Now that the Stimulus has passed...

So now that the Stimulus plan is actually being put into law, as is shown by Obama's signing, where does education fall into all of this. While I am interested in the fact that the Bill is right now said to only help those families that bought more expensive houses knowing that they could not afford them, I am even more interested in what is going to directly effect me in a year and a half, probably even sooner than that. One of the most interesting articles that I was able to run across this week was an article written on 2/16 for the NY Times, entitled "For Education Chief, Stimulus Means Power, Money and Risk". The former chief of Chicago schools Arne Duncan, who is now the head of the Department of Education has a very risky but fortunate opportunity to distribute almost double the original budget allotted to help education immediately. He now has to budget out $100 billion in emergency aid to public schools and colleges across the country and tell the 50 states and their respective 14,000 school districts exactly how handle the money they are given.

The bill, which President Obama is expected to sign on Tuesday, doubles federal spending on disadvantaged and disabled children, includes hefty increases in the main federal college scholarship program and for Head Start, and, for the first time, makes billions in federal dollars available for school renovation.

It is so exciting to hear all that this Bill is going to be able to give to schools that our educational system has been lacking. However, some are scared that Mr. Duncan is going to wield too much power, specifically with a $54 billion stabilization fund which is intended to prevent public school layoffs. Mr. Duncan gets to decide which states specifically deserve the awards because they have set high standards and for narrowing achievement gaps. The fact that this amount of money has never been moved this quickly before towards education means that there is also more room for mistakes in spending it. I think that everyone has high hopes, but is kind of stepping back to see what the politicians actually do with the money.

The next article that interested me was actually not about education but more about Richard Burris's investigation about fundraising for his appointer Rod Blagojevich. I just found it very interesting that he has had three different admissions about whether he spoke to Blagojevich's people before being appointed. The article, from the Washington Post on 2/18, stated that:

Burris said he contacted "some people" about holding a fundraiser at the request of Blagojevich's brother, Robert, only to learn that no one was willing to help the governor. He said he later changed his mind, raised no money and contributed none.

I just find it to be very fishy that a man of Richard Burris's status as attorney governor, would let the media and federal government investigate him if he knew that he had already worked to help get Blagojevich money while still hoping to be appointed to the Senate. It is fairly obvious with three different versions of the same story, that he was up to no good. I do hope that the Senate investigators work hard to find out what actually happened.

Finally, there was also an article this week about Giorgio Armani giving $1 million to public schools in NYC specifically for the arts. I found it particularly interesting in thoughts about American politics because of the fact that the arts in school are what are taken out first in terms of funding. The arts are was keep schools and students well-balanced, especially in public schools where students that attend them are often the ones that can't afford to get that kind of training, whether it be in art, music, or chorus outside of school. I hope that this, along with other programs like Armani's, can prove to the government what good the arts are for our schools. This is even more important right now with schools being allotted so much money with the Stimulus Bill.