Vermont schools and school districts will get $160,129,000 from the 2009 stimulus bill, according to figures released by the House Education and Labor Committee.

Under the law signed Tuesday by President Barack Obama , the U.S. Department of Education will distribute more than $90 billion in education funds.  Education seems to have been one area where the final bill was closer to the original House proposal than the less generous Senate version. Some of the money will go directly to schools and school districts. Some will go to state governments, but the states will have to use this money for public elementary and secondary education.

Vermont’s share is roughly one eighth of one percent of the total. But the state’s share of the population isn’t much more than that. Perhaps no more than that including Puerto Rico and other U.S. territories, which also get some of the education money in the new law.

By one standard, though, Vermont does very well. According to an analysis of the House Committee figures by the New America Foundation, Vermont will receive $2,688 for every poor student in the state.  Only Wyoming gets more money ($2,715) per poor student.

One reason Vermont ranks high by this measure is that it has relatively few poor students. Only five states have a smaller proportion of public school pupils living in poverty, according to the Census Bureau’s 2007 American Community  Survey.  One of them is neighboring New Hampshire, which has the lowest percentage of students living in poverty.

Among the entire population, adults as well as school-children, only New Hampshire and New Jersey have lower poverty rates than Vermont. Jennifer Cohen of the New America Foundation said her organization used that American Community Survey in its analysis because those are the figures the Federal Government uses to apportion  “Title I” school funds, which are designed to increase spending in poor  areas.

So Vermont is not poor. This does not mean it is rich. Jill Remick, the spokesperson for the Vermont Department of Education, said about 30 percent of the school-children in the state qualify for the free or reduced lunch program, meaning their family income is 180 percent of the poverty line or less. That’s higher than many states, and all the New England states except Maine.

Vermont can thank some of its policies for its relatively large allotment per poor pupil. The complex federal formula by which these funds are distributed is not based entirely on percentage of poor students.  A state is rewarded if it spends more of its total state budget on education, and also if spending is relatively equitable around the state. Vermont schools may be expensive, and its efforts to equalize education spending controversial, but in this case both policies seem to have brought a little extra money into the state.

The federal money is expected to be dispatched quickly, but Remick said it will not be soon enough to affect Vermont’s local school budgets that will be voted on over the next few weeks. In fact, state education officials only got the House Committee estimates yesterday, and it will be some time before they can figure out how the money will be distributed among the Vermont’s 302 school districts

“The school budgets (for next year) have already been prepared and printed,” she said. The new federal money will start affecting the Fiscal year 2011 school budgets that will be prepared and voted on next winter.

But the money will begin to flow sooner than that, and if nothing else it could have a psychological impact on voters. More money from the federal government means less reliance on local property taxes, soon if not now. It is the prospect of rising property taxes that most commonly leads to school budget defeats.

Vermont will get $26,364,000 in additional Title I money, plus $7,125,000 for physical improvements to schools in poor areas. Under two separate formulas, the state will get $27,366,000 in extra funds for special education. In this case, the state does not seem to be getting extra funds because of its generous Special Education policies, which in many cases provide each special needs child with his or her own teaching aide.

The policy is very expensive, and last month Gov. Jim Douglas singled it out as one that might have to be changed to save money. The new funding should at least provide state education officials some breathing room to examine Special Education.

As with all states, Vermont’s biggest chunk, $96,050,000, is for the “State Fiscal Stabilization Fund.” This money goes to state government  “to help states maintain 2008 levels of education funding,” in the words of the New America Foundation analysis.

State Senator Douglas Racine is now the front-runner for the Democratic nomination for governor of Vermont next year.

Though a poll taken now would surely find him trailing Republican Gov. Jim Douglas, from what might be called the political energy perspective, Racine could even be considered the front-runner in the general election, thanks to his de facto campaign associate: Jim Douglas.

It was Douglas who declared that most Vermonters would find it “perverse” that Racine had already announced his candidacy. A plausible contention, but in making it, Douglas was reacting to Racine.

Front-runners do not react. Especially incumbent front-runners.

By reacting, and by focusing his reaction on Racine, Douglas did Racine the favor of seeming to be – if only for the moment – the “other guy” in the mix. Right now, it’s Douglas versus Racine.

