Federal hurricane aid on the way to schools

The U.S. Education Department has begun the process of distributing hurricane relief funds to schools with a first installment of $250 million.

The total $1.6 billion package to aid public and private schools was approved by Congress as part of a Defense Department appropriations bill and was signed into law by President Bush Dec. 30.

The Hurricane Education Recovery Act provides $750 million to help schools in damaged areas of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Texas “restart operations” and $645 million for schools nationwide that have taken in displaced students.

The measure calls for schools to receive a maximum amount of $6,000 for each displaced student and $7,500 for each displaced student with a disability.

But NSBA is concerned that the actual amounts available per student will be considerably less. That’s because the previous legislation called for $1.2 billion to aid displaced students and the final bill appropriates just over half that amount -- so the funds might be stretched thin to reach all of the displaced students. The U.S. Education Department estimated that about 370,000 students had been displaced.

About 41,000 displaced students have enrolled in Texas schools, about half of them in the greater Houston area.

The Houston Independent School District estimates it is costing the district $180,000 a day this school year to educate students displaced by both hurricanes and as much as $30 million for the year, says spokesperson Terry Abbott. The biggest cost is for additional teachers, but the district also has had to spend money on additional security, counseling, and busing.

At the peak, the district had 7,000 displaced students; it had 5,964 as of Jan. 5. Houston had temporarily reopened two schools that had been closed last year to serve students who had been living in the Astrodome and Convention Center. Those students have since been dispersed to other schools throughout Houston or to other communities. One of those schools, Douglas Elementary, has been converted to a charter school.

Houston has received about $164,000 in state funds to help cover some of the costs of serving the displaced students and purchase textbooks and has also applied for assistance from FEMA.

The Texas Education Agency announced Jan. 13 that it expects to shortly receive $50 million as a “first installment in federal hurricane recovery funds,” including $7 million for private schools. Louisiana and Mississippi will each receive $100 million in initial funds and Alabama will receive $3.75 million.

An Education Department notice published in the Federal Register Jan. 12 outlines the procedures for states and local school districts seeking hurricane relief funds.

State education departments must submit applications by Feb. 2 requesting funds under the Emergency Impact Aid for Displaced Students program.

States that receive these grants will make subgrants to school districts. Parents must submit applications on behalf of displaced children who are attending nonpublic schools. Districts are supposed to make payments to accounts at private schools for those students.

State education agencies will receive quarterly payments based on data they submit each quarter stating their numbers of displaced students.

The Education Department’s notice acknowledges that “it may take some time” for state education agencies and local school districts “to count, retroactively for the first and second quarters of the 2005-06 school year, all students who may have moved to other states or districts.”

Therefore, the notice says, districts and states can make “upward or downward revisions to their initial child counts” if they get more accurate data after they submit their initial application.

“Because of the tight timelines in submitting applications for relief funds, the department made a good call by allowing local districts and states to later amend their student counts for the first two quarters,” says Marc Egan, director of federal affairs at NSBA. “It strikes a sensible balance between providing districts with much-needed funds while acknowledging the practical challenges they may face in collecting that data, especially with some displaced students having moved to other locations or returned to their homes.”

Funding for displaced students can be used to pay personnel; purchase instructional materials; lease space; provide basic instructional services; cover transportation costs; and provide health services, counseling, and other support.

The Atlanta school district will apply for funds to reimburse its costs for social workers, counselors, psychologists, and administrators who provided help to displaced students in shelters, says Arletta Brinson, executive director of the district's Office of Student Services and Programs. The Atlanta school system has 465 displaced students -- but had 706 at the peak. Some students are still living in hotels.

The $750 million to re­start operations can be used for such purposes as recovering student data, replacing lost instructional materials and equipment, financial operations, transportation costs, rental of mobile classrooms and leasing of sites, curriculum development, and educational and support services.

The hurricanes damaged or destroyed approximately 700 schools along the Gulf Coast, but these funds cannot be used for construction or major remodeling. However, “minor remodeling,” meaning “minor alterations in a previously completed building” is allowed, as is the extension of utility lines.

A percentage of funding must be set aside for private schools based on the percentage of schools in the state that are private.

Private schools must tell the state education agency what they need the money for, and the state or a third party will make the purchases. If the money for private schools isn’t used within 120 days, the state can use those funds for public schools.

The Biloxi, Miss., school system is seeking restart funds to help offset a $7.8 million shortage in local education funds, says Superintendent Paul Tisdale. Last year, the district had 6,400 students. Enrollment dipped to 3,200 after Katrina and now is up to 4,300.

The smaller student population plus the loss of 19 school days has cut into the district’s amount of state aid.

The destruction of housing at the Keesler Air Force Base has caused many families to leave the area, reducing the district’s federal impact aid payments by $880,000 this year. About 1,500 to 1,800 students from the base had attended public schools.

But the biggest problem for the district’s budget results from the fact that “the local tax base has been decimated. About 20 percent of the structures in Biloxi are gone,” Tisdale says. Forty-five percent of the district’s operating budget comes from local revenue.

The district also will lose about $1.5 million to $2 million this year in casino revenue.

Tisdale hopes the federal funds will help reimburse the district for $1.18 million in insurance deductibles. The district also spent money on portables to house students who had attended two schools that were too heavily damaged to reopen this year.

Of Biloxi’s 11 schools, six sustained severe damage. The district’s warehouse also had major damage, and most of the school records from the 1920s through the 1960s were destroyed.

The Hurricane Recovery Act also includes $5 million for a new temporary program to assist homeless youths. The funds, awarded to state education agencies, will be distributed to school districts on the basis of demonstrated need for activities eligible for funding under the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act.