To all of my conservative Gwinnett County friends who love to berate the "Stimulus Act" and claim it created no jobs, it's pretty obvious from this report that those stimulus funds have been propping up your school system for the last 3 years. I would have thought that money should have bought you time to come up with a better plan.

Brian...the stimulus act was a complete failure. No question. If massive debt is a way of stimulating the economy they why didn't he spend even more??? The simple, but often overlooked, problem with the debt spending is how much it took away from potential business investment. Picture a swimming pool full of water...but before they let you dive in they drain a third of the water out. Still gonna dive in? that 1.5 - 1.2 trillion dollars annually of ObamaDebt helped suck the life out of potential growth. Propped up the GCPS? Sounds more like it was in the way. But what can you expect from a community organizer whose business experience doubled when they gave him a pen that clicked.

31 million out of the entire budget is what Brian? Hardly propping up much of anything in my opinion.
And what is your plan Brian? How large is too large for a class size? How do you solve this problem?

All you want to do is bring politics into every post you reply to, it really gets a little old. And I don't know where that federal stimulus money went or what it was spent on, but I can assure you one thing, I didn't see the benefit of it in my pocket and neither did my wife.

Brian...it seems that we must have done away with the entire math curriculum. Talk about fuzzy math. 31 million divided by gwinnett's school budget is? Hardly a prop unless you prop your car up on matchsticks to change a tire. Furthermore, the loss of property tax revenue is over 4 times your beloved stimulus deficit and nearly 50 million more than the entire 2013 budget deficit. Seems to me the stimulus wasn't much of a prop now was it. Thank you...I didn't think so either.

As far as the stimulus keeping someone employed...I call BALONEY. If nearly 1 trillion dollars keeps people employed (at an average cost of several hundred thousand dollars a job) WHY didn't he spend more? The "stimulus" bill was passed in 2009. If deficit spending was what got this tiny "recovery" started...heck...he should have spent MORE. Lots MORE. Face it..the stimulus bill was a major screw up from BHO either way. All it achieved was putting more treasury bonds into the pockets of the Chinese...

I work for Gwinnett County Schools. This is due to less revenue than expected. More kids, less paying taxes (due to many factors such as apartment dwellers rather than tax paying home owners for starters), and foreclosures. Many reasons.

Brian, that's a load of crap, you know absolutely nothing about the school system. You need to stop while you're behind.

Sorry Dac, I honestly don't mean to belabor the point but according to the article one third of your rather large budget shortfall is due to lost stimulus funds and now that those funds are gone folks are going to start losing jobs. I know it kills you to admit that you may still be employed due to Obama's dastardly plan but I really don't see any other way to interpret it. Since those were my tax dollars too the least you could do is seem a tiny bit thankful for it.

I'm also correct about apartment dwellers. They pay property tax just like everyone else because a portion of their rent is used by the apartment owner to pay his property taxes.

Brian... that was $31 million out of a $1.3B budget. Please, I know I'm getting old but I can still do simple math.

Well, for all the talk about our economy growing again, there are still too many situations like this one... Budget cuts, jobs being lost, stores and restaurants closing... And I believe the article referenced another 7.5% anticipated drop in revenue. Sure doesn't sound like the economy is improving much to me. To be honest, I believe it is going to get worse before it gets better, as many government jobs run out of stimulus money and finally have to face reality. This whole stimulus has been smoke and mirrors, and now we have to figure out how to cut and balance budgets.

Mr. Crawford, respectfully... the large budget shortfall is not due to "lost" stimulus funds. The shortfall is due to decreased tax revenues and decreased funding from the state who are no longer allocating dollar amounts based on their own funding formulas. Yes stimulus dollars helped curtail the budget shortfall for a year or so as they replaced the lost tax revenue, but the budget deficit was immense prior to the stimulus and has continued to grow after the stimulus. Considering the federal government spends more money on paying the INTEREST of our current debt than it does on EDUCATION, spare me the rhetoric of the saving grace of a stimulus. Of course let's not even begin to debate the merits of calling it a stimulus... if it had worked, why is tax revenue still lagging behind that of 2008 levels?

I appreciate you comments Mr. Crawford, and I'll respectfully disagree as to the point the stimulus "saved or created jobs." A postponed firing is neither a saved nor created job... as to your point it kept the economy from "falling off a cliff" I cannot rebut that argument as there are no facts to prove it either way. I would agree somewhat that it was a short term fix, but a long term failure.

