María Elvira Salazar: “amendment No. 1903, which I am working on with my colleagues to resolve, will provide impact aid funding to the children…”

“amendment No. 1903, which I am working on with my colleagues to resolve, will provide impact aid funding to the children of the service personnel in Fort Carson, CO. It will restore $1.2 million in needed educational impact aid funding to the El Paso County School District No. 8. The money for this amendment has already been appropriated within the Department of Education budget. The El Paso School District educates the children of thousands of service men and women serving our Nation on the Fort Carson military base. Many of the loved ones of these students and staff of the El Paso County School District have been deployed to Iraq as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom. In fact, over 11,000 soldiers from Fort Carson are currently deployed in Iraq. That is one-half of Fort Carson's total force. Due to a technical error, the Department of Education has denied the school district access to a $1.2 million set-aside for that school district's program. The result is that school district may have to fire as many as 12 teachers and teachers' aides. This amendment simply permits the school to access the money already set aside for it. I recognize this is not the traditional vehicle for this fix, but, frankly, given the stakes for the school district and the fact that the education of the children of the men and women from Fort Carson who are in Iraq is at stake, I believe we owe it to the families there to fix this problem, and to do it now.…”