How will Fed $ be Spent in the B-R School District?

I’d like to expand upon a response that I made this afternoon to a comment by Poppet, a reader of my blog. Poppet is concerned about how the $398,882 of Federal $ allocated to the Bridgewater-Raritan School District will be spent. Poppet writes, “I hope it will be directed to the classrooms and not administration or sports.”

Not necessarily. That will be up to the Board of Education.

Below are several excerpts from the New Jersey Education Job Funds Guidance which explains how that money may be spent:

• “A district must use its funds only for compensation and benefits and other expenses, such as support services, necessary to retain existing employees, to recall or rehire former employees, and to hire new employees, in order to provide early childhood, elementary, or secondary educational and related services.”

But

• “A district may use the funds to pay the salaries of teachers and other employees who provide school-level educational and related services. In addition to teachers, employees supported with program funds may include, among others, principals, assistant principals, academic coaches, in-service teacher trainers, classroom aides, counselors, librarians, secretaries, social workers, psychologists, interpreters, physical therapists, speech therapists, occupational therapists, information technology personnel, nurses, athletic coaches, security officers, custodians, maintenance workers, bus drivers, and cafeteria workers.”

As you can see, the use of these funds is not restricted to direct classroom purposes. Quite the contrary, it includes a very wide swath of school employees. There are four pages of relevant Q&A points on the link referred to above and it is well worth your time to read, if you have an interest in this topic.

It is highly unlikely that the Bridgewater-Raritan Board of Education would allocate these funds for anything other than direct classroom use, but it would be a good idea for it to put the matter to rest by passing a formal resolution now, restricting its use exclusively for that purpose in the budget.