Executive Director’s Report: In good times and bad -- NSBA is looking out for you
By Anne L. Bryant
03/09 -- “It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.” Those opening lines of Charles Dickens’ historical novel A Tale of Two Cities, published in 1859, capture some of my feelings at this very hopeful time in our nation’s history.
We have elected a president who embodies the qualities of leadership many of us admire. Barack Obama is intelligent, erudite, an eloquent speaker, and an author (he actually wrote the books bearing his name). He speaks of collaboration and the need to listen to all points of view -- leadership traits we desperately need as a nation.
His cabinet nominees and the actions he has taken so far reflect his willingness to reach across the aisle. As a nation, we need him, and the newly convened 111th Congress, to succeed.
But although it is a time of hope, it is also a time of despair. Most states face very tough financial shortfalls. Property taxes, and indeed most tax revenues, are down. And although most states have held K-12 education spending harmless or even approved increases in fiscal year 2008, the picture for 2009 does not look good.
At this point, we cannot look to Wall Street or corporate America for leadership. Indeed, I’d put my money on the “human” capital in our public schools before I’d risk more than we already have in the financial markets.
At NSBA, we’ve spent the last few months in heavy-duty preparation for the new administration and Congress. In mid-November, our advocacy staff and I participated in a lengthy meeting with the education policy staff on Obama’s transition team.
We outlined our priorities, gained a sense of Obama’s views on education, and discussed concerns at the local school board level.
We had five more meetings with the education transition team to discuss a range of issues: the need for increased federal funding for students with disabilities; the need to make dramatic changes to No Child Left Behind, including a shift in the law’s philosophy from penalties to positive support for schools; our opposition to vouchers and tuition tax credits; and most important, the need to invest in schools as part of the economic recovery package.
To bolster the case for ensuring that schools play a big part in the stimulus plan, NSBA carried out a number of surveys and held conversations with state and local school board leaders to gather appropriate data and information for Congress, the transition team, and the new administration.
Our survey identifying shovel-ready school projects provides information from more than 1,300 school board members (who responded in 72 hours) about urgently needed facility repair and modernization projects totaling $17 billion. These projects have been stalled because of budget cutbacks, failed bond issues, disruptions in the credit market, or other problems due to the faltering economy.
State school boards associations have provided insights about fiscal conditions in their member school districts through a survey from our advocacy team that addresses state budget shortfalls, state and local budget cuts to education, short and long-term fiscal priorities for school districts, and districts’ capital improvement needs.
We’ve made sure to distribute the results from these surveys to the House and Senate leadership, House Ways and Means Committee, Senate Finance Committee, and appropriations committees.
NSBA has also provided recommendations to the transition team, Congress, and new administration to address problems in the bond market. We have proposed the creation of a reserve fund to insure or guarantee outstanding bonds, establishment of a dedicated fund to purchase districts’ pending bond issuances, and a change to the 1986 Tax Reform Act to allow a government or district to refinance outstanding bonds at a lower interest rate.
We have also shared recommendations with Obama’s economic advisers, including Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, regarding the need for targeted assistance for school bonds that could be provided through the economic recovery legislation.
NSBA has been the lead organization in a coalition formed to seek bond and debt service relief for districts and support the creation of a reserve fund for districts facing severe budget challenges.
We are hopeful that Education Secretary Arne Duncan, the former Chicago schools chief, will be a strong advocate for public schools and school board governance, particularly due to his participation in the Council of Urban Boards of Education, along with Chicago board of education member Tariq Butt, who serves on the CUBE Steering Committee.
In fact, we believe that Duncan will be the keynote speaker at the opening General Session April 4 at NSBA’s Annual Conference in San Diego.
The Annual Conference reflects the best of times and worst of times: The workshops and other programming will offer a mix of inspirational and practical advice -- ranging from leaders of successful districts demonstrating how they’ve raised academic performance and closed achievement gaps to sessions that tackle the tough issues related to the troubled economy.
There will be sessions on how to cut costs, how to make better use of limited resources, how to meet the demands of a 21st century education, how to raise revenues through such activities as creating school foundations, and, of course, how to effectively govern in good times and bad.
So NSBA has been working on your behalf to help you through the best of times and hopefully to better prepare you for the rocky times ahead. When the going gets tough, it is so important to stay together and stay focused on our long-term goals: creating great public schools and serving the interests of our nation’s greatest resource -- our students.
Reproduced with permission from
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