Thanks to a seven-month budget stalemate, Pennsylvania state government begins 2016 without a full budget, leaving the short and long term needs of every school — and every student — up in the air.
In the short term, the partial spending plan recently signed by Gov. Tom Wolf will provide desperately needed money for schools and human services, but only enough to stave off the consideration of school closures and program cuts for a few months at the most.
Because of inadequate funding in recent years, many school districts have eliminated programs; laid-off teachers; or reduced academic support for students. The long budget deadlock only made things worse: scores of districts were forced to borrow emergency funds and drain reserve funds just to keep the doors open. It will be up to each local community to pay borrowing costs for these loans as well as consider property tax increases to fill the gap created by inadequate funding.
In the long term, the budget gridlock means that one of the fundamental issues facing Pennsylvania — the need to fix our broken public school funding system — remains unresolved. School districts in our area are operating as lean as possible. With the numerous federal and state mandates placed on our districts, our local school boards have limited control over many areas in our annual budgets. Funding provided has not kept pace with the demands placed on our school districts.
The state’s current basic education funding system just does not work. On that, virtually everyone agrees, Republicans, Democrats, and educators in rural, urban, suburban and charter school districts. The system does not provide enough resources to educate every student to academic standards, nor does it distribute dollars according to a fair and valid formula.
The result, as has been repeated again and again since long before the current budget impasse began, is that Pennsylvania has the widest funding gap between wealthy and poor school districts of any state in the country. That means that the amount of money available to educate a child varies widely; all depending on where each child happens to live. The lack of a formula also means that state funding is so unpredictable from year to year that school districts cannot effectively budget or plan for the future.
That is why the bipartisan state Basic Education Funding Commission (BEFC), made up of representatives from the Governor’s Office, Department of Education, and both parties in the state House and Senate, was convened a year and a half ago: to examine school funding in Pennsylvania, determine any inequities, and offer recommendations on how to correct any disparities across school districts.
Last June, the BEFC unanimously approved recommendations for an equitable new school funding formula to help Pennsylvania begin the transition to fair and predictable funding.
In a year of political gridlock and increasing polarization, and even before the budget deadline came and went, all sides came together to find a solution to benefit all students.
The BEFC, after months of hearings, analysis and negotiations, developed a funding formula to address the concerns of schools across the state, whether urban or rural, large or small, experiencing changing student populations or holding steady.
This balanced formula removes politics from the equation, directing money to school districts based on objective factors, such as student enrollment, the needs of the student population, and school district wealth and capacity to raise local revenues. This formula was widely praised by legislators, local school officials and other experts, and editorial boards across Pennsylvania.
The nonpartisan Campaign for Fair Education Funding, a diverse group of more than 50 organizations committed to improving public education in Pennsylvania, endorsed the Commission’s work.
Yet because lawmakers have not been able to reach agreement on broader budget issues, the BEFC formula remains only a recommendation.
As 2016 begins, lawmakers must tap into the same spirit of bipartisanship and compromise that guided the Commission, and adopt its formula into law. In addition, because schools have suffered from insufficient funding over the last several years, the final budget must include a significant new investment of funding so public schools can begin to reverse or avert layoffs and education program cuts. The governor and legislators should pass a budget that contains at least $350 million to help restore funding and begin implementing the BEFC’s fair funding formula.
Those two important steps would be a strong foundation for the sustainable, predictable and long-term investment that is needed in our public schools. But it requires lawmakers to cast aside their differences for what should be their top priority: an equitable basic education funding system.
This can begin Pennsylvania’s transformation from being a case study in unpredictable and inequitable public school funding to setting the standard for delivering fair funding that meets the needs of each and every child.
Failure to enact the BEFC funding formula will mean funds will continue to be distributed based on legislative whim, with no predictability and continued inequities. Failure to put enough dollars behind the formula, now and in future years, will further stall progress toward education opportunity for every child.
There is no more pressing issue facing lawmakers than fixing Pennsylvania’s broken public school funding system. It is long past time for lawmakers to resolve their differences and make children a top priority in the final budget negotiations, so that this entire process is worth the wait for them.
