At the July 28 Board of Education meeting, school district Business Administrator Michael Harvier announced that the school district will soon receive $543,000 in grant money as part of the federal government’s stimulus package.

“We have received our grant amount for the stimulus funds,” Harvier said at the meeting. “These funds are all allocated to the IDEA, which is the Individuals with Disabilities Act. “We were awarded $705,668, of which $162,000 has to go to the non-public schools, so we net $543,000. The way we understand it right now is that half that money can be used in the general fund. The other half has to be used for special education programs that supplement the existing programs. For the pre-school we received $25,000. Eighteen hundred dollars goes to the non-public schools and we net $23,000.”

The IDEA (wiki) is a federal law that governs how state and other public authorities provide special education and other services to individuals with disabilities.

The $23,000 for the school district refers to Metuchen’s special education pre-school program, which each district must have.

Harvier later explained that every school district is getting some money from the federal government as part of the stimulus package. Information on how much money each town in New Jersey received in grant money can be found at http://www.state.nj.us/education/arra.

How precisely the money will be spent in Metuchen is yet to be determined.

“I think what would be very helpful is that after we have some discussion, we then meet with the finance committee [of the board of education] and then have a discussion at an upcoming board meeting on the best way to spend the moneys,” schools superintendent Terri Sinatra said at the July 28 board meeting.

The money will be distributed to Metuchen in October, Harvier said.

“We will have two years to spend it. One of the [federal government's] goals is to spend the money as quickly as possible, but there are a lot of constraints on how to spend it.”