House digs into big education budget
By Christina Lengyel | The Center Square
(The Center Square) – Education is the second largest spending area in the state’s budget after human services.
For legislators on both sides of the aisle, the question that loomed the largest seemed to be, “Are we getting what we pay for?”
It was a question that Education Secretary Dr. Carrie Rowe and other officials who sat before the House Appropriations Committee for an all-day discussion on Monday heard again and again.
Minority Chairman Jim Struzzi, R-Indiana, laid out the numbers: the proposed budget includes $19.7 billion for education, a $905 million increase.
Within that, pre-kindergarten through 12th-grade education would receive $17.9 billion, an increase of $787 million. Libraries would receive $79 million, a $581,000 increase. Higher education would receive $1.7 billion, a $117 million increase.
Pressed by legislators on the efficacy of the new funding formula, which went into effect during the current school year, Rowe agreed that ” it’s more complicated than just adding additional funding.”
This year’s budget proposal includes $526 million toward the $4.5 billion adequacy gap suffered by schools in districts with high poverty rates and lower property tax income. The majority of impacted schools are in urban and rural areas.
Legislators who represent historically better-funded districts maintain that it isn’t fair for taxpayers to send dollars to schools elsewhere while no new funds come their way. The state’s hold harmless policy ensures that districts never receive less funding than they did the previous year.
Rep. Marci Mustello, R-Butler, cited reports showing no direct correlation between funding and standardized test performance. This is a metric lawmakers consistently rail against while also using as the primary performance indicator in their discussions.
“What I can say is that underfunding school districts, we’ve seen, has led to lower test scores in some places,” said Rowe. She said that funding goes toward staffing, creating smaller class sizes and creating a safe, healthy space for students.
In many districts, that means improving facilities. Lead and asbestos are major issues for districts in every region of the state, as are space and climate control. The department’s budget allocates $75 million for facility improvements, a figure Rep. Justin Fleming, D-Harrisburg, called “woefully inadequate.”
To fund these projects, schools are expected to pull from their roughly 17% fund balances, a number that they say they can’t afford to let drop too low.
The report revealed expenditures on facilities, which students do not use, gifts and bonuses, which traditional schools don’t offer, and travel and entertainment that aren’t part of public school budgets, riled lawmakers who see charter school tuition deducted from their districts’ budgets.
Education Committee Chairman Rep. Peter Schweyer, D-Allentown, noted that the five schools not only underperform at much lower numbers than schools called “failing” within the commonwealth, but they don’t even test the expected percentage of their students.
In his budget proposal, Gov. Josh Shapiro wants a flat rate of $8,000 per student for cyber charter school tuition across the state. Rowe stated that this number is slightly higher than the lowest any district pays for charters for non-special education students and should, therefore, be sufficient for every student since costs and programming do not change by location.
The cap echoes a bill passed in the House that year that included tightened regulations on charter schools.
The Pennsylvania Coalition for Public Charter Schools scoffed at the cap and criticized the “blanket assertion that cyber charter schools operate at lower costs,” citing incomparable costs for faculty salaries, technology infrastructure, cyber security and individualized student support services.
Cyber charters weren’t the only time school choice came into legislative crosshairs. While some Democrats and Rowe insisted that it’s the constitutional responsibility of the legislators to create a functioning public education system, others maintained that today’s shortcomings betray the students in struggling schools who don’t have time to wait for improvements.
For them, school choice is the best option, but the numbers, according to Appropriations Chair Jordan Harris, D-Philadelphia, don’t bear out. He says currently, the Opportunity Scholarship Tax Credit program has a 25% surplus, and its Educational Improvement Tax Credit program retains $74 million of its $375 million for the year.
Supporters say the funding that is used creates better outcomes for students. According to data compiled by the Commonwealth Foundation, the average family income for scholarship recipients ranged between roughly $41,000 and $73,000 annually, well below the statewide median of $93,000. The average EITC and OSTC awards are $2,583 and $1,853, respectively.
The Childrens Scholarship Fund of Philadelphia said students from the city’s collar counties – Bucks, Chester, Delaware and Montgomery – outperformed their public school peers on math and reading tests, both in fourth and seventh grade. Ninety-nine percent graduate on time and 72% enroll in college.
The group also cited data that shows 61% of seventh-grade scholarship students read at or above proficiency, compared to 38% in the School District of Philadelphia. The gap in math proficiency is much wider: 54% of scholarship students score at or above grade level, while only 19% of district students do the same.
Still, private schools can come with religious requirements that shut out the same vulnerable youth the programs purport to help.
Rowe noted that while outside schools are allowed to accept students from public schools, they are not obligated to. Frequently, she said, schools deny students from low-performing districts, even if they receive the funding they need to attend from the state.
