County schools to get federal dollars for reading, special ed

Nationwide, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) will spend more than $13 billion on Title I programs for low-income students and $13.5 billion on IDEA services for students with disabilities.

The intent behind the funding, according to Rep. Brian Baird (D-Wash.), is to help save education-related jobs and maintain programs for at-risk students and students with special needs.

"The current financial crisis has many school districts throughout southwest Washington staring into the financial abyss, being forced to make untenable decisions that could affect the future of thousands of children," Baird said in a news release dated April 1. "This money will help make many of those decisions unnecessary."

The White Salmon Valley School District is targeted to receive a $266,000 grant under IDEA and $158,922 in Title I funds. For the Trout Lake School District, $31,000 in IDEA funding and $10,458 for Title I programming have been earmarked.

Superintendents Dale Palmer of White Salmon and Doug Dearden of Trout Lake said, because their districts are in a special education cooperative administered by the Vancouver-based Educational Service District 112, the IDEA grants--which Palmer characterized as "flow-through dollars"--will go directly to the ESD and be used throughout the cooperative.

Moreover, Dearden noted, the money "will possibly help us to reduce the costs that we pay to be a member of the co-op, but I don't believe the impact will be significant for us."

Palmer said the stimulus funding will save the White Salmon district about $10,000 on what it pays for special education services and likely means "the ESD won't have to go to the state Safety Net [to obtain funding for operations] for a couple of years."

In the case of Title I funding, from which the state will deduct 5 percent for administrative costs, both districts are still evaluating how best to infuse the money into their programs.

"We're only a targeted--not a school-wide--program [for Title I]," said Dearden. "This means the allocation we will receive will be minimal. We're still talking about how to use these additional funds to benefit the students in our school."

Palmer said the White Salmon district will use its Title I funds where they've been spent in the past: At Hulan L. Whitson Elementary School, where the district has the greatest proportion of low-income students housed.

"You can only use Title I money where it's already being spent," he noted, and added, "It's not going to help us a great deal, but it will help us a little bit."