The public school system in this city hugging the shore of Lake Michigan is running low on money and options for educating its 21,000 students as federal stimulus cash dries up.
Anticipating this summers end to the 10 million boost it received from the stimulus, Racine Unified held a referendum in April asking to replace some of the lost cash with local property tax dollars.
The Department of Education generates regular reports on states and their stimulus spending. But it shows every education program, not just stimulus funds for special education.
So I took the most recent report, from August 6, deleted all the other programs and created a PDF file that shows where states are in drawing down their special education stimulus funds.
So far, about 43 percent of the Part B allocation to the states has been spent; that’s the largest portion of federal funding for special education, and it’s used for students ages 6 to 21. About 36 percent of the section 619 preschool stimulus grant money, which would be used for children ages 3 to 5, has been spent.
