Amid inequity, school funding may be budget flashpoint again
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) - Pennsylvania's school funding could once again become a contentious point in fledgling state budget talks after a fight over how school funding helped drive this past year's historic budget stalemate.
The stalemate came amid the backdrop of federal data showing that Pennsylvania harbors the nation's most inequitable education system in terms of a funding disparity between wealthier and poorer school districts.
It's not clear that much has changed, and Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf's office said this past week that inequity is still a serious problem.
The state upped classroom spending by $200 million - to $5.9 billion - and used a new formula to distribute $150 million of it. The formula, which has bipartisan support, was developed after years of criticism that the state needed to take year-to-year political tinkering out of future decisions on how to distribute aid to Pennsylvania's 500 school districts.
However, other ways to attack inequity failed.
The Republican-controlled Legislature shied away from reducing aid to school districts that, over the past couple decades, got state funding that would have gone elsewhere under the new formula, which favors districts with rising poverty or growing student populations.
Wolf had originally sought $400 million for public schools, a 7 percent increase; he got half. Wolf also had sought to route a substantial amount of the money to school districts that suffered the deepest funding cuts in 2011. The Legislature rebuffed that, with Republicans in particular complaining it targeted too much aid to Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.
Wolf's office called the new formula "a move in the right direction." But, his office said, "it cannot truly be fair until we restore the funding that was cut from all districts in 2011-12. This remains a top priority of the governor."
Wolf also failed to persuade lawmakers to raise state taxes to reduce Pennsylvania's heavy reliance on school property taxes, which public school advocates say is a significant driver of the funding disparity.
In his proposal for the 2016-17 budget year that begins July 1, Wolf called for classroom funding to rise to $6.3 billion. It is not clear yet whether Wolf can secure a $350 million-plus commitment from Republican lawmakers, particularly as he seeks a tax increase to balance a projected deficit approaching $2 billion.
Once negotiations begin, "we'll be able to see what we can agree with and don't agree with, and take it from there," said House Appropriations Committee Chairman Bill Adolph, R-Delaware. "There's a lot of issues we need to work out."
For now, the majority of school districts - about nine of 10 - are receiving less state aid than they were five years ago, according to an Associated Press analysis. At the time, the state was using federal recession aid to prop up school spending. Most of the school districts that are receiving more state aid now rank in the top fifth of household income.
That did not come as a surprise to education advocates.
"Those districts with the least wealth were cut disproportionately in 2011 and so (Wolf) was trying to get them back to where they were before," said Jim Buckheit, executive director of the Pennsylvania Association of School Administrators.
Notably, Philadelphia, the state's largest school district, is getting $200 million less from the state, still a 16 percent cut, the second biggest in the state. Phoenixville Area School District, at 20 percent, has the largest percentage reduction in state aid.
The Campaign for Fair Education Funding, a coalition of labor unions, social welfare groups and education improvement advocates, is pressing for $400 million in new aid to schools. It is advocating the year-old formula to distribute the money instead of the politically sticky position of backing Wolf's push to wipe out the 5-year-old funding cuts or reducing aid to districts that, arguably, should not be getting it.
Even so, pumping that much new aid into schools year after year will soon iron out funding disparities in Pennsylvania schools, some say.
"If we continue to do it at $150 million a year, like we did this year, it'll take over 20 years," Buckheit said. "If we do a $400 million increase going forward over the next several years, we can get there in six to eight years."
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