Educators urge Congress to honor its obligation to support rural schools
Volume 12, Issue 6 - March 2008
By Trudy Stephenson Willis
As if the governor’s proposed funding cuts for education weren’t causing enough upheaval, rural counties that encompass national forest land are facing the loss of as much as half their school budget if Congress reneges on its century-old agreement to compensate them for the loss of their tax base.
Since 1908, the National Forest Service has been making payments to counties with the proceeds from timber sales; fees from grazing, recreation and some mineral uses; and other land use receipts. Things changed, however, in the late 1990s, when decreased logging led to a dramatic reduction in revenues available to the forest service.
Funding for schools dropped to less than 10 percent of historic levels, bringing about dramatic reductions in teaching staff and other education personnel, elimination of extracurricular programs, cancellation of school meals programs, and postponement of desperately needed building repairs.
To bring relief to rural areas dependent on revenue from federal lands, Congress passed the Secure Rural Schools and Communities Act (SRSCA), popularly known as the Forest County Schools Bill, in 2000. The legislation guarantees adequate and predictable levels of funding for education, as well as for road improvement and forest stewardship programs.
Now efforts to get the bill reauthorized are meeting resistance. Last year’s one-year extension ran out in January. This year’s extension was yanked from a natural resources funding bill when the president threatened to veto it.
There’s a possibility an extension might get attached to the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations bill, which includes funding for Iraq. The bill is likely to be introduced when Congress returns after the Easter recess. Debate and action will likely occur in April through the middle of May.
Educators from rural areas that count on the money are trying to mount a grassroots movement behind the effort to win a multi-year extension of the bill by June.
They’re visiting members of Congress while they’re home for recess and asking them to get on board.
“Most members of the California delegation have already agreed to support the extension,” says CTA Director Mike Green, a member of the Tulare Education Association and the NEA-appointed teacher representative on the board of directors for the National Forest Counties and Schools Coalition. “It’s a bipartisan effort.”
Both CTA and NEA support the reauthorization. At CTA’s State Council of Education meeting in January, CTA Executive Director Carolyn Doggett urged members “to take action now and tell members of Congress to help rural schools by reauthorizing this program.”
Congress’ failure to act would result in layoffs of more than 15,000 school and county workers in 780 rural counties across the country. This is a $530 million annual payroll loss for rural counties, which equals a net annual economic loss of more than $3.5 billion.
“It’s big money for these counties,” says CTA Director Dana Dillon, a member of the Weed Teachers Association in Siskiyou County. The 2008 fiscal year payments would range from just under $23,000 in San Luis Obispo to $9.5 million in her county. Her CTA district includes 19 of the 38 California counties receiving payments from the Forest Service. Among them is Trinity County, which is expecting $8 million this year, and Plumas, which is expecting $7 million.
Green’s CTA district includes four affected counties, parts of which are very isolated and remote. “It’s difficult to find people willing to make the commitment to work in those areas.” It’s even more difficult to replace them if they move away in search of work after they’re laid off, and the layoffs are later rescinded.
The SRSCA funding also covers road improvements and snow removal, which is necessary for students to reach schools. Another area that gets funding is forest stewardship and conservation, which includes the environmental education camp where every Tulare student spends a week during fifth grade.
“Timber receipts were an easy way to pay off the obligation, but now that they’re gone, the obligation is still there,” says Dillon. She doesn’t look kindly on the idea that the government should get off the hook just because the logging industry is gone.
“It doesn’t matter if they’re cutting timber or not, the federal government still took the land,” says Dillon. “They have to find another way to pay for this. The government has an obligation.”
