A New Foundation for Infrastructure Support

School Administrator, June, 1994 by Nick Penning

It started with an idea. A little more than two years ago, Rep. Robert Roe, D-N.J., then chair of the House Committee on Public Works and Transportation, introduced a major bill to "jump start" the economy.

His bill, H.R. 4175, was termed the Anti-Recession Infrastructure Jobs Act of 1992. The bill's language included the phrase: "...full priority and preference to public works of local governments." That included projects requested by school districts.

The chair of the House Education and Labor Committee, Rep. William Ford, D-Mich., and the chair of the elementary and secondary education subcommitee, Rep. Dale Kildee, D-Mich., wrote Roe to thank him for including schools and to suggest specific language to help schools even further.

When hearings began on H.R. 4175, AASA asked to have a witness speak expressly to the school infrastructure issue. As it turned out, the chair of AASA's Federal Policy and Legislation Committee, James Murphy, then superintendent in Bayonne, N.J., was a constituent of Roe's and agreed to present our testimony.

In his appearance before Congress, Murphy specifically laid out all the jobs that could be created by helping schools meet pent-up demands in the typical school district's infrastructure.

Changing Mood

Of course that was 1992, an election year, and Democrats were out to emphasize the ongoing recession. Roe retired, and Clinton won the White House. Up until a year ago, the president was pushing hard for money to jump start the economy.

Then, in an effort to hold together the hard-line conservative Democrats (a/k/a/ "Boll Weevils"), Clinton had to back off some of his promised initiatives. At this time last year AASA was pushing hard, at the urging of the administration, for ways to spend $1 billion in new Chapter 1 money as quickly as possible.

The president agreed to place mandatory caps on military and domestic spending. He also agreed to a new concept--called "firewalls"--designed to keep the House and Senate Appropriations Committees from raiding the less-popular military pots of money to fund highly needed domestic programs, such as education and health. With a firewall and caps in place, there would be no place to gain new funds except by raiding worthy programs.

New Possibilities

With this new attitude toward spending and Roe gone from Washington, where does this leave federal support for school infrastructure?

Maybe not in as poor a condition as one might think. AASA had the foresight in 1992 to prepare, with the technical expertise of Hansen Associates and with funding from Honeywell, a book entitled Schoolhouse in the Red: A Guidebook for Gutting Our Losses. The book contains valuable information on what needs to be done to save on energy costs.

Out of the blue, AASA recently received a call from the office of Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun, D-Ill., asking for information on school construction needs. She has urged her staff to make legislation in this area a high priority and convened meetings with representatives from the American Institute of Architects, Department of Energy, National Academy of Sciences, Public Health Service, and the General Accounting Office. She has requested a report on the existing need for school construction funds from GAO.

Meanwhile, Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., has proposed a School Facilities Improvement Act for construction loans to local school districts. Kildee has arranged to include such a loan program under the auspices of H.R. 6, the Improving Schools for America Act, the vehicle for re-authorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965.

H.R. 6 has passed the House, and interest in this issue exists in the Senate. In the meantime, school administrators can help most by writing their House (Washington, D.C. 20515) and Senate (Washington, D.C. 20510) members, giving them a line-item breakout of their district's facility needs.

When legislators begin hearing of real problems from real people back home, this school loan idea might influence them to vote for it.