Shovelwatch

The head of the Missouri School Boards Association is calling on Congress to come through with more federal money, in hopes that the state’s public schools can be fully funded next year.   Not surprising — you can see on their state recovery site that they’ve spent all their education stimulus dollars.  You can hear KCUR’s story here.

Meanwhile, Kansas City’s school system is considering closing half its schools.  You can hear a report on that issue here.

American University’s Investigative Reporting Workshop came out with a report last month that said 79 percent of the $2 billion in grants doled out by the clean-energy program in the stimulus so far has gone to foreign companies. This percolated until New York Senator Charles Schumer called on the Obama Administration to suspend stimulus spending in renewable energy until the program becomes, well, more Americanized.  The Department of Energy is defending their program.

Some irony here — the Department of Energy is one of the slowest agencies to spend stimulus money.

New Hampshire Public Radio reports on that state’s recent transportation stimulus award.    Read about it here.

Yesterday we talked about minority contractors and the stimulus — today The Takeaway is talking about how minority communities seem to not be receiving their share of recovery dollars.  Read more here.

It was talked about on The Brian Lehrer Show and now AP talks about it as well:  Hispanic and black businesses are receiving a disproportionately small number of federal stimulus contracts.