Congressman Joe Neguse Announces Over $1 Million in Secure Rural Schools Payments for Grand County

Press Release

Today, Congressman Joe Neguse announced that Grand County will receive $1,448,524.11 to support public schools and other municipal services through the Forest Service's Secure Rural Schools (SRS) program.

"Schools in Grand County rely on funds from the Secure Rural Schools (SRS) program as a primary source of funding. These dollars are critical to support our students and provide reliable and consistent funding to Colorado's mountain communities," said Congressman Joe Neguse. "We were glad to secure a two-year extension for the program in 2019 to bring these resources to Grand County and similarly-situated counties throughout the state, and will continue to be a champion for this program to ensure our Colorado communities have the resources they need."

"SRS funding continues to be vital in our efforts to provide all of our students with a quality education," said Frank Reeves, Superintendent of East Grand School District. "We live in an area with an extremely high cost of living. This cost of living causes the socio-economic gap to continually widen. As our county and district grow it is vital that we keep our limited resources focused on making sure all of our students have access to becoming successful in school and as adults. With roughly 2/3rds of our district being on National Forest land we lack the ability to collect the property taxes needed to support our students. SRS allows East Grand to continue to support our quality teachers, maintain infrastructure in our facilities and provide curriculum and technology for our students. We have also been able to keep our class sizes relatively small resulting in teachers and staff being able to focus more individualized efforts to support all of our students. Without the additional funding from Secure Rural Schools it would be extremely difficult to maintain our quality of education for all."

Congressman Neguse was successful in enacting a two-year extension for the Secure Rural Schools program in 2019. Earlier this year, he introduced legislation to reauthorize the program for an additional two years.

A breakdown of funding by state and county is available HERE.

Colorado Counties in the 2nd District to receive:

Grand: $1,448,524.11
Summit: $846,226.94
Eagle: $731,031.39
Clear Creek: $439,605.95
Park: $374,344.27
Larimer: $269,947.77
Boulder: $33,326.43
Gilpin: $26,293.08
###

Source