Absence of stimulus funds confounds Lynn school administrators

LYNN – As the School Committee passed a bare-bones $107.4 million fiscal year 2010 spending plan Thursday, the mystery and confusion surrounding federal stimulus money that was supposedly in line for the city remained.Seemingly since the day that President Barack Obama took the oath of office Jan. 20, members of the community and school department have been hopeful that federal stimulus money from the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act would help the department avoid teacher layoffs and school closings.Hope soon turned to confusion as rumors of monies headed for the department surfaced daily without any actual written notice of allocation from the state, effectively tying the hands of Superintendent Catherine Latham and her staff.Committee members had hoped to use stimulus money for everything from saving the Ford School Annex to re-hiring teachers, and Latham had mentioned a variety of ideas if money came in, including the creation of an all-inclusive special education school at the Fecteau-Leary Building on North Common Street.When Lynn Teachers Union members agreed to work one unpaid day to save jobs after Gov. Deval Patrick made a mid-year local aid cut, the city agreed to pay the teachers back for their charity with stimulus cash. At the time, union members were under the impression that the city was in line for more than $13 million in stimulus money – another rumor that has yet to become reality.Thus far the city has seen only a small amount of funding for Title 1 and IDEA accounts, allocations that are still pending while the department continues to write grant proposals required by the state, but watched helplessly earlier this year when Patrick took money that was supposed to go to local communities and used it to fund the state’s final Chapter 70 local aid payout in fiscal year 2009.”The stimulus sounds wonderful, but frankly, we don’t have a dime of it,’ Latham told the School Committee Thursday. “We are in the process of working with the state to find out what we can get and what we need to write for, this is literally consuming (Business Administrator Kevin McHugh’s) life.”Latham said she would continue to be in touch with authorities at the state level and keep the committee and various bargaining units abreast of any changes in stimulus funds.