Political Quotes

“I'm also very pleased that conferees kept my amendment on impact aid in the final bill. Since the Truman administration, the Federal Government has acknowledged its responsibility in assisting school districts educate federally connected children through the Impact Aid Program. In 1994, Congress made a change to this program and said that if a school district which provides an education to children whose parents are civilian and work on Federal property does not enroll 2,000 of these students and this does not impact a school district by 15 percent then the school district would not be able to count these children for payment. With this change, we drew a line in the sand which was arbitrary and unfair. We ignored the fact that a school district may be heavily impacted, but may not enroll 2,000 of these students in it school district. The end result was that our rural school districts were penalized unfairly because of their size. But, these students have as much of an impact on smaller school districts as they do on any of the larger school districts. I am pleased to see that the provision I offered lowering this threshold to 1,000 students or 10 percent impact, has been retained.”