A recent ruling by a Commonwealth Court judge that the state’s way of funding education is unconstitutional opens the possibility of a lifetime change that will benefit many Pennsylvania youth in the decades ahead.

Even if the judge’s decision doesn’t stand through appeals, the General Assembly should still rethink the way public education is funded. And I want to emphasize the word public. I think it’s time to stop funding nonpublic schools: parochial, charter, cyber. They take money away from public education, which was once the bulwark of democracy.

The United States thrived, in part thanks to public education. There was a common thread throughout the country.

When I was in high school, some of my classmates left for what we then called prep school. Their parents paid the bill, not the taxpayers and thus public education was not deprived of funding the way it is today.

Let us return to a system in which public dollars are spent on public schools, not private or parochial schools.

R. Thomas Berner

Tamaqua native