The Impact Aid Program, signed into law by President Harry Truman in 1950, is the nation’s oldest K-12 Federal education program. Nationwide, approximately 1,200 school districts enrolling more than 10 million students benefit from Impact Aid funding.

Today’s Impact Aid program had its beginnings in the early 1800s. Regulations were passed in 1821 to support the cost for schools to educate military-dependent children. The Johnson-O’Malley Act of 1934 identified that there were no local taxes to educate Native American children and provided funding for them. This Act was the first acknowledgement by the Federal Government of its obligation to the local school district for educating children residing on Indian Lands. Additional pieces of legislation passed in the late 1930s and early 1940s were the precursor to the modern day Impact Aid program.

Impact Aid, originally PL. 81-874, was incorporated into the Elementary and Secondary Education Act as Title VIII in 1994. It’s now Title VII of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). Funding for the program is approved annually by Congress through the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education Appropriations Subcommittee bill, and the program is administered by the U.S. Department of Education.

Many local school districts across the United States include within their boundaries parcels of land that are owned by the Federal Government or that have been removed from the local tax rolls by the Federal Government, including Indian lands. These school districts face special challenges — they must provide a quality education to the children living on the Indian and other Federal lands and meet the requirements of the Every Student Succeeds Act, while sometimes operating with less local revenue than is available to other school districts, because the Federal property is exempt from local property taxes.

Since 1950, Congress has provided financial assistance to these local school districts through the Impact Aid Program. Impact Aid was designed to assist local school districts that have lost property tax revenue due to the presence of tax-exempt Federal property, or that have experienced increased expenditures due to the enrollment of federally connected children, including children living on Indian lands. The Impact Aid law (now Title VII of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA)) provides assistance to local school districts with concentrations of children residing on Indian lands, military bases, low-rent housing properties, or other Federal properties and, to a lesser extent, concentrations of children who have parents in the uniformed services or employed on eligible Federal properties who do not live on Federal property.

Over 93 percent of the $1.3 billion appropriated for FY 2016 is targeted for payment to school districts based on an annual count of federally connected school children. Slightly more than 5 percent assists school districts that have lost significant local assessed value due to the acquisition of property by the Federal Government since 1938. More than $17 million is available for formula construction grants.

The Impact Aid law (now Title VII of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965) has been amended numerous times since its inception in 1950. The program continues, however, to support local school districts with concentrations of children who reside on Indian lands, military bases, low-rent housing properties, and other Federal properties, or have parents in the uniformed services or employed on eligible Federal properties. The law refers to local school districts as local educational agencies, or LEAs.

National Association of Federally Impacted Schools

Federal Department of Education