Latest news with #SecureRuralSchoolsAct
Yahoo
16-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
After federal funding cut, Alaska Legislature asks Congress to help rural schools
Rep. Jeremy Bynum, R-Ketchikan, speaks Feb. 21, 2025, on the floor of the Alaska House of Representatives. (Photo by James Brooks/Alaska Beacon) A group of Alaska's rural school districts are asking for help after the federal government failed to renew a program that sends grant money to logging-dependent areas. On Monday, the Alaska Legislature joined the call for help by passing House Joint Resolution 5, which asks Congress to reauthorize the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act of 2000. That act sent $12.6 million to Alaska schools in federal fiscal year 2023, but Congress has thus far failed to reauthorize the program. The state Senate passed HJR 5 by a 19-1 vote on May 9 after modifying a version originally written by Rep. Jeremy Bynum, R-Ketchikan. The House agreed with the changes, 37-3, on Monday. The votes against the resolution came from conservative Republicans who generally oppose federal spending. The Secure Rural Schools Act, as it is commonly known, was designed to compensate rural school districts for tax revenue lost as the federal government began to restrict logging in the 1990s. In 2023, the law provided more than $250 million to districts nationwide, with about 5% of the funding coming to Alaska. For some of Southeast Alaska's rural school districts, the money was a big part of the local budget. Yakutat, for example, received more than $6,500 per student. Wrangell had almost $3,500, and the money was worth $584 for each of Ketchikan's 2,045 students. HJR 5, which will be sent to every member of Congress, asks for retroactive funding and for a permanent funding source to pay for the bill. It also encourages Congress to open more federal land to timber cutting 'in a manner that supports rural economic revitalization, conserves habitat, and promotes forest health.' SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Yahoo
11-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Amid threat of massive funding cuts, rural school administrators work overtime to balance uncertain budgets
On Jan. 27, 2025, the White House issued a late-night directive that paused federal grants and funding in order to locate and eliminate "woke" government spending. The pause seemingly included funding for public schools, such as the Farm to School Program that provided schools with locally sourced food. It wasn't long before Jared Cordon, superintendent of a rural school district in Roseburg, Oregon, started receiving calls from concerned community members. "If kids can't eat, where can I drop a check off?" they asked. On Jan. 29, the White House rescinded the sweeping pause, after a federal judge temporarily blocked the administration's order. One funding crisis was temporarily averted. But with mounting uncertainty and anticipated cuts on the horizon, rural school administrators are working tirelessly to balance next year's budget, The Daily Yonder explains. They do so for the students, families, and faculty who rely on strong public schools—and for their rural communities at large, whose well-being is closely tied to the fate of their local schools. In addition to the Trump administration's chaotic management of federal grants, other funding challenges loom. Some rural districts are already facing steep funding cliffs, as COVID-19 emergency funds phase out over the next few years. Other rural districts are set to lose over $200 million of annual federal funding due to Congress's failure to reauthorize the Secure Rural Schools Act (SRS), which helps support school districts in counties with public lands exempt from local property taxes. Some states experienced underperforming returns on their Public Employees Retirement System, which will require school districts to make higher payments to the system. Meanwhile, Republican-controlled states continue to push for universal school voucher programs, further diverting critical funds away from rural public schools. Beyond these immediate funding challenges, even more drastic shifts in federal education policy are unfolding. On March 20, the president signed an executive order to facilitate the eventual closure of the Department of Education. Congressional action is required to legally close the department or relocate key programs like Title I funding for low-income students or IDEA funding for special education to other departments. However, the administration already took some actions to slow the department's ability to distribute these funds by firing half of its staff. It remains unclear what additional actions Education Secretary Linda McMahon will take to further dissolve the department. A major role of many employees at the education department is to make sure federal dollars reach the right students, said Will Ragland, a former rural public school teacher and former Department of Education employee who now researches for the Center for American Progress, a progressive public policy institute. "[Federal funding] is intended to target, by-and-large, low-income students and students with disabilities. There are also programs that directly target rural areas, including grants to ensure their transportation needs are met and that rural kids can make it to school." Ragland said he worries that programs could meet the same fate as USAID funding, which the White House continues to block, despite numerous federal court orders. The administration has continued to follow the conservative Project 2025 playbook, according to Ragland, which outlines a 10-year phase-out of Title I funding. "Even though [Trump] said that [legally protected education] funding is not going to be touched, I worry they're going to start to phase out this funding," Ragland said in an interview with the Daily Yonder. "I worry that they say what they need to say at any given moment, but the larger plan is to eliminate the federal role in education altogether, including the funding." This growing uncertainty puts rural school districts, which often rely more heavily on federal funding and whose smaller budgets are hit harder by reductions, at greater risk. Rural school leaders, already working at a high capacity, are facing unpredictable finances by working overtime to create multiple contingency budgets. Jamie Green is a superintendent at Trinity Alps Unified School District in rural northern California, which is at risk of losing $3.5 million in SRS funding. He and other rural superintendents he's connected with put in 12- to 16-hour days when creating budgets or filling out federal grant paperwork. "During the day you have to support your kids, your parents, your teachers, and your principals. [Budgets and grant paperwork] have to be worked on after hours," he told the Daily Yonder. "It's difficult, but you signed up to lead, you didn't sign up to be a victim. You don't make excuses to your community. We won't make excuses." Oftentimes, the only way to balance the budget is by delaying essential maintenance or cutting teachers in art, vocational, or special education programs. In states like Oregon and California, this challenge is compounded by the fact that the final budget deadline arrives before schools have a clear picture of the funding they'll have for the upcoming year. Superintendent Cordon highlighted the importance of federal funding at a crowded February school board meeting in Roseburg, Oregon. About 12% to 13% of the district's budget comes from the federal government, Cordon told the crowd. "Not having