Dinosaur tracks and parts of the Painted Desert Region can be found in Tuba City, a rural Navajo Nation community in Northern Arizona where Lena Fowler lives and handles some of her responsibilities as a Coconino County Supervisor. Her district is dotted with other small communities like hers, some that bleed into the Navajo Nation and another that bumps up against the Utah border. 

These communities are home to sacred indigenous sites, one of the state’s few ski resorts, alpine and desert environments, and the largest Ponderosa pine-tree-stand in the world. As a county supervisor, Fowler works with a variety of elected officials and community leaders to make sure the funding her district needs is secured. 

While each of these communities, from Fredonia, to Page, to Flagstaff, and Williams, have their own unique personalities and needs, they have one significant financial characteristic in common. Their tax bases are limited by the federal lands that surround them.

The Secure Rural Schools program, administered by the USDA through the Forest Service, fills critical funding gaps for communities like these.

“These dollars are very much essential to the communities for maintenance of roads, mainly on the rural roads that school buses travel on,” Fowler said. “County tax dollars wouldn’t be able to accommodate the needs being met right now through Secure Rural Schools funding.”

Because of how vital the funds are to the county, Fowler said that she and her colleagues are constantly advocating for reauthorization of the funds — reaching out to the state’s senators to make sure they understand just how important the funding is. 

Specifically, the funding addresses needs such as road repairs, school staffing and programming, and facility support. The program was designed to plug a financial hole that counties experienced when timber harvest revenue on federal lands was lost.

“If it was canceled, it would have a major impact on the services. The counties really rely on Secure Rural Schools,” Fowler said of the funding. “The county budget would shrink as a result of it, especially in the areas where there’s a lot of national forest areas. The infrastructure would be impacted.”

Fowler said the rural town of Fredonia, just four miles from the Utah line, shows why SRS matters. As a small district in a county with large areas of nontaxable federal land, Fredonia relies on SRS to stabilize its budget. If SRS lapses, the district could face mid-year shortfalls that translate into larger class sizes, staff reductions, trimmed bus routes over long distances, deferred maintenance, and cuts to essentials like aides, counselors, CTE, arts, and athletics.

The risk is that their local schools would be forced to do more with less, eroding access and quality close to home. Fowler added that she and her colleagues are in ongoing conversations with communities, Tribal nations, and state representatives to plan contingencies and advocate for a durable funding fix during uncertain budget cycles.

“This year is a lot more challenging because we’re getting notice every once in a while that this program might not get funded,” Fowler said. “There’s so much uncertainty because of the federal actions being taken, so Secure Rural Schools is one of them that we are constantly advocating for.”

In late 2025, Congress reauthorized the Secure Rural Schools Act through 2026.

The funding helps support more than school budgets too. The road work being done for school bus routes also benefits the county at large, particularly for emergency services. Fowler said the improvements seen from the funding ripples out well beyond the school district boundaries. 

“We’re a tourism base and we rely on those federal investments in our county and what we try to do is strengthen our federal partnerships for forest health and recreation and make sure we’re all benefiting from it because the employment comes from there and our sacred sites are protected.”