent’s organization. Finkes is president of BASA.
“A lot of the folks I spoke with there were talking about using that money to maintain current employees,” she said.
With the state’s budget woes, the stimulus funding helped some — but not all — districts avoid cutting staff.
“I think until the evidence-based model is fully-funded every district in the state of Ohio is going to have problems with maintaining their staffing and programming,” she said. “Therefore the stimulus money and the ARRA money has helped for this two year span to continue some programs although there are lots of schools that still made cuts in programming and staff even with the stimulus money.”
Contact this reporter at (937) 328-0373 or mgildow@coxohio.com.