VantagePoint: Fight over federal budget sounds familiar 

It seems as though our struggles over the budget will never end. In my last column I referred to the governor’s budget and our efforts to obtain adequate state funding for schools. That was before President Bush released his budget. Now it appears that we are fighting the budget battle on two fronts, at the state level and nationally.

It is interesting that Congressman George Miller’s response to the President’s budget proposal is titled, “Bush Fiscal Year 2007 Education Budget: Breaks Promises, Underfunds Preschool and K-12 Education, and Puts College Farther Out of Reach for Millions of Americans.” That language sounds familiar to all of us in the California Education Coalition, as it is the language we used to depict our governor’s budget last year. It is, indeed, an accurate description of President Bush’s 2007 budget.

As we struggle to improve student achievement, close the achievement gap and meet the ill-conceived requirements of No Child Left Behind, our resources are being cut again. President Bush’s budget contains a $2.1 billion, or 3.8 percent, cut in education funding! The $12.7 billion for Title I funding suggested in the president’s 2007 budget is only about half of the $25 billion that he and Congress promised to provide schools under NCLB in fiscal year 2007. This results in an overall shortfall of $55 billion over the life of NCLB, and the problems do not end there.

Special education dollars in FY 2007 increase slightly, from $10.6 billion in FY 2006 to $10.7 billion, resulting in a payment of only 17 percent of special education funding from the federal government. This certainly falls far below the 40 percent funding that federal officials have always promised to schools.

Additionally, the budget eliminates 42 programs, including the Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Technical Education Act, Educational Technology State Grants, dropout prevention programs, and Elementary and Secondary School Counseling. Funding for the Safe and Drug Free Schools program is cut dramatically and Bilingual Education is frozen for the fifth straight year. Yet, as the President is slashing funding to our nation’s public schools, he is advocating for $100 million of funding for a voucher program for private schools!

This budget is shameful and it constitutes neglect of our nation’s public schoolchildren. We should not tolerate this. We need to let our representatives in Congress know that we expect more responsible behavior from them. We all need to advocate for full funding of federal programs for our schools and for our children. By the time you read this, CSBA will have already sent two delegations to Washington, D.C., this year to fight for funding, as well as other legislative issues. We attended the National School Boards Association’s Federal Relations Network in February, and in March sent our own Federal Issues Council. Nevertheless, we need the help of every school board member in the state.