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To all PARSS Members,
We haven’t been taking up much space in your email inbox
recently because there hasn’t been much happening, unless you consider a
bunch of education lobbyists talking with each other about what isn’t going
on, something happening.
There have been appropriations hearings on the Governor’s
budget, of course. These have a ritualized air about them with legislators
firing off questions about their pet projects or peeves, and getting back
well rehearsed answers. If all else fails there is always “We’ll get back
to you on that, Senator”. There is not a whole lot of controversy and won’t
be until the Republicans respond with their own budget, which will be soon.
The one guess I would make at this point is that those districts, like
Reading, that get an enormous increase, will find themselves being reeled
back in to something approaching reality.
Property tax reform is taking a nap for another week or so.
Then it will return with all its previous fury (yawn). Of course the public
will be transfixed by the intricate dance going on between the leadership of
the House and Senate that will result in the naming of a conference
committee (another yawn) to work out an agreeable version of their
diametrically opposing bills on the topic. I suspect this will continue
until close enough to the primary for one of the really scared leaders to
blink.
Do not, under any circumstances think, that because it is
getting close to the end of the fiscal year, they won’t find a way of
forcing the index on all you rascally non Act 72 districts.
The story, as always, is not in what is being talked about,
but in what is not. We have a corrupt, archaic, inchoate, inadequate way of
funding the most important part of the state budget: public education. Its
continuance is an indictment of policymakers at all levels in the process,
insofar as their commitment to seeing that all children get a quality
education. The fact that this year the Governor put out one of the best
versions of this mess is little cause for other than short term celebration
on my part.
School funding is like some creature eating its own tail. It
is a system (or, more accurately, a nonsystem), that is composed of so many
disparate, unrelated parts that there is something good and bad for almost
everybody. The tragic part of it is that districts have become so dependent
on the piece of the thing that sustains them that many would be reluctant to
support efforts to trash the whole thing and start again. “A bird in the
hand is worth two in the bush”.
We have a basic education subsidy that is driven by data over
15 years old. The same is true of special education. To update those
numbers would mean disaster for lots of districts, so we continue, even
though some districts are unfairly advantaged by the nonsystem. Numbers of
kids don‘t matter in determining subsidy, and the combined aid ratio is no
longer a valid indicator of relative wealth or poverty. There are anomalies
in it you could drive a truck through, just ask Forest County, or Fannett
Metal.
Many of you make it only because you receive some form of a
hold harmless. Hold harmless is school findings analogue to heroin
addiction. If by some miracle we were able to put a rational, pure funding
formula together, and have it enacted, how many of you would lose you shirts
if it didn’t contain a hold harmless? This is a tautology because if the
formula contained a hold harmless, it wouldn’t be a pure formula. How does
the habit get broken without you firing teachers and closing schools?
Not to worry. There are few in Harrisburg who even
understand the preceding riff, let alone see the need for change. I
sometimes think PARSS should close its office and open a cave.
We need to talk about these things. If we don’t they will
divide us, and that folks, would be damn near the end of public educators
fighting for equity in school funding. When PARSS started, every one of the
members was in the same boat. We are in a number of different boats now,
but we have to keep rowing together in the same direction. You know why?
Because, no matter how the numbers might come out for your district, it is
the right thing to do for the long term interests of present and future
kids.
I challenge anyone reading this to tell me that is not so.
Joe Bard
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