Max Baucus: “I rise today to speak to the Federally Impacted School Improvement Act. As we all know, there is a very important debate…”

“I rise today to speak to the Federally Impacted School Improvement Act. As we all know, there is a very important debate going on in our country today concerning our Nation's schools. Schools all across our country are crumbling, in many cases in such disrepair that it affects the child's ability to learn or even feel safe. I hope and expect that this Congress will reach a consensus on a school construction bill very soon. I support and have cosponsored several bills in the last Congress that encourage a nationwide effort to rebuild our public schools. Quite simply, it is the right thing to do. But in a heated national debate, one group of children is continually left out in the cold; that is, students who live on federally owned land, usually an Indian reservation, very often a military installation. In my State of Montana, about 12,000 children are classified as federally impacted; that is, they live on Federal land. For almost 50 years, Congress has provided financial assistance to school districts that are impacted by a Federal presence. We call this Impact Aid funding. Unfortunately, it has been underfunded for the last 15 years. And even worse, for the last 5 years Impact Aid schools have received zero dollars to help in paying for badly needed repairs and construction. This has created an underclass of schools with glaring infrastructure problems that border on dangerous and inhumane.”