S.Amdt. 2817

SA 2817. Mr. HEINRICH submitted an amendment intended to be proposed
to amendment SA 2282 proposed by Mr. Inhofe (for himself and Mr.
McCain) to the bill H.R. 5515, to authorize appropriations for fiscal
year 2019 for military activities of the Department of Defense, for
military construction, and for defense activities of the Department of
Energy, to prescribe military personnel strengths for such fiscal year,
and for other purposes; which was ordered to lie on the table; as
follows:

At the end of part I of subtitle F of title V, add the
following:

SEC. 564. SENSE OF THE SENATE.

(a) Findings.--The Senate finds the following:
(1) The program of Federal impact aid was created by
Congress in 1950 to provide local educational agencies with
direct and flexible funding meant to replace property tax
revenue lost due to the presence of tax-exempt Federal
property, and since that time, impact aid funding has given
local public schools the ability to provide quality public
education to military connected students.
(2) More than 1,200 local educational agencies receive
funding through the impact aid program under title VII of the
Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (20 U.S.C.
7701 et seq.) (referred to in this section as ``impact
aid'').
(3) Impact aid funding is used as a tax replacement program
that supports all students in the school district due to the
presence of Federal tax-exempt land, such as military
installations, Native American reservations, or national
parks.
(4) Congress designed impact aid funds to be intentionally
flexible, and local educational agencies can use these funds
to purchase classroom equipment, fund after-school programs
and advanced placement classes, and provide additional
resources for special education.
(5) Turning impact aid into a voucher program would take
away critical funding from public local educational agencies
serving the majority of military connected students.
(6) Using the impact aid program as a funding source to
support misguided school privatization policies will do
nothing to increase the education quality for the vast
majority of students at schools that receive funding under
the impact aid program (referred to in this section as
``federally impacted schools'').
(7) Reducing impact aid funding for public schools places a
great financial burden on the local community of federally
impacted schools, and this is particularly unfair to these
communities, as residents in many federally impacted school
districts pay higher-than-average taxes because of the lack
of taxable property or taxpayers in their communities.
(8) School vouchers undermine public school systems, lack
accountability, and fail to ensure that the civil rights of
students are fully protected.
(b) Sense of the Senate.--It is the sense of the Senate
that--
(1) because a majority of military connected students
attend public schools, Congress should reaffirm its
commitment to providing all military connected students with
high-quality local public education;
(2) Congress should reaffirm its commitment to maintaining
the structure of the Federal impact aid program under title
VII of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (20
U.S.C. 7701 et seq.), as in effect on the day before the date
of enactment of this Act; and
(3) Congress should reaffirm that the impact aid funding
authorized under section 561 and section 562 is critical to
ensuring public local educational agencies, whose tax base
has been impacted by the Federal Government and who educate
concentrations of military connected students, have adequate
resources to educate federally connected students.
______