While educators are eager to forget the financial woes of the past two years and return to the familiar routine of steady budget increases, the fiscal outlook for America's fourteen thousand school districts is bleak--not just for next year, but for a half decade or more.

One of the most frightening security threats to the United States is a terrorist nuclear attack in which the device is smuggled into the United States by sea. In addition to the thousands of lost lives and the physical damage that such an attack would cause, the ensuing disruption to...