12/14/04 — President Bush signed into law Dec. 8 an omnibus appropriations bill for fiscal year 2005 that includes minimal funding increases for the major education programs.
The measure increases Title I by just $500 million more than the amount provided for 2004. That is only half as much as the $1 billion increase approved by the House. The Senate Appropriations Committee had approved a $1.1 billion increase.
For special education, Congress appropriated an increase of just $608 million — also far less that the increases in the House bill ($1 billion) and Senate bill ($1.26 billion).
“For this Congress to think the resources they’re providing to implement the mandates they saddled schools with illustrates the extent to which Congress is detached from reality,” says Dan Fuller, NSBA’s federal programs director. “When it comes to running schools, to provide these meager funding increases is irresponsible.”
NSBA had sought increases of $2.5 billion for Title I and $2.2 billion for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).
Title I, which provides grants to school districts to support academic programs for disadvantaged students, is the primary federal program for implementing the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). When Congress enacted NCLB, it authorized $21.5 billion for Title I for FY 2005. With the omnibus funding bill appropriating just $12.8 billion, the result is an $8.7 billion shortfall.
And when Congress passed a major piece of legislation to reauthorize IDEA, just a day before it approved the omnibus funding bill, it reauthorized a funding increase of nearly $2.3 billion for 2005.
NSBA Associate Executive Director Michael A. Resnick calls these meager increases “a major disservice to the 48 million students in our nation’s school systems.”
For Congress to promise significant funding increases in education programs before the election and then to substantially reduce those increases during the final deliberations “represents an inconsistent approach,” Resnick wrote to members of Congress Nov. 23.
“The underfunding of education programs places local school districts in a quandary about how to achieve the goals of NCLB and the education of children with disabilities,” Resnick says. The resulting shortfall in federal funding is likely to lead to tax increases and program cuts at the local level.
The omnibus appropriations bill provides $200 million for Title V, a decrease from the current level of $296 million. NSBA had worked with a coalition of education groups to block an effort by members of Congress to zero out this program. Title V provides grants to school districts to support various locally determined education reforms, such as class size reduction and intervention programs for struggling students.
The omnibus bill cuts reading programs 3.4 percent over 2004 levels. Funding for teacher quality state grants, English language acquisition, and 21st Century Learning Centers remains basically unchanged from 2004.