Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

Senator Steve Ogden, chair of the Senate Committee on Finance

Can you still call it “stimulus” funding if it’s being used for a purpose no more stimulating that maintaining the status quo?

The obvious answer, being shouted from schoolhouse rooftops by superintendents and the Texas Democratic congressional delegation, is no.

But that’s in large part what lawmakers are in the process of doing with federal stimulus dollars meant for Texas schools.

It’s a kind of switcheroo in which state Senate budget-writers cleaned out the state’s main public school fund, and one for school technology, sprinkled the dollars elsewhere in the budget, and then replenished the state school funds with about $2 billion in federal stimulus money.

In elementary math, that would be one, minus one, plus one equals one. In terms of state schools funding, Texas schoolchildren gain zero.

The Senate, led by Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and Senate Finance Chair Steve Ogden, R-Bryan, approved the budget. It’s expected to be considered by the full House Friday.

Some argue the maneuver is a fiscally conservative, forward-thinking method of protecting the state’s rainy day fund this session so we’ll have about $9 billion of it next session to deal with whatever budget calamities arise.

They point out, quite accurately, that schools will receive another type of stimulus funding, about $1.9 billion specifically for low-income and special education students.

But others say it’s highway robbery of Texas schoolchildren.

“If someone’s going to steal a bunch of money from children, then I think it ought to be done with the lights on,” said Houston school board trustee Harvin Moore at an April 2 workshop.

Last week, HISD schools chief Abelardo Saavedra wrote a letter, co-signed by 10 superintendents across the state, asking U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to clarify how Texas lawmakers can spend about $3.2 billion of the stimulus funding meant for education.

The language in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act says states should use the money to restore education funding if they had to cut any, and then send the rest to districts.

But Texas isn’t as bad off as many other states.

Budget-writers here never warned of dire education cuts. So, as the superintendents and Democratic congressmen like Gene Green argue, since Texas had no cuts to restore, the money should have gone straight to local districts.

In his letter, Saavedra implores Duncan to direct state lawmakers, “in the strongest language possible,” not to use the money to “supplant” funding Texas intended to spend anyway. But rather, he writes, it should be used to increase support for schools.

Using the funds for anything other than improving schools would be “unacceptable and a violation of the public trust,” Saavedra writes.

Saavedra wasn’t available for comment, but David Thompson, special counsel to the school board, said HISD had planned to use the stimulus money for things like extended day programs, smaller class sizes for at-risk kids and performance incentives for high-performing teachers.

He said he hadn’t heard of any response from Duncan or the Education Department on the letter, but that details are still being worked out on how states should handle the stimulus funds: “I have the image that we’re in a plane that’s already taxiing down the runway and we’re still putting the wings on.

Unfortunately, those wings almost certainly won’t be ready to fly when the House lifts off on its budget debate Friday. Without clarity and leadership from the Obama administration, the misguided tactics of Texas legislative budget-writers could punish school districts across the state, sooner, and later.

In an interview with Education Week, Duncan warned that states stand to lose future funding if they veer from the educational intent of the stimulus money: “At the end of the day, we are putting out literally billions of dollars. We are also holding back billions of dollars, and if we see states doing things that don’t make sense and aren’t in the spirit of what this is about, they would put themselves at jeopardy in receiving that second set of money.”