Protecting and Increasing Funding for NOAA’s Office of Education & Sustainable Development

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) oversees a number of education-related programs, ranging from the Sea Grant program to the Hollings Fellowships, and has been actively building these programs over the years. In 2004, NOAA received an additional $6.3 million in funding to spend on new “educational initiatives” in FY05; they subsequently decided to distribute $2.5 million of those funds to the field in the form of competitive "Environmental Literacy Grants".

In 2005, although this new “education initiatives” program was originally intended to provide multi-year funding for its grantees, the Bush Administration proposed in its FY06 budget to discontinue its funding after only the first year. With CEL’s help (e.g., see our 2005 letter to Congress), the environmental education community subsequently launched a successful campaign to fully restore these funds. (While the Senate FY06 appropriations bill for NOAA actually increased the “education initiatives” program to $10 million, reconciliation with the House bill reduced this amount to the original $6.3 million. The degree of bipartisan support demonstrated within Congress for environmental literacy during this process was especially encouraging. NOAA subsequently decided to increase the funding for the Environmental Literacy Grants program by $1 million to $3.5 million for FY06.

Despite our letter to President Bush prior to his FY 2007 budget proposal asking him to include these funds in his budget proposal, the Administration has once again zeroed out these funds for FY07. This year, we are seeking to double the FY07 appropriation from $6 million to $12 million. Much of the increase would go to the Environmental Literacy Grants Program, which over the past two years has successfully established new partnerships to deliver education materials to thousands of teachers and students.

On March 8, 2006, we again assisted nearly 30 environmental education (EE) member organizations in coming together on a new letter to Congress requesting that this vital funding be restored for FY 2007.

We now ask you to contact your representatives and voice your support for restoring and doubling the NOAA education initiatives funding.
(Please remember that updates on the status of this campaign and others can be found on our Campaign News page.)