Baldwin Schools Get Five Million In Federal Aid

The Baldwin County Board of Education will receive five million dollars of a federal, ten billion dollar education stimulus package. President Obama signed the bill last month and says the teacher bailout will save hundreds of thousands of teaching positions across the United States.

Of that ten billion dollar package, Alabama will get 150 million...Baldwin County's cut is five million dollars.

"We're going to use that money in ways that'll impact students in the classroom," says Baldwin Co. School Supt. Dr. Alan Lee. "We'll be able to reduce the student teacher ratio, we'll have teachers going into those classrooms and we'll be able to bring back fine arts programs that were recently cut."

But will the five million dollar teacher bailout be enough to help the financially strapped school system? The Baldwin County Board of Education has seen its share of recent financial hardships, including cuts in state and federal funding and a loss of local sales tax revenue because of the Gulf oil spill. Five million dollars will help, but for how long?

Last school year, Baldwin County voters passed an emergency one percent sales tax to help the struggling school district but because of the oil spill, sales tax revenue is down.

"I'd be purely guessing if I were to say was going to make up for the shortfall. We really don't know what the impact of the oil spill will be because sales tax receipts come in weeks or months later," says Lee.