President Barack Obama is relying heavily on educators to pull the country out of its economic doldrums, and Maryland will soon receive $210 million in federal stimulus dollars for local school districts.
Acknowledging that the huge federal package needs a jump-start of its own, Obama on Monday announced an accelerated spending timetable for a variety of programs, including money for 135,000 teachers, principals and support staff nationwide.
While the administration portrayed the announcement as a new initiative, school systems across the state were already prepared to spend federal money.
Taking advantage of the ready pipeline from the U.S. Department of Education to states and localities, Baltimore and surrounding counties have already accounted for much of the stimulus money in their budgets for the coming school year.
The bulk of Maryland's schools funding - which will reach $589 million over two years - will go to make up for what would have been shortfalls in state allocations to local school districts because of declining revenues.
Gov. Martin O'Malley had flexibility in allocating the first wave of federal spending that Maryland received earlier this year, and gave a large portion of it to schools.
"There is no doubt that the money is saving jobs and filling in holes that would have been there," said Maryland school superintendent Nancy S. Grasmick.
Other stimulus spending is apparently marching more slowly.
Surrounded by his Cabinet on Monday, Obama emphasized what has become a dominant issue of public concern: an economy that keeps bleeding jobs.
He concentrated in his remarks on the billions of dollars from a taxpayer-funded plan that will be disbursed this summer, although much what he described was already in the works, spurring new debate about just how much the $787 billion federal plan is helping.
"We've done more than ever, faster than ever, more responsibly than ever, to get the gears of the economy moving again," Obama said, acknowledging that the country was "still in the middle of a very deep recession" despite recent jobless numbers that were better than expected.
But at the same time, he said he wasn't happy with the progress made so far and pressed his Cabinet to keep at it.
In Maryland, only $1.2 million of the stimulus funds for education has been spent so far, for cafeteria equipment.