In terms of GCPS, I cannot say unequivocally that stimulus money was never used for payroll, but I feel somewhat sure that it was not. Most of the stimulus money went to short term items that were not payroll related. GCPS is not in the business of creating jobs based on a short term cash flow. In fact the only reason GCPS is not in a budgetary free-fall is the foresight to not over-expand during the "golden goose years." Fiscally, GCPS has been very prudent (AAA bond rating, has several million in cash reserves, and contrary to some readers opinion, runs relatively lean in terms of support staff and "bureaucrats."

Financially the problem in Gwinnett comes from poor management of funds on the state and local level. When GCPS budget based on a funding formula provided by the state and local tax revenues... and under budgets to save money... and yet STILL has the funding cut... it is difficult to maintain fiscal solvency. If the state would only fund the district correctly, then even in the current economic climate, GCPS would not be facing any budget crisis. Think about that for a moment... being fiscally conservative has allowed GCPS to operate at a high level in the most difficult of times. If the BOE had overspent (like our current government) during the good years... we'd be looking at closing whole school clusters and not budget shortfalls.

The "stimulus" artificially extended a bad situation. These cuts in the schools should have happened two years ago. If they had, and if other sectors of the economy had been allowed to fail as they rightfully should, than we would have hit bottom by now. As it is, we have a ways to go. It is analagous to paying your mortgage with a credit card. The debt comes due, do you deal with it like an adult or put it off until tomorrow.

Since 2002, the state of Georgia has underfunded GCPS by $517 million dollars based on the QBE funding formula.

If I recall correctly, the economy was humming right along from 2002-2008. So even if the state had funded GCPS correctly during those years... again no severe budget problems.

Interested Reader and Joe Cobb, it's obvious that the two of you have been in this system for a long time (like me), and watched the evolution of all of this. You can't just look at the past few years, but the overall picture of education in Gwinnett over the past 20. Good observations. As one who works here and is privy to much of the info that you won't see in the paper, you are very close to being right on the money (no pun intended- lol).

I'm a little fuzzy on how eliminating vacant positions will save money.

It's all right here in a nutshell. Crawford is trolling..

a $36 million decline in local tax revenue. In 2012, Gwinnett County's tax digest is expected to drop another 7.5 percent in value. The tax digest has shrunk 24 percent since 2008 resulting in $133 million in lost revenue for GCPS.
the loss of $31 million in federal stimulus funds that were used to balance previous budgets.
an $11 million increase in health insurance premiums for school system employees.
the need to hire more teachers due to growth in enrollment, costing an estimated $4 million.
an estimated $7 million mandatory increase in the school system's contributions to the Teachers Retirement System.

To address the shortfall, GCPS plans include:

reducing central office departmental budgets by another 2.5 percent for $1.6 million in savings.
eliminating 54 central office positions to save $2.7 million.
ending payments to one external charter school for a savings of $2 million.
increasing most class sizes by two students.
continuing two furlough days for all employees except bus drivers and school nutrition staff.
releasing all employees hired after the beginning of the school year and retired part-time employees.
leaving vacant any district-level positions when possible.

Joe and T in G -BINGO.

Just google it - the stimulus money was not used for any payroll for teachers etc... it was, as Joe Cobb said, used for other short term projects (roads, senior citizen needs...).

By the way, you folks are paying your Superintendent over $400K a year which makes him the highest paid School Superintendent in the state and one of the highest paid in the entire nation. I would expect better than the same stale solutions every other school district is offering to their budget woes. Perhaps you need some fresh leadership.

I'm sorry Tammy but you're wrong about the Stimulus. Read the article again. The GCPS attributes their shortfall in part to "the loss of $31 million in federal stimulus funds that were used to balance previous budgets." Plain as day.

But Brian, it was not used for salaries.

But again...not for salaries. I know where my salary comes from. We also got expensive smart boards etc... lots of new do-dads the year they first started doing the furloughs, and I had a duck about it until it was explained to me. Turns out, we bought those out of a totally different fund that cannot be allocated for salaries. Monies are allocated for specific things. It's not as simple as Brian wants it to be. As much as I'd like to be partisan with it (started under a democrat) as Brian likes to be, I find that I have to look at the facts, so can't. Got to look at it through factual information ( tax revenues projected etc...) rather than trying to blame parties.

Throwing money at a bad situation makes it an expensive bad situation. The education system in America is broken. It doesn't need more money. It needs more discipline (pun intended.)

I agree with the discipline. And that starts at home.

