Gluesenkamp Perez, Skamania County Leaders Urge Congress to Reauthorize Vital Secure Rural Schools Program
Today, Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (WA-03) and Skamania County leaders held a press conference at the Mt. Pleasant School to urge Congress to reauthorize the Secure Rural Schools (SRS) program to ensure rural communities can continue to access vital funds for infrastructure and schools.
During the press conference, the leaders laid out the dire impacts to schools, public safety, and infrastructure that will occur if the program is not soon extended, and Rep. Gluesenkamp Perez discussed her efforts in Congress to fight for reauthorization.
Video of their remarks can be found here.
Earlier this month, Rep. Gluesenkamp Perez joined a bipartisan effort to reintroduce the Secure Rural Schools Reauthorization Act to extend the program and enable retroactive payments. In January, Rep. Gluesenkamp Perez urged House Leadership to immediately prioritize an SRS extension, following a September letter urging reauthorization before the end of 2023.
The SRS program is a historically bipartisan lifeline for rural communities who rely on timber revenue that has been limited by federal action and are highly impacted by tax-exempt federal lands. According to the Forest Service, reauthorization needed to have been completed by the end of January in order for the program to stay on schedule without delays to payments.
Since its enactment, SRS has provided $7 billion in payments to more than 700 counties and 4,400 school districts across 40 states. In 2023, Cowlitz, Lewis, and Skamania Counties received significant amounts of funding through SRS. In Skamania County, only 1.8 percent of land can generate revenue for public services, and SRS funding accounts for 5.1 percent of the county’s budget.
More details about the local impacts of not reauthorizing SRS can be found here.
“Our kids had access to all sorts of programs, all [the] resources that they needed, and that has dwindled and dwindled. … We’re trying to hang onto as much of that as we can so our students can stay and have the skills and the abilities that they need to go out and have living-wage jobs in our community. And if they do decide to go outside of the community to get education and training and come back, we want them to have something to come back to. Our schools cannot degrade that experience to the point that that isn’t preparing them for the future,” said Stevenson-Carson School District Superintendent Dr. Ingrid Colvard in her remarks. “This is what happens because of these essential funds: Students in our district can access a therapist, a counselor, a support person immediately if they’re in crisis. In our county, that is very difficult to do … Our students have access to a post-high school counselor … Each learner has the support they need to be able to read and perform mathematics at grade level. … Those things are at risk. Those are people that work and mentor our students to make it happen. Our teachers, our paraprofessionals, our custodial staff that’s already cut to the bone – it’s cut into the bone. … This extra money, this additional five percent – it’s in our budget, and we have to have it to continue these things. Opportunities to learn job-ready skills, like welding and carpentry, the Congresswoman was able to see that in action. Our kids can walk in and go to work and we have all of these other opportunities happening like Forest Youth Success, preparing them for their futures. We don’t want to lose that. … Our learners, our community, they count on the promise that was made to our county. … I ask you and implore you to please support our future, our kids. … Our kids are worth it, they deserve it, and opportunity comes with these funds.”
“In February 2024, we had two inches of ice and negative wind chills. Water pipes burst in the school, and during repair, we discovered that we had asbestos. Our cost of repairs after insurance was $72,000. Additionally, our HVAC is failing. Over the last two years, we have spent approximately $25,000 on repairs, and we anticipate replacing the unit soon. Mt. Pleasant is one of only 43 districts in the state of Washington to receive a perfect 4.0 financial health score in 2022-2023. We are careful stewards of our funding. However small districts like Mt. Pleasant are unduly impacted by not having the services of a large district and having to contract for those services,” said Mt. Pleasant School Board Member Liz Wilber in her remarks. “We are committed to doing everything we can to make cuts furthest from the classroom, but without SRS funds, we will be left to cover budget deficits with levy dollars and reserves – both of which are extremely tenuous. If we were to close, our taxpayers would become part of the Washougal School District, paying significantly higher taxes. … For small, rural districts like mine, these monies are absolutely vital.”
“I want nothing more than our county to regain our independence through responsible timber harvest. However, relying on an unpredictable handout from the federal government for our county to survive has been a forced hand we’ve been made to accept. Without SRS funding, the future of Skamania County, and specifically public safety, is bleak. In 2025, the Skamania County Sheriff’s Office was forced to cut two patrol deputy positions due to the lack of SRS funds,” said Skamania County Sheriff Summer Scheyer in her remarks. “Over the past 15 years, due to the continued reduction in SRS funds, the Sheriff’s Office was forced to cut animal control, a narcotics detective, detective sergeant, chief criminal deputy, telecommunicators, corrections officers, and patrol deputies. If SRS funds are not reappropriated, public safety in Skamania County will not be sustainable as we currently operate. Further personnel cuts will be required, creating a detrimental reduction in patrol deputy response for criminal activity and traffic enforcement. … Response times to assist those utilizing the recreational aspects of the Forest Service-managed land may be delayed so significantly the mission that would have been a rescue transforms into a deadly recovery.”
“SRS is a financial ray of hope for the people of Skamania County. SRS helps fill the gaps between the funding that Skamania County and our schools should be getting from the timber harvest of the Gifford Pinchot National Forest and what is actually being harvested,” said Skamania County Commissioner Brian Nichols (District 1) in his remarks. “It means family wage jobs for Skamania County. It means improved safety for the people of Skamania County. And it means a local government that is better able to serve the people of Skamania County. And it means greater opportunities through education for our greatest treasure – our kids and our grandkids.”
