Gov. Nixon signs bill to provide more than $189 million in federal funding to schools

Gov. Jay Nixon today signed into law House Bill 15, which will provide $189.7 million in federal funding to Missouri school districts across the state for the current and next school years. The money will provide stable funding for Missouri classrooms from fiscal year 2011 to fiscal year 2012, the Governor said at a bill-signing ceremony held at Linn High School.

Last month, Gov. Nixon strongly urged the Missouri Senate to pass the bill, which had already been passed by the House.

“Rejecting these funds would have had an immediate – and harmful – impact on Missouri schools,” Gov. Nixon said. “School districts are relying upon those funds in the supplemental budget to meet payroll and other expenses this school year.

“The federal law that authorized these education funds was crystal-clear. If Missouri had turned these funds away, they would have gone to other schools in other states,” the Governor said. “Missouri schools would have been left frantically finding ways to cut hundreds of thousands of dollars from their budgets in the last few weeks of the school year, and that was simply unacceptable. I am very pleased that the Senate put politics aside and passed the supplemental budget to all local schools to begin investing these critical funds.”

Gov. Nixon also used the occasion to urge the state Senate to quickly send him House Bill 18, another critical bill to re-appropriate federal funding. The deadline to pass the bill is May 6; the House has already approved the bill.

“Schools, law enforcement, cities, counties and others are counting on these federal funds, particularly schools that are incurring costs for which they anticipate being reimbursed this summer,” Gov. Nixon said. “If House Bill 18 doesn’t pass, there will be no way to reimburse them for expenditures they’ve already made.”

The funding in House Bill 18 includes a total of $137 million for K-12 schools, including:

n $50 million for special education;

n $47 million to help disadvantaged students in the classroom; and

n $37 million to improve struggling schools.

The bill also includes:

n $14 million for law enforcement justice grants;

n $63 million for clean water projects for local communities;

n $120 million for highway maintenance and construction, and public transportation; and

n More than $15 million to help low-income families with child care assistance.

“This is vital federal funding that we will lose if we don’t get this bill signed in the next few days, and I strongly urge the Senate to pass House Bill 18 right away,” the Governor said.