Good lord you people are hard headed...from the state of Georgia's Stimulus Accountability site: "Georgia will receive approximately $2.8 billion in Recovery Act funds to strengthen education and improve results for students from early learning through college. The largest portion of ARRA funds come from Fiscal Stabilization which helps stabilize budgets of local educational agencies (LEAs) and public institutions of higher education (IHEs) to avert cuts and retain teachers and professors". REPEAT: "TO AVERT CUTS AND RETAIN TEACHERS". http://stimulusaccountability.ga.gov/00/channel_press/0,2684,134245182_151134394,00.html

The FACT is, the Stimulus saved teachers jobs in many Georgia counties including Gwinnett.
It is actually quite hilarious how deep in denial conservatives are over the fact that the Stimulus saved or created millions of jobs. You can thank your Republican Congressmen and women for the lack of additional stimulus and the loss of teacher's jobs all over the nation. And yes, this is most definitely a partisan issue. The jobs bill President Obama proposed last year included additional funding for teachers salaries and was soundly rejected by Republicans because it would have been paid for with a miniscule tax increase on millionaires.

Hard headed indeed. All of us would have had our jobs, stimulus money or not, that's a fact Brian. The federal money was used to pay for "stuff", not salaries, I don't care what some fancy distorted advertising slick says, it's just not true.

And I'll repeat what you've already forgotten... 31 million out of a budget of 1 billion. I guess you can do the math but just in case, that's about 3% and that's hardly enough to even notice in the grand scheme of things.

From the GCPS 2012 adopted budget document: " In addition to the state and local revenue declines discussed above, the sunset of ARRA federal funding will also create a significant negative impact on the General Fund expenditure budget for FY2012. Approximately $15.2 million in annual salaries and benefits were funded by ARRA grant funds and included in the Special Revenue Fund budget for the two previous years. In FY2012 these salaries and benefits must once again be included in the General Fund budget, representing a $15.2 million increase in expenditures over FY2011." http://www.gwinnett.k12.ga.us/gcps-mainweb01.nsf/C8D21FBE947469538525789A007B36F8/$file/FY12_Adopted-Budget.pdf

Brian, thes are not "normal" jobs. If any salaries were paid, it did not affect the general employee paycheck.

It sounds pretty stupid to start a program that you can't continue to fund... I guess those people lost their jobs.

Please find me one employee ( out of 24,000) that benefited from this stimulus.

<GIGANTIC PACEPALM> Steve, this was not a special project, There weren't extra jobs created out of this money. This money came from the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund (SFSF) which was the part of the ARRA set aside to help states and localities plug budget shortfalls to prevent laying off teachers and other state and local employees.. Deny it all you want but I have prevented incontrovertible evidence to support this FACT. If it weren't for Barack Obama fighting so hard for this fund you might well be unemployed.

It didn't pay our salaries nor did it keep us from having furlough days. Despite the loss of a wee bit of federal money, we still managed to pay everyone. A little bit of money for a couple of years didn't do squat for all practical purposes. We're making do without it... what does that tell you?

Perception is everything here Brian, ask ANY school system employee if they received any benefits from the federal stimulus money from the government. I'll bet you can't

Not only did it not create any new jobs OR go toward raises, no one lost their job when it went away. So tell me, what good was that?

Wee bit of federal money? Enough to keep several hundred teachers employed. The county is "making do" by cutting jobs increasing class sizes and continuing furloughs.

Don't worry... I'm getting the facts for you.

And unlike the "big brother" federal government, we have to balance our budget.

Here's your answer Brian...

The ARRA funds were distributed to the schools for the most part. We were not allowed to use those funds for salaries. The funds at our school were used to buy/fund equipment, an after school program, and other associated cost. If any of the money was used for salaries it was done so at a district level and it wouldn't have been much. This comes from my principal and she may know more than you about it.

Barrow County .... say no more.

population about 70,000 /13,000 enrollment 150,000 for your super . Looks like you may be the one overpaying. you need to compare your numbers to our 1960"s data !

It probably was used as intended by the feds but not in addition to what was budgeted , that amount was used for other purposes . So now that its gone it just means we are back to our regular budget line item with no additional special purpose money.The tax situation didnt get better , it got worse and therefore it will need to be cut once again from the same figures without our play money from the feds.thats my take on it.

I am telling you what we COULD NOT DO WITH THE MONEY. what was done on a district level is unknown.

I know some of the money helped to pay for our Virtual Field Trip equipment, and some funded an after school program. I can find out what else it was spent on at our school but I can assure you, it did not fund any positions.

The Feds like to dangle the carrots and they always come with strings attached.

Exactly NGW , That would have been stupid to hire and start paying only to know that these funds are going away . Now i would expect that from a 150 K super .But Thats not how we roll in the GCPS !

The way cuts were made concerning salaries was the displacement process. X amount of people retired, or left for whatever reasons. Schools eliminated positions and those left without a job were shuffled around to fill the vacant ones. I know. I was displaced a year ago and filled a vacant spot. In other circumstances, they eliminated a position and simply went without it. Now, I'm watching it (displacement) happen again this year with others.