Some Stimulus for Virginia Schools

MoonHowler

Someone just sent me that latest from Virginia Education Association Director of Government Relations Robley Jones. Good news for the schools:

The significance of President Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) is just beginning to sink in. Bush bailed out the banks and Obama has bailed out the schools! U.S. Department of Education ARRA funding for the 2009-2010 school year for Virginia includes the following:

State Fiscal Stabilization $1,202,770,052
Title I – $165,311,666
Ed. Technology – $10,801,292
IDEA Part B – $261,415,033
IDEA Part B, Pre-School – $9,470,492
Grand Total – $1,696,587,551

Dr. Frank Barham, the Executive Director of the Virginia School Board Association wisely sent a message to school board members across the state last night offering that, “Our [VSBA] advice is that you implement no RIF policies, amend or adopt new budgets until you get the printout from the state in the next few weeks.”

Please urge your superintendent and school board to follow Dr. Barham’s advice.

I am not sure what all this means but it tells school boards and superintendents to hold off on major decisions until the ink dries.

It looks like almost $1.7 billion dollars is being pumped into Virginia schools. I suppose what would be critical is when and how the money will be divvied up. PWC Schools are short $57 million. Will our notoriety for having the most foreclosures in the state give us a bigger piece of the pie?

A new industry to get us out of this economic disaster?

Elena

This article in the Washington Post, demonstrates, clearly, what I have been saying about this new industry of detaining undocumented immigrants. Is this how a moral country creates new jobs?

The November death of a Prince William County man in immigration custody at Piedmont Regional Jail has prompted Immigration and Customs Enforcement to suspend placing new detainees at the facility, three hours south of the District near Farmville, Va.

In recent years, the rural six-county jail has contracted with ICE at rock-bottom rates to become a principal storehouse for noncitizen detainees from Northern Virginia and the District awaiting deportation. But since the Nov. 28 death of detainee Guido Newbrough, ICE has launched an investigation into medical care at the facility, and its detainee population had plunged from 330 to 53 as of yesterday. As a result, 50 jail employees have been laid off.

“It’s a depressed area to begin with,” he said. “There’s not much industry left here. And the loss of 50 jobs equates to a whole lot of hardship.”

I find this idea extremely disturbing, the idea of “investors” making money off of a very human dilemma, one that can only be resolved with comprehensive immigration reform.

The suspension comes at a particularly sensitive time for Piedmont and the town of Farmville. Piedmont had been earning $46.25 a day for each of the ICE detainees it housed in dormitory-style cells with triple bunk beds. Business was so robust that a group of investors announced a deal with Farmville officials last year to build a $21 million, 1,050-bed, privately run immigration detention facility there, pledging to covert the town into a hub for ICE operations in the mid-Atlantic region.

“Justice Department: We Fail to Enforce Deportation Orders”

Elena

This Fox news article could not have come at a more appropriate time, considering the conversation we are having, revolving around the 7-11 ICE raid in Maryland. So, here is the crux of it, 80% of people with deportation judgements do NOT leave the country.

About 8,000 cases made it to the U.S. Court of Appeals last year and the study tracked the 7,200 cases in which the Justice Department prevailed. The study found that despite winning those cases, only 1,375 illegal immigrants — 19 percent — had been removed as of last month.

Talk about a broken system! We have SERIOUS financial and security issues facing this country. Do we REALLY want to expend all this wasted energy and money on people, who primarily, are simply working to feed their families? Do we want secure borders, sure, do we want to deal with gangs, sure, but clearly, we are wasting our money on an ICE endeavor that is failing, miserably failing.

The U.S. government spends tens of millions of dollars each year persuading federal circuit courts to uphold orders for thousands of illegal immigrants to leave the country, but those orders have been enforced in only one-fifth of the cases, according to sources familiar with a recent Justice Department study.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a branch of the Department of Homeland Security, is responsible for “removing” illegal immigrants who stay in this country against the law. But the study found that more than 80 percent of the illegal immigrants whose deportation orders were upheld by a federal appeals court last year were still in the country as of five weeks ago, according to an internal Justice Department memo obtained by FOX News.

“If the people aren’t getting removed, why the heck are we spending all the money?” asked one former Justice Department official who left with the Bush administration.

Two sources familiar with the memo accompanying the Jan. 16 study said the Justice Department spends at least $20 million each year paying litigators to argue deportation cases in federal appeals courts. But, the former Justice Department official said the total cost to taxpayers is much higher considering the price tag of flying some 300 litigators around the country and putting them up in hotels. That’s not to mention the cost for federal and immigration courts to operate so they can hear the cases.