AUGUSTA – It was meant to put 160,000 laid-off educators nationwide — and 700 in Maine — back to work this fall.

But two months after Congress approved $10 billion in last-minute aid to save school jobs, the Augusta area school districts that can afford to are banking their latest federal payout.

The $337,000 sent to the Readfield-based Maranacook area school district as part of Maine’s $39 million allotment went immediately into the bank, where it will likely stay until next fall, Superintendent Rich Abramson said.

“From a reality standpoint, it just makes more sense to save it,” he said.

That’s because the current school year is the last in which Maine school districts will receive funds from the federal economic stimulus package, which expires July 1, 2011.

“From a reality point of view, I’m looking at $400,000 going away before I even start to build my budget,” Abramson said.

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The $337,000 can soften the impact of those funds phasing out, he said.

Statewide, school districts are receiving about $59 million in federal stimulus funds that they’ll have to do without after next July. Districts can wait until Sept. 30, 2012, to spend the $39 million they’ll receive as part of the federal education jobs bill.

In Augusta, Superintendent Cornelia Brown said the School Department used its $495,000 payout to cover all hires made after Aug. 10. That let the district set aside an equivalent amount in other accounts until next fall, she said.

The teachers’ unions that called on Congress to pass the $10 billion aid package — including the Maine Education Association — argued that school districts should spend their payouts immediately to maximize economic impact.

But doing that would have put the positions filled in jeopardy only a year later, Brown said.

“I think that it will prevent job reductions in next year’s school budget,” she said of banking the money. “If the goal is to keep people working, I think it achieves that goal. But it’s not immediate.”

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In Hallowell-based Regional School Unit 2, the $399,000 federal payout helps to blunt the impact of losing the $638,000 in stimulus funds, RSU 2 Superintendent Donald Siviski said.

“It’s a steep hill now instead of a cliff,” he said.

Spending it all this fall, Siviski said, would have jeopardized jobs next year.

“If you were looking at a $638,000 decrease, I was going to have to consider reductions in staff again,” he said.

Sept. 21, about 62 percent of school districts had submitted plans to the state revealing how they planned to spend their education jobs money. In those districts, the money would cover about 472 salaries.

But “the bulk” of those salaries would be paid during the 2011-12 school year, said Jaci Holmes, the Maine Department of Education’s federal liaison.

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In Winthrop, $113,000 of the $195,000 aid package will cover jobs affected by a $180,000 budget shortfall discovered this summer by a new team of administrators, Superintendent Briane Coulthard said.

“That was one good amount coming in at the right time,” he said, adding that he’ll bank the remainder of the funds.

For Fayette, where Coulthard is also superintendent, the $53,000 in aid can cover tuition payments for a larger-than-expected number of middle and high school students who have to attend school out of town.

In Gardiner-based Regional School Unit 11, about $60,000 of the education jobs money will pay for two educational technicians hired in response to swelling enrollments at Pittston Consolidated School and West Gardiner’s Helen Thompson School.

The four-town school district will bank the rest of its $284,000.

 


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