Executive Director's Report: Make your voices heard on Capitol Hill
By Anne L. Bryant
9/23/03 -- After a well-deserved vacation, children, teachers, and other school staff are back in class, ready to hit the ground running -- and so are the members of the 108th Congress.
Congress returned in early September with a full plate of education issues on the table, beginning with a bill to establish a voucher program for the District of Columbia.
For those of you who are longtime School Board News readers, this will sound all-too familiar: We once again are battling against the use of public funds for private school vouchers.
Last time this came up, we were fighting against an amendment to tack vouchers onto the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). This time we are engaged in an important battle to keep vouchers out of the D.C. appropriations bill.
As of Sept. 12, we had very narrowly lost two strategic amendments in the House, but heard that the Senate will vote on the issue within the next few weeks. Stay tuned to your NSBA electronic alert system, which will keep you updated on these important votes.
The irony, of course, is that vouchers for the District of Columbia come in direct conflict with the views of D.C. voters. According to an NSBA poll, 76 percent of voters oppose vouchers. Close to 80 percent said that if taxpayer-funded vouchers were passed, private schools should be required to meet the same accountability standards as public schools. And these views are held by D.C. voters across the board -- whites, blacks, males, females, those who have children in the public schools, and those who don't.
The D.C. Board of Education, acting in concert with public opinion, passed a resolution in July 2002 opposing vouchers.
The D.C. mayor, President Bush, and even the president of the school board -- all of whom are supporting the voucher legislation -- apparently are not concerned that D.C. voters do not want a voucher program.
What makes the D.C. voucher proposal even worse is that it would pay for this program by taking $10 million away from the federal education budget. That means money will be siphoned off from public schools across the nation to fund vouchers in D.C.
Another major item on the congressional docket is the overall appropriations bill for K-12 education. NSBA and our Federal Relations Network have been working hard to try to increase the amounts in both the House and Senate bills targeted for the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, Title I, and IDEA.
At this moment, the Senate bill includes NSBA's recommendation to increase funding for IDEA by $2.2 billion. So as this bill heads for a House-Senate conference committee, we urge you to call or e-mail your members of Congress to ask them to appropriate the money they promised.
The message that school board members and superintendents need to clearly make is that if we are going to implement NCLB -- and truly begin to ensure that every child is ready to do math and read at grade level -- the resources must be increased. You and I both know that it will take more resources, not fewer, to provide the kind of teaching, professional development, and curriculum that is needed to ensure that every child can meet the higher standards.
It's a big challenge, and I know that we're up to it. But we must have the resources.
As many of you know, we are continuing our work on the reauthorization of IDEA.
We are pleased that many of our recommendations already have been incorporated into the House and Senate IDEA bills (H.R.1315 and S.128). And we encourage you to continue your efforts -- to contact your senators, through phone calls and e-mail messages, as this legislation goes to the Senate floor.
Also coming up for reauthorization is the Child Nutrition Act, which includes the school lunch program. NSBA has sent a letter to key members of Congress urging them to increase local control and flexibility so that we can, in fact, create greater cost-saving efficiencies in the school meals program.
What we're after on your behalf is to oppose mandates on school districts that increase the paperwork and administrative burdens and do nothing to make meals healthier and better for our children.
You might not have heard about another issue we addressed this summer: With very little fanfare, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) was about to put into operation some guidelines that would have prohibited not only businesses, but not-for-profit organizations, from sending faxes to members and customers without getting written permission from every recipient.
You can imagine what this so-called "reconsideration" to the Telephone Consumer Protection Act would have done to our state associations, to NSBA, and, in fact, to all not-for-profit organizations that depend on this cost-effective way to communicate with their members.
Thanks to strong leadership, the NSBA staff and the entire not-for-profit association community in Washington were able to convince the FCC to postpone the effective date of this ruling until January 2005. We may well come back to our state school boards associations for help as we work to persuade the FCC to drop plans to limit non-profits from using faxes to reach our members.
So whether it's big issues, such as funding, vouchers, and the reauthorization of IDEA, or somewhat smaller issues like school lunches and faxes, your NSBA staff and board leadership are working hard to make things better for you, your schools, and your schoolchildren.
The summer gave us some time to rest up a bit and reflect on how we can be even better school board members and leaders for public education. Now that we're all back and ready to once more tackle the issues facing our schools, let's all work together to convince Congress to fund its fair share.
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| Reproduced with permission from the 2003 issue of School Board News. Copyright © 2003, National School Boards Association. Opinions expressed in this newspaper do not necessarily reflect positions of NSBA. This article may be printed out and photocopied for individual or educational use, provided this copyright notice appears on each copy. This article may not be otherwise transmitted or reproduced in print or electronic form without the consent of the Publisher. For more information, call (703) 838-6789. |