Hillcrest was one of nearly 14,000 school districts or local education agencies nationwide that the U.S. Department of Education reported would get stimulus funds under its Title I program.

But some of those districts are phantoms because they were dissolved or merged.

In Kansas, 11 school districts that no longer exist are on the U.S. Department of Education’s distribution list for stimulus funds. They are set to receive nearly $600,000.

We found these school districts when Kirby Ross, managing editor of the Phillips County Review in Phillipsburg, Kan., alerted us that our county-by-county stimulus tracker [1] included two districts in his area that didn’t exist. That prompted us to do some more digging.

We checked more states and found that other consolidated or dissolved districts were on the list. In Missouri and Iowa, a handful of closed districts were listed as receiving stimulus funding.

That doesn’t mean stimulus checks will be arriving to empty buildings. In instances where money is allocated to a closed district, it typically is divvied up among the districts where the students now attend.

States must notify the Department of Education when districts are dissolved or merged. We asked the Department of Education why the list of districts receiving stimulus funds included closed districts, but we did not hear back. We’ll let you know when we do.

We’ll update our data once states know how the funds will be redistributed. In the meantime, if you browse our list and notice money going to closed districts in your area, please let us know.

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“The national economic downturn has caused a significant number of people and families, through no fault of their own, to become homeless or nearly homeless,” said Governor Rendell. “These funds could not have come at a better time. They’ll boost county and local efforts to help those teetering on the edge of homelessness and provide assistance to those who are homeless.”

The stimulus funds will provide financial assistance and other services intended to help people and families find stable housing, Governor Rendell said.  These services include short- and medium-term rental assistance, help with costs associated with moving into permanent housing, intensive case management, as well as relocation and stabilization services.

The federal Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing Program funds for Pennsylvania have two components: one competitively awarded and the other to be distributed according to a formula.

In the competitive component, 10 projects in six counties will receive $1.8 million. In the formula-based allocation, more than $20 million will go to 63 counties according to a base grant amount and a “need factor” based upon demographic data.

For information on the Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing Program and other programs administered by DCED, visit www.NewPA.com or call 1-866-466-3972.

Governor Rendell is committed to ensuring that the public is able to monitor how federal Recovery Act funding is being invested in Pennsylvania by providing news, up-to-date information and regular reports on www.recovery.pa.gov.

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EDITOR’S NOTE:  Sixty-three counties will receive a total of $20,065,423 as part of the county housing partnerships component of the Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing Program.  Below is a by-county breakdown of the funds each received.

Adams $343,905.00
Allegheny $826,654.00
Armstrong $357,494.00
Beaver $286,105.00
Bedford $188,473.00
Berks $317,515.00
Blair $257,482.00
Bucks $396,431.00
Butler $490,141.00
Cambria $363,288.00
Cameron $30,969.00
Carbon $344,447.00
Centre $454,064.00
Chester $300,814.00
Clearfield $378,325.00
Clinton $180,256.00
Columbia $344,664.00
Crawford $379,986.00
Cumberland $334,546.00
Dauphin $339,095.00
Delaware $331,879.00
Elk $176,810.00
Erie $422,359.00
Fayette $565,681.00
Forest $29,254.00
Franklin $480,386.00
Fulton $37,525.00
Greene $186,895.00
Huntingdon $186,733.00
Indiana $354,951.00
Jefferson $187,861.00
Juniata $38,595.00
Lackawanna $311,683.00
Lancaster $273,581.00
Lawrence $383,895.00
Lebanon $380,119.00
Lehigh $249,798.00
Luzerne $269,810.00
Lycoming $338,401.00
McKean $189,522.00
Mercer $406,279.00
Mifflin $191,267.00
Monroe $516,137.00
Montgomery $432,616.00
Northampton $423,523.00
Northumberland $365,361.00
Perry $174,932.00
Philadelphia $2,091,608.00
Pike $182,636.00
Potter $40,335.00
Schuylkill $516,093.00
Snyder $172,334.00
Somerset $354,719.00
Sullivan $28,702.00
Susquehanna $177,909.00
Tioga $180,053.00
Union $170,875.00
Warren $178,629.00
Washington $212,136.00
Wayne $184,805.00
Westmoreland $386,489.00
Wyoming $46,541.00
York $321,057.00
Total $20,065,428

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On Thursday, the president’s Council of Economic Advisers released its first quarterly report on the economic impact of the stimulus. The next day’s headlines seized on a single number in the report: one million, the council’s estimate of how many jobs the stimulus had created or saved. But how solid is that number?

