‘This is great news’: Skamania school district hails long-awaited reauthorization of Secure Rural Schools fund

Rural schools in Southwest Washington are heartened by news that a bill restoring critical federal funding is headed to President Donald Trump’s desk.

The U.S. House of Representatives approved a bill to reauthorize the Secure Rural Schools program after a nearly two-year lapse that forced schools across the United States, including one in rural Skamania County, to make significant budget cuts.

“This is great news. We’re excited,” said Ingrid Colvard, the superintendent of the Stevenson-Carson School District. “It’s had bipartisan support all along, so we really did think if it was going to get on the floor for a vote that it would pass. Once we saw that the vote was on the calendar, we were feeling pretty hopeful.”

The House voted 399-5 to reauthorize the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act of 2000 through September 2026 and provide lapsed payments for the 2024 and 2025 fiscal years. The bill, which now goes to the president to be signed into law, was approved by the U.S. Senate in December 2024. But it stalled in the House and was not reauthorized by a Jan. 31 deadline to avoid impacting rural counties that rely on the federal revenues.

“Candidly, the only reason it took this long is because way too many folks in D.C. have been blissfully ignorant about how disastrous the lapse of SRS has been for timber communities in Southwest Washington and across the West,” U.S. Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, D-Skamania, who co-led a bipartisan effort to reauthorize the program, said in a news release. “Schools have closed up, teachers have been laid off and our kids have been left footing the bill for Congress’s neglect. My colleagues need to wake up and see that their blind spots have massive consequences for the American people.”

The Secure Rural Schools program helps fund schools, roads and other public services, such as law enforcement, in 700 rural counties, including Skamania, that are rich in timberlands but lack the type of industry that generates tax revenues.

The lack of Secure Rural Schools funding has greatly impacted the Stevenson-Carson School District, which cut its 2025-26 budget by $1.85 million, forcing the district to close one of its middle schools, cut 21 staff positions, and postpone its tentative plans to install air conditioning in its school buildings.

“I would say our staff has been incredibly resilient, and they’re doing their best to give kids the support they need with fewer people,” Colvard said. “We’re trying to support the well-being of our staff while they try to do this work that got a lot harder this year.”

Colvard said she doesn’t know how much money the district will receive from the program or when it will come. The district last received $800,000 of the Secure Rural Schools funds in 2023. She does know, however, that the district will put the money into its capital fund, which it depleted to cover the shortfall in its general fund before the start of the 2025-26 school year.

“There’s not a lot of planning that we can do quite yet,” she said. “But we will repair some of the damage not getting it earlier caused.”

The Stevenson-Carson School District will plan some type of celebration once Trump signs the bill into law, Colvard said.

“I want to make sure people don’t get false hope, because our reductions were caused by (other factors such as) the state not adequately funding schools, reduced enrollment and those sorts of things, ” she said. “But it is huge, and it’s going to make a difference over time. We’re going to fix the bleeding that it caused us.”