Stimulus money comes to CISD

Teachers at Clarendon CISD will be getting a raise this coming school year thanks to federal stimulus money received by the state.

Superintendent Monty Hysinger said the public school should receive about $60,000, which will be used to give each teacher an additional $922 on top of their state step raise.

“The stimulus money is only good for this coming school year,” Hysinger said. “It dries up after that, but we will guarantee that a teacher won’t make less in 2010-2011 than they did in 2009-2010.”

The money also is just for teachers and cannot be used for staff pay raises, Hysinger said.
Gov. Rick Perry’s office released a statement about the approval of the state’s fund request.

“I’m pleased that the U.S. Department of Education has approved Texas’ application for State Fiscal Stabilization Funds, which will help increase public school funding, providing each school a minimum additional $120 per student,” Gov. Perry said.

“Providing quality education to our state’s school children continues to be a top priority. Texas lawmakers appropriated this money, along with more than $30 billion in state funds, to enhance educational excellence in our state,” the governor said.

The stimulus funds will come to the school with its regular state appropriation.

With this stimulus funding, CCISD has received a total of about $210,000 in economic stimulus money.

“We received about $100,000 in stimulus money for special education,” Hysinger said. “The majority of that will go to salaries over two years in order to maintain the level of service the district currently provides.”

The school district also received about $50,000 for what Hysinger called remediation endeavors, and he said that money will be used over two years to purchase software packages for laptop computers and for software that will enhance instruction in a variety of fields.