Favoritism
When it comes to school district funding, some Pennsylvania lawmakers are playing a game of favoritism.
Anyone who doesn’t like it should start speaking up, because, otherwise, the game will continue.
While the 2013-14 state budget passed on June 30 showed a 2 percent funding increase for the state’s 500 school districts, we’ve since learned that an additional $30.3 million in supplemental education funding will trickle down to 21 select school districts — leaving other school districts and taxpayers wondering why they were excluded.
The answer lies within the budget negotiating process that goes on behind closed doors, where lawmakers are free to craft language directing money to specific districts. Perhaps the lawmakers’ actions would be easier to understand if they negotiated in public and explained their intentions.
Instead, the finished budget showed the $30.3 million divided into 12 supplemental funding categories, including two labeled for rural and small school districts. However other factors, such as enrollment, aid ratio and tax rates, were used to allow them to qualify while ruling out all others.
The same sort of restrictive selection applied to larger school districts, as well.
Lawmakers labeled one of the supplemental funding categories for districts in third-class counties, where populations range between 210,000 and 499,999.
Yet, of the 154 school districts in the state’s third-class counties, only Hazleton Area in Luzerne County will get the supplemental funding of $1 million. It qualifies, according to the state, not only because it’s in a third-class county but also because its market value/personal income aid ratio and its enrollment level fell within specific ranges — factors that eliminated the other 153 districts.
Rather than urging lawmakers to muscle their way into this negotiating process, we urge them and others to push for eliminating these supplemental allocations — which are nothing more than political earmarks. Such favoritism takes away funding from school districts all across the state and should not be part of the education process.
The legislature should end the perks and begin working on a comprehensive education funding formula, which is fair to all school districts across the commonwealth.
In February, the Education Law Center of Philadelphia pointed out that Pennsylvania is one of three states in our nation with no formula, and as such, its lawmakers “cannot guarantee that state education dollars are being distributed accurately, fairly or transparently.”
The supplemental education funding allocations in the state’s 2013-14 budget is further proof of that shortfall.
This process should be terminated, and a fairer system should be implemented as soon as possible.
– Altoona Mirror