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Milton to lose $93,000 in federal funds

MILTON — Normally, Superintendent Peg Ekedahl starts her yearly review of federal grants with the statement, “Nothing much has changed.”

Unfortunately, 2008-09 won’t be a normal year, she said.

Ekedahl presented the estimated grants the Milton School District will receive from the federal government to the school board Monday night. Included in her review was an expected 38 percent drop in Title I funding, which pays for remedial literacy programs.

The district expects the amount from the state to drop from $244,000 in 2007-08 to $151,000 in 2008-09.

The grant helps pay for tutoring, reading recovery and other programs for students with below-average language and reading skills, Ekedahl said. Though the programs are open to anybody, the government decides funding for the grant based on the number of students in poverty in the district.

The school district considers students low-income if they qualify for free or reduced lunch, Ekedahl said. By that standard, 10 percent to 15 percent of district students are low-income.

But the government has a stricter definition of students in poverty. Had the number of Milton students in poverty stayed above 5 percent, the funding wouldn’t have changed much. But the number of Milton students in poverty fell below 5 percent of the government definition this year, leading to a significant drop in Title I funding.

The drop will be difficult for the district because officials didn’t find out about it until May, Ekedahl said.

Still, district officials will find the money required to keep remedial literacy programs going, even if it means cutting textbook, staff development or maintenance budgets, she said.

“We are going to have to move money around in the regular fund, and we would do that because literacy is the most important part of what we do,” she said.

The district will find out exactly how much the cut will hurt when it learns its fall enrollment numbers, Ekedahl said. The district makes its budget assuming enrollment won’t grow, but the district has been growing by about 100 students a year the past three years.

Ekedahl doesn’t know if the district will grow by 100 students in 2008-09, but she does hope for some growth.

“If we have a healthy rise, then we should be OK,” she said.