Flathead County schools are set to receive more than $6 million in federal stimulus money.

Montana schools were allocated $71.58 million for special services through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

The money is intended to support districts' Title I and special education programs; the funds will be added to schools' annual allocations from the federal government.

School districts around the state will receive their one-time-only payments this year and must spend the money in two years.

Districts are encouraged to spend the money quickly to save and create jobs - but they must walk a fine line to avoid a "funding cliff."

There's no guarantee of more money at the end of two years, so districts that use stimulus money to hire new staffers must be prepared to possibly find new ways to pay those salaries or fire people at the end of the 2010-11 school year.

Some school districts expect to use some stimulus funds to hire staff.

Kalispell Public Schools, which will receive almost $2.3 million, will add a few new positions and retain several others with stimulus money, district Clerk Todd Watkins said.

New positions will include a half-time speech pathologist, "which we've been needing for a while," a preschool special education teacher and two high school resource teachers, he said.

The new jobs are advertised as one-year positions because the funding is uncertain.

"The scary thing is that it's only two-year funding," Watkins said. "What happens at the end of these next two years is potentially everything is back on the table."

Fair-Mont-Egan School will use its entire Title I allocation, almost $13,200, to hire an aide to help with its Title I students, district Clerk Susan Clanton said.

Some of those students will graduate at the end of the school year, so the district shouldn't need the additional aide for more than one year, she added.

The Somers-Lakeside School District likewise plans to use some of its almost $239,850 in stimulus money to hire an additional special education teacher, Superintendent Teri Wing said. Other money will go to bolster reading intervention programs at Lakeside Elementary and Somers Middle School and will be used to fund the district's Title I program, which will ease a significant burden on the district's budget.

"We haven't had enough Title I funds to pay for our Title I program, so we've had to bail out Title I with general fund money," Wing said.

Columbia Falls plans to use most of its special education stimulus money - about $608,000 for its elementary and high school districts - to fund its current special education personnel, district clerk Dustin Zuffelato said. That includes 11 para-educators and a quarter of Special Services Director Terri Burghardt's salary.

The district's Title I allocation - about $579,000 - also will help pay some salaries, Zuffelato said. It will go toward after-school programs at Glacier Gateway and Canyon elementary schools, the high school's learning center and the high school's summer school program for at-risk students.

Columbia Falls hopes to avoid the funding cliff in two years by making room in its general fund budget for future salaries. The district has budgeted for programs that can be discontinued in a year or two, Zuffelato explained.

At the end of two years, those programs will go away, and staffers whose salaries had been covered by stimulus funds will be paid for out of the general fund budget.

"What we've done is just shifted, freed up more money in the general fund to use on things besides just … Title I or special ed," Zuffelato said.

Spending the money on things other than salaries has been challenging for some districts.

"It's very difficult to find ways to spend the money," Olney-Bissell district clerk JeAnna Wisher said. "We're very, very happy to get the money, but it will be a challenge to spend it. And it will be a challenge two years down the road" when the money is no longer available.

Olney-Bissell likely will use some of its $47,500 in stimulus money to make its three-quarter-time kindergarten teacher a full-time position, she said. The kindergarten teacher will use the extra time to cover for other teachers, who will then be able to collaborate on special education- and Title I-related programs.

Most districts' plans for the stimulus funds aren't yet definite. Districts have to apply for the money using an application that isn't yet available on the state Office of Public Instruction Web site. The stimulus allocations then go to schools in addition to their usual Title I and special education payments.

Many will use the money for professional development, to train staffers in special-education-related issues such as autism.

Some district clerks remarked that the stimulus funds aren't as grandiose as the government has tried to make them seem.

"It's great that we're getting it, but it's not as flexible as we would like it to be," said Danelle Reisch, the Whitefish School District's clerk.

All the stimulus money really does is bring federal special education funding up to the level it is supposed to be, she added.

"It's not funded very well. The federal government was supposed to fund it at 40 percent a long time ago," she said.

Federal special education requirements for schools have long gone unfunded, Watkins said.

"The level of general fund support for special education is out of whack," he said. "What this really does is gets us back in the position we should have been in several years ago."

Some stimulus money is available outside the realm of special services. Districts may receive one-time-only facility improvement grants and can compete for QuickStart grants. Those funds are available through the Department of Commerce.

Additional information about Montana schools' stimulus allocations is available at www.opi.mt.gov/RecoveryAct.

Reporter Kristi Albertson may be reached at 758-4438 or by e-mail at kalbertson@dailyinterlake.com