Secretary of State Deb Markowitz, who has created an official campaign “exploratory committee” but not officially declared her candidacy, could not have been pleased. Neither, probably, were Sens. Peter Shumlin and Susan Bartlett, who are also among those “mentioned” as possible Democratic candidates.

While it is a plausible contention that most Vermonters would find a two-year campaign for governor “perverse,” the suggestion is implausibly inconsistent coming from Douglas, who in the past has supported four-year terms for governor precisely because the current two-year system essentially means that governors can never stop campaigning.

Certainly Douglas never stops. He can’t. Statewide campaigns take two years these days. That’s not a matter of any candidate’s choice. It is the imperative of campaigns that (yes, even in Vermont) revolve around television, and therefore depend on the money needed to pay for TV ads. To raise enough money, campaigns have to get organized early. Twenty-two months before the election is not too early.

So, “perverse” or not, it was smart of Racine just to jump into the race last month.  If you’re going to do it, do it. Whether his assertiveness is what convinced Treasurer Jeb Spaulding to decide not to run is unknowable and irrelevant. What is known and relevant is that one of the more formidable contenders took himself out of the contest.

Also known and relevant is that the Democrats in general are being aggressive. After their fourth straight defeat by Douglas in November, Democrats seemed stunned and cowed. The Republican governor bestrode the state like the last Republican colossus in New England, easily surviving Barack Obama’s Vermont sweep.

But in the last six weeks or so, Douglas has stumbled a bit. Nothing calamitous to be sure, and nothing that can’t be reversed. But at the very least he has for the moment lost control of the political/policy conversation. His insistence on deep budget reductions, no tax increases, and sharp cuts in school spending has inspired more opposition than support, and has gotten no traction in the Legislature.

A visitor to the Senate Finance Committee’s meeting room yesterday would have seen on the wall a white poster on which three circles had been drawn, representing three means of solving the state’s fiscal mess. One was labeled “cuts,’ but the other two were “stimulus” (as in the Federal law signed yesterday), and the third “revenue.”In each circle were the words, “How much? Where?” The senators are obviously planning to use all three circles.

The governor also seemed a bit discombobulated by the latest Lake Champlain brouhaha. After travel writer Peter Greenberg included the lake in a “must-miss” list in his new book, Don’t Go There!: The Travel Detective’s Essential Guide to the Must-Miss Places of the World, Douglas’s office put out a statement calling it “outrageous  that Mr. Greenberg chose to rely on misleading information from an anti-growth organization trying to score cheap political points.”

The apparent reference was to the Conservation Law Foundation, which did seem to have been one source for Greenberg’s conclusion, which arguably over-stated the case; only parts of the lake are badly polluted.

But politically speaking, some assertions are better ignored than attacked. And whatever the merits of the case, Matt Crawford’s column in Sunday’s Free Press put the finishing touches on the political argument, not in Douglas’s favor.

Greenberg’s comments may have been “over the top,” Crawford said, “but you have to admit, Lake Champlain seems more like a cesspool than a pristine place these days, and the chance for improvements coming on any front seem slim to none.”

Ouch. In the Vermont sports fishing community, Crawford has clout. Though “only” an outdoor writer, he was one of the best reporters on the Free Press until he decided to work full time for a more civilized outfit while still contributing two columns a month to the newspaper.  On the record of his past work, no one could reasonably call him partial to the ultra-Green faction. His column, then, put a fitting if unwelcome end to a politically uncomfortable  couple of weeks for the governor.

Now, all this is transitory to the nth degree. Right now, few Vermonters care about next year’s governor’s race. Only weird people like the writer (and quite likely the readers) of this web site are paying attention. And beware of the attention-payers. Just a little more than a year ago the experts were assuring all of us that there was no way Hillary Clinton could fail to win her party’s presidential nomination and no way John McCain could succeed in winning his.

So there’s plenty of time for Racine, who ran an uninspired campaign for governor in 2002, to squander his advantage, plenty of time for Markowitz or one of the other Democrats to become the front-runner, more than enough time for Douglas to regain his political footing.

Right now, though, Doug Racine must be feeling pretty good.

The News Guy did not exactly take a President’s Day holiday. But because so many potential information-providers did, and because last Friday’s post was actual news, this seemed like the right time to deal with the housekeeping-clarifying-mopping up function to which Fridays are often devoted.

