The halls of the United States Capitol are daunting to an Idaho middle school teacher. The ceilings soar, the marble glows, and the air is thick with the weight of government and political conversations. I was out of my element, but I was not alone as I felt the voices of Idaho students and educators with me.

This past September, I was in Washington, D.C., for Hill Day as part of the Educator Policy Fellowship Program. My purpose was to advocate for S.1277, the IDEA Full Funding Act, by asking Idaho Senators Risch and Crapo to support this bill. The Full Funding Act would finally honor a promise Congress made in 1975 when it passed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. At the time, lawmakers pledged to cover 40 percent of the additional cost of educating students with disabilities. That promise has never been met; Federal funding has remained around 15 percent, leaving states and districts to cover the rest by taking money from the general education fund.

In America, every school feels the consequences of Congress’s broken promise. When the federal government underfunds IDEA, schools are forced to pull from general budgets to cover the gap. That means fewer resources for all students, staff, and educators.

Teachers are still told to meet the same standards, regardless of whether their classrooms have the support to succeed. When a paraeducator position goes unfilled, a special education teacher stretches thinner. When federal dollars fall short, general education teachers pick up responsibilities meant for specialists. These are not abstract policy issues; they are daily realities in classrooms everywhere.

Inside the Capitol, conversations about education often sound like numbers on a spreadsheet. To make those conversations worth a senator’s time, I found myself turning my students into data points—attendance rates, reading scores, percentages of unmet needs. It felt wrong, but that was the language the system demanded.

Yet behind every number is a child: the student waiting weeks for reading support because there’s no staff to provide it, the teacher giving up their only planning period to cover a service, the family promised fairness and inclusion nearly fifty years ago, who is still told to wait.

S.1277 matters because it is not about politics. It is about trust. Full funding would not create luxuries; it would allow schools to hire the staff already required by law. It would give teachers the space to focus on instruction instead of constantly patching gaps in the system, and it would ensure that students with disabilities finally receive the education they are entitled to under federal law.

Walking out of the Capitol, I could still feel the weight of those marble columns. They stand tall, but they are not what holds up our democracy. That work happens in classrooms, in every community, every day. If Congress continues to ignore its own commitments, it will not be the buildings in Washington that crumble. It will be the foundation of opportunity owed to every child.

Alyson McIrvin is a middle-school social-studies teacher in Caldwell and a fellow in the Educator Policy Fellowship Program.