Federal

Urban Schools Group Pushes for Jobs Bill

By Dakarai I. Aarons — February 17, 2010 1 min read
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The Council of the Great City Schools sent out a rare statement this morning, pushing for the passage of a jobs bill by Congress.

The Washington-based urban schools advocacy group released the statement on the first anniversary of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, known to lay people as the stimulus.

Michael D. Casserly, the group’s executive director, says while the federal economic-stimulus law helped save tens of thousands of education jobs and gave school districts money crucial to implementing academic reforms, state and local budgets look even worse now than they did last year.

“The Council calls on Congress to pass a jobs bill this month that will directly maintain the hundreds of thousands of education jobs which will be lost waiting for the economic recovery to reach the school and community level,” the statement says.

The U.S. House of Representatives passed a $154 billion jobs bill in December that included $23 billion for an “education jobs fund.” The U.S. Senate has yet to pass any similar legislation.

You can read more about the jobs bill in our story by my colleague Alyson Klein or in this post from the Politics K-12 blog.

A version of this news article first appeared in the District Dossier blog.