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SUMMARY OF COMMUNITY FORUM DISCUSSION “The Challenge of Public School Funding” Sponsored by Friends of Better Government
Introduction This discussion was the first community forum organized by Friends of Better Government, a political action committee. Paul Thibault opened the session by stating that “We had an idea in seeking better government that it would be useful, helpful and profitable to Participation on the panel was by invitation. An additional 25 people observed.Two people led the discussion, with eleven others participating. They were: Leaders: Vicki Phillips, Secretary, Pennsylvania Department of Education and former Superintendent, Bob Still, President, Hempfield School Board Panel Participants: Bill Adams, Former Chairman and President, Armstrong World Industries George Brubaker, Partner, Hartman, Underhill & Brubaker Dr. Tom Gemmill, Veterinarian Timi Kirchner, Greg Lefever, Bank of Kirk Liddell, CEO, Irex Corporation Jess May, National Bearings Matt Parido, Director of Housing, City of Scott Smith, Fulton Financial Dennis Stuckey, Mike Young, This was an exploration of issues, not a collection of prepared presentations. The one-and-one-half hour discussion was wide ranging and rarely moved along a straight line. So this summary is a collection of informed observations, questions and suggestions. Most of the comments are quoted verbatim; some are paraphrases. Some of the comments may not be dead accurate with the facts, but they came, nevertheless, out of conviction. This summary does not end with conclusions or a consensus, other than the need to give this topic more of the public attention it deserves. The Importance of the Topic
Education accounts for 40% of the Commonwealth’s budget. It is the future of the state. It is the future of our society. Education does not get enough weight and enough time in public affairs. Yet, there is not one
The Elements of the Problem The issues in the funding of public education are local revenues, local spending and local control. The issue is much broader than property tax reform. Is the issue more money – or redistributing where it comes from and who it goes to? We don’t need to spend more money on average in People do not seem to be unhappy with the quality of education that their children and the children around them receive. Citizens (outside the SDL – When we are talking about school children, we are not talking about just the districts where they now go to school. We are talking not just about among their students. “Local control” means the independence of 16 school districts in the county, interacting with 60 municipalities. That independence is rooted in taxpayers who would rather have the people who are mowing the lawn down the street and sitting next to them at the basketball games making decisions about spending and the control of their school district and taxes than a few hundred legislators up in
Difficulties
The schools are called on to do so much more in a different and difficult societal structure. In “the old days,” whole segments of society went to school for a period of time, then left, got a decent job, made a decent living. Those families did not have to worry about their kids being supported in school to do well. They were going to do okay anyway. That’s changed. It just doesn’t work anymore. More and more people have to have the better education in order to get a decent job. The workforce has gone in 50 years from the majority earning a living with their hands and backs to a majority doing it with their heads, the “knowledge workers.” At whatever grade level students leave the system, they now have to have solid verbal and quantitative skills. If they leave high school and they still don’t know fractions or how to measure with a ruler, they are condemned to decades of not making a decent living.
The districts within
In Hempfield, 200 students speak foreign languages. In are spoken at home. In the SDL, students are from 20 countries, speaking 19 languages. The SDL has 3,000 pupils with “English language learner issues.” The SDL has 800 children who are officially “homeless.” The SDL does not receive its fair share of state and local funding. There is a wide disparity within the County in both revenues per student and required expenditures per student. Unfunded state mandates are a huge problem for the SDL.
For example, the SDL has 250 children with special needs that require Individual Education Plans. Those plans call for new resources, which add up to about $10,000 to $17,000 per student. The state gives every district enough money for 15% of their students to be classified as special needs. If a district has 8% of its students with special needs, that’s a great thing. Because they take what they need for the 8% and pump the rest into prevention programs so that more kids don’t start to exhibit those issues. But if you’re a district like The districts are growing more similar as time goes on.
For example, at Rohrerstown Elementary 25% of kids are on the school lunch program, many of them children of parents who have found housing of greater value in that area than they did in the City. There is pressure for tax increases on school boards almost everywhere.
