Litchfield's federal stimulus of $86,528 will be held in reserve for one year and will be used to save three jobs in 2011-12, the Board of Education's finance committee was told Monday.

The funding is the town's share of a $26 billion jobs bill, the latest federal stimulus Congress approved in August to save or create unionized government positions. The school board has two years to spend its money.

But instead of spending the cash in 2010-11, the board will wait until 2011-12. That's when funding from the $800 billion stimulus of 2009, known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, expires.

ARRA funding has been used to fill two part-time teaching positions and a part-time school psychologist position last year and this year. Those positions will be funded in 2011-12 with the jobs bill cash, according to school officials.

Saving positions, not creating them, is the best way to use the money, according to Superintendent of Schools Deborah Wheeler.

"We didn't want to create positions in this economy, because we wouldn't be able to sustain them," Wheeler said.

In other financial business, the school board ended the 2009-10 fiscal year with a surplus of $178,405 in its budget of $15,914,000, according to business manager Pat Buccitelli.

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