Sequestration

Portions of this  Blog post is courtesy of Amanda Karhuse @akarhuse (Director of Government for the National Association of Secondary School Principals)


This past June, I was fortunate enough to attend an orientation at the national headquarters of @NASSP.  My principal colleagues in Rhode Island have nominated and voted me President-Elect of the Rhode Island Association of School Principals @riasp6 #riasp and the first part of my new responsibilities was to become acclimated with the priorities of the organization.  I met with the RI delegation and was able to advocate for education on behalf of all of our students.  One of the newest vocabulary words that I learned was sequestration.    The following briefing addresses the word and what it means for K-12 education as of January 1, 2013.  I believe that it is an important issue that needs to be addressed between now and the end of the calendar year.  I personally fear that if this issue is not dealt with by Congress, we will have a disruption of great magnitude to the type of education our students need.  Please read below and feel free to act in a manner that best suits you.    

(As a reminder, sequestration is the drastic, across-the-board cuts to education that are scheduled to occur on January 2, 2013. These across-the-board cuts will occur-unless Congress acts to stop it-as stipulated in the August 2011 Budget Control Act. Congress put this measure of sequestration in place in case a 12-member Congressional committee was unable to approve a plan to reduce another $1.2 trillion from the federal deficit; this committee failed, triggering sequestration.

Sequestration would impose the largest education funding cuts ever, chopping funding for programs in the Department of Education by roughly $4 billion, or 8.4%, which would have a devastating impact on state and district budgets.)

In May, the House passed H.R.5652, the Sequester Replacement Reconciliation Act of 2012 in a near party-line 218-99 vote. The bill was supported by nearly all Republicans — only 16 opposed it, and no Democrats supported it.

As The Hill explains in a May 10 article, “The House voted Thursday to override steep cuts to the Pentagon’s budget mandated by last summer’s debt deal and replace them with spending reductions to food stamps and other mandatory social programs.

While doomed in the Senate and opposed by the White House, the legislation, which would reduce the deficit by $243 billion, is a Republican marker for post-election budget talks with the White House.”

NASSP is strongly opposed to this bill and feels that this legislation does not come anywhere near the balanced deficit reduction approach we must take to address our federal deficit.

NASSP encourages you to tell your legislators that sequestration is unacceptable by signing this online petition at www.cef.org/action. Join with thousands of other education stakeholders and sign this petition! NASSP Government Relations staff is also leading the efforts around grassroots activism to urge Congress to not let sequestration occur, and will be implementing key grassroots activities in the next quarter to attempt to stop the sequester. Please look for our emails in the coming months on ways we ask you to advocate against sequestration, and we thank you in advance for your participation.