When the Notice of Grant Award arrives from Texas Education Agency in about another month, Cleburne ISD will know exactly how it can spend each penny of $4.3 million in stimulus funds from Uncle Sam.

The breakdown is $965,033 in Title 1 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds, $1.9 million in state fiscal stabilization funds, $30,142 Title 2 D technology ARRA, $5,574 Individuals with Disabilities Education Act-B funds for pre-school, and $1.3 million IDEA-B Formula ARRA funds.

School districts are able to use Title 1 funds to hire teachers to lower their student-teacher ratio, provide tutoring for struggling students, create school computer labs, fund parent involvement activities, purchase instructional materials, host professional development for teachers, create pre-kindergarten classes, and hire teacher assistants.

IDEA is the federal government’s primary vehicle to power the education of children with disabilities. It authorizes aid for special education and services to help children with disabilities receive a full education.

But the additional breakdown in stimulus funding is complicated, and Cleburne ISD administrators such as Dr. Darlene Callender and Dr. Tim Miller crossed every “I” and dotted every “T” to try to ensure TEA could find no stone unturned.

“There are four different kinds of stimulus funds,” Callender said. “There’s Title 1 ARRA. There’s IDEA-B ARRA. There’s state fiscal stabilization fund. And there’s a new one, Title 2 Part D ARRA. All we know about that is the amount we’re getting.

“Title 1 is to supplement the No Child Left Behind program. IDEA-B is to supplement the special education grant. The SFSF is to help with funding issues we’ve seen statewide.”

The majority of the money will be spent this year, Callender said.

“It can be spread over two years. Once it’s spent, it’s gone.”

The $1,990,749 in SFSF funds essentially covers $2 that the state legislature took off the table instead of sending to Cleburne ISD. The legislature mandated teacher raises, but school districts got no money to pay the mandates until the federal government came through.

In applying for grants, Cleburne ISD took considerable time to determine how it could spend the money.

“We tried to be deliberate in the process and make sure we were meeting our needs,” Callender said. “We started with district and campus needs assessments. We looked at areas of need. We visited with principals to make sure we were filling our needs with Title 1 ARRA. At the special ed level, we met with department people. The SFSF was more of a recapture of funds.”

Needs will continue to be assessed.

“It’s an ongoing campus and district improvement plan,” Miller said. “If a family moves in with some very high special education needs, you may have to adjust your needs assessment accordingly.”

Much of the SFSF funds were allotted for newly created positions or positions that were about to go away because of the economic downturn.

Unlike Alvarado, which chose to spread stimulus money as raises among the entire staff, Cleburne ISD elected to spend it in specific areas, such as career and technology.

CISD funded the across-the-board, mandated raises by other means.

Initially, districts feared they would be unable to spend the money they received because of restrictions.

“It took a lot of planning,” Callender said.

“We were given a lot of leeway in how we could spend the SFSF funds,” Miller said. “The legislative mandate was for across the board raises for teachers, but because we would have needed a lot of documentation and paperwork for every single employee, we decided to focus on a few employees, as in career and technology, and use the money to pay their full salaries. TEA gave us a lot of guidance on that.”

Another fear for districts is spending money that won’t be available two years hence.

“You have to make the programs sustainable, so we worked to do that,” Callender said.

“We didn’t want to put anybody in jeopardy of not having a job in two years,” Miller said.

If the money isn’t there in two years, he said, “those programs will go back to the funding sources that paid for them prior to this. The $2 million deficit [former state allotment] needs to be figured out, whether it comes to us from the federal or state government. Worst case scenario, if the state legislature doesn’t provide the funding, we’d have to look at other sources to fund salaries.”

The stimulus grants besides SFSF were not as personnel-related.

“We looked at sustainability, developing programs that would increase student achievement,” Callender said. “Once that money is not there, we’ll already have good programs in place.”