Nearly 200 leaders of local school districts and education service agencies from 32 states descended on Capitol Hill yesterday as part of an "Educators’ Call to Action" issued by the Association of Education Service Agencies (AESA) and AASA. The grassroots advocacy effort, which began on the Senate side and continues today with meetings in House offices, is aimed at persuading federal lawmakers to:

• Make federal funding of the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) an entitlement;
• Reject federally funded vouchers;
• Fund the Rural Education Initiative; and
• Require the Health Care Financing Administration to work collaboratively with schools in developing a guide for reimbursement of school-based health care services costs.

Organizers of the joint AASA/AESA activity estimated 80 percent of Senate offices and roughly half of U.S. Representatives, or their staffs, would receive a visit from association members during the two-day push.

While educators planned to discuss all four issues, foremost on the agenda was fulfillment of the promise, made in 1975, for the federal government to pay 40 percent of the cost of IDEA. Federal funding currently accounts for about 13 percent of the total spent nationwide to meet the requirements of this mandate.

"We don’t feel we should have to deal with this every year," said Superintendent Gayden Carruth, superintendent of Park Hill School District in Missouri, expressing a frustration that appears to be universal among school administrators. "Every year we’ve fought for an increase," explained Jordan Cross, AASA legislative specialist. "The idea is to move it out of discretionary spending and make it an entitlement. As key budget decisions are being made, our focus is going to be on fully funding IDEA," he said.

Carruth explained how the lack of federal financial support for IDEA harms children in her district during a meeting yesterday with Brian Waidmann, chief of staff to U.S. Sen. John Ashcroft, R-Mo. Park Hill spends an average of $11,482 per year to provide education and other services under IDEA, yet the district receives only $1,610 per student in federal IDEA money to carry out this mandate.

"We’re having to supplement with regular education funding," Carruth said. The $3.5 million shortfall in federal special education funding for Park Hill means the district can’t offer the smaller classes parents are demanding; can’t hire the school nurses that would address the growing health problems of students, such as asthma; can’t open much-needed after-school programs for middle-school students.

"We’re not saying we don’t want to educate these students, but the cost is huge" added Gary Sharpe, executive director of the Missouri Association of School Administrators. "It’s just really impacting what goes on in schools for the regular education student."

AASA’s proposal would gradually increase IDEA funding by $2 .2 billion a year over the next five years—a total increase of less than 2 percent of the projected federal budget surplus.

Rep. Charles Bass, R-N.H., has introduced a bill, H.R. 5180, which would make full funding of IDEA mandatory.

"Full funding of special education is not only good education policy, but it’s good tax policy and good administrative policy" and has "far broader implications" than the discretionary programs educators fight for year after year, Bass said in remarks to school administrators at an AESA/AASA breakfast meeting this morning. "By fully funding special education, we return power to you to make decisions…for your local communities," he said.

The focused push by AESA/AASA members appears to be making a difference in Hill offices, said Bruce Hunter, AASA director of public policy. With 17 senators agreeing with the proposal and only two saying "no," "We’re looking at a possible victory here," Hunter said.

Natalie Carter Holmes, Editor