Utah approved for $101 million for education jobs

The U.S. Department of Education announced Monday that Utah will receive $101 million in stimulus funding geared toward teachers' jobs, despite earlier controversy over whether the state should apply for it and ongoing questions about exactly how much school districts will have to spend. Utah submitted its application last week, one of the first states to do so, said Education Secretary Arne Duncan in a news release.

The national $10 billion education fund is designed to support education jobs in the 2010-11 school year. Though Utah's amount is just 1 percent of the total funding, it could benefit 1,400 to 1,500 teachers, according to state estimates, up to 1,800 teachers, according to federal estimates. But officials in the Utah State Office of Education have cautioned school districts to be wise about allocating the funding. "The only caution we've given is that it's one-time in nature," said Todd Hauber, the state's associate superintendent of business and operations. The Deseret News