How Not to Waste Your Perkins V Funding
A CTE director's guide to turning federal dollars into a program that lasts
The schools that waste Perkins funding are almost never the ones that break the rules. They're the ones that treat the money as a purchase instead of a program.
Those are not the same thing.
A Machine Is Not a Program
Buying equipment is the easy part. It is also the part that gets all the attention. But equipment sitting in a classroom is not a program.
A real program is four things working together:
The equipment
A curriculum and implementation plan
A trained instructor
Ongoing support to keep it running after the people who started it move on
Get all four, and the funding builds something that lasts. Miss one, and you can follow every Perkins rule and still waste the money.
At Klein Educational Systems, we know that because we've watched it happen.
What "Spending It Correctly" Looks Like When It Fails
A community college in the Southwest bought a top-of-the-line automation system. A million-dollar smart factory. The most advanced product on the market at the time.
It was fully allowable. Correctly purchased. Installed and working.
For nearly a decade, that machine did exactly one thing. When visitors toured the program, someone flipped it on and ran the demo. Everyone said, "wow, that's impressive." Then they walked out.
About eight years in, we asked the instructor how many students he had trained on it. His answer was none. Simply because they hadn’t finished writing the labs yet.
Eventually the school realized the thing was taking up an entire room nobody used and they sold it at auction for a fraction of what they had paid for it.
The Two-Step Trap
The pattern we see more than any other goes like this:
Our CLNA says we need a robotics program.
Let's buy robots.
There is a quiet assumption buried in step two. It is the belief that putting equipment in a classroom creates a program, but it doesn’t.
A few years back, robotic welding got very popular. Nearly every community college on the West Coast bought a big robotic welding cell. These are serious machines. Twenty feet on a side, protective screens, genuinely impressive equipment.
Across an entire region, you could count on one hand the number that actually got used in a classroom. Not because the equipment was bad. Because it showed up with no plan for how an instructor was supposed to teach with it.
Correct and Effective Are Not the Same Thing
Here’s what trips people up. They spend all their energy on the wrong question.
Everyone worries about whether a purchase is allowable. Can I buy this? Does it fit the CLNA? Will it pass the audit? Those are real questions, but they are also the easy ones. Your grant office can answer them in an afternoon.
Staying compliant just means you spent the money by the book. It doesn’t mean you built anything.
The harder question, the one that actually decides whether the funding was worth it, is how do I turn this into a program that survives?
What Actually Makes a Program
A sustainable CTE program needs four things. This is true whether or not you ever buy a thing from Klein.
1. The equipment - The part everyone starts with, and honestly the part that is easiest to get right. The technology in this field is not new. Most trainers do more or less the same things. The hardware was never the real differentiator.
2. The curriculum and implementation plan - This is what turns a machine into instruction.
One of my strongest programs is a community college in Arizona. The instructor there chose his equipment specifically because the curriculum and labs came built and ready to drop into his Canvas portal. He didn’t have to reinvent anything. He wasn’t writing labs. He was teaching.
That program grew from about fifty students a year to several hundred, with multiple instructors all running the same system.
3. A trained instructor - Equipment without a confident teacher is the single most common point of failure we see.
When a large district in southern Nevada equipped the manufacturing programs across its high schools, we didn’t just deliver hardware. We ran workshops on how to teach with it. We went further than the manufacturers do and showed them how to grade it, how to seat students, and how to run a full year.
Now, there’s roughly ten programs across that valley certifying workforce-ready students, all on the same page. That almost never happens. And it didn’t happen by accident. It happened becuase they had the right equipment, curriculum, and most importantly, confident instructors.
4. Ongoing support - Installation is day one. The real question is who is still there in year three when something breaks, the software needs updating, or a new instructor inherits the room.
Support that is reachable during your workday, from people who have actually taught with the equipment, is the difference between a hiccup and a dead program.
Miss any one of these four, and the funding is at risk. No matter how correctly it was spent.
How to Spend Perkins Funding Without Wasting It
The fix is to treat the spending decision as a program-design decision, not a procurement decision.
That means:
Start from the CLNA priority, but define the outcome you want, not the shopping list
Plan all four pieces before you spend, not just the equipment
Budget for curriculum, training, and support alongside the hardware
Document how each purchase ties back to both a required use and a real program outcome
A modest piece of equipment with a full program around it will outperform a premium one gathering dust. Every single time.
None of this is unique to Perkins, by the way. The same logic applies to state grants, local bonds, or any pot of money you are trying to turn into something lasting. Perkins is just where most CTE directors feel it first.
And this is the whole reason Klein exists.
Anybody can sell you parts on a board and tell you it is great. What actually determines whether that federal money becomes a functioning program is everything built around the equipment.
That is the part we help you get right. The curriculum. The instructor training. The implementation plan. And a support relationship that is still standing after the people who started it have moved on.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can Perkins V funds be used for equipment?
Yes. Equipment tied to a CTE program identified in your CLNA is generally an allowable use. The more important question is what comes with the equipment. A machine bought without curriculum, instructor training, and a plan to use it is still allowable, and still at risk of becoming an expensive display piece.
Can Perkins V funds pay for curriculum and professional development?
Yes, and they are often the most valuable thing you can spend on. Curriculum and PD are what turn hardware into instruction. Most schools pour the budget into equipment and treat these as afterthoughts. That is backwards.
What is the difference between spending Perkins funds correctly and spending them effectively?
Correctly means the purchase follows the rules. Effectively means it produces a working, sustainable program. It is entirely possible to spend every dollar by the book and still end up with equipment nobody uses. Compliance is the floor, not the goal.
How do I know if a vendor is overpromising?
Ask to see the full curriculum, not a demo of one showcase course. Some vendors build a single strong course around one trainer to close the sale, then leave you to figure out the rest of the catalog on your own. Look at what covers every trainer you are buying. Ask where support is located and when you can actually reach a person. And ask whether anyone on their team has taught with the equipment.
How do I build a CTE program that survives instructor turnover?
Make sure the program lives in documented systems, not in one person's head. A program built on documented curriculum and repeatable structure can onboard a new instructor with "here is the system, here is how it runs." A program built around one irreplaceable person is one resignation away from collapse.
Do I need a plan before I spend, or can I buy the equipment first?
Plan first. The most common and most expensive mistake I see is treating the purchase as the decision and the plan as something to sort out later. Define the outcome, map out all four pieces, then buy.