Advocacy for Environmental Education

 

Organizationally and pedagogically environmental education (EE) in the United States is, by many measures, the strongest it has ever been, in spite of serious budget constraints on every level – from individual schools and nonprofit organizations, to state agencies and Federal departments. Even with these current limitations, the field is in the process of making a generational leap, hopefully aided in a big way by the anticipated passage of significant Federal and state EE legislation.

Strong, organized, advocacy on behalf of this legislation is the very best way to ensure that EE can make this leap which is so vital to the future of our planet… and we need your help to make it happen!

Included in this Overview and Action:

• The year ahead for NAAEE national advocacy, including: new website, action call dates and annual meeting plans;
• Great news on the legislative initiatives we have been working so hard on together:

  • Good progress made to pass No Child Left Inside act (NCLI) for K-12 EE;
  • Fiscal year 2010 Federal appropriations approved for:

National Environmental Education Act Program
First Year of the University Sustainability Program
NOAA Environmental Literacy Grants Program
NOAA Bay Watershed Education and Training Program (B-WET)

  • National Environmental Education Act (NEEA) reauthorization legislation introduced in Congress
  • 47 States and the District of Columbia actively developing new or revised Environmental Literacy Plans (ELP)

• Most effective actions for you to take now on behalf of these issues;
• Planning and action for state-based EE affiliates;
• Plenty of thanks!

 

 

The Year Ahead for the NAAEE Advocacy Committee

  • Monthly calls – dates below. Email advocacy (at) naaee.org to find out more or be added to the call notice list
  • Alerts and updated NAAEE Web sites
  • Annual meeting advocacy development sessions – October 12 - 15, 2011 in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina.
  • Providing support to the State affiliates.
  • Integration of advocacy with additional areas of the Association as per the new NAAEE strategic plan.
  • And, as detailed throughout this piece, we need your help. If you need additional suggestions finding where you can help in this crucial effort, please email us at: advocacy (at) naaee.org.

NAAEE Advocacy Committee Call Dates 2011
All are welcome. First Thursday of each month 1:00 – 2:00 p.m. Eastern Time

April 7
May 5
June 2
July 7
August 4
September 8 (2nd Thursday)
October 6
November 3
December 1

Shareen Knowlton, Chair and Brock Adler, Vice Chair
North American Association for Environmental Education - Advocacy Committee


 

LEGISLATION

No Child Left Inside (NCLI)

Our goal remains to advocate on behalf of NCLI (H.R. 2054, S. 866) in order to get its important provisions included in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act reauthorization (ESEA), and if not, have NCLI enacted as a stand-alone bill. (ESEA is the original name for the Federal education bill; the name had been shelved in favor of Bush-era "No Child Left Behind" nickname, which is now being retired.)

NAAEEs multi-pronged advocacy strategy we are executing in close partnership with the NCLI Coalition, National Wildlife Federation, and many others, has proven itself very successful. We have engaged a full spectrum of stakeholders in numerous ways on behalf of our cause:

  • Many Congressional cosponsors for the House and Senate versions of the bills have been recruited through visits and other communications with staff and the Legislators themselves.
  • The NCLI Coalition has collected over 1800 member organizations with our help.
  • We and our partners have been in dialogue with Department of Education Secretary Duncan and his key staff.
  • And we are leveraging the Environmental Literacy Plan movement in almost every state to influence Congressional passage of NCLI.

Legislation Update

The NCLI bills are now in the House Committee on Education and Labor and Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, but the reality is that they are unlikely to be passed in 2010, nor is the ESEA reauthorization, nor will much else even be voted on.

The good news is the momentum that we gather from one Congress to the next is building wonderfully. The number of cosponsors for NCLI in both houses of Congress in the 111th Congress far exceeds the great start we had in the previous sessions. For the the current background on the bills, including cosponsors, go to http://thomas.gov and search for "No Child Left Inside".

