Considering that he was surrounded by administrators whose careers are rooted in education, Waco school board member Pat Atkins probably didn’t need to mention it, but he did so. We’ll now echo, and with the best of intentions, his concerns during last week’s budget workshop: Proceed with great caution in budgeting the $5.8 million in education funds allotted by a federal jobs bill that passed Congress last week.

For one thing, if Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott makes a real legal fight of it over the bill’s peculiar demands on state spending levels, as seems likely, this federal money could be tied up in litigation limbo.

Also, if the federal money is used now for purposes that recur in 2011, it could put the Waco Independent School District in a heck of a long-term bind. There’s no guarantee this money will be available again next year. If Republicans take Congress come November, you can almost bet it won’t, considering growing voter discontent over widening federal deficits.

Also, state budget projections indicate a shortfall of about $18 billion. Yet state legislators are not going to seek tax hikes — not in this anti-tax environment.

Interim Superintendent Sheryl Davis wants to use the federal money we get to provide a 2.1 percent pay hike for teachers and staff and a 1.6 percent hike for administrators. Without the federal funds approved last week, our district faces an estimated $1.9 million budget shortfall this year and a likely $2 million shortfall next year, she says. Ah, but the catch: If we fund the raises and other costs this year with federal funds, we may instead face a $4.5 million budget shortfall next year, which may mean going into our reserves.

Atkins and local administrators are completely justified in feeling anxiety. Across the nation, school administrators are balking at just how to use this federal money, fearful that hiring new teachers now might only see them laid off next year when an even tighter budget picture prevails amidst a weakening national economy. If raises are allotted, they too could spell layoffs a year later.

Some superintendents in Texas are wondering if they can save the money for later. Indeed, if there’s any good news to all this, it’s that the money doesn’t have to be spent till Sept. 30, 2012, so districts might be able to sit on it till a real disaster arises, like the state’s failing to meet its financial obligations in 2011, sparking the kind of teacher layoffs we’re now seeing in other states.

Solution to all this: State lawmakers must finally take some significant steps to address the structural deficit that they opened up in granting property tax relief a few years back. In doing so, they created perpetual revenue shortages.

We wonder, too, why Congress and the Obama administration are again intruding in state and local affairs, bailing out states such as Texas when our state legislators should be addressing their own crises. Surely Congress has enough to fund with a war on terrorism and a growing litany of entitlement programs.

Irony: Had Washington refrained from approving this latest package of state aid, Texas lawmakers might have had to turn from their usual politically motivated nonsense to crafting real solutions for serious matters such as school finance. Now, it seems, the federal government has once again made it possible, even likely, that our state lawmakers will avoid the inevitable.