With a $787 billion in federal economic stimulus dollars being doled out, and a promise of transparency from President Obama, it should be easy to find out how your local school district or college is benefitting, right?
Unfortunately, no, according to the panel, “Tracking Education Stimulus,” held Thursday at the Education Writers Association conference in San Francisco.
The government’s stimulus web site, recovery.gov, gives little detailed local information about how much is allocated to specific schools, colleges, road projects, housing programs and other initiatives, panelists said.
So, EWA is providing a new resource called edmoney.org to help journalists, policy makers, educators, parents and the public understand how the money is being spent in each local community.
“The place where stimulus is the most interesting is on the local level,” said Matt Waite, a former investigative journalist who now builds Internet databases for the St. Petersburg Times.
Waite and four other journalists working part-time for EWA are making records requests to school districts, community colleges and universities around the country. Then they build databases with the information. Obviously, that’s a mammoth task, so they’re asking for your help.
If you’re a journalist who has written a story about how stimulus dollars were used for local education, EdMoney wants you to send it to them. If you’re a parent or a teacher who has some inside information about how stimulus dollars were used, or perhaps misused, send it on. That could provide some good story ideas for journalists, Waite said.
To submit create an EdMoney account at edmoney.org/accounts/register.
The project is being funded by a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
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