School board members converge on Washington
More than 800 go to D.C. to learn and lobby
Published: March 1, 2010
School board members from around the country traveled to Washington, D.C., recently to hone their leadership skills and advocate for the state’s public schoolchildren at the National School Boards Association’s Federal Relations Network Conference, where U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan provided a personal briefing on President Obama’s proposed 2011 education budget.
FRN delegates also heard from NSBA governmental relations experts about potential impacts of federal policies on local school boards and networked with colleagues from other states before spending their final day lobbying their congressional representatives on Capitol Hill.
Public school advocates welcomed Duncan’s news that the president has proposed spending $3.5 billion more in discretionary funding as part of his 2011 budget for education (see related story). But they expressed concern that most of the new money would go into the Obama administration’s competitive grant programs rather than into Title I programs for disadvantaged students or spending for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.
“Out of our concern for the needs of all school districts, we would like to see IDEA and Title I receive increases,” said NSBA President Anne L. Bryant. “It does concern us that the administration is placing such a large focus on competitive grants, which are the core of the additional funding sought by the president.”
NCLB, Race to the Top
Leading issues on the advocacy agenda at the Jan. 31–Feb. 2 FRN Conference were congressional reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, known during the administration of President George W. Bush as No Child Left Behind, and concerns about President Obama’s sweeping education initiative, Race to the Top.
Led by CSBA President Frank Pugh, the 22 Californians at the conference provided local perspectives on federal education policies during visits to the offices of California’s U.S. Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer and members of the state’s delegation in the House of Representatives.
While California’s school board leaders enjoy a good working relationship and rapport with both of the state’s senators and their respective policy staff, Pugh said, Congress must begin to take a more active role in protecting the interests of public schools and locally elected school governing boards.
Pugh also said he may have caught Senate staffers off guard when he recommended they oppose California’s request for a waiver from federal requirements to maintain state spending levels on public schools under President Obama’s economic stimulus package. Waiver of the “maintenance of effort” requirement would help Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s bid to manipulate Proposition 98’s education funding guarantee in order to cut an additional $2.4 billion from California’s spending on public schools.
“We encouraged our representatives in Washington to oppose the waiver request,” Pugh said. “The governor and the Legislature have the ability to solve our budget problems, they just don’t have the political will.”
Pugh said he does not believe Congress has been sufficiently involved in the formation of federal education policy and has failed to effectively advocate for state interests. Race to the Top, he said, represents “a huge intrusion by the federal government into the authority of local governing boards.”
The president’s education priorities, which provide funds for such “reforms” as charter schools and district takeovers, conflict with many state school policies, Pugh said.
“The whole RTTT process has thrown states into turmoil,” Pugh said. “Many legislatures have passed laws that would not normally have passed just to ensure that states can compete for RTTT grants. How could all this have happened with no effective oversight from Congress?”