While Hempfield has raised school taxes an average of 2% per year over the last five years, spending increases faster. It is up 6% in 2002-2003, fueled partly by such “hidden” costs as a 19% increase in employee health care and a 10% increase in contributions to employee pension plans. In the SDL, the tax base is stagnant. 25% of the real estate is non-taxable. Tax abatement to attract new businesses, while probably beneficial in the long run, nullify real estate tax revenues from those businesses for several years. When school districts build or remodel, they are subject to the same (often onerous and expensive) regulations and restrictions that commercial businesses are. Practical politics works against
Possibilities Economic development is so important for the tax base in some areas that there should be strategic targeting of efforts to attract new business. Some firms with a long local history are taking a short term economic hit for the benefit of the City (and it schools). Examples are Fulton Financial, High Industries and Lancaster Newspapers. Now we need to attract businesses without that long local history. We should try to find a way to help businesses who choose to locate in the City offset some of the extra costs vis-à-vis choosing suburban locations. Could there be a process by which the whole County, with the SDL, figures out what is best in County and state funding for the city’s schools? Progress is possible without a lot more money from the state.
serves six homeless shelters. It has a high mobility rate. Among the 75 students in the fifth grade at consecutive years at that school. Five years ago, the school had 60% of its students at the bottom in reading level and about 80% at the bottom in mathematics. That school has gone from 0.4% of its kids at the advanced level to about 20% advanced and from 60% to 22% of its kids at the bottom reading level. The SDL spent time raising $23 million in external funds. They used the funds to make happen the kinds of reforms that give “the kids who come to they need to succeed.” The Conestoga Valley Educational Foundation has for ten years raised private funds to finance worthwhile educational initiatives which could not be funded from annual budgets. The system would benefit from competition from well-structured organizations that are user/customer focused, while giving the present systems the power to make changes for the benefits of their users.
Charter schools are not a competitive panacea. In fact, they often make public schools’ problems worse. We may be heading to a tipping point in at least reform in education funding. From the governor on down, a growing group of people are willing to take this on. We need to continue to rally and make it known that something has to be done, because there appears to be a growing will. The Hard Questions 1. What’s adequate enough and where are those dollars going to come from? 2. How can schools do the planning and get the money they need to invest in technology? Districts cannot have the depreciation accounts that businesses do. So every expenditure is a current expenditure. That makes it difficult to do prudent capital planning which extends over several years. There is no central source for finding and sharing “best practices” for using technology for more effective and cost-efficient learning. Not among the 501 districts in As part of $560 million technology system. Now every teacher in the state can download one piece of software right to their desk. That desk is also connected to the public libraries and the universities’ system. ratio from 40:1 to 3:1. they will have a system in which everybody in education can talk to each other, because it makes sense to share data. It is just more productive and more cost effective. 3. Where is the political will to follow a promising plan for the next 10 to 15 years? The parents and the taxpayers are, generally, not unhappy. higher priorities than better public education. And they have political clout. Some in have said that change is up to the legislature. Political pressure may come from urban minority groups, keying in on civil rights One of the most severe tests of political will would be a plan to either redistrict the schools of 4. How much “accountability” should be expected from school districts? At least, districts should and do have systems for accounting for how money was received and where it was spent. Districts who seek additional money for hard-to-educate students should have a very refined plan for how they will spend that money. Districts should be accountable for teaching students the basic skills they need to live productive lives.
Going Forward The problem of public school funding cannot be solved in a purely political arena, where the goal may be politically acceptable legislation. There are nuances and complexities that have to be explored in depth over time. Progress will be a whole series of compromises along the way. We could use a process in the county like the regional approach to land planning. The heart of that is bringing people together to discuss. + + + + + At the conclusion of the Forum, Paul Thibault said, “We want to keep a healthy political community discussing the real issues of the day, rather than sloughing them off to the next generation because they are too tough for us. “ |
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Paid for by Friends of Better Government P.O. Box 8910 - Lancaster, PA 17604 717-393-3246 (T) 717-299-5692 (F) Legal