School Construction in the Stimulus

I have a piece up in the Washington Independent today about why the stimulus should include school facilities investments. Key paragraph:

New investments in school construction and modernization are a natural fit for the stimulus package. Unlike education programs, which need ongoing funding in order to keep operating, a two-year investment in school construction would produce thousands of school buildings that could be used for decades to come, with no need for continued federal funding. Similarly, investments in “greening” existing school facilities to reduce their energy consumption will produce substantial, ongoing savings that school districts can use to fund pre-k, increased teacher compensation, and other educational programs.

This piece doesn’t specifically address the issue of early education facilities, but as readers here are aware, we believe that early education should be an important part of any federal school facilities investments, and that community-based providers should have equitable access to funding, alongside school districts. The stimulus bills currently before Congress get this half right, providing $14 billion (House) and $16 billion (Senate) for school facilities investments. But unfortunately they don’t give community-based providers equitable access to these funds. That’s a problem that just a few lines of text within the legislation could fix, though. With Congress also pondering big early education investments in the stimulus, it’s important to make sure the facilities piece of the bill helps create new space for those programs.