Californians take part in lobbying D.C. for schools

No Child Left Behind and federal funding issues drew nearly 900 local school board members from around the country to Washington, D.C., earlier this month for the National School Boards Association’s Federal Relations Network Conference.

CSBA President Paul H. Chatman led a delegation of more than 30 California school board members. The annual trip gave participants fresh insights into how federal issues affect their work in governing school districts and county offices of education, as well as a chance to compare notes with their peers from all 50 states.

“We had great participation. Everyone was enthused,” Chatman said after his return.

The Feb. 3-5 conference also coincided with the Bush administration’s release of its budget request for the 2009 federal fiscal year that begins Oct. 1—a spending plan that, if approved by Congress, would zero out funding for 47 K-12 education programs.

“It would decimate education as it exists right now,” Chatman told an Associated Press reporter in a story filed from Washington and carried in newspapers across the country.

FRN conferees had scant time to digest the trillion-dollar budget plan, however. The fast-paced event included briefings from NSBA President Norman D. Wooten, senior NSBA staff and other groups advocating for public education in the nation’s capital, in addition to presentations from Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel, noted political analyst Norman Ornstein and other speakers.

A day of lobbying on Capitol Hill concluded the trip. Meetings were scheduled with staffers serving more than two dozen congressional representatives from California, including Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer; Rep. George Miller, chairman of the powerful House Education and Labor Committee; and Rep. Ken Calvert, who sits on the House Appropriations Committee.

Senior CSBA staff also participated in the conference, with Assistant Executive Director Rick Pratt and Principal Legislative Advocate Erika Hoffman presenting their annual briefing on education issues in California to a combined meeting with approximately 20 members of the state’s congressional delegation staff.

“They had a lot of questions on the state budget and a lot of interest in the impact of federal programs on California,” Hoffman said.
Insights on the issues

FRN participants came away with fresh insights into crucial issues affecting public education in California—including NCLB and the multiple federal funding programs that educators rely on, such as school-based Medicaid services and the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act.

“I think we’re going to have to live with this for a couple more years,” Chatman said of NCLB, even though “it’s left such a negative taste in everybody’s mouth.” Also known as the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, NCLB has dictated much of the federal government’s K-12 policies. The promised funding to pay for the act’s stiff requirements has been lacking, however, as has much-needed flexibility in applying those federal policies to the 50 states.

The legislation authorizing NCLB expires this year, but the act will remain the law of the land. Chatman predicts that a modified version will eventually be approved, along with additional funding and flexibility.

Funding for school-based Medicaid services has become another critical issue. The Bush administration wants to prohibit federal reimbursement of school-based administration and transportation costs for Medicaid-eligible students—a move that the Office of Management and Budget estimates would cost local education agencies more than $4 billion over the next five years. Congress has enacted a moratorium on bureaucratic limits on schools’ reimbursement claims for those expenses, which will take effect Sept. 1.

Still, the bottom line remains that “Fewer kids are going to have access to health care,” CSBA lobbyist Hoffman said, because funding local education agencies’ efforts to identify students who are eligible for Medicaid will lapse.

Those local agencies will continue to foot much of the cost for transporting Medicaid-eligible students—but at much-reduced levels of federal reimbursement, Hoffman continued.

The Secure Rural Schools legislation is the current version of compensation the federal government has extended to communities that were impacted by the creation of national forests early in the last century. Placing the lands under federal control limited local revenues from property and sales taxes. A one-year extension was enacted when Public Law 106-393, which authorized the compensation, lapsed in 2006, and officials are optimistic for another extension this year. The act provides federal funds for 39 counties and 4,400 schools in California.

The FRN conference laid useful groundwork for CSBA’s own Federal Issues Council in Washington April 6-9.
“FRN helps us to be really effective when we go back for FIC,” Chatman said.

Related link:
CSBA’s Governmental Relations Department analysis of the Bush administration’s budget proposal is @ www.csba.org/NewsAndMedia/Publications/CASchoolNews/2008/Jan/ElectronicOnly/OverviewOfBudget.aspx

Find more information on NSBA’s Federal Relations Network Conference, including a 37-page “Issue Brief” and other materials suitable for downloading, @ http://nsba.org/site/page.asp?TrackID=&CID=365&DID=8604