02.10.09: Federal Advocacy Update
By David Walrath
As part of the National Rural Education Advocacy Coalition, on February 2 and 3, 2009, SSDA participated in lobbying on the new federal economic stimulus legislation, ESEA reauthorization, E-Rate reauthorization and the Child Nutrition Act reauthorization.
I met with the following:
- David Johns, Senior Counsel for Education, Senate HELP Committee
- Lindsey Hunsicker, Senior Education Policy Advisor, Senate HELP Committee
- Adrienne Dunbar, Professional Staff Member, Committee on Education and the Workforce
- Nikki McKinney, Legislative Assistant to Senator Susan Collins
- Jenelle Leonard, Director, School Support and Technology Programs, Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, U.S. Department of Education
- David Cleary, Staff Director, Subcommittee on Children and Families, Senate Health Education Labor and Pensions Committee
- Ron Barron, Legislative Assistant to Senator Tom Harkin
The following are the positions advocated on the economic stimulus legislation:
Title 1
- Create a better formula to help small districts – no maintenance of effort for new funds and no “supplement but not supplant” language so the new Title 1 funds could be used for any ESEA authorized expenditure, including Title V allowed expenditures.
IDEA
- Maintain current federal statute allowing 50% of new federal IDEA funds to reduce local contributions and exclude the new federal funds from future maintenance of effort requirements.
School Modernization and Repair
- Allocate funds directly to school districts and increase the district minimum to $25,000-$50,000.
Education Technology
- Fund 100% by formula with small district minimum grants.
We also advocated on the following reauthorization proposals:
ESEA
- Ride federal Title 1 Part 1 formulas to provide increased federal per pupil funds for high percentages of poverty students rather than large numbers of poverty students.
- Redefine poverty to be locally audited numbers of students to be eligible for free and reduced price meals.
- Extend Rural Education Achievement Program provisions, base poverty on locally audited number of students eligible for free and reduced priced meals rather than the flawed federal census numbers, increase the sliding scale to $25,000 - $80,000 from the current $20,000 -$60,000 per district, increase eligibility up to 1,000 student districts if additional funding is provided to meet with costs from expansion and develop a better definition of rural schools than the current census locale codes.
- Modifications to other titles to be more sensitive to rural needs, allocate funds by formulas with small school district minimums and avoid requiring state controlled competitive grants and have funding go directly to districts rather than through the state.
E-Rate
- Increase the E-Rate cap up to the amount necessary to adequately fund the program and, if the cap is increased, add Tier 2 approved expenses into Tier 1.
- Streamline application and reporting requirements.
Child Nutrition
- Support increase in federal reimbursement rates.
- Support increased use of locally grown and purchased fresh fruits and vegetables.
- Adopt State Child Health Insurance Program income levels for school meal reimbursement student eligibility and allow use of CHIP eligibility verification paperwork to substitute for child nutrition eligibility paperwork.
