FiscalCliffSign010113Congress' New year's day'southward Mean solar day drama, ending a stalemate over extending tax cuts for all but the wealthy, delays rather than resolves an across-the-board 8.2 percentage decrease in federal didactics spending. That's the spending piece of the "fiscal cliff" that Congress decided to put off deciding until early March.

For California districts, that means a two-calendar month reprieve from facing potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in funding cuts to special pedagogy programs and Title I aid for low-income students, forth with tens of millions in cuts to the preschool programme Caput Showtime, career and technical didactics and grants for instructor grooming.

Fifty-fifty if all of those cuts were to happen, districts would have months to prepare for them. Except for Head Commencement, the cuts would happen starting July 1, the beginning of the next financial year for schools. The cuts to Head Showtime and to subsidies for school districts that serve families working at federal facilities, like Naval Base San Diego, were to take effect Jan. 1.

The reprieve from cuts to defence force and most domestic spending programs volition coincide with the deadline to heighten the ceiling on the national debt. Many congressional Republicans have vowed non to increase the national debt unless there also are substantial cuts to entitlement programs like Medicare and discretionary spending. Thus, the next round volition likely exist as rancorous, if not more so, than the last few days' debate in Congress.

The federal government contributes less than 10 percentage to school spending in California, merely it is concentrated in programs for students with disabilities and poor children. According to a staff report prepared for Autonomous Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa, who chairs a subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee (see pages 88-89 for impact on California), the full 8.ii percent cuts to California would include:

  • $139.half dozen one thousand thousand in Title I grants to districts with low-income students, including $30 1000000 for Los Angeles Unified;
  • $107 million for special didactics, including services for preschool-aged children;
  • $75 million for Caput Start;
  • $19 meg in child-care subsidies; and
  • $15 1000000 for career and technical education.

And then far, federal student loans and most child nutrition programs would be exempt from the cuts.

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