Texas' application for stimulus funds in
Texas Gov. Rick Perry submitted the state’s application for billions in education funds from the federal stimulus package Wednesday, just before a deadline to do so passed.
If the application is approved, Texas would begin getting the $3.25 billion in Education Stabilization Fund dollars when fiscal year 2010 begins in September.
By Thursday morning, 42 states had already been approved to receive the bulk of their education funds. Another distribution will be later this year.
Some school districts in Texas have worried that Education Secretary Arne Duncan could balk at state legislators’ use of $1.9 billion in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds to fuel a funding increase, which also includes a mandatory $800 teacher raise. He has warned at least one other state against using stimulus money as a way to decrease state funding.
In Texas, school funding is through a combination of state money and local property tax revenue. In his application, Perry said that the state portion of funding would have dropped in the coming fiscal years because of increases in local property tax revenues. So, the $1.9 billion in stimulus money is restoring funds, not supplanting them, the application said.
The remainder of the $3.25 billion is being used to replace money lost because of declines in the state's Permanent School Fund, the application said.
“State leaders are confident that the allocation of SFSF (State Fiscal Stabilization Funds) are consistent with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act,” Perry’s letter to the education department said.




