Nixon approves educational funding bill

Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon yesterday signed into law House Bill 15, a measure that will provide $189.7 million in federal funding for public elementary and secondary school districts statewide.

The funds are made available through the U.S. Department of Education - Education Jobs Fund, according to the text of the bill.

“The federal law that authorized these education funds was crystal-clear. If Missouri had turned these funds away, they would have gone to other schools in other states,” Nixon said in a news release. “Missouri schools would have been left frantically finding ways to cut hundreds of thousands of dollars from their budgets in the last few weeks of the school year, and that was simply unacceptable.

"I am very pleased that the Senate put politics aside and passed the supplemental budget (for) all local schools to begin investing these critical funds.”

In January, Nixon proposed a fiscal 2012 budget of $23.1 billion, with $5.2 billion going toward K-12 education, down from $5.36 billion in the current fiscal year. Missouri's 2012 budget - which starts in July - has yet to be approved.
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