LAKE COUNTY — Lake County Superintendent of Schools Dave Geck is gearing up to persuade the powers that be on Capitol Hill to keep a century-old flow of money coming to the county”s schools and roads that may cease if it”s not treated separately from a bill that includes Iraq war funding.
Money from timber sales that has buoyed Lake County”s schools and roads for the past 30 years is about to run out. The Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act of 2000 sunsetted in September of 2006, effectively cutting off the flow of hundreds of thousands of dollars to the county.
Lake County got just over $1 million for the 2006-2007 school year. The total gets split 50/50 between public roads and public schools, bringing the benefit to the county”s schools to $512,666.91. Approximately 90 percent of that goes to the Upper Lake School District, as determined by a formula that allocates the funds based on the presence of national forest land in a benefiting area. The remaining 10 percent is distributed among the rest of the county”s public schools.
According to a November 2006 memo to the California Congressional Delegation, penned by California Forest Counties School Coalition president Bob Douglas, 39 of California”s 58 counties have U.S. National Forests within their boundaries. They average approximately $70 million per year, writes Douglas.
California, Oregon and Washington have traditionally received the lion”s share of the funds. A five-year plan just agreed upon will implement a new formula that will more evenly distribute the funds over the participating states, reducing the three states” shares by 10 percent for each of three years starting in 2008.
Geck explained that because administrators thought ahead when the funding started over 30 years ago, the school system has a one-year buffer before schools feel the effects. Those effects might mean cutting programs and laying off teachers, said Geck. Money saved in the program”s very first year of funding, around 30 years ago, will last through the end of the 2007-2008 school year.
Douglas went further in his description of possible effects on California”s rural counties if the bill is vetoed. “The effects of changes of this magnitude are cumulative and daunting. In essence they describe a forest county school system relegated to a third world education status by comparison to California”s urban and suburban schools. In these rural schools, No Child Left Behind will no longer even be remotely possible,” writes Douglas in the November memo.
An extension of the funding is included in a Senate supplemental appropriations bill, S. 965, which includes funding for emergency spending items such as the salmon fishery disaster related to the Klamath River, agriculture freeze disaster relief, levee funding, according to media spokesman Scott Gerber of Sen. Dianne Feinstein”s Washington, D.C. office.
What makes S. 965”s approval problematic is that he bill also covers Iraq war funding. Language that spells out a phased redeployment of all combat troops from Iraq by September of 2008 is expected to get the bill a presidential veto.
“He”s (President Bush) signaled that he”ll veto anything with strings attached,” said spokesperson Anne Warden of Congressman Mike Thompson”s office. She said Thompson maintains that the bill would give “teeth” to benchmarks Bush set for the Iraqi government for security, reconstruction and developing an Iraqi government by removing troops sooner if the benchmarks are not met.
“Congressman Thompson thinks that a veto signals an open-ended commitment to the war,” said Warden. “Also there are critical programs in this bill that the American public relies on, such as the rural schools funding, which the prevailing majority in Congress neglected to pay for. Congressman Thompson was a leader in getting the rural schools funding into the supplemental bill. It was a priority for him.”
In a memo to coalition members dated March 21, Douglas writes, “The larger question that hangs over all of this is whether or not the Iraq war provisions in the supplemental bill can be finetuned sufficiently that the President will sign the bill. A veto … would put us back to square one.
Media Spokesman Scott Gerber of Sen. Dianne Feinstein”s office said Friday that it was too early to know what may happen in the event of a veto.
“If the president vetoes that bill, we would need to separate it out,” said Geck. He will be in Washington D.C. April 25 and 26 to meet with Congressman Thompson and Senators Boxer and Feinstein to confirm their support and broaden support for the extension of the funding.
A conference process will begin Tuesday to work out the differences between the House and Senate versions of the appropriations bill, according to Warden. After being adopted by Congress, the bill could be on the President”s desk for approval or veto by early May. Approximately $400 million in countrywide funding rides on the decision, said Warden.
Contact Tiffany Revelle at trevelle@record-bee.com.
