This article reports that the crisis besetting U.S. and world financial markets is hitting school districts hard, as they struggle to float the bonds needed for capital projects, borrow money to ensure cash flow, and get access to investment funds locked up in troubled institutions. Some schools districts depend heavily on borrowed money to pay for capital projects such as new schools and even to tide them over while waiting for property-tax revenues to roll in. But the various investment instruments used to borrow that money are under pressure from the global freeze in the credit markets that drove the $700 billion financial-rescue package approved by Congress and signed into law by President Bush on Oct. 3. The impact of that plan remained unclear last week, even as the stock market continued to seesaw and the Federal Reserve--working with central banks worldwide--cut interest rates in the hope of forestalling a deeper economic decline. The situation leaves school district finance officials with a basket of worries--both short-term and long-term.