And speaking of Friday, because of some still-unexplained computer glitch, the post for that day didn’t actually get onto the web site until almost 10:30 AM. For those who usually check in earlier, and perhaps assumed that we were taking  a holiday then, apologies.

That post is below, the third one down.

Thanks to the readers who emailed wondering what was going on, and to the reader who realized that New Hampshire’s pending budget deficit was probably closer to $100 million than $100 billion.

Looking at those federal budget figures really can fry the brain.

Friday’s post included results of a New Hampshire poll ,and some musing about why Vermont does not have the equivalent of  the Granite State Report polling operation connected with the University of New Hampshire.

If that musing conveyed the impression that the University over there in Durham, N.H., finances the poll, the impression was incorrect. Andrew Smith, who runs the poll, is a political science professor at UNH, but the poll, he said, finances itself. In election years, news organizations put up most of the money. In off-years such as this one,  he gets funding from various sources, including by allowing companies and non-profit agencies to “buy” a few questions in a broader survey.

Just as one of the Vermont polling firms does as discussed in an earlier post (“The Perils of Polling,” on January 27) about how polling results can misinform if the questions are not precisely worded.

The difference is that in the Granite State Survey, Smith edits the questions and changes the wording if he thinks it might affect the way some respondents answer the question.

“In fact, I’m a pain in the butt when it comes to the final wording,” Smith said.

As he should be. Polling questions should be written by scholars trying to discover public opinion. Not by activists trying to manipulate it.

And speaking of polls, here’s a one-question version: Do you give a hoot about whether , when that guy Tribble killed that guy Borello eight years ago. it was murder as opposed to…well, something else?.

What? Does someone charge that the above question was poorly worded, revealing a bias on the part of the questioner?

Guilty.

But not as guilty (of another offense, to be sure) as the Burlington Free Press was by devoting 81 square inches of Page One on Sunday (more than a third of the page’s news hole), plus another 132 square inches inside. That was almost one sixth of the front section news content.

And for what? For the verdict in the second trial of one boring, grouchy guy who shot and killed another boring, grouchy guy some time back. It doesn’t seem likely that very many people care that much. The stories have been ably reported and written by Adam Silverman. But toward what end?

Do not misunderstand. Murder is the ultimate great story. Accounts of it can be fascinating and fun. But this one was just bizarre. It had neither a famous victim (the Lindbergh baby) nor a famous defendant (O.J. Simpson),  nor any social, economic, or political significance. It didn’t even have any sex.

But the Free Press devoted thousands of column inches to the story over the past several weeks, which makes sense neither as news judgment nor as a circulation booster.

Which the Free Press could use. Two years ago, it sold 48,042 papers on weekdays, 56,295 on Sunday. The latest figures are 41,901 and 47,566. Yes, many newspapers are losing circulation and the Free Press did raise its price by one third.

Still, those are big circulation losses, 12.7 percent daily and 15.5 percent on Sunday. Do you suppose if the bosses there employed reporter Silverman’s competence on matters that affected the actual lives of actual people a few more of said people might read the paper?

Just asking.

All right, to some web site business: I am accepting the invitations of all readers who want to be my Facebook friend or to follow me on Twitter except for those trying to connive me into supporting some political cause or candidate.

But I still would like someone to answer this question: What is the point of it all?

On Twitter, for instance, one is regularly asked: “What are you doing now?”

Sitting at the computer, obviously.

OK, maybe I’m being too literal. But suppose I decide to answer that question some evening later this week. I could sit down at the computer and type in, “I’m watching an NBA game.”

That would be accurate. It would not be interesting.

Not to mention that when I clicked on one Twitter-follower, the Twitter company informed me that “this person has protected their updates.”

This company does not speak English. The person involved is clearly a female. Such a with-it firm ought to be able to program its software so it tells us that she has protected her updates. Or if that’s too much trouble it could use “his/her” for everyone. It need not debase the language and the culture.

And speaking of the language and the culture, this one was too delicious not to use to close today’s exercise. A letter-writer to the editor of the Free Press, enraged about the Burlington teachers contract, proposed that they all take pay cuts and that ten percent of the city’s teachers should be laid off immediately, with “the remaining teachers…asked to work extra hours to make up for less teachers.”

Turns out this guy, who will not be identified to protect the guilty, doesn’t even live in Burlington. Hmmm. Maybe if he’d gone to school there one of those well-paid teachers would have taught him when to say “less” and when to say “fewer.”