Bush’s Forest Proposal Worries Rural Schools

President Bush wants to sell more than 300,000 acres of federal lands to finance federal payments for rural schools and counties, while moving to end an existing aid program.

The proposal, contained in the administration’s fiscal 2007 budget proposal, would generate some $800 million over five years that would be paid to localities that are nestled amid the nation’s 193 million acres of public lands.

But the plan would be part of a phaseout of federal payments that have totaled more than $370 million annually, under a 2000 law that created a financial “safety net” for localities that historically received a slice from federal earnings from commercial timber sales, mining, and...