School board leaders call for greater federal investment in education
09/27/05 -- “The majority of our school districts are grappling with rising costs for education,” says David Pickler, a member of the Shelby County, Tenn., school board. “From special education needs to rising gasoline prices and the enrollment of students displaced by Hurricane Katrina, we are all experiencing budget constraints that will continue without the federal funding we need for programs such as Title I and special education.”
Pickler spoke at a press event on Capitol Hill Sept. 13 to urge Congress to provide sufficient federal funding for education this year. NSBA, several state school boards associations, and other education organizations participated in the event, which was sponsored by the Committee for Education Funding.
Pickler, representing the Tennessee School Boards Association, as well as NSBA, was joined by school board members Linda Omobien of Akron, Ohio; Katie Reed of the Northside Independent School District in Texas; and Scott Williams of the Homewood City School District in Alabama.
Pickler and the other school board members -- representing the Alabama, Ohio, and Texas school boards associations -- also met privately with their senators and House members.
The school board leaders urged Congress to provide increases of at least $1 billion for Title I, the major source of funding to schools under the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), and at least $1 billion for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).
The House has approved an education appropriations bill for fiscal year 2006 that would provide increases of only $150 million for IDEA and $100 million for Title I. The Senate bill would provide even less -- just a $100 million increase for each program. The bills also eliminate many smaller programs.
Now that Congress is focused on providing aid to communities affected by Katrina, it’s uncertain whether those appropriations bills will proceed to a conference committee or whether education funding will be tacked on to another vehicle, such as an omnibus appropriations bill or a continuing resolution.
To highlight how the appropriations bills are shortchanging public schools, the press event was styled as a “Billion-Dollar Bake Sale,” featuring such items as “Title I brownies” at $6.67 each (because we need to sell more than 1.49 million to provide the funding already authorized by Congress).
In Shelby County, federal funding represents about 5 percent of total revenues, Pickler says. “But federally mandated expenditures, such as special education, exceed 25 percent of our total operating budget. This gap in revenues and mandated expenditures has created in communities across the nation a de facto federal education tax.”
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