Earlier in the year, Rep. Sarbanes (MD-3), introducer of the bill in the House, gave the NAAEE Advocacy Committee glowing feedback about the stellar job that supporters of the bill (you!) have been doing. He said that we have really covered all of the bases and made his job as the lead Representative on the bill so much easier. He expressed his gratitude for our work so far, said he couldn’t have done it without us, and implored us to keep it up until we prevail.

Advocacy Action: Congress

Even this late in the current session and especially moving into the 112th Congress, your advocacy on behalf of NCLI is especially valuable. If your Representative and/or Senator(s) cosponsored the bill(s), now, at the end of the session, is a great time to thank them and their staffs; it is vital that they know you still need them to support NCLI by cosponsoring it again in the 112th Congress.

If your legislators has not cosponsored yet, it isn’t too late to make a last push to have them included. A fantastic group of potential cosponsors on the House side is the nearly 300 Representatives who voted for the NCLI bill in September 2008; almost everyone of them could cosponsor if approached in the right way, even by a small group of EE supporters. To see the roll call of NCLI 2008 voters, go to http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2008/roll614.xml

NCLI Coalition membership continues to play an important role our efforts. Legislators look at this list, now over 1800 organizations(!), to assure themselves that there is broad support behind the bills. Please review the Coalition list to make sure your organization is on it and that there is also a good range of other organizations represented in your state… and please ask a few of your colleague organizations join now. www.NCLIcoalition.org.

We invite you to stay informed about NCLI progress and action: by joining the NAAEE Action Network - send your email to advocacy@naaee.org; and by personally signing onto the NCLI petition on the NCLI Coalition website and checking the box to get updates: www.cbf.org/page.aspx?pid=687

Environmental Literacy Plans - Status and Action

In many ways the actions by the individual states in organizing to develop and implement their Environmental Literacy Plans (ELP) to qualify for eventual NCLI funding is a good part of the lasting pay-off from the national effort and the foundation for a continued renaissance in EE.

We are extremely pleased with the enormous strides that the states made in 2010 in the development of their ELPs… and the progress continues. While the NAAEE Affiliate Steering Committee is providing assistance to states in their development of the actual plans, the Advocacy Committee is primarily helping to build the capacity of states to legislatively or administratively pass the plans. This part of our work is especially critical because while the state EE associations have great expertise regarding planning and development of learning and curricular matters, not all have the skill sets needed to, draft regulations, pass laws, and develop the political buy-in that this effort takes.

The sheer volume of activity on the state level precludes a comprehensive description in this update, but here is an overview and summary. The states have:

  • been assembling their stakeholders in the ELP development process and making new alliances;
  • held listening tours;
  • started to get legislative authorization for ELP development;
  • made grant applications to EPA, the Federal “Race to the Top” program, and private sources for funding ELP development – and some have been funded;
  • participated in regional mutual support efforts such as the New England group and the mid-west nodes; and
  • gathered and shared their strategies at the NAAEE annual conference in Buffalo, and also have been conducting learning and working sessions at most state affiliate conferences (session templates and resource people materials available).

One item of great news is that the State/National connections that have been made in our national efforts have already been working in our favor. Some of the synergies mentioned above are ripe for leveraging further support on the level of state departments of education and legislators. Every state has NCLI Coalition members, almost 40 states have at least one Federal Legislator cosponsoring NCLI, and 20 governors signed a letter of support to Dept. of Education Secretary Duncan. These are our key allies in helping the states.

ELP Advocacy Action in 2011

The advocacy for passage of ELPs is just in the beginning phases and there is great variability between the legislative processes and needs of the states, so this is an area of advocacy that will rely heavily on mutual support among all of the states, and lots of local learning and partnering from state-based environmental and education-related allies such as: PIRGs, Sierra Clubs, science teachers associations, Leagues of Conservation Voters, Audubon Societies, Earth Day organizers, and more. This committee will devote some of our monthly call time to this topic, keeping everyone up to date with special alerts, and more.