“When I came into office, one of our predecessors had always talked about how Skamania County only had 1.8 percent of land taxable for the support of school functions and all of the other county functions. And as I listened to that, I thought, ‘what does that really mean?’” said former Skamania County Commissioner Tom Lannen (District 2) in his remarks. “Well, it means that back in 1990, we averaged about 364 million board feet off of the Gifford Pinchot forest every year. And that delivered to the county and the schools about $10 million a year. That’s equivalent to $22 million in today’s market. That’s greater than our county’s entire budget.”
“One of the programs I oversee is Forest Youth Success, which is a workforce development program for our local teens. … We provide basic job skills in a paid work setting while we help our youth participants to develop and enhance their life skills, and that increases their long-term employability, [and] to learn the importance of environmental stewardship, as well as the fundamentals of forest ecology and management through real-world opportunities. They develop a sense of responsibility for themselves, the forest, and their communities,” said WSU Extension 4-H Program Coordinator Somer Meade in her remarks. “We are able to offer this annual program due to Secure Rural School funds and the support we have from our dedicated community partners at the Skamania County Board of Commissioners, the Stevenson-Carson School District, and a variety of agencies and organizations like the Forest Service.”
“Our success is tied directly to the SRS funds that support our school. These funds are not a luxury, they’re a necessity. As we strive as board members to keep our school fiscally sound, give the students and teachers the resources they need, and stay compliant with the myriad and ever-changing requirements from the state, we depend on this essential funding. Without it, Mt. Pleasant faces cuts to programs, staffing, and even the long-term sustainability of the school itself,” said Mt. Pleasant School Board Vice Chair Tanis Morris in her remarks. “I urge lawmakers and decision makers to continue supporting the Secure Rural Schools Act, because when we fund rural schools, we don’t just preserve history, we build a stronger future.
The following are Rep. Gluesenkamp Perez’s full remarks:
“Access to education, a level playing field for our kids, economic agency – these are all the things that SRS represents to us. I live here in Skamania County with my husband and my young son – he would go to one of these schools if he were old enough to be in class. And I am so grateful to be standing here with such an incredible team of leaders and people who have fierce loyalty to place, who really know what’s worth fighting for in life and know how lucky we are to live in a place rich in natural resources and culture, and who are going to stand up to make that level playing field that SRS represents happen for us.
The sad truth is that we are now past the January deadline to extend this program and keep payments on track. It’s why we are holding this press conference today. In Skamania County, only 1.8 percent of our land base can generate the revenue for vital public services, and that’s due to the abundance of tax-exempt federal land.
I come from a line of folks who worked in the woods, and I know how important our harvest rates are to preventing wildfire – which was one of the largest emitters of CO2 in our state last year – to keeping small businesses, family businesses operating and viable.
If you’re worried about consolidation of timber land, stalling these sales, putting us in a hole – that’s not a way to create an efficient, competitive market where family businesses can compete. And as a result of all of these blows compounding damage to our economy, we’ve seen a loss of jobs, we’ve seen a loss of wealth in our community, we’ve seen a loss of families – to small businesses. Our communities have been stopped from exercising this self-sufficiency due to interminable litigation and federal inaction.
Part of the deal with SRS is that these federal funds would backfill our budget shortfalls that we have been prevented from generating ourselves due to the timber revenue declines. It is also the fundamental American principle that your Zip Code should not determine the caliber of education you receive. And [that we should] help folks who choose to stay and fight and be loyal and get buried on the same land they were born on.
Our rural schools and counties have already faced decades of painful cuts to our basics, consolidating schools and considering a four-day school week – and this is even with SRS funding and a dedication to fiscal responsibility. Failing to reauthorize this SRS funding would devastate our schools, our jobs, their trade programs in these high schools which are often the first thing to get cut, and here at Mt. Pleasant School, these funds keep the doors open – it’s as plain and simple as that. And the same goes for the Stevenson-Carson School District, where the budget is already set and they would have to make drastic cuts to staff and empty out funds for maintenance to old buildings.
We are not talking about luxury programs here – we are talking about having heating and cooling and an A/C system in our schools at a time when the classroom temperatures can reach 85 degrees on the inside. This is craziness. We will not go quietly along with this inattention from federal agencies and the federal government.
I’ve had the opportunity to visit the shop class at Stevenson High School and these are incredibly bright, gifted kids, and they deserve a fair shot to have the skills to graduate with the resources to start their own businesses, have economic self-determination, to have real economic power, political agency, choice in where they live and how they make that living. Not to mention, programs like WSU Extension’s Forest Youth Success which give kids the opportunity to build the skills and nurture the gifts that they were born with.
It’s also about our county operations and Sheriff’s Departments and roads and schools up in Lewis County and Cowlitz County that will cost us more down the line. This is penny wise and pound foolish. The backlog of maintenance on these programs, our roads, our infrastructure, is not cheap, and it’s not fiscally responsible.
And beyond Southwest Washington, there are more than 700 counties, 4,400 school districts, and 40 states [that] have relied on SRS. While Washington, D.C. experiences, frankly, an atrophy of awareness of what it’s like to live in rural America, to send your kids to a rural school, this vital program is now running behind schedule. These are the schools that my son would go to as I mentioned.
I’ve repeatedly pressed leadership to bring this vote to the House floor. We recently introduced bipartisan legislation with colleagues I respect and know and who are eager partners in this fight with me to retroactively provide this funding authorization.
This has historically been a bipartisan, commonsense bill, so we’re working to build support – and part of that is being here today and ensuring that federal electeds are hearing the local voices of the communities who are most closely impacted by this. Last year, this program cost about $253 million, and I think Congress could find that sort of money at the same time we’re spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year on literally empty office buildings of federal agencies.
I refuse to let federal inaction undermine the opportunities our kids have, so I’ll keep fighting for this in D.C., and I’m incredibly grateful to all the folks up here and all of you for being partners in this work.”