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Five-Minute Activist
Send a message to your Representative. Tell them how IDEA shortfalls - year after year - affect your students. Urge them to cosponsor H.R. 3802.
Special Education Funding
Urge your Representative to become a cosponsor of the Mandatory IDEA Full Funding Compromise Act (H.R. 3802) introduced by Representatives Bass (R-NH), Bradley (R-NH), Ferguson (R-NJ), and Simmons (R-CT). This important legislation would put Congress on an eight-year path to meeting its commitment to students with disabilities.
Who is hurt?
Everyone. The underfunded federal share now totals some $11 billion. Schools are forced to dip into the General Fund to make up the shortfall, affecting all students in general and special education. Hasn't Congress Boosted Special Education Funding? IDEA funding has increased over the last several years. But progress has been like spooning sand on the beach. For this budget year, Congress is funding only some half the promised 40 percent. [See your state's shortfall] And at the rate of increase sought by the Administration, another 30 years will pass before full funding of the federal share of the nation's special education program is accomplished.
Why
Thirty years of leaving special education funding to Congress' discretion has brought us to where we are. Our students deserve more than an empty promise. H.R. 3802 would earmark the federal dollars needed for IDEA and guarantee the money could not be diverted to other programs.
