Stimulus a victory, but not for school construction
At last night's Baltimore Education Coalition event (culminating in a riveting sermon by BUILD co-chair Bishop Douglas Miles... wish I could post an audio recording on the blog), organizers vowed to keep working together to keep fighting for the city's schools. Among the reasons that's a good thing: While the stimulus money will help on the operations side for the next two years, the capital budget is still sorely lacking.
Last night's event at Fort Worthington Elementary was focused on the victory of fending off changes to funding formulas that would have disproportionately hurt Baltimore and Prince George's County. But let's not forget: Stimulus money that Gov. O'Malley could have given as direct grants for school construction is instead going to community colleges -- another worthy cause, I know. The stimulus gives school districts the ability to get zero-interest bonding authority, but they'd still need to pay that money back. And as we all know, Baltimore's school buildings need a ton of work.
The Baltimore Education Coalition, which brings more than 30 advocacy groups together, has clearly caught politicians' attention. John Sarbanes was there in the Fort Worthington auditorium, and Barbara Mikulski sent a representative.
Baltimoresun.com's 
Comments
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Posted by: Portable Storage | March 5, 2009 4:49 PM
Many people bidding for many of these government funded construction projects will be left out in the cold if they do not have their OSHA training. Several nearby states (NY, CT, MA, RI, NH, and MO) have laws requiring workers on publically-funded jobsites to take the OSHA 10 hour construction training class, like the ones available at www.osha10hourtraining.com . Without the OSHA card, they cannot get on the site. Many general contractors also have the same requirement for minimum OSHA training. So be prepared, do not wait until the last minute.
Posted by: OSHAPro | March 17, 2009 2:19 PM