According to the report itself, not very. “Any estimates of the impact of the ARRA at this early stage must be regarded as preliminary,” noted the report, “and understood to be subject to substantial uncertainty.”

Why is that? First, as we’ve reported before, gauging the jobs impact of the stimulus means comparing it against a hypothetical, stimulus-free scenario—a “baseline” that can be projected but by definition never known. Such economic projections are always difficult: in January, Christina Romer, now the council’s chair, predicted that without the stimulus, unemployment would peak at 9 percent in 2010. The fact that unemployment has already passed that level only demonstrates the difficulty of estimating unknowable scenarios. (Indeed, the council itself calls its baseline “plausible”—hardly a rousing endorsement.)

Second, even assuming the baseline is accurate, the report points out that not much time has passed since the stimulus was enacted, which makes it hard to measure actual economic performance with great certainty. “It is important to acknowledge that six months is a short period of time for macroeconomic analysis,” the authors write. “The only official GDP data that we have under the program is for the second quarter of 2009,” add the authors, and “one observation obviously does not constitute a trend.”

Third, the report hedges its bets by giving a range for the number of jobs created or saved by the stimulus. “By August,” concludes the report, “employment is estimated to be between 600,000 and 1.1 million higher than it would otherwise have been.” But few news organizations took the time to report the lower number, choosing instead to focus on the more eye-catching “million” number. The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, and the Associated Press all skipped mention of 600,00 or any range at all.

(Reporters may have been following the lead of the White House, which in February was remarkably specific about how many jobs would theoretically be created by the stimulus in each congressional district.)

Finally, it’s hard to separate the impact of the stimulus from other measures, including the trillions of dollars committed by various government agencies as part of the financial rescue. The council’s report breezes past this point, saying, “This analysis indicates that the ARRA and other policy actions [emphasis added] caused employment in August to be slightly more than 1 million jobs higher than it otherwise would have been.” How much of that impact came from the stimulus rather than the bailout? We’ll never really know.

None of this is to call into question the quality of the report’s own findings. The council supported their results by comparing them with private-sector analysis, as well as looking at the experience of other countries’ stimulus packages. And the authors deserve credit for making clear the many caveats that apply to their job estimates. But caveats don’t lend themselves well to headlines.

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Not content to put you in a new car, the government wants you to think about a new washing machine and fridge, too. BusinessWeek reports that the Department of Energy will use stimulus cash to offer rebates of up to $200 for the purchase of high-efficiency household appliances. (You don’t need to turn in your old one.) The department has up to $300 million to spend on the program, which only covers appliances with an Energy Star seal. According to BusinessWeek, the industry could use the help: Shipments of washers, dryers, refrigerators and ovens fell by 10 percent in 2008.

Stock analysts warn that two stimulus programs are distorting market signals for cars and homes, creating artificial boosts in demand that aren’t sustainable, reports CNN Money. Only when the “cash for clunkers” program ends later today will the true state of the auto industry be apparent again, said one analyst. Similarly, the government’s program providing tax credits for home purchases obscures the fact that “inventories of unsold homes still rose and home prices are still falling,” noted another.

The New York Post proves unable to resist a double entendre with its story about stimulus-funded sex research. The article cites stimulus funding for studies that examine “barriers to correct condom use” ($221,000), “hookups among adolescents” ($219,000), and “drug use as a sex enhancer” ($123,000).

This corner usually sticks to American coverage, but news today from across the Atlantic merits an exception. Le Monde reports (via the AP) that France has now spent two-thirds of its stimulus package and plans to have spent three-quarters by year’s end. By contrast, according to ProPublica’s research, the United States has spent less than 15 percent, excluding tax cuts, which are more difficult to track. To be fair, France’s stimulus is considerably smaller: Two-thirds is only $26 billion, while the U.S. has paid out more than $80 billion so far in direct spending alone. However, Francophiles will note that La Belle Pays is no longer in recession. Coincidence? Nous ne savons pas.

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Story courtesy of Propublica