Districts race to receive NC stimulus funds

Although it has been more than two weeks since North Carolina was awarded nearly $400 million in “Race to the Top” funding, the process to allocate funds among local districts, such as Durham County, is far from over.

Now that North Carolina has been awarded the federal dollars, local schools are waiting for specifics on how the districts will have access to the dollars from the state, Lewis Ferebee, chief of staff of Durham Public Schools, wrote in an e-mail. There will likely be rigorous competition for those dollars, Ferebee added.

“Three themes come to mind in regards to the dollars: innovation, assessment for learning and attracting [and] retaining high-quality teachers in every classroom,” Ferebee wrote on how DPS would like to use money from the grant. “The dollars could mean trying fresh initiatives that are too costly with current budget times... [providing] funds for updating tools to assess student mastery of standard taught to better inform instruction... [and creating] incentives to attract and retain teachers.”

Chris Mackey, press secretary for Gov. Bev Perdue, said that although the exact amount of funding that will be directed toward Durham is still not finalized, the money will be available to local districts as soon as this year and is permitted to be distributed over the course of four school years. Over the upcoming weeks, the funds will be broken down into individual local education agencies, she added.

The money will be used in the state to recruit and retain quality teachers and administrators, help the state establish a concrete plan to turn around low-performing schools and find ways to use technology to assess student needs, she said.

“Race to the Top” had principals, school boards, politicians and education officials across the country jockeying for a part of the $4.35 billion sum set aside for education. Eleven states and the District of Columbia have now won parts of the funding that will affect 13.6 million students in 25,000 schools, according to a U.S. Department of Education press release.

“North Carolina’s children today are one step closer to being guaranteed the best public education possible—something every child deserves,” Perdue said in a statement. “This grant will give us the resources to more aggressively implement our plan to ensure that all of our children graduate ready for a career, college or technical training.”