North Fork Schools to Receive Job-Saving Fed Funds

While North Fork school districts wait on proposed state financial aid, the federal government announced last month that most districts will receive a modest amount of federal money this year.

Under the recently passed Education Jobs and Medicaid Assistance Act, the state education department will administer $80,154 in federal funds to $72,793 to $59,334 to Southold, and $24,784 to Oysterponds. Since the tiny New Suffolk school district will not get state aid, it will not receive aid under this federal package.

U.S. Rep. Tim Bishop, D-Southampton, announced in August that the funds are part of a $10 billion federal education fund, of which New York State will receive nearly $608 million. The money is intended to save or create education jobs nationwide.

"We don't consider this to be stimulus but rather job-saving legislation," said Oliver Longwell, spokesperson for Rep. Bishop. "The funds can only be used to save educational jobs that would otherwise be cut due to reductions in state aid."

Though Greenport School Superintendent Mike Comanda said he was glad to hear of the federal support, he said he doubted the numbers were concrete at this point.

"We are 90 to 120 days out from knowing the actual amount of the support," he said last week.

Without any guarantee of aid from financially-deficient New York State materializing this year, local school districts planned their budgets carefully with the possibility of no help from the state. All of the North Fork school districts' 2010-11 budgets passed without program cuts in April.

Mattituck-Cutchogue Superintendent James McKenna said that his district has not received any official notification of when the federal funds will be dispersed. In the meantime, he'll continue to track  financial aid as the school year progresses.

"We budgeted almost to the dime," he said of the 2010-11 budget process. "We simply never know what we're going to get moving forward. This is going to be a very, very tight year."