Minnesota's largest school districts have been able to save or add scores, even hundreds, of teaching jobs and other positions this year, thanks to federal stimulus funds, according to newly released state figures.

Breakdowns show that the state's largest district, Anoka-Hennepin, owes the equivalent of 413 full-time jobs to the stimulus package. For St. Paul and Minneapolis, those figures are 444 and 364, respectively. Overall, $643 million in stimulus money has been allocated to the state's public schools.

Take those numbers away, some say, and cash-strapped districts would have suffered crippling classroom losses at a time when future state funding is uncertain.

Not having that money "clearly would have been just devastating," said Scott Croonquist, executive director of the Association for Metropolitan School Districts. "The layoffs would have been really severe."

But some officials suggest that the numbers should be taken with a grain of salt. Had stimulus funding not been there, the state may have found other ways to provide some of the money, they say.

Many jobs were saved indirectly, the result of a complex manipulation the Legislature designed to plug the state's budget deficit. In effect, $500 million was removed this year from state education funding to help erase the budget shortfall, then it was replaced by federal stimulus funds.

"I think it would have been a very difficult conversation" if the state had really cut that much without the stimulus money, said Matt Mohs, director of Title I programs for the St. Paul Public Schools. Even without the cuts, the district had to deal with a $25 million deficit for this year, and that meant laying off 117 teachers.

Many education jobs that were reported as "saved" presumably would have been cut had the stimulus money not been available to plug the $500 million hole.

Instead, the Legislature kept education funding steady for this year and next.