Advocacy Matters, Especially Now

By Nicole Fuller, Senior Policy Manager

July has been a rollercoaster here in our nation’s Capitol. At the start of this month, the budget reconciliation bill was signed into law with damaging impacts for students and individuals with disabilities across the country, from cuts to Medicaid to the first national private school voucher program with no cap (it has the potential to be very costly if a lot of people donate). And while the bill was racing through Congress the first week in July, the Administration announced that it was withholding nearly $7 billion in education funds already signed into law this past March. Yes, that’s a billion with a “b”. That included funding for afterschool programs, for providing access to a well-rounded education, for supporting teacher professional development, and for supporting English learners. It would impact nearly 55 million K-12 students in over 95,000 schools and about 1.2 million adult learners.  

As exhausted as many education advocates were from the tireless work to oppose the reconciliation bill, we quickly sprang into action to oppose this illegal withholding of funds. Over 600 organizations wrote to this Administration urging them to disperse these funds immediately. Because of our collective advocacy, especially hearing from constituents, Members of Congress of both parties (see Republican and Democratic letters) asked for these funds to be sent. 

Last Thursday, our CEO, Dr. Jackie Rodriguez, spoke in front of seven Senators with concern about what withholding funds means for our nation’s students with disabilities. Jackie and I are both former educators, and she spoke for all of us when she said, “To educators, this isn’t a delay—it’s a breach of public trust, forcing schools to make tough choices about how to reallocate funding.”

Just 24 hours later, U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon announced that these funds would be released. This was a reminder to us all, in Washington, D.C., and across the country, that advocacy matters. We must work together to protect investments, reject education funding cuts, and tell our stories about why this matters.