In February 2023, Jaime Green, the head of a school district in the mountains of Northern California, flew to Washington, DC, with an urgent appeal.
The Safe Schools Act, a long-standing funding program for schools like federal districts, was about to expire, putting thousands of districts at risk of losing their budgets. The Act was repealed 25 years ago as a temporary fix for rural counties that were losing tax revenue from reduced timber harvests on public lands.
Green grass, Trifinity Alps with the unity of the school works about 650 students in the city that enters the line of weaverville, tied with a small group of teachers from the north of Califorland, agreeing to anyone who will listen: please renew the program. Please refresh the program. Please refresh the program.
They were assured, over and over again, that it was bipartisan support, it wasn’t a lot of money in the grand scheme of things, and it would certainly be renewed.
But because Congress couldn’t agree on how to fund the program, it took nearly three years — and a run of money — to revive the funds, temporarily.
On Tuesday, the US House voted overwhelmingly to extend the program through 2027 and provide reimbursements to states that lost money when it was repealed.
The vote was 399 to 5, with all votes shy of the Republican cast. The bill, unceremoniously approved by the Senate in June, now awaits President Trump’s signature.
“We have Republicans and Democrats holding hands, passing this freaking bill, finally,” he said. “We always have hope. The option to give up, what, layoffffs and uneducated kids? We kept telling them this story, and they kept listening.”
Green, who until this trip in 2023 had never traveled east of Texas, they hurt to fly to Washington 14 times. He was in the audience on Tuesday as the Bill was passed.
In an interview on Tuesday, republican rep. Doug Lamalfa, who represents a large gewath in northern California and helped lead the ruvuzation, said the conference should not have let the program end in the first place.
The rural school protection law, he said, was a victim of Congress when there is “an eternal fight over anything money.” “It’s annoying,” Lamalfa said, “how hard it is to get basic things made here.”
Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), greets Supts. Jaime Green, of Waserville, and Anmarie Swanstrom, of Hayfork, on Capitol Hill in February 2023.
(Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times)
“I’m not proud of the situation that is taking so long and putting these people under so much pressure,” said rural communities that rely on funds. “I’m not going to break my arm and find myself behind.”
Despite broad bipartisan support, the Rural Safe Schools Act, run by the US Forest Service, expired in the fall in the United States and Puerto Rico, about $34 million going to California.
In 2024, restoration was installed in the house. This year, it was included in the house draft of the one person good law but it finally dropped in the final package.
While the public school budget is largely supported by local property taxes, the districts surrounded by Federal Forest Land depend on modest payments from the US Forest Service to stay afloat.
Historically, that money came mostly from logging. Under a 1908 law, tribal forest regions – primarily in the rural west – received 25% of what the Federal Government made by selling timber on that land. The money was divided between schools, roads and other critical services.
But in the early 1990s, the spam industry once flourished. So is financial support.
In 2000, Congress issued what was supposed to be a temporary, six-year solution: Safer Rural Schools & Community Service based on a complex formula involving historical income and other factors including historical funds and other factors.
Congress has never made the program permanent, instead renewing its forms by inserting it into other bills. At one point, it was included in the Bill that he would coast the nation’s helium. At one time, it was funded in part by a tax on roll-your-own-cigarette machines.
Last Tuesday’s program expansion was Bill Overalone.
“For rural school districts, it’s very important, and it means sustainability from a financial standpoint,” said Yuri Calderon, Executive Director of the Sacramento-based School District.
Calderon said he had heard from many school districts in the region that are in a situation where it has become a reserve fund to avoid layoffs and services since rural schools are safe.
Calderon said the plan was not a “handout; it’s basically a down payment” from the federal government, which owns and manages about 45% of California’s land.
Rep. Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael) meets with a group of Superintendents from Northern California in February 2023.
(Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times)
On December 3, Lamalfa and Democratic Rep. Joe Neguse of Colorado, alongside Idaho Republican Sen. Mike Democrat, who led a book with signs that appeared for more than a year.
The letter said the lost money in the fund has already led to “school closures, road and bridge maintenance, and public safety activities.”
In Trinity County, where the Green district is located, the federal government owns more than 75 acres of land, which reduces the tax limit and the ability to bypass local obligations for things like campus maintenance.
When the rural school protection law passed many years ago, funding became evident. In 2004, the green district in Weaverville, population 3,200, received $1.3 million for the program.
The final payment was about $600,000, about 4% of the district’s budget, said Sheree Bean, the district’s budget officer.
Bean said on Monday that, if the program had not been renewed, it is possible that the district may have placed seven or eight workers.
“I don’t want to put anyone in my little town,” Bean said. “I see them in the mail. It affects the children. It affects their education.”
In October – during the 43-day government shutdown – Bean took three Trinity County student members to Capitol Hill to meet with House Speaker MOJENLONI MIKE MIKE MAHNETSONIS COUND MIKE MAHNETSONIS CAFTY MIKE MAHNETH MAHNETHONS COUND MIKE BHANDONONI INSIDE.
After years of going back and forth, green was unable to go on that trip. He didn’t feel well. His doctor told him that he needed to stop walking so much.
Before he flew to Washington this weekend, the 59-year-old executive wrote a letter to his staff. After three decades in the district, he was retiring, effective Monday.
Green wrote that he has a rare genetic condition called neurofibromatosis Type 2, which has caused tumors to grow in his spinal cord. Soon he will be having surgery to remove it.
He wrote: “My body has let me go as far as I can.
In the green letter, he wrote that, if the rural school protection act is expanded, “we will be financially sound for years to come.”
On Monday night, the district board of Trustees called Bians the Superimendent. He went to the meeting, then drove more than three hours to the airport in Sacramento. He got on a red-eye flight and made it to Washington when safe rural schools voted on the floor of the house.
When Green decided a few weeks ago to step down, he had no idea that the ruthorization vote would come together on his first day of retirement.
But he said, He never asked that the program would eventually be renewed. Coming before Christmas, he said, “It’s a good time.”
