When news broke Wednesday that the U.S. Senate had broken free $10 billion for something called Edujobs, not many people were sure how it would benefit the state. Officials here had been watching the money for Medicaid but not the education measure.

Neither Gov. Chris Gregoire nor schools chief Randy Dorn knew how it would work, other than quoting U.S. Sen. Patty Murray’s stats that Washington could save 3,000 teaching jobs facing layoffs.

But few districts were proposing layoffs in Washington. So how can unplanned layoffs be prevented?

It took a while, but I found this assessment by the Education Commission of the States. edujobs

It estimates that Washington will get $207 million and must use it to either save jobs or create jobs in public schools. It would be sent to the state and be distributed through regular k-12 funding methods. A safe rule of thumb would be that it would be shared based on student populations so if Tacoma has about 3 percent of the state’s public school students it would receive about 3 percent of the money (say, $6 million give or take).

The cash must be used for school personnel, not administrative or support staff and there are rules to prevent it from being skimmed to other uses – either to repay debt or back fill for earlier cuts.