federal funding would dramatically impact our ability to serve children," he said. Micki Hall, a former Roseburg teacher and school board member who now sits on the board's budget committee was in attendance. For Hall, budget cuts dredge up memories from her time as an educator. "Back in 2001 we faced a lot of budget crunches. The French teacher was laid off and they cut one of the German teachers," she said in an interview. "It's just frightening because it also has a chilling effect in the building. If you're not cut, you might be moved into a different, unfamiliar position." Across the country, rural districts are grappling with similar challenges, forced to make tough decisions that affect not just budgets but the very education and well-being of students and their communities. It's clear that the need for adequate and reliable support from state and federal governments is urgent, but superintendents like Cordon and Green—and the communities they serve—can't afford to focus solely on problems or delay action. The buck, Green said, stops with them. The only option they have is to do the work, put in the time, and find solutions. "Rural schools will not fail," Green said. "We're working as hard as we can for our students. We cannot fail." This story was produced by The Daily Yonder and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
Yahoo
21-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Bipartisan congressional group hopes to restore bill providing millions in rural school funding
Chiloquin Elementary School is part of the Klamath County School District in southern Oregon and relies on federal funding from the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act. In December, U.S. House Republicans failed to renew the bill for the first time in 24 years. (Alex Baumhardt/Oregon Capital Chronicle) A bipartisan group of lawmakers from the West are joining forces to persuade Congress to reauthorize a 24-year-old bill that has sent billions to states including Oregon for critical public services and schools. Oregon's U.S. Sens. Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley, both Democrats, and two Idaho Republicans — U.S. Sens. Mike Crapo and Jim Risch — announced Feb. 4 that they are reintroducing the Secure Rural Schools Act that was left to die without a vote by U.S. House Republicans last December. A bipartisan group of lawmakers from the U.S. House of Representatives, including U.S. Rep. Val Hoyle, a Democrat representing Oregon's 4th District, and Rep. Cliff Bentz, a Republican representing Oregon's 2nd District, also reintroduced the act in the U.S. House on Feb. 14. There is currently no hearing on the bill scheduled in the House or Senate, but if passed, it would restore millions in funding — including about $80 million for Oregon — through 2026. Glen Szymoniak, superintendent of the Klamath County School District in southern Oregon, which has received the most funding from the act among the state's school districts, said the money is crucial. The district has, in recent years, gotten between $800,000 and $1 million each year. 'Having that money each year is a big deal us,' he said. 'When you can't pass a bond, having a million dollars to fix roofs or something like that is a big deal.' In November, the Senate reauthorized the act, which first passed in 2000. But during the December run-up to passage of a stop-gap spending bill to keep the government open until March, House Republicans could not reach agreement about how the bill should be funded and so it died without a vote, according to Wyden spokesman Hank Stern. Wyden co-authored the original bill in 2000. 'I'm glad this bill is being reintroduced right at the start of this new Congress in this bipartisan spirit, and I strongly urge our House colleagues to act with the same urgency and bipartisan ethic to reconnect this proven lifeline ASAP for rural communities in Oregon and nationwide,' Wyden said in a news release. The Secure Rural Schools Act has distributed billions in funding for schools, roads and other public services and infrastructure to counties in Oregon, 40 other states and Puerto Rico. The money is designated to counties that have federal land within their borders. Because those counties provide critical services to people and industries using those lands for activities that generate revenue for the federal government — such as animal grazing and timber production — the federal government sends money back to those counties to help them pay for critical services and to weather other changes. In the West, the money has largely helped keep county and school budgets whole following reduced logging and a reduction in timber revenue from federal forests in the 1990s to save imperiled species. In Oregon, the bulk of funding goes to school districts in and around the Willamette National Forest, which took the biggest financial hit when harvest levels on the heavily logged forest were reduced nearly 80%. Oregon has received $4 billion in funding from the bill in the last 24 years, and in 2024, 30 counties got nearly $74 million. Early payments to counties under the act equaled the average amount they received from timber harvests from the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management in the top three timber-producing years of the 1980s. It's declined by more than half in recent years due to reshifting of funds across eligible states and because it was meant to be transitional, according to Stern. Oregon schools have received more than $368 million from the act since 2004, and an average of $9.7 million each year, according to Oregon Department of Education data. Oregon traditionally counted the Secure Rural Schools payments as local revenues for the sake of the statewide school funding equalization formula, so 165 of the state's 197 school districts ended up seeing some money from the act, including the two biggest, Portland Public Schools and the Salem-Keizer School District, despite having little to no federal forest land within their boundaries. This changed in 2023, when Oregon made updates to the distribution model and stopped counting Secure Rural Schools funding as local revenue. The Oregon Department of Education in 2024 agreed to back-pay districts like Klamath County School District that should have received more direct funding from the Secure Rural Schools Act since 2018. The agency has until Oct. 1 to make up for millions of dollars in underpayments to 82 school districts, including Klamath County School District, which is owed more than $2.5 million. Despite these issues with funding distribution, districts in Eugene, Douglas County and Roseburg, Springfield and Albany were among the top recipients of funding in the last two decades. And districts near the Klamath National Forest, such as Klamath County School District, have ultimately received greater payments than most other districts in the last two decades. Szymoniak, the superintendent in Klamath County, said it is the only money the district gets from the federal government that can be broadly used for any needs they have. 'Other federal money, like Title I and Title IX, they all have strings attached, and they have really strict allowances for how you spend it. With state school funding, I always consider that that's got to go to kids and teachers and to providing education,' he explained. 'Secure Rural Schools money, because there's no strings attached, that's where I go to buy buses, to get equipment for maintenance for the school. That's where we can build efficiencies and invest in the future.' SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
