Cash for Clunkers to Continue Under Department of Ed

August 24, 2009 (GBN News): With the popular “Cash for Clunkers” program set to expire, Education Secretary Arne Duncan has agreed to extend it under the auspices of the US Department of Education. The Secretary announced today that starting immediately, school districts will be given $450,000 in Federal stimulus money towards the purchase of a brand new charter school for each failing school they trade in.

While Secretary Duncan has not yet announced all of the details, he did indicate that, like the junked cars, the old schools will have to be entirely destroyed. “People couldn’t keep so much as an oil pan or a spark plug from any of those old cars they traded in,” the Secretary said. “So why would we let them keep any part of a ‘clunker school’?” Mr. Duncan thus indicated that teachers, principals, and even the students will have to vacate the schools that are traded in. “With a fresh staff and students in the new charter schools,” he said, “we’ll get much higher mileage – I mean test scores – than the old schools did.”

However, it appears that some of the old trade-in automobiles will not in fact meet their intended fate. According to GBN News sources, the Education Department has managed to block the destruction of thousands of “clunkers”, and will be using them as classroom space for students whose schools are traded in. “Those are pretty big cars being traded in,” said one source close to the Secretary. “The kids may actually have more space than some of the classrooms they’re in now.”