National Environmental Education Act (NEEA) Funding

The effort to secure funding for this key Federal EE program was a totally positive experience in 2010 with an appropriation of $9.03 million for FY 2010, matching the amount for last year. Our goal in this very tough budget year was to increase the budget from FY 2009, and even though this was not met, we did manage a break-through with the House approving a $1 million increase to $10 million, which, unfortunately, was negotiated back down in the end by the Senate committee to the $9 million figure. This none-the-less gives us an opening for next year.

Federal Fiscal Year 2010 Wrap-up and Preparations for Next Year

As you may know, Sen. Gillibrand (NY) was our new NEEA champion for this Congress, seeing the appropriation though on the Senate side, and Reps. Jared Polis (CO-2) and Mike Castle (DE-at large) were our lead advocates over in the House. They certainly deserve a big thanks for their leadership, and we ask you to email or fax them a thank you today, especially if they represent you. You should also thank members of the appropriations committees if you are one of their constituents and if they voted for the funding. Also, if your institution or a colleague’s one was awarded a grant from the EPA Office of EE grant in the last couple of years, an extra thank you would be especially effective. Check out http://epa.gov/education/grants/index.html for a full list.
A side note: a colleague who has worked for many years with EPA Office of EE where most of the NEEA funds flow through, said that they received about the same number of requests this year as last, but each one asked for more money. Subsequently, the ratio of funds requested to granted is getting smaller… ever the more reason to fight for an increase in FY 2011!

NEEA Reauthorization Introduced

In a crucial move that had been in the works for a number of years, NAAEE and a coalition of other EE and environmental groups have supported the introduction of House and Senate bills that would reauthorize the National Environmental Education Act of 1990, H.R. 6194 and S. 3833. While we know that only a few new laws will be passed in the waning days of the 111th Congress and this will probably not be one of them, the introduction of the reauthorization bill, even this late in the session, establishes the issue for further action next year.

What we need you to do is to familiarize yourself with the bills at http://thomas.loc.gov Search for "National Environmental Education Reauthorization Act."

Understand and be ready to explain the difference between the purpose of this funding stream for informal and formal EE programs, and NCLI that would fund teacher training for EE teachers; and alert your representatives in your end of the year communications that this is a priority for the EE field in the coming year.

University Sustainability Plan - First Year Appropriation

We got some great news this year about funding for the University Sustainability Program (USP) - a newly authorized program at the Department of Education that focuses on sustainability practices, research and education on college campuses. USP will be one of six "invitational priorities" that will compete for $29 million in FY 2010 funding through the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE). While our coalition and champions were pushing for $50 million for USP alone, this is a significant step forward since USP is one of just a handful of the more than 60 new programs that were created in the higher education reauthorization act last year that actually got funded.

Special thanks to our champions on Capitol Hill - Senator John Kerry (MA), Congressman Earl Blumenauer (OR-3), and Congressman Vern Ehlers (MI-3). Send them a note if you are in their district/state, and especially if you are with a institution for higher education. Extra thanks also, of course, to the Jim Elder and the Campaign for Environmental Literacy who led this effort along with Second Nature, the American Association of Community Colleges, Earth Day Network, National Wildlife Federation, and others. And finally thanks to those who worked so hard to get the program authorized last year… this appropriation is the payoff for the field and the future.

More Key Environmental Education Federal Legislation

NOAA Environmental Literacy Grants Program
The great news for this program is that the Commerce, Justice, and Science Appropriations Conference Committee allocated $12 million for the FY2010 NOAA Environmental Literacy Grants Program, which was the figure requested and is up from $8.5 million last year.

B-WET
The Appropriations Conference Committee also funded the NOAA Bay Watershed Education and Training Program (B-WET) at last years level of $9.7 million, including a special focus on California BWET. The EE community had asked for $12 million for the program so a new Great Lakes component could be launched, but that will have to wait for next year and the FY2011 budget.

For more information on either of these important funding streams, please contact our colleague and champion, Jim Elder at The Campaign for Environmental Literacy, www.FundEE.org. Also special thanks to the National Wildlife Federation for their leadership on these two items.