We should expect more from legislators

Remember the Governor Corbett cuts? To pay, in part, for a massive handout for corporations, Governor Corbett slashed $1 billion in school funding in 2011, resulting in layoffs of 27,000 school personnel and years of floundering academic achievement. 

It took until just last year for the state to restore that billion dollars in funding but the damage visited upon our Districts, especially Philadelphia, remains evident today.

[Trigger warning: For parents, teachers, students who bore the brunt of those Corbett cuts, the following may be very upsetting.]

Pennsylvania legislators may be on the verge of a cut far worse for public schools. Due to the pandemic, the state’s Independent Fiscal Office estimates a budget deficit of $3 billion, or THREE TIMES the amount of the 2011 cuts.

Locally, districts may not be a factor in mitigating such a disaster. Districts across the Commonwealth are likely to have $1 billion less in revenue thanks to waning local tax collections, the PA Association of School Business Officers recently projected. In the Philadelphia region alone, revenues for schools could drop by nearly $400 million.

If that wasn’t troubling enough, here’s why we should be bracing for disastrous impact.

First, PA House leadership has hired Charles Zogby, Gov. Corbett’s Budget Secretary who was the architect behind the 2011 $1 billion cut. 

Second, House leaders are also pushing to neuter local school board members by freezing property taxes, knowing full well such legislation will result in the erosion of the quality of education statewide.

Schools were inadequately funded before the pandemic but even with the most optimistic projections of how schooling will proceed in September, we can be sure the costs to keep students and staff safe will require additional funding.

It doesn’t have to be this way. There is a solution.

Due to the COVID-19 crisis, voters are naturally seeking greater accountability and have little patience for dogmatic politicking. We all know the world is changing and politicians should understand that our expectations are changing along with it.

We need extraordinary leadership from lawmakers…that means understanding the top priority of voters and delivering what we need. In Pennsylvania, our top priority is, and has remained for years in poll after poll, school funding.

That’s why we demand legislators take action on these common sense protections for our students:

• at a minimum, guarantee that any new legislation protects the quality of education for every student 
• recognize that Districts have incurred a far-reaching set of new expenses, requiring that there be no cuts to the funds the Governor has proposed for school districts (which already represents less than a 1% increase in total education funding for districts for the upcoming school year)
• find resources school districts need to cover the loss of a projected half a billion dollars in local revenues after the COVID federal aid is distributed 

Legislators must reject facile approaches to complex problems. With so many threats inching closer and closer, foreign and domestic, politics as usual in the face of the extraordinary can only end in failure.

If we’re unable to prevent the unprecedented cuts we fear will devastate our schools, not only are the futures of our students in jeopardy but our competitiveness in the already uncertain global marketplace will be decimated.