Rural schools in forest areas plead for renewal of special federal funding; program helps 742 counties in 41 states

Rep. Jared Huffman, left, meets with rural California superintendents
in his Capitol Hill office. (Photo by Kent Nishimura, Los Angeles Times)

For rural schools, a little can go a long way, and those in national-forest areas again fear a loss of special federal funding. "Anmarie Swanstrom a school superintendent from impoverished Hayfork, Calif. along with three other rural Northern California superintendents went to Washington this month to look their legislators in the eye and tell them just how desperate they are," reports Hailey Branson-Potts of the Los Angeles Times. "In Hayfork, pop. 2,300, where timber crashed and legal marijuana is now doing the same — students have little access to medical care. Mental health support comes through the schools, which are also evacuation centers when the mountains burn." Swanstrom told Branson-Pitts, “We serve as the heart of the town, and if the schools go, the town will go completely."

Historically, "schools like Swanstrom’s, surrounded by national forest land that cannot be taxed, have depended upon modest payments through the U.S. Forest Service to stay afloat. . . .That money has come primarily from logging," Branson-Pitts notes. "Counties with national forests — mostly in the rural West — received 25% of what the federal government made from timber sales off that land. . . . But by the early 1990s, the once-thriving logging industry cratered. So did the school funding. In 2000, Congress enacted the Secure Rural Schools & Community Self-Determination Act. Congress never made the program permanent, instead reauthorizing versions of it by tacking it onto other bills — nine times." Those have used "increasingly bizarre funding sources," saidBill Imbergamo, executive director of the Federal Forest Resource Coalition, a timber trade group that supports increased logging on federal land. 

The funds needed are "what lawmakers call 'budget dust' in a federal budget that is trillions of dollars," Branson-Pitts writes. "Last year, the Secure Rural Schools program gave $238 million to 742 counties in 41 states and Puerto Rico. The latest version of the rural schools program is set to expire in October. . . . Calls for permanent funding abound. From Republicans and Democrats. From environmentalists and the timber industry. A solution inevitably falls victim to partisan bickering. Liberals don’t want to cut down trees. Conservatives want to slash spending."

Atfter meeting privately with the superintendents, Rep. Jared Huffman, D-Calif., said the program has "become a political football . . . kind of been used as a prop for folks with a different agenda, folks who want to roll back environmental protections, who want to do mandatory logging quotas in national forests. . . . I’d like to see the federal government just embrace this as an ongoing financial responsibility."