October is National Principals Month! Will You Advocate With Us?

This October, we are using National Principals Month (NPM) to celebrate the dedication of our nation’s principals by recognizing their achievements and thanking them for creating positive environments where all students can learn. But NPM isn’t just a celebration; it’s also a time for all of us to take action on behalf of principals, teachers, schools, and students.

One of the most pressing issues in public education today is the growing shortage of highly qualified teachers and principals. For myriad reasons—including inadequate pay, poor working conditions, high cost of teacher and principal prep programs, and lack of decision-making authority—many current educators are choosing to leave the profession, and potential aspiring educators are taking other career paths. Our children are our nation’s future, and we need qualified, motivated teachers and principals to be there to lead, educate, and prepare them for their lives.

Despite the challenges we face, the good news is that there are real, proven solutions that lawmakers can implement to mitigate the problem and strengthen the profession. That’s why, during NPM, we’re asking you to join us and send a message to your members of Congress telling them to support policy that addresses teacher and principal shortages like the bipartisan Preparing and Retaining Education Professionals Act.

It takes just two minutes using our automated system to send an email or tweet to your officials. Will you advocate with us?

For more ways to get involved in NPM, check out this post in the NASSP School of Thought blog.

THIS MONTH'S TOP ADVOCACY ISSUES

Senate Releases Education Appropriations Bill—Congress Delays Budget Deadline

On September 18, the Senate Appropriations Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies (Labor-HHS) Subcommittee released its FY 2020 Labor-HHS appropriations bill. The bill includes very few increases for NASSP priority programs, with Title IV seeing a small $50 million increase. Other priority programs like Title I, Title II, IDEA, and others were unfortunately funded at the same levels they received in FY 2019. These numbers show the partisanship of the bill, with Republicans pushing for large increases in other appropriations areas, like defense and border wall spending. Fortunately, this budget is far from finished as it appears destined to fail if brought to the Senate floor for a vote. This seems especially likely as a vote for cloture on the bill failed, mostly along party lines, soon after the bill was introduced.

With this bill and others still under debate by Republicans and Democrats, it became clear that Congress would need more time beyond the September 30 budget deadline to avoid a government shutdown. Because of this, the House and Senate passed a continuing resolution that extended the budget deadline to November 21 in the hopes that these issues can be resolved by then. Going by past precedent, however, it is completely possible that Congress will need to pass another continuing resolution in late November to extend the deadline to late December in order to give members more time to conference on appropriations bills and agree on final funding numbers.

TWITTER TALK

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