School funding in Pennsylvania is an arcane property-tax based system long criticized by just about everyone. There are many repurcussions for all invloved and seem to be few, if any, good things about the system. Districts have unequal funding since property taxes are based on local millage rates. Some of the poorest, worst-performing school districts in the state share a border with some of the wealthiest and best. The students from the poor districts are stuck in failing schools despite being a stone's throw from successful ones. Taxpayers are held hostage by school board decisions and demands of unions, no matter how incompetent or unreasonable. People buy houses and pay them off, owning the home outright only to lose them to the county if they can't afford tax increases over which they have little to no control.
These aren't the only problems, nor are they new problems. But the state's current budget crisis has brought an entirely new dimension to light. After 8 years of Ed Rendell's utter incompetence as Governor, Pennsylvania has a $4 billion deficit. Rendell increased spending by about 40% over his tenure but none of that money appears to have been spent wisely. We lead the nation in bad roads and structurally deficient bridges. Our public transportation systems and schools lack dedicated funding. All we have to show for Fast Eddie's frivolous spending are crony contracts and overpaid politicians.
We've run out of money and our state is in worse shape in many areas than ever before. What passed for leadership from Rendell has been a complete failure in every sense, catapulting Pennsylvania into the bottom in many categories. Bring in Tom Corbett, barely sworn in as our new Governor, and his attempts to bring some fiscal sanity back to the Keystone state. Corbett actually increased state spending on education to the tune of $240 million. But temporary federal stimulus funds for education are no more, meaning that schools are getting $900 million less total. The Governor and the state legislature have no authority to force the federal government to hand out stimulus money to schools and did all they could by increasing education funding despite a $4 billion shortfall.
Sidebar: All school districts were well aware that the federal stimulus money was a temporary payout which would end in 2010. They only received the money for two school years, which means they knew damn well not to make any big or permanent changes that their budgets could not support after the stimulus funds were gone. They had no reason to believe these emergency programs would continue. They could easily have parceled out the windfall carefully so as to not spend it all immediately or they could have allocated the funding in ways in which it wouldn't be too sorely missed after it ended.
In addition, less than 30% of eligible Pennsylvania schools applied for federal grant money available to them for the current school year. And they are all well aware of the state's budget crisis. Yet they aren't taking any responsibility for their own fiscal mismanagement or poor planning. Instead they're laying sole blame on the Governor's administration. Corbett is being excoriated for not simply taxing an additional one billion dollars out of Pennsylvania's citizens in order to indulge the whims of school administrators and reward their bad behavior with stimulus funds.
It's lunacy, pure and simple. But just when we all assumed it couldn't get any more ridiculous, some do-nothing Democrats in the state legislature are trying to get school districts to sue Corbett for discrimination. Our arcane system of funding education primarily via property taxes means that some schools receive significantly less funding than others. The schools collecting less in property taxes depend much more heavily on the state budget's direct funding of education. Thus, poorer schools are losing more money without the federal stimulus funds than wealthier districts in more affluent areas.
Our schools certainly have some serious and immediate problems as a result -- an inequitable and questionable funding system, subpar adminstrative and leadership, and immediate funding needs, just to name a few -- but none of these are the fault of our new Governor, nor will they be solved in a courtroom. The suggestion to sue his administration reveals complete ignorance on the part of these state representatives. They clearly don't understand how our state funds education, nor do they seem to care. They are putting all taxpayers at risk of having to come up with a billion dollars that we don't have should the suit succeed (although under the circumstances, such a lawsuit would be so frivolous that seems highly unlikely). It's the lowest form of pandering on the parts of Rep. Bill Kortz and Marc Gergely.
Kortz and Gergely aren't truly concerned about education or else they would be proposing new ways to fund all schools equally. Both men are grandstanding with this hare-brained scheme to encourage school districts to sue taxpayers right into the poorhouse. It's nothing but cheap political scheming: Blame the GOP and if you say it enough times, these dumb voters will believe it, despite the fact that it's not true. Voters need to contact Kortz and Gergely to request their funding proposals. It will be interesting to see what they have to offer constituents besides cheap political shots and pandering, if they have anything else to offer.
These aren't the only problems, nor are they new problems. But the state's current budget crisis has brought an entirely new dimension to light. After 8 years of Ed Rendell's utter incompetence as Governor, Pennsylvania has a $4 billion deficit. Rendell increased spending by about 40% over his tenure but none of that money appears to have been spent wisely. We lead the nation in bad roads and structurally deficient bridges. Our public transportation systems and schools lack dedicated funding. All we have to show for Fast Eddie's frivolous spending are crony contracts and overpaid politicians.
We've run out of money and our state is in worse shape in many areas than ever before. What passed for leadership from Rendell has been a complete failure in every sense, catapulting Pennsylvania into the bottom in many categories. Bring in Tom Corbett, barely sworn in as our new Governor, and his attempts to bring some fiscal sanity back to the Keystone state. Corbett actually increased state spending on education to the tune of $240 million. But temporary federal stimulus funds for education are no more, meaning that schools are getting $900 million less total. The Governor and the state legislature have no authority to force the federal government to hand out stimulus money to schools and did all they could by increasing education funding despite a $4 billion shortfall.
Sidebar: All school districts were well aware that the federal stimulus money was a temporary payout which would end in 2010. They only received the money for two school years, which means they knew damn well not to make any big or permanent changes that their budgets could not support after the stimulus funds were gone. They had no reason to believe these emergency programs would continue. They could easily have parceled out the windfall carefully so as to not spend it all immediately or they could have allocated the funding in ways in which it wouldn't be too sorely missed after it ended.
In addition, less than 30% of eligible Pennsylvania schools applied for federal grant money available to them for the current school year. And they are all well aware of the state's budget crisis. Yet they aren't taking any responsibility for their own fiscal mismanagement or poor planning. Instead they're laying sole blame on the Governor's administration. Corbett is being excoriated for not simply taxing an additional one billion dollars out of Pennsylvania's citizens in order to indulge the whims of school administrators and reward their bad behavior with stimulus funds.
It's lunacy, pure and simple. But just when we all assumed it couldn't get any more ridiculous, some do-nothing Democrats in the state legislature are trying to get school districts to sue Corbett for discrimination. Our arcane system of funding education primarily via property taxes means that some schools receive significantly less funding than others. The schools collecting less in property taxes depend much more heavily on the state budget's direct funding of education. Thus, poorer schools are losing more money without the federal stimulus funds than wealthier districts in more affluent areas.
Our schools certainly have some serious and immediate problems as a result -- an inequitable and questionable funding system, subpar adminstrative and leadership, and immediate funding needs, just to name a few -- but none of these are the fault of our new Governor, nor will they be solved in a courtroom. The suggestion to sue his administration reveals complete ignorance on the part of these state representatives. They clearly don't understand how our state funds education, nor do they seem to care. They are putting all taxpayers at risk of having to come up with a billion dollars that we don't have should the suit succeed (although under the circumstances, such a lawsuit would be so frivolous that seems highly unlikely). It's the lowest form of pandering on the parts of Rep. Bill Kortz and Marc Gergely.
Kortz and Gergely aren't truly concerned about education or else they would be proposing new ways to fund all schools equally. Both men are grandstanding with this hare-brained scheme to encourage school districts to sue taxpayers right into the poorhouse. It's nothing but cheap political scheming: Blame the GOP and if you say it enough times, these dumb voters will believe it, despite the fact that it's not true. Voters need to contact Kortz and Gergely to request their funding proposals. It will be interesting to see what they have to offer constituents besides cheap political shots and pandering, if they have anything else to offer.
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