By Victor Skinner
EAGnews.org

WASHINGTON, D.C. – A new report suggests that President Obama’s 2009 stimulus package successfully created or saved education jobs during the national recession.

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We think it was a wasteful Band-Aid fix designed as a handout to public-sector unions, particularly teachers unions.

The report by the Center on Education Policy shows that “federal stimulus funds appear to have blunted the effects of the economic downturn on the K-12 education sector” by pumping billions to public school district around the nation, the center’s executive director Maria Ferguson said in a recent press release.

The CEP report claims that nearly three-quarters of public schools nationwide used stimulus funds to create jobs or prevent teacher layoffs in 2010. That’s a sad figure we don’t dispute.

While the federal funds likely kept numerous teachers and other school personnel employed, it undoubtedly delayed the inevitable tough decisions school officials will be forced to make in coming years. Contracts negotiated between local school boards and teachers unions in recent decades have created skyrocketing labor costs taxpayers can no longer afford.

In districts across the nation, EAGnews has documented massive spending on labor  perks like bonuses for teachers’ unused sick days, free health insurance, release time for teachers to work for their unions at taxpayer expense, lavish pension plans, five-figure retirement bonuses, and special pay for everything from playground supervision to covering classes for absent colleagues.

Economists and school finance experts have repeatedly warned that spending on such items is unsustainable, and is driving schools toward a financial cliff. It’s the reason governors in Wisconsin, Idaho, Indiana, Michigan and other states have curbed collective bargaining privileges for public sector unions and returned power to local officials to control labor costs.

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But Obama took a different route.

Instead of demanding that public schools adjust their budgets and cut labor costs to meet economic realities, he sent billions to school officials to help them avoid their fiscal responsibility.

The federal funds ensured that many bloated union contracts remained that way, and that public school employees continued to receive special union perks not afforded to hard-working Americans struggling during the recession.

The money kept union teachers employed when they may not have been needed, and ensured an uninterrupted flow of dues dollars to the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, the nation’s largest teachers unions and two of Obama’s biggest campaign contributors.

In other words, Obama’s 2009 stimulus cushioned the blow of the economic recession on one class of Americans – unionized employees – at the expense of taxpayers.

Public schools will now be forced to do what they should have been done all along – cut unnecessary labor expenses to align their budgets with America’s economic conditions.

By delaying those critical decisions, Obama’s stimulus likely has only made matters worse.