OKLAHOMA CITY – The U.S. Department of Education has delayed changing the way it determines funding for rural and low-income schools, preserving almost $133,000 that was allocated to four southwest Oklahoma school districts.
Last month the USDE announced plans to implement a bookkeeping change that would affect the way school districts report how many of their students live in poverty.
The department planned to stop allowing states to use data about the percentage of students receiving free lunch to measure poverty. The schools will be allowed to continue doing so for at least another year.
Of Oklahoma’s 512 public school districts, 61 received $1.76 million this year via the Rural and Low-Income School (RLIS) program, according to Steffie Corcoran, executive director of communications for the Oklahoma State Department of Education.
The recipients included Elgin school district (en- rollment 2,412), which got $45,969 in RLIS funds, ledgers ref lect. Cache schools (enrollment 2,048) received $39,583; Marlow schools (en- rollment 1,358) got $28,638; and Comanche public schools (enrollment 919) received $18,723.
State Supt. of Public Instruction Joy Hofmeister urged Oklahoma’s congressional delegation to intervene on behalf of the affected school districts.
A bipartisan group of U.S. senators, including Oklahoma’s Jim Inhofe and James Lankford, said the move would adversely affect several hundred rural schools. The senators said the schools would lose millions of dollars, and in a letter, they told Education Secretary Betsy DeVos that it also would take away access to “the only dedicated federal funding stream to help rural schools overcome the increased expenses caused by geographic isolation.”
More than 800 rural, low-income schools “could have lost crucial funding and been forced to forgo essential activities and services, such as technology upgrades and expanded class offerings for reading, physical education, art, music, and distance learning,” the senators said in a statement.
“The Department’s actions were designed to align the RLIS program with the law as Congress wrote it,” the USDE reported. “Should members want to change the data source, we have provided language to Congress to permanently address this issue...
“However, due to the States’ reliance on the Department’s calculations for the past 17 years,” Secretary DeVos “has concluded the Department can use its authority to allow alternative poverty data to be used for an additional year,” the USDE announced earlier this month. “This protects States and their students from fi- nancial harm for which they had not planned.”
The purpose of the Rural and Low-Income School grant program is to provide rural districts with financial assistance for initiatives aimed at improving student achievement. The grant is non-competitive, and eligibility is determined by statute.
School districts that receive RLIS grants may use the funds to finance the following types of activities:
• Parental involvement activities.
• Supporting effective instruction. An example would be paying the stipend for a prospective teacher to work alongside an effective teacher, who is the teacher of record, for a full academic year.
• Language instruction for English learners and immigrant students. Example: A school district offers an after-school enrichment program for English learners.
• Student support and academic enrichment. An example would be the purchase of bully-prevention materials for a district’s schools.