In a flurry of eleventh-hour

presidential activity that has included over 60 pardons and one highly

controversial federal judicial appointment, President Clinton signed the

last budget bill of his eight-year tenure on Dec. 21st. After months of

on-again, off-again partisan negotiations, the omnibus spending bill was

approved by Congress and will provide funds for the departments of Labor,

Health and Human Services, and the Department of Education.

The Education Department was

given an 18 percent funding increase for an additional $6.5 billion dollars,

bringing the Education Department budget to a record $44.5 billion, more

than double the department's funding prior to the Clinton reign. Included

in the Education spending bill are budget increases for Title I, professional

development, Impact Aid, and education technology. Also included in the

budget is $1.6 billion to hire new teachers to reduce class size and $900

million in new funds for the repair of older public schools throughout

the country.

It's easy to sit back and tick

off the totals of countless programs that sound like good ideas, but careful

scrutiny of the enormous budget is likely to reveal the shallowness of

any significant local level impact.

The $1.6 billion for 100,000

new teachers amounts to something like six new teachers per local school

district. The $900 million for the repair and renovation of older existing

facilities is seen by many conservatives as yet another effort by the

federal government to mandate every aspect of our public lives. No longer

content to tell local systems what to teach and how to teach it, now the

Department of Education has their foot in the door on telling us what

kind of facility to teach in.

In an interesting turn of events,

Congress also passed the Children's Internet Protection Act as part of

the appropriations bill. The new law, sponsored by senators McCain, Santorum,

Istook and Pickering, will amend the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and

require all schools and libraries that receive federal "eRate"

funding for the purchase of Internet access and computer technology to

certify to the Federal Communications Commission that they are using filtering

technology to block access to obscene or pornographic materials by minors.

Sen. John McCain said that, "parents can protect their children from

Internet smut at home but have no control over the computers at school."

The American Civil Liberties

Union (ACLU), echoing concerns of free speech advocates, is expected to

file suit to block the new law. Even the national PTA, in its online newsletter

dated Dec. 22, 2000, expressed "disappointment... that schools receiving

federal assistance for education technology [should be required to] install

censoring technology on computers accessible to minors."

While efforts to "censor"

the Internet for minors is seen by some as an effort to infringe upon

constitutional rights to the free exercise of speech and expression, the

move is undoubtedly seen by many parents as a stroke of common sense,

and a measure of comfort in an increasingly uncomfortable world. I applaud

the senators for having the political prowess to see this one through

Congressional ranks.

While I agree wholeheartedly

with the move to mandate the Internet filters, I can't help but recognize

the obvious correlation between "federal" monies and federal

rules. That it happened to play in our favor this time is of little comfort

when you consider that these are our monies in the first place that the

federal government is so graciously offering to return to us, with strings,

and when you consider that public education is the responsibility of the

local and state governments and shouldn't even exist at the federal level.

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