Congress (finally) renews Secure Rural Schools Act, through 2027

Congress voted overwhelmingly yesterday to renew the Secure Rural Schools Act.  Here's an excerpt from the Los Angeles Times coverage, by Hailey Branson-Potts, which leads with a bit historical perspective on rural schools lobbying efforts for the funding over the past few years:  

In February 2023, Jaime Green, the superintendent of a tiny school district in the mountains of Northern California, flew to Washington, D.C., with an urgent appeal.

The Secure Rural Schools Act, a long-standing financial aid program for schools like his in forested counties, was about to lapse, putting thousands of districts at risk of losing significant chunks of their budgets. The law had originated 25 years ago as a temporary fix for rural counties that were losing tax revenue from reduced timber harvesting on public lands.

Green, whose Trinity Alps Unified School District serves about 650 students in the struggling logging town of Weaverville, bounded through Capitol Hill with a small group of Northern California educators, pleading with anyone who would listen: Please renew the program.

They were assured, over and over, that it had bipartisan support, wasn’t much money in the grand scheme of things and almost certainly would be renewed.

But because Congress could not agree on how to fund the program, it took nearly three years — and a lapse in funding — for the Secure Rural Schools Act to be revived, at least temporarily.

On Tuesday, the U.S. House overwhelmingly voted to extend the program through 2027 and to provide retroactive payments to districts that lost funding while it was lapsed.

The vote was 399 to 5, with all nay votes cast by Republicans. The bill, approved unanimously by the Senate in June, now awaits President Trump’s signature.

“We’ve got Republicans and Democrats holding hands, passing this freaking bill, finally,” Green said. “We stayed positive. The option to quit was, what, layoffs and kids not getting educated? We kept telling them the same story, and they kept listening.”

Green, who until that 2023 trip had never traveled east of Texas, wound up flying to Washington 14 times. He was in the House audience Tuesday as the bill was passed.

In an interview Tuesday, Republican Rep. Doug LaMalfa, who represents a vast swath of Northern California and helped lead the push for reauthorization, said Congress never should have let the program lapse in the first place.

I don't agree with LaMalfa on many issues, but on this one he is absolutely correct.  

The five congresspersons who voted against the Act were: 

• Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ)
• Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ)
• Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL)
• Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY)
• Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC)

Here is an Ed Source story about the passage of the law, and here's an Oregon Public Broadcasting story focused on the significance of this funding to many counties in the Pacific Northwest. 

Finally, here is a February 2023 post based on Branson-Potts previous story about California legislators lobbying in Washington, D.C., for the Secure Rural Schools Act.   The term used there for the pittance represented by this spending:  "budget dust."