By Ellie Ashford
03/08 -- If Congress is going to refocus its priorities to support public education this year, it’s going to take a concerted, well-organized advocacy effort on the part of local school board members.
More than 900 school leaders got such an effort started at NSBA’s Federal Relations Network (FRN) Conference in Washington, D.C., earlier this month. As the FRN members prepared to fan out across Capitol Hill to urge their senators and representatives to support NSBA’s advocacy priorities, NSBA President Norman Wooten called upon them to send a clear message:
• Fix the No Child Left Behind Act by joining the 20 lawmakers who have already signed on as co-sponsors of NSBA’s bill.
• Support funding increases for Title I and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).
• And secure a lasting solution to prevent cuts in the Medicaid reimbursements to school districts.
Noting that FRN members represent 95,000 school board members who serve 50 million schoolchildren, NSBA President Norman Wooten, said “Those numbers give us power.”
In 2007, FRN members reached out to members of Congress with more than 5,500 e-mails, calls, letters, and personal visits, Wooten said. “You are sending the message and it is being heard. And you can bet that this momentum will carry us forward into this year and help education become a higher priority when the new president takes office in 2009.”
NSBA Executive Director Anne L. Bryant said school board members, most of whom are elected to serve their communities, are in a unique position to influence members of Congress. “There is nothing quite as convincing to a member of Congress or staff as his or her constituency,” she said. School board members are not only constituents -- and voters -- but are in charge of the education in their community and can tell lawmakers how federal laws affect the local schools.
“There’s a spirit of change in the air, it’s coming not just with the presidential elections, it is coming from the public. People want public schools to succeed,” Bryant continued. “They know we have problems but they believe that local leaders must provide the solutions.”
The presidential campaigns under way, along with the nation’s economic woes, present some special challenges -- and opportunities -- for public education advocates.
Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), told the audience at the FRN Conference that the next president will need to engage in a new discussion about the role of education in the federal government, and “whoever is in the White House will need to listen to those closest to education -- school board members, teachers, and parents.”
The next president “will inherit great challenges,” Hagel said, but “cannot stay bogged down in partisan paralysis. There must be a consensus” if anything can be accomplished.
Hagel said he opposes President Bush’s proposed economic stimulus package, noting that it is not in the nation’s best interest to give people rebate checks while the national debt continues to soar.
Hagel believes we’re in the midst of a “historic transformation,” with a global economy taking precedence over that of individual nations, and education is at the core of how we will adapt to the challenges wrought by such an enormous change.
According to Hagel, education is the core of the “strength of the cultural fabric of the nation.”
“When you have a well-educated population -- people who not only have certain skills sets, but know how to think and be innovative -- then that society, that country, has a future,” Hagel said. “Education encourages a wider-lens view of the world. The wider that lens is, the more capable that society is to engage in the changes going on in the world and address the challenges.”
Hagel has long been a champion of full funding for IDEA, and said it’s essential that the federal government honor its original commitment when the special education mandate was enacted in 1975. Otherwise, he said, local districts will have to divert more and more of their local resources to complying with this mandate.
Convincing Congress to provide adequate resources for education -- particularly for the two key programs, IDEA and Title I -- is essential for many reasons, NSBA Associate Executive Director Michael A. Resnick told the FRN members.
During the past few years, Congress has approved very small increases for these programs while costs have soared, due to expanding enrollments, year-to-year expansions of NCLB mandates, costly interventions for struggling schools as the bar continues to rise under NCLB, and the increasing need to provide health-related services for students with disabilities, Resnick said. At the same time, districts are facing reduced tax revenues and budget cuts at the state level.
Another key priority for the FRN members is fixing NCLB this year. “If Congress does not deal with NCLB until after the election, we will have to struggle for another two or three school years under the current flawed system,” Resnick said.
“In the meantime, an ever-rising AYP (adequate yearly progress) bar will unnecessarily and unfairly identify more and more of your schools as failing and consequently ensnare more and more of them in an annual progression of poorly conceived sanctions,” he said.
In their Capitol Hill meetings, FRN members urged lawmakers to support the NCLB Improvements Act (H.R.684), introduced by Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska), which includes 40 recommendations proposed by NSBA to make NCLB more flexible, less punitive, and more responsive to the needs of school districts.
During the FRN Conference, NSBA presented Special Recognition Awards to four members of Congress for their outstanding efforts on behalf of public education in 2007: Rep. John D. Dingell (D-Mich.), Rep. Sam Graves (R-Mo.), Rep. David Obey (D-Wis.), and Rep. James T. Walsh (R-N.Y.)
Reproduced with permission from School Board News. Copyright © 2008, 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.