Secure Rural Schools, a federal program that provides millions of dollars to rural counties and school districts across the country, including Forest County in Pennsylvania, is awaiting reauthorization from Congress, putting that funding in jeopardy.
Amanda Hetrick, superintendent of the Forest Area School District in northwestern Pennsylvania, said the money from Secure Rural Schools usually arrives in May, but she's not expecting to get it this year.
“The impact is we’ll have a big hole in the budget," Hetrick said.
Secure Rural Schools meant more than $700,000 in funding for the school district last year. The district will get some money through a different funding stream, but only about a third of what they’d been counting on.
Hetrick said they’ll look to their budget reserves to make up the difference now. But it makes up about 5% of the school district’s revenue, so if funding doesn’t come through for next year, it will likely mean spending cuts.
“It will depend on the priorities of the board when they look at the budget, but if we have to make cuts, we're probably looking at cutting teachers, programs, you know, things that impact kids, unfortunately," Hetrick said.
Congress passed the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self Determination Act in 2000. Since then, it has sent $7 billion dollars to more than 700 counties and 4,400 school districts across the country.
The idea is to provide funding for schools, roads and services in counties with significant amounts of tax-exempt federal land. The act typically gets reauthorized every two years. That did not happen last year.
In Forest County, about half the land is national and state forests. The county gets more than $100,000 dollars through Secure Rural Schools. County Commissioner Bob Snyder said they use the money to support Penn State Cooperative Extension — with office space and a staff person.
He said the county can probably handle one year without funding.
“If this goes away forever, they’ve got about one year we can continue to fund them and work with them, but at the end of that, unfortunately, our hands are tied," Snyder said.
The Allegheny National Forest crosses four counties in Pennsylvania. Only Forest County opts in to the Secure Rural Schools funding formula. The others have chosen a different option — getting 25% of revenue from timber sales.
Julia McCray, executive director of the Allegheny Forest Alliance, said one township in Forest County gets almost 85%-90% of its revenue from national forest funding. When funding didn't get reauthorized in 2016, it hit hard.
“They had layoffs. Some of their road maintenance had to be deferred. Some of their staff took pay cuts," McCray said. "It was a major hit for them."
The U.S. Senate passed legislation to reauthorize Secure Rural Schools funding in November. Now, the act has been re-introduced in the Senate and House.
McCray said the legislation that has been proposed includes making up the difference between the 25% payment and what districts and counties would have gotten.
"The problem is when are they going to get that reauthorized, and how long will the school and communities have to wait for that additional funding to come through," she said.
Representative Glenn “GT” Thompson is a sponsor in the House. His office said he has been in “bipartisan negotiations on the best path forward,” and Secure Rural Schools “remains a priority.”
Hetrick noted that all of this is happening at a time of uncertainty for education funding.
“We're looking at cuts from several different directions, or potential cuts," she said. "So this is kind of like the last thing we can afford at this time."
