By Dick Miller
WE.CONNECT.DOTS: Percentage of state funding for local public school education?
Pennsylvania is in the bottom 10 in the United States. Data from the National Center for Education Statistics show our state taxes only covered 35.8 percent of public education costs for 2010.
Why is this so conspicuously bad? The more funds are pulled from local taxpayers, the less public education is adequately funded in poor districts. For example, while 53.3 percent of the cost of PA public education came from local sources in 2010, residents of Vermont only contributed 7.8 percent at the local level.
State government in Vermont provided over 81 percent of public education funding in 2010.
In 2012, after two years of Republican Gov. Tom Corbett and his Republican-controlled legislature, the state share remained at about 36 percent, but local kick-in ballooned to over 55 percent. State and local numbers would have been farther apart if school districts had not cut over 3,500 teaching jobs and even more administrators and support staff.
Corbett cut $1.1 billion from the 2011-12 public education budget while reducing business taxes a near equal amount. Corbett said schools should not have relied on dwindling Federal stimulus funds even though he used $234 million from the same pot to close a budget shortage the year before.
The “goal” for Pennsylvania for over four decades, according to governors of both political persuasions, has been 50% state funded. Democrat Milton Shapp (1971-79) first began to promote the level funding. His implementation of the state’s personal income tax drove PA’s share to almost 50 percent, but it has been declining ever since.
The Education Law Center, from which most of the data for this column has been appropriated, has advocated for fair and equitable public education funding for almost 40 years. Quoting from that think tank’s report of 2013:
“All students deserve an equal opportunity to learn and achieve success in school and beyond … Students with disabilities . . . and in poverty, require additional resources to have these same opportunities.”
Gov. Corbett and his education officials believe money does not matter when it comes to educating our children. He has shown less concern about the 50% goal for state funding than any governor in a half century.
Corbett blames former Gov. Rendell, local school districts and, of course, teachers’ unions for the mess of public education.
Corbett claims, correctly, that most of these funds came from President Obama’s stimulus program to combat the Great Recession. These funds expired at the end of former Rendell’s administration.
Rendell was focused on early childhood education to match what is being done in other civilized nations. Because he poured monies there, matching percentages actually began to rise somewhat during his administration.
Corbett does not play by the same rules his Tea Bagger allies insist when Democrats propose new or more costly programs.
When he cut business taxes, he did not specify what programs would have to be reduced or eliminated due to decreased funding. Instead, he never said a word and Democrats did not demand an accounting.
Finally, Corbett and his Republican-controlled legislature has done nothing to provide more reliable tax bases or management tools for local school boards to reduce reliance on dwindling tax bases. Then there is the pension crisis, growing larger as legislators recessed to go home and get re-elected by uninformed voters.
Bottom Line: Pennsylvania’s commitment to the education of our children is a continuing shame. There is plenty of blame to pass around. Think local school board members, teachers’ unions, school administrators and ignorant parents, among those already mentioned.
What specifically should school boards do differently than they do now? And, why?